Whitfield's acting, his passionate, energetic, whole-souled preaching, was the fruit of his new birth.

Because his new birth had given him eyes to see life and light and power from above.

So he saw the glorious facts of the gospel as real and through those facts. He saw the Savior and what he accomplished as wonderful and

terrifying and magnificent and real. And so he cries out, I will not be a velvet mouth preacher.

What fueled George Whitfield's intense, passionate preaching?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper explores Whitfield's dramatic style,

showing that his delivery was no mere performance but a reflection of his deep conviction about the

gospel's reality.

This biographical message was originally preached at the Desiring God 2009 conference

for pastors.

Harry Stout, Professor of history at Yale, has written a book called The Divine Dramatist,

George Whitfield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, which I read very carefully all the way through,

cover to cover. He's not so sure that Sarah Edwards is right

about the purity of Whitfield's motives. This book by Harry Stout, which you will not find in the

bookstore, because I told them not to carry

it. So you can criticize me if you said you ought to have it there, because Piper quotes from it.

This is the most sustained piece of historical cynicism I have ever read.

In the first hundred pages of Stout's book, I wrote in the margin the word cynical

70 times.

But having restrained myself tremendously at this point in being negative about this book

I do think we need to come to terms with what he faced.

And if we face it head on, I think we will find something deeper than Stout found. Even asking his kind of question about drama, the divine dramatist, I think we find something

...