Early Life and Conversion
George Whitefield was born on the 16th
of December in Gloucester England. Many of his relatives had
gone to Oxford
and become clergymen. His father owned the “Bell Inn” in Gloucester, the largest and finest
establishment in town, and its main hall had two auditoriums, one of which was
used to stage plays. When George was two, his father died. He attended school
from the age of 12 in the local parish. He displayed skills as a gifted speaker
from an early age, had a great memory, and often acted in the school plays. The
thrill of acting never left him, although he grew to despise the ungodly
theater. Obviously, this helped him later with his speech and his ability to
project and control his voice. By 16 he
was proficient in Latin and could read New Testament Greek.[1]
After
the death of his father, his mother remarried and his stepdad almost lost the Inn; his stepdad eventually bailed on the family and
left. George was forced drop out of school at age 15 and work at the Inn; it turned
out to be a divine lesson, because it caused George be humbled many times and
he could identify later with very poor both in England and in America.[2]
Soon
enough, he went to Oxford
as a "servitor," at age 17. As a "servitor" (or domestic) he
lived as a butler and maid to 3 or 4 highly placed students. He would wash
their clothes, shine their shoes, and even do their homework. A servitor lived
on whatever scraps of clothing or money they gave him. He had to wear a special
gown marking his lowly state, and it was forbidden for students of a high rank
to speak to him. Most servitors left rather than endure the humiliation.[3]
It
was there at Oxford
that he met and befriended John and Charles Wesley and the other members of the
so-called “Holy Club,” a group of young persons devoted to Bible study and acts
of service and compassion in the city. Although he believed himself to be already
religious, he was surprisingly and soundly converted reading The Life of God
in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal, given to him by John Wesley, and he experienced
the power of the new life for the first time. (Wesley’s own conversion is a
story worth reading in its own right!).
Whitefield’s
life was immediately revolutionized (no pun intended) as he discovered the
life-changing power of free grace in the heart of the believer; no longer did
he have to work for his salvation, striving to please God with asceticism and
religious devotion, God had given all of His righteousness to him through the
justification that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
Calling to Ministry
In his early twenties, Whitefield
began to preach in earnest. Ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1736,[4] he began to display incredible
powers of oratory as he guest preached in local churches. His first sermon is
said to have “driven fifteen people mad.”[5] Fully utilizing the powers of his
dramatic skills as a thespian and former lover of the stage, Whitefield was
able to use in incomparable natural-born voice and dramatic flair to hold
audiences spellbound. J.C. Ryle said, “You must listen whether you like it or
not. There was a holy violence about him. Your attention was taken by storm.
You were fairly carried off your legs by his energy before you had time to
consider what you would do.”[6]
“Tremendous
congregations flooded”[7] the churches that did allow him to
preach, although his open air campaigns soon became his modus operandi. Often
castigated by the jealousy of his Church of England clergymen, he found himself
unwelcomed in many pulpits due to the incredible affect he had emotionally on
the audience. He was often criticized as a “showman” and an “enthusiast” in an
age in which most ministers wrote out in long hand and read their sermons to
the congregation with an academic tone. “The vast majority of sermons [in those
days] were miserable moral essays, utterly devoid of any thing calculated to
awaken, convert, save, or sanctify souls.”[8]
Contrarily,
Whitefield often paced dramatically on his wooden platform which he brought out
of doors to compensate for the growing number of pulpits locked to the
“enthusiast,” and he used the full range of his vocal inflection in order to command
the attention of his audience as well as utilizing dramatic hand-gestures.
Hardly a sermon went by that he did not break into weeping and tears, often
pausing dramatically to regain his composure.
Although
many critiqued his then-controversial preaching methods, John Piper makes a
great point in his essay when he makes this distinction between preaching and
the stage: “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. And third is: You can speak about
a real spiritual world as if it were wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently
real (because it is).”[9]
Historian
Mark Noll says that his "spontaneous [style of] preaching affected
virtually every aspect of Christian worship and practice in the region."[10]
His Message: Conversion
Whitefield was not an academic
theologian, but that is not to say that his sermons were simple, or populist,
or watered-down. He did, however, consistently speak on one major theme:
conversion. He constantly and relentlessly implored his hearers to be born
again and to turn to God in repentant faith. The modern day phenomenon of Billy
Graham and his Evangelistic Association is perhaps the best recent parallel.
While Whitefield addressed many topics both practical and moral, he
consistently beat one drum: “You must be born again!” (John 3:3).
It
is written of Whitefield, “His ministry presents an unparalleled example of
declaring the sovereignty of God combined with the free offer of salvation to
all who would believe on Christ.”[11]
Theology: Calvinism
Whitefield’s
theology was distinctly Calvinistic as was that of the majority of the earliest
pilgrims, settlers, and colonists in New England, tracing their theological
heritage directly back through the Puritans of England and the Magisterial Reformers
on the Continent before that, all the way back (as the name suggests) to John
Calvin the Genevan Reformer.
Yet
as any good Calvinist will tell you, the system of “Reformation Doctrine” is
nothing more and nothing less than the Biblical theology of the New Testament
in general, and the Apostle Paul in particular! (As a basic primer, Calvinism
sees the full work of salvation in the soul as a divine work of God’s
transforming grace—from predestination, to calling, to regeneration, to faith,
to justification, to sanctification, to glorification—it is all of God; whereas
the Arminian theology of the Wesley Brothers emphasized human free will). In
fact the Calvinism/Arminianism debate was one bone of contention between George
Whitefield and the Wesley Brothers that they were never able to resolve and
repair. They agreed to disagree and broke fellowship.
Preaching in the Americas
Whitefield’s
greatest love was open field preaching in the American colonies. He once
confessed excitedly, "America
is to be my chief scene of action!"[12] He made some 7 preaching tours
across the New World[13] and made 13 voyages across the Atlantic Ocean in total. In another place, he happily
professed, "America,
in my opinion, is an excellent school to learn Christ!"[14]
For
him, the colonies were adventuresome, wild, and filled with massive potential
for the Kingdom
of God. His humble
beginnings as the son of an Inn Keeper came to fruition as Whitefield preached
among the commoners and the poor, with particular attention to peasants,
coalminers, and slaves. Historian Mark
Noll notes that Whitefield made his special contribution to evangelism and
missions by "directing the message of salvation to common people neglected
by the established churches."[15]
Death
In his last sermon before his death, just
five years before the Revolutionary War, Whitefield cried out almost
prophetically hours before meeting the Savior He served for decades,
"I go! I go to rest prepared. My sun has arisen and by the aid of
heaven has given light to many. It is now about to set... No! It is about to
rise to the zenith of immortal glory.” O
thought divine! I shall soon be in a world where time, age, pain, and sorrow
are unknown. My body fails, my spirit expands. How willingly I would ever live
to preach Christ! But I die to be with Him!"[16]
George Whitefield died here in America
in 1770, and his body was buried in the basement of Old South Presbyterian
Church in Newburyport Massachusetts. As a matter of historical curiosity,
his corpse can still be viewed today by request in a crypt underneath the
church! John Wesley—his longtime friend and theological rival—preached his
funeral sermon at Whitefield’s request.
Of
all of the quotes about Whitefield, my favorite has to be one of his own, “Let
the name of Whitefield perish, but Christ be glorified!”[17]
--Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida.
[1]
Rev. David Franklin, “George Whitefield” in Passages that Changed Lives, a
Wednesday Night sermon series, (Brooksville,
FL: Faith Evangelical
Presbyterian Church), 2012.
[2]
Rev. David Franklin, “George Whitefield” in Passages that Changed Lives, a
Wednesday Night sermon series, (Brooksville,
FL: Faith Evangelical
Presbyterian Church), 2012.
[3]
Rev. David Franklin, “George Whitefield” in Passages that Changed Lives, a
Wednesday Night sermon series, (Brooksville,
FL: Faith Evangelical
Presbyterian Church), 2012.
[4]
“George Whitefield” in Dictionary of Christian Biography ed. Michael
Walsh (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 1139.
[5]
“George Whitefield” in The New Dictionary of Theology: A Concise and
Authoritative Resource, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, et. al. (Downer’s Grove,
IL: IVP, 1998), 721.
[6]
J.C. Ryle, A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield.
Electronic Edition, (New York, NY: Anson D. Randolph Publications, 1854),
location # 338.
[7]
“George Whitefield” in The New Dictionary of Theology: A Concise and
Authoritative Resource, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, et. al. (Downer’s Grove,
IL: IVP, 1998), 721.
[8]
J.C. Ryle, A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield.
Electronic Edition, (New York, NY: Anson D. Randolph Publications, 1854),
location # 40.
[9]
John Piper, “I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher.”
[10]
Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United
States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1992), 48.
[11]
“George Whitefield” in The New Dictionary of Theology: A Concise and
Authoritative Resource, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, et. al. (Downer’s Grove,
IL: IVP, 1998), 721.
[12]
Stephen Mansfield, Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George
Whitefield, (Nashville,
TN, 2001), 240.
[13]
“George Whitefield” in The New Dictionary of Theology: A Concise and
Authoritative Resource, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, et. al. (Downer’s Grove,
IL: IVP, 1998), 721.
[14]
Stephen Mansfield, Forgotten Founding Father: The Heroic Legacy of George
Whitefield, (Nashville,
TN, 2001), 239.
[15]
Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United
States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1992), 91.
[16]
Rev. David Franklin, “George Whitefield” in Passages that Changed Lives, a
Wednesday Night sermon series, (Brooksville,
FL: Faith Evangelical Presbyterian
Church), 2012.
[17]
“George Whitefield” in The New Dictionary of Theology: A Concise and
Authoritative Resource, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, et. al. (Downer’s Grove,
IL: IVP, 1998), 721.
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