David Pawson on Completing Luther's Reformation - Part 3

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Thoughtful Thoughts 13.6.25 by John Dunning.

The Reformation & beyond Part 3; A ‘tag-team’ passes on the baton…

INTRODUCTION

Some people became famous for the difference they made. But there were people behind the scenes who made them what they became, and who are forgotten. 

For example, who has heard of the evangelist who led Billy Graham to the Lord? Well, there is a whole story behind Billy’s conversion, which we are including next week. That example introduces this week’s stories, which are merely representative of heroes of the reformation. There are so many that all I can do is just ‘cherry pick’ some examples of the kind of people who were passing on our faith down through the ages…until the baton was passed on to us, leaving us to pass it on to others… and that is how the reformation was spread.

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Henry Scougal / George Whitefield 1650 to 1678.

Most Christians have heard of George Whitefield because of the great work he accomplished as a protestant reformer. Yet no-one would have heard of him if it had not been for Henry Scougal. So who was Henry Scougal?

The main reason why most Christians have NOT heard of Scougal is because he died of TB at the age of 28. And yet it was because Henry Scougal authored “The Life of God in the Soul of Man”, that George Whitefield’s heart was changed from being religious to becoming a “Born Again” Christian. And from there George Whitefield became a famous Christian reformer. 

Scougal was a Scottish protestant reformer, who was both a minister and author.

He only lived from 1650 to 1678, yet God used his short life to pass on the spiritual baton to George Whitefield. 

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George Whitefield / John Wesley

The story does not end there, because when George Whitefield left England in 1739, he asked John Wesley to care for his congregation of thousands. But how was it that an evangelistic reformer like Whitfield came to entrust his congregation to an Anglican clergyman like Wesley? Well, Whitefield noticed that Wesley had changed… He may have started off as an Anglican, but there was a whole story in between Wesley as an Anglican and Wesley as an evangelistic reformer who started the Methodist church; (which was a nickname given his work of travelling on horseback, between church halls he set up, to preach.)

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The state of the church…

To explain further, for Anglican clergy to have been Born Again was unusual, because it was still the same old people running the show. For example, after the church was nationalised, vicars still lived in mansions, bishops in palaces like kings, and Archbishops like emperors. It needed secular authorities to improve the level of morality in the clergy by forbidding torture in England. For example, not long after leaving the Roman church, “The Long Parliament” had to intervene to forbid the torture of an assassin in 1640. Parliament no longer recognised statements gained through torture. That was later followed by the English Bill of Rights in 1689 criminalising torture.

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John Wesley (1703- 1791)

a). The “old man”

John Wesley started his ‘career’ as an Anglican clergyman, but as his life progressed, the Lord kept bringing people across his path to change all that. 

On the boat returning home from America, Wesley noted that fellow passengers who were missionaries were spiritually alive and were Moravian missionaries. 

According to his own diary, he was an Anglican missionary to America before he was ‘Born Again’. As the Wesleys realised that they had been Anglican missionaries before they were ‘Born Again’, they went to the Moravian meeting of the missionaries they had met… 

That led on to a transforming religious experience on May 24 1738 at a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street, London. (Cf. Jesus’ terminology to Nicodemus in John 3).

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b). The “new man”.

So the important date was this… After Wesley experienced the Lord Jesus for the first time at a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street, London, (years after being ordained an Anglican clergyman), on May 24, 1738, under the influence of Moravian missionaries, they began preaching a message of new birth to whoever would listen.

Note that the year was 1738 of becoming Born Again, because the difference in Wesley was noted by Whitefield. In 1739 Whitefield handed his congregation of thousands over to Wesley. 

Because Whitefield remained as Anglican, he only reached the first of Peter’s points in Acts 2:38, of repenting, and didn’t follow through to points No. 2 and 3 of immersion and the Holy Spirit. By not progressing as Peter directed, there was still parts of his inherited culture that affected his thinking, as he continued supporting the most heinous of crimes against humanity which the Anglican church had investments in, which Archbishop Welby had said the church must make reparations for, and that was the slave trade in America. As St Paul said that slavers were destined for hell, I believe Whitefield could not have yet received the Holy Spirit because his teaching on that point went against the clear teaching of Scripture. So, never put any man on a pedestal. But also, remember these men had come out of an English church that was itself in need of saving. 

After the Wesleys' conversion, they preached here, there, and everywhere. But they had to set up church halls from which to preach, as the Anglican church would not allow them to use church buildings apart from the one they had been assigned. 

After his conversion, John Wesley was able to recognise that other clergy were not Born Again…  For example, John Wesley wrote in his diary after visiting St Mary’s Anglican Church in Scarborough, England… “The last time I went to Scarborough I earnestly exhorted the people to go to church and went there myself, but the wretched minister preached such a sermon that I could not in conscience advise them to hear him any-more.”

The conversion of the Wesleys led them to depart in practice from Anglicanism as  they disobeyed the order not to evangelise outside of their church. However, one of the brothers said he still considered himself to be Anglican, so it was said that “they were like men in a rowing boat facing the Anglican Church, but with every stroke of the oars, they found themselves moving further and further away from the church. “

It was said of Wesley's evangelistic work that so many workers were converted by his preaching, that the civil unrest that was brewing, was prevented from turning into civil war in England, (which had already happened in France.)

Wesley became such an evangelist that he was noticed by Whitefield and when he went to America, he entrusted his huge congregation of many thousands in England to John Wesley.

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EPILOGUE

This study has been about the importance of being a link in the chain to leading someone to the Lord.  What happens after that is not for us, but we are called to be faithful witnesses.

There are so many other verses, I’ll have to leave them to your own study. The Bible answer is to put faith in the Lord, who is Jesus Christ, for salvation.

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This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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