Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history and we are on location in the city of London.

We are sitting here in a beautiful park and I want to tell you about the story of the Great Awakening here in this city. Now the Great Awakening in England begins with

the story of John Wesley and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield when they were

all students at Oxford together.

And they formed what they called the Holiness Club.

And together, they thought they could achieve Holiness

by adhering to a strict discipline and they all committed

to following a strict method of discipline and they were referred to as the people of the Methodist way.

Well, eventually, as they were reading the scripture and they were hearing what was being preached in Anglican churches, they realized

that there was a great divide. And both Whitfield and the Westleys started

preaching a sermon entitled the almost Christian.

So they'd be invited to an Anglican church,

they'd step up into the pulpit,

and they would begin their sermon,

the almost Christian.

Do you know who the almost Christian is?

Well, it's you, they would preach.

You thinking that because you were baptized

as an infant or because you come to this church you are a

Christian know they said you want to know who is a Christian the one who is born

again and so they were preaching the gospel and gospel transformation and

preaching for conversion. Well you can imagine after preaching a few sermons like that they found themselves

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