Wealth & Money Quote by George Whitefield

Whitefield’s genius is how he turns salvation into an expiring offer, pitched to everyone at once. “High and low, rich and poor” is not just pious inclusivity; it’s a social leveling device. In the open-air theaters of the Great Awakening, where Whitefield’s celebrity preaching pulled crowds across class lines, that line quietly detonates hierarchy. Your rank can’t buy you extra time. Your poverty isn’t an excuse. In a world that sorted people by inheritance and deference, he creates one sudden category: the perishing.

The rhetorical engine here is urgency. “Now” repeats like a drumbeat, collapsing past and future into a single pressured moment. The phrase “accepted time” sounds administrative, almost contractual, as if grace has office hours. That’s the subtext: God’s mercy is abundant, but access is time-sensitive, and you don’t control the schedule. Whitefield is recruiting decision, not reflection. The question at the end - “will you not accept it?” - is a trap with velvet padding. It frames refusal as irrational, even self-destructive, while preserving the appearance of free choice.

There’s also a shrewd emotional choreography. “Mercy and grace” offers comfort, but only after the audience is made to feel the cliff edge: salvation is available, but only “while it is offered.” The line doesn’t merely invite conversion; it manufactures a crisis, then sells the cure. That’s revivalism’s power: not argument, but atmosphere - a mass-produced, intensely personal deadline.