Review: The Evangelistic Zeal of George Whitefield

As we approach the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation I thought it would be timely to also share this book review of a biography of an important Reformed preacher in Protestant history: George Whitefield.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Westminster | Amazon

Many years ago I heard John MacArthur say that when he’s on vacation he often read an encouraging Christian biography.  I started reading this biography on the famous George Whitefield while on a short family vacation and I’m glad I read it since it was encouraging and spiritually edifying.  This book is part of “A Long Line of Godly Men Profile” series published by Reformation Trust Publishing and like the other two works in this series that I read this particular volume did not disappoint.

I know very little of Whitefield prior to reading this book, other than the fact that he was a famous evangelist and preacher.  This book left me amazed at what God has done through his life and also his faithfulness in serving the Lord.  It also was hugely spiritually encouraging as well.

For preachers after the Apostolic period Whitefild was unmatched in his evangelistic zeal.  The following statistics in the book puts it in perspective.  Whitefield in thirty four years of ministry preached an incredible amount of eighteen thousand sermons in which three or four sermons a day was common.  Whitefield’s preaching took place not only in England but also colonial America.  He was used by the Lord to bring about revivals in two continents!  Eighty percent of Colonial Americans during his time has heard him preached which is more than the amount of Americans who have heard and seen Washington.  We must also remember that this was a time before steamboats and airplanes; Whitefield spent three years of his life on ships for the sake of traveling to preach the Gospel outside of England and would have made seven trips to Colonial America seven times and elsewhere such as Scotland and Ireland fifteen times.  During the span of his ministry over ten million people heard Whitefield preached.  The summer when Whitefield first preached he preached to over a million soul and he did so at the age of twenty four.  Clearly we have a lot to thank God for God using Whitefield.

The book is divided into six chapters.  Chapter one gives us a biographical sketch of Whitefield’s life and times.  I really appreciated the fact that the author Steve Lawson is a preacher himself who is able to put Whitefield’s ministry in the context of the time and also as a minister and preacher.  Chapter two is on the focused devotion Whitefield had in his spiritual life.  Here we see an examination of Whitefield’s immersion with Scripture, prayer, humility and striving for holiness while being focused on Christ.  Chapter three is on Whitefield’s theology of Sovereign Grace where Lawson not only presented Whitefield’s theology in embracing the five points of Calvinism but also how it did not undermine Whitefield’s evangelism but fueled it.  I appreciated that thrust of this chapter since people often complain today that Calvinism hinder evangelism.  Chapter four is on Whitefield’s Gospel ministry in which the subsection of the chapter looked at Whitefields’ continually exposing sin, exalting the cross, requiring regeneration, summoning the will and pointing to eternity.  Chapter five is titled “A Passion that Consumed.”  What was memorable for me with chapter five is the love of God and the love of the lost that drove Whitefield’s preaching.  In this chapter I also learned that Whitefield was one of the early preachers to slaves in the American colonies and he did during a time when it very sensitive to do so, following the wake of several slave rebellion.  What an encouragement it is to see Whitefield’s example of taking the Gospel to all and doing so in a way that went against the grain of society.  Chapter six is on the Spirit’s work in Whitefield’s ministry and life.

In summary this is a recommended spiritual biography.