Remembering Whitefield — E.A. Johnston

George Whitefield's Tercentenary and Ministry

For the past several weeks, we've been studying man of revival, and I want to take this time this evening, friends, to remember the life of the great British evangelist, George Whitefield. Next month, December, marks the 300-year anniversary of his birth.

It's the tercentenary celebration of the birth of George Whitefield, and I want to take this time to just look over his life tonight. I'm going to read a couple excerpts from my two-volume definitive work on Whitefield, and as I proceed, I want us to just recall how God blessed the church with such a magnificent gift in that day to his generation, whose life still impacts Christians around the world.

Whitefield's Burial Place in Newburyport

George Whitefield died in the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. As a matter of fact, if you visit that town today, the house that he died in can still be seen. It's three houses down from the church in which Whitefield is buried, the Old South First Presbyterian Church.

And you can look at that house up in the window of the middle hallway is the location where George Whitefield died in a chair that morning in September of 1770. The house is a private residence, so please do not knock on the door if you do go visit it, but you certainly can stand outside and look at it.

But you can visit the church that Whitefield used to preach in. It's the same today as it was back then when it was built in 1756. As a matter of fact, George Whitefield's remains are buried beneath the pulpit of that magnificent church.

He lies between two other men. To his left is Jonathan Parsons, the first pastor of the church, and then to Whitefield's right is Joseph Prince, the blind preacher that Whitefield often rode with. I even referred to him in his journals as I was out preaching today with the blind boy, Prince.

And you can visit that crypt, which you descend some stairs beneath the pulpit and you go down to that tomb and you can see where Whitefield's buried. And I want to read us out of my second volume today some recollections of some strange visits to that tomb.

Historical Accounts of Whitefield's Tomb

Here's one from a man by the name of J. Brown of Epping, Excess, who wrote,. In 1784, I visited my friends in New England, and hearing that Whitefield's body was undecayed, I went to see it. A lantern and candle being provided, we entered the tomb.

Our guide opened the coffin lid down to Whitefield's breast. His body was perfect. I felt his cheeks, his breast, etc. And the skin immediately rose after I had touched it. Even his lips were not consumed, not his nose.

His skin was considerably discolored, though, through dust and age. But there was no decay, and even his gown was not much impaired, nor his wig. And then in 1801, another man by the name of William Mason visited the tomb, and he said,.

About five years ago, a few friends were permitted to open Whitefield's coffin. We found the flesh totally consumed, but the gown, cassock, and bands were almost the same as when he was buried in them.

Henry Vincent's Reflection on Whitefield's Remains

But the oddest, oddest visit, friends, to that tomb was by an eloquent English lecturer by the name of Henry Vincent, who described his visit to the tomb in 1867. Let me read it to you. We descended into a cellar through a trap door behind the pulpit and entered the tomb of the great preacher.

The upper part of the lid of Whitefield's coffin opens upon hinges. We opened the coffin carefully and saw all that was mortal of the eloquent divine. The bones are blackened as though charred by fire.

The skull is perfect. I placed my hand upon the forehead and thought of the time when the active brain within throbbed with love to God and man, and when those silent lips swayed the people of England from the churchyard in Islington to Kennington Common, from the hills and valleys of Gloucestershire to the mouths of the Cornish mines, and on through the growing colonies of America.

Whitefield, Wesley, and the Need for Spiritual Revival

In these days of high church pantomime, would it not be well to turn our attention to the times of Whitefield and his glorious friend Wesley? Not by new decorations and scenery, not by candles and crosses, not by what Wycliffe boldly called the priest's rags, not by pan-Anglican synods, or by moaning out bits of scripture in unearthly chants, but by such lives as those of Whitefield and Wesley are the people to be reached and won.

I confess that, as an Englishman, I envy America the possession of the earthly remains of dear George Whitefield, but perhaps it's appropriate that, while England claims the dust of Wesley, the great republic should be the guardian of the dust of his holy brother.

I might add, friends, that in the early times of the Old South Church, right after Whitefield died, the pastors and visiting preachers of the First Presbyterian Church there in Newburyport would often place Whitefield's skull between their feet when they preached from the pulpit.

It was a tradition of the church. I want to read you now from volume one of my biography on Whitefield a couple excerpts from Richard O. Roberts and James Packer. Richard O. Roberts wrote the preface to the book, and I want to read what he had to say about Whitefield.

Whitefield's Great View of God

A man's view of God has an incredible impact upon his own life and the lives of all his life touches. It is particularly grievous that a man in ministry whose view of God is altogether too small will eventually find that the eternal fruit of his life paralleled his conception of God.

Thankfully, in the kind providence of the Almighty, he occasionally loans the world a man who really knows his God wondrously. Not only the multitudes of his own day are gloriously helped, but hundreds of years later, the magnitude of the works of God through that man are still felt and loved.

George Whitefield was one of those men whose concept of God matched both scripture and reality. Rarely in the history of the world has the impact of a single man been so profoundly powerful, deeply felt, and enduring as that of this prince of preachers and fiery evangelist.

Whitefield's Conversion and Devotional Life

And now, friends, I'd like to read a section of the foreword to this book by J .I. Packer, who really knows Whitefield better than many today as far as studying his great life. In fact, they both went to the same grammar school, St. Mary de Krip in Gloucester, England, and I hear now are the words of J .I. Packer.

George Whitefield of Gloucester, England, intercontinental gospel preacher with a voice like organ music and a lifelong West Country accent was a phenomenon. He was an unusual human being who got equipped and used in a quite unique way.

He was a very godly man from the time when, as a student in Oxford, he met the Wesleys. His passion was to grasp and be grasped by the God they served, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Following his conversion, he left Oxford and ministered in and around his hometown. He came to the bishop's notice and received ordination at 21, two years younger than the statutory minimum age. Overnight, he became a popular preacher, always highlighting the new birth throughout his ministry.

He lived by rule, maintaining a steady devotional life each day, reading and rereading the marvelous Puritan exposition of the Bible by Matthew Henry. Usually on his knees and interceding at length for the advance of God's kingdom.

His penitent humility before God was lifelong and deep and was the taproot of the compassionate, confident and confidential boldness that never ceased to amaze his hearers. He was a disciplined man, abstinence in food and drink, taking no more sleep than he needed.

And he could manage on less sleep than most and always meticulous in his personal affairs, single-minded and eager, well-focused and joyful, genial and practical. He lived every day, full stretch for his Lord, a premature aging and the onset of asthma or angina, or perhaps both, did not slow him down.

The Distinctive Power of Whitefield's Preaching

The odd response that he commanded wherever he preached was as much admiration for his transparent spiritual zeal as for the stupendous force of his preaching as such. He was a very gifted man. To his natural energetic alertness and charm were added in sanctified mode all the powers that mark great actors.

What were these? First, the power to command and hold attention, movement or action, as the classical theorists of rhetoric called it, is central here. And Whitefield was never still in the pulpit. Second, a big, in Whitefield's case, a huge voice capable of expressing the whole range of human emotions and attitudes, Whitefield could thunder, lament, caress, and encourage with overwhelming, heart-searching, heart-breaking power.

Third, a total identification with what he was projecting. Not, in Whitefield's case, a character on stage, but the holiness and mercy of God and the transformation of life that Christ brings when, through faith and repentance, we learn to live in, through, to, and for him.

Fourth, the ability to make every utterance an easy flow of vivid and arresting speech. All great actors and all great preachers could do this. Fifth, power so to impact each individual in the crowd that he or she feels personally addressed, arrested, and drawn into what is going on.

In Whitefield's case, a persuasion from God through his messenger, thus gifted as dramatic communicator, Whitefield had an evangelistic and nurturing ministry in the pulpit of unprecedented power and fruitfulness.

Whitefield's Forgotten Legacy and Prayer for Revival

And I'll add to that, friends, that there have been few preachers in the history of the Church who have possessed this holy fire. His apostolic preaching started with those who heard him. When George Whitefield preached, he was like Mount Sinai, he was altogether on a smoke.

And other than Pope or King, few men were as famous as George Whitefield in his day. It's astounding that in this century, he's almost forgotten. On a recent trip to Gloucester, his place of birth, none of the locals I talked to even heard of him.

Yet in his day, he was more well known than his good friend Ben Franklin. So friends, as we remember the great George Whitefield and his contribution to the Church, let us go to our knees and pray that God will rise up, raise up another Whitefield for our day.

We desperately need him. And I want to close this message before we go to prayer with a quote from one of the pastors of the First Presbyterian Church, the Old South Church there in Newburyport, which Whitefield last buried.

Whitefield's Preaching and the Founding of the Newburyport Church

As a matter of fact, it was Whitefield's preaching, and a revival broke out on the corner there that a church was formed. And Whitefield had the people call his good friend Jonathan Parsons from Lime, Connecticut to come be their first pastor.

Whitefield Preaches the Salt of the Earth

But here now is a scene described by Dr. Ashbel G. Vermaley at the centennial anniversary of the death of George Whitefield preached in that church. An immense crowd is hurrying at five or six o 'clock in the morning to the corner of High and Federal Streets.

And some of them, men and women too, young and old, have come riding or afoot, even from Raleigh. And for what strange thing of all other strange things to hear a sermon. But the preacher is George Whitefield.

He gives out his text. Ye are the salt of the earth. Then his voice rolls over the assembly as he begins. And whom does the apostle mean when he says, Ye are, why you, ye saints of Newbury, but I fear much, ye have lost your savor.