How many sermons did george whitefield preach

He is a born orator. A prejudiced person, I know, might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display, but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him. While far from an abolitionist, Whitefield was deeply disturbed to witness the brutal treatment of slaves. With increasing frequency, he sought to preach the good news to them.

He also rebuked slaveowners who mistreated their slaves and deprived them access to hearing the gospel. Still, Whitefield accepted slavery, supported the practice, and even owned a plantation with slaves in Georgia.

Whitefield, it seems, had more concern for orphans than distress over the plight of Blacks. Whitefield sought a wife who would be a helpmate to him in his tireless missionary journeys and orphanage work.

In , he married Elizabeth James, a year-old widow from Wales and a recent convert to Christianity. Elizabeth gave birth to their only child in , but the baby boy died only four months later. Shortly after, George left for America, where he would die a year later.

His most significant impact was felt in America and Scotland, where the winds of revival had already begun to blow through the ministry of local pastors and evangelists. Along with the Wesleys, Whitefield was one of the co-founders of Methodism. However, Whitefield followed the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, while the Wesley brothers rested in the Arminian theology of conditional election or free will. After a split over these theological differences occurred, Whitefield relinquished leadership in the Methodist societies to Welsey.

The tone of his meetings was non-denominational, uniting people of any background. Whitefield established no churches, movements, or denominations in his lifetime, but he took the Great Commission seriously. He was the first person in America to skyrocket to celebrity status, but remain a man of high integrity.

He was the Billy Graham of his day. Franklin also built a large auditorium in Philadelphia for Whitefield to hold his crusades, since the churches there could not contain the crowds. Whitefield was a preacher who commanded audiences of thousands with only the use of his unamplified voice and charismatic personality. How does such a person spend his lifetime preaching at least 18, times to perhaps 10 million hearers and not be remembered more notably? George Whitefield understood his mission clearly—to spread the gospel of the new birth.

In that mission, he succeeded. He did not seek to build a name for himself or a legacy on earth. The effect was often soporific. Drawing on his youthful foray into drama, Whitefield memorized his sermons, spoke without notes, varied the timbre of his voice and gestured with abandon.

He drew freely on his own emotions, crying out, "My Master! My Lord! The effect was electric. Crowds responded with outpourings of emotion. People cried, sobbed, shrieked, swooned and fainted. All of New England, it seemed, was seized by a spiritual convulsion. Whitefield ignited the Great Awakening, a major religious revival that became the first major mass movement in American history.

At its core, the Awakening changed the way that people experienced God. Instead of receiving religious instruction from their ministers, ordinary men and women unleashed their emotions to make an immediate, intense and personal connection with the divine.

From New England to Georgia, the revival was marked by a broad populist tone -- small farmers, traders, artisans, servants and laborers were especially swept up by the preaching of Whitefield and his followers. As historian Harry Stout observed: "They were still part of a view of the world as a world divided between superiors and inferiors.

And Whitefield, like the other Methodists, sought out groups of people whom other ministers had passed over, such as miners in Britain or slaves in Georgia. Where other Anglican ministers emphasized religious ritual or moral living, Whitefield preached conversion. His hearers must be inwardly changed through faith in Jesus Christ for a personal salvation from sin, to experience a new birth through the Holy Spirit.

That conversion and regeneration could be experienced in an instant, Whitefield preached, if only people would repent and believe. As he grew increasingly popular, though, Whitefield also became increasingly divisive. Many established ministers thought he was wrong to emphasize conversion and that his style was too flamboyant.

Whitefield in turn was unsparing and sometimes uncharitable in his attacks on other ministers, whom he accused of being ignorant of the gospel and of serving Satan. These disputes began to create a division between evangelicals like Whitefield and mainstream Anglicanism. Whitefield also broke with his fellow Methodist John Wesley over a theological argument that led to a personal rift, and the Methodists separated into two camps.

In Whitefield returned to the colonies for what would become the most important preaching tour of his life. At the same time that he raised money for the Georgia orphanage, Whitefield preached throughout the colonies, from New England to Georgia, in a trip that lasted over a year.

He held meetings both in the open air and at whatever churches would invite him. The trip was well publicized, for Whitefield arranged for newspaper coverage and wrote many pamphlets and sermons on his journeys, thereby harnessing the power of the press for the sake of revival. Consequently, Whitefield preached to tremendously large crowds, including some gatherings that numbered in the tens of thousands.

Whitefield preached alongside each of those ministers. On his return to Britain in , Whitefield continued his preaching ministry, though his popularity was waning. Many churches were closed to him because of his attacks on the Anglican clergy, so he preached in the open air and established a chapel for himself in London.

Whitefield sailed again for the colonies in