Jonathan Edwards, ""Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival."
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A great deal of noise and tumult, confusion and uproar, and darkness mixed with light, and evil with good, is always to be expected in the beginning of something very extraordinary, and very glorious in the state of things in human society, or the church of God.
As after nature has long been shut up in a cold dead state, in time of winter, when the sun returns in the spring, there is, together with the increase of the light and heat of the sun, very dirty and tempestuous weather, before all is settled calm and serene, and all nature rejoices in its bloom and beauty.
It is in the new creation as it was in the old: the Spirit of God first moved upon the face of the waters, which was an occasion of great uproar and tumult, and things were gradually brought to a settled state, till at length all stood forth in that beautiful, peaceful order, when the heavens and the earth were finished, and God saw everything that he had made; "and behold, it was very good" [cf. Genesis 1].
When God is about to bring to pass something great and glorious in the world, nature is in a ferment and struggle, and the world as it were in travail.
As when God was about to introduce the Messiah into the world, and that new and glorious dispensation that he set up, he shook the heavens and the earth, and shook all nations [Haggai 2:6–7].
There is nothing that the church of God is in Scripture more frequently represented by than vegetables; as a tree, a vine, corn, etc., which gradually bring forth their fruit, and are first green before they are ripe.
A great revival of religion is expressly compared to this gradual production of vegetables, Isaiah 61:11, "As the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations."
The church is in a special manner compared to a palm tree, Canticles 7:7–8; Exodus 15:27; 1 Kings 6:29; Psalms 92:12.
Of which tree this peculiar thing is observed, that the fruit of it, though it be very sweet and good when it is ripe, yet before it has had time to ripen, has a mixture of poison.
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