Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These.

John Morant was born a free black man in New York in 1755. He became a musician, a trade

that as he put it opened me to a large door of vanity and vice and supplied him with

as much money as I had any occasion for. Able to indulge in his whims, he lived without

God and was as unstable as water. After moving to Charleston, South Carolina, he and a friend

happened to walk by a revival meeting led by George Whitefield, which he entered on a

dare. Here's his account.

The lower to company, the word with such power that I was struck to the ground and lay

both speechless and senseless near half an hour. When I was come to, I found two men

attending me and a woman throwing water in my face and holding a smelling bottle to my

nose. Everywhere I heard from the minister was like a parcel of swords thrust in me.

And what added to my distress, I thought I saw the devil on every side of me. I was constrained

in the bitterness of my spirit to hollow out in the midst of a congregation, which disturbing

them, they took me away. But fine and I could neither walk nor stand, they carried me as

far as the vestry, and there I remained till the service was over. When the people were

dismissed, Mr. Whitefield came into the vestry and being told of my condition, he came immediately.

And the first word he said to me was, Jesus Christ has got thee at last.

John Morant's story may sound familiar to anyone who's been around or knows much about

evangelical Christianity, being suddenly struck down by the spirit of the Lord and experiencing

a dramatic rebirth into a new life with Christ. But that sort of story is only familiar

now because of writings like Morant's and the movement he was a part of, what's called

the first great awakening. In the mid 1700s, a new generation of preachers began to

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