George Whitefield FBC – Young Biographers Series 2 June 2013

Home , George Whitefield, Sarah Edwards (mystic)

THE HISTORIC BACKDROP

The Monarchy of King Charles I was deposed in1649. Oliver Cromwell ruled for a short while with military successes in Scotland and Ireland. After that, Charles II was restored to the throne and 8 Proprietors who helped him and they were given the Carolinas. Charles brother, The Duke of York was given New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1665. When Charles II died, his brother James II took over. Like Charles II, James II was a Catholic, and hated the Colonies because of their independence. James II was very heavy handed and took all of New England and put them into one colony. He was also very heavy handed in England and tried to dissolve the Parliament. Parliament got rid of James and brought in William III and Mary II. Mary was protestant and, one of the conditions to them becoming co-regants was that they accepted the Bill of Rights in 1689 giving Parliament and the People rights over the monarchy. This is the “Glorious Revolution” and resulted in some of the Colonies getting rid of the colonies like Edmond Andros in 1689. This was followed by fifty years and more of imperial skirmishes between Britain and France and the American colonists saw this as a great struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism.

By the 1720s and 30s because of the conditions of war, because of ongoing conflict with Native Americans, because of feelings of fear about theological innovation and what they would call liberalism at the time they had a strong sense that their culture was really becoming decayed and at risk of becoming really ungodly. And this is the context in which pastors began to call on lay people to pray for revival, to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for revival. Starting in the mid-1730s they get answers to their prayer.

Like the return to churches after 9/11, the Great Awakening is born out of a spirit of a desperate sense of cultural crisis.

1714 Born in Gloucester, England, December 16 – youngest of 6 boys

1716 Father, Thomas; an inkeeper, dies.

1718 Blackbeard the Pirate beheaded

1722 Mother, Elizabeth, marries Capel Longden, an ironmonger, who seizes control of the family tavern (The Bell Inn).

1726 George enrolls at St. Mary de Crypt grammar school, where he enjoys reading plays and acting. Later drops out to help his mother with the inn.

1727 George II becomes king of England

1728 George’s mother leaves her husband. Family conflicts cause George to leave the Bell Inn and cease “drawing wine for drunkards.”

1729 Ben Franklin begins Pennsylvania Gazette

1730 Returns to his studies at St. Mary’s. On Christmas, receives the Lord’s Supper for the first time and determines to be more watchful over his thoughts, words, and actions.

1732 Enrolls at Pembroke College, Oxford University. Pays expenses by working as a servitor (errand boy for other students). Begins praying three times a day and fasting weekly.

1733 Georgia, last of 13 colonies, settled

1733 Invited to breakfast by Charles Wesley and introduced to the Holy Club’s 10 or 11 earnest members. Like his Holy Club friends, seeks salvation through severe discipline and good works, which causes a breakdown of his health from which he never fully recovers.

1735 Borrows from Wesley The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal, which “showed me that I must be born again, or be damned!” Following years of penitence, Whitefield becomes first of the Oxford methodists to experience “a full assurance of faith broke in upon my disconsolate soul!” Begins evangelizing, with converts organized into a society.

1735 Leads the Holy Club (the Wesleys had become missionaries to Georgia). Completes his degree, is ordained a deacon in the Church of England, and preaches his first sermon. Returns to Oxford to pursue graduate studies, but then leaves to substitute preach for various friends. Decides to become a missionary to Georgia.

CONVERSION, CONVICTION & OPPOSITION

Conversion

I must bear testimony to my old friend Mr. Charles Wesley, he put a book into my hands, called, The Life of God and the soul of man, whereby God showed me, that I must be born again, or be damned. I know the place: it may be superstitious, perhaps, but whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to that place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me, and gave me the new birth. Scougal says, a man may go to church, say his prayers, receive the sacrament, and yet, my brethren, not be a Christian. How did my heart rise, how did my heart shutter, like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account-books, lest he should find himself a bankrupt: yet shall I burn that book, shall I throw it down, shall I put it by, or shall I search into it? I did, and, holding the book in my hand, thus addressed the God of heaven and earth: Lord, if I am not a Christian, if I am not a real one, for Jesus Christ’s sake, show me what Christianity is, that I may not be damned at last. I read a little further, and the cheat was discovered; oh, says the author, they that know anything of religion know it is a vital union with the son of God, Christ formed in the heart; oh what a way of divine life did break in upon my poor soul. . . . Oh! With what joy—Joy unspeakable—even joy that was full of, and big with glory, was my soul filled.

George Whitefield – Sermon 1779

From the time of his conversion in 1735, Whitefield had been profoundly conscious of man's entire depravity, his need of the new birth, and the fact that God can save and God alone. Describing an experience which occurred a few weeks after his conversion, he wrote: "About this time God was pleased to enlighten my soul, and bring me into the knowledge of His free grace . . ." Strengthened by his reading of the Scriptures, the Reformers and the Puritans, Whitefield gradually grasped the great related chain of truths revealed in the New Testament—the Father's electing love, Christ's substitutionary death on behalf of those whom the Father had given Him, and the Spirit's infallible work in bringing to salvation those for whom it was appointed. These doctrines of "free grace" were the essential theology of his ministry from the very first and consequently the theology of the movement which began under his preaching in 1737.

Conviction

Righteousness Imputed & Preeminent Justification

“After these inward conflicts, were you ever enabled to reach out the arm of faith, and embrace the blessed Jesus in your souls, so that you could say, ‘my beloved is mine, and I am his?’ If so, fear not, whoever you are. Hail, all hail, you happy souls! The Lord, the Lord Christ, the everlasting God, is your righteousness. Christ has justified you, who is he that condemneth you? Christ has died for you, nay rather is risen again, and ever liveth to make intercession for you. Being now justified by his grace, you have peace with God, and shall, ere long, be with Jesus in glory, reaping everlasting and unspeakable fruits both in body and soul. For there is no condemnation to those that are really in Christ Jesus. Whether Paul or Apollos, or life or death, all is yours if you are Christ’s, for Christ is God’s. My brethren, my heart is enlarged towards you! O think of the love of Christ in dying for you! Talk of, O talk of, and recommend the righteousness of Christ, when you lie down, and when you rise up, at your going out and coming in! Think of the greatness of the gift, as well as the giver!

George Whitefield – Sermon on Jeremiah 23:6 - The Lord Our Righteousness

He never elevated justification to the exclusion of regeneration and sanctification. In fact, he was explicit in his effort to keep them in balance:

We must not put asunder what God has joined together; we must keep the medium between the two extremes; not insist so much on the one hand upon Christ without, as to exclude Christ within, as evidence of our being his, and as a preparation for future happiness; nor on the other hand, so depend on inherent righteousness or holiness wrought in us, as to exclude the righteousness of Jesus Christ without us.

George Whitefield – Sermon on Jeremiah 23:6 - The Lord Our Righteousness

Sanctification – The Imputation Of Christ’s Obedience / Good Works

Whitefield would press home the particularities of this doctrine, especially the imputation of Christ’s obedience.

I fear they understand justification in that low sense, which I understood it in a few years ago, as implying no more than remission of sins; but it not only signifies remission of sins past, but also a federal right to all good things to come. As the obedience of Christ is imputed to believers so his perseverance in that obedience is to be imputed to them also.

Never did greater or more absurdities flow from the denying any doctrine, than will flow form denying the doctrine of Christ’s imputed righteousness. The world says, because we preach faith we deny good works; this is the usual objection against the doctrine of imputed righteousness. But it is a slander, an impudent slander.

George Whitefield - Michael A. G. Haykin, editor, The Revived Puritan: The Spirituality of George Whitefield

Benjamin Franklin, who enjoyed one of the warmest friendship’s Whitefield ever had, in spite of their huge religious differences, said, “Whitefield’s integrity, disinterestedness and indefatigable zeal in prosecuting every good work, I have never seen equaled, I shall never see excelled.”

Whitefield’s impassioned belief in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness did not hinder the practical pursuit of justice and love, it empowered it. This connection between doctrine and practical duties of love was one of the secrets of Whitefield’s power. The masses believed, and believed rightly, that he practiced what he preached. The new birth and justification by faith made a person good.

Election & Perseverance

Whitefield the link between election and perseverance. God had chosen him unconditionally, and God would therefore keep him invincibly.

Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election, and of the saints’ final perseverance, to those who are truly sealed by the Spirit of promise! I am persuaded, till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself; but when convinced of these, and assured of the application of them to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed, not in himself but in the Son of God, who died and gave himself for him. Love, not fear, constrains him to obedience.

George Whitefield - Michael A. G. Haykin, editor, The Revived Puritan: The Spirituality of George Whitefield

Pure & Precise Proclamation

The preaching of the 18th-century awakening was doctrinally specific and not vague. You are struck with how amazingly doctrinal Whitefield is in his preaching.

What Whitefield saw within months after his conversion was the preciousness and power of the “doctrines of grace.” What was real for him was classical evangelical Calvinism. “From first to last,” Stout says, “he was a Calvinist who believed that God chose him for salvation and not the reverse.” J. I. Packer observes that “Whitefield was entirely free of doctrinal novelties.”

His guide as he read the Bible in those formative days was not John Calvin but Matthew Henry. “I embrace the Calvinistic scheme,” he said, “not because Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me.” In fact, he wrote to John Wesley in 1740, “I never read anything that Calvin wrote.”

He believed these biblical truths—which he sometimes called “the doctrines of the Reformation”—did the most to “debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus. . . . All others leave free will in man, and make him, in part at least, a Savior to himself.” And not only did that diminish the work of the Savior; it made our position in Christ insecure.

Compelling Invitation

He said to John Wesley, “I must preach the Gospel of Christ, and this I cannot now do without speaking of election.” In his sermon based on 1 Corinthians 1:30 called “Christ the Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption,”

For my part I cannot see how true humbleness of mind can be attained without a knowledge of [the doctrine of election]; and though I will not say, that every one who denies election is a bad man, yet I will say, with that sweet singer, Mr. Trail, it is a very bad sign: such a one, whoever he be, I think cannot truly know himself; for, if we deny election, we must, partly at least, glory in ourselves; but our redemption is so ordered, that no flesh should glory in the Divine presence; and hence it is, that the pride of man opposes this doctrine, because, according to this doctrine, and no other, “he that glories must glory only in the Lord.” But what shall I say? Election is a mystery that shines with such resplendent brightness, that, to make use of the words of one who has drunk deeply of electing love, it dazzles the weak eyes even of some of God’s children; however, though they know it not, all the blessing they receive, all the privileges they do or will enjoy, through Jesus Christ, flow from the everlasting love of God the Father.

George Whitefield – Sermon on 1 Cor 1: 30 – Christ The Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption

“Though I hold particular election, yet I offer Jesus freely to every individual soul.”

George Whitefield – Letter to John Wesley – 1741

Indeed Whitefield does not hide his understanding of definite atonement or irresistible grace as he pleads with men to come to Christ. In a sermon on John 10:27–28 called “The Good Shepherd,” he speaks clearly of the particular sense in which Christ died for his own,

If you belong to Jesus Christ, he is speaking of you; for says he, “I know my sheep”. “I know them”; what does that mean? Why, he knows their number, he knows their names, he knows every one for whom he died; and if there were to be one missing for whom Christ died, God the Father would send him down again from heaven to fetch him. O come, come, see what it is to have eternal life; do not refuse it; haste, sinner, haste away: may the great, the good Shepherd, draw your souls. Oh! If you never heard his voice before, God grant you may hear it now. O come! Come! Come to the Lord Jesus Christ; to him I leave you. Amen.

George Whitefield – Sermon on John 10: 27 – 28 – The Good Shepherd

1737 While voyage is delayed, his preaching electrifies England; thousands pack churches, publishes six sermons, and opponents publish against him.

Opposition

1738 – John Wesley is converted

1739 Ordained an Anglican priest but finds many pulpits are now closed to him. Begins preaching outdoors, and tens of thousands hear of Christ in the fields. Nobility (countess of Huntingdon) drawn to Whitefield.

Two years before he died at the age of 55, he wrote in a letter, “I love the open bracing air.” And the following year, he said, “It is good to go into the highways and hedges. Field-preaching, field-preaching forever!”5 Day after day all his life, he went everywhere preaching, preaching, preaching.

1739 - In August, sails for America and preaches to throngs in New York and Philadelphia. Meets Ben Franklin who attended a revival meeting in Philadelphia and was greatly impressed with Whitefield

THREE DISTINCT FEATURES

Power

In 1739 arriv’d among us from England the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant Preacher. He was at first permitted to preach in some of our Churches; but the Clergy taking a Dislike to him, soon refus’d him their Pulpits and he was oblig’d to preach in the Fields. The Multitudes of all Sects and Denominations that attended his Sermons were enormous and it was a matter of Speculation to me who was one of the Number, to observe the extraordinary Influence of his Oratory on his Hearers, and how much they admir’d and respected him, notwithstanding his common Abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half Beasts and half Devils.

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text

Franklin admired Whitefield as a fellow intellectual but thought Whitefield's plan to run an orphanage in Georgia would lose money. He published several of Whitefield's tracts and was impressed by Whitefield's ability to preach and speak with clarity and enthusiasm to crowds.

It was wonderful to see the Change soon made in the Manners [behavior] of our Inhabitants; from being thoughtless or indifferent about Religion, it seem’d as if all the World were growing Religious; so that one could not walk thro’ the Town in an Evening without Hearing Psalms sung in different Families of every Street.

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text

Franklin had previously dismissed, as an exaggeration, reports of Whitefield preaching to crowds of the order of tens of thousands in England. When listening to Whitefield preaching from the Philadelphia court house, Franklin walked away towards his shop in Market Street until he could no longer hear Whitefield distinctly. He then estimated his distance from Whitefield and calculated the area of a semicircle centred on Whitefield. Allowing two square feet per person he computed that Whitefield could be heard by over thirty thousand people in the open air.[9]

Speaking to Thousands

And keep in mind that most of these messages were spoken to gatherings of thousands of people—usually in difficulties of wind and competing noise. For example, in the Fall of 1740, for over a month he preached almost every day in New England to crowds up to 8,000 people. That was when the population of Boston, the largest city in the region, was not much larger than that.

He recounts that in Philadelphia that same year on Wednesday, April 6, he preached on Society Hill twice in the morning to about 6,000, and in the evening to near 8,000. On Thursday, he spoke to “upwards of ten thousand,” and it was reported at one of these events the words, “‘He opened His mouth and taught them saying,’ were distinctly heard at Gloucester point, a distance of two miles by water down the Delaware River.7 And there were times when the crowds reached 20,000 or more.” This meant that the physical exertion to project the voice to that many people for so long, in each sermon, for so many times every week, for thirty years, was Herculean.

Persistence

There are no references to vacations or days off. When he thought he needed recuperation he spoke of an ocean voyage to America. He crossed the Atlantic 13 times in his life—an odd number (not even) because he died and was buried here, not in England. The trips across the Atlantic took 8–10 weeks each. And even though he preached virtually every day on the ship, the pace was different, and he was able to read and write and rest.

But on land, the preaching pace was unremitting.

From his first outdoor sermon on February 17, 1739, at the age of 24 to the coalminers of Kingswood near Bristol, England, until his death 30 years later on September 30, 1770, in Newburyport, Massachusetts (where he is buried), his life was one of almost daily preaching. Sober estimates are that he spoke about 1,000 times every year for 30 years. That included at least 18,000 sermons and 12,000 talks and exhortations.1

The daily pace he kept for 30 years meant that many weeks he was speaking more than he was sleeping sometimes 40 to 60 hours a week SPEAKING not preparing since he had no time!

When he traveled it was done by horse, carriage or ship. He covered the length and breadth of England repeatedly. He regularly traveled and spoke throughout Wales. He visited Ireland twice, where he was almost killed by a mob from which he carried a scar on his forehead for the rest of his life. He traveled 14 times to Scotland and came to America 7 times, stopping once in Bermuda for 11 weeks—all for preaching, not resting. He preached in virtually every major town on the Eastern Seaboard of America.

J. C. Ryle summed up Whitefield’s life like this:

The facts of Whitefield’s history are almost entirely of one complexion. One year was just like another; and to attempt to follow him would be only going repeatedly over the same ground. From 1739 to the year of his death, 1770, a period of 31 years, his life was one uniform employment. He was eminently a man of one thing, and always about his Master’s business. From Sunday mornings to Saturday nights, from 1 January to 31 December, excepting when laid aside by illness, he was almost incessantly preaching Christ and going about the world entreating men to repent and come to Christ and be saved. No preacher has ever retained his hold on his hearers so entirely as he did for thirty-four years. His popularity never waned.

Select Sermons of George Whitefield With an Account of his Life by J. C. Ryle (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958 with Ryle’s Life written in 1873), pp. 21-22.

“His whole life may be said to have been consumed in the delivery of one continuous, or scarcely interrupted sermon. “

Estimates are that 80% of the entire population of the American colonies (this is before TV or radio) heard Whitefield at least once. By 1750 virtually every American loved and admired Whitefield and saw him as their champion.

Persuasiveness

Whitefield held people in thrall who did not believe a single doctrinal word that he said. Benjamin Franklin, who loved and admired Whitefield—and totally rejected his theology—said,

Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned, and well-placed, that without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse: a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music.

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text

Scottish Philospher David Hume thought it worth going 20 miles to hear him speak

David Garrick; an actor who envied Whitefield’s gifts, said, ‘He could move men to tears . . . in pronouncing the word Mesopotamia.’

And then she raised the question that has caused so much controversy around Whitefield in the last 15 years. She says,

A prejudiced person, I know, might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display; but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him. He is a very devout and godly man, and his only aim seems to be to reach and influence men the best way. He speaks from the heart all aglow with love, and pours out a torrent of eloquence which is almost irresistible.

Letter From Sarah Edwards To Her Brother – quoted in Michael A. G. Haykin, editor, The Revived Puritan: The Spirituality of George Whitefield (Dundas, Ontario: Joshua Press, 2000)

Detractors

Some contend Whitefield never left behind his love for acting and his skill as an actor which was prominent in his youth before his conversion. Thus he says the key to understanding him is “the amalgam of preaching and acting.” Whitefield was “the consummate actor.” “The fame he sought was . . . the actor’s command performance on center stage.” “Whitefield was not content simply to talk about the New Birth; he had to sell it with all the dramatic artifice of a huckster.” “Tears became Whitefield’s . . . psychological gesture.” “Whitefield became an actor-preacher, as opposed to a scholar-preacher.” Pursuing “spiritual fame” Craving “respect and power” Driven by “egotism” Putting on “performances” and “integrating religious discourse into the emerging language of consumption”?

He was an actor-preacher as opposed to a scholar-preacher. He was not a Jonathan Edwards. He preached totally without notes, and his traveling pulpit was more of a tiny stage than it was a traditional pulpit. Unlike most of the preachers in his day he was full of action when he preached.

I hardly ever knew him go through a sermon without weeping . . . sometimes he exceedingly wept, stamped loudly and passionately, and was frequently so overcome, that, for a few seconds, you would suspect he never could recover; and when he did, nature required some little time to compose himself.

Cornelius Winter – George Whitefield’s assistant toward the end of his life

Whitefield moved with “such vehemence upon his bodily frame” that his audience actually shared his exhaustion and “felt a momentary apprehension even for his life.”

John Gilles

Whitefield was taking the part of the characters in the drama of his sermon and pouring all his energy into making their part real. As when he takes the part of Adam in the Garden and says to God, “If thou hadst not given me this woman, I had not sinned against thee, so thou mayest thank thyself for my transgression.”

Why? Was he a fraud? If not, why was he so dramatic?

“I’ll tell you a story. The Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1675 was acquainted with Mr. Butterton the [actor]. One day the Archbishop . . . said to Butterton . . . ‘pray inform me Mr. Butterton, what is the reason you actors on stage can affect your congregations with speaking of things imaginary, as if they were real, while we in church speak of things real, which our congregations only receive as if they were imaginary?’ ‘Why my Lord,’ says Butterton, ‘the reason is very plain. We actors on stage speak of things imaginary, as if they were real and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.’”

“Therefore,” added Whitefield, ‘I will bawl, I will not be a velvet-mouthed preacher.”

Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 59.

There are three ways to speak. First, you can speak of an unreal, imaginary world as if it were real—that is what actors do in a play. Second, you can speak about a real world as if it were unreal—that is what half- hearted pastors do when they preach about glorious things in a way that says they are not as terrifying and wonderful as they are. Third is: You can speak about a real spiritual world as if it were wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real (because it is).

So if you ask Whitefield, “Why do you preach the way you do?” he would say: “I believe what I read in the Bible is real.” George Whitefield is not a repressed actor, driven by egotistical love of attention. Rather, he is consciously committed to out-acting the actors because he has seen what is ultimately real. He is acting with all his might not because it takes greater gimmicks and charades to convince people of the unreal, but because he had seen something more real than actors on the London stage had ever known. For him the truths of the gospel were so real—so wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real—that he could not and would not preach them as though they were unreal or merely interesting.

This was not a repressed acting. This was a released acting. It was not acting in the service of imagination. It was acting in the service of reality. This was not rendering the imaginary as real. It was rendering the super- realness of the real as sheer awesome, breathtaking real. This was not affectation. This was a passionate re- presentation—replication—of reality. This was not the mighty microscope using all its powers to make the small look impressively big. This was the desperately inadequate telescope bending every power to give some small sense of the majesty of what too many preachers saw as tiresome and unreal.

There is no disagreement that God uses natural vessels to display his supernatural reality. And there is no disagreement that George Whitefield was a stupendous natural vessel. He was driven, affable, eloquent, intelligent, empathetic, single-minded, steel-willed, venturesome, and had a voice like a trumpet that could be heard by thousands outdoors—and sometimes at a distance of two miles. All of these, I venture to say, would have been part of Whitefield’s natural gifting even if he had never been born again.

ORPHANAGE

1740 In Georgia, selects a site for Bethesda, his orphanage, and preaches at every opportunity.

Collecting For The Orphanage

I happened soon after to attend one of his Sermons, in the Course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a Collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my Pocket a Handful of Copper Money, three or four silver Dollars, and five Pistoles [Spanish coins] in Gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the Silver; and he finish’d so admirably, that I emptied my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold and all. At this Sermon there was also one of our Club [Junto literary club], who being of my Sentiments respecting [opinions concerning] the Building in Georgia, and suspecting a Collection might be intended, had by Precaution emptied his Pockets before he came from home; towards the Conclusion of the Discourse [sermon], however, he felt a strong Desire to give, and apply’d to a Neighbor who stood near him to borrow some Money for the Purpose. The Application was unfortunately to perhaps the only Man in the Company [audience] who had the firmness not to be affected by the Preacher. His Answer was, At any other time, Friend Hopkinson, I would lend to thee freely; but not now; for thee seems to be out of thy right Senses.

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text

1740 - April: Preaches in northern cities like Philadelphia and small towns like Fagg’s Manor, where 12,000 hear him.

“Some of Mr. Whitefield’s Enemies affected to suppose that he would apply these Collections to his own private Emolument [profit]; but I, who was intimately acquainted with him (being employ’d in printing his Sermons and Journals, etc.) never had the least Suspicion of his Integrity, but am to this day decidedly of Opinion that he was in all his Conduct a perfectly honest Man. And methinks my Testimony in his Favor ought to have the more Weight, as we had no religious Connection. He us’d indeed sometimes to pray for my Conversion, but never had the Satisfaction of believing that his Prayers were heard. Ours was a mere civil Friendship, sincere on both Sides, and lasted to his Death.”

Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: An Authoritative Text

1740 - Midyear: Back in Georgia.

In 1740 George Whitefield was preaching the gospel in Savannah, Georgia. From October 3 to October 13 George Whitefield collected over $173,000 for Georgia’s orphans!!!

People were motivated to give by the hope-giving power and beauty of gospel-rich preaching! When Christians are moved deeply by the greatness of God’s gracious gift of righteousness to them, they will consider it their great joy to give generously to those in need.

1740 - Fall: Preaching tour takes New England by storm.

Edwards And Wilberforce

In February of 1740, Jonathan Edwards sent an invitation to Whitefield in Georgia asking him to come preach in his church. On October 19, Whitefield recorded in his journal, “Preached this morning, and good Mr. Edwards wept during the whole time of exercise. The people were equally affected.”

‘He preached here four sermons in the meeting-house (besides a private lecture at my house) – one on Friday, another on Saturday, and two upon the Sabbath. ‘The congregation was extraordinarily melted by every sermon; almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of sermon time. ‘Mr. Whitefield’s sermons were suitable to the circumstances of the town, containing just reproofs of our backslidings, and, in a most moving and affecting manner, making use of our great profession and great mercies as arguments with us to return to God, from whom we had departed. Immediately after this, the minds of the people in general appeared more engaged in religion, showing a greater forwardness to make religion the subject of their conversation, and to meet frequently together for religious purposes, and to embrace all opportunities to hear the Word preached. The revival at first appeared chiefly among professors and those that had entertained the hope that they were in a state of grace, to whom Mr. Whitefield chiefly addressed himself. But in a very short time there appeared an awakening and deep concern among some young persons that looked upon themselves as in a Christless state; and there were some hopeful appearances of conversion; and some professors were greatly revived. In about a month or six weeks, there was a great alteration in the town, both as to the revivals of professors and awakenings of others.’

Letters and Personal Writings - WJE Online Vol. 16 - Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University

Who were the main characters in the Great Awakening?

• Jonathan Edwards • George Whitefield • John & Charles Wesley

THE GREAT AWAKENING

In the 1740 - 1743 people knew that something incredible and unprecedented was happening in terms of revivals all over the American colonies and also in Britain, Scotland, Wales and the continent.

In New England, the original faith of the puritan colonists had probably become a little more distracted or limited in its intensity of those founding pioneers who had come here to preserve their faith, to be able to practice their faith in freedom.

George Whitfield arrived in 1739, to America, he brought a new passion and intensity to the preaching of the gospel with laser focus on the message that people needed to be born again. It brought a kind of fervor and simplicity to the preaching of the gospel that brought people out of this sort of complacency that they just attended church and tried to live virtuous lives and this sort of thing. There was something else to Christianity, in fact the center of the Christian faith which was the conversion experience.

There were anti-revivalists “old lights”, the people who just thought that the revivals were religious frenzy, and they were leading to really no good at all.

Among the moderate evangelicals there was certainly a commitment to a focus on the experience of the new birth and preaching and, you know, they were glad for Whitfield’s arrival in general. The revivals gave a lot of people new ideas about who might be able to speak in church, new theological developments attacking, for instance, the established state churches, suggesting that some of the established state ministers might not even be converted themselves.

The evangelical movement in America had been born,” speaking of the Great Awakening, “and once born, rhetorical protests could not stop it.

Jonathan Edwards was really the great theologian of the awakening. He is a great theologian of emotion. When you look at Religious Affections, one of his most famous writings, he talks about the proper role for emotion in the life of a believer, the life of the church.

To some extent that the Great Awakening feeds into some of the key principles of the revolution about all men are created equal, that there’s a new appreciation for human equality coming out of the Great Awakening,

The impact of Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the Great Awakening in England changed the face of both England AND the United States. William Wilberforce, who led the battle against the slave trade in England was 11 years old when Whitefield died. Wilberforce’s father had died when he was 9, and he went to live for a time with his aunt and uncle William and Hanna Wilberforce. This couple were good friends with George Whitefield. This was the evangelical air Wilberforce breathed even before he was converted. And after his conversion, Whitefield’s vision of the gospel was the truth and the spiritual dynamic that animated Wilberforce’s lifelong battle against the slave trade. This is only one small glimpse of the lasting impact of Whitefield and the awakening he served.

So I do not doubt that Henry Venn was right when he said, “Whitefield no sooner opened his mouth as a preacher, than God commanded an extraordinary blessing upon his word.” So at this level, the explanation of Whitefield’s phenomenal impact was God’s exceptional anointing on his life.

One of the impacts of the great awakening is that it unified the American colonies as it spread through numerous preachers and revivals. This unification was greater than had ever been achieved previously in the colonies.

1741 Arriving in England in March, meets with great hostility, stirred largely by John Wesley’s attacks against his Calvinism. Publishes a counterattack against Wesley. Preaches extensively in England, Scotland, and Wales. Nov. 14: Marries widow Elizabeth James.

WHITEFIELD & THE WESLEYS

When Whitefield returned to England at the end of 1738, after his first visit to America, he found that the awakening in London had been furthered by the conversion and subsequent ministry of the Wesleys. Immediately they began to work together. Under Whitefield's preaching the revival spread to Bristol and the West country in February and March 1739, and when he left that area at the beginning of April 1739, John Wesley was given the oversight of the work. But before three months had elapsed it began to be evident that there had not been the same doctrinal development in the Wesleys on all points mentioned above. The fact is that while John Wesley had at his conversion in May 1738 accepted evangelical views on sin, faith, and the re-birth, he had at the same time retained his pre-conversion opinions on the doctrines of predestination and the extent of the atonement.

The first hint that this doctrinal difference might lead to serious results occurs in a letter of Whitefield's to Wesley on June 25, 1739: "I hear, honoured sir, you are about to print a sermon on predestination. It shocks me to think of it; what will be the consequences but controversy? If people ask me my opinion, what shall I do? I have a critical part to act, God enable me to behave aright! Silence on both sides will be best. It is noised abroad already, that there is a division between you and me. Oh, my heart within me is grieved!”

On July 2, 1739, Whitefield wrote: “Dear, honoured sir, if you have any regard for the peace of the church, keep in your sermon on predestination. But you have cast a lot. Oh! my heart, in the midst of my body, is like melted wax. The Lord direct us all! . . . "

On Whitefield's departure from England in August 1739, Wesley immediately published this sermon. Entitled "Free Grace," it professed to be founded upon Romans 8:32, and was printed as a 12 mo. pamphlet in 24 pages. Annexed to it was a hymn by Charles Wesley on Universal Redemption.

George Whitefield responded: "Avoid all disputation. Do not oblige me to preach against you; I had rather die."

On September 25, 1740, however, he wrote to Wesley: "What a fond conceit is it to cry up perfection, and yet cry down the doctrine of final perseverance. But this, and many other absurdities, you will run into, because you will not own election. O that you would study the covenant of grace! . . . O that you would not be too rash and precipitant! If you go on thus, honoured sir, how can I concur with you? It is impossible. I must speak what I know"

During 1740, Whitefield made close friendship with Jonathan Edwards; through them he was doubtless led into a deeper understanding of Puritan theology and its relevance to evangelism and revivals. He also witnessed the outstanding blessing on their preaching.

1740 - He wrote to John Wesley, “The doctrine of election, and the final perseverance of those that are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, then when I saw you last.” He loved the assurance he had in the mighty hands of God. “Surely I am safe, because put into his almighty arms. Though I may fall, yet I shall not utterly be cast away. The Spirit of the Lord Jesus will hold, and uphold me.”

The outcome of Whitefield's return to England in March 1741 and the publication of his reply to Wesley, was an inevitable separation. Henceforth the evangelical forces engaged in the revival movement were divided, and a new party of Arminian evangelicals emerged for the first time in British church history.

Some evangelical writers have sought to minimize the division between Whitefield and Wesley by referring to their "minor differences." An impression is given that Whitefield abandoned the strong conviction he had about Arminianism in 1741; in proof of this we are referred to the fact that in 1742 their personal friendship was in measure resumed and that ultimately Wesley even preached Whitefield's funeral sermon. The truth is that Whitefield rightly made a distinction between a difference in judgment and a difference in affection; it was in the former sense that he differed from the Wesleys, and that difference was such that, as Tyerman writes, it "led them to build separate chapels, form separate societies, and pursue, to the end of life, separate lines of action . . . the gulf between Wesley and Whitefield was immense." But while their public cooperation was thus seriously disturbed, his personal affection for the Wesleys as Christians was preserved to the last. In this respect Whitefield teaches us a needful lesson. Doctrinal differences between believers should never lead to personal antagonism. Error must be opposed even when held by fellow members of Christ, but if that opposition cannot co-exist with a true love for all saints and a longing for their spiritual prosperity then it does not glorify God nor promote the edification of the Church.

MARRIAGE

“I believe it is God’s will that I should marry,” George Whitefield wrote to a friend in 1740. But he was concerned: “I pray God that I may not have a wife till I can live as though I had none.”

His proposal letter to Elizabeth Delamotte; his first love, began by cataloguing the sufferings she would endure as his wife, concluding with, “Can you, when you have a husband, be as though you had none, and willingly part with him, even for a long season, when his Lord and Master shall call him forth to preach the Gospel?” He smothers romantic notions: “I write not from any other principles but the love of God.… The passionate expressions which carnal courtiers use … ought to be avoided by those that would marry in the Lord.”

As one historian put it, “Had he tried to design his proposal in such a way as to ensure its failure, he could hardly have done better.”

Howell Harris; a fellow evangelist had fallen in love with one Elizabeth James, a Welsh widow in her mid- thirties. Though her affection for him was equally strong, he, like Whitefield, wanted “no creature between my soul and God.” He had labored to break off the relationship but failed time after time. Harris arranged a meeting between Whitefield and Elizabeth James. Whitefield was impressed with her devotion to Christ, so both Harris and Whitefield wrote her, suggesting an exchange of suitors. She was furious, writing Harris, “If you were my own father you had no right of disposing me against my will.” Yet, four days later, she agreed to marry Whitefield. At the wedding a few weeks later, Harris gave away the bride.

Whitefield had vowed that he “would not preach one sermon less in a married than in a single state.” During the week-long honeymoon in Elizabeth’s home, he preached twice a day. From then on, she usually remained in London during his travels. Once he was gone for two years.

Within two months of his wedding, he wrote, “O for that blessed time when we shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the angels of God.” Years later he warned a young man, “Marry when or whom you will, expect trouble in the flesh.” After Elizabeth’s death, though, he said, “I feel the loss of my right hand daily.”

Elizabeth James’s letters show it took her ten years to get over Harris. She suffered four miscarriages, and her only child with Whitefield, a son, died when 4 months old. A man who lived with the couple during their last years put it well: “He did not intentionally make his wife unhappy. He always preserved great decency and decorum in his conduct towards her.”

1742 Itinerates in several parts of England. June: Begins five months of ministry in Scotland, and his sermons are “attended with much power” and often “a very great but decent weeping.”

1742 Handel’s Messiah

1743 Helps form the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Association, serving as first moderator – This would later be a great love and focus

1744 His 4-month-old son, John, dies of sickness and is buried February 8. George is attacked in bed and almost killed. August: Sails with his wife for America, arriving desperately ill in October, but soon resumes preaching.

1745-1748 Whitefield’s third visit to the Colonies, though beset with opposition, inspires a great wave of revival. In early 1748, ministers for a month or two in Bermuda.

1748-1751 Lady Huntingdon appoints Whitefield her chaplain, lessening financial perils of his work. Whitefield ministers throughout England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, with extended ministry at the Moorfields (London) Tabernacle.

PERSECUTION IN OPEN AIR PREACHING

SLAVERY

1749 – Petitions For Slavery To Be Legal in Georgia

In fact, one of the effects of reading history, and biography in particular, is the persistent discovery of contradictions and paradoxes of sin and righteousness in the holiest people.

Whitefield is no exception and he will be more rightly honored if we are honest about his blindness as well as his doctrinal faithfulness and goodness. The most glaring blindness of his life—and there were others— was his support for the American enslavement of blacks.

Slaveholder

Before it was legal to own slaves in Georgia, Whitefield advocated for the legalization with a view to making the orphanage he built more affordable. In 1748, he wrote to the trustees of Bethesda, the name of his orphanage and settlement,

Had a Negro been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending about half the sum which hath been laid out. . . . Georgia never can or will be a flourishing province without negroes [sic] are allowed. . . . I am as willing as ever to do all I can for Georgia and the orphan house, if either a limited use of negroes is approved of, or some more indentured servants sent over. If not, I cannot promise to keep any large family, or cultivate the plantation in any considerable manner.

Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism

In 1752 Georgia became a royal colony. Slavery was now legalized, and Whitefield joined the ranks of the slave owners that he had denounced in his earlier years.80

“There was no longer a need for the South Carolina plantation. All resources were transferred to Bethesda, including a force of slaves for whom, Whitefield rejoiced, ‘Nothing seems to be wanted but a good overseer, to instruct the negroes in selling and planting.’”

Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism

Ardent Slave Evangelist

That in itself was not unusual. Most of the slaveholders were professing Christians. But in Whitefield’s case things were more complex. He didn’t fit the mold of wealthy, Southern plantation owner. Almost all of them resisted evangelizing an educating the slaves. They knew intuitively that education would tend toward equality, which would undermine the whole system. And evangelism would imply that slaves could be come children of God, which would mean that they were brothers and sisters to the owners, which would also undermine the whole system. That’s why the apparent New Testament tolerance of slavery is in fact a very powerful subversion of the institution.

Ironically, Whitefield did more to bring Christianity to the slave community in Georgia than anyone else. Whitefield wrote letters to newspapers defending the evangelism of slaves and arguing that to deny them this was to deny that they had souls (which many did deny). Harry Stout observes: “In fact, the letters represented the first journalistic statement on the subject of slavery. As such, they marked a precedent of awesome implications, beyond anything Whitefield could have imagined.”

Whitefield said he was willing to face the “whip” of Southern planters if they disapproved of his preaching the new birth to the slaves. He recounts one of his customary efforts among the slaves in North Carolina on his second trip to America:

I went, as my usual custom . . . among the negroes belonging to the house. One man was sick in bed, and two of his children said their prayers after me very well. This more and more convinces me that negro children, if early brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, would make as great proficiency as any among white people’s children. I do not despair, if God spares my life, of seeing a school of young negroes singing the praises of Him Who made them, in a psalm of thanksgiving. Lord, Thou has put into my heart a good design to educate them; I doubt not but Thou wilt enable me to bring it to good effect.

Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism

Gary B. Nash dates “the advent of black Christianity” in Philadelphia to Whitefield’s first preaching tour. He estimates that perhaps 1000 slaves heard Whitefield’s sermons in Philadelphia. What they heard was that they had souls just as surely as the white people. Whitefield’s work for the slaves in Philadelphia was so effective that Philadelphia’s most prominent dancing master, Robert Bolton, renounced his old vocation and turned his school over to blacks. “By summer’s end, over 50 ‘black Scholars’ had arrived at the school.”85

Sowing the Seeds of Equality

From Georgia to North Carolina to Philadelphia, Whitefield sowed the seeds of equality through heartfelt evangelism and education—blind as he was to the contradiction of buying and selling slaves. Whitefield ended his most famous sermon, “The Lord Our Righteousness” with this appeal to the blacks in the crowd:

Here, then, I conclude; but I must not forget the poor negroes: no, I must not. Jesus Christ has died for them, as well as for others. Nor do I mention you last, because I despise your souls, but because I would have what I shall say make the deeper impression upon your hearts. O that you would seek the Lord to be your righteousness! Who knows but he may be found of you? For in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, bond nor free; even you may be the children of God, if you believe in Jesus. . . . Christ Jesus is the same now as he was yesterday, and will wash you in his own blood. Go home then, turn the word of the text into a prayer, and entreat the Lord to be your righteousness. Even so. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly in all our souls. Amen. Lord Jesus, amen, and amen!

George Whitefield – Sermon on Jeremiah 23:6 - The Lord Our Righteousness

This kind of preaching infuriated many slave owners. One wonders if there was a rumbling in Whitefield’s own soul because he really did perceive where such radical evangelism would lead. He went public with his censures of slave owners and published words like these: “God has a quarrel with you” for treating slaves “as though they were Brutes.” If these slaves were to rise up in rebellion, “all good Men must acknowledge the judgment would be just.”86

This was incendiary. But it was too early in the course of history. Apparently Whitefield did not perceive the implications of what he was saying. What was clear was that the slave population loved Whitefield. For all his imperfections and blindness to the contradiction between advocating slavery and undermining slavery, when he died it was the blacks who expressed the greatest grief in America.87 More than any other eighteenth century figure, Whitefield established Christian faith in the slave community. Whatever else he failed in, for this they were deeply thankful.

1751-1752 Fourth visit to the Colonies, arriving in Georgia in October with a group of destitute children. Cancels plans for an extensive preaching tour when the Orphan House’s financial needs send him hurriedly back to England.

1752-1754 Tours Wales, visits Edinburgh for the seventh time, and returns to London for the opening of a new, brick Tabernacle.

1754-1755 Fifth trip to the Colonies, with preaching from Boston to Georgia. Sept. 1754: Receives honorary M.A. from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).

1755 George Washington leads British forces in French and Indian War

1755-1763 Preaches often in London, as well as in Bristol, Gloucester, Edinburgh, Dublin, Glasgow, many places in Wales, and countless towns and villages. Travels briefly to Holland for his health.

1758 First Indian reservation

1763-1765 Sixth trip to the Colonies. Weak in health, ministers with difficulty in New York, Boston, and other places, generally with greater acceptance than ever.

1765-1769 Devotes attention to London ministries, also traveling to Edinburgh and elsewhere. August 1768: Wife, Elizabeth, dies. Visits Trevecca, Wales, to help open Lady Huntingdon’s College.

1769-1770 Seventh and final trip to the Colonies is a difficult voyage. Arrives in Charleston and preaches for 10 days to large congregations. May 1770: Begins tour from Philadelphia, preaching as often as his frail body permits. Sept. 29: In New Hampshire, preaches final sermon and dies the following morning. Some 6,000 gather for funeral including a large number of blacks (negroes / former slaves).

1770 Boston Massacre

Next Week: Martin Luther

1. During which time period did Luther live/work? How would this have affected his life/ministry?

2. What major invention happened during this time period that would have affected his life/ministry?

3. Luther was saved by studying what book of the Bible? What other book of the Bible was being quoted where he was specifically reading?

Bibliography:

"I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher!” - The Life and Ministry of George Whitefield: Living and Preaching as Though God Were Real (Because He Is) - Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors - John Piper – http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/biographies/i-will-not-be-a-velvet-mouthed-preacher

“Iain Murray on Whitefield and Wesley” - http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/wesley/murray.htm

“Rethinking Christianity and America’s Early History: A Conversation With Historian Thomas S. Kidd” – Albert Mohler - http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/11/22/rethinking-christianity-and-americas-early-history- a-conversation-with-historian-thomas-s-kidd/

Sermons Of George Whitefield – Hendrickson Publishers Marketing