GEORGE WHITEFIELD: THE GREATEST EVANGELIST

One of the greatest evangelists in the history of the church was George Whitefield, and he has been honoured by the two volume Life written by Arnold Dallimore and published by the Banner of Truth. The lives of a number of pastors have been changed through the influence of that book. His 'Journals' with all their youthful vision and sense of wonder have also been published by the Banner of Truth. A sample of his preaching, Select Sermons of George Whitefield, has also been published by the Banner of Truth. One of the most interesting books on Whitefield is his 'Letters, 1734 - 1742' in a facsimile edition of one of those six volumes of his complete Works, first published in 1771 and containing an additional 34 letters not found in the first edition.

Now the Quinta Press is working towards the goal of producing a new edition of Whitefield's Works, including material that the original editor missed. To help fund further research, Quinta Press is releasing the 1771 edition of Whitefield's Works in a retypeset form, including the Journals, on CD-ROM on April 30. The newly edited text will be in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document format which is readable on Apple Macintosh and Windows 95 computers that have Adobe Acrobat installed. Installers for the Macintosh and Windows 95 versions of Adobe Acrobat will be included on the CD. In addition, Quinta Press will be including images of the original pages of the works for comparison. Price will be £45 inclusive of postage.

The editor, Dr. Digby James, used a scanner to achieve this, even though the Works of Whitefield are in facsimile form. He has done this with a number of the other books he has worked on, but Whitefield needed a lot more correcting than most of them (though not John Cotton).

This was very much a labour of love. Digby read Dallimore's life of Whitefield in 1976 and that was one of the things that helped him to leave Campus Crusade and its approach to evangelism. During their European Conference in Aberystwyth he spoke to the local Baptist pastor who encouraged him to attend Belvedere Road Baptist Church when he moved to Liverpool.

He had the delight of driving Dallimore from London to Bournemouth after he had spoken at his church in 1980/81. Dr James says, "Whitefield still has much to teach us about evangelism and true ecumenism. With regard to the former he often lamented his failure to work hard and mourned the fact that he lived in a day of small things!"

Dr James hopes that over the next few years he will be able to visit the several UK and US libraries containing Whitefield material, and he hopes to produce (probably with Peter Brumby's help) a definitive edition of the evangelist's works. Dr James adds, "I wrote to Iain in 1989 bemoaning facsimiles and suggesting scanning and resetting."

Quinta Press can be contacted at:
Meadow View,
Weston Rhyn,
Oswestry,
Shropshire,
England,
SY10 7RN

Phone: 01691 778659
Fax: 01691 777638
quintapress@digby.cix.co.uk
www.cix.co.uk/~digby/qp.html