FINNEY’S REVIVALS Charles Grandison Finney testified, “I was powerfully converted on the morning of the 10th of October, 1821. In the evening of the same day, and on the morning of the following day, I received overwhelming baptisms of the Holy Ghost, that went through me, as it seemed to me, body and soul. I immediately found myself endued with such power from on high that a few words dropped here and there to individuals, were the means of their immediate conversion. My word seemed to fasten like barbed arrows in the souls of men. They cut like a sword. They broke the heart like a hammer. Multitudes can attest to this. “Sometimes I would find myself, in a great measure, empty of this power. I would go out and visit, and find that I had made no saving impression. I would exhort and pray with the same result. I would then set apart a day for private fasting and prayer, fearing that this power had departed from me, and would enquire anxiously after the reason of this apparent emptiness. After humbling myself, and crying out for help, the power would return upon me with all its freshness. This has been the experience of my life.” For ten years: from 1824-1834, Finney laboured continually in powerful revivals. In 1834 he came to a great crisis in his life: his health was broken through his labours in preaching and praying; also at that time the subject of slavery was calling so much attention that revivals of religion were beginning to decline. In the month of July, 1834, as he was on a voyage, the burden became unbearable. The spirit of prayer was upon him, and he spent one whole day in prayer, until he prevailed with God. “After a day of unspeakable wrestling and agony in my soul, just at night, the subject cleared up to my mind. The Spirit led me to believe that all would come out right, and that God had yet a work for me to do; that I might be at rest; that the Lord would go forward with His work, and give me strength to take any part in it that He desired.” In the Autumn of that year he delivered his famous “Lectures on Revivals of Religion.” The reading of these lectures has resulted in hundreds of revivals in America and other countries. Finney became Professor of Theology in Oberlin College in 1835. Later he became President of the College. Twenty thousand students came under his influence during the years he was at Oberlin. While still in connection with the College he conducted some of the most powerful revivals of his ministry. He also visited England twice, and had revivals in many places. Finney died in July, 1875, after a mighty ministry, in which Rivers of Living Water literally flowed to multitudes of souls. His revival ministry has been a tremendous blessing and challenge to the Christian Church. He emphasised that any company of Christians can have a revival if they will fulfil the necessary conditions; agonising prayer, and a balanced presentation of the truths of the Gospel. Finney insisted that, “Young converts should be trained to labour for Christ, just as carefully as young recruits in an army are trained for war. The plan is to train a body of devoted Christians, who know how to pray, and how to converse with people about their souls, and how to attend anxious meetings, and deal with enquirers, and how to SAVE SOULS. When the day comes that the whole Church will realise that they are here on earth as a body of missionaries, and shall live and labour accordingly, then will the day of man’s redemption draw nigh.” The secret of Finney’s power was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and a life of prayer. He wrote, “In regard to my own experience, I will say that unless I had the spirit of prayer I could do nothing. If even for a day or an hour I lost the spirit of grace and supplication, I found myself unable to preach with power and efficiency, or to win souls by personal conversation. In this respect my experience was what it has always been.” “I have said, more than once, that the spirit of prayer that prevailed in those revivals was a very marked feature of them. It was common for young converts to be greatly exercised in prayer; and in some instances so much so, that they were constrained to pray whole nights, and until their bodily strength was quite exhausted, for the conversion of souls around them. There was a great pressure of the Holy Spirit upon, the minds of Christians; and they seemed to bear about with them the burden of immortal souls.” Those who have studied the statistics involved, state that only thirty per cent of the converts of the best evangelists stand, but they further state that eighty-five per cent of those converted in Finney’s revivals proved by their subsequent lives that they were soundly converted. The reason for this was that Finney was honest and thorough in his treatment of sinners and young converts.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:16:17 +0000
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