The Glenn Beck Program - Spiritual Firestorm： How the First Great Awakening Rewired America ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 3

00:00:00.000 it's a frigid bleak January day 1692 slate sky sharp wind rattling the bare

00:00:12.880 trees in the sleepy Puritan town of Salem Village Massachusetts two girls

00:00:19.840 nine-year-old Betty Paris and her 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams huddled

00:00:26.280 together in the dim glow of a candle. They're just playing a game. Something silly, but secret.

00:00:34.940 A fortune-telling game involving an egg dropped in a glass of water. You're supposed to watch 0.88

00:00:42.140 the way the ghostly shapes form, how the egg white curls in the glass, and catch a glimpse

00:00:47.800 of your future. Maybe great riches, maybe adventure, maybe a tall, handsome husband.

00:00:54.820 It's a boredom-busting activity that would certainly be forbidden by Betty's father,

00:01:00.660 the Reverend Samuel Parris, if he knew that they were doing it, that is.

00:01:06.820 But when Betty and Abigail peer into their glass,

00:01:10.380 they don't see husbands or homes or happy futures.

00:01:14.440 They see a coffin.

00:01:17.400 Then something goes wrong.

00:01:20.460 Horribly, horribly wrong.

00:01:23.060 The girls begin barking like dogs.

00:01:25.560 They shriek without warning, speaking strange, unintelligible words.

00:01:30.200 They clutch their heads in agony, convulsing, writhing on the floor,

00:01:33.880 and curl themselves under the furniture as though trying to escape invisible claws.

00:01:39.960 The town doctor, William Griggs, is quickly summoned.

00:01:43.560 He examines them, his face growing more and more pale.

00:01:47.220 He can't detect the obvious physical cause,

00:01:49.640 And so he provides the only diagnosis a Puritan village would accept in New England in the late 1600s.

00:01:57.440 The girls have been bewitched.

00:02:01.120 Betty and Abigail point fingers first at Tituba, the Paris household slave who is from the Spanish West Indies. 0.97

00:02:09.480 She's a witch, they say. 0.86

00:02:11.300 She's tormenting us through dark forces. 0.84

00:02:14.840 Days go by and the accusations begin to snowball.

00:02:19.640 12-year-old Anne Putnam joins in.

00:02:22.760 Her parents are tight with the Paris's.

00:02:25.200 Then, 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard,

00:02:28.220 an orphan who works as a maid in Dr. Griggs' own home,

00:02:31.640 the very man who diagnosed this as witchcraft.

00:02:36.040 Suddenly, Salem Village is aflame with panic.

00:02:40.340 Disembodied spirits, the girls say.

00:02:42.660 They're stabbing them, choking them, pricking them with pins.

00:02:46.680 Soon, the four girls accuse two more women, 0.96

00:02:49.640 of being witches, Sarah Good, a local beggar scraping by on handouts, and Sarah Osborne, 0.58

00:02:56.640 a sickly widow shunned for her scandalous affair with an indentured servant. 0.80

00:03:04.560 More girls pile on the accusations. The air in Salem is now thick with terror. The whispers

00:03:11.500 are contagious. People are convinced the devil himself is loose in their midst, turning

00:03:16.240 neighbors against neighbors in a frenzy of fear and suspicion. Now, what started as a childish

00:03:21.520 game spirals into a nightmare that proclaimed lives and shatter a community and echo throughout

00:03:28.820 American history. But this isn't just a tale of hysteria. It reveals a deeper rot in the soul

00:03:37.940 of colonial America, setting the stage for a spiritual turning point that will reshape the

00:03:45.640 colonies. This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same

00:03:53.500 title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 3, Spiritual Firestorm, How the First Great

00:04:02.440 Awakening Rewired America. In the late 1600s, many Europeans genuinely believed that humans

00:04:10.840 could strike deals with the devil, granting dark powers to curse enemies or torment them in the

00:04:17.540 spirit world. To the Puritans of Massachusetts, this wasn't some fairy tale passed around the

00:04:23.900 fire. The devil wasn't just prowling around in some vague spiritual sense. So when those girls,

00:04:31.220 Betty, Abigail, Anne, and Elizabeth, claimed to be physically assaulted by invisible forces,

00:04:36.420 when they flailed their limbs in seizures and screamed in voices that didn't seem to be their

00:04:42.080 own. It didn't take long for the community to conclude that witches were at work. It was a

00:04:49.120 full-blown crisis that tapped into the deepest fears of people already on edge from the Indian

00:04:54.500 wars and their harsh living environment. The accusations rolled like wildfire. First,

00:05:00.620 Tetuba, the Paris family household slave, then Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, and then dozens

00:05:05.880 more, including some of Salem's most respected citizens. By spring, the town jail overflowed

00:05:13.400 with the accused witches, men, women, even some children, all locked up awaiting judgment.

00:05:21.440 A special court was hastily convened to handle the witch trials because the regular system

00:05:26.700 couldn't keep up with the flood of accusations. Betty Paris never showed up in court. Her parents 0.99

00:05:33.660 whisked her away to relatives in another town to escape the madness. Her cousin Abigail,

00:05:39.940 well, she, on the other hand, had become a star witness, accusing 57 people of witchcraft. Ann

00:05:46.240 Putnam didn't hold back either, testifying against 60 people. Elizabeth Hubbard went after 29.

00:05:52.880 These girls were the epicenter of a storm that engulfed the entire village.

00:05:58.240 The trials themselves were spectacles. 0.98

00:06:01.060 The afflicted girls would spasm, contort, scream, and writhe on the floor.

00:06:05.540 They claimed that the accused appeared to them as specters,

00:06:08.480 ghostly spirits urging them to sign the devil's book and join the dark side.

00:06:14.620 Judges accepted this so-called spectral evidence as legitimate evidence.

00:06:19.760 Imagine that.

00:06:20.880 If a teenager said she saw your ghost attacking her,

00:06:24.680 that was enough to condemn you.

00:06:27.300 Tituba, the first accused, cracked under relentless pressure.

00:06:31.700 She implicated Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, hinting at a whole network of witches lurking in the shadows,

00:06:38.920 a conspiracy that only fed the paranoia.

00:06:43.440 While Good and Osborne protested their innocence with desperate pleas,

00:06:48.140 Tituba spun wild tales of Satan appearing to her in the form of a dog.

00:06:54.080 She said she had also seen, quote,

00:06:56.000 two rats, a red rat and a black rat, end quote,

00:07:00.240 that commanded her to serve them.

00:07:03.180 She admitted she had signed the devil's book in her own blood

00:07:05.840 and seen Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne's name written right beside hers.

00:07:10.680 By confessing, Tetuba saved her own life.

00:07:14.580 Those who admitted guilt often got mercy while deniers faced the noose.

00:07:20.040 It was a twisted logic that encouraged false admissions just to survive. 1.00

00:07:26.240 The girls kept up their fits during interrogations, 1.00

00:07:29.440 rolling in agony as the accused were grilled, 0.95

00:07:32.060 their screams echoing off the wooden walls.

00:07:34.880 Tuba and others testified that Sarah Good Spector attacked them,

00:07:39.000 that she flew on broomsticks through the moonlit sky

00:07:42.340 and hosted witches' meetings in hidden groves.

00:07:46.240 In July, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and three other accused were carted to Gallows Hill,

00:07:53.300 the wagon creaking in the strange silence as a somber crowd followed.

00:07:59.400 They were hanged,

00:08:02.800 their bodies swinging in the wind as the town watched in a mix of horror and righteous satisfaction.

00:08:11.820 Then there was Giles Corey.

00:08:15.100 He was an older man, stubborn as they come.

00:08:18.680 He refused to plead guilty or not guilty, perhaps knowing either way led to his doom.

00:08:24.000 For that defiance, his sentence was being pressed to death under heavy stones.

00:08:33.760 In total, 19 accused witches were hanged.

00:08:37.840 14 women, 5 men.

00:08:40.180 Their lives snuffed out in a frenzy of fear.

00:08:44.160 Five people died in the filthy jails.

00:08:47.080 Two hundred more languished in cells, waiting for their turn.

00:08:55.380 As much of a nightmare as Salem was, it wasn't isolated madness.

00:09:00.540 It was part of a larger, darker pattern.

00:09:04.140 In Europe, a staggering 500,000 people were executed for witchcraft accusations.

00:09:09.840 entire villages were decimated by hunts that stretched over decades.

00:09:16.220 And before Salem's chaos, 300 New Englanders, mostly poor, middle-aged women without family,

00:09:22.980 the spinsters and the widows on society's edges, had faced those same charges.

00:09:28.840 Over 30 of them were hung here in America.

00:09:32.020 Why did America's body count stay relatively low compared to the bloodbath that dragged on for generations in Europe?

00:09:39.840 Because at the height of the panic, there were Christian voices of resistance.

00:09:48.820 Leaders stepped up.

00:09:50.440 Pastors, including John Wise, Increase Mather, and Thomas Brattle,

00:09:54.680 men who were not afraid to challenge government when it strayed from biblical principles.

00:10:00.380 They confronted the civil authorities, arguing that the courts were trampling biblical standards on evidence and due process.

00:10:08.840 Boston minister Increase Mather put it bluntly, saying, quote,

00:10:13.000 It would be better if ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.

00:10:20.600 His words cut through the hysteria, and slowly others began to agree.

00:10:26.780 By October 1692, Governor William Phipps finally stepped in.

00:10:31.780 Perhaps when the accusations hit too close to home, you see, even his own wife had been whispered about.

00:10:38.140 Well, he shut down the special court and ordered the remaining suspects released.

00:10:43.640 The madness fizzled, but it left the town in ruins.

00:10:49.660 Tituba eventually recanted her confession, claiming her master had beaten it out of her with brutal force.

00:10:57.160 But by then the trials were over and someone anonymously bailed her out after 13 months in jail.

00:11:04.460 She faded into obscurity.

00:11:08.000 Perhaps, we don't know, starting a new life far from Salem's shadows.

00:11:13.600 Five years later, Judge Samuel Sewell stood in his pew at Boston's South Church

00:11:19.600 and begged forgiveness publicly, owning the blame and the shame of his role,

00:11:25.980 his voice trembling with regret.

00:11:27.880 In 1706, Ann Putnam, by then a 27-year-old woman haunted by her childhood actions, offered

00:11:37.100 the only known apology from one of the accusers.

00:11:41.260 She admitted that she had been deluded by the devil and begged God and the victims'

00:11:46.560 families for pardon.

00:11:50.120 The scars in Massachusetts ran deep.

00:11:53.980 The state passed laws in 1711, restoring the good names of the condemned and providing restitution for their families.

00:12:02.240 But it was a small gesture toward mending the broken.

00:12:06.520 Belief in witches didn't vanish overnight, but the Salem travesty marked the end of mass witchcraft prosecutions in America.

00:12:16.480 those pastors who helped halt the trials were not outliers they continued the long tradition

00:12:26.500 of clergy shaping civil progress and liberty acting as the moral compass for the young society

00:12:33.700 in 1636 reverend roger williams and john clark founded rhode island as a haven for religious

00:12:40.940 freedom, a place where dissenters could worship without fear of the whip or the stocks.

00:12:47.040 In 1639, Reverends Thomas Hooker and John Davenport launched Connecticut, with Hooker

00:12:53.460 drafting America's first written constitution.

00:13:00.080 Called the Fundamental Orders, it was a document that laid out representative government and

00:13:05.940 rights in a way that would again echo through history.

00:13:10.560 Reverend Nathaniel Ward wrote Massachusetts' Body of Liberties in 1641,

00:13:16.280 the continent's first Bill of Rights, listing protections against arbitrary power.

00:13:22.260 And in 1681, Quaker minister William Penn founded Pennsylvania with its frame of government.

00:13:28.700 It emphasized tolerance and equality, a blueprint for diverse communities all living in peace.

00:13:36.440 And then there's the Reverend John Wise

00:13:40.300 He was a pastor in rural Ipswich, Massachusetts

00:13:43.600 As early as 1687, nearly a century before American independence

00:13:48.780 Wise was already preaching that taxation without representation is tyranny

00:13:54.880 And that the consent of the people is the foundation of government

00:14:00.120 and also that, quote, every man must be acknowledged equal to every other man.

00:14:09.280 His ideas were so potent that in 1772, as war loomed on the horizon,

00:14:15.560 Massachusetts patriots reprinted his works to rally the colonies,

00:14:19.880 reminding them of the biblical principles for just governance.

00:14:24.400 Again and again, pastors were at the heart of shaping American civil liberty,

00:14:28.820 Yet, even with those solid foundations and strong spiritual leaders, part of the human condition is to fall into spiritual apathy.

00:14:39.440 The Salem Witch Trials, while an extreme example, were symptomatic of churches sinking into decay.

00:14:46.340 Puritans repeated the kind of oppression that they had fled England to escape. 0.89

00:14:50.840 Their piety had turned rigid and cruel. 0.84

00:14:54.360 By the early 1700s, a sense of decline gripped New England.

00:14:58.600 Pastors lamented their congregations straying from their first love.

00:15:03.280 Distracted by business, trade, and worldly woes, their hearts had grown cold.

00:15:10.120 God, they said, had sent judgments as warnings,

00:15:14.360 such as the devastating wars with the Native Americans and the disaster in Salem.

00:15:19.540 The New England colonies were barely a century old, and they already needed a reboot.

00:15:25.300 At the First Congregational Church in Northampton, Mass., embers began stirring.

00:15:31.380 It was Pastor Solomon Stoddard.

00:15:33.520 He urged his congregation to pray for God to do a new work in their community.

00:15:39.160 As Stoddard put it, quote,

00:15:40.440 The Spirit of the Lord must be poured out upon the people, else religion will not revive.

00:15:48.360 The sparks from those embers in the Northampton church would ignite something massive,

00:15:53.240 a spiritual renewal that would spread from town to town and change America.

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00:16:17.500 Right now, there are a lot of voices in our culture,

00:16:20.520 and most of them are really loud, pushing in one direction.

00:16:23.820 But the truth isn't always the loudest.

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00:17:17.960 If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate,

00:17:26.040 it would immediately fly open,

00:17:28.220 and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God

00:17:31.200 would rush forth with inconceivable fury,

00:17:34.500 and would come upon you with omnipotent power.

00:17:37.720 And if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is,

00:17:41.400 yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest,

00:17:44.980 sturdiest devil in hell,

00:17:47.300 It would be nothing to withstand or endure it.

00:17:51.700 That is an excerpt from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

00:17:56.420 It's the most famous sermon by Pastor Jonathan Edwards.

00:18:00.160 It's a sermon that became shorthand for Puritan doom and gloom.

00:18:04.580 It helped pigeonhole Edwards as the ultimate stern Puritan thundering about sin and hellfire.

00:18:11.860 But Edwards was far more than that caricature.

00:18:16.360 He was one of America's most brilliant minds of the 18th century, a powerhouse theologian,

00:18:22.680 philosopher, scientist, and psychologist. Born in Windsor, Connecticut in 1703, Edwards was the son

00:18:30.560 of a minister and a grandson of the legendary Solomon Stoddard, the pastor I mentioned earlier

00:18:35.980 who was urging the congregation to pray for revival in the early 1700s. Jonathan Edwards,

00:18:42.740 He was a prodigy, grappling with the big questions about God, nature, and existence, even as a boy.

00:18:49.980 He entered Yale College when he was 13 years old and graduated as valedictorian four years later.

00:18:57.180 After brief stints pastoring in New York and Connecticut, he landed in Northampton, Mass, in 1726,

00:19:03.620 where he was the assistant pastor to his grandfather.

00:19:07.420 The following year, he married Sarah, a union that would produce 11 children and become the model of devout partnership.

00:19:14.960 Sarah was Edwards' anchor, managing the household while he pursued his intellectual quests.

00:19:20.900 When Edwards took over as senior pastor after his grandfather's death in 1729, he found his congregation spiritually flatlining.

00:19:29.580 People were preoccupied with money, their faith dry and devoid of the heart of Christianity.

00:19:35.580 Like his grandfather, Edwards longed for revival in his community, as well as in his own life.

00:19:43.280 Edwards had this quirky habit that paints him as the absent-minded professor type.

00:19:47.600 He would ride through rolling green meadows on horseback, lost in deep contemplation,

00:19:53.520 ideas swirling in his head like leaves in the wind.

00:19:57.720 As his thoughts struck, he would jot them down on a paper scrap and pin them to his cloak.

00:20:03.020 He would return home literally covered in notes like a walking inspiration board.

00:20:09.760 Sarah would then help organize them for his future sermons and writing, a partnership that fueled his productivity.

00:20:16.200 Edwards believed we experience God's grace not just through dusty books, but through the world around us.

00:20:24.140 Nature was a divine canvas.

00:20:26.280 He described his glimpses of this, for example, when thunderstorms rumbled across the valley.

00:20:33.280 I felt God, so to speak, at the first appearance of a thunderstorm.

00:20:38.280 And I used to take the opportunity at such times to fix myself in order to view the clouds

00:20:43.280 and see the lightning's play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder,

00:20:49.280 which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining,

00:20:53.440 leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God.

00:20:58.760 In 1734, the seeds planted in prayer by his grandfather

00:21:03.140 and the Northampton congregation years earlier

00:21:05.620 suddenly began to sprout.

00:21:13.160 Revival erupted in Edwards' church.

00:21:15.960 He kept track of it in a book called A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God,

00:21:22.040 which read like a first-hand account of a miracle.

00:21:26.100 Listen to this excerpt, his words capturing the electric atmosphere.

00:21:30.400 The Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us.

00:21:38.740 There was scarcely a single person in the town, either old or young,

00:21:42.860 that was left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world.

00:21:49.340 This work of God, as it was carried on

00:21:52.260 and the number of true saints multiplied,

00:21:55.060 soon made a glorious alteration in the town

00:21:57.380 so that in the spring and summer following, 1735,

00:22:03.140 the town seemed to be full of the presence of God.

00:22:06.780 It never was so full of love, nor so full of joy.

00:22:10.020 There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house.

00:22:16.460 It was a time of joy in families on the account of salvations being brought unto them.

00:22:21.860 Parents rejoicing over their children as newborn,

00:22:25.000 and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands.

00:22:29.200 There were many instances of persons that came from abroad, on visits or on business,

00:22:34.120 who partook of that shower of divine blessing that God rained down here,

00:22:38.280 and went home rejoicing.

00:22:41.540 Till at length the same work began to appear

00:22:44.160 and prevail in several other towns in the country.

00:22:48.080 In every place, God brought his saving blessings with him.

00:22:53.660 Edwards was floored, stunned by the scope of the revival.

00:22:58.100 Nearly everyone in Northampton showed signs

00:23:00.800 of conversion or deep soul-searching.

00:23:05.040 This revival didn't stay local.

00:23:06.880 it marked the dawn of the Great Awakening, a movement of Christian conversion and rededication

00:23:13.380 that swept through the colonies like a flood.

00:23:22.060 The Revival Bliss didn't last forever at the First Congregational Church in Northampton.

00:23:27.620 John Edwards was never one to shy away from truth and eventually got him into hot water.

00:23:33.620 Fifteen years after the Northampton Revival,

00:23:36.420 Edwards offended some prominent church members

00:23:38.720 when he denounced the actions of their wayward teenagers from the pulpit.

00:23:44.000 He tried to tighten the rules on communion and church membership,

00:23:47.360 insisting that only the truly converted should partake.

00:23:51.460 It split the congregation.

00:23:53.180 Some saw him as too rigid,

00:23:54.520 others viewed his call for purity as an essential part of his role as pastor.

00:23:59.660 But in the end, the church voted him out,

00:24:02.260 and Edwards was dismissed. It was a devastating blow. Imagine being the pastor who sparked

00:24:08.920 America's greatest revival only to be fired by your own flock. And yet Edwards didn't fade away.

00:24:16.640 He moved to Stockbridge, Mass. to serve as a missionary to Native Americans and to oversee

00:24:22.320 a school for Mohawk boys. Now some saw this as a demotion for such a renowned figure,

00:24:27.880 a fall from grace, a kind of banishment to the frontier.

00:24:31.440 But for Edwards, it was poetic, almost redemptive.

00:24:36.440 You see, his uncle had negotiated land purchase and founded the mission years earlier.

00:24:41.740 It was the first substantial mission since King Philip's War in the 1670s,

00:24:46.460 which had devastated Christian missionary efforts among the Indian tribes.

00:24:51.320 Edwards had always agreed with his grandfather Solomon Stollard's view

00:24:54.860 that the colonial wars and the hardship were God's punishment

00:24:58.180 for neglecting to bring the gospel to the Indians.

00:25:01.480 That mandate was actually in the original Massachusetts Bay Charter.

00:25:06.260 It was a covenant,

00:25:08.220 and he felt it had been forgotten in the pursuit of land and wealth.

00:25:12.620 At Stockbridge, he fulfilled his family's vision.

00:25:17.060 There, he also wrote his most profound theological books,

00:25:21.060 like freedom of the will and original sin.

00:25:26.260 These works wrestled with human nature and grace,

00:25:29.860 influencing philosophers and theologians for centuries.

00:25:33.980 In 1758, Edwards began a final all-too-brief chapter in his life.

00:25:38.820 He was invited to be the president of the College of New Jersey,

00:25:41.700 now known as Princeton University.

00:25:44.460 It was a fitting capstone for a mind like his.

00:25:48.040 But just 35 days after taking the job,

00:25:50.500 tragedy struck. He died from a smallpox inoculation that went horribly wrong. He was 54 years old.

00:25:59.140 It was a sudden end for a man who sparked so much life. But Jonathan Edwards had prepared

00:26:05.980 the ground. He had given the colonies a vision of revival, a sense of expectancy. But it would

00:26:12.900 take another preacher, a voice far louder, a presence far more theatrical, to set the continent

00:26:18.580 ablaze. And when this preacher arrived, America had never seen anything like him.

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00:27:45.960 Born to raise the sons of earth. Born to give them second birth. Hark the herald angels sing.

00:27:59.380 It was co-written by two British friends, John Wesley and George Whitefield.

00:28:04.800 Whitefield was the 18th century equivalent of a viral sensation.

00:28:10.040 The key lyric for Whitefield was in the song's second verse,

00:28:13.720 born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.

00:28:20.220 Whitefield had just experienced this second birth that Jesus describes in the Gospel of John,

00:28:25.080 a profound personal transformation.

00:28:28.480 And Whitefield wanted as many people as possible to have the same experience.

00:28:32.800 George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England in 1714.

00:28:35.860 As a child, he devoured plays, skipping school to rehearse lines and perfect his delivery,

00:28:42.120 dreaming of a life on the stage. Later, he would ditch the theater, but those skills fueled his

00:28:49.000 preaching, turning sermons into performances that eventually captivated enormous audiences.

00:28:56.120 At Pembroke College in Oxford, he waited tables for rich students to pay his way.

00:29:01.600 It was a humble start, but that built resilience. There he joined a group called The Holy Club,

00:29:07.080 led by John and Charles Wesley. 0.98

00:29:09.600 These were the original Methodists,

00:29:12.360 the students devoted to prayer and fasting and holy living.

00:29:16.880 After constant frustration with his inability to measure up,

00:29:20.600 Whitefield's understanding of Christianity completely shifted

00:29:24.120 when Charles Wesley handed him a book.

00:29:27.540 Here's how Whitefield described the experience.

00:29:30.080 I must bear testimony to my old friend, Mr. Charles Wesley.

00:29:35.020 He put a book into my hands called

00:29:36.900 The Life of God and the Soul of Man,

00:29:40.640 whereby God showed me that I must be born again or be damned.

00:29:46.000 I know the place.

00:29:47.120 It may be superstitious, perhaps,

00:29:48.720 but whenever I go to Oxford,

00:29:50.520 I cannot help running to that place

00:29:52.420 where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me

00:29:55.600 and gave me the new birth.

00:29:58.540 Skoogl says,

00:29:59.920 A man may go to church, say his prayers, 0.99

00:30:02.180 receive the sacrament, and yet, my brethren, not be a Christian. 0.93

00:30:07.800 How did my heart rise? How did my heart shudder? 1.00

00:30:11.580 Like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account books,

00:30:14.860 lest he should find himself bankrupt.

00:30:17.400 Holding the book in my hand, I thus address the God of heaven and earth.

00:30:22.440 Lord, if I am not a Christian, if I am not a real one,

00:30:26.740 for Jesus Christ's sake, show me what Christianity is,

00:30:30.540 that I may not be damned at last.

00:30:35.140 That new birth experience

00:30:37.580 became the driving passion in his life.

00:30:40.720 It reshaped a theater kid into an evangelist.

00:30:45.200 Ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church,

00:30:47.520 Whitfield began preaching around London

00:30:49.180 and was surprised that everywhere he showed up,

00:30:52.020 larger and larger crowds appeared.

00:30:54.700 He punctuated his vivid biblical storytelling

00:30:57.340 with shouting and tears and sweeping gestures.

00:31:01.260 A famous actor at the time said, quote,

00:31:02.860 I would give a hundred guineas if I could just say, oh, like Mr. Whitfield.

00:31:08.580 In 1738, Whitfield visited America for the very first time, spending three months in Georgia,

00:31:14.060 where he started an orphanage called Bethesda.

00:31:17.480 It was a project that plunged him into debt for life.

00:31:20.500 But he saw it as God's work, a beacon of charity amid colonial hardships.

00:31:25.400 It was all reported on by his newspaper, named The Blaze.

00:31:30.780 Back in London, churches stunned his unorthodox style, too emotional, too loud.

00:31:35.800 So he took to preaching to the outdoors in streets and in fields,

00:31:39.540 anywhere people could hear him and see him.

00:31:42.040 And the crowds kept growing.

00:31:44.960 Whitfield returned to America in 1739 for an ambitious tour of the colonies.

00:31:49.040 He started preaching in Philadelphia, the New World's bustling hub of commerce and ideas.

00:31:54.980 And Benjamin Franklin, when he saw him, he was hooked from the start.

00:31:57.400 In his autobiography, Franklin described hearing Whitfield's voice from almost a mile away.

00:32:03.920 He said its power just cut through the air.

00:32:07.280 Franklin even crunched the numbers on crowd size, estimating based on how far Whitfield's voice carried.

00:32:14.240 In modern acoustic tests, using computer models back up Franklin's estimates.

00:32:19.560 Under ideal conditions, Whitfield could reach up to 60,000 people intelligibly,

00:32:26.200 though 20,000 to 30,000 was more common in that era before microphones.

00:32:31.100 But his voice was a natural megaphone honed by practice.

00:32:38.420 Benjamin Franklin later became Whitfield's hype man and publisher,

00:32:42.540 printing ads, sermons, and journals.

00:32:44.180 From 1739 to 1741, America's print industry grew 85%,

00:32:50.420 mostly due to Whitfield's related publishing.

00:32:53.500 That included supporters and critics who fueled the buzz in pamphlets.

00:32:59.220 It was an 18th century media frenzy.

00:33:02.800 And Franklin was blown away by the transformation he was witnessing in Philadelphia.

00:33:08.500 He wrote,

00:33:09.360 It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants.

00:33:14.560 From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion,

00:33:17.580 it seemed as if all the world were growing religious,

00:33:20.180 so that one could not walk through the town in an evening

00:33:23.200 without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.

00:33:27.780 During his two-year tour of America,

00:33:30.200 Whitfield's message was really simple.

00:33:32.780 You must be born again.

00:33:35.220 Your parents' church membership, that didn't save you.

00:33:37.500 Your outward morality didn't save you.

00:33:40.620 Only a personal, heart-changing encounter with Christ would change you.

00:33:46.320 Typical preaching at the time involved ministers

00:33:48.380 writing out their sermons in longhand and then reading them in boring, monotonous voices.

00:33:54.080 But Whitefield memorized his sermons.

00:33:56.760 He didn't use notes, and he acted out biblical narratives.

00:34:00.520 Here's an excerpt from one of his sermons that captures the passion.

00:34:04.000 Oh, how amiable, as well as all sufficient, does the blessed Jesus now appear.

00:34:10.440 With what new eyes does the soul now see the Lord its righteousness?

00:34:15.140 Brethren, it is unutterable.

00:34:17.260 Would you have peace with God?

00:34:19.660 Away then, to God through Jesus Christ, who has purchased peace.

00:34:24.140 The Lord Jesus has shed his heart's blood for this.

00:34:27.080 He died for this. He rose again for this.

00:34:29.680 He ascended into the highest heaven and is now interceding at the right hand of God.

00:34:35.480 The crowds were captivated, crying, fainting, waves of emotion sweeping through like a storm.

00:34:44.180 On October 1740, Whitfield preached at Jonathan Edwards' church in Northampton.

00:34:49.760 Even Edwards wept through most of it.

00:34:52.580 His stoic demeanor totally cracked.

00:34:56.060 Here's how Edwards' wife Sarah described Whitfield's preaching in a letter.

00:34:59.660 He makes less of the doctrines than our American preachers generally do

00:35:03.540 and aims more at affecting the heart.

00:35:07.240 He is a born orator.

00:35:08.420 A prejudiced person, I know, might say that this is all theatrical artifice and display,

00:35:15.340 but not so will anyone think who has seen and known him.

00:35:19.500 It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience

00:35:22.940 by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible.

00:35:27.120 Our mechanics shut up their shops,

00:35:29.420 and the day laborers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach,

00:35:33.420 and few return unaffected.

00:35:35.720 In one grueling year, Whitfield logged 5,000 miles by horseback and ship in the American colonies,

00:35:45.120 preaching over 350 times from north to south.

00:35:49.820 One quarter of all Americans heard him preach directly, live.

00:35:56.600 Other than the British king, Whitfield was the most famous man in America,

00:36:02.040 with newspapers tracking his every move.

00:36:04.600 His last sermon on that tour drew 23,000 people to Boston Commons,

00:36:08.960 the largest crowd in colonial history up to that point.

00:36:13.480 Now, fame, of course, has downsides,

00:36:16.180 and for Whitefield, it included a chilly, distant marriage to his wife, Elizabeth.

00:36:21.280 She would stay in England throughout his relentless travels.

00:36:24.720 Their letters were sparse and strained.

00:36:28.020 Everywhere he went, critics accused Whitefield of stirring up fanaticism

00:36:31.700 because of the emotional displays by the crowds who heard him.

00:36:34.600 Many pastors banned him from their churches.

00:36:38.220 Whitefield and other revivalists were labeled enthusiasts and troublemakers.

00:36:43.360 Itinerant pastors were accused of undermining the established local pastors, and often they did.

00:36:51.500 The Great Awakening split colonists.

00:36:54.680 The so-called New Lights embraced revival, while the Old Lights defended tradition,

00:37:00.860 splitting into factions which would become an American habit.

00:37:05.580 But despite the differences, the Great Awakening became the defining American event.

00:37:11.100 Thousands of local revivals morphing into one national change.

00:37:16.100 Not top-down, but grassroots.

00:37:19.060 The movement decentralized faith and empowered the ordinary people.

00:37:23.720 From 1740 to 1742, as many as 50,000 people joined churches in New England alone,

00:37:31.140 out of a population of just 300,000.

00:37:34.600 The Great Awakening took a battering ram to religious complacency, and in the process, it started battering against something else, authority.

00:37:45.660 And that spirit of resistance? Oh, it would not remain confined to religion.

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00:38:06.620 You tell yourself, I'm going to catch up next month.

00:38:08.580 And then the next month has its hand out to you, too.

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00:39:26.520 For 250 years, this country's philosophy has been that we are meant to live as free men and free women,

00:39:32.200 work free, move free, free to enjoy the life that we've built without somebody holding us back.

00:39:37.240 And most of the time, we think that's, you know, that's the big term.

00:39:40.860 You know what I mean?

00:39:41.340 History, government, the kind of freedom that gets talked about on a national level.

00:39:44.700 But the freedom we have to guard is a much more personal idea of that freedom.

00:39:49.640 because if you're dealing with everyday aches and pains, that slows you down.

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00:40:28.780 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American

00:40:34.080 Story, The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com.

00:40:46.060 On a misty July morning in 1804, along the foggy banks of the Hudson River in New Jersey,

00:40:53.580 two titans of America faced off in a duel.

00:40:58.140 Bitter political rivalry and personal slights had led both of the men there.

00:41:04.080 Vice President Aaron Burr and the former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton,

00:41:08.700 they now stood ten paces apart, pistols gleaming in the dawn light.

00:41:15.140 Hamilton's witness on the duel claims that Hamilton fired in the air

00:41:18.600 to preserve honor without any bloodshed.

00:41:22.720 Burr, however, seething from his years of slights, didn't hesitate.

00:41:28.700 His shot struck Hamilton in the abdomen,

00:41:31.940 a crack echoing across the water.

00:41:35.100 Hamilton collapses, gets rushed back to New York, and dies the next day.

00:41:39.880 his death sparked a national mourning and national outrage here's the twist Aaron Burr was the

00:41:49.820 grandson of Reverend Jonathan Edwards from Edwards pulpit of revival and redemption to

00:41:56.280 Burr's path of political intrigue dueling and eventual treason charges I want to talk about

00:42:02.780 complicated legacies this is a family tree with branches twisting into light and shadow

00:42:09.000 But to be fair, the Edwards family tree bore a lot more good fruit.

00:42:13.080 A study done in 1900 revealed that among his descendants were 13 college presidents,

00:42:18.440 65 professors, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 80 public office holders,

00:42:25.420 100 missionaries, 3 mayors of large cities, 3 governors, 3 U.S. senators,

00:42:31.580 and yes, one vice president.

00:42:34.140 Further complicating the light and shadow is the fact that Jonathan Edwards owned at least two slaves.

00:42:40.660 One historian describes Edwards as, quote,

00:42:43.640 a combination of a person of his time and a person ahead of his time.

00:42:51.020 So he treated his slaves as household members,

00:42:54.420 even admitting them to full church communion in Northampton,

00:42:57.900 a rare equality in spiritual terms.

00:43:00.420 But they were still slaves.

00:43:02.120 And yet, at the same time, he condemned the cruelty of the slave trade.

00:43:06.900 His writings show a tension between acceptance and a critique of slavery.

00:43:12.820 George Whitefield's position on slavery was even more checkered.

00:43:17.660 Early on in his travels through the southern colonies, he denounced the brutal abuse of slaves by their masters.

00:43:23.660 He welcomed blacks into his revival meetings, helping convert black evangelists and church leaders.

00:43:28.680 But by 1747, wealthy supporters gifted him a South Carolina plantation, complete with slaves, just to generate revenue for his Bethesda orphanage.

00:43:41.060 The needs of the orphanage even drove Whitfield to advocate legalizing slavery in Georgia, where it was banned initially.

00:43:50.640 He argued that without slavery, Georgia would not flourish like its neighbor, South Carolina,

00:43:55.860 and he wanted slave labor to fund his orphanage.

00:44:00.100 Whitfield became an influential voice in getting slavery legalized in Georgia.

00:44:05.560 Ben had become lifelong friends with Whitfield.

00:44:08.140 Always the pragmatist, Franklin had been so impressed by Whitfield's preaching

00:44:12.720 that he built an auditorium for him in Philadelphia.

00:44:15.760 It became the first building of the University of Pennsylvania.

00:44:19.760 Later, the campus added a bronze statue of Whitfield,

00:44:22.460 which stood for 100 years until the Ivy League school took it down

00:44:25.680 in reaction to the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.

00:44:29.840 At age 55, Whitfield ignored dire health warnings.

00:44:34.040 He had asthmatic colds that left him gasping,

00:44:37.620 his body worn out from decades of travel.

00:44:41.140 And on September 29, 1770,

00:44:43.380 he preached for two hours outdoors to 6,000 people in New Hampshire.

00:44:49.760 His voice was still booming.

00:44:52.320 Works! Works! A man get to heaven by works?

00:44:57.040 I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand. 0.82

00:45:05.220 It was a fitting finale, rejecting salvation by human effort.

00:45:11.380 That night he went home, tucked himself into bed, and died in his sleep, his heart finally giving out.

00:45:19.760 George Whitefield's impact in the Great Awakening and 18th-century culture is hard

00:45:27.460 to overstate.

00:45:29.260 Seven American tours, heard by an astonishing 80% of all the people that lived in the colony.

00:45:36.880 Over 10 million attendees and a nation of just 3 million, meaning that people heard

00:45:42.260 him multiple times.

00:45:44.780 His message seeped into the cultural fabric of America.

00:45:49.640 the Great Awakening, the colonies acted like separate nations with different currencies,

00:45:54.620 economies, militias, religious tensions, and even border wars. But Whitfield's preaching up and down

00:46:01.300 the eastern seaboard did more than anything to turn the isolated, squabbling colonies into one

00:46:07.280 country. It helped erode the barriers of geography, denominations, and rivalry. There was now a shared

00:46:15.840 experience, a sense that God was doing something across all 13 colonies.

00:46:20.880 And the National Consciousness was born.

00:46:24.920 The Great Awakening was Colonial America's biggest social upheaval before the Revolutionary

00:46:30.560 War.

00:46:32.060 Whether you loved it or hate it, you could not ignore it.

00:46:36.060 Because the Great Awakening transformed the colonies.

00:46:38.940 It broke the monopoly of state churches, it decentralized authority, it gave ordinary

00:46:43.940 people permission to challenge the elites. In this awakening, colonists learned to resist and resist

00:46:51.560 together. That habit of resistance prepared them for something greater, the American Revolution.

00:47:01.660 As historian Alice Baldwin documented, the sermons of the Great Awakening were

00:47:05.940 vital in shaping America's unique view of civil and religious liberty. She said,

00:47:10.820 There is not a right assured in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763.

00:47:20.160 The Constitutional Convention, and when written, the Constitution, were children of the pulpit.

00:47:28.340 Before the Revolution, before the Declaration, before the Constitution, there was the Great Awakening.

00:47:35.620 Without it, America most likely would never have been born.

00:47:39.380 It was foundational in preparing Americans in the biblical character and worldview necessary for lasting independence.

00:47:49.380 It also molded young men who became our founding fathers.

00:47:55.580 Men like a 22-year-old Virginian named George Washington,

00:48:02.180 who is just about to experience the brutal reality of combat for the very first time.

00:48:13.840 Coming up on The American Story, The Beginnings.

00:48:18.340 A bullet finds General Braddock ripping through his arm and into his chest.

00:48:23.740 He crumples to the ground, blood soaking his coat.

00:48:26.820 Washington wheels around and dismounts, kneeling beside Braddock.

00:48:30.900 Washington feels lightheaded, his own body severely depleted.

00:48:35.440 He's in excruciating pain from weeks-long battle with dysentery, and he tries to make out Braddock's words.

00:48:42.700 Then, with swift determination, he swings back onto his horse, no time to register the pain coursing through him as he settles into the saddle.

00:48:50.540 The air is still thick with smoke and bullets, and Washington is a tall, easy target.

00:48:56.540 He draws his sword, charging ahead into the maelstrom.

00:49:02.740 A bullet then rips through his coat, yet somehow fails to graze him.

00:49:08.000 He is at home on horseback, and there is a strange calm about him in this wicked battlestorm.

00:49:20.980 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

00:49:25.300 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

The Glenn Beck Program - April 25, 2026

Spiritual Firestorm： How the First Great Awakening Rewired America ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 3

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