Asahel Nettleton

Sounds like a pen name someone on this blog would have right? Asahel Nettleton. In fact, if I could go back maybe I would make that my name, but that would be similar to a quarterback changing his name to Johnny Unitas. Why Johnny Unitas? Because in another generation or so no one will remember who he was except the true, diehard football fans. Right now most people in my generation are starting to forget him. We probably remember Broadway Joe Namath, but not Johnny Unitas. The same of Asahel Nettleton, a contemporary of.. well, I'd rather say it this way: Charles Finney was a contemporary of Asahel Nettleton. You've almost undoubtedly heard of Finney, but unless you are the diehard church history or evangelism fan you probably haven't heard of Nettleton. I ran across a 14 paqe article on him on the Resurgence website by James Ehrhard. All the quotes here will be taken from that article. It was great reading and really informative.
Here's the rundown: Basically, Nettleton led a lot of revivals along the east coast around the same time as Finney. Nettleton however was basically reformed in his doctrine, he preached more along the lines of Edwards and Whitfield, while Finney was pretty much heretical in a lot of his ministry. What?! The much revered Finney? Yeah, shocking huh. But true. By most accounts Nettleton led around 30,000 people to the Lord in basically a tri-state area (comparable to about 600,000 today based on percent population differences) and these people had an incredibly low 'backsliding' rate. There was a genunine change brought about from the Spirit's work through his preaching and many many years later the people who had been saved were still pursuing the Lord.

"Nettleton's converts were surprisingly solid. For example, of the eighty-four converts in an 1818 revival at Rocky Hill, Connecticut, all eighty-four had remained faithful, according to their pastor's report twenty-six years later. Similarly, only three spurious conversions out of eighty-two professions of faith were noted in another pastor's report on a revival in Ashford, Connecticut."

In comparison, with regards to Finney
"B. B. Warfield also tells of the testimony of Asa Mahan, Finney's closest friend and long-time coworker:
No more powerful testimony is borne ... than that of Asa Mahan, who tells us—to put it briefly—that everyone who was concerned in these revivals suffered a sad subsequent lapse: the people were left like a dead coal which could not be reignited.... 12 Nettleton's ministry was decidedly different than that of Finney, not only with regard to conversions, but also with regard to the lasting impact upon the communities which he visited. One contemporary pastor, Bennett Tyler, noted the differences between the revivals of Finney and Nettleton:
These revivals were not temporary excitements, which like a tornado, sweep through a community, and leave desolutions behind them; but they were like showers of rain, which refresh the dry and thirsty earth, and cause it to bring forth "herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed." These fruits were permanent. By them the churches were not only enlarged, but beautiful and strengthened; and a benign influence was exerted upon the community around."

I would encourage you to check out the rest of the article found at the Resurgence link above. Sometimes history remembers the wrong people for the wrong reasons in the wrong light. This is one of those instances. Instead of remembering the man who said,
"regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate choice, intention, preference.... when mankind becomes truly religious, they are not enabled to put forth exertions which they were unable before to put forth. They only exert powers which they had before, in a different way, and use them for the glory of God."

Perhaps we would be better served to remember the man who said,
"All self-righteousness failed me; and, having no confidence in God, I was left in deep despondency.... After awhile, a surprising tremor seized all my limbs, and death appeared to have taken hold upon me. Eternity—the word Eternity—sounded louder than any voice I ever heard; and every moment of time seemed more valuable than all the wealth of the world. Not long after this, an unusual calmness pervaded my soul, which I thought little of at first, except that I was freed from my awful convictions...The character of God, and the doctrines of the Bible, which I could not meditate upon before without hatred, especially those of election and free grace, now appear delightful, and the only means by which, through grace, dead sinners can be made the living sons of God."

Signing out,
EP