The document summarizes the history of spiritual awakenings and revivals in the United States through prayer movements. It describes three Great Awakenings that occurred through prayer: the First in the 1730s-40s led by Jonathan Edwards that addressed moral decline; the Second in the early 1800s that stemmed rationalism and infidelity on campuses and in society; and the Third in the 1850s as a business leaders' prayer movement. It also discusses the Azusa Street revival of 1906 and notes that throughout history, nations thrive for 200 years before declining without spiritual renewal through prayer.

1. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
SECTION Four
Back to the
Future!
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
 Our National
Spiritual History
Inset: A Man of Prayer
in a Pagan Government
The First Great
Awakening
Our National Beginnings
The Second Great
Awakening Inset: Prayers
for Cities and Nations
The Third Great
Awakening
Nation
Changing
Prayer

2. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
SECTION Four
Back to the
Future!
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Chapter 13 continued …
Azusa Street
Camp Creek
 Needed - Another
Great AwakeningNation
Changing
Prayer

3. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The First Great Awakening…
In the first Great Awakening, Jonathan
Edwards was a fresh vessel of purity and prayer.
 A movement of united pastors in prayer
developed.
Puritanism had declined. Godlessness, crime and
immorality were flooding the colonies. The
situation was dire.
In most cities, the decent feared leaving their homes at
night.
The streets were filled with muggers and thieves.
Deism was flowering.
In the culture “the worst vices prevailed…if any one
condemned them, he was set down as a fool…”

4. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The First Great Awakening…
Church rolls were shrinking.
The “Halfway Covenant” allowed people with no
profession of faith to belong to the church - have
their children baptized.
The result was a passionless and misdirected
church, powerless to change culture.
Only “united, earnest prayer could bring a divine
outpouring” that would save the colonies.
Ministers began to call out to God, seeking his
face, in order to lead their people into revival.
That’s when God sent the first Great Awakening.

5. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
 Rationalism had taken over colleges and
universities.
Godly professors were marginalized.
Sceptics of the faith were enthroned as the
enlightened.
Christian students suffered as a growing
minority.
Higher education, institutions which had been
founded as Bible Colleges, to train clergy, turned
away from their Biblical roots.
Infidelity was rampant and a ruin to families.

6. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
The culture was characterized by “promiscuity,
profanity, gambling, and drunkenness.”
Doctrinal division and spiritual dullness plagued
the churches.
Prominent preachers were joined by lay leaders
with white-hot hearts, as critical cultural change
agents.
Isaac Backus promoted the idea, “There is only
one power on earth that commands the power of
heaven – prayer.”
The nation was mobilized to pray.

7. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
In Kentucky, a four-day observance of the
Lord’s Supper provoked a revival.
Three months later for a similar observance,
twenty thousand showed up. Thousands were
converted.
Youth were impacted. A new generation was
claimed for God.
Revival shook Yale College in 1802. The whole
mass of students seemed destined to press into
the Kingdom of God.
Nearly all the converts from the revival entered
the ministry.

8. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Second Great
Awakening …
Revival stopped skepticism in its tracks and
returned the helm of the country to the godly.”
Even the wild frontier full of gambling and vice
was transformed.
By January of 1801, the great camp meeting
revivals were spreading from county to county in
Kentucky and Tennessee.
Eyewitnesses wrote, “The roads were crowded
with wagons, carriages, horses and footmen
moving to the solemn camp.”
The roar of people praying and crying out to God
was like the sound of Niagara.

9. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Third Great Awakening …
Called the Layman’s Prayer Revival, it began in
New York (1857-1858) as a noon-time prayer
meeting.
America again needed renewal.
Crime was widespread.
Banks were folding.
The times were difficult, and the church was again
ineffective.
The nation was in the middle of a gold rush. As gains
grew in some sectors, godliness declined.
Jeremiah Lamphier promoted idea of
businessman’s prayer meeting. The weekly
meeting became daily.

10. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
The Awakening Spreads…
Soon other prayer gatherings spread across the
city, then across the nation.
In six months, at least 10,000 businessmen were
gathering in New York alone. Churches were full.
The Spirit of God settled on New York City.
Thousands became devoted follows of Christ.
Crime and vice drastically declined.
By March of 1858, from Maine to California,
there was hardly a village or town to be found
where ‘a special divine power’ did not appear
displayed.
And God touched the nation.

11. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
Azusa Street …
In 1906, revival came to the humble livery stable
at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
On the morning of the San Francisco earthquake,
Los Angeles was also rolled out of bed. Folks
grabbed for a morning paper and news about a
different stirring – on Azusa Street.
The meetings were held three times daily and at
times twenty-four hours a day. They cut across
socio-economic and racial barriers.
Like the great revivals before it - repentance,
humility, unity, prayer, waiting on God, and a
hunger for holiness at its heart.
It quickly spread around the world.

12. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish
historian wrote…
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it
simply cannot exist as a permanent form of
government… the average age of the world’s
greatest civilizations – from the beginning of
history – has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always
progressed…From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage; from
courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to complacency; from
complacency to apathy; from apathy to
dependence; and from dependence back to
bondage.

13. PRAYER – THE HEART OF IT ALL – P. DOUGLAS SMALL – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ©
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