Episode 45: George Whitefield (Part 1)

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Christ the King and the Local Church

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Eddie, you're a little bit left out today.

I know, because I don't have a luscious beard.

Like you brothers.

Ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha.

We're talking about the one and only David Wesley Brown from Plumerville.

Plumerville?

That's how it's spelled. It's spelled, it's spelled P-L-U-M-E-R. I'm like, I know everybody calls it Plumerville, but that's not phonetically correct.

No, I think they actually changed it. I believe they changed it in like the 70s, when they took out an M. One time it was spelled correctly.

And someone got mad?

It was too long for the sign.

Ha ha ha. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co-host, Allen Nelson, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church. With me as always is the one, well, not the one and only Eddie Ragsdale ever, but the best Eddie Ragsdale, in my opinion.

Say hello, Eddie.

I'm the only one you know.

Hello, everybody.

And then we also have special guests today, pastor of First Baptist Plumerville, Arkansas, our good friend, Wes Brown. Say hello, Wes.

Hello there.

What do we need to know about you as we get started, Wes?

Don't need to know anything about me. I mean, I'm a, you told it, I'm pastor of First Baptist Plumerville. I'm married to Kristen. I have four sons, Asa, Jonah, Ezra, and Judah. And I'm saved by the sovereign grace of our God and amazed at his mercy.

And your beard is big.

Probably a little long.

Ha ha ha.

And amazing. It's amazing. You know, just having a long beard, that's one thing, but yours is great.

It's full.

It's a great beard.

Too full. I had to tame it before I jumped on the Zoom call.

Well, this is early for you, Wes. You're what we call a night owl.

So I'm a night owl also, Wes.

Yeah.

Why Study Church History and Biographies of the Faithful

Well, we invited Wes on today because we want to address the subject of George Whitefield. And so Wes has been doing some reading on that. I've recently taught some stuff on Whitefield as well in a class at church on the great awakening.

And so we just thought us three sitting around together talking about the ministry of Whitefield would be a fun couple of episodes here. But here's how I want to take this conversation. The first thing I want to do is this.

I want to ask you brothers, okay, we're going to talk about this guy who lived in the 18th century. What's the big deal?

Why?

Is there any biblical admonition for us to care about those who've gone before us? Or do I just need my Bible and my current contemporary situation? So what do you guys think? Why should we think about, obviously you are in agreement with me or you wouldn't be on this episode, but why do you guys think that we should be talking about men in the past like George Whitefield?

Why don't we start with you, Eddie?

Well, I was going to say, I will defer to our guests, but I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is Hebrews chapter 11. We see there in the scripture that the Hebrew writer or the Hebrew preacher, however you take the book of Hebrews, wants to look back at those who have shown an example of faith in the past.

And you know, this morning, me and a couple of brothers in our church, we were just looking at 1 Timothy chapter four, where Paul encourages Timothy and tells him not to let anyone despise him for his youth, but to set an example in faith, in love, in conduct, in his speech.

And so when he gives those things that he's supposed to be an example in, that's not only true for, I need my brothers, I need Alan and Wes to be examples for me, or I need to set that example for my church, but it's also true that we need to look back at these brothers and sisters who have gone before us.

And you're looking at the book of Hebrews, and the book of Hebrews is dealing with the history of Israel and how God has fulfilled his promises, his covenantal promises, and these people that had looked forward to those covenantal promises.

When we look back at the last 2 ,000 years of church history, what we're really looking at is brothers and sisters who have walked faithfully in the new covenant. And we want to look at that and say, well, that should be instructive for us.

Maybe there'll be some cautionary tales of things we don't want to do, but certainly there will be some things that we'll learn that we do want to do, some things we want to follow, practices we want to implement from faithful brothers in the past.

Amen.

Wes?

Yeah, I agree totally. You know, you keep first things first, obviously. Your study of the scriptures is most important, but I don't think that we're advocating for a competition between church history or biography and studying the Bible.

I found that when I do study church history or biographies of brothers, sisters that have gone before us, it spurs on my Bible study and it encourages me to increase my faithfulness in that personally.

Because it marries us to God's story.

Yeah.

It shows us, you know, God's story doesn't end with early church or the apostolic era.

Yeah, yeah.

He still sees sovereign throughout all of history and we see him moving and working in his church throughout all of history. And so, yeah, it's different. You know, we don't, there's nothing, there's no inspired account of the church in the 300s or 800s or 1500s, but we still have excellent histories and stories that we can look at and be encouraged by.

Yeah.

And so, it helps. I think it helps us to not feel alone. I think it helps us and it protects us from feeling unique. There's so many people who just think that, oh, everything that we're faced today is unique.

No one's ever faced this before where we are in things that just would flummox all people who came behind us. And then you actually start studying it and you look and say, oh, wow. No, this has been faced many times before.

And here's how, here's a great example of faithfulness in this area. And here's someone who stood up in a time, not only that was like ours, but much worse than ours.

Amen. I'll just add to the conversation, Psalm 111 too, which says, great are the works of Yahweh, studied by all who delight in Him. And so, if we delight in God, then we certainly want to study His works.

And that includes not only what the scriptures teach us, but even what God has done in the past and through great men in the past. And so, we come today, and this is gonna be two episodes. We come today to start talking about George Whitefield.

Before we talk about him, why don't we list in this episode some things that you guys have read and would recommend for others to read, whether they've heard a little bit about Whitefield or maybe they know Whitefield.

What are some resources you guys would recommend to people checking out to learn more about Whitefield? Eddie, do you want me to start?

Yeah, you start.

Okay.

So, a couple I would mention. The first is, there's a two-volume by Arnold Dalimore, and I haven't actually read the two-volume by Dalimore. I've heard it just has a lot more source material in it. But where I became really acquainted with Whitefield was the condensed volume of Dalimore.

And then, not long after that, I read the biography by Thomas Kidd. So, my top, the top one, I would say, is the Dalimore. I've also read the one by Thomas Kidd. That is helpful. And then, there's a real short one, real easy-to-read one by Steve Lawson.

Yeah, there you go. And then, I see that you have also, okay, I see Wes is holding up those. Wes, I won't talk about those two, that two-volume sermon collection you have. Why don't you talk about that?

Because I have that as well, and would recommend that as well.

Go ahead.

Yeah, if you've only got, I mean, you have no time at all, pick up Lawson. I mean, it's just a small book, and it's 129 to 130 pages. So, I mean, that's, I mean, you could literally read that just a few minutes a night, and you'd be done with it in a week.

The condensed version of Dalimore's biography is the first one I read on him. But what I love about Whitfield is like, if you wanna say, well, why should I read a biography of George John Whitfield? I would just encourage you to pick up some of the sermons.

Yeah.

You pick up, and you start reading some of George Whitfield's sermons, you're gonna go, I wanna know more about this guy.

Yeah.

He's one of the few guys from hundreds of years ago that you pick up, and his sermons just, they're so easy to read. He doesn't use a ton of antiquated language, or more fancy language. And his sermons are so full of heart and passion that you start reading some of his sermons, and you're gonna want to know his story.

And there are several, you know, now we kind of are spoiled to several good biographies of Whitfield, but that wasn't the case for quite some time.

Has any of y 'all read Thundering the Word, the one that Free Grace Press puts out?

I was going to, yes. I read this one after Dalmore, and this guy, Mr. Kurt Smith, you can just tell he's been a big fan of Whitfield for a long time. And he's read a lot of the scholarly works that might be a little more

Biological, yeah.

It's a great, great little work. And very encouraging, it's real pastoral. And so anyway, that's a great one too, called Thundering the Word.

That doesn't look like a little work.

Part of it is that he includes several letters.

Oh, okay.

At the end, but it's 174 pages.

Okay, that's not bad. Yeah, that's from Free Grace Press, that's good. And then of course that two-volume sermons from Crossway, that came out not long ago. And then, Eddie, were you going to add anything?

Well, the only thing I would add, I was going to mention Dalmore as well. I actually listened to that on Audible. And there's some books that are, when you're looking at in-depth theology, it's hard to listen to those kinds of books.

But when it's a biography, if you're looking for something to listen to, I would say biographies are great. And then the other book I was going to mention was the Steve Lawson book. And I would say not just about George Whitefield, but I've read not all of them, but several of those Steve Lawson.

And those are great introductions to any of those people that Steven Lawson has written about. But the other thing, if somebody wants to do something other than read a book, if you go to YouTube and you look up Bruce Gore, he has a session that he did.

It's like 45 minutes long. It was basically a Sunday school class, but he does a session on George Whitefield. And it was very good as well. So if anybody wants to look that up, that would be good too.

And I just, if someone's new to it, and for me, what I do, there's going to be recommendations, but I pick up some easy one like George Whitefield from a guy I know like Steve Lawson, and then check the bibliography in the back.

In that Lee Gattis volume, he quotes Dr. Lloyd-Jones as saying, the Lee Gattis is the crossway two-volume sermons, that Lloyd-Jones said that Whitefield is the most neglected man in the whole of church history.

The ignorance concerning him is appalling. So if you don't know much about Whitefield, you'll take the doctor's advice and study up on him, so.

We'll get into why, so we could, we have time to get into why that is. And some of that's Whitefield's doing.

Sure, we'll get it. Yeah, but we'll definitely get into that. Let's take ourselves, let's take ourselves all the way back to December 16th. And it's the year 1714, it's December. So it's appropriate to talk about an inn, right?

But this time there was room in the inn, the Bell Inn, ran by Thomas and his wife Elizabeth, who on that day, December 16th, 1714, welcomed to the family their seventh child. And nine days later on Christmas Day, 1714, they have, I'm putting in air quotes here, their son, George Whitefield, baptized.

And thus the world is not acquainted with him yet, but here he is. The cries of the newborn child would sure one day be crying out, repent and believe the gospel. So that starts our journey. Where do we go from there?

Whitefield was born to more of a, kind of a middle-class family, but his dad ran the inn there. I forgot, what's the town name? I had to look that up again.

It's Gloucestershire.

His dad, the family's okay, but early on his dad dies. How old was Whitefield when his mom remarries? He's a little bit older. Apparently the new husband is not as financially savvy as the previous one.

And so the family, I don't think you could ever call them impoverished, but their financial means from the time that Whitefield's born to the time that he gets a little bit older, becomes less than where they were at.

And that actually is going to start providentially, that's going to play into Whitefield's life. What things do you guys want to mention about his growing up years?

I think it's important just to recognize the era that he was born into was a low ebb of the church that in England at that time, it was an epidemic of nominal Christianity. And I mean, on a scale that we've never known.

I mean, C .S. Lewis when he, in mere Christianity talks, compares the term Christian to the term gentlemen. I mean, everyone in England would have considered themselves a Christian. Of course I'm Christian, I'm English.

Right, very good.

But the personal piety or personal faith was so foreign to so many of them. And the beer halls and all of the places of ill repute were full all the time. Yeah, there was just

Yay Christendom.

Well, I think it's important to mention again, just to reemphasize, I heard that jab. Just to reemphasize, I think it's important to say someone is not a Christian is akin to saying you're not English, right?

Right, yeah. I think that's good. And so that's, of course, he was baptized. If I didn't say earlier, he was baptized into the Anglican church, which obvious. So I think all that's very good. I know that when he was younger, he had an aptitude for play acting.

I know that his teachers would notice this. And if there was some sort of part or something to be read, he sort of had this natural aptitude toward being able to act well. And I think God's gonna use that later in his life.

Obviously he's unconverted. I don't have it up right now, but I know he's written about his time before Christ that he was a wicked little boy. You know? And so obviously he recognizes that, but he ends up having to help.

So the financial means is gonna be an issue. So he has to end up having to help at the end. And so he has to help with serving tables and taking care of guests and such at the end. And of course, that's God's providence.

I think about David, think about how he had to kill lions and bears. And then he faces the Goliath. But similarly in Whitfield's life, he had to do these things and that's gonna set him up for when he goes to Oxford.

So do we wanna say anything else before going to Oxford?

I just, there's a lot of things in his childhood that if you study and read that I think put flesh and bone on him. And when you just read a sermons, man, he just sort of ascends to the angelic. But when you start reading about the time that he was born into and the family issues, like it would be hard for any boy to lose his father age and then for his mom to remarry.

And in that day, the union didn't work out. And how bad it had to be for that to be the case. His mistreatment, his stepdad's mistreatment of his brothers, it seems like his brothers had more of an aptitude for running the inn and he just kept messing it up.

Pulling them further and further down into poverty, lost dreams, things that might've been that never would be because of that in his family. And one of those things being the fact that he never thought he'd be able to go to Oxford.

But that would be something that happened as a result of all those things. Yet through the, the word servitor is coming to my mind, but that may be wrong term.

No, that's the right term for Oxford. Yeah, but go ahead. Sorry, I interrupted your thought. Really.

No, I just that, man, there are a lot of things that he had to walk through that are not unique to that time.

Yeah.

And that so many people have to walk through today. So many people that we pastor, their childhoods look like that. And our things in our families, I'm sure that we've had to walk through and he did too.

Yeah.

He didn't float in and preach and then float out. So even in his going to Oxford, he goes there and the only way he can is by being a servant of the guys who can afford it.

Whitefield at Oxford and the Holy Club

Yeah, he goes in 1732 in the fall. So he is not 18, be 18 in December. And that's, yeah, he's intellectually gifted. He goes unconverted and we'll talk about that obviously, but I think maybe there is the allurement of the priesthood in a sense that maybe this is a bit of conjecture really, but in the sense of, well, that's a way I can get out.

At one time, they didn't think he could go because they can't afford it. But as Wes is saying here, he's able to go by being a servitor, being a servant essentially of students, the wealthy students. Now, how demeaning and humbling would that be?

But Whitfield takes the opportunity and he goes, and it is said that he was very good. And the reason, a couple of reasons, one though would be that he had a lot of practice having to work at the end.

And so now it's the fall of 1732 and we find him at Pembroke College at Oxford. And what happens at Oxford? Well, he begins to become more serious about religious matters. He falls in with a motley crew of students who created a club.

What was that club's name?

Holiness Club.

Yeah, the Holy Club. Some of them called them the Methodist and were introduced to two brothers by the name of

John and Charles Wesley.

Yeah, that's right. Is that your namesake, Wesley?

My namesake is my dad. But I think before me, there are five Wesleys that skips a generation in my family on the Brown side. So I have to connect that to the Wesleys, I think, because I think that somewhere way back there, there is a Methodist preacher.

Yeah, I have a distant cousin who was a notorious outlaw in Texas, John Wesley Hardin. And his dad was a Methodist preacher. So yeah, that's that Wesley name. But anyway, we're not talking about Wesley.

Whitfield meets the Wesley brothers and they form a friendship. But the problem is they're all members of the Holy Club and they're all unconverted.

Right, they're not believers.

But what are they doing in this Holy Club?

They are practicing personal piety to a greater degree than any Christian that I know.

Mm-hmm, yeah. Starving themselves, Whitfield would lay out in the snow, giving, you know, generous is not the right word. It's like over, you know, giving themselves even into poverty, going without sleep.

In fact, there are those who theorize that, you know, Whitfield, spoiler alert, Whitfield, he died. And so he's not still living today, yeah. He passes away in 1770. And he, so he wasn't quite 56. Well, that's relatively young.

And some Very young. Yeah, some have, well, I'm even for that day. And some have, you know, theorized that part of the reason his health was in such poor state is because of these early years at Oxford where they just worked, worked, worked, worked.

And yet, none of these young men at this point were able to find peace with God.

Do you brothers think that that extreme pietism was a reaction against the The nominalism that they had grown up in? The nominal Christendom that they had grown up in?

Absolutely, you see that today. You see that in young men today. You see that who are frustrated at the status quo of the church. And you might say, go off too far on a different side in reaction to it.

And that's what these, they're not, they weren't brothers then, but we'll call them brothers now. That's what these brothers were dealing with in their pre-converted state is, okay, we don't understand Christianity yet, but we know it's not that, and we're running in this direction.

And I do think it's hard to talk about Whitfield without talking about Wesley. And we know from Wesley's own testimony that he was already dealing with genuine conviction even years before his conversion.

Yeah.

You know, and so I do think they were dealing, the Holy Spirit was bringing genuine conviction and before they came to rightly understand the gospel, sometimes a person can throw themselves into pietism or legalism as a way to try to deal with the conviction of their sin.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's why you see their personal piety went to a sinful degree. Now they're not regenerate, so none of what they were, all of what they were doing was filthy rags. But if they had been regenerate at that point in their lives, then some of what they were doing would still have been sinful, you know, the way that they had responded and how far they had made an idol of their piety.

Yeah.

Now to push back just so everybody, to give a balanced view here, I will say this. There are some of the disciplines that Whitfield learned that he's going to carry later into his life and that Christians should carry later into their life.

But just to give a balanced view there, but absolutely, I'm in agreement. Well, down the road then, there is a book by Henry Schugle. Henry Schugle wrote this book in the 1600s. The book is The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

And so Whitfield must have been given this book sometime in 1734 or early 1735. The book is just talking about, well, I'll read a portion from it. Schugle says, some falsely place religion in going to church, doing hurt to no one, being constant in the duties of the closet, meaning private prayer, and now and then reaching out their hands to give alms to their poor neighbors.

Well, what's the problem here? That speaks directly to what Whitfield's doing, right? And so Whitfield at this point in his life, I have a quote here from Joseph Tracy. Whitfield says, my soul was in agony.

I thirsted for God's salvation and a sense of divine love. And think about this, he's hurting himself physically and it's not helping his soul. And so Charles, who wasn't converted, Charles Wesley, gives him this copy of Henry Schugle, The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

And by the way, Free Grace Press puts that out as well. And he begins wrestling with that. And at some point, it's after Easter in 1735, he's converted. And he writes in one of his journals, God was pleased to remove the heavy load to enable me to lay hold of his dear son by living faith.

What else do you guys wanna mention or talk about in terms of his conversion here?

Well, I think the first really great benefit when you're studying Whitfield that you come to is the emphasis of the doctrine of regeneration. You see young men who are pursuing piety to a level that it's just not, we don't see it in our culture.

We don't see them people doing this. And I'm glad for one, because Whitfield almost died in the pursuit of that idol. His conversion is in a bed because he is so sick, he can't move anymore from all that he's done to his body.

And I mean, you think about a young man, 18, 19 years old and what you have to do to completely incapacitate yourself at that age. I mean, you're 18, 19 years old, you're invincible, man. You can look at all the videos of the guys at that age, sliding down a rail on a skateboard and hitting the concrete and popping right back up.

But what he did to such a degree that he was completely incapacitated. God completely broke him down in order for him to through the Holy Spirit, make him see that he must be born again. And we see the cost of losing regeneration, losing that doctrine on the church.

Yeah, we saw, yeah, we see it then. You're talking about, yeah, and we also see it now. But yeah, amen, that's right, yeah.

It'd be nice if somebody had wrote a couple of books.

About regeneration.

I know, especially Quattro, I haven't done much thinking about that, but I just wanted to bring it up.

Yeah, no, I think it's great. And I think we're gonna wind down here on this episode. So we've gotten to 1735. Let me give you an interesting historical note here. In 1735 in Northampton, the people of Northampton under Jonathan Edwards at the end of 1734 and into 1735, they're experiencing revival.

But later on in 1735, by late spring into the summer, the revival fades there. And it won't pick back up again until George Whitefield in 1740. But that's what's interesting. That's the very same time that the revival is cooling in Northampton is the exact same time that God converts Whitefield.

And at this point, Edwards and Whitefield don't even have an idea of who the other one is, right? So just a reminder of God's precious and sweet providence that at any time, he's doing so many things.

But we'll shut it down there for this episode. So we've gotten to Whitefield's conversion and we'll pick right back up there with next episode. So why don't you close us out, Eddie, tell everybody goodbye.

See you guys next week.

The New Birth, Regeneration, and Whitefield’s Conversion

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemas, the masterpiece of God.

How are you gonna respond?