The Scalding of Revival

We tend to think that when revival comes, all will be sunshine and honey blossoms as God bestows his favor upon the church and everyone's blessed with a new vigor for the Lord. It may end up that way, but it doesn't start that way. The pathway to revival is often lined with endless nights of desperate, burdened prayer and painful self-examination before the Lord.

If you throw scalded water on a dog, it will cry out and run. So too, in the midst of revival, will sinners be struck down by Holy Ghost conviction and cry out for mercy. During the height of the great revival of Hawaii under Titus Cohen in 1837 to 1842, where his congregation swelled to 13,000 people from that powerful revival that swept the island of Hilo, as Titus Cohen preached, natives would fall on the ground and cry out in agony his soul.

Here is an eyewitness account of that scalding revival. There was trembling, weeping, sobbing, and loud crying for mercy, sometimes too loud for the preacher to be heard. And in hundreds of cases, his ears fell in a swoon.

Some would cry out, the two-edged sword is cutting me to pieces. And the wicked scoffer who came to make sport dropped down like a dog and cried, God has struck me. Well, that was the experience in that revival in Hawaii.

When God comes in revival, it is often a pruning, purging, stripping, scalding experience, where one becomes wounded over their sins and acutely aware of the awful presence of a thrice-holy God. This indeed was the case during the great awakening in the colonies under the searching preaching of Jonathan Edwards, where, on July 8, 1741, in a meeting-house in Enfield, Connecticut, Edwards took for his text, Deuteronomy 32, 35, their foot shall slide in due time. As Edwards began his sermon, sinners in the hands of an angry God, there was a prevalent attitude in the congregation that was characterized as thoughtless and vain.

But before the sermon ended, the people were bowed down with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. An eyewitness account relates, before the sermon was done, there was a great moaning and crying out through the whole house. What shall I do to be saved? Oh, I'm going to hell.

Oh, what shall I do for Christ? The minister was obliged to desist from preaching, as the cries and shrieks were piercing and amazing. That's when Jonathan Edwards preached that sermon, and when Edwards got through with that crowd, they were scalded sinners in the hot hands of an angry God who was holding them over the very flames of hell. In the midst of revival, it's a scalding experience where sin is exposed and self is executed.

The aftermath of revival is refreshed, energized burdened for the souls of men and live in God-centered lives for the glory of God.