Revival: Spiritual Awakening in the Reformed Tradition

REVIVAL

Spiritual Awakening in the

Reformed Tradition

Michael A. G. Azad Haykin

Reformation Heritage Books

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Revival

© 2024 by Michael A. G. Azad Haykin

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Scripture taken from the King James Version. In the public domain.

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Haykin, Michael A. G., author.

Title: Revival : spiritual awakening in the Reformed tradition / Michael A.G. Azad Haykin.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Reformation Heritage Books, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023050461 (print) | LCCN 2023050462 (ebook) | ISBN 9798886860962 (paperback) | ISBN 9798886860979 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Church renewal—Reformed Church—History.

Classification: LCC BV600.3 .H446 2024 (print) | LCC BV600.3 (ebook) | DDC 269/.24—dc23/eng/20231220

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050461

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050462

For additional Reformed literature, request a free book list from Reformation Heritage Books at the above regular or email address.

To Joel Beeke,

with deep thanks to God for his friendship

and fellowship in the gospel.

There is no subject which is of greater importance to the Christian church at the present time than that of revival. It should be the theme of our constant meditation, preaching and prayers.

­—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I am an eighteenth-century man.

—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Contents

Introduction

1. When the Spirit Shall Be Poured Forth Plentifully:

Revival in the Reformation and English Puritanism

2. God Is Doing Marvellous Things:

The British Need for and Experience of Revival in the Eighteenth Century

3. Come to This Life-Giving Stream:

George Whitefield and His Ministry in a Time of Revival

4. He Carries Fire Wherever He Goes:

William Grimshaw and the Haworth Revival

5. The Theologian of Revival:

Becoming Jonathan Edwards

6. A Spirit of Powerful Holy Affection:

Twelve Marks of Genuine Revival

7. We Are a Garden Wall’d Around:

Particular Baptists Needing Revival

8. Impress Thy Truth upon My Heart with Thine Own Seal:

Andrew Fuller and Theological Reformation

9. The Lord Is Doing Great Things, and Answering Prayer Every Where:

John Sutcliff and the Concert of Prayer for Revival

Conclusion: Eight Theses on Revival

Appendix 1: William Grimshaw’s Letter on the Haworth Revival

Appendix 2: John Stutterd, The Means of Reviving and Promoting Religion

Acknowledgments

Introduction

This small book on revival, one of thousands that have been written on this vital subject, is written with the conviction that I learned from Martyn Lloyd-Jones and that was reinforced by Richard Lovelace: the history of the church is a history of revival, a history of ups and downs.¹ To record that entire history would require a good number of volumes. The aim of this book is far more modest. It seeks to stoke the passion, as it were, for the presence of Christ’s Spirit of revival by looking at two moments in this history of renewal: the transatlantic Great Awakening in the mid-eighteenth-century Anglo-American world and the revival of the Particular Baptists in the British and Irish archipelago at the close of the eighteenth century, which stands at the fountainhead of what historians term the Second Great Awakening. In many ways, years of study of revival and renewal have convinced me that these two scenes of church history are paradigmatic when it comes to the subject of revival.

The first chapter contains a number of snapshots of the way that revival was a feature of both the Reformation and English Puritanism. In essence, it seeks to show that concern for revival was not unheard of prior to the awakenings of the eighteenth century. After detailing the need for revival in eighteenth-century Great Britain and highlighting the revivals that took place in Wales and Scotland, we then look at three key figures of the First Great Awakening: George Whitefield, William Grimshaw, and Jonathan Edwards. Above all figures, Whitefield brought together the various revivals in the United Kingdom and her American colonies. Grimshaw is a good case study of what revival looked like in a local parish. Edwards, while ministering in the somewhat different context of the British colonies in America, provided the First Great Awakening on both sides of the Atlantic with a paradigmatic theology of revival. While these three men are not without their weaknesses and faults—the subject of slavery in the cases of Whitefield and Edwards is a clear and recent example—their experience of and thinking about revival forms, in the opinion of this author, are a standard in many ways as we think about and long for revival. The second half of the book, chapters 6 to 9, looks at the revival of a community of Baptists, the Particular Baptists in Great Britain and Ireland. After also detailing the way that this community needed reviving (a chapter that parallels chapter 2, which sketches the need for revival prior to the First Great Awakening), we look at two key figures in this Baptist revival, Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliff, and their distinct contributions to this time of renewal.

It is obvious that far more could be said about revival. I think of studies that I have done and lectures that I have given on Asahel Nettleton, the Haldanes, le Réveil among the French Calvinistic churches in the nineteenth century, and the revival of the Gaelic-speaking Baptist churches of the Ottawa Valley, Ontario, in the 1830s. And while there are a number of works available that deal with the overall history of revival,² my approach is to focus on a couple of major revivals so as to discern a number of key principles with regard to revival.³ Again, let me stress, the revivals considered in this book, which are from what historians call the long eighteenth century (the 1680s to the 1810s, or even to the 1830s), provide a template or paradigm for our thinking about revival. Hopefully, what this book outlines about revival will provide principles about this all-important subject and stimulate ardent prayer for God to revive His church in the midst of these trying times.⁴

St. David’s Day, 2022

Dundas, Ontario

1. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Revival (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1987), 26. See also Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978).

2. See, for example, R. E. Davies, I Will Pour Out My Spirit: A History and Theology of Revivals and Evangelical Awakenings (Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Monarch Publications, 1992). See also the fine studies of revival by Eifion Evans, Fire in the Thatch: The True Nature of Religious Revival (Bryntirion, Bridgend: Evangelical Press of Wales, 1996) and by Brian H. Edwards, Revival: A People Saturated with God (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2019).

3. For a focused approach to revival similar to what I am doing in this book, see Ian Randall’s excellent work, Rhythms of Revival: The Spiritual Awakening of 1857–1863 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2010).

4. See the Conclusion for a summary of these principles in the form of eight theses.

CHAPTER 1

When the Spirit Shall Be Poured Forth Plentifully

Revival in the Reformation and English Puritanism

The renewal of interest in Reformed teaching and doctrine over the past sixty years has been tremendous. A key means by which this interest has been kindled and enabled to flourish has been the British Westminster Conference (formerly known as the Puritan Conference). Organized in the 1950s by, among others, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) and J. I. Packer (1926–2020), this conference, which still meets annually in December, has played a vital role in awakening evangelicals to the riches of Puritan and Reformed theology. For many years it was customary for Lloyd-Jones to give the final address of the conference. The first of such addresses was the one that he gave in 1959 entitled Revival: An Historical and Theological Survey.¹ Lloyd-Jones began his address by defining revival as an experience in the life of the church when the Holy Spirit does an unusual work. These extraordinary movements of the Spirit consist first of all, he stated, in the enlivening and quickening and awakening of lethargic, sleeping, almost moribund church members and then in the conversion of masses of people who hitherto have been outside in indifference and in sin.² Lloyd-Jones went on to illustrate his defini­tion of revival from the history of the church and from Scripture and to show that the history of the progress and development of the church is largely a history of revivals…these mighty exceptional effusions of the Spirit of God. What is striking about Lloyd-Jones’s survey of the history of revival is the significant place that revivals have occupied in the Reformed tradition. Lloyd-Jones asserted that one of the main reasons why revivals have not been prominent in the past century is due to the fact that the final half of the nineteenth century witnessed a widespread turning away from Reformed theology which continued unabated until the late 1940s.³

To those acquainted with the history of Calvinism these assertions by Lloyd-Jones should not be a surprise. For instance, the massive advance of the gospel in Europe during the time of the Reformation can be adequately explained only in terms of spiritual revival. And on the cutting edge of this advance were undoubtedly those whom today we call Calvinists (though, it should be noted, John Calvin would abhor the use of this term). Consider France as an example. It has been estimated that by the time of John Calvin’s death in 1564 there were roughly 1,200 Reformed congregations in the country with around two million members, which was about a tenth of France’s population.⁴ And the emergence of these congregations occurred in the space of less than fifty years! But let us focus our attention on Puritan thinking about revival.

A deep and abiding interest in the work of the Holy Spirit lies at the very core of English Puritanism, that late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century movement that sought to reform the Church of England and, failing to do so, splintered into a variety of denominations such as English Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Particular (i.e., Calvinistic) and General (i.e., Arminian) Baptist.⁵ Whatever else the Puritans may have been—social, political, and ecclesiastical Reformers—they were primarily men and women intensely passionate about piety and Christian experience. By and large united in their Calvinism, the Puritans believed that every aspect of their spiritual lives came from the work of the Holy Spirit. They had in fact inherited from the continental Reformers of the sixteenth century, and from John Calvin (1506–1564) in particular, a constant and even distinctive concern with the person and work of the Holy Spirit.⁶ Benjamin B. Warfield (1851–1921), the distinguished American Presbyterian theologian, can actually speak of Calvin as preeminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit.⁷ And about his Puritan heirs and their interest in the Holy Spirit, Warfield has this to say:

The formulation of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit waited for the Reformation and for Calvin, and…the further working out of the details of this doctrine and its enrichment by the profound study of Christian minds and meditation of Christian hearts has come down from Calvin only to the Puritans…. It is only the truth to say that Puritan thought was almost entirely occupied with loving study of the work of the Holy Spirit, and found its highest expression in dogmatico-practical expositions of the several aspects of it.⁸

Here are four vignettes of revival in the Puritan era.

Dedham, Essex⁹

When John Rogers (ca. 1570–1636) first went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a student in February 1588 he proved to be a complete wastrel. His way was being paid by his uncle, the well-known Puritan preacher Richard Rogers (1551–1618), but John sold all of his books so as to spend the proceeds on various sinful activities. Not surprisingly, Emmanuel College, a hotbed of Puritan theology and piety, asked John to leave the college. Richard Rogers’s wife convinced her husband to give the young man another opportunity. So the younger Rogers went up again to Cambridge only to prove the profligate once more, again selling his books and squandering the money obtained on his vices. His uncle would have washed his hands of him at that point, but yielding to the entreaties of his wife sent John up to Cambridge yet a third time. This time things proved to be quite different as a longsuffering God saved the young man and Richard later confessed, I will never despair of a man for John Rogers’ sake.

Most of Rogers’s pastoral ministry after graduation was spent at what was then a Puritan stronghold in the parish of Dedham, Essex. He came to the Dedham church in 1605 and served there as a lecturer till his death thirty-one years later. A good number of Puritan leaders who had conscientious objections about aspects of the liturgy of the Church of England served as lecturers since this enabled them to preach, usually on a Sunday afternoon, outside of the framework of the typical Anglican service. According to the Puritan Sidrach Simpson, Rogers was an extraordinary preacher, both a Boanerges, a Son of Thunder (see Mark 3:17) and a Barnabas, a Son of Consolation (see Acts 4:36) through whose preaching the stout hearts of many rebellious sinners were humbled and led in submission to Christ.

The great Puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) was present on one occasion when, during the course of a sermon, Rogers took the part of God, angry with His people for not prizing the Scriptures and not reading them. He threatened to take away the Bible from such an ungrateful people. Rogers then impersonated the people, falling to his knees in the pulpit and pleading with God not to give them a famine of hearing the Word of God. Lord, whatsoever thou dost to us, take not thy Bible from us; kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods, only spare us thy Bible, take not away thy Bible. Goodwin recalled that the impact of the sermon was electrifying, as many of the people in the church were smitten in their consciences and reduced to copious weeping in repentance. Goodwin himself, not yet converted, was brought under deep conviction of sin. When he came out of the church he was so overwhelmed with tears that he stood for fifteen minutes or so, leaning on the neck of his horse before he had the strength to mount.

The Puritans long prayed and labored for a national awakening that was Dedham writ large. Though these prayers and labors did not see an answer in their lifetime—such an awakening was to come in the eighteenth century—here at Dedham we clearly see an anticipation, an antepast, of the remarkable scenes of revival in the next century. Here is great encouragement not to give up praying if we do not see immediate fruit. Praying breath is never lost.

Kirk of Shotts, North Lanarkshire

Around the same time as this foretaste of revival in Dedham, a celebration of the Lord’s Supper at Shotts near Glasgow on Sunday, June 20, 1630, was attended by such a rich sense of the presence of God that at the end of the services, instead of retiring to bed, folks continued together in prayer and devotion throughout the night. Evidently it was not the custom at that time to have a further service on the Monday following the Communion. Yet God had so presenced Himself with them that they were unable to part without further thanksgiving and praise. A Monday preaching service was therefore arranged and a young man called John Livingstone (1603–1672), chaplain to the Countess of Wigton, was persuaded to be the preacher.

He too had spent the previous night in prayer. Alone in the fields at eight or nine in the morning he was so overcome with a sense of his unworthiness (particularly as so many choice ministers and experienced Christians were present) that he thought he would slip away quietly. He had actually gone some way and was almost out of sight of the church when the words Was I ever a barren wilderness or a land of darkness? were so impressed upon his heart that he felt bound to return and preach. What was to ensue was a most remarkable demonstration of the power and the grace of God under the preaching of His Word.

Livingstone preached for about an hour and a half upon Ezekiel 36:25–26: Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. He was about to finish when a heavy shower of rain caused people in the churchyard to cover themselves hastily with their cloaks. This prompted the preacher to continue:

If a few drops of rain so discompose you, how discomposed would you be, how full of horror and despair, if God should deal with you as you deserve? And God will deal thus with all the finally impenitent. God might justly rain fire and brimstone upon you, as he did upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and the other cities of the plain. But, for ever blessed be his name! the door of mercy still stands open for such as you are. The Son of God, by tabernacling in our nature, and obeying and suffering in it, is the only refuge and covert from the storm of divine wrath due to us for sin. His merits and mediation alone are the screen from that storm, and none but those who come to Christ just as they are, empty