The Best Christian Biography I Have Ever Read

October, 2009

by: Jack Hughes

Do you read Christian biographies? If not, you should. Reading biographies of godly men and women will convict, challenge you, and remind you of what God can do through a sinner who is sold out to the cause of Christ. Recently I read a biography of George Whitefield which is the best biography I have ever read. Then I said to myself, “Why not write a Calvary Review on the value of reading Christian biographies?” Here it is! First, I would like to argue why you should be reading Christian biographies. Second, I would like to tell you about the Whitefield biography I just read. Third, I would like to give you some recommendations for other biographies you might enjoy. First things first, why read Christian biographies?

Christian Biographies Teach You About History

In my B.C. days (Before Christ), history bored me to death. In my mind it was right up there with government and social studies. While attending a secular university, I had one excellent history teacher that whetted my appetite for history. As I grew in my Christian walk, my hunger for historical knowledge increased. I wanted to know more about biblical history, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other groups mentioned in the Bible. I wanted to know about church history and where and how different heresies, cults, and denominations got started. Then I read a Christian biography and discovered that Christian biographies teach you about history and encourage you in your walk with the Lord. Ever since, my reading of Christian biographies, it has expanded my knowledge of history. I was hooked!

Christian Biographies Teach You About Other Places

Most of the biographies I have read have been about the English reformation and especially the Puritan era. I didn’t realize it until I visited England, Scotland, and Wales that I had learned a great deal about those places. I remember touring through the country saying to my wife, “I know about this place,” or “Famous preacher so and so’s church is here,” or “this is where Bloody Mary executed so many godly men.” I had learned quite a bit about Great Britain from reading biographies about people in those places.

Christian Biographies Provide Godly Examples to Follow

One of the greatest blessings of Christian biographies is they provide you with godly examples to follow. You are able to see how great men and women of God came to know the Lord, grow in their faith, and died anticipating glory. You read of their trials, blessings, thought processes, and about the sins they struggled to overcome. You see their godly and ungodly moments. You are challenged, convicted, rebuked, motivated to pray harder and do more for Christ. Christian biographies help you grow in the Lord.

Christian Biographies Teach You About God

Another great benefit of reading Christian biographies is that they teach you about the character and workings of God. You see God save a sinner and turn them into an incredible instrument of grace in His hands. As you read about the struggles of these faithful saints you see God teaching them valuable lessons. You see His providence in their life. You see God deliver them from temptation, empower them for the work of the ministry, and die with grace. Yes, you can learn many things about God as you read Christian Biographies.

Christian Biographies Teach You About Biblical Ministry

We live in an age when people are trying all kinds of things to make the church grow or look attractive to the world. Churches, missions agencies, and support organizations put a lot of resources into helping Christians become “culturally relevant.” Some turn to drama, others to music, still others to emotionalism, or deluded displays of what they claim to be “sign gifts.” Sermons are shortened, lightened, filtered, and crafted for humor and crafted to be “positive.” In the onslaught of all this, Christian biographies are a solid reminder of how God saves sinners and builds His church. You are reminded there must be constant prayer, and faithful, fearless, authoritative, clear, passionate, and doctrinally accurate preaching, that emphasizes the greatness of God and the person and work of Christ. There must be holiness in the lives of individuals and the church. This is what God has always blessed and it will never change. Christian biographies remind us of the kind of ministry God blesses.

If you are a preacher you know about George Whitefield. He is probably the greatest preacher who ever lived. Arnold Dallimore wrote a very comprehensive two volume biography of Whitefield and then later a shorter condensed version. I read the shorter version which so blessed me that I intend to read the two volume version as well. Whitefield was born on December 16, 1714. As a young man he discovered he had a passion and gift for acting and the theater. His schoolmasters saw in him a great talent for reading and acting out plays. Thus, he was encouraged in that direction and it became such a passion for him that he would skip school for days to prepare. He learned to shut out the world around him and create an imaginary world in his head and communicate it through his words and actions. God would later use this greatly in his preaching ministry.

As a young boy Whitefield’s mother intended on sending him to Oxford. This she did. But when Whitefield’s father died, his mother remarried, and the family business declined. The only way Whitefield could continue his studies at Oxford was to become a servitor there. Servitors were poor students who would serve the richer students. They were like voluntary slaves who humbly labored to make the attendance of the rich more pleasant. This Whitefield did. Again, in the providence of God, Whitefield learned to serve others with joy.

Upon entering Oxford, Whitefield was still unsaved but the conviction of the Lord was upon him. He, like Martin Luther, turned to extreme forms of fasting and self denial. His zeal for holiness became known and at nineteen he was invited by Charles Wesley to partake in the Holy Club, which was a discipleship group of eight or nine men who were extra zealous for God. It was there he met Charles’ brother John and formed his lifelong relationship with the Wesleys.

Still Whitfield did not know the Lord. He tried greater forms of self denial, refusing to eat tasty foods, dressing in humble clothing, praying for hours while lying flat on his face. All of these things proved vain and brought no relief to his soul. Yet in the spring of 1735, at twenty years of age Whitefield found what he was looking for. He wrote:

God was pleased to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold of his dear Son by a living faith and by giving me the Spirit of adoption, to seal me, even to the day of redemption. O’ what joy -joy unspeakable - even joy that was full of and big with glory, was my soul filled when the weight of the sin went off, and an abiding sense of the love of God broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. My joys were like a springtide and overflowed the banks.

The world did not know it at the time, but George Whitefield would be God’s chosen instrument to unleash spiritual revival in the wake of wherever he would go, both in Great Britain and America.

Whitefield became a diligent student of the Scriptures and became sound in doctrine studying on his knees with his Greek New Testament and Puritan Matthew Henry’s works before him. This laid a solid foundation of doctrine in his life which never crumbled. From his early days Whitefield had a zeal for reaching the lost and God, from the very beginning, blessed his evangelistic efforts with converts. But this was just the tip of a very large iceberg of converts Whitefield would eventually lead to Christ.

At the age of twenty-one, Whitefield became an ordained minister in the Church of England. His first sermon drew a large crowd who gathered at the novelty of hearing such a young upstart preach. Though somewhat intimidated, Whitefield said that as he began to preach:

The fire kindled, till at last, though so young and amidst a crowd of those who knew me in my infant childish days, I trust I was enabled to speak with some degree of Gospel authority. Some few mocked, but most for the present seemed struck, and I have since heard that a complaint has been made to the Bishop that I drove fifteen mad the first sermon.

This was the glorious beginnings of a man so gifted and empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach that it beggars belief. Immediately Whitefield began to receive invitations to preach in many places. At first he preached five times a week, then nine times a week. Large crowds gathered to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and many were brought under conviction, repented, and gave their lives to Christ.

Having barely started the great work God had for him in Great Britain, he heard of a need for the Gospel in America, boarded a ship and began his ten-week trip across the Atlantic. As he boarded the ship he prayed, “God give me a deep humility, a well-guided zeal, a burning love and a single eye, and then let men and evils do their worst.” The ship was The Whitaker, and had as its passengers about twenty women and children, a hundred soldiers, and the ship’s captain and crew. Whitefield “determined to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” The soldiers and crew were brazen sinners, but soon the salt of Whitefield’s evangelistic efforts began to check their wickedness. A Bible study was started drawing only six people at first, but soon there were twenty and soon the captain and crew set up planks on the deck turning it into an open air chapel. Whitefield formed a choir with some of the men. At the end of the four and a half month journey, God was pleased to save nearly all on board. The Whitaker had become a floating church.

As Whitefield traveled back and forth from America to Great Britain, larger and larger crowds gathered to hear him preach. Some ministers, jealous of his success and offended by his comments that some of them were not even converted, shut him out of their churches. Whitefield then determined “to go into the highways and by-ways and compel them to come in.” He started to open air preach. Still in his twenties, he regularly drew crowds from ten to eighty thousand people!

He was in such great demand that he began to preach 20, 30, 40 and at peak times in his life, 60 times a week! Assuming an average of 30 sermons per week for 30 years, Whitefield would have preached some 45,000 sermons! At times, thousands stood before him in tears, repenting and giving their life to Christ. God sent revival nearly everywhere Whitefield went. Thousands gathered every day at 5:00am to hear him preach before going about their daily duties. Alas, time has run out. Read George Whitefield by Arnold Dallimore. You will be blessed!

Suggested Biographies to Read

Let me give you a few suggestions of biographies you might want to read.

• Starting small, Agape Leadership, snippets of the life of R. C. Chapman.
• J. C. Ryle’s two works Light From Old Times, and Christian Leaders of the Last Century, both contain multiple smaller biographies of famous preachers.
• John Piper’s two works The Legacy of Sovereign Joy and The Hidden Smile of God are smaller works that contain multiple shorter biographies of great men of God.
• Elizabeth Dodd’s Marriage to a Difficult Man, a biography of the relationship between the great preacher and theologian, Jonathan Edwards and his wife Sarah.
• Read William Carey a biography of the famous missionary written by his grandson, Peirce Carey.

That should get you started!