Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in an essay about George Whitefield, once commented on the disadvantage of printed sermons with the following words. May they serve as a reminder to us of the value of hearing the Word preached (of actually hearing the "thunder" and seeing the "lightning"):
[Whitefield] was asked one day for a copy of the sermon he had preached in order that it might be published, and this was his reply. He said, "I have no objection, if you will print the lightning, thunder, and rainbow with it."
You cannot put preaching into cold print; it is impossible. You can put the contents of the sermon, but you cannot put the preaching; you cannot put the "lightning," you cannot put the "thunder" - the roar of the thunder, the flash of the lightning - you cannot capture the "rainbow." All that is in the spoken word, in the action, in everything about the preacher. You cannot put that in print....[T]o read a sermon and to listen to it being preached are not the same thing. Thank God the Spirit can use a written sermon, but it does not compare with a preached sermon.
--Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "Calvin and Whitefield," in
Puritan Papers, Volume 3
