Chapter 4: A Gospel without Compromise
Other ministers could, perhaps, preach the Gospel as clearly, and in general say the same things. But, I believe, no man living could say them in his way. Here I always thought him unequalled, and I hardly expect to see his equal while I live.1
—John Newton
The eighteenth century was an era of great preachers, men whom God raised up to proclaim His Word and mark their generation. A survey of modern-day Christianity would surely identify the greatest preacher in Britain during the period of the evangelical revival as John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism. Likewise, a polling today of observers of the early American revivals would undoubtedly name Jonathan Edwards, regarded by many as America’s greatest pastor-theologian, as the premier preacher of the Great Awakening in the colonies.
However, if you were able to go back in time and survey those living during the eighteenth century, whether in London, in Edinburgh, or in America, there is little doubt that their answer would be one and the same. In fact, even John Wesley or Jonathan Edwards would likely name the same man. The man most widely regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest preacher of his time was George Whitefield.
As a harvester of souls, Whitefield lived to magnify Jesus Christ and call lost sinners to repentance and faith in Him. The focus of his extraordinary ministry was the simple proclamation of the gospel and the appeal to the unconverted to enter through the narrow gate. Wherever he was—whether in a church, in an open field, in a city square, on a ship, in a house—and with whomever he was—whether with royalty, coal miners, the cultured, or the uncouth—Whitefield was unashamedly lifting up Christ and fervently calling for their verdict. He purposed not to be with anyone for more than fifteen minutes without confronting them with the claims of Christ.
At the heart of Whitefield’s prolific ministry was this gospel message. He reveled in the truths of the free grace of God in the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Whitefield’s own heart had been captured by the gospel while a student at Oxford, and he resolved to take this same life-altering message to the masses. He chose not to wait for the unconverted to come to him. As a shepherd goes after the one lost sheep that has wandered from the fold, Whitefield ardently pursued those lost and in need of Christ. This was the heart of his preaching and the soul of his ministry.
In this chapter, we will focus upon the main elements that defined the evangelistic endeavors of this remarkable revivalist. We will concentrate on the fact that in his gospel ministry, he continually exposed sin, exalted the cross, required regeneration, summoned the will, and pointed to eternity. Here lay the driving forces behind Whitefield’s soul-winning efforts. To grasp these essential truths is to understand the dynamics of his ocean-spanning ministry.
Exposing Sin
Whitefield was convinced that any presentation of the gospel must begin by exposing the listener’s sin and his dire need for salvation. This necessitated the preacher’s confronting his hearers’ rebellion against God and warning of the eternal consequences of their rejection. Whitefield plainly understood that none rightly desire the gospel of Christ until they know of their own condemnation before God. Whitefield preached those truths that reveal sin, namely, the holiness of God, the fall of Adam, the demands of the law, the curse of disobedience, the certainty of death, the reality of the final judgment, and the eternality of punishment in hell.
When addressing the unregenerate masses, Whitefield sought to ensure that their depravity was fully laid bare. Martyn Lloyd-Jones aptly stated, “No man could expose the condition of the natural unregenerate heart more powerfully than George Whitefield.”2 Only when confronted with their sinfulness, Whitefield insisted, would unbelievers seek to embrace Christ as their Savior and Lord. He peeled back the outer layers of people’s self-righteousness in order to bring about self-awareness of their sinful hearts.
The work of evangelism mandated that he address the eternally devastating effects of sin in his preaching. Whitefield, like a watchman on the tower, warned of sin, death, and judgment. He sought to disturb his listeners with their lost condition before a righteous Judge in heaven. “The sin of your nature, your original sin, is sufficient to sink you into torments, of which there will be no end,” he preached. “Therefore unless you receive the Spirit of Christ, you are reprobates, and you cannot be saved.”3 He believed the lost must be driven to the brink of utter desperation before they will come to faith in Christ.
Whitefield was a master at sweeping away all useless rhetoric in order that the unconverted would recognize their desperate need to repent. He implored them, “You are lost, undone, without Him; and if He is not glorified in your salvation, He will be glorified in your destruction; if He does not come and make His abode in your hearts, you must take up an eternal abode with the devil and his angels.”4 None who heard Whitefield were put to sleep with a false sense of security.
Pointing back to Adam’s transgression, Whitefield emphasized that all are born with an inherited sin nature from the first man. He declared, “We all stand in need of being justified, on account of the sin of our natures: for we are all chargeable with original sin, or the sin of our first parents.”5 It was this strong belief in original sin and total depravity that caused his every sermon to drive his listeners to grasp a sense of their desperate condition in sin. All humanity is born spiritually dead, he believed:
Can you deny that you are fallen creatures? Do not
you find that you are full of disorders, and that these
disorders make you unhappy? Do not you find that
you cannot change your own hearts? Have you not
resolved many and many a time, and have not your
corruptions yet dominion over you? Are you not
bondslaves to your lusts, and led captive by the devil
at his will?6
Whitefield’s sermons were filled with vivid warnings of the horrific dangers of remaining in a state of sin. In his sermon “Walking with God,” he warned that hell may be but one step away for them: “For how knowest thou, O man, but the next step thou takest may be into hell? Death may seize thee, judgment find thee, and then the great gulf will be fixed between thee and endless glory for ever and ever. O think of these things, all yet that are unwilling to walk with God. Lay them to heart.”7 Whitefield understood that gospel preaching must include the threat of hell, which is intended to drive men to flee to Christ and escape His terrors.
By such strong statements, Whitefield shined a sin-exposing spothght into the dark crevasses of depraved hearts. Only then would sinners flee to the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ to hear about a Savior who died for their guilty souls.
Exalting the Cross
Whitefield next proceeded to the saving death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The message of sin is dark, but by it the truth of salvation through the cross shines that much brighter. Few men have ever proclaimed the death of Christ with greater precision and power. Whenever Whitefield preached, he spoke of the perfect atonement accomplished by the death of the Son of God. Moving from man’s ruin in sin to Christ’s redemption at the cross, Whitefield preached of Christ crucified as his greatest passion and most-dominant note.
Whitefield set before sinners Christ’s death and His atoning blood as the only means of salvation. He relentlessly issued the invitation to come to the Savior by faith and find a sufficient substitute for the sins of all who believe in Him:
Our mountains of sins must all fall before this great
Zerubbabel. On Him God the Father has laid the
iniquities of all that shall believe on Him; and in His
own body He bare them on the tree. There, there, by
faith, O mourners in Zion, may you see your Savior
hanging with arms stretched out, and hear Him, as it
were, thus speaking to your souls: “Behold how I have
loved you! Behold My hands and My feet! Look, look
into My wounded side, and see a heart flaming with
love: love stronger than death. Come into My arms,
O sinners, come wash your spotted souls in My heart’s
blood. See here is a fountain opened for all sin and
all uncleanness! See, O guilty souls, how the wrath
of God is now abiding upon you: come, haste away,
and hide yourselves in the clefts of My wounds; for I
am wounded for your transgressions; I am dying that
you may live forevermore. Behold, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, so am I here lifted up
upon a tree. See how I am become a curse for you:
the chastisement of your peace is upon Me. I am thus
scourged, thus wounded, thus crucified, that you by
My stripes may be healed. Oh, look unto Me, all you
trembling sinners, even to the ends of the earth! Look
unto Me by faith, and you shall be saved.”8
Using vivid language, Whitefield described the sin-bearing terrors of the cross of Christ. He led his listeners back to the scene of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. He urged them to look upon the wounded Savior:
Look then, look then, by the eye of faith, to that God-man whom you have pierced. Behold Him bleeding,
panting, dying upon the cross, with arms stretched
out ready to embrace you all. Hark! How He groans!
See how all nature is in agony! The rocks rend, the
graves open; the sun withdraws its light, ashamed as
it were to see the God of nature suffer; and all this to
usher in man’s great redemption.9
Hear Whitefield again pleaded with his hearers to look to Christ dying upon the cross for sinners, and believe:
Look on His hands, bored with pins of iron; look
on His side, pierced with a cruel spear, to let loose
the sluices of His blood, and open a fountain for sin,
and for all uncleanness…only believe in Him, and
then, though you have crucified Him afresh, yet will
He abundantly pardon you; “though your sins be as
scarlet, yet shall they be as wool; though deeper than
crimson, yet shall they be whiter than snow.”10
Whitefield preached best, he perceived, when he proclaimed the glories of the cross. He affirmed, “I am never better than when I am brought to lie at the foot of the cross.”11 Throughout his sermons, journal entries, and correspondence, Whitefield repeatedly exalted the cross as the singular and supreme hope for sinners. Joseph Belcher described Whitefield as a man whose “whole soul was…in habitual contact with the cross.”12 It was his constant gazing upon the death of the crucified Savior that drove Whitefield to pursue the lost with the message of grace. Whitefield preached the cross as the saving purpose for which Christ came to this earth.
Requiring Regeneration
Whitefield, moreover, was continually expounding upon the necessity of regeneration, as a “great theme”13 in his preaching, according to Lloyd-Jones. There is an often-repeated story in which a woman asked Whitefield after a preaching service, “Why do you keep saying to us, ‘You must be born again’?” The great evangelist answered, “Because, dear woman, you must be born again.”14 This was a central thrust in his many sermons, namely, the absolute necessity of regeneration in order to gain entrance into the kingdom of God.
At the heart of Whitefield’s preaching was this doctrine of the new birth. Arnold Dallimore asserted, “Throughout these sermons there runs one great Scriptural truth—the truth indicated by Whitefield when he summarized his early ministry and its effect, saying, ‘The doctrine of the New Birth…made its way like lightning into the hearers’ consciences.’ He stood, not as declaring his own message, but that of God as set forth in His Word, ‘Ye must be born again.’”15 Further establishing that the new birth was primary in Whitefield’s preaching, Dallimore stated, “The one great truth which had been the foundation of Whitefield’s ministry from the first was that of the new birth.”16 Here lay the core of Whitefield’s preaching.
Dallimore noted that Whitefield’s sermon titled “The Nature and Necessity of the New Birth” was his “most widely circulated discourse.”17 He further stated, “There can be no doubt that the man on the street in Bristol, Gloucester, and London, had he been asked in 1739, ‘What do Whitefield and the Methodists believe?’ would have answered, ‘They claim everybody must be born again.’”18 Another observer noted the following concerning Whitefield’s preaching: “Regeneration was another great doctrine, which the excellent man much insisted upon; hardly a single sermon, but he mentioned it, sometimes more than twice.”19 Henry Stout, professor at Yale University, observed along the same lines that in Whitefield’s preaching the new birth is said to be the “chief product.”20
Regeneration had not been a central focus for the Reformers, but Whitefield made it a dominant emphasis in his preaching. Never allowing it to be relegated to secondary status, the evangelist wrote, “The doctrine of our regeneration or new birth in Christ Jesus…[is] one of the most fundamental doctrines of our holy religion” and is “the very hinge on which the salvation of each of us turns.”21 This was a truth repeatedly lifted up and driven home to the hearts of his listeners.
This primary focus upon regeneration goes back to Whitefield’s own experience of salvation. While a student at Oxford, he came to know Christ by reading Henry Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man. This work explained that salvation is by divine grace, not by man’s own self-righteous efforts. As Scougal’s title suggests, the reality of regeneration is the life of God in the soul of man. Once Whitefield was born again, he never forgot this personal experience. He was constantly proclaiming this fundamental truth to his unbelieving listeners.
Whitefield repeatedly asserted the need for his hearers to find identity in Christ alone. Reliance upon denominational ties and religious affiliations, he contended, would simply not suffice. While preaching in Philadelphia, Whitefield exclaimed:
Father Abraham, who have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No. Any Presbyterians? No. Any Baptists? No.
Have you any Methodists, Seceders, or Independents
there? No, no. Why, who have you there? We don’t
know those names here. All who are here are Christians,
believers in Christ—men who have overcome by the
blood of the Lamb, and the Word of His testimony.22
Men must be born again, Whitefield asserted, to be made right with God. They must be in Christ “by an inward change and purity of heart and cohabitation of His Holy Spirit.”23 This is by the sovereign operation of God. In regeneration, “God is a sovereign agent. His sacred Spirit blows when and where it wishes.”24 Standing behind the truth on regeneration is the doctrine of election. Whitefield exulted, “[God] will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.”25 Just as there is nothing that man can do to cause his physical birth, there nothing he can do to induce spiritual labor in the new birth. This is a truth that Whitefield deeply believed and preached as he urged his listeners: you must be born again.
Summoning the Will
Whitefield pressed the hearts of his listeners for an immediate response. It was not enough for him that people knew the truth of the gospel. They must fully commit themselves to Jesus Christ. “Though I hold particular election, yet I offer Jesus freely to every individual soul,”26 he said. Whitefield was constantly calling men and women to come to Christ.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones implored, “Let us, I hope, once and forever put an end to that lie which says that Calvinism and an interest in evangelism are not compatible.”27 Lloyd-Jones argued that the great evangelists of church history were Calvinistic in their theology: “Here is the greatest evangelist England has ever produced and he was a Calvinist. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the greatest evangelist of last century, confesses that he had modeled himself—as far as he had modeled himself on anybody—on George Whitefield. And he too was a Calvinist.”28
Whitefield biographer Lee Gatiss commented, “Every time, [Whitefield] makes an appeal to his listeners to respond to what they have heard in the living and active word of God. His appeals were variously based on the text and could be either invitations to enjoy the benefits spoken of, warnings to escape the wrath to come, pleadings to accept an offer given, or commands to repent and obey a new Lord.”29 As Whitefield preached, he was summoning his listeners to respond by faith.
It could be argued that Whitefield’s favorite word in preaching was the word come. He repeatedly urged his listeners to come to Christ by faith. Consider the following passionate invitation:
Come, all of you, come, and behold Him stretched out
for you; see His hands and feet nailed to the cross. O,
come, come, my brethren, and nail your sins thereto.
Come, come and see His side pierced; there is a fountain open for sin, and for uncleanness: O, wash, wash
and be clean: come and see His head crowned with
thorns, and all for you. Can you think of a panting,
bleeding, dying Jesus, and not be filled with pity
toward Him? He underwent all this for you. Come
unto Him by faith; lay hold on Him: there is mercy
for every soul of you that will come unto Him. Then
do not delay; fly unto the arms of this Jesus, and you
shall be made clean in His blood.30
Hear the impassioned pleading of Whitefield as he calls his listeners to respond by faith and come to Christ immediately:
Come, then, unto Christ, everyone that hears me this
night; I offer Jesus Christ, pardon, and salvation to all
you who will accept thereof. Come, O you drunkards;
lay aside your cups, drink no more to excel; come and
drink of the water which Christ will give you, and
then you will thirst no more. Come, O you thieves; let
him that has stolen, steal no more, but fly unto Christ,
and He will receive you. Come unto Him, O you harlots; lay aside your lusts and turn unto the Lord, and
He will have mercy upon you; He will cleanse you of
all your sins and wash you in His blood. Come, all you
liars; come, all you Pharisees; come, all you fornicators,
adulterers, swearers, and blasphemers; come to Christ,
and He will take away all your filth; He will cleanse
you from your pollution, and your sins shall be done
away. Come, come, my guilty brethren; I beseech you
for Christ’s sake, and for your immortal soul’s sake, to
come unto Christ.31
With intense passion and compelling persuasion, Whitefield implored his listeners:
Come, I beseech you to come unto Jesus Christ. Oh,
that my words would pierce to the very soul! Oh, that
Jesus Christ was formed in you! Oh, that you would
turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might have
mercy upon you! I would speak till midnight, yes, I
would speak till I could speak no more, so it might be
a means to bring you to Jesus; let the Lord Jesus but
enter your souls, and you shall find peace which the
world can neither give nor take away.32
“Come!” Whitefield exclaimed. Come as guilty, helpless, hell-deserving sinners and find righteousness and life in Christ: “In Him is your only help; fly to Him then by faith; say unto Him, as the poor leper did, ‘Lord, if Thou wilt,’ Thou canst make me willing; and He will stretch forth the right hand of His power to assist and relive you.”33
It is quite clear that Whitefield believed an invitation must be offered to the lost to come to Christ. Still, he did not practice an “altar call,” nor did he encourage emotional excitement among his congregation. He said, “I offer you salvation this day; the door of mercy is not yet shut, there does yet remain a sacrifice for sin, for all that will accept of the Lord Jesus Christ.”34 This gospel appeal represents countless invitations Whitefield extended to his listeners.
Those under the sound of his voice must not delay even one more moment. Whitefield urged them to act decisively and embrace Jesus Christ who died for sinners:
Make haste then, O sinners, make haste, and
come
by faith to Christ. Then this day, even this hour, nay,
this moment, if you believe, Jesus Christ shall come
and make His eternal abode in your hearts.…Alas!
Why do you stand still? How know you, whether
Jesus Christ may ever call you again? Come then,
poor, guilty sinners; come away, poor, lost, undone
publicans: make haste, I say, and come away to Jesus
Christ.35
Whitefield intensely sought to wake sinners from their spiritual slumber, exhorting them to run to Christ. He did so by arguing that they would have no excuse when they stood before the Judge of all ages:
This day I have invited all, even the worst of sinners, to be married to the Lord Jesus. If you perish,
remember you do not perish for lack of invitation.
You yourselves shall stand forth at the last day, and
I here give you a summons to meet me at the judgment seat of Christ, and to clear both my Master and
me. Would weeping, would tears, prevail on you, I
could wish my head were waters, and my eyes fountains of tears, that I might weep out every argument
and melt you into love. Would anything I could do,
or suffer, influence your hearts, I think I could bear
to pluck out my eyes, or even to lay down my life,
for your sakes.36
This was the urgency with which he summoned the human will and urged for a decisive commitment. J. I. Packer remarked that Whitefield’s preaching was urging “on-the-spot entries into the reality of the new birth.”37 Here was Whitefield pleading with his hearers to respond to the gospel and embrace Christ.
Pointing to Eternity
Whitefield further impressed upon his listeners the certain reality of eternity that lay before them. He addressed them with a mighty sense of God and a weighty sense of eternity. He preached as though the final judgment, heaven, and hell were looming on the immediate horizon. In nearly every sermon, Whitefield affirmed that the day of eternity was close at hand. The Judge is standing at the door, he exclaimed, ready to step onto the scene. This kind of eternity-pressing preaching—of both heaven and hell—characterized the evangelistic thrust of George Whitefield.
Whitefield spoke of heaven as a glorious reality and the future home to which all saints will go. He proclaimed, “In heaven the wicked one shall cease from troubling you, and your weary souls shall enjoy an everlasting rest; his fiery darts cannot reach those blissful regions: Satan will never come anymore to appear with, disturb, or accuse the sons of God, when once the Lord Jesus Christ shuts the door.”38 To be free from sin and in the presence of Christ is the supreme blessing of heaven; the great separation will occur, removing believers from unbelievers and righteousness from unrighteousness.
With graphic words and an arresting voice, Whitefield had the keen ability to dramatically represent the horrors of hell. His vivid language in describing the lake of fire caused people to feel as if they might drop into the bottomless pit at any moment. Crying, screaming, and weeping could be heard as Whitefield preached on the fiery punishment of the ungodly. In one sermon, Whitefield challenged his listeners:
Think often on the pains of hell; consider, whether it
is not better to cut off a right hand or foot, and pull
out a right eye, if they offend us (or cause us to sin)
“rather than to be cast into hell, where the worm dieth
not, and the fire is not quenched.” Think how many
thousands there are now reserved with damned spirits
in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great
day.…Think you, they now imagine Jesus Christ
to be an hard master; or rather think you not, they
would give then thousand times ten thousand worlds,
could they but return to life again, and take Christ’s
easy yoke upon them? And can we dwell with everlasting burnings more than they?…How shall we
bear the irrevocable sentence, “Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels”?39
Whitefield often asked searching questions of his listeners, forcing them to think about where they would spend eternity. By their own answers his hearers would often condemn themselves.
How will you be able to stand at the bar of an angry,
sin-avenging Judge and see so many discourses you
have despised, so many ministers, who once longed
and labored for the salvation of your precious and
immortal souls, brought out as so many swift witnesses against you? Will it be sufficient then, think
you, to allege that you went to hear them only out of
curiosity, to pass away an idle hour, to admire the oratory or ridicule the simplicity of the preacher?40
No decision for Christ, Whitefield asserted, could be made after one dies. He pleaded, “While your sins are not repented of, you are in danger of death, and if you should die, you would perish forever. There is no hope of any who live and die in their sins, but that they will dwell with devils and damned spirits to all eternity.”41 Unless lost souls receive Christ in this life, there is no hope in the eternal ages that one should escape the punishment of the damned.
So powerful were Whitefield’s pleas in his sermons that “scoffers were put to silence, and Satan’s strongholds were pulled down.”42 On one occasion at a drinking club in Philadelphia, it is recounted that there was a boy “who used to mimic people for their diversion. Persuaded by the gentlemen, the boy (though reluctantly) stood up and mimicked Whitefield, and said, ‘I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not; unless you repent you will all be damned.’ This unexpected speech (quoted from one of Whitefield’s sermons) broke up the club, which has never met since.”43 Though physically absent, Whitefield’s pressing appeals nevertheless resounded through the bars and back alleys of every town in which he preached.
Whitefield’s alarming message to his audience was that if they did not believe in Christ, their lost souls would surely enter an eternity of God’s wrath: “Oh sinner! I beseech you to repent, let not the wrath of God be awakened! Let not the fires of eternity be kindled against you!”44 His fervor led him to press hard upon the hearts of his hearers the realities of both heaven and hell. Whitefield always lived in light of eternity and preached as one who sensed the impending day drawing ever nearer.
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The evangelistic zeal of George Whitefield flowed out of his love for the glorious gospel of grace. It was this supreme love and devotion that drove him to pursue the lost, expose sin, exalt the cross, summon the will, and point to eternity. Thoroughly Calvinistic in theology, this fervent evangelist held forth the only saving message there is for guilty sinners. He delighted in calling them to faith in Christ and leaving the results to God, who alone can save.
Arnold Dallimore wrote, “His ministry presents an unparalleled example of declaring the sovereignty of God combined with the free offer of salvation to all who would believe on Christ.”45 Whitefield provides the quintessential example of one who held the doctrines of grace in one hand and the free offer of the gospel in the other hand. To know this about Whitefield is to know the man, and to know the man is to have a most excellent example to follow.
We need to have a similar granite-like boldness in our gospel message. We need to go back to Paul, to Augustine, to Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers, to the Puritans, and ultimately back to Whitefield. We need again heralds such as these, those who are not ashamed to preach sin and judgment, heaven and hell, repentance and faith, righteousness and holiness. We must preach the necessity of radical life transformation that can only come about through the reality of the new birth.
May God raise up in this day a host of such clarion voices that will proclaim this same gospel message.