Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: George Whitefield 2

But the question is, why was

Whitfield acting? Why was he so full of action and drama?

Was he, as Stout claims, and here comes a whole other sequence of pejorative cynical phrases.

Was he, as Stout claims, plying a religious trade, pursuing spiritual fame, craving, that's his word, respect and power, driven by egotism, putting on performances, integrating religious discourse into the emerging language of consumption?

Is that what's going on? I think the most penetrating answer is given by Whitfield himself as he talks about acting on the stage in London.

This is right at the core of my discovery and what I think makes him tick. So listen carefully for the next minute or so to this quote.

I think this is the key to understanding how his spiritual power and his natural power intersect and the meaning of his so -called acting in his preaching.

James Lockington was present at this sermon that I'm about to quote in London and Whitfield is speaking.

So what I'm about to read you, written down verbatim by this James Lockington and is

Whitfield's own reflection on acting. I'll tell you a story.

Picture him saying this to 3 ,000 people in London maybe. 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 the stage can affect your congregations with speaking of things imaginary as if they were real while we in the 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 the 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 Whitfield, I will bawl.

I will not be a velvet -mouth preacher. I think that little vignette is the key.

There are three ways to talk in this text.

You can speak of the unreal imaginary as if it were real.

That's what actors do on the stage. Or you can speak about the real world as if it were unreal.

Namely, indifferently and bored. And that's what pastors do,

Butterton said in his day. Or you can speak about the real spiritual world as if it were wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real because it is.

And Whitfield would say, I believe, Why do I preach the way

I do? Why is there so much action and so much passion and so much animation?

It's not because I am a repressed actor from the days of my youth when

I loved so much to take my school parts. It's because I will outact the actors because what

I have to say is so much more real than what they have to say. So this kind of acting is different than the acting on the stage.

He's acting with all his might, not because it takes greater gimmicks or charades to convince people of the unreal, but because he had seen something more real than actors on the stage in London had ever dreamed.

For him, the truths of the gospel were so real, so wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real that he could not and would not preach as though they were unreal, as though they were merely interesting.

So thinking in terms of here is a repressed actor.

This was not repressed acting. This was 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. This was rendering the super real of the real as sheer, awesome, breathtaking real.

This was not affectation. This was passionate re -presentation.

This was not the mighty microscope using all of 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 boring.

There's no disagreement here that God uses natural vessels and that Whitefield's vessel was extraordinary.

What a voice! Right. Two miles away. There's no disagreement that Whitefield was a stupendous natural talent.

He was driven, affable, eloquent, intelligent, empathetic, single -minded, steel -willed, venturesome, and a voice like a trumpet you could hear two miles away and he would have been that if he'd never been born again.

That's what historians like Stout are trying to come to terms with. But then something happened to this vessel.

All of his natural gifts suddenly were subordinated to a reality because Whitefield was born again.

He was converted. It was the spring of 1735. He was 20 years old.

His birthday is in December. He was part of the

Holy Club at Oxford. John Wesley, part of it. Charles Wesley, part of it.

They were all pursuing God by discipline.

None of them was saved. I always chose the worst sort of food.

I fasted twice a week. This is Whitefield talking. My apparel was mean.

I wore woolen gloves, a patched gown, dirty shoes. I constantly walked out on cold mornings till part of one of my hands was quite black.

I could scarce creep upstairs. I was obliged to inform my kind tutor who immediately sent for a physician for me.

In other words, he was into mega asceticism, trying desperately, like Martin Luther, to find spiritual reality.

His health broke. He took a break from school. During this break,

Charles Wesley, who wasn't much farther along spiritually than he was, put into his hand

Henry Schugel's The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

If you've not read it, read it. And here's what happened in his own words.

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 the place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and gave me the new birth.

Schugel 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 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? 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 farther, and the cheek 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.

I don't think Harry Stout reckoned seriously enough with this. The power and the depth and the supernatural reality of that change in Whitefield needs to be reckoned with.

What happened there was that Whitefield was given a supernatural life, a spiritual life, and thereby the ability to see what was real.

That's what happened. That's what the new birth is. His mind was open to see reality.

Here's the way he described it. Above all, my mind being now open and enlarged,

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books and praying over, if possible, every line and word.

This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life and light and power from above.

I got more true knowledge from reading the book of God in one month than I could have acquired from all the writings of men.

That's what happens when you're born again. Your mind is altered so that when you go to the

Bible, you see wondrous things out of His law. And then it's a fight for the rest of your life, which is why the psalmist prays that way.

Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of Your law.

Now this means that Whitefield's acting, his passionate, energetic, whole -souled preaching was the fruit of his new birth.

Because his new birth had given him eyes to see life and light and power from above.

So he saw the glorious facts of the gospel as real and through those facts he saw the

Savior and what He accomplished as wonderful and terrifying and magnificent and real.

And so he cries out, I will not be a velvet -mouth preacher.

None of his natural abilities vanished. They were all taken captive to obey

Christ. Let my name be forgotten. Let me be trodden under the feet of all men if Jesus may thereby be glorified.

There was the change. So Whitefield had a new nature. He'd been born again and with this new nature,

God enabled him to see what was real. And Whitefield knew in his soul,

I will never ever speak of this real as though it were unreal.

I will not join these boring pastors. I will not preach that way.

So he became quite different and a phenomenon.

I will not be a velvet -mouthed preacher.

But he didn't abandon acting. He would out -act the actors in his preaching because they became actors to make imaginary things look real.

And he became the preacher actor to make the real things look like what they really are.

Extraordinary. Glorious. Wildly. Magnificently. Terrifyingly.

Real. He didn't, let's clarify here, he didn't pause in his preaching to have a little drama on the stage.

A little skit. He didn't stop and show a clip from a movie.

That for him, had they existed, that for him would have missed the whole point.

Preaching was the play. Preaching was the drama.

The reality of the gospel had consumed him. This was the witness.

This was the witness. You know, this was the witness.

This was the reenactment of the real. The preaching itself had become the active word of God.

God was speaking. Reality was not simply being shown. Reality was happening.

And this means that in the end, Whitefield's acting was not acting in the theatrical sense.

If a woman is an actor, actress, and her role is assigned to be a mother and on the stage, well, let's put it out in the world, there's a house that's burning.

Her child is in the second floor, and the cameras are everywhere rolling in on her from every side, and her job is, you scream, and you call the fireman, and you point to the child in the window, and she does it.

She's screaming, and tears are rolling down her face, and she's grabbing the fireman everywhere. It's my baby! It's my baby! Everybody knows she's acting.

If the same thing happens in your neighborhood, you hear the sirens, and you go out of your door, and you look, you see the big black smoke from the end of the block, you run down there, and there's this woman, it's my baby!

It's my baby! Up there, look, she's gotta go! Or she starts running, and they take her down. Nobody says she's acting.

It looks exactly the same. Exactly! There's a difference.

It's real! It's real! You don't call it acting.

It is, and it isn't. It looks like it. It's because there really is a child up there.

There really is a fire. The child could really die. This really is his mother.

Everything's real. And that's the way it was for Whitefield. The new birth had opened his eyes to what was real, and the magnitude of what was real.

God. Creation. Human beings. Sin. Satan.

Divine justice and wrath. Heaven. Hell. Incarnation. Perfections of Christ.

Death of Christ. Atonement. Redemption. Propitiation. Resurrection. Holy Spirit. Saving grace.

Forgiveness. Justification. Reconciliation with God. Peace. Sanctification. Love. The second coming of Christ.

New heavens. New earth. Everlasting joy. These were real!

Spectacularly. Gloriously. Supremely. Over everything. Real!

And he felt it to the bottom of his bones because he had been born again.

When he warned of wrath and pleaded for people to escape and lifted up Christ, he wasn't playacting.

He was calling down the kind of emotions and actions that correspond to such realities.

That's what preaching does. It seeks to exalt Christ and describe

Him and offer salvation and persuade sinners with emotions and words and actions that correspond to the weight of the reality.

Now, let's be more specific. When I say he saw reality and therefore his so -called acting is not acting because it's in the service of reality, not the service of imagination made to look like reality.

What was the reality that he saw? Let's be more specific.

This is evangelistic preaching. He had a flock in London that he would go back to regularly, and others would care for it while he was away, but mainly he's an evangelist.

He's a Billy Graham type, only preaching a thousand times more than Billy Graham did without a microphone more than my daddy did.

I read the Banner of Truth collection of sermons all the way through.

So I have a taste of I haven't read all 57 sermons, but I read that book of collected sermons, and what you get is an incredible impression that these are unbelievably doctrinal.

You even say, you're kidding me. He said this to 8 ,000 people?

I don't even know how to say this to 8 ,000 people. I mean, you've got to say this slowly and carefully because it's so complex.

How did he do this? That's the first impression I got is that these are amazingly doctrinal.

And as you know, I suppose the doctrine was the doctrine of grace.

He used that phrase over and over. Doctrines of grace, or Reformation doctrines.

Calvinism. From first to last, Stout says, rightly, he was a

Calvinist who believed that God chose him for salvation and not the reverse.

J. I. Packer observes Whitfield was entirely free of doctrinal novelties.

Whitfield said, I embrace the Calvinistic scheme not because Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me.

And then he wrote to John Wesley in 1740, I never read anything that Calvin wrote.

I mean, can you bear witness in such a way? What an effective way to bear witness to the truth of Calvinism.

And that was his way. He said that in 1740. I don't know if it was true when he died. I never read anything that Calvin wrote.

I love it. What Whitfield saw when his new eyes were opened were the five points of Calvinism.

He was simply blown away, this is just a few months after his conversion, and his main helper was

Matthew Henry, plus his Bible. He was blown away by election and perseverance and their connection.

So, E .P. This became for him the rock solid foundation of his life in ministry.

Here's what he wrote. 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.

A year later, he wrote to John Wesley, the doctrine of election and the final perseverance of those who are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, than when

I saw you last. He loved assurance.

He had a deep love for his safe place in the mighty hands of God.

He said, Surely I am safe because put into his mighty arms though I may fall, yet I shall not utterly be cast away.

The Spirit of the Lord Jesus will hold and uphold me.

Now, a lot of people kind of quietly are drawn to these things as they see them in the

Bible and don't say anything because they haven't gone deep enough, like Whitfield did, for them to sound glorious, sweet, precious, good news.

But not so Whitfield. Whitfield was not quiet about these things. They are strewn throughout his preaching.

He said to Wesley, I must preach the gospel of Christ and this I cannot do without speaking of election.

In his sermon, based on 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 30, the sermon was called

Christ the Believer's Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption. He exalts in the doctrine of election.

Now remember, he's lifting up his voice to thousands of ordinary people. 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 everyone 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 dazzles the weak eyes of some of God's children.

However, though they know it not, all the blessings they receive, all the privileges they do or will enjoy through Jesus Christ flow from the everlasting love of God the