Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 02:4 (Fall 1993)
Article: Spiritual Drunkenness
Author: Richard Owen Roberts

RAR 2:4 (Fall 1993) p. 69

Spiritual Drunkenness

Richard Owen Roberts

Some may wonder, “Who is this who writes on the prophecy of Jeremiah and seeks to focus attention on the peculiar subject of spiritual drunkenness?”

For reasons that I cannot explain, I became concerned about revival when I was a boy of about twelve. I determined then to read everything I could find on the subject. I have been pursuing that commitment ever since. However, as the years passed, I gradually realized that my interest in revival had moved from my heart to my head. There was a certain sense in which I was almost a walking encyclopedia on the subject, but had someone invited me to a serious prayer meeting for revival, I would probably have made some excuse for not attending. Then, by the grace of God, after some years of treating revival academically, God brought me to a point of real smashing in my own experience—a deep, deep breaking—and what had risen to my head went back to my heart. I now write, not so much of what I have learned academically, but rather out of my heart and, I believe, out of the heart of God also.

The Proposition

Before looking at Jeremiah thirteen, let me set before you the proposition: When God is angry with His people because of their unforsaken sin, He may force them into a state of spiritual drunkenness. Is this a doctrine with which you are familiar? You may consider what I am about to say something of a novelty. It is strange truth, isn’t it? In my travels as an itinerant preacher, the most common objection offered to what I say is, “We never heard that before.” In the event that your mind operates that way, let me recommend to you a sermon on this theme by a father of this nation, Thomas Shepard, titled, “Wine for Gospel Wantons,” preached in Boston in 1645. I will not write anything in this article that will be out of harmony with what Shepard and other founders of this nation believed, taught, preached,

RAR 2:4 (Fall 1993) p. 70

and practiced.

But again, before looking at Jeremiah, let me emphasize the righteous judgments of God. Tragically, we have forgotten some important things that our fathers knew well. Strangely, when we use the term judgment we usually think of something in the future, but it was not so earlier. One of the most magnificent reservoirs of great American theology is found in the Sprague Collection in the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University. William B. Sprague, its collector, pastored for many years in Albany, New York. He gathered a vast array of American sermon material in pamphlet form. In his collection are hundreds of fast day and solemn assembly sermons. Over a long period of American history there was at least one officially called day ...