Truth Unites - England BEFORE vs. AFTER John Wesley (Amazing Revival)

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Gavin Ortlund discusses the impact John Wesley and the origins of Methodism had on England in the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is about the renewal of the church that God brought through John Wesley and the founding of Methodism. This is a part of what we call the First Great Awakening, though that usually refers more to the United States. Here we're looking more at the United Kingdom, where this movement is often called the Evangelical Revival. And what are a story it is? I hope this video will be inspiring for us. That's my main hope for this. As we seek the work of Christ today, we can often get discouraged when we see all the problems of the world, all the evils of the world. sometimes it helps to study church history and to see this is not the worst it's ever been. There's been times of tremendous darkness and God has brought tremendous renewal and revival before and he can do it again. So hopefully studying Wesley's life will help us envision that a little bit

and pray for a fresh work today. Let's do three things. First, we'll describe how bad things were in England before this revival, and you might be shocked by this. Then let's narrate just a little bit of what God did, though we won't be exhaustive. Hopefully it'll just inspire you to do some more of your own research. And then let's draw two lessons for the church today. I think it would be surprised at the things that I was surprised at what I took from this. First, England before Wesley. At the beginning of the 18th century, England was in a time of just tremendous darkness. In the church, you have a lot of deism, meaning you don't believe God's interacting with the world, a lot of nominalism, meaning people are Christians in name only. There's a lot of persecution of nonconformists actually still

into that time. And then throughout society, you have just tremendous injustice. and immorality. It's a very cruel time, very carnal time. One historian of the time describes the country's condition as stomach well alive, soul extinct. That gives you a flavor. Let's describe this a little bit. Again, this kind of gives us context today when we feel like the sky is falling in our world. I think sometimes, you know, like if you grew up in the United States, you might remember in the 1990s watching, seeing an MTV music video and feeling like, wow, it's so scandalous. and then today, 30 years later, you look back and it feels so mild in comparison, and you feel this sense of, wow, the world's getting worse, things are breaking down, moral standards are collapsing,

and so on and so forth. Going back in time and studying church history just provides some helpful context, and it pushes against this inevitability of decline narrative that we can fall into, which I think we actually need to be called out of, and not because things aren't getting worse in various ways, but because decline is not inevitable, and this isn't the worst it's ever been, and we can pray for renewal, and this is how history works. So we look back in the early 1700s in England, and you just see some things that are so barbaric and horrific that are hard to even take in and are actually painful to consider, so I'm not going to go into any grisly details here. Of course, we might think of the slave trade, and many of us are familiar with people like

William Wilberforce and their heroic efforts to end the slave trade. Wesley was a great influence on William Wilberforce, and the last letter that Wesley ever wrote was to him. In this letter, he describes slavery as the execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. And in this letter, he's basically saying, you can't do this unless God is with you, but if God is with you, if you're standing like Athanasius against the world, then God can work through you. And you feel this sense of how much these evangelicals were depending upon God for their efforts of social reform, which is really true historically. Again, we're going to learn from that when we take lessons from this at the end of the video.

It's amazing how God used these men in so many different ways. Because the slave trade is one of those things that we often might immediately think of as a horrific evil of that time. But there were actually many areas of injustice throughout society. One was prison, absolutely inhumane conditions. The filth and inhumanity of it was just unbelievable. I won't describe it. You can use your imagination. At this time, jailers were often not paid. So they received their livelihood through bribes and extortion and other corrupt means. And so there was so much

injustice and cruelty without check. Wesley in his journals describes prisons as hell on earth. And that will give you some flavor of how bad it was. Another issue was the ferocity of the legal system. So because there's so much crime at this time, there's a reaction against that. trying to crack down on crime with these cruel laws. And then you have these public executions. This is described a little bit in this book, England before and after Wesley, which I've been reading.

Pretty fascinating book. It's an older book, and it's a bit hegeographical of Wesley. That means it kind of idealizes him a little bit, but nonetheless, really edifying to read lots of information, just about the social condition of England in the early 18th century.

Here's how the author of this book puts it. not only adults but children of both sexes enjoyed the liberty of being hanged for no less than 160 different violations of the law, to pick a pocket for more than one shilling, to grab goods from anyone's hand and run away with them, to shoplift to the value of five shillings, to steal a horse or a sheep, to cut a hop bind, to break a young tree, to snatch gathered fruit and make off with it, to snare a rabbit on a gentleman's estate, or even to appear on a high road with a blackened face, these are typical offenses for which a free Britain could be hanged. Charles Wesley's journal records the fact that he preached in one jail to 52 felons waiting to be

hanged among them a child of 10. Charles Wesley, of course, is John's brother and a great hymn writer. So just, you know, hopefully this makes you a little bit angry, a little bit indignant as it does me to think of a 10-year-old boy or girl shoplifting and then they're hanged publicly, you know. and you get a sense of just, you know, it helps you realize how much society has improved. And then the fascinating question that this brings up is, well, how did it improve? Because these improvements were not just inevitable. Prison reform, legal reform, all of these things were deliberately sought, in many cases, by Christians. And that's what we'll talk about a little bit here.

You know, in other words, these social injustices are the kinds of things that Christianity changed. People like William Wilberforce were not just concerned about the slave trade. They were concerned with prison reform and improving working conditions, improving education, reducing capital punishment, even reducing animal cruelty, which we'll talk about. So this, but we're trying to set the context here, set the table here to see how bad it was. You have this tremendous injustice throughout society in so many ways. You also have such immorality. A big issue is the abuse of alcohol. So the period from around 1720 to 1750 is something.

sometimes called the gin craze. Basically, for a variety of reasons, gin became much more accessible and affordable, and its consumption massively increased during this time. You can read the Wikipedia page for the gin craze and see pictures depicting crowds of people drunk in the street and so on and so forth. I won't show them because they're not a pretty picture. But part of the issue here is public drunkenness becomes more normal and more socially acceptable. And it just sort of worms its way into society. You know, there's parts of the city of London where one out of four buildings is a gin shop. And many will have up signs that say free straw. Now, why would you need free straw? Well, the assumption is you're going to need to lie down, right? That's how much drunkenness there is.

And of course, the abuse of alcohol then leads to all kinds of other sins and evils, people getting financially exploited while they're drunk. People who are drunk acting cruelly and violently, children being mistreated because all the adults around are drunk, people getting married while drunk, and then coming to realize, oh, we're married now. That's an issue. You know, it's like, it's really bad. Perhaps the most painful anecdote I was reading about is how weddings would often be performed in the morning, because this would give greater likelihood of the sobriety of the people attending. You know, if you have the wedding at 10 a.m., it's less likely that everyone will be drunk than if you have it at a 4 p.m. or something like that, that's how much this was an issue.

And it wasn't just in the lower tiers of society. It's a, you read stories about members of parliament and clergy being drunk and so on and so forth. The sort of this degrading influence throughout the entire culture. This anticipates one of the lessons we're going to get to at the end. And that is part of our calling as followers of Jesus is to uphold a sense of public morality. And, you know, certain behaviors should be seen. is shameful. And we want to oppose the normalization of vice, because that's not enough in and of itself. If public drunkenness is seen as shameful, then that's not going to guarantee it's never going to happen, but it might help. You know, it's going to reduce the likelihood because one of

the issues here, it's like if you don't have, if the target is on the wall, you still might miss the target. But if you just take the target down, you're definitely going to miss. And if people aren't even ashamed. You know, one of the things I was reading about is how parents wouldn't necessarily have been embarrassed to be seen by their own children drunk in public. And so this is the kind of thing where you're realizing there's this sense of just the sense of public morality that's actually an important thing for Christians to be concerned about. And we were to talk about it at the end. But there's other issues besides alcohol, gambling. It's a huge issue. It's so extensive that one historian described England as one vast casino.

Another issue is cruelty to animals. So for sports, they don't have baseball and basketball. They have bull baiting and bear baiting. And this is where you have a bull or a bear tied down, chained down, and then dogs fighting against it and so on and so forth, usually resulting in the death of one side or the other, just very bloody. It's also just a time of great suffering. Poverty, tremendous poverty, poor working conditions, much ignorance. You know, again, just the basic availability of schools and education. It's one of the things we take for granted in the modern world. That came about through a very specific process. It's not always been that way. You also have a lot of infant mortality. So during this time, three out of four children will die before they turn

five years old. So you have so many parents who don't have any children who survive into adulthood. Tremendous despair. So just, you know, if you want to get a picture of how bad things can get during this time, early 1700s, imagine you're in London somewhere and you're walking down the street and there's public executions going on, which a series of people are being hung, and then others come out to watch it as sport. And then they're getting drunk while watching, and because they're all drunk, fights are breaking out. And so you've got people brawling around in the mud underneath the gallows at which these criminals have been hung. And this will give you some flavor. I mean, I don't want to exaggerate this, but truly it was a dark time in terms of

just the degeneration of the time. So that's the context. And then now let's talk a little bit about what God did in this time of incredible renewal that we call the evangelical revival. And John Wesley is right in the mix of it. I'll put up a picture of John Wesley. I'm not a Wesley expert, so I welcome correction from any experts on John Wesley. I'm just someone who's fascinated by him, appreciates him as a great Christian man want to learn from him. He was an Anglican priest who served in America as a missionary for about two years. He struggled a lot during this period of his life. His ministry didn't get as much traction then. And I find his honesty refreshing. At one point, he said, I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh, who will convert me. Something about that just

like, I need to be converted. Like that just ruthless honesty, I just find so refreshing. During this time, he's greatly impacted by the Moravians. So at one point in the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, there's a storm and the English passengers are panicking, but the Moravians are calmly singing and praying during this time. And he realizes, they've got something I need. I don't have that kind of calmness and faith. Eventually, he has this famous, much-discussed breakthrough in 1738. I'll read what he says in his journals. In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther's preface to the epistle of the Romans, to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works

in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I underlined the two phrases that stand out to me that try to capture something of this experience that he had. His heart being strangely warmed, and then the words, an assurance being given to him. So God just gave him something. And I hope you feel how personal Christianity is from that passage. And this came after much struggle. You know, this wasn't just easy and light. One writer describes Wesley's experience as an inner sunshine of assurance, peace, and power. And I just want to pause right here.

and just sort of offer that out to everybody who's watching this video. I hope you know that you can have your heart strangely warmed, as Wesley did. I hope you know that you can have the inner sunshine of assurance and peace. Assurance is something God can give, that you don't have to strive to attain. Just as you can't attain salvation by obeying the law of God, so also we can't attain assurance. This is something we also receive by faith, and it's something the Holy Spirit does. And if you say, well, I'm really struggling, I'm not there. Then take heart in the fact that lots of great saints have struggled before they arrive upon that, not just Wesley, but Luther, Augustine, many great Christians.

You know, it was a long process and something just broke open in their heart at a certain point. And I just want to offer this out to people to encourage people. God can do that inside of you. There is nothing more wonderful to experience than the application of the gospel to our hearts needs, that language of inner sunshine, of peace and power and assurance, that is what Jesus feels like in your heart when it breaks open. And I don't know how to say it. That's, you know, I talk about assurance a lot. That's what I have in mind, that, that enchanting experience of joy,

the rush of joy at experiencing your sins forgiven and the personal application of the gospel falling down into the nooks and crannies of your heart. Anybody can have that. Anybody can experience that. It's not for Christian elites. It's for the needy who come before God and faith and just ask and receive from him. Soon after this experience, John Wesley begins to preach with a new power, and around this time he's influenced by George Whitfield. George Whitfield is preaching in England around this time, and he's denied access to pulpits because he's deemed as an enthusiast. So he begins to preach outside, and almost immediately these huge crowds, forms. So in February 1739, very quickly, about 10,000 people are there for Whitfield, and he's

preaching to them in Bristol. And then within a few months later that year, he's in London, and there's crowds of up to 50,000 people. Just unbelievable how popular he was. And Whitfield influenced Wesley toward field preaching as the best strategy to reach the toiling masses. Wesley was initially uncomfortable with this. but he came to see this is a way to reach the common people that are not already being reached by the established church. Those kind of on the outskirts of society. I know I couldn't help but think about today and just, you know, YouTube and other mechanisms like this that have all their downsides and so many negatives. But honestly, we, I am, put it like this, we should

be desperate to get the gospel message out there. And so it's at least worth struggling with. How do we use whatever mechanisms we can to get the message out there? Because people need to hear about Christ. Field preaching was very controversial. What are the ways we need today to just ring a bell really loudly and get the message of the gospel out there? It's at least worth asking that question. I was uncomfortable with getting on YouTube, but I've come to feel it's a way to reach people, but I know there's dangers. And I'm trying to say this in a spirit of honesty. I feel regularly afflicted, if I'm honest, about am I doing this right? You know, I don't want to ever, I don't want to ever veer off the path. I know it's not easy. At any rate, field preaching was rough.

I mean, sometimes when you feel a miscellological urgency, you're going to push the envelope, you're going to move into the culture in a way you're trying to proclaim Christ, and it's not neat and tidy, you know? At times, he and Whitfield were even physically attacked. Nonetheless, God used this to reach an incredible number of people, and the simple emphasis in their preaching on the conviction of sin and on repentance and rebirth gets traction. So the doctrine of regeneration or the new birth is a theme in the first great awakening. And this simple idea that you need to be born again, like Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3,

I don't care how religious you are. You need to personally be reborn by the Holy Spirit. This is a great theme here. And as the preaching is getting traction, there's such great need that they're appointing other itinerant preachers to carry on the work. Wesley is very influential in organizing this. One of the great themes that now develops is this tension between the established church and these enthusiasts who are seen as kind of contemptible because they're preaching outside

and so on and so forth. And granted, there's probably some improprieties and things going on and some abuses and errors. Wesley became unwelcome in many of the established churches in England, and he was looked down upon. But, you know, this is one of those things that God uses for good because now he's preaching in prisons and in the minds and in hospitals and all. all, he's reaching all these people. This is a constant theme we see throughout history, where within the

establishment among the people of God, the true prophets are rejected and marginalized. And so they get cast out into the periphery, but then God uses that for good, and all kinds of great fruit is borne out on the periphery. And you weigh 500 years, and now this periphery over here on the outskirts of society, or 200 years, is now like the new establishment. This is like the new headquarters of religion now. You know, this dynamic, I like to think of it in First King 17, First Kings 18, Elijah is rejected by Ahab, so he's up in Zarifath with the Gentile widow, and that's where the Word of God is. That's where miracles happen. And then First Kings 18, this great revival comes, and God uses Elijah's isolation and marginalization for good.

This will happen over and over, I think. There's a story of an archbishop complaining to Charles Wesley about how they employed lay preachers in their efforts. And Charles Wesley said, well, it's your fault. And the archbishop was shocked and said, how is it my fault? That's something that you guys are doing. And Wesley said these words, because you hold your peace and the stones cry out.

How I love that. What I love about that is the urgency. I'm not even taking a position on exactly how much training and oversight and so forth should a minister have. That was the controversy there. What I love, though, is the sense of urgency, that the gospel must be preached or else the stones will cry out, the name of Jesus must be proclaimed. Hearts that are worn down by despair must find relief and freedom through the gospel.

That is true today. I hope we all feel a sense of urgency to bring the gospel, push the envelope, bring the gospel out, you know, be a little innovative, you know. Push the gospel out there because the need. is so desperate. Now, one key that we can learn from in Wesley's revival is the organizing of these societies, these Methodist societies. Earlier, Wesley had been a part of a holy club in Oxford, and during the awakening, he helps organize these societies, which were especially kind of like small groups, kind of, small communities of people who had been converted in their gathering for fellowship and to share their testimonies and to get guidance and so forth. And I think that highlights,

two things. One is community. When God pours out his Holy Spirit, when people are coming to Christ, we need community. We need to not just stay isolated. That's why I talk a lot about revival on my YouTube channel, but revival is not going to come through the internet. I mean, God can use the internet to spread ideas, but we need community. We need face-to-face encouragement and fellowship. That's something we've got to think about. The other thing I think this brings up is the importance of organization. A key part of the first great awakening was organization. This is, I think, perhaps Wesley's great gift. Well, he had many gifts, but this is one of them. Revival is more than just spiritual power. Revival needs wise stewardship of those who are overseeing it. And I'll put it kind of crudely,

I remember one of my professors in seminary saying, even if God sends revival, people are still going to need to use the bathroom. It's like, you know, in other words, don't forget the human factors that you need to just work hard and have practical organization. And this is something we're thinking about. So today, if God sends revival, what does, what do Methodist societies look like today? So let's go to the last part of the video and talk about this a little bit. I'll just bring two lessons or two applications. These are just what struck me. It's not all that we need, of course. Number one, true Christianity has social consequences. This is the most obvious and basic point, I think. When God sends renewal, it impacts all of society. You can't study

the 18th century and not feel this. And so many of the benefits that we experience today in our culture in the West are related to Christian influence and even evangelical renewal influence. Now, we could overstate this, and this is a little bit contested for exactly how to understand this. It's not only evangelical renewal that leads to social reform. There's a lot of factors, but I think it's true that the great evangelical awakening of the 18th century was a massive force for social good. William Wilberforce is just one sort of face to put to that. There's so many others. And it's hard to imagine how our world today would be different without that renewal. This is a great emphasis of the Brady book, even though it's possible maybe he exaggerates this a bit.

He says the democratic and cultural heritage of the modern English-speaking world is much more a spiritual than a political or an economic achievement. There's an older French historian who writes, in the vast work of social organization, which is one of the dominant characteristics of the 19th century England, of 19th century England, it would be difficult to overestimate the part played by the Wesleyan revival. Now, the political and economic, in turn, affect the spiritual. So I'm not arguing that the influence here only moves in one direction. But I think we can truly say that what really moves the world is the spiritual. And the political and economic and social and cultural flow out of this. Change begins in the heart. And the preaching about new birth by people like Wesley and Whitfield

had tremendous social consequence. So for example, in the transition from the 18th century to the 19th century, over 100 years, you go from the slave trade is widely accepted to it's widely condemned. what causes that change? Well, the public conscience had to be awakened and shaped before you can get laws that will get traction. And the evangelical revival plays a great role in that awakening of the conscience. That's one example. Wesley himself had a profound social conscience. He was concerned about war. He was concerned about poverty. He was concerned about orphans. He was concerned about education. He started a tuition-free school in his own home. And the movement that he was a part of trickled down into every sector of society. Now, I'm not saying that the renewal was the only factor

in changing society. There's a lot. This is complicated, but it really did make a difference. And this is something I think some quarters of the church today can especially learn from. Sometimes we can fall into having a more privatized gospel. Sometimes we react, even to the language of social justice, because this language just brings up connotations of Marxism for us. And so our reaction to that is just to move in the other direction and sort of withdraw from social concern. John Wesley can be a great model to us. Social justice doesn't need to bring up Marxism. Let it bring up the face of John Wesley or William Wilberforce.

Christians should care about, you know, there's a great quote from Kuiper that there's not one square inch of all creation over which Christ does not say mine. We should feel that. We should look out on the world. and if our hearts have truly been touched by Christ, we should care about every person and every situation. Now, in the other direction, some Christians put so much emphasis on social justice that we lose the gospel message of forgiveness of sins for the individual person. And so one of the things I think we can learn from the evangelical revival of the 18th century is how you really see both. You see this emphasis on preaching the new birth, going out to the outskirts of society, go outside, stand up on a box,

and just proclaim, you know, you need to be born again. Here's how you do that. It's amazing, just the simple preaching of the gospel, what it can do. But then all these social reform efforts flow out of that. And it's something for us to think about today and something for us to learn from today. One basic way that we can connect the dots between preaching the gospel message and caring about social reform is just addressing issues of injustice and immorality in the world today. We look around today. You know, we've got to be. a lot of darkness we can see today. And so we, on the one hand, we want to proclaim the gospel. We know that change starts in the heart. At the same time, we want to uphold a sense of public

morality like we were talking about earlier. So, for example, we want to promote an atmosphere in which virtue is honored and in which vice is seen as shameful. This is something we really need right now. Sometimes, you know, and you can see this happening on both the right and the left, where vice will be held up as virtuous. And we want to oppose this. Like here's a practical, non-controversial thing we can do. We can speak well of marriage and of fidelity to one partner. We want to try, to put it colloquially.

We want to try to make, and I'm not talking, I'm not saying marriage is better than singleness. Here, the contrast I'm thinking of is between fidelity and sexual morality versus just complete breakdown in that area, which we see in our culture. And what we want to do is make celibacy, you know, godly singleness and godly marriage, and not violating the Seventh Commandment flagrantly. We want to make that cool. We want to make that honorable.

And we want to make pornography and sleeping around and so on and so forth seem kind of pathetic. You know, I know I have a lot of Catholic viewers. I appreciate Catholics who do this. Lila Rose and Matt Frad and people who are opposing pornography and talking about those issues. It's really important. And what I'm trying to say here is just the public perception of these things matters in this. And we want to help people understand integrity and righteousness is not boring. That's the way to life and flourishing. Again, it's not all we need to do, but that's one area we should be concerned about. The broader point here is Christianity should trickle down

into every aspect of human existence. Here's the second thing I think we can learn from the 18th century renewal, and that is the church needs renewal movements. I talk about revival a lot on my YouTube channel. I know that some people can be uncertain about revival. And today, also, we see tremendous interest in more established and historic church traditions, and sometimes there can be a disdain for populist waves within Christianity. In some circles right now, high church is trendy, and hip. Low church is contemptible and passe. And so it's, you know, it's an interesting question to ask, how might the Wesleyan renewal movement up the 18th century speak to these kinds of conversations? Now, we want to be careful here to allow for the fact that the 18th century dynamics and the 21st

century dynamics don't map on to each other exactly. So, for example, Wesley, a very interesting figure. He has a very high view of the sacraments. He's a very learned man. He promotes reading and learning. He's a very lowercasey Catholic. He remains within the established Church of England. He sees the Methodist movement as a renewal movement within this tradition. He once wrote, it is the plain old Christianity that I teach, renouncing and detesting all other marks of distinction, but from real Christians of whatever denomination they be, we earnestly desire not to be distinguished at all, not from any who sincerely follow after what they know. They have, which is in heaven. Does thou love and fear God? It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship.

So you feel like a sort of Catholic spirit from Wesley there. At the same time, Wesley is profoundly hated and despised by many of kind of the highbrow religious establishment types. And there's this snobbishness toward him as these enthusiasts are hated. And it's very instructive and sobering to see the intensity of that hatred. One clergyman spoke of the horrid blasphemies and impieties taught by these diabolical seducers called Methodists, their religion could be forged nowhere else but in the bottomless pit. That's not, you know, you find that, this tremendous hatred that people literally think it's satanic and it's sobering and sad to see how self-assured some of these criticisms can be. It makes me think of Christ's words in John 16 too, but sometimes people

will kill you and they think they're offering a service to God. In other words, they're not just willing to kill you, they think they have a clean conscience while doing so. This is how deceived they are. And this happens in the church today. You will find people who inflict unbelievable cruelty and slander and hatred and lies and contempt upon you. And they actually think they're serving God by doing this. And we need to pray that the scales would fall from their eyes because it's just a madness and a blindness, this level of hatred. But this is going on with what? And the dynamic here is the established church looking down on this renewal movement. And I think this is relevant for us today.

I wonder if the 18th century revival can remind us of the need for renewal movements like evangelicalism within the church. There's a, and I'm using the word evangelical in a very broad sense here. So there is a similar danger of snobbishness that we can see today. Now I'll be the first to admit that, you know, popular level evangelical culture has a lot of flaws. And I talk about that a lot. but it's one thing to see flaws and seek to heal them. It's another to see flaws and seek to exploit them. It's one thing to see a wound and respond with medicine. It's another thing to see a wound and respond with ridicule. I think we have a caution to learn from the established church's disdain of Wesley. We should not assume that, oh, if I was alive back then in 1740, I would have understood that field preaching was great. I would never be afflicted by that prejudice.

Honestly, it's easy to fall into that, and we actually need to humbly rely upon the Holy Spirit, sometimes correcting us. Sometimes the Holy Spirit works outside of the box of what we expect. Can we appreciate the good God has brought even to the messiness of church renewal movements? Can we appreciate the Holy Spirit's work in ways that are counterintuitive to us and that maybe rub against our prejudices? This is a challenge. It's really good to wrestle with this.

One of the great emphasis in evangelicalism is on the new birth, and this is a whole whole thing. and this is a hallmark distinctive of Whitfield's preaching, for example, you must be born again. And this is something I think we need to really value. We only know how precious this is once we've lost it, and once Christianity becomes much more structural and much less personal. One of the great benefits of these evangelical renewal movements is every single person must personally respond to the gospel. I'm going to put it as strong as this. single human being needs something in the ballpark of what Wesley had. Now, I'm not saying you need that your heart strangely warmed. Now I'm not saying you need to describe it just like

that. Sometimes a person will become a Christian and it won't be a very emotional experience. So let's leave variation for the experience. Nonetheless, the reality of having your heart awakened personally to God. This is a great emphasis in evangelical renewal movements. And in the times we live in now, where there's a lot of disdain in that direction, let's remember to value this and the importance of this. Another lesson we can learn is the importance of going to the people, the margins of society, the people that the world doesn't think of as important. This is often where Christ's heart is drawn. We need to think about how do we bring the gospel to people that are not on the radar screen of the important things of the world, and that might be right where God sends us, because

those people are so important to Jesus because everybody matters to Christ. And then there's this tension between the structural and the organic. We've talked about this with field preaching and this sense of misiological urgency that we should feel. Sometimes evangelicals go too far with the organic, but there's a danger of reaction in the other direction. I think Wesley's a good model for us. Wesley was ordained. He had no desire to leave the Anglican church and start a new church or something like that. But field preaching was innovative. It was controversial. They were pushing the envelope in order to reach people. Here's the question. How do we push the envelope today? How do we reach people today? Let me know what you think in the comments. I think we need to keep that conversation going.

And I think we need to look at other revivals and other times where God has worked to keep filling in the blanks here as we work at this today. And we think about what would revival look like today, which is now the question that really animates me so much in my life. I'll leave you with this final quote Wesley's final words. On his deathbed, he lived a long time toward the end of the 18th century as he's dying. His final words were the best of all, God is with us. That's a great way to summarize the practical import of the gospel. God is with you. Do you feel that in your heart? Do you know God is with you? He's for you, not against you if you've trusted in Jesus. He's with you. That's a great lesson to land the plane on here. Let me know what you think about this and look out for some more videos on

revival in the days ahead. Thanks for watching everybody.