Evangelists: The Quarry From Which We Were Hewn Part One

Author: Michael Gott

. . . Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn. Isaiah 51:1, NIV

In this day and in our time it is too easy to forget, as evangelists, the rock from which we were cut and the fabric from which we were spun. I believe we should go back and be reminded anew of our spiritual heritage. Let us remember who lit the fires of revival and our spiritual trailblazers. Let us study the evangelists who led out in the great revivals of our history. It is from them that we got the very word “revival” and from them that the idea of the traveling evangelist came down to us in the American tradition.

We have had bequeathed to us a noble tradition and a pattern of special evangelistic meetings planned exclusively to save souls. It shaped the thinking of our Southern Baptist forefathers, and it needs to be fully appreciated by each of us now.

Many times the Old Testament tells us not to forget our God or the glorious work He has done in times past. Gideon spoke of the same thing saying,

. . . the miracles that our fathers told us of . . . Judges 6:13

The point is, Gideon knew not only about the great moments of God but the great men of God in times past. So check yourself; when did you last seriously study one of the great awakenings or study the life of the evangelists that God used?

Bernard Weisberger wrote a book entitled They Gathered by the River. He said it was “the story about the great revivalists and their impact upon religion in America.” He also admitted he wrote as a historian who tried “to interpret revivals in purely secular terms.” Nevertheless, it has a lot to say to us, and I will give you an example. His description of early American evangelists is classic. He said that “These men were native timber, with the bark on.” What a powerful word picture!

The early evangelists traveled with saddlebags for luggage and rode on horses across the uncharted frontier. They were often lower class people, former backwoods squirrel hunters and farmers, whose fiery faith was expressed in words that, evangelist Peter Cartwright said, “murdered the king’s English almost every lick.” (As an aside, I suggest reading Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the Backwoods Preacher.)

The preaching done by these evangelistic preachers was unpolished preaching by plain men who preached with tears and shouts and passionate pleas. They demonstrated communicating energy and emotion, but they avoided hysteria. They were men certainly whose faith was strong but preached in simple rhetoric, the same as the rest of the backwoods pioneers. They had “quick-triggered zest” and “unharnessed emotions.”

Some evangelists, like James McGready, even wore buckskin breeches and preached in a bold and uncompromising manner with pistols in their saddlebags. The frontier spirit was evidenced in the fact that an urgent letter of invitation for McGready to come and preach in Kentucky in 1798 was written in human blood! He responded, and soon that part of Kentucky was in a spirit of revival that brought needy souls into the kingdom.

The result of this passion was an experience that produced a personal change of heart in hundreds, then thousands. These conversions came suddenly, publicly, and in an atmosphere that was supercharged with emotion. It was all part and parcel of the frontier camp meetings, and it was there that the “revival” tradition was born and institutionalized.

In the first of the camp meetings held at the log church in Gasper River, Kentucky, people came from over 100 miles away, which required a week or more in travel time. They came with tents and provisions of smoked meats and large pieces of cornbread for this several day event held in the raw outdoors.

It was everyday frontier families that were converted in these camp meeting revivals. They lived, worked, and often died hard, and when they got converted, they got converted “hard.” They would cry, shout, and leap praising God, and then everyone would soon know that they were experiencing the glory of “revival.” It was a joyful thing and even a miraculous thing, a miracle within a miracle! People trembled at the nearness of God. One person called it “heart-shaking” religion — the real old time religion.

This revival spirit grew until 1801 when between 20,000 and 25,000 gathered at the Cane Ridge. Without amplification several preaching stands were erected with Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist evangelists preaching at the same time. Blacks and whites alike participated. Often no questions were asked about to which denomination the evangelistic preacher belonged. The crowds shouted, “Amen!” and, “Hallelujah!” as the dozens of sermons were preached simultaneously. One man, an open blasphemer, sat in his saddle openly laughing at the unbridled religious passion of an evangelist preaching when suddenly, like a man shot in the heart, he fell from his saddle and lay on the grass unconscious for over a day! Later he awoke totally dazed.

Other stories could be told of the power of God in revival. The great revival rolled like a rattling conestoga wagon across the frontier from western New England to the valleys of Ohio into Tennessee and Georgia, a triangle of revival glory.

The American awakening brought in great innovations such as fiery extemporaneous preaching, meetings that lasted whole days and nights, and uninhibited outbursts of songs and praise. It featured unlettered preachers preaching with great fervor. Some were men with farms and families and who, with no seminary training, had taught themselves to “exhort.” They were all ardent revivalists, and their only creed was the Bible.

The average evangelist of that time believed that his whole duty was to preach the word of God as a sharp, two-edged sword. They attacked the conscience and pointed to human failure and brought a sense of profound guilt to the hearers. They drove the sword of the Spirit deep into the heart. It was all aimed at a religion that was “felt then telt.” Thus there was often “a crying out for mercy” with groans, shrieks, and shouts of release from spiritual bondage. Salvation was preached as potentially and freely accessible to everyone. It was heaven come down!

There is a wonderful description of the itinerant evangelist in the American frontier. Let me close this essay with the moving description provided. They “were a superbly mobile force, ready to go anywhere, at anytime, where sinners were in need of the saving word. No settlement was too remote for them. They roughed it along the trails in snow and rain, taking their chances on bears, wolves, cutthroats, and Indians. They put up where they could find local hospitality, which usually meant cornbread and pork and a spot for sleeping on the dirt floor by the fire. They spent a good part of their lives hungry, wet, cold, verminous, and saddle-sore, and if they did not die young of consumption, they could expect an old age rheumatism and dyspepsia. But they went almost literally everywhere.” (Bernard Weisberger)

These rugged evangelists were once nicknamed “religious Daniel Boones.” Certainly they were as straight-shooting and as straight-talking as the legendary pioneer Boone. Their aim was precise; they shot straight for the heart, and they seldom missed!

It was once said it was almost impossible to find a newly built log cabin in the American frontier that had not been visited by an evangelist! There is a letter on yellowing paper that still exists from that era. It was written on a cold, inhospitable winter day. It reads, “It is so cold and so wet there will be nothing moving outside but crows and circuit riding evangelists.”

That then is our spiritual heritage as evangelists.

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