Evangelists Who Reached Their World

“Throughout church history, God has sent wake-up calls to the church in her time of declension. When she has grown cold and dull in her missionary spirit God has sent fresh power to awaken her. He has often done this through the gift of great evangelists. These unique men of God, powerful ministers of the Gospel, are sovereignly raised up by the Holy Spirit for ‘such a time as this.’ If God attend their labors with blessing they reap a mighty crop of converts born of God and added to the church. . . . These God-given increases sometimes resulted in wide-scale awakening. Such evangelists have understood that evangelism is the responsibility of the whole church. They have also understood that revival is God’s singular gift, not something brought about by human planning and effort.”

With this paragraph, John Armstrong introduces his readers to five key evangelists whose ministries covered a period of two hundred years, impacted hundreds of thousands of lives, and were marked by unusual boldness, passionate proclamation, and an outpouring of Spiritual blessing on two continents. His book, Five Great Evangelists, is published by Christian Focus Publications and focuses on the ministries of George Whitfield, John Wesley, Howell Harris, Asahel Nettleton, and Duncan Matheson. Since this valuable work is relatively unfamiliar, I intend to introduce his material on George Whitfield in this column and will cover some of the other evangelists he deals with in two subsequent columns.

The value of the book lies in both its brevity and its thoroughness. Unlike other “short” biographies on men like Whitfield and Wesley, he provides details that are generally only found in the larger and more substantial treatments. Additionally, his material is fervently evangelistic in nature. The spiritual passion that drove these men is so well captured that it transforms the book from being merely a biographical sketch by adding a devotional flavor that is often missing from other similar works. Furthermore, he delivers a well-balanced presentation of both the strengths and weaknesses of each man and his ministry rather than merely recounting their accomplishments and amazing results as other works of this size tend to do. Finally, Armstrong writes with a burden to inspire a new generation of evangelists to aspire to the boldness of these men in preaching not just to lost men in the world but to boldly preach the need for salvation to multitudes of lost church members. In this column I intend to introduce his material on George Whitfield. The next column will focus on his material on the life of John Wesley. A final column will cover his material on Harris, Nettleton, and Matheson.

Armstrong begins with the extraordinary life and ministry of George Whitfield. Born in 1714 in Goucester, England, George was the last of seven children born to Thomas and Elizabeth Whitfield. His growing up years were not easy. His father died before his second birthday and his mother remarried a man who made life difficult for George and his siblings. As a result, his educational experience during his pre-college days was marginal at best. Additionally, he suffered a severe case of measles that permanently affected his eyesight. The sorrow and hardship he experienced in his youth would shape him into a powerful and compassionate preacher of the good news of the gospel. At eighteen, he entered Oxford intending to become a minister of the Church of England. At Oxford he met Charles and John Wesley who became life-long friends. Shortly after his conversion in 1735, he returned to Goucester and God blessed his first evangelistic efforts with a several conversions. They would prove to be but the first of thousands that God would bring to faith by means of his preaching. He soon returned to Oxford and began a preaching ministry in London. There he reconnected with his old friends, John and Charles Wesley who were doing mission work in North America. He would make

As he began to preach the gospel, he experienced rejection from those who should most have embraced him, his fellow ministers in the Church of England. So strong was their opposition that he soon found no open doors available for him to preach in the regular church assemblies in either London or Bristol. The pain this caused him is evident in the following diary entry:

"They have thrust me out and since the self-righteous men of this generation count themselves unworthy, I go out to the highways and hedges and compel harlots, publicans, and sinners to come in that the Master’s house may be filled. They who are sinners will follow after me to hear the word of God.!”

Eventually he made his way to the coal-mining region of Kingswood where no parish church existed. There he took to preaching to the miners in the open air. Soon, he was preaching to 5,000 then 10,000 and ultimately to more than 20,000 hearers. God richly blessed this ministry and many were soundly converted.

Whitfield had thirty-four years of fruitful ministry for Christ. He preached more than 18,000 formal sermons and if all the informal messages are added the figure exceeds 30,000. He crossed the Atlantic seven times in his missionary endeavors to Georgia. He made fifteen voyages to Scotland, two to Ireland, and traveled to Bermuda, Holland, and Gibralter.

His singular passion to preach the Gospel and make Christ known was his driving passion until his death in 1770 at fifty-five years of age. Perhaps a statement made during the difficult time of controversy with his beloved friends, the Wesleys, best captures this sentiment. “May the name of Whitfield perish, but Christ be glorified.” Clearly, God honored such humility and exaltation of Christ by preserving the story of Whitfield’s life and labor for the profit of His people.