In One Accord

The Never-Changing Revival Message

By Eddie Hyatt

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 was a direct result of the preaching of the evangelists of the Great Awakening,” concluded the late Harvard professor Perry Miller. But what was it about the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennant, George Whitefield, and others that would lead this Harvard professor—a recognized expert in Puritanism and early American history—to make such a statement?

It was not the act or style of preaching, for there were very diverse styles. Jonathan Edwards wrote out his sermons and read them in a monotone voice without movements or gestures. George Whitefield preached extemporaneously and with much fire and movement.

The Message Matters

The message itself brought the results. This is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1:18—that it is not the mere act of preaching that produces fruit for the Kingdom of God but the message that is preached. Style may stir the emotions, but it can never change the heart. In fact, Paul says that if we go too far in trying to make the message acceptable to contemporary culture, we run the risk of preaching a gospel that is emptied of its power (1 Cor. 2:4–5).

The results of the Great Awakening should be credited to the message that was preached, backed by much prayer, and to messengers who lived like they believed what they preached. I see seven common emphases in their collective messages.

1. God is a great, majestic, and holy Being who created all things and to whom all creatures owe their love, honor, and respect.

2. Adam and Eve, our first parents, rebelled against their Creator and went their own way, dragging their posterity down with them into the abyss of sin and judgment—known in historical theology as “the fall.”

3. Humanity in its current state is a rebellious and fallen race. All people stand guilty and condemned before an infinitely just and holy God.

4. God in His sovereign mercy and grace now offers full pardon and forgiveness of sins to all who will put their faith in Jesus Christ the Savior.

5. Faith in Jesus Christ alone must be laid as the only foundation. The Great Awakening preachers emphasized that many professing Christians had built their faith on faulty foundations, such as church membership, good deeds, family pedigree, social status, and cultural refinement.

6. There must be a new birth. These preachers emphasized that when one truly believes in Christ, a work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit occurs—a new birth—from which springs new desires and aspirations that are godly, producing a whole new tenor of life.

7.  God offers eternal bliss in heaven for all who truly trust in Christ. And eternal suffering and damnation are reserved for all those who refuse God’s gracious gift of salvation in Christ.

America’s First National Event

The Great Awakening had a pervasive impact throughout Colonial America. Entire cities were transformed.

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin describes the wonderful change that came over his hometown of Philadelphia. He wrote, “From being thoughtless and indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world was growing religious so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street” (p. 49).

It was the first time the colonists of different ethnicities, denominations, and languages had participated together in a single event. Denominational and ethnic walls came down, and they saw themselves as a single people with one Divine destiny—one nation under God.

The preaching of the Great Awakening evangelists tended to democratize Colonial society by putting everyone on the same level—guilty sinners before God, with only one remedy for all: unfeigned faith in Jesus Christ. We can see the fruit of this in the American Constitution, where in Section 9 the Founders forbade the American government to grant honorific titles of nobility to anyone. There was to be no aristocracy in the new nation.

Today, America is probably facing its greatest crisis since the Civil War. It is a crisis on multiple levels—moral, spiritual, political, and social. While many Christians hold out hope for a political solution, the First Great Awakening shows us that only a new commitment to preach biblical truth in love and in the power of the Holy Spirit will bring the change that America must see in the days ahead.

After all, it was not some newfangled revelation that was preached by Edwards, Whitefield, and the others. It was the same message preached by those first apostles and followers of Jesus. It was an old message made alive through prayer and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

EDDIE HYATT is an author, Bible teacher, and ordained minister with a passion to see another Great Awakening. This article was derived from his book America’s Revival Heritage, available from Amazon and his website eddiehyatt.com.