Teaching from chapter 13

1. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
SECTION Four
Back to the
Future!
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
 Our National
Spiritual History
Inset: A Man of Prayer
in a Pagan Government
The First Great
Awakening
Our National Beginnings
The Second Great
Awakening Inset: Prayers
for Cities and Nations
The Third Great
Awakening
Nation
Changing
Prayer

2. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
SECTION Four
Back to the
Future!
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Chapter 13 continued …
Azusa Street
Camp Creek
 Needed - Another
Great AwakeningNation
Changing
Prayer

3. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The First Great Awakening…
In the first Great Awakening, Jonathan
Edwards was a fresh vessel of purity and prayer.
 A movement of united pastors in prayer
developed.
Puritanism had declined. Godlessness, crime and
immorality were flooding the colonies. The
situation was dire.
In most cities, the decent feared leaving their homes at
night.
The streets were filled with muggers and thieves.
Deism was flowering.
In the culture “the worst vices prevailed…if any one
condemned them, he was set down as a fool…”

4. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The First Great Awakening…
Church rolls were shrinking.
The “Halfway Covenant” allowed people with no
profession of faith to belong to the church - have
their children baptized.
The result was a passionless and misdirected
church, powerless to change culture.
Only “united, earnest prayer could bring a divine
outpouring” that would save the colonies.
Ministers began to call out to God, seeking his
face, in order to lead their people into revival.
That’s when God sent the first Great Awakening.

5. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
 Rationalism had taken over colleges and
universities.
Godly professors were marginalized.
Sceptics of the faith were enthroned as the
enlightened.
Christian students suffered as a growing
minority.
Higher education, institutions which had been
founded as Bible Colleges, to train clergy, turned
away from their Biblical roots.
Infidelity was rampant and a ruin to families.

6. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
The culture was characterized by “promiscuity,
profanity, gambling, and drunkenness.”
Doctrinal division and spiritual dullness plagued
the churches.
Prominent preachers were joined by lay leaders
with white-hot hearts, as critical cultural change
agents.
Isaac Backus promoted the idea, “There is only
one power on earth that commands the power of
heaven – prayer.”
The nation was mobilized to pray.

7. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
In Kentucky, a four-day observance of the
Lord’s Supper provoked a revival.
Three months later for a similar observance,
twenty thousand showed up. Thousands were
converted.
Youth were impacted. A new generation was
claimed for God.
Revival shook Yale College in 1802. The whole
mass of students seemed destined to press into
the Kingdom of God.
Nearly all the converts from the revival entered
the ministry.

8. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
Revival stopped skepticism in its tracks and
returned the helm of the country to the godly.”
Even the wild frontier full of gambling and vice
was transformed.
By January of 1801, the great camp meeting
revivals were spreading from county to county in
Kentucky and Tennessee.
Eyewitnesses wrote, “The roads were crowded
with wagons, carriages, horses and footmen
moving to the solemn camp.”
The roar of people praying and crying out to God
was like the sound of Niagara.

9. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Third Great Awakening …
Called the Layman’s Prayer Revival, it began in
New York (1857-1858) as a noon-time prayer
meeting.
America again needed renewal.
Crime was widespread.
Banks were folding.
The times were difficult, and the church was again
ineffective.
The nation was in the middle of a gold rush. As gains
grew in some sectors, godliness declined.
Jeremiah Lamphier promoted idea of
businessman’s prayer meeting. The weekly
meeting became daily.

10. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Awakening Spreads…
Soon other prayer gatherings spread across the
city, then across the nation.
In six months, at least 10,000 businessmen were
gathering in New York alone. Churches were full.
The Spirit of God settled on New York City.
Thousands became devoted follows of Christ.
Crime and vice drastically declined.
By March of 1858, from Maine to California,
there was hardly a village or town to be found
where ‘a special divine power’ did not appear
displayed.
And God touched the nation.

11. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
Azusa Street …
In 1906, revival came to the humble livery stable
at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
On the morning of the San Francisco earthquake,
Los Angeles was also rolled out of bed. Folks
grabbed for a morning paper and news about a
different stirring – on Azusa Street.
The meetings were held three times daily and at
times twenty-four hours a day. They cut across
socio-economic and racial barriers.
Like the great revivals before it - repentance,
humility, unity, prayer, waiting on God, and a
hunger for holiness at its heart.
It quickly spread around the world.

12. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish
historian wrote…
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it
simply cannot exist as a permanent form of
government… the average age of the world’s
greatest civilizations – from the beginning of
history – has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always
progressed…From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage; from
courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to complacency; from
complacency to apathy; from apathy to
dependence; and from dependence back to
bondage.

13. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
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