41 DAYS LEFT UNTIL THE REVIVAL CONFERENCE

Jim Packer, in a paper given at the Puritan Conference in London in 1961, helpfully summed up Edwards’ teaching on revival under three headings, which, with a few principal comments of explanation, are set out in the following paragraphs 1. Revival is an extraordinary work of God the Holy Ghost reinvigorating and propagating Christian piety in a community. Revival is an extraordinary work because it marks the abrupt reversal of an established trend and state of things among those who profess to be God’s people. To envision God reviving His Church is to presuppose that the Church has previously grown moribund and gone to sleep. 2. Revivals have a central place in the revealed purposes of God. “The end of God’s creating the world,” declared Edwards, “was to prepare a kingdom for His Son (for He was appointed heir of the world).” This end is to be realized first through Christ’s accomplishing redemption on Calvary, and then through the triumphs of His kingdom. Thus, according to Edwards, “All the dispensations of God’s providence henceforward (since Christ’s ascension), even to the final consummation of all things, are to give Christ His reward, and fulfill His end in what He did and suffered upon earth.” A universal dominion is pledged to Christ, and in the interim, before the final consummation, the Father implements this pledge in part by successive outpourings of the Spirit. Revivals, therefore, prove the reality of Christ’s kingdom to a sceptical world and serve to extend its bounds among Christ’s enemies. 3. Revivals are the most glorious of all God’s works in the world. Edwards insisted on this in order to shame those who professed no interest in the divine awakening that had come to New England. He believed they insinuated by their attitude that a Christian’s mind could be more profitably occupied with other matters: Such a work is, in its nature and kind, the most glorious of any work of God whatsoever. It is the work of redemption (the great end of all the other works of God, and of which the work of creation was but a shadow). It is the work of new creation, which is infinitely more glorious than the old. I am bold to say that the work of God in the conversion of one soul . . . is a more glorious work than the creation of the whole material universe.