Prophecy and Revivalism in the Transatlantic World 1734–1745

Abstract

Writing in the early nineteenth century, decades after the deaths of John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770), William Blake invoked their memory to present them as the two witnesses of Revelation 11:1–13. He cast the two preachers as God’s emissaries, who are given permission to ‘shut heaven’, ‘smite the earth with plagues’, and emit fire from their mouths for the duration of ‘the days of their prophecy’ (Rev. 11:5–6).² Blake thus depicted these pre-eminent figures of the transatlantic evangelical revival of the early eighteenth century as prophets. Indeed, for Blake, they were prophets par excellence, the prophets who would be resurrected and translated to heaven ahead of the ‘great earthquake’ that would level a tenth of ‘the great city’ (Rev. 11:11–13). As Michael Farrell states, Blake in Milton: A Poem presented the religious revival wrought by Whitefield and Wesley as a prophetic mission, and an important precursor to the eventual establishment of the New Jerusalem.³