“Our need of revival is indeed very great today. It may be that a generation of freshly-anointed preachers is already being prepared. Whether that is so or not, when such men are sent forth by Christ we can be sure of certain things.
They will not be identical in all points with the men of the past, but there will be a fundamental resemblance.
They will be hard students of Scripture.
They will prize a great spiritual heritage.
They will see the danger of ‘unsanctified learning’.
While they will not be afraid of controversy, nor of being called hyper-orthodox, they will fear to spend their days in controversy. They will believe with John Rice that ‘the church is not purified by controversy, but by holy love’.
They will not forget that the wise, who will shine ‘as: the stars forever and ever’, are those who ‘turn many to righteousness’ (Dan. 12.3).
They will covet the wisdom which Scripture attributes to the one ‘that winneth souls’ (Prov. 11.30).
But their cheerfulness will have a higher source than their work. To know God Himself will be their supreme concern and Joy.
They will therefore not be strangers to humility.
And their experience will not be without trials and discouragements, not least because they fall so far short of their aspirations.
If they are spared to live as long as John Leland they will be ready to say with him at last: ‘I have been unwearedly trying to preach Jesus, but have not yet risen to that state of holy zeal and evangelical knowledge, that I have been longing after’.
Whether their days be bright or dark they will learn to say with Nettleton that ‘the milk and honey lie beyond this wilderness world’.”
—Iain H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 386-387.
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