Explains a Lot

George Whitefield's preaching ignited the Great Awakening, one of the most formative events in American history. He was perhaps the most famous religious figure of the eighteenth century. In his lifetime, he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million hearers.

Here is how he read and studied the Bible:

There he is at five in the morning . . . . on his knees with his English Bible, his Greek New Testament and Henry’s Commentary spread out before him. He reads a portion in the English, gains a fuller insight into it as he studies words and tenses in the Greek and then considers Matthew Henry’s explanation of it all. Finally, there comes the unique practice that he has developed: that of ‘praying over every line and word’ of both the English and the Greek till the passage, in its essential message, has veritably become part of his own soul (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield (London, 1970), I:82-83).

It explains a lot.