George Whitefield’s Impact on Revival

Although Whitefield himself spoke very little of the hardships he encountered, his “Journals” reveal the price he paid for the cause of Christ.  His zeal and determination took him on an amazing course of evangelistic labor.  After nine days of preaching in Philadelphia in the spring of 1740, he set out for New York.  A seven-hour journey on horseback brought him to the home of Mr. Tennent at Neshaminy, where a congregation of 5,000 awaited him.

“When I got there (he writes) my body, through heat and labor was so weak and faint, that my knees smote one against another, my visage changed, and I was ready to drop down as soon as I had finished my prayer.  But God was pleased to revive me.  Great numbers were melted. . . .” But despite his weakness, he traveled another eight miles that night and another sixteen the following morning. This brought him to the Dutch settlement of Shippack, where he reported:

Thursday, April 24. . . “It was seemingly a very wilderness part of the country but there were no less, I believe, than two thousand hearers. . . Traveling and preaching in the sun again, weakened me much and made me very sick; but by the Divine assistance, I took horse, rode twelve miles, and preached in the evening to about 3,000 people at a Dutchman’s plantation. . .” Read more »

My dad was saved in a revival meeting in 1930. The revival meetings were held every night for six straight weeks! My grandfather loaded his family up into the Model A every evening and drove seven miles from the family farm to the church. Upon arrival, they listened to the preaching of an evangelist by the name of Shannon.

I love to hear the old-time stories of revival. Years ago in northern Wisconsin, a song leader told me how his family used to attend the Methodist camp meetings every night for weeks at a time. One day as a fifteen year-old boy, the song leader looked across the field and saw a neighbor kneeling down in the furrow behind a team of horses. He and his dad walked over to see what was wrong and heard their neighbor praying the sinner’s prayer. He was a proud, hardened old farmer, but the conviction of the preached Word broke him.

In a revival meeting near Detroit, Michigan in December of 1975, an elderly man lent me his overcoat for the week. When I tried to refuse his kindness, he told me how he sang in the choir during several Billy Sunday crusades. He had been praying for a revival to sweep across the nation once more. Stories like these make me thirsty for a pouring out of God’s Spirit again in a Great Awakening! Read more »