In the middle of the 18th century in America, a crisis of faith arose.
Traditional belief about the destiny of Christians in the New World had been tested and proved false. Instead of spreading a pure and just society across North America which the whole world would see and hold in great esteem, everything was chaos, controversy and opposition!
Puritans, Congregationalists, Baptist, Catholics hated each other even though Christ was the center of their very worship!!
The source of this conflict and crisis was not merely variance in interpretation of God's will for man. The astonishing progress of the Western World in technology, manufacturing, medicine and Science challenged man's place in nature and popped the bubble of religous mythology.
The world was changing and True Believers had to cope or go insane!
The task at hand was either:
1.Retreat into fundamentalist refusal to accept modernity, change and Enlightenment
or
2.Reshape one's interpretations of the old religious world view to accomodate Science and Modernity and....(gulp!) ease into Enlightenment.
A clash of civilizations (psychological and emotional) was at hand.
Into this delicate balance of mental disturbance came what is now known as THE GREAT AWAKENING!
We have all seen those revival tent meetings with bible pounding evangelists ranting and working up the crowds---right?
The object of the sermon is to create an over-wrought frenzy of feeling that will reach a fevered pitch leading to the Preacher's call for action!
This is how the Great Awakening began.
It had an amazing effect on the population of the British North American colonists in the mid 1700's.
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards ripped apart the fence-sitting, back-sliding former church goers and lukewarm
believers and plunged a white-hot dagger of remorse and anxiety deep into their hearts.
The listeners became hysterical as wild animals plunging into bouts of ecstacy and depression, tears and laughter which sometimes led to suicide.
Not everybody embraced these antics!
Mainstream churches feared schism and backlash and began speaking out against the extravagant showmanship and excesses of the tent preachers.
Others embraced the enthusiasm of spiritual revival and encouraged awakening to new christian commitment.
These naturally opposed factions were respectively called OLD LIGHT and NEW LIGHT believers.
These phrases (Old Light/New Light) began to enter common parlance as referencing former ideas which, while true at the time, were now expired and no longer optimum for growth and understanding....in contrast to....new ideas much closer to absolute truth and indicative of forward-thinking believers willing to step outside the mainstream.
By the time Adventists split from mainstream churches pursuing definite dates for Christ's return, Old Light and New Light, could be used to distinguish and divide off believers in any suddenly new concept arising for prophetic purposes.
You don't believe Christ will return in 1884? You must be Old Light!
You accept that Christ will destroy the wicked in 1914? You have received New Light!
These phrases (Old Light/New Light) became polemical terms used pejoratively.
Sects and cults always had newly discovered thoughts and interpretations likely to send mainstream believers into skepticism. The cultist would decry the mainstream believer as "Old Light" and their new beliefs as "New Light".
Thus, this passed into the Watchtower through history from the Great Awakening through Adventism and plopped into a modern explanation of how the Watchtower can pull ridiculous ideas out of its collective ass like a magician pulls a rabbit from a tophat!
We've got NEW LIGHT! (Implying that everybody else is groping about in the darkness of Old Light).
So, there you have it, kiddies; the history of the phrase: New Light.
(Brief Wiki article:)
The terms were first used during the First Great Awakening, which spread through the British North American colonies in the middle of the 18th century. In A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), Jonathan Edwards, a leader in the Awakening, describes his congregants vivid experiences with grace as causing a "new light" in their perspective on sin and atonement. [ 1 ] Old Lights and New Lights generally referred to Congregationalists and Baptists in New England who took different positions on the Awakening than the traditional branches of their denominations. New Lights embraced the revivals that spread through the colonies, while Old Lights, suspicious of the revivals (and their seeming threat to authority), wanted to suppress them. Historian Richard Bushman credits the division between Old Lights and New Lights for the creation of political factionalism in Connecticut in the mid-eighteenth century. [ 2 ] Often "many "new light" Congregationalists who had been converted under the preaching of George Whitefield left that connection to become "new light" Baptists when they found no evidence of infant baptism in the apostolic church. When told of this development, Whitefield famously quipped that he was glad to hear about the fervent faith of his followers but regretted that "so many of his chickens had become ducks." [ 3 ] The Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania would experience a division during the Great Awakening, with those elements of the denomination embracing the revivals called "New Sides" and those opposed to the revivals called "Old Sides." [ 4 ]
The terms were also used during the Second Great Awakening in America, in the early 19th century. New Lights were distinctive from the Old Lights in that they were more evangelical and, as historian Patricia Bonomi describes, carried "ferocity peculiar to zealots...with extravagant doctinal and moral enormities." [ 5 ]
The terms were also used in 1833, with "Old Lights" referring to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America
