Today Glenn Beck will be hosting Founder's Friday once again on his program on Fox News network. The previous two Fridays he was featuring two of our famous Founding Fathers which were Samuel Adams and George Washington. On today's program the topic will be about the famous preacher in North America whose name was George Whitefield. He was a major force in the First Great Awakening in 1740. He and other preachers such as Jonathon Edwards preached to untold crowds in North America. There was a wave of revival that blew into America and transformed the country. Whitefield was not a Founding Father but he was considered as a seed in encouraging what would eventually be the American Revolution. He died six years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1770. Let's take a quick look at this great preacher.
George Whitefiled was born on December 16, 1714, in Gloucester, England. He was the youngest of seven children born in the Bell Inn where his father, Thomas was a wine merchant and innkeeper. His father died when George was two and his widowed mother Elizabeth struggled to provide for the family. He had a passion for the theatre at a young age and enjoyed acting. Because he thought he would never make much use of his education, at age 15 Whitefield persuaded his mother to allow him to leave school and work in the inn. However, George became a diligent student of the Bible staying up late at night. A visit to his mother by an Oxford student who worked his way through college encouraged George to pursue a university education. He returned to grammar school to finish his preparation to enter Oxford. In 1732 at age 17 George entered Pembroke College at Oxford. He was gradually drawn into a group called the "Holy Club" where he met John and Charles Wesley. Charles Wesley loaned him the book, "The Life of God in the Soul of Man." After a long and painful struggle in reading the book, George was converted in 1735. He said many years later: "I know the place . . . Whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to the spot where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and gave me the new birth." He was forced to leave school because of poor health. He had returned home for nine months to recuperate.
During the time he was home, he wasn't idle. He stayed busy. His activity attracted the attention of the bishop of Gloucester, England. The bishop ordained Whitefield as a deacon, and later as a priest, in the church of England. Whitefield finished his degree at Oxford on June 20, 1736. Bishop Benson ordained him. Whitefield declared that "My heart was melted down and I offered my whole spirit, soul, and body to the service of God's sanctuary." He was an outstanding preacher at the beginning. He was slender-built but he stormed the pulpit as if he were a giant. Within a year it was said that "his voice startled England like a trumpet blast." He first took to preaching in the open air in Hanham Mount, Kingswood and in Southeast Bristol.
At a time when London had a population of less than 700,000, he could hold spellbound 20,000 people at a time at Moorfields and Kennington Common. For thirty-four years his preaching resounded throughout England and America. In his preaching ministry, he visited America seven times and crossed the Atlantic 13 times and became known as the "apostle of the British Empire. At that time crossing the Atlantic was considered a dangerous voyage. There were no such things as airplanes where people could fly across the ocean like they can today. He was a firm Calvinist in his theology. Though a clergyman of the Church of England, he cooperated with and had a profound impact on people and churches of many traditions such as Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. Whitefield, along with the Wesleys, inspired the movement that became known as the Methodists. He preached more than 18,000 sermons in his lifetime, which averages to around 500 a year or ten a week.
In 1736 George Whitefield became parish priest in Savannah, Georgia. He also pushed for laws to legalize slavery in Georgia. He had established a charity called the Bethesda Orphanage in 1739. He felt that the town would never be developed without the help of slave labor. He himself even owned slaves and treated his slaves well. He used his slaves to work at the Bethesday Orphanage. It was said that he grieved over how slaves were treated by their owners because some slaves were treated very harshly. That would seem odd to many "civil rights" leaders today. Back them many people in that era thought that slavery was justifiable. The reason why that was so was probably because the Bible addressed the relationship between slaves and their masters. Therefore, many whites probably thought slavery was justifiable. Whitefield was also a close friend to Benjamin Franklin, one of our Founding Fathers. Many historians have portrayed Franklin as being some type of skepticist when it comes to religion. Franklin believed in God but was skeptical of traditional Christianity. Franklin would go listen to Whitefield preach in Philadelphia and Franklin marveled how Whitefield could deliver a message.
In 1740 Whitefield started preaching a series of revivals in the North American colonies. It would be called the "Great Awakening". He would preach to crowds of thousands in open air. Many people were converted as a result of his preaching. His preaching and influence would help later sow the seeds for the American Revolution. Whitefield died in 1770. Phillis Wheatley, a black poet, wrote a poem in tribute of George Whitefield. He was buried at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
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