Psa. 51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Unconverted preachers were a huge problem at the time of the Great Awakening. It took years of college to be qualified or recognized as a minister in those days. Sadly, many of the ministers were just educated heathen. Obviously, it takes more than education or information for true conversion to take place, a man’s soul has to be awakened to the grace of God. When George Whitefield began to address the problem of unconverted ministers it released a firestorm that caused great division in the Great Awakening. Many awakened ministers found themselves in the position of agreeing with Whitefield yet defending the unconverted preachers; it got quite messy. Thankfully, the Lord began to raise up a new generation of born again pastors and evangelists. Here is a short glimpse of one of their stories as told by Thomas Kidd.
“Daniel Rogers had grown up in a minister’s family in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and he was under consideration for a ministerial position at Boston’s New North Church when Whitefield arrived. A 1725 Harvard graduate, Rogers knew Christian doctrine and ethics, but had never experienced the new birth. Perhaps Whitefield could help him break through, he thought, and so he joined the evangelist’s traveling cohort. The day before Nathan Cole heard Whitefield preach, Rogers wrote: “I am heart sick of the “kingdom of sin and Satan, and want the Kingdom of God within me in righteousness peace etc. I hunger, I thirst. Lord Jesus, let me be filled, Lord help me to wait upon thee, to believe in thee, to hope in, rely upon thy promise. I find myself a lost damned creature without thee . . . I hunger I thirst after an experimental knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Rogers received such “experimental knowledge” as they approached New York City. “It pleased God of his free and sovereign grace to come into my poor soul with power and so to fill me with peace,” Rogers wrote, “yea with such joy in the Holy Ghost as I never experienced before. I could not forbear smiling nay laughing for joy and gladness of heart.”
Today, we have a similar problem with unconverted “Christians”. Many have been raised in church, prayed “the prayer”, but have little or no knowledge of God Himself. What is the solution? It’s the same one Jesus offered when He spoke to the unconverted minister or church attender; “YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN”.