A Blunt Observation
“You have prayed enough since I have attended these meetings to have prayed the devil out of Adams, if there was any virtue in your prayers. But here you are praying on, and complaining still.” Despite the candor of his remarks, Charles didn’t intend them to be insulting. They were merely an expression of his honest pursuit for real answers.
A Growing Restlessness
Restlessness grew within him as he confronted the realization that he needed a Savior, but he could find no one who could tell him how to properly seek Him.
Calvinistic Barriers to God
One of the issues with which Charles struggled was the very one that had driven a wedge between George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. Despite what had happened during the First Great Awakening, New England churches- especially Presbyterian churches-remained staunchly Calvinistic. God’s sovereignty was preached as supreme in all matters-especially salvation. Accordingly, those who were saved were the “elect” who had been “predestined” to receive salvation through the cross, so that Jesus’ sacrifice covered their sin alone. Jesus died only for these elect, and no one else.
A Crisis of Faith
Thus, no individual could know for certain whether he or she was saved; salvation depended on the will of God. Everyone was still expected to live a holy life before a holy God, knowing that if they did not, they would provoke the wrath of God that Jonathan Edwards and those like him had so aptly described. They knew little, though, about responding to God’s love and mercy.
A Choice to Make
When Charles applied the same logic he used in preparing legal cases to what he read in the Bible, however, he saw that the Calvinists’ basic failure was believing what was preached from the pulpit instead of believing what they read in the Bible. He saw that if God were a good and righteous judge, and if the Bible was His written Word and law to humanity, then either the Bible was a lie or the Calvinists were following a delusion. Once he concluded this, he knew he had only two choices: “accept Christ as presented in the Gospel, or pursue a worldly life.”
Is God a Lie?
On a Saturday evening in October 1821, twenty-nine-year-old Charles decided to settle the question of the future of his soul, once and for all. Either he would make his peace with God, or God was a lie and the Bible a fabrication. Since he found no answers in the church and no help from its membership, he knew his answers would be found in studying the Bible and seeking God in prayer.
A Secret Pursuit
Although he was still required to spend long hours in the law office, Charles decided to try to put his work aside as much as possible until this issue was resolved. The odd thing was that in the midst of this decision, he suddenly felt quite timid and ashamed when people saw him with a Bible or heard him praying. He had read his Bible openly at work when he first purchased it and had even left it lying open when others met with him, but now, whenever someone entered the office, he would throw a law book over his Bible to conceal it.
A Desperate Struggle
Charles kept his Bible out of sight as much as he could. He also stopped up the keyhole to his office and whispered his prayers for fear that someone would hear him praying for the salvation of his soul. He spent Monday and Tuesday of that week in anguish; Tuesday night, he became virtually paralyzed with fear that he would die and go to hell because he couldn’t find voice enough to cry out to God for His mercy.
To be continued…
Tale Tuesday 064
Date: 21st November, 2023
Title: : Charles Finney – The Father of Modern Revivalism(part 4)
Source: The Azusa Street Revival
Author: Roberts Liardon
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