The Lord's Recovery
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  1. Post Reformation History and Recovery
    1. George Fox (A.D. 1624-1691)
    2. Jean de Labadie (A. D. 1610-1674)
    3. Madame Guyon (A.D. 1648-1717)
    4. William Law (A.D. 1686-1761)
    5. Count Zinzendorf (A.D. 1700-1760) and the Moravians
    6. John Wesley (A.D. 1703-1791); Charles Wesley (A.D. 1707-1788)
    7. John Nelson Darby (A.D. 1800-1882) and the British Brethren
    8. Robert Govett (A.D. 1813-1901)
    9. G.H. Pember (A.D. 1837-1910)
    10. D.M. Panton (A.D. 1870-1955)
    11. Andrew Murray (A.D. 1828-1917)
    12. Jessie Penn-Lewis (A.D. 1861-1927)
    13. The Welsh Revival (A.D. 1906)

III. Post Reformation History and Recovery

A. George Fox (A.D. 1624-1691)

In The Pilgrim Church, Broadbent says that with George Fox there was a revival, or recovery, of the forgotten truth as to the reality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.[1] Fox was very much impressed by I John 2:27: “The…anointing teaches you of all things.”

He and those who gathered with him were called “Friends.” Their opposers, however, derisively called them “Quakers.”

Quoting Broadbent:

[Fox] was aware of the Lord's command to go abroad into the world, to turn people from darkness to light, and, he says, “I saw that Christ died for all men, and was a propitiation for all; and enlightened all men and women with His divine and saving life; and that none could be a true believer but who believed in it...” and adds: “These things I did not see by the help of man nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter, but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scriptures were written. Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that Spirit by which they were given forth: and what the Lord opened in me, I afterwards found was agreeable to them.”[2]

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B. Jean de Labadie (A. D. 1610-1674)

Jean de Labadie was a French Jesuit, ordained a priest in 1635. He tried in vain to reform the Catholic Church until 1650. After failing, he attempted to reform the Reformed Church for another twenty years. Finally, after many years of failure, he realized that restoration was only possible by separation from all existing systems, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. Carron writes of Labadie's desire for a recovery of the New Testament church life:

He hoped the day would come when the Church would abandon all its rites and ceremonies, and return to the simple worship of Apostolic days. “Then,” he said, “they would all meet for reading the Word, for preaching and for prayer, and to take the Lord's Supper, both bread and wine as in the days of the Apostles.”[3]

Labadie's endeavors to reform aroused much opposition, threatening, and persecution. The Reformed Church strongly opposed his use of extemporaneous prayer, i.e., praying aloud what wells up from within. Labadie saw that the power of outward form was in the inner life of communion with God. As many as 60,000 Christians gathered around him in Amsterdam, where a type of communal life was begun.

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C. Madame Guyon (A.D. 1648-1717)

Madame Guyon was a French Catholic known for her intense devotion to the Lord's name. She had a strong inner life which issued from her communion with the Lord. Being ignorant of the inner life and the real experience of the Lord, Louis XIV, in conjunction with the Catholic Church,

She had a strong inner life which issued from her communion with the Lord.

condemned her for mysticism, and imprisoned her repeatedly. She was condemned because she did not take the usual way of obtaining grace through the sacraments. She implied that these were not necessary and that she only needed to talk with the Lord, opening to Him from deep within. During her imprisonment and following her release she corresponded with Archbishop Fenelon. Eventually, both her writings and his were condemned by the Catholic Church. Finally she was put into the Bastille, the worst of the French prisons.

Her autobiography is still in print. However, there is need of discretion in reading her book, because some of her practices were ascetic, especially her techniques for subduing the flesh. We have to praise the Lord, though, for her devotion to Him, and for the personal experience she had with her Lord.

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D. William Law (A.D. 1686-1761)

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law had quite an influence on John Wesley. However, the means of salvation presented in this book seems at times not to be grace but works of law. It was written at a stage when Law did not know more than a Christ to be imitated rather than the Christ imparted. A better book, though, is The Power of the Spirit. In this volume Law writes:

“Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing.” On the same basis it must be said that popery is nothing, and Protestantism is nothing, because neither can make a sinner into a new creature in Christ Jesus. Therefore call nothing your salvation but the formation of Christ in you by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing His Church except those who are “a habitation of God through the Spirit.”[4]

Concerning the Scriptures he writes:

Therefore the Scriptures should only be read in an attitude of prayer, trusting to the inward working of the Holy Spirit to make their truths a living reality within us.[5]

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Concerning the spirit versus the letter he says:

Yet the church is filled with professing Christians whose faith has never gone beyond a conviction that the words of Scripture are true. They believe in the Christ of the Bible, but do not know Him personally. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is sound doctrine to their minds, but their lives are empty of His manifest power either to overcome the power of sin within, or to convert others to Christ. Though many are zealous to preach the gospel, yet instead of bringing men to Christ, they seek to reason them into a trust in their own learned opinions about Scripture doctrines. In contrast to Paul, their gospel is in word only, without the demonstration and power of the Spirit. Nor can they see their need of the Holy Spirit to fill them with Christ, and then to overflow through them in rivers of living water to others, because reason tells them that they are sound in the letter of doctrine.[6]

E. Count Zinzendorf (A.D. 1700-1760) and the Moravians

It would be hard to summarize what was recovered through Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians. For this reason an entire website is devoted to them alone. Their practice of the church life was probably the highest until their time, and in some ways the highest up to the present stage of the Lord's recovery with the local churches. It is amazing how rich their church life was. One of their outstanding characteristics was the many, many hymns which they wrote.

F. John Wesley (A.D. 1703-1791);
Charles Wesley (A.D. 1707-1788)

In Oxford, England, John and Charles Wesley, along with George Whitefield, formed a so-called Holy Club where they developed methodical practices for meeting together, for study, for prayer, and for having the weekly Lord's table meeting. Eventually this developed into the Methodist Church.

John Wesley was saved through his contact with the Moravians. He was very zealous with the spread of the gospel, even traveling 250,000 miles mostly on horseback to preach the word. John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield preached the gospel to such a degree that revival spread throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, and America.

There was real coordination between the Wesleys, Charles putting to music the messages that John preached. Probably no other individual has composed as many hymns as Charles Wesley, over six thousand total. The Wesleys purposely wrote hymns to teach the truth, having found that most people took their theology more from hymns than Scripture.

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G. John Nelson Darby (A.D. 1800-1882) and the British Brethren

As with Luther and Zinzendorf, a fuller consideration of Darby and the British Brethren is presented in another website. It has been said that the Brethren movement was much larger and more influential than the Reformation itself, at least as far as spiritual impact is concerned.

It has been said that the Brethren movement was much larger and more influential than the Reformation itself, at least as far as spiritual impact is concerned.

Watchman Nee indicates that the Brethren corresponded to the church in Philadelphia (Rev. 3:7-13), i.e., the church of brotherly love.[7]John Nelson Darby was the most prominent teacher among the Brethren. One of the best English translations of the Bible was that made by Darby, who also translated the Scriptures into French and German. It is true that Luther opened the Scriptures during the time of the Reformation, but it was through Darby and the Brethren that much of the Bible was first understood. Among them the Scriptures were unfolded as never before. The Chief Men among the Brethren, which gives a brief sketch of those of note among them, includes George Mueller, William Kelly, C.H. Mackintosh, Anthony Norris Groves, C.A. Coates, and Sir Robert Anderson along with many others.

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H. Robert Govett (A.D. 1813-1901)

The next three individuals could be put together, these being Robert Govett, G.H. Pember, and D.M. Panton. Through them the truths about the kingdom, the Lord's return, and the rapture of the saints were recovered. Although these points were brought out by John Nelson Darby and Benjamin Wills Newton of the Brethren, the best presentation of them was given by these three. They were a great help to both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.

Robert Govett graduated from Oxford University. In 1854 he built a chapel in Surrey, located in Norwich, England, where he pastored until his death in February 1901.

Govett wrote an excellent booklet entitled, “The Twofoldness of Divine Truth.” Two other books by Govett are, Reward According to Works, and The New Jerusalem Our Eternal Home. His book, The Apocalypse, originally a four volume set, is probably the most intense coverage of Revelation in writing today. This book was particularly helpful to Watchman Nee.

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I. G.H. Pember (A.D. 1837-1910)

    Four books by George Hawkins Pember are,
    1. Earth's Earliest Ages;
    2. The Antichrist, Babylon, and the Coming of the Kingdom;
    3. The Church, the Churches, and the Mysteries; and
    4. The Great Prophecies Concerning the Gentiles, the Jews, and the Church of God.

In his introduction to Earth's Earliest Ages, he prescribes a means of studying the Word:

Let [the Christian] but believe that the Bible is the infallible word of the great Creator, and that all men are, and ever have been, prone to error, and he will readily see that to discover the truth of any doctrine he must first strive to divest himself of preconceived notions, of all that he has ever heard about it, and of all feeling either for or against it. And then, with earnest prayer for the Spirit's aid, let him examine every portion of Scripture which bears upon it, noting the simple and obvious teaching of each, and observing how the various texts interpret and corroborate one another. So will he by God's help arrive at the truth. But yet another precaution will be necessary; he must mark the degree of prominence assigned to it in the Bible, and give it, as nearly as possible, the same in his own teaching. For even true doctrines may sometimes be mischievous if unduly pressed to the exclusion of others, to which, as we may see by their more frequent mention, the Spirit of God attaches greater importance.

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Were this course generally pursued, there would soon be an end of diversities in the real Church: the true followers of Christ would present an unbroken phalanx to the world; the greatest obstacle to the spread of the Gospel would be removed; and very different would be the result both of our preaching at home and of our missionary work abroad. For the sword of the Spirit, if drawn forth keen and glittering from its own scabbard, and not merely picked up from the ground where it has been left, blunted and dulled, perchance, by some former warrior, is irresistible, and pierces through body and soul to the inmost shrine of the God-conscious spirit.[8]

J. D.M. Panton (A.D. 1870-1955)

David Morrison Panton initially had close ties to the Church of England. Later, however, he left the Anglican Church, and picked up the responsibilities at the Surrey Chapel in October of 1901 after Govett's death. It was there that M.E. Barber visited him and received much help concerning the church.

Panton edited Dawn magazine from 1924 until his death in 1955. A sampling of the articles in his magazine yields such titles as:

“Faith Increased,”
“The Church of Old,”
“Coming as a Thief,”
“The Hinderer and the Hindrance,”
“Antichrist's Empire Universal,”
“Watchfulness in Prayer,”
“No Salvation by Sacrament,”
“The Church and the Tribulation,”
“A Dateless Advent,”
“The Kingdom Lost,”
“The Rewards for Overcomers,”
“The Setting of the Judgment Throne,”
“The Seventy Weeks,”
“The Spirit Leaving the Temple,”
“World Empires,” etc.;

Authors include: Benjamin Wills Newton, George Mueller, Robert Govett, G.H. Lang, G.H. Pember, Margaret E. Barber, as well as Panton himself.

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The last issue of Dawn magazine, published shortly after Panton's death, included “A Short Memoir of the Late Editor.” The following is an excerpt from that memoir:

…the doctrine of Responsibility and Accountability of every redeemed soul to his Redeemer, naturally arising out of his redemption, has passed from the knowledge of the Church for the most part: certainly, in general, as a living and urgent power over the lives of disciples of Christ. And the future effect upon the believer of this present relationship to his Redeemer is completely ignored by most; namely, that, as a responsible agent of Christ, he must hand in an account of his stewardship before the Judgment Seat of his Lord; that from his Lord's lips he will receive the sentence due to him, be it good or bad, according as he has been faithful or unfaithful, obedient or disobedient, holy or sinful.

Mr. Panton believed that God put Dawn into his hands for the making known of these doctrines far and wide.[9]

Two outstanding booklets by Panton are “The Judgment Seat of Christ” and “The Rapture.”

K. Andrew Murray (A.D. 1828-1917)

Through Andrew Murray there was a further recovery of the experience of the inner life. Murray was born in South Africa, where he remained for most of his life, ministering to the needs of the saints as a pastor and an evangelist. He emphasized Christ as the life-giving Spirit, having seen much of the truth concerning the all-inclusive Spirit. His book, The Spirit of Christ, has been particularly helpful to the saints, especially the fifth chapter entitled, “The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus.”

L. Jessie Penn-Lewis (A.D. 1861-1927)

Jessie Penn-Lewis was influenced by Murray. With her there was more of the inner life recovery, especially concerning the cross. She saw clearly the distinction between the soul and the spirit. Between 1909 and 1914 she published a periodical called The Overcomer.

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M. The Welsh Revival (A.D. 1906)

With the Welsh Revival, there was not an emphasis on particular individuals doing a work for the Lord but rather on what the Spirit was doing independent of any outstanding or specially gifted persons. In A Second Evangelical Awakening, Orr describes the Welsh Revival as the third phase of a larger move of the Lord called the Evangelical Awakening.[10] The first phase took place primarily in the British Isles in 1859, and was characterized as having no single leader. D.L. Moody was a product of this phase of the Awakening. Thirty-five out of one hundred of those mentioned in The Chief Men among the Brethren were either brought to the Lord or participated in the preaching of the gospel at this time.

There was an unusual dependence upon the Spirit and the Scriptures.

During the second phase, between 1873 and 1899, D.L. Moody was strong in proclaiming the gospel. Finally, the third phase consisted of the Welsh Revival which Orr portrays as having many prayer meetings, much singing, and many people preaching the gospel with a strong zeal, not only in their homeland, but also abroad. Much emphasis was placed on the so-called lay ministry rather than the trained clergy for the preaching. Evan Roberts was used by the Lord more visibly than others in the Welsh Revival although he had received no formal religious training. There was an unusual dependence upon the Spirit and the Scriptures. The spirit of prayer was intense, resulting in an overwhelming conviction of sin. William Hoste, in a supplementary paper in Miller's Church History, says:

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If we are constantly reminded of the sovereignty of God's ways, in working where, when, and by whom He wills, it would be difficult to find a more remarkable example than the said “Revival,” when one looks at a group of those whom God used to stir Wales to its depths and far beyond Wales, the whole Evangelical world–a few young men and women of humble origin, slender educational advantages, and with no financial or ecclesiastical backing.[11]

He also noted the place that prayer had in that revival, and the absence of collections taken for the speakers.