Decisional Regeneration

Know your church history. Know the old stuff and the more recent. Knowing the old stuff from the First Century puts the gospel and epistles in context and helps to correct some things we hold onto that are mere traditions. Knowing medieval and Reformation history will help to understand what can happen to the faith if it is not grounded upon the Word. Understanding 18th and 19th Century history will help to see how we have come to where we are in much of North American Christianity, following the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the rise of Cartesian philosophy. 

This brief bit from Mark Keilar (found on Lane Chaplin's YouTube channel) gives a hint as to how Finneyism made the end of the Second Great Revival into a damp squib, and corrupted the methods of gospel presentation down to the present day.