October 22, 2020 Show with Kurt M. Smith on “Thundering the Word: The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield” (Part 2)

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 22nd day of October 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back for the second time to address part two of the topic that we began last

Thursday on the 15th of October, and that topic is the title and theme of the new book by Kurt M.

Smith, Thundering the Word, the Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield, and Kurt M. Smith is pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, in addition to being a prolific author, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Kurt M.

Smith. Glad to be here.

We can redress this wonderful subject in Whitefield again. Amen. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and as always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, let's say you're asking a question in regard to the theology of George Whitefield, and perhaps you are beginning to wholeheartedly agree with that theology, which happens to be nicknamed

Calvinism, happens to be nicknamed Reformed Theology, the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, the doctrines of Free Grace, we could go on and on with nicknames, but perhaps you're starting to see the truth in these teachings, and you're a member of a church that is hostile towards them, you don't want to identify yourself because you're not ready to make it publicly known that you are agreeing with these things, or perhaps you're even a pastor in that situation, you disagree with your own fellow elders, or your denomination over this, well, we understand questions like that, that involve personal and private matters, we understand that you would want to remain anonymous, but if it's just a general question on history and theology and on George Whitefield himself, then please at least give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Well, for the sake, again, of those who have not heard you on this program, Pastor Kurt, tell our listeners about Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

Well, I'll be glad to. Providence Reformed Baptist Church is a Reformed Baptist Church.

We are only four years old, having constituted back in August of 2016.

We are located 45 minutes northeast of Birmingham, Alabama, and one of the most thrilling things that I can say that's very thrilling for me as a pastor regarding this wonderful congregation that I minister to and I shepherd is just that at this time, at this place and season in the life of our church, we are very much like -minded and experiencing real genuine peace and unity of the

Holy Spirit, which is wonderful. And I'm just very thankful for the healthiness, the spiritual healthiness that is very evident in our congregation right now.

Great. Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, and technically in Remlap, Alabama, their email address is prbc1689 .org,

PRBC, standing for Providence Reformed Baptist Church, 1689, standing for the 1689

London Baptist Confession, .org, prbc1689 .org. Well, we had quite a fact -filled interview last week on George Whitefield.

It always is surprising when you hear, not only surprising, but disturbing to hear that there are people who not only opposed his ministry then, but there are even people who oppose his legacy today, even those who share his

Calvinistic faith. But if you could, perhaps start off with just another summary, especially for those who missed last week's show, who may be unfamiliar with George Whitefield.

Give us a summary of who this great man of faith was. Well, George Whitefield, he lived between the years of 1714 to 1770.

He died just three months shy of his 56th birthday, which was

September the 30th, 1770, so 250 years ago, which of course, as I mentioned last week, that's one of the reasons for the publication of my new biography on Whitefield to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his death.

Whitefield was an Anglican priest, and he remained true to the

Anglican confession, the 39 Oracles of the Church of England, all the 34 years that he preached the gospel.

But he was not an Anglican rector or pastor of a particular parish in England.

The Lord providentially moved Whitefield to be an itinerant evangelist par excellence.

He traveled extensively and really more than any figure in that time and that period of the 18th century.

As I stated in the book, no one reached more people for Jesus Christ in his day and time than Whitefield.

Whitefield, he was a man on a mission, and he pursued every avenue, he pursued every potential door that was open.

He took opportunities, he made opportunities to make much of Christ. And so while he remained an

Anglican priest, Anglican clergy, yet you would find him preaching the gospel to saints of all different stripes, whether they were

Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists as well as Anglicans. But of course, as we discussed last week, most of the people in his own denomination shunned him and cast him out.

That was very largely because the primary message that Whitefield proclaimed was that you must be born again.

For the Church of England at that time, they did not want to hear that message.

I mean, unbelief had gripped them and had them in a spiritual death grip at that period.

I remember a humorous quote by him, and I don't know if you're aware of the quote or if you're aware of how dismayed

Whitefield truly was because it's a humorous quote, so it's kind of hard to know, not knowing much of the background, whether or not he was truly upset or just saying this in jest.

But the quote that I remember was when he was watching and hearing about the fact that many of the people that had been led to Christ through his preaching and teaching and ministry, when he had found out that many of them were becoming

Baptists, he said something of the effect, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but it was something very close to that many of his beloved chicks had become ducks.

And he was obviously making a reference to a duck being something that frequently dips itself in water.

But are you familiar with that story? Very familiar with that, yeah. How badly did

I remember the quote? Yeah, you quoted him accurately, and he was saying that in response to a whole movement of Congregationalists out of New England who were converted to the

Baptist faith, and they became known in Baptist church history, in American Baptist church history, as the separate

Baptists. In fact, one of their most well -known figures was, in fact, my fifth -rate grandfather,

Daniel Marshall, who in 1744 heard Whitefield and was greatly inspired by Whitefield's evangelistic zeal, which

Daniel Marshall and his brother -in -law, Shubel Stearns, caught that fire and took it with them to the

Middle Colonies and down to the Southern Colonies, and they would be responsible for the planting of a multiplicity of Baptist churches throughout

North and South Carolina. Then my fifth -rate grandfather,

Daniel Marshall, would end up planting the first continuing Baptist church in the state of Georgia.

It had not become a state as of yet, but Whitefield, the separate

Baptists were really and truly on many counts the fruit of his labors.

And one thing that, or one person, I should say, that we who are

Reformed, when we are on the receiving end of the slander that Calvinism or Reformed people are those that deaden or even rob the preaching of the gospel of its urgency and its passion and its compassion for the lost, and George Whitefield is that person that most of us immediately first and foremost go to, what are you kidding me?

Do you know anything about George Whitefield? Tell us about when he came to understand and embrace

Calvinism and why this is a slander or caricature that Calvinism and Calvinists deaden the faith, rob evangelism of its zeal and urgency and compassion for the lost, because obviously

Whitefield, all of those things were actually hallmarks of his evangelism, the zeal, the urgency, the passion, and the fact that he was out there, out in the open air declaring these things because it was as if, you know, we were under enemy attack or something.

The urgency was so great that he wanted everyone in the community within an earshot of his voice to hear these warnings and also, not only the warnings, but the good news of the gospel that is the only remedy to the warnings.

Well, the first part of your question as in regards to how Whitefield came to see the doctrines of the

Reformed faith, this was something that happened to him in the first two years of his

Christian life. He was an avid reader from the very beginning of his

Christian life with the works of Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry's commentary on the

Bible was inseparable from Whitefield's daily diet in the

Word. In fact, he drank in so much of Matthew Henry that even John Wesley would say at one point that he could remember sermons that Whitefield preached, and he heard

Matthew Henry in the sermons. But Matthew Henry, as we know, was an

English Puritan, you know, very strong Evangelical Calvinist Reformed.

So, from the writings of Henry and as well as many other of the

Puritan writers, in those first couple of years that Whitefield was growing, maturing, and in that very quickly, in the faith, he was cutting his spiritual teeth on the

Reformed faith. And then when he went to America for the first time, he came into contact with many of the

Congregationalists, some of the Presbyterians, and discovered that in colonial

America, different than in Great Britain in his time and place, there were more

Brethren of the strong Calvinistic faith of the Reformed faith.

In fact, so much so that he even wrote Wesley back and told

John Wesley, you would not like it here in colonial America, because there are so many

Calvinists. So, anyway, that's how

Whitefield came to see the doctrines of grace through those writings. And of course,

Whitefield would say himself in regards to coming to see the doctrines of grace, he would say that, you know, it wasn't

John Calvin that taught him these things, but Jesus Christ. He gave the credit where the credit was rightly due, and that was the

Word of God. But certainly, the writings of other great men of God who went before him helped him with the illumination that the

Holy Spirit had given them, too, because George Whitefield, thankfully, had a very, very humble, teachable spirit about him, and he knew that he was not the only filter of illumination that the

Holy Spirit would give understanding to. In regards to his preaching of the gospel, in the ninth chapter of my book, that chapter is entitled,

Preach the Gospel. And in that chapter, what I give are six distinctive traits of Whitefield's gospel preaching, which should be the distinctive traits of any true gospel preaching.

But of course, what is obviously shocking to those of a very different persuasion and way of thinking theologically that would be very opposed to Calvinism is that Whitefield, one, would preach the gospel anyway, that he would call sinners to faith in Christ.

In fact, he was so, in his words, promiscuous with spreading the gospel that John Wesley called

Whitefield an inconsistent Calvinist, because Wesley, in his

Arminian thinking, could not understand how Whitefield could be so promiscuous in his gospel preaching and giving the gospel so freely just to everyone who was within earshot of him.

But in the chapter that I title, Preach the Gospel, the traits that I give in Whitefield's gospel preaching, the first of those traits is that his gospel preaching was aggressive.

And this is something that J .C. Ryle, in his biographical sketch of George Whitefield, wrote about particularly.

In fact, he made it a major point in his sketch of Whitefield. He said, Above all,

Whitefield was the very first Englishman who seems to have thoroughly understood what

Dr. Thomas Chalmers aptly called the aggressive system.

He was the first to see that Christ's ministers must do the work of fishermen.

They must not wait for souls to come to them, but must go after souls and compel them to come in.

He did not sit tamely by his fireside like a cat on a rainy day, mourning over the wickedness of the land.

Whitefield went forth to beard the devil in his high places.

He attacked sin and wickedness face to face and gave them no peace.

He dived into holes and corners after sinners. He hunted out ignorance and vice wherever they can be found.

In short, he set on foot a system of action which, up to this time, had been comparatively unknown in England, but a system which once commenced has never ceased to be employed down to the present day.

And so Whitefield, which I compare to the Apostle Paul, as many others have since Whitefield's passing, with Paul, if you remember when he wrote to the

Corinthian church, he said, And I, when I came to you, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Paul himself was aggressive like that. He went after sinners. He went to them.

He did not wait for them to come to him. Another trait of Whitefield's gospel preaching was compassion.

He was deeply, deeply compassionate in his gospel preaching. He was moved over the spiritual plight of his hearers if they did not turn to Christ for salvation.

In fact, there was hardly a gospel sermon Whitefield preached without the visible shedding of tears for those who stood or sat listening in unbelief.

Whitefield's assistant in the last few years of his life, a man by the name of Cornelius Winter, he bore witness to this unveiled solicitude and tenderness toward those to whom

Whitefield preached Christ. This is what Winter said, I hardly ever knew him to go through a sermon without weeping, more or less, and I truly believe his tears were the tears of sincerity.

His voice was often interrupted by his affection, and I have heard him say in the pulpit,

You blame me for weeping, but how can I help it when you will not weep for yourselves?

Though your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and for aught you know, you are hearing your last sermon, and they nevermore have an opportunity to have

Christ offered to you. Cornelius Winter said, Whitefield's freedom in the use of his passions often put my pride to the trial.

I could hardly bear such unreserved use of tears and the scope he gave to his feelings, for sometimes he exceedingly wept, stamped loudly and passionately, and was so frequently overcome that for a few seconds you would suspect he would never recover, and when he did, nature required so little time to compose himself.

That is some unreserved compassion that Whitefield showed forth in his preaching.

The other trait that I mentioned is that his gospel preaching was interrogative.

It was interrogative, and what this means, as related to preaching, the interrogative element works to search and probe the listener that it might establish the facts asserted.

But where this method in gospel preaching is most effective is when the truth proclaimed is laid bare by a series of questions which are personal, pointed, and awakening in their content.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, in his famous Preaching and Preachers publication, he called the interrogative method the element of attack.

Lloyd -Jones said that this is what distinguishes a sermon from a lecture, where a lecture appeals almost exclusively to the mind.

A sermon, however, Lloyd -Jones says, does more as it appeals to the conscience and heart of the hearer.

In other words, it takes the preached word and promotes its application in the most personal way possible.

And so you see that with George Whitefield in his gospel preaching.

When you read his sermons, and again quoting from J .C. Ryle who gave attention to this also,

Ryle said, Whitefield never used that indefinite expression, we, which seems as peculiar to English pulpit oratory and which only leaves a hearer's mind in a state of misty confusion.

He met men face -to -face like one who had a message from God to them,

I have come here to speak to you about your soul. And scores of Whitefield's printed sermons give example of this.

I'll just give one example. This is how Whitefield interrogated his listeners.

This is from a sermon he preached called the Kingdom of God. And in a rapid fire of questions that he gave, this is what he said to his hearers.

Before I go further, I would endeavor to apply this. Give me leave to put this question to your hearts.

You call yourselves Christians and would count me uncharitable to call it into question, but I exhort you to let conscience speak out.

Do not bribe it any longer. Did you ever see yourselves as damned sinners?

Did conviction ever fasten upon your hearts? And after you had been made to see your want of Christ and made to hunger and thirst after righteousness, did you lay hold on Christ by faith?

Did you ever close with Christ? Was Christ's righteousness ever put upon your naked souls?

Was ever a feeling of application of his righteousness made to your hearts? Was it or was it not?

If not, you are in a damnable state. You are out of Christ.

For the apostle says here, the Kingdom of God is righteousness. That is the righteousness of Christ applied and brought home to the heart.

And I'll just pause here and say that in regards to the interrogative method in preaching, it is sad to me at how many pastors are fearful to employ this method in their sermons to address their hearers in a very direct way.

In other words, really putting the exposition of the scripture in very pointed application to those people that are sitting under them and hearing them preach.

Whitfield is a great example for pastors, for gospel preachers in how to address their hearers in such a way where they bring the sermon home and they will not let their listeners leave without dealing with their own souls and truly examining themselves as God's word commands us to do to see if we really are in the faith.

Yes, I remember when I was a new Christian or perhaps it was even prior to my regeneration when

I was visiting the church where I eventually was saved and baptized and became a having been raised in Roman Catholicism, I began visiting

Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, which is now Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York.

But my first pastor, Mike Gaydosh, I remember as a young Christian before I was, as I said before, a non -regenerate person being drawn,

I remember distinctly before I became aware that this is a normal thing with true biblical preaching from the mouth of a true man of God, I began wondering when

I was hearing the sermons, is he airing my dirty laundry in public here?

What's going on here? He knows things about me and I'm not sure I like the way that he's talking about this.

And then it started to dawn on me, this is just the Holy Spirit convicting me of what he's saying and what he's preaching.

And I can even remember clearly this woman who was visiting, who was a friend of my late wife, and I remember during a service, during a sermon that Pastor Gaydosh was preaching, she stood up right in the middle of the sermon and she walked very rapidly with an angry look on her face out of the church.

And I got up and followed her out into the parking lot and I said, what's going on? Is there anything okay?

And she said, he's talking about me in public like that and I don't like it. He is, and I'm like, what are you talking about?

He's just preaching the word of God. No, he's talking about me. And I said, well, that's the

Holy Spirit convicting you. He's not airing your dirty laundry as I had once thought he was doing about me.

And it's a good sign if you think that that's what he's doing, because that's a sign that your heart is being pricked and that you're being drawn to the truth.

So that is a, I think that's a phenomenon that should be happening during every sermon, and it will be happening during the sermons of truly faithful preachers of the gospel.

Yeah. Amen. Absolutely. Absolutely. We have to go to our first break right now.

And if anybody would like to join us, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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We're going to be back with more of Thundering the Word, the awakening ministry of George Whitefield with our guest,

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sherpa and Siren Radio, and today we are continuing part two of a discussion that we began last

Thursday with Kurt M. Smith, the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama.

We began part one last week, and today we are on part two of Thundering the Word, the awakening ministry of George Whitefield.

And one thing I wanted to ask you before I go to some listener questions is that earlier on you were quoting some of the glowing commendations of Bishop J .C.

Ryle for George Whitefield. Bishop Ryle lived about 100 years after George Whitefield, if I'm not mistaken, and he was speaking with such high terms,

I am assuming that Bishop Ryle, the great Calvinist bishop of the 19th century,

I'm assuming he must have been ashamed by the way fellow Anglicans treated

George Whitefield in his day. I'm sorry, you were muted the very first few seconds of what you were saying.

I'm sorry. Now, yeah, J .C. Ryle, he had written a book entitled

Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, which is a book that Banner of Truth actually publishes.

And in that work, he gave all of these biographical sketches of these 18th century evangelical preachers who were all within the

Anglican church and were used of God during the evangelical awakening in Great Britain at that time.

And of course, the very first chapter of the personalities that he covers is devoted to George Whitefield.

And in that chapter, J .C. Ryle himself lamented greatly at how so few people, even in his own denomination, at that time and period that he wrote that book, knew nothing of Whitefield.

And he went so far as to say, and of course, they know nothing of the spirit with which

Whitefield preached, nor do they know anything of the great revival that took place in the 18th century in Great Britain.

So J .C. Ryle, he was greatly full of just sorrow and grief and disappointment in his own day with what he saw very largely in the

Anglican church. And you know, it was in many ways no different than what Whitefield and others were seeing in their day as well.

The evangelical movement within the Church of England historically has always been in the small minority.

And so that was something that J .C. Ryle spoke much about. And we do have an anonymous listener.

And this anonymous listener says, I have grown very much acquainted with and fond of a number of Anglican ministers, scholars, authors, and rectors.

And one thing that puzzles me about them that they seem to share with many

Presbyterians is that on the one side of their mouth, they are declaring that the

Church of Rome has a false gospel in its official sense as dogma, as cited in the

Council of Trent. But at the other side of the mouth, they view the Church of Rome as a true church in spite of the serious heresies that it continues to cling to as official dogma.

Now, I am the first to say that I believe many Roman Catholics will be in heaven because in spite of their false church, they believed in the true gospel, whether it's out of naivete over what the

Church of Rome truly teaches in their dogmatic statements, or whether it's some sort of act of rebellion or attempt at reform, that they remain in the

Roman Catholic Church knowing that their gospel is at odds with their own. But I don't understand how you can claim that a church is a true church and yet have a false gospel.

And I don't mean to say all Anglicans say this, and I don't mean to say all Presbyterians do.

But what is your view of this? And what was George Whitefield's view? Well, my view of that would be that the

Roman Catholic Church is not a true church. I would hold the same convictions as did the

Protestant Reformers in their day, as did the Puritans in their day, and as did

George Whitefield and other Evangelicals in his day.

The Roman Catholic Church denies the gospel of Jesus Christ wholly and completely, which is why when you go back to the

Protestant Reformation and look at men and examine men like Luther and Calvin and Knox and so forth, those men did not see the gospel until they were reading the scriptures.

They didn't see the gospel through the blasphemous mass. They didn't see the gospel through all of the church councils and traditions, and they didn't see the gospel through all the other customs of the

Roman Catholic Church. I mean, it would not be until the scriptures in their raw content was set before them.

And so the result of that, as we know, as much as, say,

Martin Luther himself wanted to reform the

Roman Catholic Church, Luther would be excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because they were not going to have anything of that.

This was just the case with all of the Protestant Reformers in Luther's day and then in generations preceding.

The point of all that is to say this, that the Roman Catholic Church completely sets a veil over the true gospel, and so I do not see how that there can be genuine, bona fide, born -again children of God who are part of the

Roman Catholic Church, who remain true to the Roman Catholic Church, but yet they're Christians. Luther tried to do that, and Luther got kicked out.

Others of his day, they didn't try to do what he did. They left because they saw no other way.

There's no way you can stay and be a part of this. And of course, for Whitefield, he had the same convictions.

And then of course, when you look at the Church of England, there's an old saying about Anglicans that they're really just Roman Catholics with top hats on.

The Church of England did not fully and completely depart from the

Roman Catholic Church, as far as in a lot of their traditions and a lot of their customs.

And that's why Roman Catholicism, in many of its ways, had such an easy way to stay in Anglicanism and even have certain movements in the

Church of England. So for Evangelicals like Whitefield, they absolutely abhorred the

Roman Catholic faith. And by the way, there are quite a number of Anglicans that I've encountered who would be equally abhorred by the heresies of Rome, who are strict 39 articles men, which is a clearly

Calvinistic confession. So we don't want to broad brush.

We know that there is an Anglo -Catholic movement in the Church of England, which these low churchmen and these

Calvinist Anglicans seem to abhor with varying degrees. I'm not saying that they're all on the same exact page, but it is a mixed group.

That's for certain. And so Whitefield would not have been in agreement.

And remember, I think our guest, in fact, I know, our listener,

I should say, not our guest, our listener is correct to say that many Presbyterians share this view of the

Church of Rome being a true church with some falsehood rather than a false church with some truth.

That was also the position of Norman Geisler, Hank Hanegraaff, who is now an

Eastern Orthodox member, but was raised in the

Christian Reformed Church, Hank Hanegraaff. So that is a position that I find quite puzzling myself.

I don't understand how you could admit that the Church of Rome has a false gospel and still call it a false church.

And do you think that a lot of that has to do with the misunderstanding of what we are saying when we say the

Roman Catholic Church? Because some of these folks, when I've had conversations with some of them, they think we are ignoring or discounting the great benefits and contributions of the patristic era, the church fathers, and so on.

But they were not Roman Catholics. Roman Catholic dogma, with the

Roman attached to it, was not, especially when it comes to the doctrine of the gospel, was not formally defined and declared until Trent, which was after the

Reformation. So we believe that there were centuries of true Christians and teachers and scholars in the

Catholic Church with a small c prior to that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely there is.

When you talk about the patristic fathers, the church fathers, you have no doubt there were true believers during that period.

No, when we're talking about Roman Catholicism, we tend to refer, to be more precise in our context, to medieval

Catholicism, to the Catholicism that the Protestant Reformers actually faced, and the

Catholicism which did give birth to what you just mentioned, the Council of Trent. And when you read the

Council of Trent, which was the counter -Reformation, and the official response of the

Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, their, of course, response continues to be to this day that the dogma, it is still considered

Roman Catholic dogma officially. And you read what they said in regards to the recovery of the gospel by the

Protestants, it is frightening. It is frightening when they say that if anyone believes that they are justified by faith alone in Christ alone, let them be anathema.

Let them be cursed by God. And we have to go to our midway break right now. You can pick up where you left off there, if you'd like, when we return.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson, at gmail .com,

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Great. Well, if you go to solid -ground -books .com and you go into the search engine, you type in Kurt M.

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Also, if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church, you're not aware of one that's nearby where you live,

I have lists of Biblically -faithful churches all over the planet Earth, and I may be able to help you find a church that sometimes people in my audience who were looking for a church that they didn't even realize that churches

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Biblical church, 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 to send in a question to Kurt M.

Smith, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And Kurt, you were saying, just before the break, you were saying that Whitfield did not hold the common position that is held today, even by many good, solid men who otherwise, and denominations, and churches and fellowships, who hold the view that the

Church of Rome has a false gospel but is a true church, a very strange way of viewing things, but you were saying before the break that Whitfield rejected that notion.

Yes, that is correct. He did. He did reject that notion. Because, for Whitfield, and as I was stressing before the break, he just stood in the same stream as the

Magisterial Reformers of the 16th century, as the English Puritans of the 17th century, that basically, you know, the

Roman Catholic Church, in Martin Luther's words, is the Whore of Babylon.

You know, the Pope was the Antichrist. They, you know, they could not and they would not see that any differently because of the absolute denial, the total and complete wholesale rejection of the gospel which medieval

Catholicism gave and issued. And, of course, you know, would put many faithful believers to death for their strong fidelity to the saving gospel of Christ.

And so, yes, for George Whitfield, when he looked at the Roman Catholic Church, he saw nothing but a false church.

And, of course, some of the arguments against what you're saying by those who are in denominations that claim the

Magisterial Reformers as their fathers in the faith, some would say, yeah, but the

Reformers never were rebaptized. So, that's proof that the

Reformers did not believe that the Church of Rome was a false church in spite of its falsehoods that are intermingled.

But one thing is that many of those were baptized prior to the

Council of Trent. And also, the idea that they were not rebaptized may have only been rooted in the fact that the act of obedience of being baptized or baptizing does not require the fact that those baptizing, the ministers baptizing, be saved.

You know, if Judas baptized anybody, that didn't mean that the persons who

Judas baptized had to be rebaptized. And, of course, we don't believe in baptismal regeneration anyway.

But I guess that could be a part of their excuse, correct? Yes. Most definitely.

I mean, for instance, in Luther's case, Luther would continue to retain baptismal regeneration to some extent.

Of course, John Calvin rejected baptismal regeneration, but he continued with the practice of paedo -baptism, but it would be dressed up in different clothes for Calvin and those who followed after him in his train.

They would work it to be more agreeable in their thinking to the gospel, which would come out in what we know today, what we would call today as Presbyterian covenant theology.

That would be different than Baptist covenant theology. But that was definitely a carryover.

The practice of paedo -baptism was a clear carryover from Roman Catholicism, which interestingly, and I think very provocatively, is why even the 19th century

Presbyterian theologian, one of the great titans of Presbyterian theology,

Charles Hodge, in his classic systematic theology, Hodge considered infant baptism from the

Roman Catholic Church as legitimate. So, I can understand the argument on the other side as far as what you're bringing up there.

All I would say to that is, well, we are dealing with fallible men.

As all fallible men are, we tend to be very inconsistent in certain areas, even though we tend to be really consistent in other areas.

Thankfully for the Protestant Reformers, and I think this was something that a couple of years ago, when you had interviewed me about Martin Luther, we had addressed this, because there was a listener who had chimed in with the question, well, why didn't

Luther go further? My answer to that was, well,

Luther went far enough, as did Calvin and the others at that time and period, because what they saw was the saving gospel of Christ, which was the essential recovery of the

Protestant Reformation. Now, the other things that had to be worked out would be worked out in the next century, in generations that would follow.

But what they got right, which was the gospel, clearly, that was sufficient, and that was enough, certainly for that time and that period.

By the way, there is a great Presbyterian who did not believe in accepting

Roman Catholic baptism, J. H. Thornwell, and in fact, you could get a book that he wrote.

It's under a new title that he did not title this work, Sacramental Sorcery, the

Invalidity of Roman Catholic Baptism, by James Henley Thornwell.

He was a Southern Presbyterian, a theologian of the mid -19th century, but you could get that book, and it's also,

I think, included in a larger work, a larger volume from Banner of Truth.

So, not all Presbyterians or Paedo -Baptists accept Roman Catholic baptism, although I think today those that reject

Roman Catholic baptism would be a minority. And to reiterate,

J. H. Thornwell believed in Paedo -Baptism, he just didn't believe in accepting Roman Catholic baptism, or Eastern Orthodox, I would assume, or the baptism of anybody that had a false gospel.

Let's see here, we have Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina. Oh, let me just quickly remind our anonymous listener, if you give me your full name and your full mailing address, you have won a free copy of Thundering the

Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield by our guest Kurt M. Smith and CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. CVBBS .com will ship that book out to you if we get your full address and full name, of course.

We have Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, a very faithful and loyal listener to this show, and also a faithful financial supporter of this show.

Greetings, brothers Chris and Kurt, I read that Whitefield was often heckled and even physically abused while preaching.

Do we know how he handled those instances? Yeah, I think we did bring this up last week, if I'm not mistaken, perhaps

I'm thinking of my interview with Roger Salter, the Reformed Anglican in Alabama, who was discussing

George Whitefield with me not long ago, and perhaps you know the exact story.

I think that, were not like cattle even set loose amongst the crowds of Whitefield's open -air sermons, or if it wasn't cattle, it was some other animal, am

I mistaken on that? I don't, for some reason

I'm not recalling that particular incident, but I am thinking though right now of when

Whitefield preached in Moorfields Park there in London, and in a letter that he wrote on May the 11th, 1742, he recounts his going into Moorfields Park, which he did many, many times, and would see many people converted to Christ there, but this one occasion,

Whitefield recounts the whole episode of preaching the gospel in Moorfields and how that there were parts of dead cats and rotten eggs and all kinds of other trash and feces that were thrown at him while he was preaching.

Not only that, but there were those who tried to drown him out with instruments.

There were just all kinds of distractions, and then of course what

Whitefield faced, and even the Westleys faced this as well, and that was what they called the mob, and that was crowds of unbelievers enraged at the gospel being proclaimed by these brothers.

They would take hold of them. Of course, Wesley was attacked more by the mob than Whitefield, but they would drag them off and beat them.

Of course, Whitefield did face an occasion in Ireland where he nearly lost his life by a mob.

He also faced another occasion in colonial America where he was staying at an inn and a man had broken into his room and nearly beat him to death with a cane.

Whitefield faced much persecution for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the gospel.

As popular as he was, as much fame as he had, and as many people who genuinely loved him and adored his love for Christ and faithfulness to Christ, even calling him the wonder of the age, yet there were just as many people of the world and even the visible church who despised him.

I'm thinking even right now of what occurred between 1739 and 1740 where Whitefield had 154 pamphlets publicly written against him.

That, of course, was at the time that Whitefield was in colonial America. He was at the heart and catalyst of the

Great Awakening. Facing enormous blessing and seeing what he and others would call the effusions of spirit being poured out, yet here you've got 154 tracts and pamphlets being published that are slandering his name and seeking to completely undermine his character and his fidelity as a gospel minister.

How specifically did Whitefield react to these things?

Well, he reacted to these things by turning the other cheek.

He showed enormous evidence of grace and meekness.

He didn't go after these people. He didn't try to necessarily take them to court.

Sue them or whatever. He just kept going back out into the fields and preaching

Christ again and again. For him, what he saw in those people, he saw these are lost souls that need

Christ. As much as they were putting him down, as much as they were beating him down, in some instances even physically, for George Whitefield, he saw the bigger picture.

He saw these people as they truly were in their unregenerate state and they need the gospel.

And he counted himself worthy to suffer for the name of Christ in order to give them the gospel.

So that's how he responded. That's how he reacted. Well, Grady, make sure we have your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina, because you have also won a free copy of Thundering the

Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield by our guest Kurt M. Smith.

And cvbbs .com will ship that out to you. So keep an eye open in the mail for a package from cvbbs.

And we want to thank cvbbs .com for shipping out all of our winners, their books and Bibles and other things they win when they send in questions for our guests.

And also we want to thank Kurt M. Smith for shipping us these giveaway books from his own personal collection.

And we are in your debt for that. We thank you so much for your graciousness. We have another very faithful and generous supporter of this show listening who has sent us a question,

Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia. And Lou, I believe you sent in a question last week, so you're only getting that one book.

Sorry, pal. But Lou says, when

Whitfield preached open air, did he use notes or just from memory? Also, do you encourage open air preaching today?

And if so, do you know of any ministries doing it faithfully? And what counsel would you give to those partaking in it today?

Excellent questions. Well, those are excellent questions. Well, to the first question,

Whitfield preached extemporaneously, which means he preached without notes, when he preached in the open air.

As to the encouragement of this kind of ministry today,

I would certainly encourage it if the men doing it were actually gifted to do it.

I don't believe that open air preaching is for every gospel preacher.

It is most definitely a medium of evangelistic ministry that certainly can be used of the

Lord in our day. It is used, but it's obviously not for everybody.

But if it is carried out, I think one thing that as far as I would think doing it rightly, even though it's something that I have never engaged in personally in all the years that I've been preaching the gospel, but I would think that if it's going to be done rightly, then the man who does it, he needs to preach a sermon.

He needs to declare the gospel and declare it clearly.

Rather than just sounding like most of what

I hear or most of what I have seen in my own experience of those who go into the open air, they just declare, if you don't repent, you're going to hell.

They just declare little sound bites like that. They're not just declaring the gospel in full.

I think another thing too, with those who do it rightly, it's much more organized.

They have people that are working with them and helping to actually gather a crowd of people to come and to hear them.

That is definitely a way to handle a ministry like that so that people are actually there and they're actually listening to a sermon being proclaimed to them in the open air.

In Whitfield's case, let me just state this, and I state this in my book, there was only one

George Whitfield, only one. He had special gifts.

He had a very unique and peculiar unction of the Spirit upon him that was the phenomenon behind what he did in the open air that drew thousands upon thousands of people to hear him.

As I stated last week, amazingly, they could hear him because of the voice

God gave him. Whitfield is unique in this medium of ministry.

I don't believe that he can be followed to the letter for the simple reason that unless you're wired just like him, which my contention is, nobody is because God only gave us one

Whitfield, then there's only a limit to which he can be modeled in this.

But certainly there is a way to do it rightly, a way that will honor

Christ, that will honor the gospel. But a lot of what I've seen, at least where I live, it really, to me, what

I hear on the streets, it's not something that is very honoring to Christ.

Instead, it creates more confusion than giving clarity. In fact, the men that I know that are involved in open air preaching who are biblically solid and reformed will admit that in their experience, the majority of what they see and hear from other open air preachers is bad, very bad.

And you have a lot of mavericks who are not members of local churches.

They're not sent out with the blessing of biblical elders out into the open air to preach.

And those that I know and have friendships with that are reformed and have a high view of the church, they are sent out with the blessings of their elders to do this.

And their elders know that they are knowledgeable enough in the word that it could be properly handled, just as if you were having a guest preacher ascend into your pulpit.

You don't want anybody to do that, anybody. So, you don't want anybody just going out into the open air who could be leading people away from Christ.

And I have an excellent book to recommend that I'd also like to recommend the, not the sermons, the interviews that I did with the authors on the show.

The book is A Certain Sound, A Primer on Open Air Preaching by Ryan Denton and Scott Smith.

It's published by Joel Beeky's publishing ministry, Reformation Heritage Books. Heritagebooks .org

is the website for that publishing house. Heritagebooks .org. But I would ask you to purchase it from cvbbs .com,

since cvbbs .com is a sponsor of the show. And you're not going to be hurting Heritage Books by ordering it from cvbbs .com,

because cvbbs .com has to purchase the books from Heritage Books, Heritage Reform Books.

So, or Reformation Heritage Books, I'm sorry. And also, if you go to the archive of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, irontripandzionradio .com,

you can look up in the archive, if you type into the search engine,

Open Air Preaching, and that's three words, Open Air Preaching, if you type that into the search engine, that book and those interviews on that book will come up with Ryan Denton and Scott Smith.

You can also type their names into the search engine, Ryan Denton and Scott Smith. So I just thought

I'd give that a plug as well. We have

Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, was George Whitefield an ordained minister in the

Church of England? Yes, he was. He was first an ordained deacon.

And then after that, following the two -step process of ordination, he then was ordained as a priest two years after that.

Well, thank you, Christopher. You've also won a copy of Thundering the Word by our guest Kurt M. Smith.

We have another anonymous listener who asks, one thing that has disturbed me about some of my close friends who are

Reformed is they think, all Arminians are damned. But I know that could not have been the case with George Whitefield, because in spite of his very sharp contrast in theology with his friend

John Wesley, they still remained very close and loved each other and considered each other brothers in Christ, in spite of the fact that their theology on certain points was very different.

Would you concur? Yes, I would concur wholeheartedly.

In fact, the largest chapter in my book, which is covering the divide between Whitefield and Wesley, one of the very, very strong points that I make in that entire story is how

Whitefield treated John Wesley always as a fellow brother in Christ.

In fact, the open letter that Whitefield wrote to Wesley that he composed on Christmas Eve in 1740, and then it would go to be published in early 1741, in part of the title of the letter, he quotes

Galatians 2 in verse 11. But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed.

What I point out is that the fact that Whitefield employed Galatians 2 .11 as his launching pad for this letter reveals much we should not miss as to how

Whitefield saw himself entering this controversy. And the very first thing was this, he was not addressing an unbeliever.

Although he strongly opposed Wesley's Arminianism, he never once questioned the validity of Wesley's conversion.

He firmly embraced John Wesley as a fellow Christian and never once moved from that conviction, all his days.

This also was true in Paul's treatment of Peter. The Apostle Peter's conversion was never in question with Paul, thus

Paul approving Peter was the wounding of a brother, not an enemy. That was something that Whitefield maintained all his

Christian life in his relationship to John Wesley, even though he vehemently opposed the

Arminianism that Wesley so strongly advocated. But Wesley was always, always treated as a brother in Christ.

I would say to this listener that you can be a genuine believer in Christ and yet your thinking in regards to salvation would be in the persuasion of Arminianism.

I can testify to that personally because that is where I once was. I was a consistent Arminian in the first couple of years of my

Christian life. I believe you got in by your free will and you could check out by your free will. But I was born again.

I was a genuine believer, but I was also very confused and very muddled in my thinking as to the order of God's way of salvation and really coming to see that salvation is truly of the

Lord and of the Lord alone. In fact, so high was the esteem with which

Whitefield held Wesley that he requested that Wesley would be the preacher at his funeral on the day when

Whitefield died. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened, that John Wesley preached at George Whitefield's funeral.

And as I've mentioned before, the letter that Kurt is referring to,

George Whitefield's letter to John Wesley on election, is the letter that the Lord used to open my eyes to the truths of the doctrines of grace.

And it wasn't because of George Whitefield per se, because I didn't even know who

George Whitefield was at the time. I was a new believer and I didn't know who Spurgeon was.

I didn't know who Calvin was. I didn't know who any of the great heroes of the

Reformed faith were. So it didn't matter to me one way or the other would not have impressed me that George Whitefield himself said what he said.

But the biblical evidence that he poured into that letter to Wesley is what the

Lord used to open my eyes to these truths. And I just want to quickly read something that John Wesley wrote to George Whitefield, just to show our listeners the love that they had for one another.

We have John Wesley saying, My dear brother, I thank you for yours,

May the 24th. The case is quite plain. There are bigots both for predestination and against it.

God is sending a message to those on either side, but neither will receive it unless from one who is of their own opinion.

Therefore for a time you are suffered to be of one position and I of another.

But when his time is come, God will do what man cannot, namely, make us both of one mind.

Then persecution will flame out and it will be seen whether we count our lives dear unto ourselves, so that we may finish our course with joy.

I am my dearest brother ever yours, John Wesley. And George Whitefield responds,

Thus my honored friend, I heartily pray God to hasten the time for his being clearly enlightened into all the doctrines of divine revelation, that we may thus be closely united in principle and judgment, as well as heart and affection.

And then if the Lord should call us to it, I care not if I go with him to prison or death, for like Paul and Silas, I hope we shall sing praises to God and count it our highest honor to suffer for Christ's sake and to lay down our lives for the brethren.

And that was George Whitefield in London, August 9, 1740. I was very saddened when

I arranged and emceed and moderated a debate on election and free will between my friend

James White, who you know very well, a Reformed Baptist apologist, and a

Fundamentalist Baptist friend of mine who rejects the specific teachings of the doctrines of sovereign grace.

I was very dismayed that there were Reformed brethren in the audience who later chastised me with great anger that I read

Wesley's part of that exchange that I just read on the air. They were of that camp that basically believed

Wesley and all Arminians will be in hell. So it's a very sad thing. I would say that in my experience, that is a tiny minority.

Would you also claim that as well? Yeah, very much so. And that, of course, is something that I go out of my way in Chapter 7 of the book to show for the example of Whitefield.

Because Whitefield, and I know I mentioned this last week, Whitefield was known for his overt

Catholicity. He loved genuinely all believers in Christ.

If they were bona fide, born -again children of God, Whitefield loved them just because of that.

That they were God's people. And in what ensued following the controversy between Whitefield and Wesley Whitefield, Whitefield was having to answer friends of his during that period who were saying, who were of that spirit and attitude, you know,

John Wesley, be damned. And they could not understand why

Whitefield was being so charitable towards Wesley.

And there is a letter. In fact, I'm going to have you pick up right where you're leaving off right there.

When we return, we have to go to our final break right now. If anybody wants to join us, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question of your own, we'll be right back with Kurt M. Smith right after these messages from our sponsors. Don't go away.

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Call 1 -800 -669 -4870. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, and this is our last segment of today's interview with Kurt M.

Smith on his wonderful book, Thundering the Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitfield. By the way, that has been published by Free Grace Press, and their website, for more information on everything they publish, is freegracepress .com,

freegracepress .com. And I would urge you, when you find things that you like at freegracepress .com,

that you purchase them from CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

because they actually sponsor this program, and you're not going to need to be hurting Free Grace Press by purchasing from CVBBS .com,

because CVBBS has to purchase the books from Free Grace Press. So, please go to CVBBS .com

when you hear about a book on our show that is being promoted. And also, don't forget about our other sponsors,

Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com, the Ministry of Mike Adosh, Solid -Ground -Christian

Books. And if you could, you were talking about a letter that was in response to the sectarian

Calvinists who were upset with Whitfield, that he embraced Wesley as a brother. If you could tell us about what you were just about to say.

Yeah, this is a letter that was written 18 months after the controversy went public between Whitfield and Wesley.

And this was a letter written to someone that was very much in Whitfield's favor and certainly held to the same great biblical doctrines as did

Whitfield. But this brother could not understand Whitfield's charitable spirit toward Wesley.

So, Whitfield wrote to this brother and he said, I think you cannot have a scene of greater confusion among you than there has been in England.

But blessed be God, matters are brought to a better issue. And though we cannot agree in principles, yet we agree in love.

Though as you know, I am clear in the truths of the gospel, yet I find that principles of themselves without the

Spirit of God will not unite any set of men whatever. And where the Spirit of God is in any great degree, there will be union of heart, though there may be difference in sentiments.

This I have learned, my dear brother, by happy experience and find great freedom and peace in my soul thereby.

This makes me to love many, though I cannot agree with them in some of their principles. I dare not look upon them as willful deceivers, but as persons who hazard their lives for the sake of the gospel.

Mr. Wesley, I think is wrong in some things, but will shine bright in glory.

It is best, therefore, for a gospel minister simply and powerfully to preach those truths he has been taught of God and to meddle as little as possible with those who are children of God, though they should differ in many things.

This would keep the heart sweet and at the same time not betray the truth of Jesus. I have tried both the disputing and the quiet way and find the latter far preferable to the former.

For Jesus Christ's sake, as much as in you lies put a stop to disputing, it embitters the spirit, ruffles the soul, and hinders it from hearing the small still voice of the

Holy Spirit. And then what I say in response to what Whitfield wrote is this. As has been observed,

Whitfield did not find a teachable, reasonable mind in John Wesley. Wesley refused to see the doctrines he wrangled against from any other perspective but his own, realizing then how improbable it would be to even have an honest conversation over the principles at hand.

Whitfield learned from this that it is better to say nothing than to quarrel. The quiet way, as he called it, was best.

By this approach with Wesley, nothing could impede Whitfield's unseemly affection for him.

He loved this brother as a brother in Christ, notwithstanding how wrong he believed

John Wesley was in his Arminianism. But since Wesley was fixed in his errors, Whitfield determined wisely to not let their fellowship be determined by his brother's confusion and stubbornness.

In this way, he would keep the heart sweet and at the same time not betray the truth of Jesus.

I want to make sure that our listeners have your contact information again. The website of Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Pine Mountain, Alabama, located specifically in REMLAP, R -E -M -L -A -P,

Alabama. That website is PRBC, which stands for Providence Reformed Baptist Church, 1689, for the 1689

London Baptist Confession .org. That's PRBC1689 .org.

I want to thank you so much, Kurt Smith. You're always such a joy and a pleasure and a privilege to interview and also a fountain of knowledge every time you're on this program.

I look forward to your return very soon. Well, thank you, Chris. Enjoyed it, brother. And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write.

And remember everybody who wrote in a question today, send me your email, I'm sorry, your mailing address so that you can receive a free copy of the book,

Thundering the Word by Kurt M. Smith. And that will be sent to you by CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater