October 15, 2020 Show with Kurt M. Smith on “Thundering the Word: The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 15th day of October, 2020.

I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest to this program, Pastor Kurt M.

Smith, who is pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Pine Mountain, Alabama.

He's also an author, and we're going to be discussing his latest book, Thundering the Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield, published by Free Grace Press, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Kurt M.

Smith. Thank you, Chris. It is a pleasure and an honor to be back, brother. Appreciate you having me.

The pleasure is all mine, brother, and tell our listeners about Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Pine Mountain, Alabama.

Providence Reformed Baptist Church, we are a church that is only four years old.

It was a church that was constituted and planted by myself and several others back in the summer of 2016, but we are located 45 minutes northeast of Birmingham in what is called the

Ridge and Valley region of the Appalachian Mountains, which people don't usually think of that when they think of Alabama, but anyway, that's the geographical region of where we are.

I'm just very thankful to be serving the congregation here, and thankfully the

Lord has been very gracious and merciful to us, and we are just experiencing just real peace and unity among the congregants, and so it's a joy, a great joy to be here.

Praise God, and for anybody who wants to look up more information about Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, you can go right to their website, which is

PRBC, which stands obviously for Providence Reformed Baptist Church, 1689, obviously for those of Reformed Baptist listeners know anyway what that means.

That's a reference to the 1689 London Baptist Confession .org, PRBC1689 .org.

Well, as you know, being somebody who has a ferocious appetite for literature and reading, and especially perhaps neck and neck with theology,

I know that you happen to be a great lover of history, so you are fully aware that there are a lot of things written about George Whitfield.

There are things that have been available in print for quite a number of years. Why did you think that this new volume,

Thundering the Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitfield, would be a needed added volume to that which is already available?

Well, that's a great question, and it's actually something I address in the introduction to my book. One reason is because this year actually marks the 250th anniversary of George Whitfield's death, which was

September 30, 1770. So I believe that it was a good time, a good season to commemorate

Whitfield's life, his legacy, his ministry of labors. Also, the other reason is because when we call certain biographies the definitive biography, as I say in my introduction to the book,

I think that's just claiming a little too much about any biography for that matter, because no human biographer is omniscient, and so therefore none of us can say everything that needs to be said and therefore give the final word on what can be said or should be said regarding any figure in history.

So while there are very good biographies that have been written on George Whitfield, my favorite being

Arnold Dallimore and the great two -volume work that he did in Banner of Truth Publishers, yet even that great work by Dallimore has not said everything that needs to be said.

And so what I've done with this particular biography, I certainly would not rank it anywhere close in the category of what they would describe as definitive.

I don't cover all of his life. I cover only the first seven years of his Christian life.

So that takes us from 1735 -36 to 1742, and so I draw in very, very close to what

S. M. Hughton described as the most dramatic years of Whitfield's ministry. And I therefore deal with certain aspects of his life and ministry at that time that certainly other biographers have covered, but because I've read everything that they've written about it,

I knew things that needed to be said that had not even been said before.

And so therefore, I have a whole chapter devoted, say, to Whitfield and the

Great Awakening. And I take the reader through all 15 months that he was in colonial

America, from 1739 all the way to 1740, and then leaving in January of 1741 and going back to England.

But I walk the reader through Whitfield's time and place in the Great Awakening and just giving a lot more detail, a lot more breadth to his place in that great revival.

And then, of course, the biggest chapter in the book is focusing on Whitfield's divide with John Wesley, and that is actually 37 pages.

That is a very big chapter. Of course, that's 37 pages front and back, but I walk the reader point by point through Whitfield's entire open letter to Wesley.

And also, I give great background and detail to John Wesley himself as to what was his angst against Calvinism, why was he at war with it, and then, of course, giving the aftermath of what happened between Wesley and Whitfield and just how

George Whitfield is a stellar model for any Christian when it comes to how we navigate through doctrinal controversy with other fellow believers.

So, those are just examples of things

I cover in the book that have not been covered to that extent and to that detail that other biographers have covered.

And I will say one other thing that is a very important matter to me, and that is the fact that for the last 20 plus years, there have been certain academic biographers that have treated

George Whitfield with great cynicism and censoriousness and have basically written him off as what one writer calls nothing more than a religious huckster trying to sell the new birth.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually a quote from a very well -known church historian.

Wow. So, that kind of cynicism, that kind of censoriousness that has been leveled at Whitfield, and of course, even just in the last year, another well -known church historian went so far as to write that because Whitfield was an owner of slaves, there was no way he could even be a

Christian. And so, I devote an entire chapter, in fact, it's the last chapter of the book called

The Already but Not Yet, of where I deal very honestly with two of Whitfield's biggest flaws and sins, but I deal with it in a way that is graceful and honest, but not throwing

Whitfield under the bus, not treating him from the priggishness of virtue signaling or the arrogance of presentism, which is what we see so much of today, especially in academic circles, and the way that men like Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards and others are treated, particularly because of their connection with slavery.

Wow. And, of course, men that we uphold in the

Christian church as heroes, who have that blemish upon their record as having owned slaves, they did not invent slavery.

In fact, they were born into a culture that already had experienced and practiced the idea of slave ownership, and many of them were left in the dilemma on how to respond to this because, you know, if everybody at a certain point in time just began, well, not everybody, but if certain individuals, many individuals began just letting their slaves free, that could have meant instant and certain death for them.

So people don't really think things through because of the fact that there were so many who were indeed evil people that hated black people and viewed them as no more than chattel and as inhuman and so on.

So people who were genuinely Christian had to be very careful how to respond to this whole area of life.

Yeah, I agree. And also, too, something that has to be realized and understood and appreciated is that while we can look back over 200, 300 years from that time and we can see that the transatlantic slave trade, you know, it was a dehumanizing, immoral industry, and certainly it was in direct violation to what

Exodus 21 -16 clearly commands that whoever steals a man and sells him, anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death.

You know, we get that. We see that clearly. But for that time and that period, the

Christians like Whitefield, who were not as clear on that, but indeed, as one biographer said regarding Whitefield, he was not wiser than his times on the subject of slavery.

And indeed, many, many Christians were not. They were in the same position as Whitefield.

But yet how they treated their involvement in the institution, they treated it as a

Christian. And that's the thing that has to be understood. It doesn't justify it.

It doesn't make that whole industry and system, it doesn't make it any better.

But Whitefield, like others, he did what he could in sincerity to Christianize it, to sanctify it as much as he could.

In fact, in a letter that he wrote in 1751 regarding his whole position on slavery, he felt privileged that if he could purchase a good number of slaves, and this is what he said, he would make their lives comfortable and lay a foundation for breeding up their posterity and the nurture and admonition of the

Lord. In other words, as deplorable and immoral as this institution was in both its industry and implementation,

Whitefield made every effort to sanctify his part in it by using it as a further gospel mission to reach centers for Christ.

He didn't view his slaves as property per se, but chiefly as human souls who needed

Christ no differently than white Europeans. And so he preached the gospel to his slaves with as much fervor as he did anyone else.

And he firmly believed that, well, at least I'm giving them a better life than what they would have had had they stayed where they were and never heard the gospel.

So, I mean, saying all of that, I can just hear certain people, even in evangelical circles, screaming at this and going, it sounds like you're justifying it or whatever.

It's not justifying it, but it's dealing realistically and factually and honestly with where Whitefield stood.

I mean, this is how he justified his position and his practice in this.

And so the facts are the facts, but let's keep the facts in their proper perspective and context rather than making these horrible judgments about men like him and saying, well, there's just no way they could be saved.

Amen. And what you were saying before about a certain segment of academia who has vilified or just tossed

Whitefield into the trash heap of history, this reminded me of a very surprising conversation

I had a number of years ago with a Presbyterian pastor who was a minister, an ordained minister, he was actually, he is no longer in this denomination, but he was in one of the more biblically sound

Presbyterian denominations. And he was telling me that he had no use for Whitefield at all and that he was just another voice in the unbiblical revivalism of American history and really just downplayed any value that he had.

And I remember being totally shocked by this, hearing a Reformed pastor speak so lowly of this great hero of the faith.

And I'm so glad that one of the major Christian publishers and ministries in the

UK and in the United States, the Banner of Truth, they think so highly of George Whitefield that his image is actually their logo.

Yeah, that's right. Well, tell us about, to start off with, the

Thundering the Word title, the Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield.

That immediately is an attention grabber because there is a division in the body of Christ on the importance of the manner in which someone declares and preaches the word.

You have many fundamentalists on one side who are guilty of practicing form over substance, where they seem to be more concerned about the loudness of voice and the animation and the passion with which somebody is preaching or yelling than they are over any kind of real thorough exegesis going on during a sermon.

Right. And then you have those who are more from our background, where you have some in our midst, in the

Reformed faith, that really elevate substance in a much, much, much, much, much higher level of importance than form.

They either don't think that it's all that relevant or important that a minister preaches with passion, that he preaches with urgency, that he preaches as a clarion at inappropriate times, raising his voice.

They either think that it doesn't really matter, or sometimes they might even go as far as to say that's emotional manipulation.

So, you do have this division even amongst the Reformed. In fact,

I was born again in a church that was pastored by Mike Gaydosh, who is a friend of yours,

I know, as well. Oh, yeah. And Mike Gaydosh has an extraordinary gift for preaching, and he was not so jealous and overly protective of his pulpit.

I mean, he was protective of his pulpit, but he was not overly protective of his pulpit to the extent that he did not share it with anyone, and we had a lot of Bible conferences.

And thankfully, because of the excellent discernment that Mike had when he was my pastor, the preachers were all superb.

I could probably think of a couple that perhaps were not all that passionate when they preached, but that was a tiny minority.

Most of them were very passionate preachers, either Reformed Baptist or Presbyterian. And I remember when

I was hearing the insult from the non -Reformed about the dry, dull, lifeless, spiritually dead preaching of Reformed ministers that have no passion for the lost and no urgency in their

Gospel message, I was shocked. I'm like, what are you talking about? Because it was so far into my experience. But having been a

Christian for decades now, I have seen that the stereotype, although it is slanderous to broad -brush us all that way, because there are some of the most powerful and passionate preachers, not only of history but even of today, that are

Reformed. But it does exist, that whole phenomenon of the pastor being more of a professorial lecturer than he is a preacher.

But tell us about this title again, The Thundering Word, and why you chose that as the title for a book, a biography about George Whitefield.

Well, the title of the book actually comes from a statement that Whitefield made in a letter that he wrote to a fellow minister in 1739.

Whitefield said, I love those that thunder out the word.

The Christian world is in a deep sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can awaken them out of it.

And what I said about that, this was actually at the very beginning of Chapter 4 of the book.

I say that perhaps no words Whitefield ever wrote in private or public have captured what he would embody for 34 years.

34 years is how long he would preach the gospel. They originally were written to a fellow minister to encourage him in his own work, yet it was

Whitefield himself who would be that loud awakening voice thundering out the word of God on both sides of the

Atlantic. Now, in Whitefield's own time, there were many contemporaries, especially those within the

Anglican Church. Of course, he was an ordained Anglican priest, and there were many fellow clergy in the

Church of England that just discounted him in a very cynical way as just basically being nothing but a well -skilled actor.

There was an occasion when Whitefield actually gave an answer to that charge, and his answer

I think is very helpful and something that I think would speak to any pastor, any preacher worth his salt.

Whitefield said, I will 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?

Mr. Butterton said, Why my Lord, 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.

This is what George Whitefield said to that story, defending the way he did indeed thunder the word.

He said, Therefore, I will shout loudly, I will not be a velvet -mouthed preacher.

What Whitefield's point was in telling the story, he was defending the way he preached.

His preaching was marked by great passion and how it moved him with such evident energy which, to his critics, looked nothing but like the dramatic skill of professional acting.

But Whitefield, of course, was no actor in his preaching. In other words, he was not like Mr.

Butterton, the actor, whose acting affected his audiences with things imaginary. No, for Whitefield, his preaching was proclaiming the things of God and Christ in eternity, things of ultimate reality.

And this is what gripped Whitefield's heart, which in turn translated to what

I call a man on fire, a man shouting loudly with dead earnest the glory and wonder of God's saving mercy in Christ.

Whitefield, therefore, could not speak of such things like the archbishop with sophistication and proper inflection, yet with unbelief.

So Whitefield would not be what he called a velvet -mouthed preacher. And this reminds me, too, of another story regarding Whitefield, where a man in colonial

America had requested of Whitefield, he said, can I print your sermons?

And Whitefield said, that's fine, he said, but unfortunately you won't be able to print the thunder and the lightning.

In other words, you'll have the content, and the content is good and true, and it's there, but you won't be able to put on the paper the thunder, the lightning of this man anointed by God, and through his peculiar personality and gifts which

God has given him, he proclaims loudly the word of God.

So all of that is the background behind the title of the book, because George Whitefield most definitely was a true, bona fide gospel evangelist who did indeed thunder out the word of God.

And frankly, God gave him all of the gifts necessary to do that in a time and period where, as I'm sure you know

Chris, Whitefield would be virtually shunned by many of his fellow clergy in the

Church of England, pushed out into the open fields, but he would use that preaching in the open fields to the advantage of reaching even more people with the gospel.

And so God gave him a voice for that. Oh, I thank

God that he did. And by the way, I know that Spurgeon lived a century after Whitefield, but I couldn't help but remember one of a number of quotes of Spurgeon when he spoke of the importance of how one uses his voice when preaching, and this quote from Spurgeon I think is very relevant.

What a pity that a man who from his heart delivered doctrines of undoubted value in language the most appropriate should commit ministerial suicide by harping on one string when the

Lord had given him an instrument of many strings to play upon. Alas, alas, for that dreary voice, it hummed and hummed like a mill wheel to the same unmusical turn whether its onerous spake of heaven or hell, eternal life or everlasting wrath.

It might be, by accident, a little louder or softer according to the length of the sentence, but its tone was still the same, a dreary waste of sound, a howling wilderness of speech in which there was no possible relief, no variety, no music, nothing but horrible sameness.

And I have been at conferences where some of the most brilliant Christians in the literary world were among those on the speaking roster, and I remember, especially as a young Christian, how disappointed

I was to hear these men speak after reading their books and being so amazingly blessed with what they've written, to hear them speak in this very monotone, boring voice.

I won't say the name of this brother who is now in heaven, but I can remember hearing a preacher at a very prominent

Reformed conference back in the 80s, and I could not help but think, I'm listening to Henry Kissinger right now.

He had that same very monotone way of speaking, very unexcited, unenthusiastic, and the sermon was like 45 minutes long at least, so that was quite difficult to endure.

But we are going to return with more of our discussion on George Whitefield after our first break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and as always, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say your pastor is one of those that we were discussing earlier who despises what he knows, or perhaps even the slanderous stereotype of Whitefield that he is familiar with, and you don't want to obviously identify yourself so people will know who you're referring to.

It could be a number of things. You could be a pastor and your fellow elders despise

Whitefield, and you are trying to convince them to have a contrary view of what they are currently holding.

Whatever the case is, when it's personal and private, we understand you remaining anonymous. But otherwise, if it's just a general question about the history, the theology, the teaching, life and legacy of George Whitefield, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Sparnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Kurt M. Smith, and we are discussing his new book, Thundering the Word, the Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield.

Let me just read a couple of commendations for this book. Sam Waldron, a name very well known to most

Reformed Baptists globally, says, in this, the 250th anniversary year of Whitefield's death,

Kurt Smith has produced a challenging, devotional, and balanced look at a man and preacher used mightily of God to call sinners to repentance.

And world -renowned Presbyterian minister and author and conference speaker, Derek Thomas, has said, the life of the 18th century's most celebrated evangelist and preacher is told with clarity and cultural sensitivity.

The Whitefield that emerges is that of a passionate evangelist, a pragmatic entrepreneur, an astute citizen of the

British Empire, and alas, a flawed, culturally compromised individual. A most valuable read, and there are many more commendations that are really glowing about this book by very gifted men in their own right, and I would highly recommend that you get a hold of this book.

If you could, go back to why the peers of Whitefield, especially in the

Anglican Church, why is it that so many of them despised him?

And drew the conclusions that you mentioned earlier about him. I mean, was it because of the fact that he was not trapped by the formality of the stoic liturgy of Anglicanism that is so common amongst those churches?

And I don't mean this as a slam, I know I have many Anglican listeners, but it can become dead formalism.

It's not always dead formalism, but it can become that. Were they just too alarmed by his passion and the raising of his voice and the fact that he did things in an untraditional way, not unbiblical way, but the whole concept of open air preaching and so on?

Well, I think one thing that has to be understood historically is just where the

Church of England was in the 18th century. And certainly in the first 30 years of the 18th century, that is before Whitefield's conversion, before the

Lord would providentially put him on the scene, as it were, in proclaiming

Christ. English Christianity, as one writer put it for 18th century

England, this gentleman said, proved itself to be little more than a religious ethic sedate and timid.

And what I write in the second chapter of the book, the second chapter of the book is called

Sleeping in Darkness, which is giving you just an overview of where Great Britain was before the great evangelical awakening that Whitefield would be the catalyst of.

One thing I state in this is that the light of the gospel had been all but put out, and the spiritual saltiness of the

Church had lost its preserving power. Anglican clergy were largely meant, given over to self -indulging pleasures like fox hunting, politics, agriculture, chemistry, law, and drinking, if such pleasures could be afforded.

But to men of God who invested themselves in the ministry of God's word, feeding God's sheep, and bearing witness to God's saving gospel, such men as this were scarce in the

Church of England, if they existed at all. No, the sermons of the Anglican Church during this time were moralistic, stressing decency, with a strong aversion to anything that hinted at what they called enthusiasm.

And by enthusiasm, they were describing any Christian whose practice of the faith showed zeal and earnestness, perished the thought, if anyone showed vocal and visible excitement for Christ.

Yet what had all this left for England's religious culture? It left a religion and Church in fashion with the world, but at odds with Christ and his gospel.

And so, just from that standpoint, you can see why a man like Whitefield coming on the scene, especially within the

Church of England, was virtually a scandal. Wow.

Do you know what led Whitefield to adopt the manner with which he proclaimed the gospel, or the manner for which he is most popularly known, the passionate open -air preacher and so on?

Was this something that was always a part of his life after coming to Christ?

In fact, if you could even give us an idea of when he consciously repented and turned to Christ and so on.

I mean, I know that there are different testimonies of those who are among God's children.

We have those that were raised in Christian homes since infancy, and they don't even remember a time when they didn't know and love

Jesus. And then you have others who have more stark contrasts in their life where they may have spent years and possibly many decades in darkness and rebellion and hostility toward God.

And then there is a more night -and -day vibrant crisis experience, if you will, where there is a 180 -degree turnaround and notable total transformation and change in someone.

So what about Whitefield? And then going back to my other question is, can you trace when this became a part of his typical manner of proclaiming the

Gospel, something that was very passionate and so on, and wanting to preach in the open air, where many

Christians might be too self -conscious or even embarrassed, which may reveal more about whether or not they're ashamed of the

Gospel. But if you could, tell us something about his background. Well, in regards to his conversion, his conversion to Christ occurred in the spring of 1735.

His conversion was a conversion that occurred in the aftermath of several months of his trying to basically save his own soul.

He was a student at Pembroke College in Oxford.

When he went to Pembroke, he did go with the hopes of actually entering the ministry.

And so he very quickly joined up with a group called the

Holy Club there at Pembroke. And, of course, the founders of the Holy Club were

John and Charles Wesley. And the Holy Club was a small group of men who basically were moralistic do -gooders on steroids.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! They, you know, they did not know the

Gospel. They did not get the Gospel. They were trying to save their own souls.

souls. And so, you know, the way

I describe the Holy Club in the book, I say that when compared to the decadence of England's culture at that time, combined with the spiritual apathy of the

Anglican Church, the Holy Club certainly had the look of authentic Christianity, but it was only a look.

It was an ardent zeal for God, minus the saving knowledge of Christ, resulting in true conversion.

In essence, the Holy Club was moralism on steroids. Like the

Jews, as described in Romans 10 and verse 3, they were ignorant of the righteousness of God, seeking to establish their own, thus not submitting to God's righteousness.

But among the members of the Holy Club, no one would go as far as George Whitefield.

And that's where I compare Whitefield to Martin Luther. You know, Martin Luther entering the monastery to save his soul, well,

Whitefield entered the Holy Club with the same ambition, and Luther -like,

Whitefield would outdo every member of the Holy Club to make himself right with God, even to the point of scaring the other members of the

Holy Club, like his friend Charles Wesley. But Whitefield, in trying to save his soul, would end up nearly killing himself, and that's not an exaggeration, but he would certainly ruin his health, and he would really see the effects of that in later years.

Doing what exactly that would bring him near death? Well, he would...I'll

give you an example of something that he would do.

In fact, you know what would be a good idea, so I don't have to cut you off right in the middle of explaining and describing that.

I have to go to our midway break, so I'd rather do it right now, and we'll remember where to pick up where we left off.

Folks, please be patient with us, because the middle break of the show, as anyone who listens regularly knows, is the longer break on the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. So, please use this time wisely, write down as much of the information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you possibly can, so you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, which will hopefully lead to them wanting to remain as our advertisers for a longer period of time, and that will subsequently enable

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So, write down as much of the information as you can from our advertisers, and also send in a question.

Write down a question for Curt M. Smith about George Whitefield and send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Before we return to our guest today, Kurt M. Smith, we just have some important announcements to make.

Tomorrow, we have joining us for the very first time ever, John Harris, to discuss his new book,

Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism.

That should be quite a controversial program and I am looking forward to it because of the horrible blight that this social justice movement has become on the body of Christ in our modern day.

It is really disturbing to see what the woke movement and other similar movements and organizations and individuals are doing to dilute the gospel and to take the church away from our true calling.

So I hope that you tune in tomorrow for Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism with John Harris.

Also, we have Jeff Thomas joining us for two days in a row, the 19th and 20th of October.

Jeff Thomas is a name known to most Reformed Christians in the United States and the

United Kingdom especially. He was the pastor of the

Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, Wales for over half a century and he is obviously very well known to supporters and lovers of Banner of Truth Ministries because he has written for them and has spoken at many of their conferences.

So I hope that you tune in next Monday and Tuesday for Jeff Thomas. You might want to make note, the last week of October, from the 26th through the 30th, we have an entire week spent in honor and tribute to the late

Greg Bonson, considered by many to be the father of modern

Christian apologetics. And we're going to have at least five different guests, sometimes even more than one guest each day, who are very familiar and sometimes we're very close friends of Dr.

Bonson who are going to have their own contribution to our tribute to him on Monday through Friday of the last week of October.

So mark that down on your calendar. Also, folks, if you love this radio program and you don't want us to disappear from the airwaves,

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My love for you and my affection and my gratitude to God for you defies my ability to describe.

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You don't have to believe identically with me, but you need to be promoting something that is at the very least compatible with what we believe.

So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet Earth and have helped many people in our audience find churches that they didn't even know existed sometimes less than five minutes away from where they live in all parts of the world.

So, if you need help funding a church, perhaps not for yourself, but for a family friend or loved one that lives somewhere in the world where they are unaware of a local church that's faithful to the

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So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Kurt M.

Smith on our theme today, Thundering the Word, the Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield.

And before our break, Kurt, you were just beginning to explain the

Holy Club, I believe it was called, which was, unfortunately, moralism on steroids.

This included George and John Whitefield I'm sorry, George and John Wesley I keep mispronouncing or giving their own name.

John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield probably,

I'm assuming, before their regeneration, before their actual rebirth. And you were just about to describe physically how

George Whitefield was so involved in moralism that he actually brought himself near physical death.

Now if you could be more detailed and explain how that could be. Yeah. Before I give the important layers to that particular detail, one very, very important part of this story that leads up to Whitefield's conversion which

I cannot leave off I certainly don't leave it off in the book was a small book that Charles Wesley had given to Whitefield preceding

Whitefield's conversion. The irony of Wesley giving Whitefield this book is that Charles Wesley needed the book as much as Whitefield did.

But the book was written by a 17th century Scotsman named Henry Scoogle and the book was entitled

The Life of God and the Soul of Man. And when

Whitefield read the book he would talk about this many, many years later in one of his sermons a sermon entitled

All Men's Place. He testified of the impact this book had on him prior to his conversion.

Basically, God used this book The Life of God and the Soul of Man to sow the very first initial gospel seeds in Whitefield.

And what Whitefield said about the book is he said that God showed me that I must be born again or be damned.

And he went on to say, as Scoogle says a man may go to church say his prayers, receive the sacrament and yet not be a

Christian. And he says, how did my heart rise? How did my heart shudder?

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? And holding the book in my hand thus addressed the God of heaven and earth

Lord, if I am not a Christian for Jesus Christ's sake, show me what Christianity is that I may not be damned at last.

Whitefield says 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 ray of divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul and from that moment but not till then did

I know that I must become a new creature. Now, when he read this book he was not initially converted he was not initially born again but as I said, it planted the very first seeds of gospel light into his heart and again

I compare Whitefield to Martin Luther where Luther would struggle for five years after the first beams of gospel light had pierced his own spiritual darkness so Whitefield, so here's

Whitefield after reading Schuylkill's book he knows he must be born again, he's now heard this gospel truth but he did not know where to acquire such a birth and so what does he do?

Well, he just defaults to a more severe and intense quest by his own vain efforts to secure what, of course, only

God and Christ could grant him and so from the fall of 1734 to shortly after Easter in 1735 and here's, you know, by this time

George Whitefield, he's 20 years of age and as I say, he nearly kills himself to obtain the new birth and what he strives to do through so many efforts he left off eating such things as fruits and sweets, he wore a patch gown and dirty shoes, he adopted the customs of a

German cult called the Quietus where he talked very little and even wondered if he should talk at all and under this burdening of his mind of course his academic work began to suffer and his tutor at Pembroke College thought

Whitefield was going mad and Whitefield wrote about this period of course in his own journal and what he said was this, by this time

I left off keeping my diary, using my forms or scarce my voice in prayer, visiting prisoners etc.

Nothing remained for me to leave unless I forsook public worship but my religious friends.

Now it was suggested to me that I must leave them also for Christ's sake this was a trial but rather than not be as I fancied

Christ's disciple I resolved to renounce them though as dear to me as my own soul but the climax of Whitefield's pain inflicting asceticism which would be the right way to describe it came during the week of Lent again this is 1735, he's 20 years old

Whitefield reports that he constantly walked out of the cold mornings till part of one of his hands was quite black.

This with his continued abstinence and inward conflicts at length so emancipated his body so he emaciated his body that at Passion Week finding he could scarce creep upstairs he was obliged to inform his kind tutor of his condition who immediately sent for a physician.

Whitefield was confined to bed where he spent 6 or 7 weeks and yet it was here in this state having exhausted all he could to gain from God what he could never clench it was here at the end of himself that God drew

George Whitefield effectually to Christ and Whitefield writing of this in his journal this is what he said of his conversion.

He says after having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan and many months inexpressible trials by night and day under the spirit of bondage

God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load to enable me to lay hold on his dear son by a living faith and by giving me the spirit of adoption to seal me as I humbly hope even to the day of everlasting redemption but oh with what joy joy unspeakable even joy that was full of and big with glory was my soul filled with the weight of sin went off and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God and a full assurance of faith broken upon my disconsolate soul surely it was the day of my espousals a day to be had an everlasting remembrance at first my joys were like a spring tide and as it were overflowed the banks go where I would

I could not avoid singing of psalms aloud afterwards it would become more settled and blessed be

God saving a few casual intervals as abode and increased in my soul ever since so that is the story of Whitfield's conversion and you know you asked earlier about his passion in preaching well

I mean his passion in preaching was what I mean it was something that just it came out of this enormous this frankly exceptional unashamed passion for Christ I mean

Whitfield himself just in his natural temperament he was very much a people oriented person he was very much an extrovert as we would call it he was not introverted at all but when you combine that with the fact that he was born again and just how he just gave himself immediately you know to the

Lord to wanting to serve the Lord and just be all that he could for the Lord you know it was only two years following his conversion that he would find himself providentially beginning to preach and it was just it was just almost immediate that the

Lord had his hand on Whitfield and began using him in a very extraordinary way you know where at twenty twenty years twenty twenty one years of age he is he is starting to just see all of these people just thronging to hear this young man this boy

Parson as many onlookers called him proclaiming loudly what in that time and period was not being heard throughout

England and that was you must be born again Wow by the way

I don't know if I ever told you this I believe I have referred to this on a number of occasions during the show but you mentioned before George Whitfield's letter to John Wesley well that was the very thing the chapel library edition of it the reprint of that letter by George Whitfield to John Wesley was the very thing that the

Lord used to finally open my eyes to the doctrines of sovereign grace as a new

Christian and I was when I initially came to Christ I was very hostile towards the idea of Calvinism and a member of the church that I had just joined and where I had just been baptized

Nigel Stone brother from England who is now in eternity with Christ he said well

I know that you're having problems with this Calvinism so I urge you to read this he gave me the chapel library edition of the letter and I read it and my first reaction to it after finishing it was oh no this is true it is biblical and I hate it but within weeks of that I came to absolutely fall in love with the doctrines of grace they revolutionized my understanding of the salvation that I had freely received by the mercy and grace of Christ and it just totally personalized the cross for me

Christ did not die for a faceless nameless sea of humanity he died for specific individuals that included me and it just really overwhelmed me with a whole new gratitude to God for his mercy and I urge people to get a hold of that from chapel library maybe available from other publishers as well that's where I first as a matter of fact in my biography

I do include in the appendices that letter in full so not only as I said earlier in this interview not only do

I actually expound the letter and take the reader point by point through the entire content of the letter but I include the letter itself so that the readers can read it for themselves we do have a number of listeners who are chomping at the bit

I'm sure to have their questions asked and answered we have I usually only give first names and cities and states of listeners but since this first question is from a dear friend whose church

I want to give a shout out to and give a plug to I'm speaking of Pastor Gary George who is one of my oldest

Christian friends actually with a friendship going back to at least the early 90s perhaps even the late 80s

I met him years ago at the John Bunyan conference which was formally held annually in Pennsylvania he is pastor of Sovereign Grace Chapel and that is located in Southbridge Massachusetts and let me give you their website that's

SovereignGraceMA standing for Massachusetts .org and Pastor Gary says in spite of John Wesley's disputes with George Whitefield over predestination was

Wesley's evangelism radically different from Whitefield's and would

John Wesley's preaching be categorized as Arminian as Arminians today that's the first of two questions that Pastor Gary has so the first question if you don't mind

Chris in spite of John Wesley's disputes with George Whitefield over predestination was

Wesley's evangelism radically different from Whitefield's and would

John's preaching be categorized as Arminian as Arminians today in other words

I guess what he's hinting at is there something different about 21st century

Arminianism and of course most people who we would categorize as Arminian would never use that term to identify themselves but there are some but we who are

Calvinists usually broadly use that label for anyone outside of Calvinism in Evangelicalism but is there anything different about Wesley's Arminian approach to evangelism than there would be from an average

Arminian pastor of the 21st century and of course he wants to know the first thing he asked was was there anything radically different from Whitefield and Wesley's preaching when you compared them side by side well having read a lot of John Wesley's sermons

John Wesley he certainly understood justification by faith alone of course that was

I mean it was really that gospel doctrine that God used to to bring

John Wesley as well as his brother Charles to faith in Christ and he never he never veered from his understanding and his conviction that would grow more and more regarding the heart of the gospel and so you know when it came to calling sinners to turn to Christ believe on Christ on Christ alone

Wesley's evangelistic preaching was was not any it wasn't radically different than Whitefield's there may be some nuances of difference between the two but nothing radically so I would even go so far as to say this which

I think is important in that you know for John Wesley unlike the second generation of his

Methodist missionaries that he would send over here to America John Wesley never in his methodology, his evangelistic methodology he never supported or never pushed for anything extra than just proclaiming

Christ and calling sinners to repent and believe and I say that because the second generation of Wesley's Methodist missionaries here in America would be the pioneers of what we know today as the altar call or the invitation system and that was something very very very foreign to the

Methodists both Armenian and Calvinistic there in England in the 18th century.

Isn't that something that really started with the so -called revivals of Charles Finney? Well, Charles Finney and I actually address this in the book on Whitefield, talking about Whitefield's strategy and evangelism, what he did

Charles Finney basically hijacked what was started and like I said pioneered by the second generation of Wesley's Methodist preachers this is of course following the

American Revolution because prior to the American Revolution they all left except for Francis Asbury but following the

American Revolution the second generation the second wave of Methodists came in they would eventually begin, they would eventually start, it wasn't immediate but they would form what would later become known as the

Anxious Bench but Charles Graveson Finney hijacked that methodology and of course he he took it much further and where he took it and how he put his own brand to it that's of course what we know of today in American Evangelicalism but in regards to John Wesley Whitefield had no problem whatsoever working with Wesley in the matter of evangelizing sinners in England I mean that is what

Whitefield desired that's what he wanted to do but of course the doctrinal divide between the two

Whitefield would have to come to terms with seeing that because of where we are doctrinally there just isn't going to be this great joint effort in reaching

England for Christ even though John Wesley was not he wasn't preaching anything radically different than Whitefield as far as evangelism was concerned in calling sinners to faith in Christ so I would say that in regards to the second part of this brother's question

Armenians today and what we see and know of in both

Armenians and even semi -Pelagians when you read John Wesley's sermons

John Wesley obviously did not believe in what we would know today as decisional regeneration in fact if you could

I have to go to our final break so if you could pick up right where you left off there on decisional regeneration this is going to be a much shorter break folks but please if you intend to send in a question do so immediately because we're rapidly running out of time and we've already got a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered so send us an email immediately to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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Where Charles Wesley came to fully embrace? Calvinistic soteriology,

I don't believe that he did. I've never read anything like that Thank you,

Pastor Gary. We have a question from Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia Is there any evidence that any of the slaves

Whitfield preached to got saved? I I Don't I don't know.

I don't know of any of any record that there is I You know,

I do know for a fact By Whitfield's own testimony and the testimony of those that worked there on the plantation at Bethsaida in Savannah as well as another plantation he had in South Carolina called

Providence that That Whitfield certainly preached the gospel incessantly to the slaves and so You know, he he does he does speak of certain slaves

Coming to faith in Christ knowing of them coming coming to Christ. And so but that's that's the only record that I know of and by the way view

Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia, you have just won a free copy of Thundering the

Word the Awakening Ministry of George Whitfield by our guest Kurt and Smith and by the way get a pastor

Gary also pastor Gary George the South Bridge Massachusetts you have also won a free copy of the book.

I already know that I want to invite Kurt back on the air

Because we've just scratched the surface and we don't have time to address all of our listener questions, but let me conclude with Murray and Ken Ross Scotland was

Whitfield condemning velvet -mouthed preaching per se Or just in the preaching of the gospel to you

Or just in the preaching of the gospel to the unsaved Would there be a place for the same preacher if so gifted to both

Thunder the gospel and teach those who are saved in a more attractive Manner, or do you feel that Whitfield would have seen it inconsistent to have two forms of communication?

reasoning that to preach Reality to the lost you should declare the same reality to the

Lord's people in like manner the best that I understand

Whitfield and In half how how he was using the term that he was not a velvet -mouthed preacher

For him no matter where he preached into whom he preached When he was preaching that's what he was doing.

He was declaring with great inflection Of his voice and with great, you know with great passion behind it and so You know, so so the best that I understand that I understand

Whitfield in that regard in that context You know, it would be you know, he would not be a velvet -mouthed preacher in in any in any context

To where you know to whom he was preaching to whether saved or lost That's you know, that's how

I've understood him Well, I want to let Our first two listeners

I want to remind you to please give me your full mailing addresses so that we can have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service cvbbs .com Ship the copies that you've won of thundering the word out to you.

I'm sorry Murray in Kenrose, Scotland we cannot afford to ship out books overseas

Nor can cvbbs .com Do that as a regular practice? So we we are sorry we cannot gift you with one of the free copies

But we want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service cvbbs .com for always shipping out

Our listeners here in the 50 United States The free books and Bibles they win

Through submitting questions to our guests. Well, thank you so much Kurt Smith for being our guest today

I want you to hang on the phone because I want to invite you back very quickly To get you to have part two of this discussion very soon

I want to thank everybody who listened and I want you all Always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater