A Study of Whitefield — E.A. Johnston

Self-Denial, Revival, and Usefulness in Ministry

We are warned in Galatians 6 .3, for if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. There is a quote I like by my good friend Dr. Ted Randall in regard both to usefulness and revival.

Let me read that to us now. God is looking for a man who will throw himself entirely on God. Whenever self-effort, self-glory, self-seeking, or self-promotion enters into the work of revival, then God leaves us to ourselves.

I like that observation by Dr. Randall, don't you friends? And I can add that anytime we allow self to need acknowledgement or approval by others, it hinders our usefulness in ministry. I remember reading about D .O. Moody, that he would rather be rude and brusque with someone rather than be flattered by them.

I believe one of the secrets to great usefulness for God is a person who is dead to the opinions of others. I see this clearly in the life of George Whitefield, the great British evangelist who shook two continents for God during the Great Awakening.

George Whitefield and the Great Awakening

My message this evening, friends, is about George Whitefield and why God used him so mightily in great revivals. My message is entitled, A Study of Whitefield, and that's exactly what I'd like to do this evening before we go to our time of prayer.

I'd like to read us an extract from my two-volume biography on Whitefield, for I believe it will benefit us as we examine his eminent life of usefulness. Whitefield was a man completely empty of self, dead to the world, and filled with the Holy Ghost.

He lived for God and his glory and the salvation of souls. Oh, how we need a George Whitefield for our day, friends. I want us to read a description of the character of George Whitefield from a rare document.

Jonathan Parsons’s Funeral Sermon for Whitefield

It is the funeral sermon for Whitefield given by Jonathan Parsons on October the 2nd, 1770. The text is Philippians 121. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And the sermon was preached at the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with the body of George Whitefield lying before the pulpit in an open coffin.

Jonathan Parsons was the pastor of the Old South Church and it was in his home that Whitefield died in, his home, by the way, still sits three houses down from the big white church in Newburyport. If you stand outside that yellow house and face the front door and look up at the window above the front door, you will see the location where Whitefield died while sitting in a chair by that window in 1770.

When I visited the Old South Church, I located the exact spot in the sanctuary where Whitefield's corpse lay while this sermon was being preached. Jonathan Parsons is buried next to Whitefield in a crypt in the church directly beneath the pulpit.

Parsons was a man of revival himself and a co-labor of Whitefield for nearly 30 years. I've even looked up in the attic of the Old South Church searching for the diary of Jonathan Parsons but was unable to locate it.

And it's a shame because in his diary he details the many times he and Whitefield would ride together preaching throughout New England during the Great Awakening. Now listen closely friends to this brief funeral sermon and carefully observe how the character and usefulness of the great itinerant George Whitefield is so magnified.

Here now are the words of Jonathan Parsons. Christ became a principle of spiritual life in his soul while he was a undergraduate at the University in Oxford. Before his conversion he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees as strict as Paul ever was before God met him on his way to Damascus according to his own declarations in his last sermon which I heard him preach at Exeter yesterday.

He was by means of reading a very searching puritanical writer convinced of the rottenness of all duties he had done and the danger of a self-righteous foundation of hope. When he heard Christ speak to him in the gospel he cried Lord what will thou have me to do and it seems as if at that time it had been made known to him that he was a chosen vessel to bear the name of Jesus Christ through the British nation and her colonies to stand before kings and nobles and all sorts of people to preach Christ and him crucified.

Whitefield’s Preparation for Gospel Ministry

From that time the dawn of salvation had living power in his heart and he had an ardent desire to furnish himself for the gospel ministry. To this end besides the usual studies at the college he gave himself to reading the holy scriptures to meditation and prayer and particularly he read Mr. Henry's annotations on the Bible upon his knees before God.

Since my first acquaintance with him which is about 30 years ago I have highly esteemed him as an excellent Christian and an eminent minister of the gospel. A heart so bent for Christ with such a sprightly act of genius could not admit of a state fixed residence in one place as the pastor of a particular congregation and therefore he chose to itinerate from place to place and from one country to another which indeed was much better suited to his talents than a fixed abode would have been.

I have often considered him as an angel flying through the midst of heaven with the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth for he preached the uncorrupted word of God and gave solemn warnings against all corruptions of the gospel of Christ.

The late Dr. Groszner upon hearing Whitfield preach at Charles Square Hoxton expressed himself thus that if the apostle Paul had preached at this auditory he would have preached in the same manner. When he came the first time to Boston the venerable Dr. Coleman with whom I had a small acquaintance condescended to write to me that the wonderful man was common they had a week of sabbaths that his zeal for Christ was extraordinary and yet he recommended himself to as many thousand hearers by his engagedness for holiness and souls.

Whitefield’s Preaching Awakens a Spiritually Formal Church

I soon had opportunity to observe that wherever he flew like a flame of fire his ministry gave a general alarm to all sorts of people though before they had for a long time been amazingly sunk into dead formality.

It was then a time in New England when real Christians generally had slackened their zeal for Christ and fallen into a remiss and careless frame of spirit and hypocritical professors were sunk into a deep sleep of carnal security.

Ministers and their congregations seemed to be at ease but his preaching appeared to be from the heart though too many who spake the same things preached as if it were indifferent whether they were received or rejected.

We were convinced that he believed the message he brought to us to be of the last importance. Nevertheless as soon as there was time for reflection the enemies of Christ began to prevail and hold up some of his sallies as if they were unpardonable faults.

By such means he met with a storm as tempestuous as the troubled sea that casts up mire and dirt. Some of every station were too fond of their old way of formality to part with it for such a despised cause as living religion.

But the spirit of Christ sent home the message of the Lord upon the conscience of some and shook them off from their false hopes but many began to find fault and some to write against his evangelizing through the country while others threatened firebrands, arrows and death.

Persevering in Evangelistic Labor and Revival

Yet God gave room for his intense zeal to operate and fit objects appeared wherever he went to engage him in preaching Christ and him crucified. In his repeated visits to America when his services had almost exhausted his animal spirits and his friends were ready to cry spare thyself his hope of serving Christ and winning souls to him animated and engaged him to run almost any risk.

Neither did he ever cross the Atlantic on an itinerating visitation without visiting his numerous brethren here to see how religion prospered amongst them and we know that his labors have been unwearied among us and to the applause of all his hearers and through the infinite mercy of God his labors have sometimes been crowned with great success in the conversion of sinners and the edification of saints and though he often returned from the pulpit very feeble after public preaching yet his engaging sweetness of conversation changed the suspicions of many into passionate love and friendship.

In many things his example is worthy of imitation and if anything he exceeded or came short his integrity zeal for God and love to Christ and his gospel rendered him in extensive usefulness more than equal to any of his brethren.

In preaching here and through most parts of America he has been in labors more abundant approving himself a minister of God in much patience in afflictions in watchings in fastings about pureness by the Holy Ghost by love unfeigned as sorrowful yet always rejoicing as having nothing yet possessing all things and God that comforted those that are cast down has often comforted us comforted us by his coming and not by his coming only but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in us so that we could rejoice the more.

Whitefield’s Popularity and Defense of Reformation Doctrine

His popularity exceeded all that I ever knew and though the asthma was sometimes an obstruction to him his delivery and entertaining method was so inviting to the last that it would command the attention of the vast multitudes of his hearers.

An apprehension of his concern to serve the Lord Jesus Christ and do good to the souls of men drew many thousands after him who never embraced the doctrines he taught. He had something so peculiar in his manner expressive of sincerity in all he delivered that it constrained the most abandoned to think he believed what he said was not only true but of the last importance to souls and by adapted text deduced and instances of the grace of God related agreeable thereto often surprised his most judicious hearers.

His labors extended not only to New England and many other colonies in British America but were eminent and more abundant in Great Britain. Many thousands at his chapel and tabernacle and in other places were witnesses that he faithfully endeavored to restore the interesting doctrines of the reformation and the purity of the church to its primitive glory.

Some among the learned some of the mighty and noble have been called by his ministry to testify for the gospel of the grace of God. The force of his reasonings against corrupt principles and the easy method he had of exposing the danger of them have astonished the most that heard him in all places where he preached how he did lament and withstand the modern unscriptural notions of religion and salvation that were palmed upon the churches of every denomination.

Opposition, Heresy, and Spiritual Warfare

The affecting change from primitive purity to fatal heresy together with the sad effects of its in mere formality and open wickedness would often make him cry as the prophet did in another case. How is the gold become dim and the most fine gold changed.

How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud and his anger and cast down from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel. It is no wonder that this man of God should meet with enemies and with great opposition to his ministry for hell trembled before him.

It is not more than may be always expected of the devil that he should stir up his servants to load the most eminent ministers of Christ with calamity and most impudent lies and represent them as the filth and offscoring of all things.

All this may be and often has been done under a pretense of great concern for the honor of Christ and the preservation of the gospel order. When satan totters and begins to fall he can find men enough to cry.

The church is in danger and that he knows is sufficient with many to hide his cloven foot and make him appear as an angel of light. Through a variety of such labors and trials our worthy friend and extensively useful servant of Christ Mr. Whitfield passed both in England and America.

Finishing the Course with Joy

But the Lord was his son to guide and animate him and his shield to defend and help him onto the end. Neither did he count his own life dear so that he might finish his course with joy and the ministry that he had received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God.

The last sermon that he preached though under the disadvantage of a stage in the open air was delivered with such clearness and pathos and eloquence as to please and surprise the surrounding thousands.

And as he had been confirmed by the grace of God many years before and had been waiting and hoping for his last change he then declared that he hoped it was the last time he should ever preach. Doubtless he then had such clear views of the blessedness of open vision and the complete fruition of God in Christ that he felt the pleasures of heaven in his raptured soul which made his countenance shine like the unclouded sun.

Whitefield’s Last Sermon and a Call to Prayer

Well that's the sermon funeral sermon by Jonathan Parsons on George Whitfield. Friends and I've actually been to the spot in Exeter New Hampshire where Whitfield preached his last sermon in the open air to about 4 ,000 hearers.

It was a day where God moved among his hearers with such power that they were solemnized under the awful solemnity of a holy God and many were converted. There's a stone which marks that spot in Exeter today.

Well I hope this little exercise in the study in the life of Whitfield has helped us as we now go to God and ask him for further usefulness for each one of us. Let us now go to the Lord in a time of prayer.