A. Theodore Frelinghuysen & the Tennents
1. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen came to America in 1720 to pastor some Dutch Reformed churches in the Raritan River Valley.
2. His evangelistic preaching bore great fruit and helped put in motion the movement we know as the Great Awakening.
3. William Tennent was a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania who started a Log College
to educate his sons and, eventually, fifteen other young men for the ministry.
4. Gilbert Tennent, William's oldest son, soon began to work alongside Frelinghuysen and this soon began a revival from New York to Virginia.
B. Jonathan Edwards
1. Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703 and graduated from Yale at age 17.
2. He became an assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at the church in Northampton, Massachusetts.
3. He became the sole minister after his grandfather died.
4. In 1734, Edwards' preaching seemed to catch fire and a revival soon resulted.
5. This revival would continue, more or less, over the next ten years.
6. A large percentage of the population was added to the churches during these years.
7. Edwards' most famous sermon was Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, preached at Enfield, Connecticut, in July, 1741.
8. Edwards would later serve as a missionary to Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and would also become the President of Princeton College.
9. His death in 1758 was due to complications from a smallpox vaccination.
C. George Whitefield
1. In addition to preaching in England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Bermuda, and Gibraltar, George Whitefield made seven trips to America.
2. He worked to support an orphanage in Savannah, Georgia.
3. He preached all over the American colonies and even had the support of Benjamin Franklin.
4. He visited Jonathan Edwards and preached several times at Northampton.
5. Whitefield died in his sleep in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770, shortly after preaching his last sermon on the stairs of the home where he was staying.
ARTICLES
Why Christians Today Should Read Jonathan Edwards