Jonathan Edwards on the Difference Between a True Revival and a False One

Jonathan Edwards, the key figure in our country’s greatest gospel awakening, said,

“In all companies, on other days, on whatever occasions persons met together, Christ was to be heard of, and seen in the midst of them. Our young people, when they met, were wont to spend the time in talking of the excellency and dying love of JESUS CHRIST, the glory of the way of salvation, the wonderful, free, and sovereign grace of God, his glorious work in the conversion of a soul, the truth and certainty of the great things of God’s word, the sweetness of the views of his perfections, &c.”
– Jonathan Edwards, A Narrative of Surprising Conversions

The Spirit is often called the “shy” Person of the Trinity because He is content—strike that, zealous—to turn the attention entirely onto Jesus. One question dominates the minds of leaders in a true revival: Is Jesus exalted? A false revival is built around the exaltation of a particular figure. Christ is named, of course, and often presented as the “answer,” but the greater focus is on the leader, the worship, or even the worship experience itself. Emotions may run high in such an encounter, but sadly this is not the work of the Spirit of God, but the spirit of antichrist. His goal is to redirect attention, slightly at first, away from Christ and onto another.

Imagine that you had asked your best friend to serve as the best man at your wedding. This honored position is given to a trusted friend who will selflessly serve you on that great day, and make sure your wedding is everything it could be. But imagine that at the moment the doors at the back of the church open, and your bride appears for you and begins to walk down the aisle, you notice that your friend is making eyes at her, flirting with her, and trying to redirect her attention from you to himself. This is the pastor or worship leader who is more concerned with what people are thinking about him than they are what the people are thinking about Jesus. The church is His bride, not yours. Hands off. If you think the bride, for whatever reason, might be starting to focus on you, do everything you can to get her attention back on the groom.

Edwards writes elsewhere:

“When the operation is such as to raise their esteem of that Jesus who was born of the Virgin, and was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem; and seems more to confirm and establish their minds in the truth of what the gospel declares to us of his being the Son of God, and the Saviour of men; is a sure sign that it is from the Spirit of God.”

(Inspired by blog by Jared Wilson at http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2012/01/revival-is-always-christ-centered.html)

Bart Ehrman and the New Testament — A Dialogue

Are you curious about the origins of the New Testament we have today? Do we have the original manuscripts? Can we trust the copies that have been passed down to us? In short, is the Bible I have in my living room really the same one written by the apostles?

If any of those questions pique your interest, you’ll be sure to find an upcoming dialogue intriguing. Drs. Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace will be discussing the origins, transmission, and reliability of the New Testament in an event called Is the original New Testament Lost? Dr. Ehrman is a prolific writer and professor of religion right here at UNC-Chapel Hill, and has often publicly questioned the trustworthiness of the New Testament. Dr. Wallace is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, and has traveled the world preserving manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Both men are top-tier scholars with excellent minds.

After Dr. Ehrman and Dr. Wallace present their respective positions, the audience will be invited to engage in a time of Q&A. This is great chance for you to hear from two renowned scholars about the origins of the New Testament, and to even have some specific questions answered. I get questions about this sort of thing a lot, so I know a lot of you are interested!

You can get tickets for the event here for $10. If you happen to be a UNC student or faculty, for you the event is free! The dialogue will be held on February 1^st  at 7:00 PM, at UNC Memorial Hall.

Determining Your Calling

With over 700 of our leaders I dealt with this question: How do you determine what God has called you to, specifically?

The Best Way To Share Christ :: Connect Someone to the Bible

This post originally appeared in September, 2011. These resources (See For Yourself; Getting Connected; Taste and See) should prove valuable when sharing your faith with others. See discussion below on the best way to use them. Feel free to print them out, and put them to good use!

I tried to emphasize this past weekend that it’s very simple to share your faith with others. Seriously–anyone can do it. Some of the most effective “evangelists” in Scripture had known Christ for about 10 minutes (John 1:40-41; 4:39-41; 9:25).

I think one of the best things to do is invite people to study the Bible, on their own, and then offer to get together with them to talk about what they are reading. Martin Luther once likened the Bible to a caged lion. When the lion is challenged, there really is no need to defend it. Just let it out of the cage!

In much the same way, when people read the Scriptures, the Spirit of God will work in their own hearts. There is nothing as powerful as the Bible itself.

Each file linked below has a set of thirty-one passages to be read for each day of the month. Along with each passage are questions that help bring clarity to the verses. Print these out and give them to a friend, ask them to reflect on them; to write out (as instructed in the documents) in a few sentences what they see as the main thought, and then, in a sentence or two, what it means to them; then arrange to get back together in a week or so to discusswhat they are learning. It’s good stuff!

Just the other day one of our pastoral team members had a friend who received Christ after only three weeks of reading through these passages.

- See For Yourself

- Getting Connected

- Taste and See

Your Work and the Mission of God

It was great to meet with a thriving group of businessmen here at the Summit this morning. They meet the 3rd Thursday of every month in Suite 111 of the Brier Creek North campus from 7-8am, and you are free to join. It’s encouraging to be around men passionate about seeing their secular vocations leveraged for the mission of God.

Here are a few resources I referenced this morning. One of the great achievements of the Protestant Reformation was the tearing down of the artificial wall between clergy and laity. The following can help you to that end, showing how God has designed and equipped you for business or other so-called ‘secular’ vocation for His purposes:

Determining Your Calling: (mp3), (Transcript PDF) (I gave this talk this past Tuesday at our Equip Leadership Forum)

Blog article: “What Makes Business Christian?“

Blog article: “The Next Wave of Missions“

These articles from past issues of Christianity Today (Note: I wouldn’t agree, necessarily, with every word of these articles, but there is some valuable stuff in there)

- Working on Eternity

- The Mission of Business

- Work Is Our Mission

- Scripture and The Wall Street Journal 

Exciting story of Conversion from Summit Team in South Asia

“I received this incredible story from our team in South Asia that I thought would encourage you. God is working through our Summit Church planters around the world. Believe God for great things on behalf of them…

“ ‘Linus’ was one of the first guys that I met here.  He came highly recommended as an auto driver, and we struck up a quick friendship.  We talked about our religious beliefs from day one—Linus, like most of the people in this city, was Hindu.  One day in the chai (tea) shop, I began asking Linus if he could remember any stories that he had been told from the Bible.  He vaguely fumbled through the creation story.  I had him tell the whole story and I prompted him for aspects he had forgotten, or helped him out when was wrong.  Then I retold the story to him and asked him what he thought.  He said he liked the story a lot.

Now, the whole time I was talking with Linus, I noticed there was another man next to him listening to my every word.  When I was finished with the story the other man, ‘Usha’, asked me if I was a missionary. After being caught off-guard, Usha and I talked for a few minutes and I learned that he was a believer, but he felt like he wasn’t following the Lord “very good.”  I encouraged him for a minute and then we both left the chai shop.  We will come back to Usha in a minute.

From that point on, each conversation I had with Linus got better and better.  He began to believe more and more of the good news from the Bible that I was sharing with Him. I asked him one night if he would read a Bible if I got one for him in his language. He promised that he would.  For three days he reminded me—multiple times!—about my promise to get him, as he called it, “Da Book.”  A few days later, when I was finally able to find one, I called Linus to arrange a time to drop it off.  While I was on the phone with him, a 17-year-old boy was in his car and overhearing the conversation, asked, “Why do you want a Bible? You aren’t going to convert, are you?” Linus responded, “No, I didn’t say anything about converting, but Jesus died so that we could be forgiven of our sins.  None of our gods has done anything like this.  Don’t you want to know more about Jesus?”  What I love about this is that Linus was witnessing even before he ever believed!

As soon as Linus got the book, he began reading. I soon discovered that his wife ‘Anita’ was reading “Da Book” too.  A few days later he approached me and said, “This book tells me about Jesus. But I want to know why Jesus had to die.” You can imagine my mixture of excitement and hesitancy to approach such a deep subject with my limited Hindi and his limited English. I took him back to the creation story and reminded him of man’s biggest problem—sin.  I then took him through the promise of one who would remedy our sin problem coming through the lineage of David (Family heritage is everything here).  Once he resolved that all men are sinful and rightfully deserved death and eternal separation from God, I asked him, “Who is the only man on earth that has never sinned?”  He said, “Jesus.”  I then asked him who Jesus was. He said, “God.”  After this I explained to him that God was so kind to send his Son Jesus, who is God, in the form of man, who would live a sinless life and would die for the sins of the whole world so we could be reunited with God.  I used the imagery of God restoring us back to our position in the Garden of Eden before the fall—and this is where he really got it.  It all clicked for him.  After we talked that night, he told me he believed that Jesus was the true God, and that the Hindu gods were not true gods. He said he did not believe he was a follower of Jesus, but that he wanted to be.

It was a few days later that Linus professed faith that Jesus is the only way for his sins to be covered and expressed genuine desire to follow Him. A few nights after he believed, Linus and Anita came to our home for dinner.  We were talking about Jesus and church when Usha, the Christian guy from the chai shop, came up in our conversation.  Linus said, “You are telling me that I should go to the same church that Usha goes to?  I know Usha.  Many times Usha and I have had conversations in the chai shop. Never once has he told me about Jesus.  I don’t think Usha knows what I know about Jesus.  If he does, how could he have never once brought Jesus up in our conversations?” Linus spoke this with a little bit of anger.  I couldn’t help but grin in excitement that he has tasted something so good about Jesus that he couldn’t imagine not sharing this news with others.  But my heart was also broken for Usha. I know many times I have had multiple conversations with people and never once brought up Jesus.  How many more “Linuses” would there be in my life if I was more bold to share about Jesus?  Here is a guy that has known Jesus for less than a week and can’t imagine NOT bringing up the Good News he now knows about Jesus.

 Since then, Linus has been sharing everything he learns about Jesus with his wife and his in-laws.  On Christmas day he called me. I had shared with him a few days earlier the story of the prodigal son from Luke 15.  We discussed the story and I challenged him to tell it to 10 people.  When he called me he was with his wife’s cousins and in-laws.  He said, “Sir, can you tell me where the story about the two sons is again in Da Book? I am with my wife’s family and I want to share it with them.”  I told him and he quickly got off the phone.  Love it!”

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