George Whitefield: The Voice That Emptied Franklin’s Pockets
Benjamin Franklin walked into a Philadelphia crowd with his mind made up. He would not give a single coin to the collection. Then a young English preacher opened his mouth, and by the end of the night Franklin had emptied his copper, his silver, and even his gold into the plate. He went home with empty pockets and a head full of wonder.
The preacher was George Whitefield.
The Skeptic Who Came to Give Nothing
Franklin was no easy mark. He called himself a skeptic, and he had decided beforehand that this traveling preacher would get nothing out of him. But Whitefield was not aiming at Franklin’s wallet. He was aiming at his heart. Coin by coin, the most famous freethinker in America surrendered everything in his pockets. That is what the gospel does when it gets past our defenses. It does not argue us into the kingdom. It melts us.
A Voice That Carried to Thirty Thousand
Whitefield came to America in 1740, only twenty-five years old, with a voice like nothing anyone had heard. Franklin once paced off the distance and figured thirty thousand people could hear him at once. He preached in open fields, on courthouse steps, from the back of a wagon, two and three and four times a day until his voice gave out. He preached to rich and poor, free and enslaved, the devout and the scornful. Nobody was beyond the reach of his gospel.
Aimed at the Heart
When Whitefield preached at Jonathan Edwards’s church, Edwards wept through the whole sermon. His wife Sarah, not an easy woman to impress, said Whitefield aimed “more at affecting the heart.” That was the secret. Scripture says, “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). You may never preach to thousands. But someone near you is waiting to hear it from you. Aim at the heart.
And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.
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- What Is Costly Discipleship? Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship in Plain English
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Books by Pastor Rodney Coe
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