George Whitefield - Philip - IV - Chapter 4

Required reading
Life and times of George Whitefield by Robert Philip (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read Chapter Four.

My summary
In Chapter Four we see Whitefield back in London.  The Chapter tells us of his first attempts at open air preaching and more of the opposition he received from other ministers.  Some opposed Whitefield for preaching in the open air, but Philip also shows us a little of the debate between Whitefield and other ministers over the doctrine of regeneration.

What grabbed me
In Chapter Four an important link was made between Whitefield's success and prayer meetings: 'Private devotional meetings were thus the cradle of field preaching, as surely as field preaching was the morning star of England's second reformation!  How often, in grace as in nature, God hangs the greatest weights on the smallest wires!  I mean, on wires accounted the smallest by the wisdom of this world, and by the folly of the church: for social prayer-meetings are the strongest wires in all the machinery of the moral universe.  God hung upon them all the weighty gifts, and all the weightier grace and glory, of PENTECOST!  God hung upon them all that is great and good in the American revivals, and all that is amazing in the success of foreign missions.  It was when the British churches were as the heart of one man in prayer, that African slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions.  The spiritual destiny of American now hangs on her prayer-meetings.'

O that Christians today would unite in Whitefieldian prayer meetings and beg God for the revivals that only he can send!

Next week's reading
Chapter Five.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.