Pastoral Ministry in Times of Revival

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003399" TEXT="#080000" background="040c8c00erkjxk.jpg"> <div> <B><U>Dr. Ebenezer Porter</U></B><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#CC0033" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT></div> <div> <B>was a congregational pastor in New England during the time of the Second Great Awakening, and also served as president of Andover Seminary.  This is an excerpt from his </B><I><B>Letters on the Religious Revivals which Prevailed about the Beginning of the Present Century</B></I><B>.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>While I would dispute about some of the Old Covenant aspects of Mr. Porter's theology, his advice concerning the excesses of religious meetings are applicable today.</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#000099" FACE="Brush Script MT" ><B>Restoration Ministries</B></FONT>  |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Restoration Ministries"><U>home</U></A></div> <div>                                                   </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="084f8900.jpg" border=0 width="504" height="144" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Part One by Ebenezer Porter</B></div> <div> _______________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> I shall now offer some general remarks with special regard to my younger brethren in the ministry and to the members of our beloved Seminary [2] who expect soon to become guides to souls. Should the opinions that I now express on any doctrinal or practical points conflict with the views of others, they will, I trust, be weighed with sincerity, and only insofar as they are found scriptural and reasonable are they entitled to any regard.</div> <bR> <div> My first remark is that <B>revivals of true Christianity exhibit the sovereignty of God in its true light, and as such offers the best encouragement to faithful labor in Christian ministers.</B></div> <bR> <div> There is a kind of Antinomian orthodoxy which abuses the doctrine of divine sovereignty by so representing man<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s dependence on it as virtually excusing him from all obligation to obey the Gospel. A minister who believes that there is no independent efficacy in means to convert sinners may gradually transform this unquestionable truth into error, and may preach as though he believed God to be sovereign in such a sense that there is no connection between a faithful, powerful exhibition of the truth, and the sanctification of men<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s hearts. Such views, doubtless, he may honestly cherish from reverence to God, but they tend to paralyze his own ministrations and to spread the slumber of death over his hearers.</div> <bR> <div> There is, on the other hand, a presumptuous orthodoxy which virtually denies the sovereignty of God, and maintains that every faithful preacher will certainly be successful in converting his hearers. The ground really taken is that the result depends entirely upon human instrumentality and not at all on the sovereignty of God. This tends to cherish ministerial pride and self-importance when success is granted and utter discouragement when it is withheld.</div> <bR> <div> What, then, do we mean by God<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s sovereignty? Not that He acts in any case without reason, but that <B>He acts without disclosing the reason to us.</B> He acts as a sovereign, too, where He is at liberty with His own promise, or as to the unchangeable principles of His own moral character, to do the things or not to do it. </div> <bR> <div> For example, a sinner repents. God is not sovereign in forgiving that sinner. He is bound to do it by His word. God sustains His church so that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, but He is bound by promise to do this. So it is never said, “He will justify whom He wills and He will condemn whom He will,” because the justification of a believer is a judicial proceeding, governed by principles entirely distinct from His sovereignty. </div> <bR> <div> But effectual calling stands on the footing of strict sovereignty, so that here, “He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires.” When it is said, then, that a “faithful preacher of the truth will certainly be successful,” some explanation is needed. Is it meant that the truth by its own inherent efficacy will convert sinners? Then no interposition of divine sovereignty is required. Or has God promised to give His truth this converting efficacy whenever it is faithfully preached? Still, He acts not as a sovereign, but as He has bound Himself to act.</div> <bR> <div> What, then, do we mean by a faithful preacher? Certainly not that he is a perfect man or a perfect pulpit orator. Not that He preaches as much truth in one sermon as Paul sometimes did. Nor that he preaches as many thousands of sermons and with as overpowering an eloquence as George Whitefield did. But that he preaches the Gospel clearly and earnestly, though perhaps with subordinate powers of impression.</div> <bR> <div> And what is meant by the minister being “successful”? Not that all his unrepentant hearers will be converted under one sermon, nor in one year, nor in the whole course of his ministry! Let us decide how faithful we mean and how successful, and then say what is the ground of certainty that so much faithfulness will be attended by so much success. </div> <bR> <div> We must find this certainty either in the state of the human heart and in the nature of truth, or in the promise of God. But it is to be found in neither. All we can properly say is that the general current of the Bible and of Divine Providence, holds out a high probability that decided faithfulness in preaching the gospel will be attended with a good measure of success. It is a probability, such as is deemed an adequate encouragement to earnest labors in the fields of husbandry, medicine, and in all cases where means [3] are to be used. </div> <bR> <div> The faithful preacher then may labor in hope — indeed, it is his duty to labor in high and animated hope — that God will bless his efforts to the salvation of some perishing souls. Still, his hope is in that sovereign mercy which has promised to render the gospel effectual to the conversion of multitudes of our lost race, but has not promised to convert all his hearers or any of them. Just this condition to call forth the powers of a Christian minister to the best advantage, places him between despondency and presumption. </div> <bR> <div> If he supposed himself able to convert his hearers at any time, or at any time to bring God under the obligation of a promise to convert them, he might sink into indifference and negligence. But while the question is, “Can these bones live?” and the only answer is, “Oh Lord God, you know,” the faithful pastor, in his deep solicitude for dying sinners, will proclaim the warnings of the gospel with no less earnestness and with much more hope of success than if their sole reliance for their salvation were on himself.</div> <bR> <div> The gospel is the power of God to salvation just so far as He is pleased to render it so by His Spirit. To many it is the “aroma of death to death,” not through any fault of the preacher, but through their own stubborn depravity. The wicked may be faithfully warned, and yet die in his iniquity, but his blood will be upon himself and not upon the watchman. Though Israel is not gathered, the faithful prophet will have his reward. Every syllable of truth that he utters will glorify God as really “in them that perish” as well as “in them that are saved.”</div> <bR> <div> My second remark, which stands in close connection with the previous one: <B>the special blessing of God usually attends only that kind of preaching which exhibits a faithful balance of the accountability of sinners and their dependence on divine grace</B>.</div> <bR> <div> This is a grand characteristic of revival preaching, that it bears down upon the conscience of the sinner with the solemn claims of the gospel to “work out his own salvation with fear and trembling,” while it shows him that it is “God who works in him to will and to do His good pleasure.” The preaching that does neither of these, or that does one and not the other is radically wanting in penetration and power. This is just the defect which renders impotent a large portion of pulpit discourses.</div> <bR> <div> You.are soon to become ambassadors for Christ. Suppose you should tell sinners that they are under a law, modified and mitigated now from its original strictness to suit their fallen condition; that the gospel regards men as wretched rather than as guilty; that it is their duty to exercise godly sorrow, not for their depravity, but for their deplorable impotence to do anything which God requires. </div> <bR> <div> You tell them to do the best they can; to wait God<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s time, relying on His help when it is sincerely sought. You can put them on a round of external duties in each of which there is no obedience of the heart and in respect to each of which they may comply with your directions to the letter, and yet perish eternally. </div> <bR> <div> Now, who has authorized you to instruct dying sinners in this manner? Who has commissioned you to represent their dependence on God as being such that, if they do perish, the blame will be upon Him and not upon themselves? If there is no preaching in our time which avowedly takes this ground, there is too much which approaches it so far as to neutralize the force of obligation to immediate repentance, by administering the deadly quietus to conscience.</div> <bR> <div> But suppose you fall into another extreme (for there is another), and devote one half of your time in the pulpit to prove that sinners have the power to repent. Is it preaching the whole gospel to teach so laboriously what Christ and the apostles never preached, but always took for granted? </div> <bR> <div> Look through the Sermon on the Mount and Peter<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s sermon at Pentecost and ask, “What proportion of either is occupied with this discussion?” Not one word. You convince a man by conclusive argument (what indeed he knows by his mere consciousness without any argument), that he is a free agent — is he therefore a Christian? </div> <bR> <div> Not at all. You have not instructed him in the great truths of the gospel, and he may believe all you have said, and yet perish — yes, he may perish because he does believe, contrary to your intention that this is the whole gospel. For though he admits fully to your main position, that he is a free agent and has power to repent, his own false logic of heart infers that it is as easy for just such a sinner as he is to repent, as to remain unrepentant, and again that just such a sinner (notwithstandinq his utter aversion to holiness) is as likely of his own accord to repent as to remain unrepentant.</div> <bR> <div> In fact, it is much more likely that he will not repent, since an infinite preponderance of motives on that side must prevail with a free moral agent. Of course, he does not need to worry, for a work so easy to be accomplished at any moment may be safely postponed for the present. </div> <bR> <div> This belief, therefore, is a practical falsehood, for the Bible says and experience confirms that multitudes throng the broad way against light, evidence and warnings while few enter the narrow way and live. His belief is also a fatal falsehood in its result. It leaves him to rest in unrepentance because he believes only a part of the truth.</div> <bR> <div> Now give him true instruction that he cannot misunderstand by showing him the simple distinction between natural and moral inability. Preach to him his own complete powers of moral agency, and his obligation to immediate repentance. Then show him another truth which does not extenuate his guilt, but aggrevates it to immeasurable criminality — namely, that he is opposed to God and never will submit unless sovereign grace shall interpose to subdue his opposition. </div> <bR> <div> The man now feels himself to be in solemn circumstances. You load him down with responsibility, guilt, danger — a triple weight that crushes him and makes him cry out. Conscience shows him that his wickedness will not be charged to Adam, to Satan or to God, but to himself only. Conscience kindles a hell in his bosom and the Bible shows him hell flaming beneath his feet. Preach both obligation and dependence, then, see if you would transform careless sinners into anxious, trembling inquirers.</div> <div> _____________________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> Endnotes:</div> <bR> <div> [1]  This is an edited version of letter number six in <I>Letters on the Religious Revivals which Prevailed about the beginning of the Present Century</I> by Dr. Ebenezer Porter. </div> <bR> <div> [2]  Dr. Porter<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="WP MultinationalA Roman" >*</FONT>s letters were written in 1832 to the faculty and students of Andover Seminary.</div> <bR> <div> [3]  The word “means” is used here as “the use of resources to achieve a specific end.” In the case of the ministry of the gospel, the means used include but are not limited to the preaching of the word of God, and the administration of the ordinances.  </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>