This week I ran across this sermon which turns modern evangelistic methods upside down. It has been commonly held that the advantageous way to begin a gospel conversation is to ask someone “If you died today, would you go to heaven?” However, Whitefield’s evangelistic strategy was “If you die today without Christ, you will go to hell, so go home and cry out to God for conversion!” That’s quite a difference isn’t it. Furthermore, the fact that Whitefield was a Calvinist and believed God alone saves sinners puts to shame evangelistic strategies of converting people by means of their autonomous decisions to go to heaven. The way that God awakened sinners through Whitefield’s ministry is amazing and exemplary! He awakened sinners not by calling men to contemplate what would earn them heaven, but what could possibly keep them from hell! Here is an excerpt of the sermon:
“And therefore, as I suppose many of you are unconverted, and graceless, go home! And away to your closets, and down with your stubborn hearts before God. If ye have not done it before, let this be the night. Or, do not stay till ye go home; begin now, while standing here; pray to God, and let the language of thy heart be, “Lord, convert me! Lord, make me a little child; Lord Jesus, let me not be banished from thy kingdom!” My dear friends, there is a great deal more implied in the words, than is expressed: when Christ says, “Ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” it is as much to say, “ye shall certainly go to hell, ye shall certainly be damned, and dwell in the blackness of darkness for ever, ye shall go Where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.” The Lord God impress it upon your souls! May an arrow (as one lately wrote me in a letter) dipped in the blood of Christ, reach every unconverted sinner’s heart! May God fulfill the text to every one of your souls!
It is he alone that can do it. If ye confess your Sins, and leave them, and lay hold on the LordJesus Christ, the Spirit of God shall be given you; if you will go and say, turn me, O my God! Thou knowest not, O man, what the return of God may be to thee. Did I think that preaching would be to the purpose, did I think that arguments would induce you to come, I would continue my discourse till midnight.
And however some of you may hate me without a cause, would to God every one in this congregation was as much concerned for himself, as at present (blessed be God) I feel myself concerned for him. O that my head were waters, O that mine eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep over an unconverted, graceless, wicked, and adulterous generation.
Precious souls, for God’s sake think what will become of you when ye die, if you die without being converted; if ye go hence without the wedding garment, God will strike you speechless, and ye shall be banished from his presence for ever and ever. I know ye cannot dwell with everlasting burnings; behold then I show you a way of escape; Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth, the Lord Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. It is his Spirit [that] must convert you, come to Christ, and ye shall have it; and may God for Christ’s sake give it to you all, and convert you, that we may all meet, never to part again, in his heavenly kingdom; even so Lord Jesus, Amen and Amen.”
George Whitefield in Marks of a True Conversion