sheepfodderGeorge Whitefield and Naps In Church
Posted by sheepfodder on November 8, 2008
This approach may not be directly transferable to our day and context, but I think more men would do well to have Whitefield’s chutzpah:
He [Whitefield] had complete confidence in the authority of his message, and was determined that it should receive the respect it deserved as God’s Word. Once in a New Jersey meeting-house he “noticed an old man settling down for his accustomed, sermon-time nap”, writes John Pollock, one of his biographers. Whitefield began his sermon quietly, without disturbing the gentleman’s slumbers. But then “in measured, deliberate words” he said:
“If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you might rest your elbows upon your knees and your heads on your hands, and go to sleep!…But I have come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts, and (he clapped his hands and stamped his foot) I must and I will be heard.” The old man woke up startled.
(John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 32-33)
HT: The Fool’s Gold
