Second Great Awakening

Hebrews 11.16A Better Country

Second Great Awakening

• The Second Great Awakening grew out of the first, and occurred about 100 years later.

• It was not a single movement like the First Great Awakening, which has a clear beginning in 1732, the Second Great Awakening seems to have caught fire at different times in different parts of the country.

• It was also different in focus.

Second Great Awakening

• The Second Great Awakening is also known as the Methodist Revival Awakening, because Methodist Churches led the way– with a Lot of Baptists involved in the States.– James McGready of Kentucky is considered to be

the founder of this revival. He preached in Kentucky from 1800-1812.

– He used tents to hold revival services– which often saw very emotional conversion experiences.

Second Great Awakening

• McGready preached of a better country– of a shining city. But he had a clear message of sinfulness: “We shall prove that Jesus is the Christ, from the testimony of scripture prophecies that expressly received their accomplishment in Him. . . . The most daring infidel cannot produce a single instance where the veracity of its prophecies has failed”

• McGready attacked with vitriol the ideas of deists.

Second Great Awakening

• My favorite line from McGready:– We may add the immortal Washington, the patriot

and sage, who, aided by the justness of his cause, succeeded in rescuing an infant nation from the yoke of oppression and in establishing its freedom. . . But [this great man] were obliged to triumph at the expense of the blood of multitudes. Jesus conquered by his own death. (1801)

Second Great Awakening

• McGready was a powerful preacher who focused on sin and repentance. He was followed by Charles Finney.– Finney was more of an intellectual– He was attacking Deism and Rationalism.– He wanted to reclaim Science and logic for its true

purpose– calling people to repent.– He was a postmillennialist, as many of the 2nd

Great Awakening were.

Second Great Awakening

• Charles Finney believed in Sin– And no sinner can avoid this fearful result, if he will

persist in sinning. Exist he must--he cannot prevent it--cannot put an end to his existence--for death only changes its place and mode--does not bring it to an end. Live, then, each sinner must, and if he will go on in sin, he must go on augmenting his guilt and consequent ruin.

– But he also believed that Reason was a gift of God: “Reason is another gift of providence--a precious blessing if devoted to God--if used legitimately and faithfully according to its nature and design;”

Second Great Awakening• Finney’s message was clear:– Let it not be understood that this death is a state of

perfect unconsciousness--by no means; nor is it a state in which all power of voluntary action is destroyed or even suspended; but it is a state in which no right moral action takes place. It is death in trespasses and sins.

• Finney and McGready called people to a personal repentance. Unlike the First Awakening, which called the Church to act, this one called Sinners.

Second Great Awakening• The last preacher we will discuss is Barton

Stone, also of Kentucky.– Stone was a Presbyterian who felt his faith

challenged by the work of the Methodists and Baptists. He was a true tent meeting Preacher, and attracted 12,000 in Lexington.

– He was not an intellectual preacher, but he was elegant. He was very much a product of his church– his sermons tended to take a single verse and develop an idea.

Second Great Awakening• Barton Stone was a Presbyterian, but he was also one

of the powerful leaders of the Second Awakening:– When in heart we believe and obey the gospel, God gives

us his holy, quickening spirit; he gives us salvation, and eternal life--In this spirit we feel a tender concern for sinners, and are led to plead with them, and pray for them. They see our good works, and from conviction are led to glorify God--they see the light of Zion, and flow to it--they see the union of christians, and are by this means led to believe in Jesus unto salvation and eternal life. God has ordained that the unbelieving world are to be saved by the means of this truth, shining in his church on earth.

Second Great Awakening

• The Second Great Awakening called the Church to take on serious social problems.– The American Bible Society began printing and

distributing Bibles throughout the States.– Mission organizations began with a focus on far off

lands– Wisconsin.– Mission organizations grew and began to send

missionaries to China and Africa.– Tract societies sprang up.

Second Great Awakening

• However, this awakening fell away from its faith and became a social reform movement.– The Social Gospel grows out of this.– Temperance Societies, originally Church in nature,

became very political.– Abolitionism, which was also a Church movement,

became political. Preachers such as Henry Ward Beecher took the abolitionist cause into violence.

– Beecher’s Bibles became a byword for rebellion.

Second Great Awakening• Consequences of this movement– Baptists became a powerful denomination.– Biblical Apologetics became very important.– Postmillennialism dominated public policy.– New Denominations like the Seventh-Day

Adventists and Mormons arose.– Tent Meetings came into existence.– The King James replaces Geneva– and the

Apocrypha is no longer part of Protestantism.– Baptists officially become Premillennial.

Second Great Awakening

• James McGready Sermons found here.• Charles Finney Sermons can be found here.• Timeline and eyewitness accounts can be

found here.