J I Packer1926-2020

J. I. Packer was a man of revival. He knew and wrote on revival with sheer clarity and wisdom. I was talking on the phone with him years ago, and we were having a lengthy conversation about the New England theology of Jonathan Edwards and Azahel Nettleton, and the downgrade of that theological thought.

And he made a metaphysical statement that was so far over my head, theologically and intellectually, that he lost me completely. I did not understand it. Then he laughed.

So I laughed in agreement with him, not to reveal my ignorance. He had one of the most brilliant minds of any person in the history of the church. He was a gracious and giving man, who always remained a humble man in the shadow of his risen Christ.

When he agreed to write the foreword to my two-volume biography on George Whitefield, he wanted to see several chapters, which I ended up sending him 500 pages. When we spoke on the phone, I asked if he wanted me to send him more chapters, and he said, no, no, this is quite enough. I think I wore him out.

I still have his handwritten note thanking me for dedicating my Nettleton biography to him, though in his typical humility he said he was quite undeserving. He said he was looking forward to receiving his copy of the Nettleton biography to put it on his bookshelf alongside my two volumes on Whitefield. J.I. Packer always inspired me to know my God more.

He was a man who knew his God, and he wanted everyone else on earth to know him as well. I will end this tribute to this remarkable man by reading his foreword to my Whitefield volumes. Here now are his words.

George Whitefield of Gloucester, England, intercontinental gospel preacher with a voice like organ music and a lifelong West Country accent was a phenomenon. He was an unusual human being whom God equipped and used in a quite unique way. He was a very godly man from the time when, as a student in Oxford, he met the Wesleys.

His passion was to grasp and be grasped by the God they served, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Following his conversion, he left Oxford and ministered in and around his hometown. He came to the bishop's notice and received ordination at 21, two years younger than the statutory minimum age.

Overnight, he became a popular preacher, always highlighting the new birth. Throughout his ministry, he lived by rule, maintaining a steady devotional life each day, reading and rereading the marvelous Puritan exposition of the Bible by Matthew Henry, usually on his knees and interceding at length for the advance of God's kingdom. His penitent humility before God was lifelong and deep and was the taproot of the compassionate, confident, and confidential boldness that never ceased to amaze his hearers.

He was a disciplined man, stemmious in food and drink, taking no more sleep than he needed, and he could manage on less sleep than most, and always meticulous in his personal affairs. Single-minded and eager, well-focused and joyful, genial and practical, he lived every day full stretch for his Lord. Premature aging and the onset of asthma or angina, or perhaps both, did not slow him down.

The odd response that he commanded whenever he preached was as much admiration for his transparent spiritual zeal as for the stupendous force of his preaching as such. He was a very gifted man. To his natural energetic alertness and charm were added, in sanctified mode, all the powers that marked great actors.

What were these? First, the power to command and hold attention. Movement, or action as the classical theorist of rhetoric called it, is central here, and Whitefield was never still in the pulpit. Second, a big in Whitefield's case, a huge voice, capable of expressing the whole range of human emotions and attitudes, Whitefield could thunder, lament, caress, and encourage with overwhelming, heart-searching, heart-breaking power.

Third, total identification with what he was projecting, not in Whitefield's case, a character on stage, but the holiness and mercy of God, and the transformation of life that Christ brings when through faith and repentance we learn to live in, through, to, and for him. Fourth, the ability to make every utterance an easy flow of vivid and arresting speech. All great actors and all great preachers can do this.

Fifth, power so to impact each individual in the crowd that he or she feels personally addressed, arrested, and drawn into what's going on in Whitefield's case, a persuasion from God through his messenger. Thus, gifted as a dramatic communicator, Whitefield had a evangelistic and nurturing ministry in the pulpit of unprecedented power and fruitfulness. Dr. Johnston tells Whitefield's story in a way that celebrates him as a servant of God, and thus can fairly be described as hagiographical.

But there's nothing wrong with that, even though it is a kind of writing in which today's secular historians tend to turn their noses up. The author does not hide Whitefield's failings and imprudences, but concentrates on celebrating the way God used his servant, which makes his book hagiography of the most distinguished kind. He praises God for Whitefield and wants his readers to do the same.

We should agree with him that Whitefield is not a man to be forgotten and be grateful for his labors to keep the great evangelist's memory green. If you care about the glory of God in the salvation of souls, you will find this book a tonic.