FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS
volume 21, number 48, December 1, 2022
“You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” -Acts 1:8
For the first time in over a millennium, less than half of the population (46%) of England and Wales now consider themselves Christians, while 37% list “no religion” as their preference. Muslims have grown to 6.5% of the population, up from 4.9% only a few years ago. The Church of England closed 423 churches between 2010 and 2019.[1] It has not always been this way. England and Wales have a rich history of great preachers and powerful revivals. Our country is not far behind. The Pew Research Center reveals that the so called Christian majority in the U.S. will end within a few decades.[2] I might add that the numbers are actually far worse. Both of these surveys have a very broad category of “Christian”, even including Mormons as Christians. I have said for at least eight years that the true number of believers in the U.S. is probably around 8%. David Wells thinks the percentage is much lower, like 1% or 2%.[3] Is there any hope for us?
George Friedrich Handel was born in 1685 in Germany and was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach (they were born only five weeks apart). Apparently they never met. Both were German Lutherans. By the time Handel was eight years old he was proficient on the organ. He became a violinist and composer with the Hamburg Opera Theatre and then at the age of twenty-one worked in Italy for four years, composing his Christian oratorio The Resurrection. From there Handel went to London where he lived for the rest of his life. He struggled professionally and more than once faced bankruptcy and debtors prison. In the midst of his struggles Handel kept his faith and his sense of humor. When one of his oratorios was to begin his friends sought to encourage him due to the nearly empty auditorium. To which he said, “Never mind. The music will sound the better due to the acoustics of the nearly empty hall.” When a friend commented on the dreary nature of some music he had recently heard, Handel replied, “You are right sir. It is pretty poor stuff. I thought so myself when I wrote it.” Handel was a devoted, earnest Christian but he had his weaknesses. At times his anger would get the best of him (usually with singers) when rehearsing his music and he was known to swear in German, French, Italian, and English but then would quickly repent and apologize.
Wealthy Charles Jennens from London, a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, earnestly desired to see his native England and the world reached with the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. He thought that the wondrous plan of redemption, as portrayed in Scripture, should be set to music. So Jennens searched the Scriptures and brought together the great strands of the plan of redemption concerning the prophecies, the person and work of Jesus, and the glory of eternal life in Christ. He gave the libretto to his friend George Frederic Handel and it sat on a shelf gathering dust for eighteen months without Handel looking at it. Finally, on August 22, 1741 Handel took up the libretto in his little house on Brook Street in London and began feverishly to write the music. Within six days he had completed part one. Nine days later he had finished part two, and in another six days part three. He took two more days for orchestration. The manuscript of 260 pages was finished in 24 days. He stayed in his room almost continually, sleeping only a few minutes at a time, and rarely stopped to eat the food his servant faithfully brought three times per day. When his servant entered the room as Handel completed the Hallelujah Chorus he said with tears streaming down his face, “I think I did see heaven open, and the very face of God.” Handel later said, borrowing from the words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:3, “Whether I was in the body or out of my body when I wrote it, I know not.” When Haydn heard the “Hallelujah Chorus” he wept like a child, and speaking of Christ said, “He is the master of us all.” Sir Newman Flower, one of Handel’s many biographers said, “Considering the immensity of the work, and the short time involved, it will remain perhaps forever, the greatest feat in the whole history of music composition.” I myself have often thought that if we could say any music was inspired by the Holy Spirit, then Handel’s Messiah fits the bill. I listen to it often and Wini and I spend our joint devotional times each December listening to portions of Messiah and reading commentaries on each section.
At the very same time, August and September, 1741, the Great Awakening was in full bloom in England, Scotland, Wales, and Colonial America. John Wesley was preaching to large crowds all over England. Welshmen Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris were preaching throughout their native Wales. Harris was in the north of Wales at the time when a local pastor furnished the riff raff of town with beer. After the men were drunk they attacked Harris as he stood preaching in the open air. Women threw dung on him and both men and women beat him with their fists and wooden stakes and trampled him, leaving him for dead. He rejoiced at being able to shed blood for his Savior but lamented that he had stopped preaching during the attack.
Likewise, William M’Cullough, a rather mediocre preacher in Glasgow, Scotland who had a burden for revival after hearing what God was doing in New England through the preaching of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and William Tennennt, began in February, 1741 to preach evangelistic sermons to his congregation. Later in July, 1742 Whitefield would preach to fifty thousand people in Glasgow at what came to be known as the Cambuslang Revival where hundreds were awakened to new life in Jesus. In August, 1741 Whitefield was in America finishing up his preaching tour in Savannah. He made his way north and preached at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut in early September where several hundred people were awakened and converted. From there Whitefield traveled up to Boston and then to Northampton, Massachusetts where Edwards was the pastor of the Congregational Church. As Whitefield preached on an October Friday night, thirty-eight year old Edwards sat on the front row with his wife, Sarah, and their eleven children and wept as he heard Whitefield proclaim the excellencies of Christ.
Why am I writing on this portion of church history? Clearly there was a mighty work of the Holy Spirit at the time. While there was great opposition to the revival and her preachers, both from religious leaders and ungodly members of the populace, there was also the unquestionable presence of the Holy Spirit. We are not seeing anything like this in the western world at this present time. We did then and in other parts of our history, namely the Second Great Awakening from around 1793 to 1863, but scarcely anything today. I know, we have many mega mega churches in almost every city in the U.S. where as many as 70,000 people gather weekly in multiple church campuses, but where is the societal impact which was clearly present in both the First and Second Great Awakenings? There is much activity but little evidence of transforming gospel power. Why is this the case and what should be done about it? I hope to address this next week.
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1 “England and Wales No Longer Majority Christian Nations, Census Reveals,” The Washington Post, November 29, 2022.
2 “America’s Christian Majority Is On Track to End,” Michael Levitt, NPR, September 17, 2022
3 “The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church,” November 25, 2022, David Wells, The Aquila Report.
FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS 
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