Cultural Implosion: Do We Need Another Great Awakening?

Doug Beaumont.org ^ | 6/11/2012 | Doug Beaumont

[OneVike]

Author Joel Rosenberg is promoting his book by lamenting recent news of cannibalism, mommy porn, and gay marriage. He says that what we need is another Great Awakening. While he only mentions the first two, Rosenberg describes these movements as,

“massive, widespread, game-changing eras of spiritual revival in which millions of people became deeply devout and passionately evangelistic followers of Jesus Christ. In 1770, for example, there were fewer than two dozen Methodist churches in America. By 1860, there were nearly 20,000. In roughly the same time frame, the number of Baptists went from under 200,000 to more than one million” (Source)

This all sounds very fine, but consider some of the combined effects of the Great Awakenings. The first Great Awakening has been described this way:

“Revivalism taught people that they could be bold when confronting religious authority, and that when churches weren’t living up to the believers’ expectations, the people could break off and form new ones” (Source)

So the fundemental aspect of the First Great Awakening was anti-authoritarianism. Note that this is very different from reform of authority – it is the throwing off of authority. Importantly, this anti-authoritarianism was not qualified by an emphasis on critical thinking:

“In the late colonial period, most pastors read their sermons, which were theologically dense and advanced a particular theological argument or interpretation. Leaders of the Awakening such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield had little interest in merely engaging parishioners’ minds; they wanted far more to an emotional response from their audience” (Source)

Trading mistaken intellectual ideas for emotion-driven commitments is of questionable value. The Second Great Awakening followed the same pattern as it “moved beyond the educated elite of New England to those that

[mdmathis6]

You asked the question, we gave you the answers. You asked the question..”Who are we to say..thus and thus?” Why we are nobody in particular...just voices in the desert crying “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, Make HIS way straight!” You want to listen and give heed...fine, if you don’t well that is your choice. It is good you want to live a moral life, at least I don’t have to fear you robbing my house. Yet, with no God that you feel particularly accountable to, you have no logical reason to live a Godly life other than fear of the law enforcement officials and of censoring attitudes by your friends, family and neighbors.

You asked Christians about the way of salvation and of the consequences of rejecting Christ, we told you. But first ask yourself...are you living a moral life of your own accord, or is there a force you are only dimly aware of attempting to console you thru all of your troubles, trying to use your troubles to bring you to himself? It’s only a question you can answer yourself. Many folks in our nation have decided there is no Christ and no moral force to keep them in check, thus we have the evils that are befalling our nation. For them, there is no resurrection of the dead and thus they have given themselves over to any evil imaginable; our nation has reached a tipping point where the numbers of such people threaten our nation’s existence.

Yet something is keeping you in check; it’s not just your “choice” in the matter. You need to become an ally of that “something” that is keeping you from falling headlong into total lawlessness... because that “something” may be the Holy Spirit and it varies how long he strives with a person. Psalms 2 says to “kiss the Son, lest a man perish before He has even begun to get a little angry”.

We are all sinners...that is the hard cold fact of the matter and Hell is our deserved destination...there is no sugar coating it. Even the best of men, even Christians may occaisionally think thoughts that would cause angels to lose their light should they think them; not to mention the evil deeds that men do. We are evil to the core, salvageable only by the grace of God!

[mdmathis6]

“(”God? I didn’t know he was signed onto the system.”) “

God as the “logos” undergirds and provides the operating system of the universe and of men’s souls; Satan tried to hack creation and rewrite the operating system with a SIN virus. The cross and resurrection were the antivirus scan and cleaner of the system and of men’s souls as well. Soon the “good data files known as Christians.dll” will be preserved and the system wiped, rewritten and rebooted!

From the “Computer Nerd’s guide to Christianity... binary volumes 0 and 1.( a pseudo book but I would like to see it written)

[wastedyears]

It’s from ‘Ender’s Game’, a sci-fi novel.