The First Great Awakening ruined the taste for over the top opera, which is what Handel excelled at. Like Rembrandt when the tulip bulb mania crashed 100 years earlier, Handel suddenly found himself with a pile of operas with no place to sell them, and lots of bills with no one to pay them. So he switched to oratorios which he could sell to all the awakened believers, sometimes using music from his operas--which wasn't stealing, because they were his operas--and he got his bills paid and pleased God simultaneously.
As a mid-level musicologist, I have heard the Hallelujah Chorus a thousand times, and I recognize its greatness, but it's lost its sheen for me. It is the finale, Worthy is the Lamb, that brings me to tears of love for my Lord.
“It is the finale...”
.
.
For me, it’s,
“I know my Saviour liveth”.