Unit 8 Video Transcripts

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Video Transcript: Dwight Moody (Dr. Bruce Ballast)

I made the title of the book upon which this course is based on ordinary people extraordinary things. Now, if you look back at the history of revival that we've seen so far in the United States, you see some people who are really quite extraordinary. Jonathan Edwards was considered to be the most brilliant man in the colonies at the time. George Whitfield certainly was thought to be an incredibly exceptional speaker and had offers of many, many church posts that he could have filled. But then as you go on in time, you find people like Charles Finney, and not much theological education, and yet, he was trained as a lawyer, we get to Jeremiah Lamphere. Again, theological education is lacking. But he was a inexperienced businessman. And he used those principles as part of the founding for the revival in 1857 1858. But now we come to a truly ordinary person. Last time I said we were going to reserve this session just for Dwight Lyman Moody, somebody that is incredibly important in the history of revivals. He has been called God's gospel salesman, because he was, above all things, a very effective salesman. So here we are an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. 

His story begins on February 5, 1837, that's when he was born in an area of Massachusetts. As he grew up, he was in a large family, he was the sixth child in the family. Five of them were boys at that point and grew up in a fairly normal, but poor family. In fact, yeah, they lived kind of on the edge of survival financially. And then when Dwight Moody was four years old, his father died. Now at that point they had there were seven children left his mother with seven children. And two weeks after the death of his father, Edwin, she gave birth to twins. So here is a woman with nine children. Now relatives told her they should farm the kids out to send them to orphanages, etc. And she was determined to try to keep the family together. And so she began looking for work wherever she could, and but was trying to raise these twins and life was incredibly complex at that time. Now, the pastor of the Unitarian Church was somebody who came around and provided a great deal of help to the family. And when Dwight Moody was five years old, he was baptized in that church, and they joined that church as a result. So you really have to understand if you're going to understand Dwight Moody, a little bit of the Unitarian Church. Now the Unitarian Church, as we saw earlier, was kind of a response that took on all of the characteristics of the enlightenment, the belief in rationality, the belief in the fact that intellect should be able to get you there and removing anything supernatural, from any belief about the Bible or belief about the stories about Jesus. And it was Unitarian Universalist is often how it is phrased that there's a belief in a god, but everybody's eventually going to be saved. And so some of the characteristics of this particular expression of faith, or they still call themselves Christian at this time, but they've denied the deity of Jesus Christ, and Lord Jesus was not God. They denied faith as the means of salvation, or one of the hallmarks of the Christian church throughout the ages has been that salvation comes by by grace through faith. But now they're saying no, that's not the way that things happen. Reason, our intellect or education was seen as the supreme good. And so the purpose of the church was not to bring people to salvation, but it was to build good character through education and reason. Maybe the most famous of the pastors in the Unitarian Church was Ralph Waldo Emerson, if you remember him, if you've had English literature classes, you've probably read some of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the fathers of transcendentalism, which is, you know, belief that we can transcend our present experience through the use of reason, etc. 

So Moody, whatever religious training he had, and he had very little took place within that kind of setting. In fact, though, you know, when his son, Dwight Moody son wrote a biography back in the year 1900, he wrote that, you know, one of the things that was always in their home and his mother's home was a Bible. Apparently, Dwight moody never read it because later, he couldn't pass a very simple exam on some of the things that are in the Bible. So this is the background, education wise. You know, he had to go to work to help support the family. So he never got more than a fifth grade education at the age of 17 he decided to move to Boston, because he wanted to make money he wanted to get a good job. Now, at that time, apparently jobs weren't too plentiful in Boston, and uncle had a shoe store and he invited Dwight Moody to join his shoe store as a salesman until he could get a better job. And yet, week after week after week went by, and he was a salesman. That's what he did. And he was pretty good at it, too. Now, the conversion story for Dwight Moody, involves a very interesting person by the name of Edward Kimball. In fact, here's another ordinary person that does extraordinary things and the history of the church in America would be different. If we're not for Edward Kimball, those name has been kind of lost. Edward Kimball was a teacher in a church, the Plymouth Congregational Church.

Dwight Moody was attending this church, and everybody was in Boston, and Edward Kimball was his teacher. Now Kimball was going through the gospel of John with his students, a bunch of young men like Dwight Moody, and he determined that one of the things he wanted to do more than anything else, was to lead each of his students to Christ. And so he would arrange to meet them outside of the church outside of the Sunday school session, and just talk to them about Jesus Christ. And so Edward Kimball one day showed up at the shoe store, walked in asked for Dwight Moody, who was in the back unwrapping shoes. They were shipped in paper back then, and he was unwrapping shoes. And Edward Kimball sat down and talked to him about his soul. Now, Dwight Moody, when you remember that day described it this way. So when I was in Boston, I used to attend a Sunday school class and one day I recollect my teacher came around behind the counter of the shop, I was at work in and put his hand on my shoulder and talked to me about Christ and my soul. I had not felt that I had had a soul till them, I said to myself, this is very strange thing. Here is a man who never saw me to lately, and he is weeping over my sins. And I never shed a tear about them. But I understand about it now. And I know what it is to have a passion for men's souls, and weep over their many sins. I don't remember what he said. But I can feel the power of that man's hand on my shoulder tonight, was not long after that, but I was brought into the kingdom of God. Now imagine that this is very encouraging to me, because I've studied revivals. And I've asked God to use me in the process of bringing about revival wherever he would choose. It's interesting to me that here's a person that history would not even remember the name would not have any significance, you wouldn't Google it and come up with a whole lot, except for the fact that he was the instrument that God used to bring somebody into the kingdom that God was going to use in a powerful way in revival. 

So Dwight decides that he's going to join the church. And so he is brought before the deacon board, at the Congregational Church. And on May 16, the visit with Edward Kimball was April 21, May 16, is brought before the board, and they asked him a rather simple question. That's a picture of the church there that's on the right on the pillar there in Boston, they asked him a very simple question, what is Christ done for you? And for us all that especially entitles him to our lives and obedience? Now think about that. How would you answer that question? Dwight Moody was not able to give an appropriate and effective answer. So they voted and did not vote him in as a member of the Plymouth Congregational Church. They assigned two men to work with him. And it was a year later, May 3, 1856, that he was then voted in as a member, though those who were part of that interview said he didn't do all that much better, yet, even a year later. And so you've got somebody who is really an ordinary person, maybe even less than ordinary, and yet, God begins to use him in a powerful way. The story goes on for him September 1856, he decided to move to Chicago at that time, it was about 80,000 people it was the new capital of the West, it was the place for opportunity would do Dwight Moody's spoken goal was that he wants to raise $100,000 in the bank. Now remember, this is 1856. And he was well on his way. In fact, when he moved to Chicago, he had $7,000 in the bank. And so he began attending, again, a congregational church there. And in fact, he asked to volunteer to become a teacher there and back then what they would do is they were higher pews for their students and Moody turned out to be an incredible salesman. I mean, he's trained as, of course, a salesman. And so he's out in the street and he's talking to children and he's talking to young people. And he begins to just start bringing in people until four pews are filled. And at that point, he decided he wanted to be a teacher in one of the mission schools of the church.

Now, the Mission School 1859 back then mission schools are not what we think of now, when we think of mission schools. I supported financially a Mission School for several years out in Rehoboth and, and it was established about the same time as the Mission School then. And the idea was that there were people there who were part of the Navajo tribe of Indians, and they weren't able to get an education anywhere else, because they didn't fit in the public school system. And so you'd bring them to the Mission School? Well, in Chicago at that time, they were doing some of the same things. They were bringing kids into mission schools, because there were no child labour laws back then many children, especially among the poor, had to work all week and Sunday was the only day they had off. So they had mission schools. Sunday, they would bring children into the schools and teach them some of the rudimentary reading, writing and arithmetic that they would need, hopefully, to better their lives. But they would also in this mission school, teach them about Jesus Christ. So Moody went to the head of the Mission School for the Plymouth Congregational Church and said, I'd like to volunteer and they said, well, that'd be nice, but we really don't need you. At that point. They had 12 teachers for 16 students and that Mission School. And so Moody went to work, he hit the streets, because they said, you can teach if you get your own class. And so he did. He piled in a class very soon, it was a it was packed. And then he decided to start his own Mission School in one of the poorest areas of the city of Chicago, and rented a facility. And once again, he's out on the streets, he would talk about Jesus Christ, anywhere, he was so excited about his faith, he was known to stand on the steps of City Hall and preached and invite kids to the Mission School and that way, and beginning to be effective, so much so that in his mission school adults started attending, because they heard of how entertaining it was to be in Dwight L. Moody's mission school classes. And so he would speak, the place began to become larger and larger and larger, and eventually got so big that he decided to turn it over to the YMCA, the Young men's Christian Association, a group that he had become associated with back in Boston and renewed his association in Chicago. And in fact, he even became president of the young Men's Christian Association, and did that for a few years. Well, things were going so well in that regard that Moody had to face the challenge. 

Moody continue to do his work and aim toward getting $100,000 in the bank? Now, by this time, he wasn't selling shoes anymore. He was actually collecting debts. He was travelling throughout all the western area as a debt collector, but 1860 came the choice for him. Are you going to do this full time or not? And he felt the challenge and felt God's call in his heart and decided that yes, this was God's call to him. Now that was interesting, because about the same time he had met a young woman named Emma Ravel. There's a picture of her and Emma Ravel and he fell in love, and they were going to get married. But the marriage had to be postponed because of the financial situation of the couple. And so it wasn't until August 28, 1862 that they were able to get married. So Moody begins to speak regularly. This is now his full time work and he's working alongside of and with and through the YMCA. It wasn't until 1870 that he really began revival meetings. Up until this point, he's speaking in churches. I speaking in mission schools. He's speaking wherever he was invited to speak. But now began the idea that maybe he could be the instigator. Maybe he could be the one who would formulate the revival meeting and set it up. And it was a meeting Ira Sankey, that set that whole process in motion and revival meetings began in 1870. If you're not aware, Ira Sankey was a tremendous musician. And he was the first member of Moody's team. And he was the one who provided the music control the music directed the choirs, as Moody began to expand his capability in this area of revival meetings. We've talked about revivals where it's a movement of the Holy Spirit revivalism where they practice revival. Well, this was a revival meeting, where the meeting was intended to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. Things really took off for him in the years 1873 to 1875. During those years, he was in England, Moody and Sankey, and they were holding revival meetings in England, incredibly well received occasional trips to Europe. But after that, when he came back out of the the large cities in the United States seemed open to his presence. 

So revival meetings series of them were held in Chicago, and Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, in New York. Now, when we look at Dwight Moody, there are several contributions to this process of revivals and revivalism and the history of revivals that he's noted for. And that's why he deserves a chapter all on his own. One is a change in the emphasis to the love of God. I remember back as I quoted, sessions ago, now, that sermon from Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God, and much of the preaching tended to be on God's judgment, and on the fact that you should escape hell. And so it was, you know, truly desire to scare the hell out of you. That's what they were doing. But now Moody combs, and he is giving an entire emphasis, different emphasis, and that is on God's love. And that's partly because of his own experience. He wrote a bit one time says, oh, what a day, I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred and experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for 14 years, I can only say that God revealed Himself to me. And I had such an experience of His love, that I had to ask him to stay his hand. I used to preach the God hates the sinner. I never knew that God loves us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out, I could not hold back the tears, I took up that word love. And they do not know how many weeks I spent in studying passages in which it occurs, until at last I could not help loving people. And so Moody is remembered as the great apostle of love much as John is in the New Testament. So, a change a major contribution is that idea of focusing on love instead of God's judgment or hatred of sin in the sinner. Second contribution is his organization. We've seen a progression, you know, from Jonathan Edwards, speaking in his church and revival breaking out to George Whitfield speaking out in the fields and enlarge places, open places and coming to Revival to Charles Finney, who brought about those new measures that we've looked at. Well Moody brought now a whole new organization into the process of bringing revivals. And so there was a an organization that started as people came as kind of the front runners came to town, and they began to pray through the town. And there was the organization of the choirs and the music and the various pastors and churches and all of this is building on what Charles Finney had already done. And now this is Moody's organization. And he became the best known revivalist third contribution, and we talked about with Moody with revivalism was his preaching style. Now, you know, we've seen already that Jonathan Edwards spoke with no gestures whatsoever, if you can imagine that and that he read his sermons, and that how that got down to Charles Finney, who began to preach extemporaneously with no manuscript. Well, Moody was an entertainer, and incredible entertainer. And so he preached with an openness but also a humility. In other words, it became very obvious that the love of God was what was motivating him. 

People did not feel manipulated to give money much as they do, going to modern day revival kind of meetings. People did not feel manipulated, even to accept Jesus Christ, what they encountered was a humble presentation of God's love. Now, this was done with somebody who had a fifth grade education. Imagine that. In fact, here's what one journalist wrote about him, said, oh, the way that man does mangle the English language. The Daily slaughter of syntax at the tabernacle is dreadful. His annunciation may be pious, but his pronunciations are decidedly off colour. It is enough to make Noah Webster turn over in his grave and weep to think that he lived in vain. And yet, in that kind of situation, people were coming to faith. The other thing that he is known for contributions to revivalism is this man with barely a fifth grade education is known for education. At Moody Bible Institute in Chicago was founded by Dwight L. Moody. Moody church there is founded by Dwight L. Moody and is the inheritors of what he did. And so a man with a fifth grade education encouraged people to go on in their education in Scripture I go on and their education about the gospel go on in their education about theology. And if you read Moodies writings today, and they still are purchasable in variety of places, you'll find that he was somebody who himself was trying to constantly expand his understanding, and his ability to express Christianity in a contemporary but well thought out way. And so you'll find lectures to students, and you'll find sermons and, and you'll find just thoughts on revival, but it's an emphasis on education. Now, Moody of course died, December 22, 1899, spent some time ill prior to his death, and was best known probably for the quote, I'm going to read to you next. Now imagine you've got friends visiting you as you're sick, and you're not predicted to recover from this sickness. And I've occasionally wondered what I would say, having had friends who died and you visit them, as they grow weaker. What are they thinking? What are these last thoughts? These are the thoughts for which Moody has become exceptionally famous. And I've been quoted over and over since then, he said, someday you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield is dead, don't to believe a word of it. At that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher that is all out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that sin cannot touch that sin cannot taint a body fashion like on his glorious body.

I was born in the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856, that which is born of the flesh may die, that which is born of the Spirit will live forever. Dwight Moody, incredibly ordinary person. Now I hope this has given you some hope, some hope. When I finished my study of revivals, many years ago and laid the foundation for this course and the book upon which is based. I remember a friend met me after I had come back home and spent six months and Harvard University Writing and studying. He met me and said, Well, what did you learn about revival and, and I said, with an edge of cynicism, it's I found out that I am too old and too educated to be used by God and bringing about revival. And I guess that was some arrogance, because I think what we're learning here is that God could use anyone. Dwight Moody is not somebody you would have looked at and said, yes, that's the guy that God's going to use. Nowhere in his upbringing, would you find anything that would have commended him to you to say, yeah, that's somebody who's coming. Nowhere in his teen years, even though he's working hard, he's trying to make a fortune, would you say yep, that's the person who at the age of 17, can't even pass a very basic kind of examination for membership in a church saying what Christ had done, you wouldn't have thought that's the guy, then you wouldn't have thought it even when he was in the Mission School, because you would come and you would hear incredibly rotten English language that he would use the rotten use of the English language in you would have said, wow, it's amazing. It's nowhere along the line, would you say yes, this is the guy. This is the guy now that that gives me encouragement in several ways. One, I never know who God is going to use. And so I've got a treat each person, I think of the children in the congregation that I serve, as I sometimes get to walk into classes, sometimes in the youth ministry, part of this get to engage teenagers and middle schoolers, talking about things of faith. And who knows who's there, that God will use? Who knows? You know, way back in the time of Martin Luther and the Reformation back in the 16th century,

Martin Luther, his teacher had a habit of doffing his hat to his students when he come in the room. And he was criticized for that, because students were considered to be, you know, a lower level of society, and certainly, a professor wouldn't do that. And so they challenged him and said, you shouldn't do that. And he said, oh, he says, but I never know who's in that room. I never know who that who their God might use in the future. And, and so Martin Luther was used in bringing about reformation. Also it is the same for us today who around us and maybe it's you. Maybe you look at your life and say, well, there's nothing in me that would commend me as the next great revivalist in the United States or whatever country you happen to be in. Well, then take hope from Dwight L. Moody, take hope that it could be, it could be. In fact, there's a wonderful story back in the book of Exodus, in chapter 17, you can read about that time when the people of Israel are travelling in the wilderness, they're on their way to the promised land, and they are attacked. And Joshua was told by Moses to get an army together, and all these people who grew up in slavery, so they had no training militarily. They were told to get together Joshua army and go fight these folks that are attacking them. And Moses says, I'll sit up on the mountain here and watch. And you remember the story of Moses, as long as he has his hands up, the people of Israel prevail in the battle. But as soon as he gets tired, and his hands come down, the enemy prevails in the battle. And so Aaron and Hur come on each side of Moses, and they hold up his hands, and eventually a great victory is attained. And then God speaks to Moses. And the first thing he says is, make sure you tell Joshua, make sure you tell Joshua, because otherwise, he might think it's him. He might think it's his ability, his train, incredible, inspirational speech to the troops before the battle, who knows what, so make sure that Joshua knows that it's Me. There's anything we're learning about revival. It's this. It's about God. It's not about us or our abilities or lack thereof, God will use whomever he will use, and maybe he wants to use you. That's the powerful message and that's why we put Dwight Moody into a category of his own in this study.

Video Transcript: Decline Again (Dr. Bruce Ballast)

Welcome back, ordinary people extraordinary things, story of revival. Now, we just talked in the last lecture about Dwight L. Moody and the incredible process that God put into place for revivalism to thrive. And, and it did. But you know the story already by now, I suspect, and that is that these periods of revival are followed by periods of spiritual decline. And once again, that's the story. In fact, Arthur Schlesinger, well known historian, describes 1875 to 1900 as the critical period in American religion. Now, it's hard to imagine, we've had times where the number of people going to church was down to about 5%. Why is this called the critical period these 25 years? Well, it's largely due to one man, that is Charles Darwin. Here's some pictures of him. On the right, it says an old man as on the left, as a young man. Now Charles Darwin was born in England, he was born as son in a very wealthy family, a wealthy physician, back then, it was possible for a physician to make a lot of money his father did. And the hope always when you had a son at that time, and sometimes you have today in some families, the hope was that this son would go on and carry on the father's tradition. And so it was intended in the family, at least the Charles Darwin would become a physician. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to like school a whole lot. And so they tried to send him to school and 1825 he ended up in Edinburgh in Scotland, for medicine. But it was a lousy student. And so eventually he leaves that because he wasn't going to succeed. And the next thing he tried was law, he went to another school for law. Now in England of that time, 1825 27 if you came from a wealthy family, and you didn't go into either law or medicine, that the third thing left for you was Holy Orders. And so 1827 Charles Darwin was in Cambridge in England, studying for Holy Orders, or to become a priest and official in the Church of England. And that's where he studied. Now, as you study there, he found that he still didn't like school a great deal. But he found that he was attracted to science, and the scientists, and particularly to naturalist. And so he began to read and study and go to lectures 1831 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Cambridge University. And at that time, he got an invitation to take a trip around the world. There was an exploration trip aboard the HMS Beagle, His Majesty ship Beagle. That's an artist's rendering of what it probably looked like. So here's a small ship, and they are intending to go around the world. And Charles Darwin was signed on the crew as a naturalist. In other words, he was simply to observe nature, he was to make drawings, he was to take home samples of plants that maybe would be unique to England, not seen in England, collect birds, feathers, animals, whatever he could collect, because the goal was not just to take the trip around the world, but to further the educational system in England of the time. Now, the real challenge came from Darwin's mind when he got to the Galapagos Islands, there's a picture of them. You'll notice these are kind of a unique area of the world, and made up of several islands gathered together, and very different from one another. And as Darwin went from island to island and began to observe nature and draw plants, he noticed one particular thing that was just kind of puzzling to him. And that was the fact that there were finches on several different islands. But the finches were all different. On one island, they have very large beaks that could crack open seeds, and so they ended up eating large seeds. 

On another island, the beaks on the finches were small and so they were left looking for smaller seeds in order to just find something to eat, and then get another island, the beaks were entirely different so that they didn't eat seeds, they eat insects. And so in his writings, as he's keeping a journal and describing all this, he postulated, what has now become known as the theory of natural selection. And that is that the kinds of finches develop unique to the area. In other words, there was to use the word that he's become associated with an evolution that was going on among the finches. In other words, a Finch with a small beak wouldn't be able to survive on an island that didn't have small seeds and those that insects wouldn't be able to eat a survive on the islands where they ate small seeds or large seeds. And so all of those birds have that particular line of the species would die out. And so those natural selection going on of the strongest people who fit in various or strongest birds that fit in various categories. And so that became his theory. Now, October 2, 1836. long voyage, right? They were back in England. And still Darwin was not known as a negative force. Until on November 24, 1859, he spent those years in between 23 years putting together his thoughts and writing them on November 24 1859. It was the his major book was produced, and it was called the origin of the species. And in that, he suggested that maybe the entire creation was the result of natural selection. In other words, maybe the world didn't happen the way the Bible says it happened, maybe creation didn't happen the way the Bible says it happened, maybe, things just happen over a period of time. We lived with this for a long, long time in our society today, these ideas, but you have to realize that this was more powerful than the enlightenment, which question, you know, the direct involvement of God, but this, this made man simply another animal, you know, we're kind of the highest developed of the animals. But looking around, wow, there must have been a development there too. Until the church felt under attack, Darwin, boy, he just set loose a firestorm of criticism, and eventually announced that he didn't believe in Christian faith anymore, this man who had once studied for the priesthood in the Church of England. Now, if you went to school anywhere, in a public school system in the United States, you have learned a great deal about Charles Darwin, and the origin of the species. I gotta tell you, one of the great moments in my life, I had a daughter who lived in Cambridge, England for four years and worked in the laboratory, connected with that, the universities there. And as part of the visiting of her, we did this trip in London, and went down to the church, where Charles Darwin is buried under the floor.

And it was a great moment to step on his on his grave and say, No, you didn't win, you didn't win, the church is still here. But back then, it began to look like maybe it wouldn't be. So these ideas about gradual development over a long period of time, began to break into other areas of the world as well. One of the ways they developed was what became known as historical criticism. One of the best known proponents of this is a man named Julius Wellhausen. In 1878, he decided to take some of these ideas of questioning now the Bible has the inspired Word of God and questioning some of what it says and applying a very strict set of rules on how to interpret it to the Bible and see what you come up with. And as a result of his work, people began to question almost everything about the Bible. For instance, with the five books of Moses, Julius Wellhausen, suggested that there was more than one author, it wasn't just Moses, who wrote these books, but there were evidence of several different ones. And so the book developed and probably was written far after the Bible seems to indicate it was written after. And so a lot of the things that happened were reported on and the things that were predicted were reported on not prophesied about and etc, etc, etc. And one of the greatest proponents was a man named Adolf Van Harnack, who in 1900, again, produced publications that began to question, big questions about what this all means. And so this had an influence on the church. Spiritual decline, once again, is, as now the gospel message, the simple message that somebody with a fifth grade education like Dwight L. Moody could present is now being challenged by well, if you only knew the truth, you wouldn't believe that simple stuff in the Bible. Such hasn't ever been. So, Darwin is one of the forces that brings decline and historical criticism is another one that brings decline in the power of Christianity of that day. A third force. We've seen this before, but now immigration is becoming the norm. And, you know, all of those big city ideas that were feared by Thomas Jefferson are becoming reality. For instance, here's, here's a picture of the city of Chicago in 1833. Now, at that time, it had 17, houses, 17 houses, 1833. Not that much later, just a couple of generations later, here's the city of Chicago in 1900. You'll notice streetcars masses of people by them it is a thriving city of 1,698,575 people. Now, the result of all this crush of immigration is that cities were getting crowded, and churches were leaving the city. Here's just some statistics 1860 to 1900, America saw 14 million immigrants and another 14 million between 1900 1920 most of them were poor, they crowded into cities, less than 1/3 of them settled on farms anywhere. And so this became a time where the cities were crowded, and the churches left. And there was hardly anyone it was estimated in downtown Chicago, that there were 60,000 people living there. And there was not one single church there that was serving them. The only organization that seemed to thrive on serving the inner city of that time was the Salvation Army. And it was not doing a real bang up job. So you have these masses of people gathering in various places, and churches not able to serve them or moving out because they're people who are coming in are of a different ethnic background than those who founded the church or for whatever reasons, the church is moving out. That's a it's a pattern that's been repeated with cities for many, many years. It's a fascinating thing was Chicago, the denomination of which I'm a part of Christian Reformed Church can almost traces experience in Chicago, because there are those original churches that began there. And then you can go out a circle, and you find another whole group of churches that were established when when the community changed in that circle. And then there's another circle, and there's another circle. And that's what happened. So the churches are being challenged, and Christianity is not ministering to an immigrant population very effectively. Another factor, during this time that contributed to the decline of religion in the United States was wealth.

It was a time where money just seemed to be flowing in after the Civil War, there was a time of prosperity that was just incredible, incredible in this country. And you can look at that time, and you can read about the very, very wealthy Americans, you know, the people who, who did the railroads and, and built the steam engines and began reaching across the country with transportation and communication until it was a time of great wealth. And as I've said before, these lectures, wealth is one of those things that has challenged the church. We can thrive in persecution, and we can thrive in poverty. But you know, it's when we get prosperous that our commitment to faith and commitment to spreading the gospel seems to decline. So you've got well, another factor that contributed decline were a group of people who were known as infidels. And these were people like the one on the right, Robert Ingersoll, probably one of the better known of the infidels of that day. These were people who challenged the Christian faith. In other words, their mission was to destroy Christianity. And so what they would do is they would go from town to town, and they would offer public lectures. And they became well known because these were skilled, entertaining people. Remember, this is a day before video games. It's the day before television, it's the day before movies, you know, what do people do for entertainment? Well, if somebody came to town, and there was going to be some big presentation in the largest hall in town, folks would come because it was something to do. And then that kind of setting somebody like Robert Ingersoll and was trained as a lawyer just found the heyday of people ready to listen to him. And he became at some point we're not told when but became an agnostic, which means he didn't know if there was a God, but he felt like if there was a god, he wasn't anything like the God that the Christian church presented. And so his mission was to try to do away with the Christian church. Now, all kinds of wonderful stories about Robert Ingersoll and you know, some of them have been wonderful sermon illustrations for me over the years. My favourite is about a time he was standing on a street corner and was ready to invite people to this meeting that was going to happen in the city during the evening. And he happened to notice a soapbox preacher. And that is one of these guys who would set up a box and stand on it and preach, challenging people to come to faith in Jesus Christ. And this guy was obviously from the country, he was obviously poorly educated, obviously, not the kind of guy that would be able to stand up to the incisive thought process of Robert Ingersoll. But Ingersoll was intrigued. And so he decided to set up something different in this town, he went up and there's a small group of people around this preacher, he went up to him and said, You know what, I'd like to to invite you to a debate tonight, I'm supposed to speak in the town hall, I invite you to come and debate me. And you can present what you you believe about Jesus Christ and the Bible and about Christianity, you present that I'll present our side. And we'll kind of have an exchange of ideas there. And, of course, the man on the soapbox, knew who Robert Ingersoll was, and knew his capacity and he was very well known. And he thought for a few moments. And the response was this. He said outcome he saw come on one condition. I said, I'd like you to bring one person, one person who, whose life was destroyed in a variety of ways, maybe economically, maybe relationships, maybe his marriage has failed. Maybe he's caught in the throes of alcoholism, one person whose life is destroyed. But because he accepted your agnosticism, and believed your unbelief, found that life was worth living again and found a change and found the courage to go on and change his life. You bring one of those, I want you to bring one person who was caught in the throes of prostitution, came here as an immigrant and couldn't make a living and ended up becoming a prostitute. But because of your agnosticism, found a new hope for a new life. And was able to turn life around and become a prosperous, contributing citizen. You bring one one of those people, you bring one person who is contemplating suicide, but changed because they heard your message and found hope for life again, you bring one of each of those, and I'll bring 100 of each and then we'll debate. I would love to see that. I suspect that's it's probably not a true story. But it was. It's a good one, isn't it? 

Because it, it creates the boundaries of what we're talking about. As far as the difference between what the agnostics believe and the new modern kind of thinking of that day believe and the promise of Jesus Christ. Well Sydney Alstrom summarize this period of time. This way, he said from every sector, the problems converged the enlightenment's triumphant competence in science and a nature's law, the multi form romantic heresy that religion was essentially feeling our poetic exaltation, that nature was a cathedral and communing in it a sacrament, the disruption of the creation story, and the biblical timescale, the evolutionary transformation of the old notion that the world's orderliness bespoke God's benevolent design, the historical criticism of the Bible, the relative position of the church and its teachings, the denial of human freedom and moral responsibility, and even the abolition of those eternal standards by which right and wrong, the false and true were to be judged. All this had to be faced. Moreover, in the new urban jungles of the Gilded Age, where Americans seem to be chiefly bent on getting and spending and laying waste their powers. never in the history of Christianity, it would seem, was a weak and disunited Christian regimen drawn into a battle against so formidable and alliance under such unfavourable conditions of climate and weather, and with so little information on the position and intent of the opposition, yeah. That's the situation. So how would the church respond? Well, the general response to the Christian world then wasn't very, wasn't very positive. One of the responses was what was known as liberal theology, and that is that it accepted all the claims of Darwinism and accepted all the finds of science of that time and all the projections of science, and simply recreated theology. And liberal theology can be summed up in this way, you know, man's freewill and tendency to do good. That's what was thought to be at the core of man. Now how different is Scriptures, teaching about us that we are at basis morally and totally depraved, by nature, moving away from God yet, liberal theology says it's just the opposite. And hard to believe that in spite of history, that they believe that. Education they thought education should not be about Jesus, but about morals. And so Jesus in this system of belief was no longer the Son of God, God in the flesh come here. But he was a good moral teacher, and we've got to learn from his morals. The history is evolution. In other words, if you look at history, you've got to look for the fact that it's evolving, and it's always evolving to up to higher scale. Now, in this time, during the period of industrialization, it seemed that way, it seemed like the nation was just going through this constant improvement, growth expansion. And so they were looking at all history that way, including biblical history of divinity of Jesus debated, and religious education is the purpose of the church, not bringing people to salvation. So that was one response. We've got to respond to this, how do we respond? Well, let's buy into the whole thing and just make it kind of baptized in some veneer of Christianity. Another response was response to the social gospel. Now, the social gospel said that the point of Christianity is to make a difference among the poor in the world. And one of the best proponents of this was Charles Sheldon, and his book in his steps, if you've never read it, I encourage you to read it. It's a story about man who comes into a very upscale upper middle class to upper class church, he's dressed poorly. And at the end of the service, he comes to the front and says, as he looks out at the people, Why doesn't anybody help me, basically, and then he drops down and he ends up dying and, and the church goes through this renewal, saying, This is what they're about, they're going to be about helping the poor from now on a very, very good question came out of that. And what would Jesus do? You know, what would Jesus do you remember, if you've lived in this country for any length of time, it used to be bracelets that were created that you know, WWJD, what would Jesus do? Well, this all goes back to Charles Sheldon, and the social gospel. But the point again, is not salvation. 

But it's doing good, doing good things. Walter Russian Bush is one of the main proponents of this on the theoretical side in his writing Christianity and the social crisis in 1907, saying Christianity should be involved in making a difference in the Christian social crisis. here's, here's just an idea of where the social gospel came down. Last May a miracle happened. At the beginning of the week, the fruit trees, more brown and greenish buds. At the end of the week, they were robed in bridal garments of blossom. But for weeks and months, the sap had been rising and descending the cells and maturing the tissues, which were half ready in the fall before the swift unfolding was the culmination of a long process. Perhaps these 19 centuries of Christian influence had been a long preliminary stage of growth. And now the flour and the fruit are almost here. If at this junction, we can rally sufficient religious faith and moral strength to snap the bonds of evil and turn the present unparalleled economic and intellectual resources of humanity, to the harmonious development of true social life, the generations yet unborn, will make this as that great day of the Lord, which the ages waited, and countless blessed for sharing and the apostolate that proclaimed it. That's the bottom line, you'll notice, there's nothing set in there about acknowledgement of sins. There's nothing set in there about any eternal day that's coming when Jesus will return and will be taken up to heaven, nothing about that. It's about making a difference in the social fabric of the world. And so that's another response of the church was the social gospel. And then finally, progressive orthodoxy. Or not finally, progressive orthodoxy was another one, which tried to find a blend between all the liberal theology and Orthodox progressive orthodoxy just questioned a lot of the basic beliefs and said, they're not really that important. We can be believers beyond that. And then our response on the other side of things was fundamentalism, where a group got together and said that they were going to focus on the fundamentals, and they produced a series of booklets about the fundamentals and said, these are the fundamentals, that you believe in the literal infallibility of the Bible, the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement resurrection, the imminent bodily premillennial second coming of Christ, and those are the fundamentals. And so that group of the church began to say we're focusing on these things, good things at that the time to call the church back to the basics. 

We're going to see later that it became kind of a negative as the fundamentalist began to marginalize themselves from the general society, but back then notice how different this is, from the social gospel or liberal theology, or even an orthodoxy that tries to find a blend between this was saying, there are things we are going to stand on. And that sense, may we all be fundamentalist. But anyway, this is the story goes on that religious decline from the height of Moody, to now a time when there are all sorts of questions, and particularly because of Darwin's work and about the forces that unleashed a lot of questions about what you and I believe, as part of the Church of Jesus Christ. And so once again, next session, we're going to look at the question how would God respond to this.

Video Transcript: God's Response to Decline (Dr. Bruce Ballast)

We continue looking at ordinary people extraordinary things. We've seen some extraordinary things in the last session about how, in spite of the work through Dwight L. Moody that the influence of religion began to decline once again. And in fact, some people will refer to the the period of that we were looking at as a period of spiritual lethargy, in the church I, that's a powerful word, you know, some words have certain description to them that have power to lethargy is one of those, that the church just couldn't seem to do anything. Sometimes I feel lethargic, when it comes to mowing my lawn, I just don't want to do it. So I find all kinds of excuses not to do it. Well, a powerful description of the church was lethargy. So in this session, we're going to ask how would God respond to that? Once again, the influence of the church is on the decline, the growth of the church is stopped or membership in the church is on decline. What would happen? What would God do as a response? Well, there were two of them. Two things that happen that that showed that God was still concerned about his church and still concerned about people coming to salvation, and still concerned about people knowing him more, more deeply. 

One was ongoing revivals, and the other is the Pentecostal movement, and that those two things are going to be the subject for this lecture today. So first of all, ongoing revivals. Now, I want you to get this distinction clear. You know, when we talked about revival early on, we are talking about what Jonathan Edwards talked about, and that is a supernatural coming to life again, of somebody or some area, as the Holy Spirit would fall in power, and there would be this renewal that would happen, new life. Now, that had changed by this time. Now we got a long history with revivalists, and revivalism, to holding a revival. In other words, a revival is something that you held, or you had a revival meeting. So rather significant difference coming to life, versus holding meetings that we've already seen how there has been a development that's been going on for a long time in making a pattern for revival. Know, Jonathan Edwards wouldn't think about patterning one he would just pray for a revival to happen. But Charles Finney brought his new measures in saying revival is not just something you got to pray for, there are steps you can take that the Holy Spirit is predictable, and how he brings about revival. And so if you just do this, you'll have a revival. And then Dwight Moody brought that even further by having advanced teams going into the town and, and fine tuning that inquiry venture, that sense of coming to faith. Now it's become a pattern. And in fact, during this time, we find that revivalism now is being criticized, and that was criticized by people outside the church, but people inside the church in a variety of ways. The criticism came from three different areas. Some came from the social gospel, okay, so there were those that we saw last time, who emphasized that the church should be about changing society. And that's the point of the church, not changing souls, but changing physical characteristics, helping the hungry, clothing, the naked, etc, that that side of the gospel, important side is the side. And the side of salvation is not a side anymore. Well, they criticize it because they said, it's so emotional, and it really doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything to help the hungry except give them that whole idea of pie in the sky by and by that one day, you're going to heaven. So that was one side, there was criticism. The other side was from the conservatives. 

These are people who believe the basics. They were more toward the fundamentalism side of the spectrum of the church at that time that we looked at last time. And so these people said that revivalism is basically done. Picture there's a Reverend Dwight F. Pentecost, he was a fairly well known revivalist. And in 1900, he quit, he resigned his position as a revivalist with a company or group that had gone around from city to city place to place and done revivals. And he said he was doing that because he didn't feel like the future of the church was in revivals. Rather, it was going to be through the work of a local church. And so he resigned as a revivalist and became a pastor in a local church. And the reasons that he said were one revivalism is done as a way but also that it's not as effective as he looked at his work as a revival, as he said. It's not doing what we want it to do and changing the world. This is one historians reflection on that. The statistics appear to show that in eastern Massachusetts, for example, the addition to the evangelical churches for five year periods after the Great tabernacle meetings in Boston, were not so large as for five year periods before. In other words, I came in with a great big revival, and said the church grew slower after the revival than it had grown before. And then says, and most pastors have observed, that the quality of the material brought into the churches under these influences is not so high as that game by the devoted work of the local church by its own methods among its own client edge. So they're saying it's not effective. We've got to find a different strategy, and it shouldn't be the local church. Now the other side, third side for a criticism of revivalists and revivalism where the moderates and liberals These are the people who wanted to try to find some kind of failed cross between gospel and changing the society. And this is one statement about what they want. 

What they want. It was a revivalism, which would be both intellectually respectable and emotionally fervant, which would show some awareness of the need for social reform and yet not substitute socialism for regenerating individuals. They felt that a more practical application of the Christian message was needed, but did not want the churches to take any stand on the controversial issues of capital and labor. In short, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. And so, so the revivalism is ongoing. But there's criticism and in fact, statistics show that it was really ongoing. For instance, in 1911, there were 650 approximately full time evangelists in this country. 650 people traveling around in 1911, and 1200 part timers. One publication estimated that between the years 1912 and 1918, 35,000 revivals Now again, this is a period of any day of two days of meetings to two weeks of meetings, where a revivalists challenges people's to faith 35,000 of those over that period of 1912 to 1918. And another source estimates that from 1914 to 1917, the church, the big church in the United States, spent $20 million per year on professional tabernacle evangelism. Now, the references we've hit it a couple of times already for tabernacle evangelism. And that's because there became a practice of moving that into a tent, later on tent became very important. But at this point, if a revival was going to come to that town, they would build a plywood tabernacle. And so when you hear references to tabernacle evangelism, you've got to be picturing people out in the field somewhere outside the edge of town. And they're building a huge building, in order to house the meetings for this coming week. $20 million in 1914 to 1970 dollars. Imagine that, would you? That's how much the church was still engaging in the process of revival. And God was bringing people to faith through this. So one of the responses, we've got to that decline that we looked at last time, was to kind of up the ante. 

You know, the church continued to, to bring people to faith. And some of the clientage of that was changing. In other words, it wasn't the educated people, they tended to be the moderates and liberals. But it tended to be the the poor people tend to be more in the small towns than in the large cities. But still, there were revivals going on. Now, the best known of the revivalists during that time, is a man named Billy Sunday. And again, if you were going to choose somebody that you'd say, that's the man that God's going to use, that's the person you wouldn't have said that about Billy Sunday, was born November 19, 1862. He was my December 23, 1862 fatherless. Is father was in the Civil War and was killed. And so he becomes somebody who's with a mother, who now has three children to take care of, and therefore in poverty. Now, his grandfather, Squire Corey, took care of the mother and the children a great deal during those years, and then the mother remarried, and that's another story but Billy Sunday in those first few years, well As a not a healthy man in fact, boy rather, in fact, this statement about his life. During the first three years of his life, Billy was anything but a healthy child. And his mother and her relatives often despaired of his life. He was small at birth, lacking in strength, and for some reason did not gain rapidly as his brothers had done. Then we read an old French doctor living in the neighborhood prescribed some herbal remedies that seemed to be just the thing, for they soon had the boy going toward robust health. So he's a young boy, three years old, sickly. But he was small most of his life. Now his mother remarried a man named Hyzer, a couple more children were born. And he lived a fairly normal life was still poor, still the family somewhat dependent on help from Square Corey, the grandfather, and that worked until 1874. There was a great economic downturn in this country in 1874, and Hyser, the husband, step father, left the family and has never heard from again. 

Now at this point, the family moved back in with grandparents, Squire Corey and his wife. But Billy Sunday was pretty headstrong at this point. And he and his grandfather butted heads quite often. And it was determined that they couldn't afford all these children. And so Billy Sunday and his brother were sent to an orphanage, that left a huge imprint on Billy Sunday, those years in the orphanage, because there was a very strict management, you know, any behavior that was negative would get a demerit. And with demerits, you got to lost privileges. And, and so this was a time, somebody who was known as a pretty free spirit and somebody who, you know, butted heads with his grandfather, certainly with a stepfather as well. And now he's in this structured area, and he hated it. He was there for two years, until 1876, when he was 16 years old, he was off on his own. And he tried to go back home, but his grandfather, basically after a very short time, such no you and I don't, don't get together, we just can't make it work. And so he was off, he went to the local town, he got a job at a hotel, he lost that he could run really fast. And so he got a job at a fire station. So they needed messengers who could run fast to bring a message from one place to another, or if there was a call for the fire engines to come out to make a run around to call the volunteer fire department. And so Billy Sunday became a runner for the fire department, in 1833, is when he began a baseball career. He played on the local Marshall town baseball team in Iowa. And in 1833, his baseball team won the championship of that area of Iowa. And a man who saw him play, he happened to be the coach of the Chicago White stockings. And so he signed them to a contract. And then Billy Sunday became a professional baseball player. And, man who signed them to that contract was that man there, and he was a baseball player, he'd become a coach. And he's well known, he's famous. And that's his old old baseball card, you'll notice those were very, very popular back then. And so he's a baseball player. He has two records for which he was known. One is that he was able to run from a standing position at home plate around all the bases in 14 seconds. And that's a record that, to my knowledge still stands. And a second record, which held for many, many years until 1915. 

Was that he stole 95 bases in 1915. Ty Cobb is the one who broke that record. So Billy Sunday, and he is known for his baseball playing, and the culture that surrounded the back then, of hard drinking hard living people. This point, he recognizes no faith in his life, no faith in God in his life. But he was focused on baseball one time he described his baseball career this way, he said, any event that set him apart, he said, as I saw the ball rise in the air, I knew it was going clear over my head into the crowd that overflowed the field. I turned my back and ran, the field was crowded with people and as I ran, I yell, get out of the way. And that crowd open like the Red Sea for the wrath of Moses. I ran on and as I ran, I made a prayer. It wasn't theological either, I tell you. I said God if you ever helped the mortal man helped me to get that ball. I ran and jumped over the bench. When I thought I was under it and stopped. I look back inside going over my head and I jumped and shoved out my left hand and the ball hit it and stuck, at that rate I was going, the momentum carried me on and I fell under the feet of a team of horses, but I held on to it and jumped up with a ball in my hand. That's the Billy Sunday that history records powerful man powerful capability to run fast. Of course back then they've never stadiums like we have now but people would gather on the outside of the outfield. And so that's how he could run into the crowd and run into a horse there. Now in 1886 he experience conversion. That happened in Chicago. He had the ballplayers that were his friends, were getting tanked his the way he put it, they were coming out of a tavern and there was a group from the Pacific Garden Mission. We're inviting this ballplayers to come in and most of them just laughed it off. But for some reason, Billy Sunday went in.

He went in and he heard the message and began to respond. Now, the word on is the name on your screen. Mrs. Clark is there because she was instrumental now here again, like Edward Kimball with with Dwight Moody, Mrs. Carcass, somebody that history does that record. In other words, she had no significant place in history other than being the person who discipled Billy Sunday to the point of conversion. And so he's converted, and they began to get involved with a YMCA those years 1890 to 91 he was closely associated with the YMCA began doing speaking in a variety of places with the YMCA. And there came a point of real challenge for him and that is, uh, would he do revival full time now, that was a challenge because he was at that point, under contract with baseball team. And so he began to pray he set out kind of a fleece that you know, God, if he released me from my baseball contract, he said, I will, I will go into full time revival kind of ministry. And the release came. Now that was a real challenge, because when people heard he was released, another baseball team offered a humungous amount, $500 per month now in 1890, that was a lot of money. Instead, he stayed true to what he felt God was calling him to do, he stayed with the revivalist, YMCA working with them. And I got $83.33 a month doing that. Now at 1893 there was a downturn economically in the country donations to the YMCA went on a downturn as well. And so he went to work then for J. Wilbur Chapman who has a well known revivalist. And so he became one of the gophers, one of the people who helped set up the revivals that would go into town. And then for some reason that Chapman never wrote out, he decided in 1895, to quit, he just quit being a revivalist. And there were some days and weeks scheduled ahead for revivals. And Chapman said to Billy Sunday, you can do it. And at that point, Billy Sunday hadn't written a message at all. And so he Chapman sent him a couple of messages that he could use his sermons and Billy Sunday tried to learn them. And 1895 is when we schedule our when we we hear of his first revival. 

Now, began meeting in towns and became incredibly popular because he was a showman, first class. And in fact, at one point, there was a plywood tabernacle. And there's a picture of it. Plywood tabernacle built for his ministry that would seat 16,000 people. Now imagine the safety codes that they had, that thing just wouldn't happen today. But 16,000 people crammed into this plywood tabernacle. And the height of his popularity was New York in 1917. The reality is that he became extremely popular during the First World War. In fact, he showed up in one town, the day after war had been declared on Germany. And of course, people were ready to hear a message. And, you know, during those years of the First World War, he had a powerfully patriotic message and an anti drink message, he became very much a proponent of prohibition, and happened 1919 prohibition happened, and from that point on, Billy Sunday became less and less popular. Some of his lack of his popularity had to do with his claim that he could deliver converts for $2 a soul. And so many people in the church just felt that was rather crass. He applied to be ordained, he was not ordained in the Presbyterian Church, and here's a description of his examination. In his examination before the presbytery, the former ballplayer was plied with question for an hour or more by the professors of theology and the learned members of the body, he answered their questions to their entire satisfaction. And his orthodoxy was pronounced sound and every particular. Occasionally some erudite professor would ask him a question that was a poser and want to think about another words to which he would immediately reply that's too deep for me, or I'll have to pass that up. And yet, the motion was made as he was under this examination by somebody who simply said, let's just pass him. And so they did. So that's one God response was to the downturn was continue of revivals that continue challenging people to faith. The other response was the beginning of the Pentecostal movement. Now, a lot of this is traced to this man, Charles F. Palmer.

Palmer June 4th, 1873, October 1900. He established a school in Topeka, Kansas, so he is a young man, but he had this idea that we should be able to speak in tongues as a response to reading the book of Acts, that the natural response he believes should be speaking in tongues. And so he began to teach that and to preach it, but it wasn't until January 1, 1901 where miss Ozeman, picture on the screen there, they were at an all night prayer meeting to introduce the new year. So it was a watch night prayer meeting such as many churches there and sometime after midnight, this young woman asked for parm to lay hands on her, and to ask for her to receive the gift of speaking in tongues, part of himself had not yet spoken in tongues. And so this is how records that event. I had scarcely repeated three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her, a halo seem to surround her head and face and she began speaking in the Chinese language, and was only unable to speak English for three days. Now after that, things began to take off. April 09, 1906, is known as one of the great dates in the history of Pentecostalism because that's when the Azusa Street Revival began. The man in the picture William J. Seymor was one parm students. Somebody came out of the experience of parm schools and had been baptized with the spirit as it began to refer to it and had gone to Los Angeles and said you should send somebody out here to further this. William Seymour was the man that was sent. And so he came out to Los Angeles, was invited to preach in a church. And when he presented his idea that we should be speaking in tongues was forced out, he went into a home was invited into a home to preach, and eventually that happened, that they rented facilities on Azusa Street. And that is a picture of it. And, and revival began to happen in that way, and that Pentecostalism, which was going to begin to impact the entire church now at this point, it was a marginalized group and, and, you know, eventually in Texas, they said there were about 25,000 pentacostalist by 1910, or the end of the world war one there, there was a growing movement, but it's very slow because they were considered to be mostly poor. That was considered to be a highly emotional, it wasn't considered to be really mainline at all. But what began there was an emphasis on the Holy Spirit was something that was going to carry through the church and impact it much later, as we're going to see in subsequent lectures.