Gilbert Tennent: The First Great Awakening

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GILBERT TENNENT
TARON EDWARDS
Burning, blazing, and on fire accurately describes Gilbert Tennent’s ministry! Tennent was a dominant preacher throughout the religious revival known as the Great Awakening. Tennent traveled to the northern colonies preaching in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania with English evangelist, George Whitfield. Tennent was born in Ireland and shortly thereafter Tennent and his family migrated from the region in Ulster to America. Tennent’s father, William founded the first American Presbyterian theological seminary on the Pennsylvania frontier known as “The Log College” because of its construction. Tennent was educated by his father before attending the Log-college and he was ordained as a minister in New Brunswick …show more content…
Led by the Tennent family, Reverend William Tennent, a Scots-Irish immigrant, and his four sons, all clergymen. The Presbyterians not only initiated religious revivals in those colonies during the 1730’s, but also established a seminary to train clergymen whose fervid, heartfelt preaching would bring sinners to experience evangelical conversion. Their seminary was originally known as “the Log College,” it is better known today as Princeton University. Religious enthusiasm quickly spread from the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies to the Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists of New England. By the 1740s, the clergymen of these churches were conducting revivals throughout that region, using the same strategy that had contributed to the success of the Tennent’s. These early revivals in the northern In the late 1740s, Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey began preaching in the Virginia Piedmont. As a matter of fact, through the warm evangelical preaching of Gilbert Tennent and the graduates of the Log College, a revival got under way which in course of time ran like a forest fire among the Presbyterians from Long Island to Virginia. Also, Tennent’s ministry provided the “spark” that ignited the revival fires during a series of meetings in Staten Island in …show more content…
They comfort people, before they convince them; sow before they plow; are busy in raising a fabric before they lay a foundation. These fooling builders do but strengthen men’s carnal security, by their soft, selfish, and cowardly discourses they have not the courage, or honesty, to thrust the nail of terror into sleeping soul, poor Christians are stunted and starved who are put to feed on such bare pastures, and such, dry nurse! It is ready to break their very hearts with grief to see how lukewarm those Pharisee, teachers are in their public discourses while sinners are sinking into damnation in multitudes. I shall conclude the discourse with the words of the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 11:14-15), and no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light: Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works Although a great admirer of Tennent, author, Archibald Alexander calls Tennent’s sermon one of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned. Needless to say the church and even supporters of Tennent were shocked by his harsh condemnation of pastor’s in his
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