Evangelists: The Quarry From Which We were Hewn Part Three

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

After the days of wild and enthusiastic camp meetings and with the establishment of churches, some of which were founded by those camp meeting preachers and even for a time pastored by them, it was only natural that a growth of the same spirit would follow. Summer “camp-meeting style” evangelistic events became the product. These were referred to commonly as “revivals” or “protracted meetings.” Weekly prayer meetings would often precede these planned annual events, and often for two weeks meetings would be held twice daily.

The Baptists and Methodists had gained headway with their Arminian notion that God might save all who believed in Him. It was both a taming but yet an effort to perpetuate the camp meeting spirit in the emerging America.

There was always the need, in the rapidly changing world, of stemming the tide of “worldliness and infidelity and downright evil.” By the late 1800’s these small “awakening” episodes were staying within the fences of approved behavior and were gaining approval. These “revivals” became numerous even though their influence was largely localized. They were cheering to the people because these “revivals” were sporadic manifestations of God’s pleasure, and it lifted their spirits.

At the same time it seemed to some churchmen that “the Lord was also pleased to raise up” a new generation of gifted men who were keenly interested in these events — evangelists of a second generation. They were committed to preserving the enthusiasm (although a bit controlled and slightly moderated) and the spirit and ardent passion of the earlier frontier camp meetings. Without apologizing, they fully meant to stimulate the life of the church. They continued to wage war against evil’s gaining the upper hand. All across the South, the Southwest, and America’s heartland the “protracted meeting” and the evangelist became institutionalized as part of American church life especially among Baptists and most rural Methodists.

While these traveling evangelists were a new generation, many were indeed men hewn from the same quarry as those that came before them. Weisberger, the historian who wrote on the impact of revival in the religion of America, said of them, “They were . . . a little of everything — mostly dynamite.”

They were for sure the unrelenting enemy of anything deemed un-Christian and “liberal” religion. They “unloaded both barrels” on a dead, if not lifeless, church. The church must reclaim its vigor, so that, they thundered and fired a volley and delivered strong denunciations when they felt it needed. As they saw it, evil was on the rise, but they did not intend to let it happen, for they would awaken both saints and sinners in these annual “revivals.” Their conviction was opposed to that of the Calvinist of a former day, for they felt that these special awakenings were indeed the work of God, but God’s people were not to sit idly awaiting the blessing to come — they were to launch out and seek the blessing.

These evangelists were men of relentless energy, and they brought constant pressure on every congregation. They were a distant heir to all evangelists who had come before them — all the “wandering awakeners” certainly including Whitefield, Wesley, and even further back in history. Later, Finney and Moody and others helped inspire them.

These men were to some degree individuals who loosely cooperated with denominations, but there were still independent religious firebrands. Some pastors were suspicious of them, but others were willing to call them “the greatest benefaction which God has given.” The vocational evangelist had fully emerged.

Wesley Duewell summed it up saying that they “were ablaze for God like those that had come before them.” To the faithful flock, with these men a torch was passed, and they abundantly illustrate again and again that in every generation when the tide of evil threatens to overwhelm the church and the simple, common people of God,

. . . The Spirit of the LORD . . . [lifts] up a standard against [the enemy] . . .
Isaiah 59:19, NKJV

and as a result there is recovery, renewal, and even in some instances authentic revival. Evangelists often lead the way in all of it.

So it can be said, the Lord was pleased in that era of American history to raise up a large number of such men, some very rustic and uneducated, but who were very aware of what was needed. So they called for a liberal use of the means they felt that God had appointed — prayer with intensity, repentance individually and collectively, and an atmosphere saturated with biblical truth proclaimed. It was to them the “old time religion,” and it was “good enough.” It pleased God!

These men, only after several generations, began to think of themselves as specialists in revival, and possibly none would have dared call himself a professional evangelist until the time of Finney or later. But these men were indeed specialists in arousing the unsaved. Some of them were inoffensive in their manner; most were not — they were like blazing stars in the firmament of American’s religious sky. In their glory-land crusades they knowingly goaded frontiersmen along a path of righteousness.

They admitted their understanding of many things was greatly limited, but one of them confessed, “I understand what holy fire is, and I understand what forever means and have experienced enough of God’s love that I want everyone to know it.” That was about all the theology or psychology they understood, and they were simple but sincere. One such evangelist said, “If it’s the saving of souls; I know about human sin, and I know about God’s power, and I believe there is a battle between good and evil, and I feel I was made for this kind of thing.”

We walk in their light — it has not dimmed; we have the same gospel; we have access to the same power. These early American pioneer evangelists are our nearest kinsmen whose experience and example and purpose the evangelist of our time greatly needs to review. And we must remember, in spite of their rough edges their experience is near the experience of the early church in an all-American setting.

Look at them standing before us across the years and tell me their passion should not be ours, and their strategy is not rich in suggestion for our day. Sweep away a few of the surface issues, and their world, in atmosphere, attitude, and movement, is not so much as different from ours as we might think. Issues they faced are issues that we face today dressed in twenty-first century attire. To their credit they met their world with amazing success.

Think, for example, of the event on November 19, 1854, in the Republic of Texas, when the rugged and rough man at the age of 63, Sam Houston, heard the powerful preaching of the gospel in an old fashioned revival meeting. He repented, believed, and requested baptism at the hands of the Baylor University president Rufus C. Burleson in a cold Rocky Creek. Later, in another revival in Independence, conducted by James A. Stribbing, this mountain of a man Sam Houston reached out his hand and said, “Brother Burleson, here is my hand. Hold it while time lasts. Here is my heart. I will love you with its last pulsation.” (quote from the life and writings of Rufus C. Burleson, published 1901) The hand/heart figure of speech was evidently a favorite of Houston. When he made his profession of faith at Independence Baptist Church, he said to the preacher, “I give my hand to you, and with it I give my heart to the Lord.”

Sam Houston’s conversion was typical of conversions on the American frontier. He had been nicknamed “The Big Drunk” because of his legendary drinking bouts, barroom brawls, and other acts of rowdiness including several failed “female partnerships.” But now he was married to a faithful, praying woman who would never settle for her husband to “die a lost man headed for hell.”

But you can be sure it took “soul shaking preaching” to reach people like this. The question is, is it being done today? What we know is that evangelists of that era of the American frontier knew how to do it, and we should search for their source of power and reclaim it for our own ministry today.

They climbed the steep ascent to Heaven Through peril, toil, and pain. O God, to us may grace be given, to follow in their train.

All of them seemed to be baptized into the revival spirit.

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