Revival Stories
The 1st Great Awakening of the 1730’s - 1740’s: Whitefield and Wesley
As God was positioning Jonathan Edwards for revival in America in the 1730’s, He was also preparing revivalists in England for a mighty evangelical awakening. He put Moravian leaders into the lives of John Wesley and George Whitefield to inspire them and ready them for His work. John Wesley was a son of an Anglican priest, and his life was marked by a sense of destiny early on. As a young child, he almost died in a fire that consumed his home, but at the last possible moment, his father and his community pulled him out from the 2nd floor window and rescued him. His mother absolutely believed God had spared John’s life for a special purpose. He grew up and eventually went to Oxford for ministry training, where he started the Holy Club to focus on good deeds, strict obedience to God, and spiritual disciplines.
There John Wesley met a young student named George Whitefield. Unlike John, George came from a poor family. He worked his way through Oxford by serving the wealthier students. John Wesley welcomed him into the Holy Club, and the two became friends.
Wesley later journeyed across the Atlantic ocean in 1735 to Savannah, Georgia, to preach to the lost, but his ministry failed to gain traction. When he returned to England, he eventually realized that he lacked a personal relationship with Christ. At a Moravian gathering, Wesley experienced the new birth as he put his trust in Jesus. Wesley and Whitefield started preaching about the need for a new birth, about the need for true conversion, in order to experience the life God intended. As a result, many institutional churches in England closed their doors to them, so they unconventionally went into the open fields and preached to the miners and to others not deemed good enough for church. Thousands would gather, even tens of thousands, to hear the message of the Gospel that the established clergy had forgotten. Many of those who heard the Good News in the fields experienced the move of the Holy Spirit and gave their lives to Christ. Revival had come to England!
In 1740, Whitefield felt led to make the hazardous ocean crossing to the New World, to bring the Gospel to the American colonies. Everywhere he went, Whitefield experienced God opening doors of favor, evoking tender hearts and ushering in revival. It is said that, in one year, he traveled over 5000 miles and gave over 350 messages to spiritually hungry audiences. There was pronounced enthusiasm and emotion as the colonists awakened personally to God’s presence and His supernatural power. God would stir hearts so intensely that people would come from miles and miles away in order to hear God’s Word dramatically delivered by Whitefield. Even well-known colonial leaders like Benjamin Franklin could not help but stop and listen to the preaching about God granting new birth to sinners through Jesus Christ. Franklin was not shy in describing the effects of revival, saying, “It was wonderful to see the change that was made in the behavior of our inhabitants from being thoughtless or indifferent about religion. It seemed as if the whole world was growing religious so that one could not walk through town in an evening without hearing psalms sung by different families.” This great awakening would continue to set ablaze more than a hundred towns during this time, with hundreds of new churches arising and 9 Christian universities established to prepare young people for ministry. God would deeply touch the heart and soul of early America and prepare it for His purposes in the years ahead.
QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS:
- How have you seen God working in someone’s life to prepare them for future ministry? In what ways has God worked in your life to ready you for His great purposes?
- What traditional areas in our society have been closed up and insulated against God’s Word? What new “open fields” are available today to preach the Gospel powerfully?