CHARLES FINNEY BIOGRAPHY, MINISTRY, NET WORTH, & LESSONS FROM HIS LIFE

CHARLES FINNEY BIOGRAPHY, MINISTRY, NET WORTH, & LESSONS FROM HIS LIFE

CHARLES FINNEY

Charles Grandison Finney was born on the 29th of August 1792 and went to be with the Lord on the 16th of August, 1875. He was an American Presbyterian minister and head of the Second Great Awakening in the US. Finney was called the “Father of Old Revivalism”.

He was broadly known as an exuberant revivalist from 1825 to 1835 in the Burnedover District in Upstate New York and Manhattan. He is an opposition of Old School Presbyterian theology, a champion of Christian perfectionism, and a Christian author.

Alongside other evangelical leaders, Finney’s religious views led him to advance social reforms, such as activist and gender equality and African Americans.

From the year 1835, he taught at Oberlin College of Ohio which accepted students without support for gender or race. Charles served as the second president of the college from 1851 to 1865.

EARLY LIFE AND BACKGROUND

He was born in Warren Connecticut as the youngest of nine children. He never went to college, Charles Finney is the son of a farmer at the upstate frontier of Jefferson County, NY. He attended the Baptist church in Henderson, NY with his family. He read the law as a mentee under the tutelage of Benjamin Wright. He joined the congregation of George Washington Gale in Adams, New York, and became the director of the choir in the church. He stopped practicing as a legal practitioner to preach the gospel after his substantial conversion and baptism in the Holy Ghost.

Finney began his studies at the age of 29 in the year 1821 under George Washington Gale to become a certified minister in the Presbyterian Church. After his teacher, Gale moved to a farm in Western, Oneida County, NY, Finney went with him and worked on his teacher’s farm in exchange for instruction, an antecedent of Gale’s Oneida Institute.

He became the professor of systematic theology at the newly formed Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Oberlin, Ohio in 1835.

REVIVALS

Charles Finney was a revivalist between the years 1925 to 1835 in Jefferson County and for a few years in Manhattan. He started a revival in Rochester, New York in 1830-1831 and it inspired many other revivals of the Second Great Awakening.

Download Also: Charles Finney Book PDF

BOOKS BY HIM

He has written a few books and some of which include:

• Calling Down Fire – Charles Finney
• Charles G. Finney An Autobiography – Charles Finney
• Lectures On Systematic Theology – Charles Finney
• Lectures To Professing Christians – Charles Finney
• Life Of Charles G. Finney – A. M Hills
• Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney – Charles Finney
• Sermons On Gospel Themes – Charles G. Finney
• Sermons On Important Subjects – Charles Finney
• The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings Of Freemasonry – Charles Finney
• The Way Of Salvation – Charles Finney

RELATIONSHIP & MARITAL STATUS

He was married three times and was a widower twice. When he was in Jefferson County, he married Root Andrews between the year 1807-1847. The couple had six children and in 1847, Lydia went to be with the Lord.

A year after, he married Elizabeth Ford Atkinson (1799-1863) in Ohio. In the year 1865, he married Rebecca Allen Rayl (1824-1907) in Ohio. He enjoyed revival works with each of his three wives.

LESSONS FROM HIS LIFE

His life is full of epistles to learn from. Just as a leading pastor in New York said of the effect his meetings had “The whole community was stirred. Religion was the topic of conversation in the house, in the shop, in the office, and on the street. The only theater in the city was converted into a livery stable; the only circus into a soap and candle factory. Grog shops were closed; the Sabbath was honored; the sanctuaries were thronged with happy worshippers; a new impulse was given to every philanthropic enterprise; the fountains of benevolence were opened, and men lived to good.” Shalom!