This Log Cabin Led to the “Great Awakening”—Which Led to the American Revolution

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or scoring the largest deal of your career. Nissan is continuously evolving and changing the game through electric vehicle engineering because the electricity of their cars not only moves engines, it also moves the emotions of those who drive them. To learn more about Nissan's electric vehicle lineup, visit www.NissanUSA.com. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app. William Tennant helped father the Great Awakening in the United Colonies, which produced the spiritual strength of faith to win our liberty during the Revolution. Here to tell this story is Robert Morgan, who is the author of 100 Bible verses that made America, defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith.

Let's take a listen. Reverend William Tennant Sr. was born in Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh, but he was ordained into the Church of Ireland. When he migrated to the 13 colonies in 1716, he was seeking freedom of religion, and he settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia, and there he served as a pastor.

But that's not all he did. He and his wife, Catherine, took in students who wanted to prepare for the ministry. These young men became part of the Tennant home, and William instructed them in matters of theology and ministry. In 1727, Tennant purchased 100 acres of land and built a log cabin to serve as a school for the training of these pastoral students. The log cabin was across the street from his house, and the students, which included his four sons, studied there.

It was a humble school, a literal log cabin academy that lasted less than 20 years and never had more than one part-time teacher and only had about 20 young men who studied there. And yet the impact of that humble seminary on American history is impossible to gauge. All four of his sons became ministers who helped spur on the Great Awakening, and so did William Tennant's other students. They all excelled in preaching the gospel. One historian said, William Tennant had the rare gift of attracting to him youth and worth and genius, imbuing them with his healthy spirit and sending them forth sound in the faith, blameless in life, burning with zeal, and he was unsurpassed in training them to be instructive, impressive, and successful preachers.

This rough building became the first Presbyterian seminary in America, and the log cabin became a bonfire for the Great Awakening. Many of Tennant's students became preachers whose sermons helped spread the great religious revival that swept over the colonies in the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence. Tennants taught them the importance of preaching personal conversion to Christ. He said that people must be born again to go to heaven, and that's the message that touched the heart of the colonies. On November 22, 1739, the celebrated evangelist George Whitfield visited the school, and this is what he recorded in his journal.

Set out for where old Mr. Tennant lives and keeps an academy. We came thither about 12 and found about 3,000 people gathered together in the meeting house yard, and Mr. Tennant preaching to them because we were past the appointed time. When I came up, he soon stopped and sang a psalm, and then I began to speak as the Lord gave me utterance. At first, the people seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my discourse, the power of the Lord Jesus came upon me, and I felt such a struggling within myself for the people as I scarce ever felt before.

The years began to be melted down immediately. After our exercises were over, we went to old Mr. Tennant who entertained us like one of the ancient patriarchs. His wife seemed to me like Elizabeth, and he like Zacharias. We had sweet communion with each other and spent the evening in concerting measures for promoting the Lord's kingdom.

And Whitfield went on to describe Tennant's log cabin like this. The place where in the young man's study now is a log cabin about 20 feet long and near as many broad, and to me it seemed to remember the school of the old prophets for their habitations were primitive. From this despised place, seven or eight worthy ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth.

More are almost ready to be sent forth, and the foundation is now laying for the instruction for many others. The devil will certainly rage against them, but the work I am persuaded is of God and will not come to naught. The carnal ministers opposed them strongly as persons who would turn the world upside down. Well, Tennant's handful of graduates, they were called the log cabin men, did turn the colonies upside down in becoming evangelists of the Great Awakening. One writer said, It is doubtful whether ever before or since then lads were collected in the same school who were afterward to accomplish so much good in their own day, and to send down such streams of blessings to unborn generations. It is absolutely startling to glance at the list of the eminent ministers, great preachers, the greatest in the early annals of our church, who obtained their training for the ministry in this humble institution.

They went forth preaching the gospel in every quarter, bringing thousands of souls to Christ, and building up the churches in many regions, establishing schools and academies, and starting streams of godly influences that flowed over the whole land, the currents of which have not subsided even to this present day. Tennant died on May 6, 1746 at the age of 73, but his graduates and supporters joined together to establish a more permanent training school for Presbyterian ministers in the colonies. It was called the College of New Jersey, today known as Princeton University. Reverend Douglas K. Turner wrote, The germ of this distinguishing seat of learning, Princeton, is to be found in Mr. Tennant's seminary. And today, when we believe everything must be large and spectacular, it's good to remember that America was shaped in large part by a small school, run by a single man whose zeal for Christ moved him to mentor young men of promise.

He is the man whom we today can rightly call the Prince of Princeton. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Robert Morgan, who's the author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, the story of William Tennant, the Prince of Princeton, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

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