I'd like to recommend a book that I think you will thoroughly enjoy, learn valuable American history through reading it and even be edified in the process! The following post is from April of 2016:
These may be the two most celebrated men in the American colonies prior to the American Revolution. Stay with me, for the names may surprise you, at least one of them. Only eight years separated the elder born in Boston in 1706 and the younger born in Gloucester, England in 1714. Both were born to humble circumstances and both had unrelenting passions. They were different in their philosophies of life yet were great friends until the younger died first in 1770.
The elder, a polymath, was a printer, an author, an inventor, a scientist, and a statesman of world renown among other things. You now surely know that he is Benjamin Franklin. The younger was an evangelist. The University of Pennsylvania honors both as founders. George Whitefield (pronounced Whit-field) was the most celebrated man in the American colonies during his ministry.
This book is far from just two mini-biographies. It tells a story of Philadelphia in the first half of the 18th century and it provides a very concise and necessary picture of Christianity during that period, including snippets of Jonathon and Sarah Edwards and Cotton Mather, while more detail is given John and Charles Wesley. But the book is more than even this. It shows the similarities of these great men... Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield... while contrasting the passion of the former to improve the mind and thereby the citizenry in general, to the latter whose passion was to to see souls come to Christ. Although it may have at first been Whitefield's enduring labors to raise money to fund an orphanage in Savannah that placed him front and center in Franklin's eyes
Raised in working-class families but rebellious to the establishment of their time, they would soon travel the world in their own endeavors and eventually change the course of an entire people. Ben Franklin rejected his Puritan Boston upbringing for a gospel of good works while George Whitefield rejected the dour messaging of the Gospel from his youth to unveil the majesties of Jesus Christ to awestruck throngs from New England to Georgia.
Whitefield published most of his sermons under the auspices of the Philadelphia printer but they forged a great friendship to go along with business, a friendship that Franklin even referred to as love. There's a lesson here for America today if we are willing to learn it. Franklin never became a Christian although he greatly supported his friend's ministry, while Whitefield never stopped attempting to bring his friend into the kingdom of Christ. Ben Franklin listened over the years as a friend would, while George Whitefield gently but firmly apportioned his pleadings to his friend, not wanting to turn him away but not willing to abandon his soul either.
The God-fearing liberal of today should admit that this nation is collapsing into anarchy and violence and welcome the Christian message of law and gospel as a stabilizing force even if they have no intention of accepting it, but that's not what's happening. They want to be free of the Bible!
George Whitefield was often hounded, ridiculed and persecuted by the secular element in society but he saw this as evidence that Satan was not happy with his ministry. We can learn from this, for if we are not being ridiculed for our belief then maybe we are just not very upsetting to the demonic forces being unleashed around us.
The book is The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitefield, and the Surprising Friendship that Invented America by Randy Petersen and it was published by Thomas Nelson in 2015. The author referred in his book to Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield as "the odd couple" and thus the title of this post.
These may be the two most celebrated men in the American colonies prior to the American Revolution. Stay with me, for the names may surprise you, at least one of them. Only eight years separated the elder born in Boston in 1706 and the younger born in Gloucester, England in 1714. Both were born to humble circumstances and both had unrelenting passions. They were different in their philosophies of life yet were great friends until the younger died first in 1770.
The elder, a polymath, was a printer, an author, an inventor, a scientist, and a statesman of world renown among other things. You now surely know that he is Benjamin Franklin. The younger was an evangelist. The University of Pennsylvania honors both as founders. George Whitefield (pronounced Whit-field) was the most celebrated man in the American colonies during his ministry.
This book is far from just two mini-biographies. It tells a story of Philadelphia in the first half of the 18th century and it provides a very concise and necessary picture of Christianity during that period, including snippets of Jonathon and Sarah Edwards and Cotton Mather, while more detail is given John and Charles Wesley. But the book is more than even this. It shows the similarities of these great men... Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield... while contrasting the passion of the former to improve the mind and thereby the citizenry in general, to the latter whose passion was to to see souls come to Christ. Although it may have at first been Whitefield's enduring labors to raise money to fund an orphanage in Savannah that placed him front and center in Franklin's eyes
Raised in working-class families but rebellious to the establishment of their time, they would soon travel the world in their own endeavors and eventually change the course of an entire people. Ben Franklin rejected his Puritan Boston upbringing for a gospel of good works while George Whitefield rejected the dour messaging of the Gospel from his youth to unveil the majesties of Jesus Christ to awestruck throngs from New England to Georgia.
Whitefield published most of his sermons under the auspices of the Philadelphia printer but they forged a great friendship to go along with business, a friendship that Franklin even referred to as love. There's a lesson here for America today if we are willing to learn it. Franklin never became a Christian although he greatly supported his friend's ministry, while Whitefield never stopped attempting to bring his friend into the kingdom of Christ. Ben Franklin listened over the years as a friend would, while George Whitefield gently but firmly apportioned his pleadings to his friend, not wanting to turn him away but not willing to abandon his soul either.
The God-fearing liberal of today should admit that this nation is collapsing into anarchy and violence and welcome the Christian message of law and gospel as a stabilizing force even if they have no intention of accepting it, but that's not what's happening. They want to be free of the Bible!
George Whitefield was often hounded, ridiculed and persecuted by the secular element in society but he saw this as evidence that Satan was not happy with his ministry. We can learn from this, for if we are not being ridiculed for our belief then maybe we are just not very upsetting to the demonic forces being unleashed around us.
The book is The Printer and the Preacher, Ben Franklin, George Whitefield, and the Surprising Friendship that Invented America by Randy Petersen and it was published by Thomas Nelson in 2015. The author referred in his book to Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield as "the odd couple" and thus the title of this post.
