David Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718, in Haddam, Connecticut. The same year  John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards turned 14. Benjamin Franklin turned 12 and George Whitefield 3.   The GREAT AWAKENING was just over the horizon, and Brainerd would live through both waves of it in the mid-thirties and early forties and early forties, then die of tuberculosis in Jonathan Edward’s house at the age of 29th Oct 9,1747.

His father died when he was nine, but he pursued devotion and fasting at very early age. His mother died when he was 14, and they were twelve of them at home.

It was tough, his brother Nehemiah died at 32, another brother Israel died at 23, his sister Jerusha died at 34, and he died at 29. When his mother died, he moved to the Connecticut River to East Haddam to live with his married sister, Jerusha.  He described his religion during these years as very serious. When he turned 19, he inherited a farm and moved to west in Durham to try farming. His heart was longing for “a liberal education.”

At the summer of 1738, David was preparing to enter Yale, at the farm he committed to God to enter the ministry, but he was not converted. He read Bible through twice that year and began to see more clearly that all his religion was legalistic and simply based on his efforts. He had great quarrelling with GOD within his soul.  He rebelled against original sin and the strictness of the divine law and the sovereignty of God. He quarrelled with the fact that there was nothing he could do in his strength to commend himself to God.

Glory Came

Half an hour before sunset at the age of 21, he was in a lonely place trying to pray.  It was the Lord’s Day, July 12, 1739. He was 21 years old. Two months later he entered Yale to prepare for the ministry. It was a hard beginning. There was hazing by the upperclassmen, little spirituality, diff studies and he got measles, and he had to home for several weeks during that first year.

The coming year from Yale, he was sent home because he was so sick he was spitting blood. So at an early age, he had tuberculosis he died seven years later.