Revival - Part 9: John Wesley

John Wesley always referred to himself as a brand plucked out of the burning (Zec 3.2) after he was rescued from a disastrous fire that destroyed the rectory in Epworth in 1709. There John was born in 1703 the ninth child of a family of thirteen children. Educated at Lincoln College Oxford he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church and appointed lecturer in Greek in 1726. Together with his younger brother Charles and some other friends he formed what became known as the Holy Club devoted to good works in and around Oxford. They quickly gained a reputation for piety and strictness of conduct and were called Methodists as a result.
Following the death of his father John went to America as a missionary to the Indians. He returned to England in 1730 after his failure as a missionary and an unhappy love affair. On board ship Wesley came into contact with some Moravians and he became troubled that he knew nothing of their personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He admitted that he had gone to convert the Indians while he himself was unsaved, and he saw that all his efforts to do good works were only establishing his own self-righteousness. He recounts his conversion in a prayer meeting in Aldersgate while listening to Luther's "Preface to Romans" on Wednesday May 24,1738." About a quarter to nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death".
From that time John Wesley devoted his boundless energy and talents to preaching the good news about his newly found saviour. Like Whitefield his preaching was not acceptable to many in the Anglican Church and so he took to open air preaching to reach the common people. Rising at 4.00am he preached at 5.00 to catch the working people. This continued for the next 52 years, when he travelled over 225,000 miles mostly on horseback, and preached more than 50,000 sermons. In the early years he faced much opposition and persecution from local clergymen and his life was often in danger from drunken mobs.
One is again struck by the sheer amount of work done by this great man of God. He produced grammars, histories, biographies, and a collection of hymns and tunes. "Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live. Lord let me not live to be useless". Wesley never intended to found a new denomination but was forced after 1748 to ordain his own men to be preachers. He never left the Anglican Church, and looked upon Methodism as a means of reviving the Church from within.
Many of us would find much to disagree with Wesley when we consider his teachings on Arminianism and holiness. Also his dealings with his former friend George Whitefield were not to his credit, but this merely goes to show that God uses imperfect instruments to do his work. When John Wesley died at the age of 88 the whole country had been revived and drawn back from the brink of civil war. He left 750 preachers and 77,968 Methodists in this country alone. His final words were, "The best of all, God is with us" and the first words of the hymn "I'll praise my maker while I've breath; And when my voice is lost in death; Praise shall employ my nobler powers".