© 2026 Don Pinson (To download, right-click on the gray play bar and select “Save Audio As”)

I often hear people talking about what we need to do to return our nation to “the way it ought to be”.  But I wonder how many of them have a clear picture of exactly what is, “what it ought to be”.  What would Biblical Reformation in America look like?

Actually, the years just before the American Revolution can give us a good starting point.  The honest student of history finds in those years an evidence of a powerful move of God.  That is what birthed America.  This is all that can change her now.  It is to that way of thinking we must return if America is to restore the liberty to get the Gospel to the next generation.  A study of the man who spearheaded that revival is a good place to start toward reformation.

His name was George Whitefield.  He was an Englishmen who had grown up with no Christian background.  His parents ran a tavern; and from the shady characters that came there he learned how to think.  He testified that as a boy he was a

“…liar, thief, and a gambler, addicted to filthy talk…and fantasy.  He had a love for novels, [and] plays…”

(Biblical Revival and the Transformation of Nations, S. McDowell (Providence Foundation, 2013), p. 26-27)

His home was very unstable; his parents eventually divorced. But in his later teenage years, he began to be very serious about his relationship to God.  He read a book entitled The Life of God in the Soul of a Man.  It showed him he must be born again or spend eternity in hell.  The common thought of the day was that if you were a member of the church you were okay and would go to heaven when you die.  Much like today, people were greatly deceived as to what a relationship with God really was.  From the conviction which came from reading this book, God would eventually bring him to bow his will and surrender his life to Christ.  He described the joy that came as being,