Lectures on Revivals
Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835)
Charles G. Finney — preached in New York in 1834–35, and printed from the notes of the editor of the New York Evangelist
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 330
- Stat total
- 402
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
STAMINA — High. Twenty-two lectures and four hundred pages.
CONTEND — High. Every lecture ends in a demand to act, tonight.
DEFEND — Middling. It argues from results, and results can be counted either way.
POPULARITY — High. It was reprinted for a century, and the altar call came out of it.
Cited for this book
Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) taught ministers how to produce a revival: protracted meetings, prayer for people by name, and the anxious seat at the front. Its first lecture says a revival is not a miracle but the right use of means.
Moves learned
This book learns nothing new by levelling — everything it knows, it knew from the start or brought with it through development.
What answers it
The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.
Augustine had this argument with Pelagius fourteen hundred years before Finney. God may command what we cannot do by ourselves, because he gives what he commands. The command is real and so is the gift!
Edwards answers from inside the revival’s own tradition. A person always chooses what looks best to them, so a heart that loves the wrong things will choose them freely. It is the heart that needs changing, and it cannot change itself!
Wesley was not argued into faith by a method. Someone read Luther on the change God works in the heart, and it was worked in his!