Spiritual Awakenings in North America Issue 23 | 1989

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“I am profoundly convinced that the greatest need in the world today is revival in the Church of God. Yet Alas! the whole idea of revival seems to have become strange to so many good Christian people. There are some who even seem to resent the very idea, and actually speak and write against it. Such an attitude is due to both a serious misunderstanding of the Scriptures, and to a woeful ignorance of the history of the Church. Anything therefore that can instruct God’s people in this matter is very welcome.”

We wholeheartedly agree with this quote by the Rev. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the eminent preacher who died a few years ago. We produced this issue on spiritual awakenings in America in the desire that it might serve as a quiet stimulus for awakening. We have been motivated by the hope that as God’s people ponder their tradition of spiritual awakenings, they will earnestly yearn to pray and seek God for a new time of refreshing, such as those times that have come when Christians have felt the urgency to humble themselves, abandon their sins, and call upon God for renewal.

Most of the material for this issue was written by Dr. Keith Hardman, a devoted minister, historian, and believer in awakenings. Mr. Hardman is chairman of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and is the author of the books The Great Awakeners: Revivalists from Solomon Stoddard to Dwight L. Moody (Moody Press, 1983) and Charles Grandison Finney 1792–1875, Revivalist and Reformer (Syracuse University Press, 1987). His book on Finney is the first major biography of the great evangelist in over 100 years, and has received excellent reviews. Our deepest thanks to him for his hard work, enthusiasm, and painstaking ...