It's common to look back on past eras and idealize those earlier times, but it's not always accurate.

Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution, there was a moral slump.

This is Dr. J. Edwin Orr, a historian of revival.

Drunkenness was epidemic.

Out of a population of 5 million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards.

They were burying 15,000 of them each year.

Profanity was of the most shocking kind.

For the first time in the history of the American settlement,

women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault.

Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Walgamoo, author of Adorned, for July 19, 2018.

Well, yesterday as part of our series on the True Woman Manifesto, we talked about the importance of revival.

And today I want to part just a little bit longer on that topic by letting you hear a classic message from the late Dr. J. Edwin Orr.

I actually had the privilege of knowing Dr. Orr personally. He was a leading historian on the subject of revival, and I had the joy of hearing this message for the first time,

oh, decades ago. I was recorded back in the 70s, and I've listened to it many, many times over the

years and always found it to be so challenging

and encouraging as well. As we hear how God has worked and moved in the past, it inspires hope

in our hearts that God could move again in a great spiritual awakening in our day.

Now again, this message was recorded many years ago, so the sound

quality isn't great, but I think the message is timeless and so important today.

Now, sometimes when we look around at this nation and we see the great moral decline,

and we see even huge issues within our churches and evangelicalism as a whole, we can get kind of despairing

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