Re: [PastorMail]
Posted by: rapha_el_ministries <rapha_el_ministries@...>
I would like to have copies of your series on Luther,
Tyndale, Wesley, and Calvin if it were possible.
Rev. Albert Corey
[email protected]
--- Steven Grose <[email protected]> wrote:
> Gentlemen, I am currently running a series of Sunday
> night powerpoint
> messages on the heroes of the faith and their
> favourite texts. Much of the
> base material is from FW Boreham a Bunch Of
> Everlastings.
>
> So far we have covered Tyndale, Luther, Wesley, and
> Calvin. this current one
> is on Knox.
>
>
>
>
> John Knox John 17:3
> "True and substantial wisdom principally consists of
> two parts; the
> knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves."
> With this sentence John
> Calvin begins his famous book, Institutes of the
> Christian Religion. Knowing
> God was the book by JI Packer that brought again a
> personal experience of
> God to the forefront of my heart about 30 years ago.
> Back in the 1500's it
> was this very concept of knowing God personally that
> brought forth so much
> hatred by religious leaders. To think that a person
> could know forgiveness
> of sins without the minister acting as a priest! To
> think that people could
> claim to know Christ personally through reading the
> Scriptures! It cost
> many their lives. In Scotland it cost a young
> nobleman his life; Patrick
> Hamilton was burned in front of the Bishop's palace.
> This young and
> scholarly nobleman had been to the continent for
> study and was converted
> through the teachings of Luther from the Scriptures.
> He made the mistake of
> teaching the grace of God in his own land. He
> perished even though he was
> related to the royal house. Then came George Wishart
> another scholar who had
> to flee to England because he taught his pupils New
> Testament Greek! He went
> to the continent to study in centres of learning and
> he returned to
> Cambridge for study. He came back to Scotland as an
> itinerant preacher. His
> preaching was powerful and effective. He was
> arrested and burned at St
> Andrews not far from the spot where Hamilton
> perished. The deaths of these
> men made a deep impression on those who witnessed
> them. They exposed the
> cruelties of Rome and demonstrated the genuineness
> of the martyrs' faith.
> George Wishart had been accompanied by a bodyguard
> called John Knox. This
> young man had been a former priest but had come into
> light through the
> writings of Augustine and reading the Scriptures in
> the original tongues. He
> carried a sword and was determined to guard his
> master from the fate of
> Hamilton. Wishart was arrested and perished.
> But let's jump through a few years and discover the
> verse that made John
> Knox all that John Knox became for God.
> As John Knox, now an old man, lay dying, he asked
> his young wife to read for
> him John Chapter 17 where as he said, he had cast
> his first anchor.
> "Go!" said the old reformer to his wife, as he lay
> dying, and the words were
> his last, "Go, read where I cast my first anchor!"
> She needed no more
> explicit instructions, for he had told her the story
> again and again. It is
> Richard Bannatyne, Knox's serving man, who has
> placed the scene on record.
> "On November 24, 1572," he says, "John Knox departed
> this life to his
> eternal rest. Early in the afternoon he said, 'Now,
> for the last time, I
> commend my spirit, soul, and body' - pointing upon
> his three fingers - 'into
> Thy hands, 0 Lord!' Thereafter, about five o'clock,
> he said to his wife,
> 'Go, read where I cast my first anchor!' She did not
> need to be told, and so
> she read the seventeenth of John's evangel." Let us
> listen as she reads it!
> "Thou hast given Him authority over all flesh, that
> He should give eternal
> life to as many as Thou hast given Him; and this is
> life eternal, that they
> might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
> whom Thou hast sent."
> Here was a strange and striking contrast! "Eternal
> Life! Life Eternal!" says
> the Book.
> Now listen to the labored breathing from the bed!
> The Bed speaks of Death;
> the Book speaks of Life Everlasting! "Life! "the
> dying man starts as the
> great cadences fall upon his ear. "This is Life
> Eternal, that they might
> know Thee!" "Life Eternal!"
> "It was there," he declares with his last breath,
> "it was there that I cast
> my first anchor!"
> A First Anchor
> While dying Knox looked for that place where he had
> cast a first anchor.
> What is a first anchor? If you have been fishing in
> a small boat you would
> well understand that the anchor is thrown into the
> water to hold the ship in
> place. However, there are places Not to throw an
> anchor. An anchor on a
> sandy bottom has nothing to grip to. An anchor
> thrown in a bed of sea weed
> will only hold the ship still as long as the roots
> of the weed stick and
> hold it in place. Now this may not affect a small
> boat, however Knox was
> familiar with larger ships, where for an anchor to
> lose its grip on sea
> floor could spell death for all those aboard. Were
> the anchor to slip in
> some strong river current, the ship and all those
> aboard could be sent
> careening downstream towards rocks and certain
> death. An Anchor needed to be
> cast somewhere where it would hold. Where can the
> anchor of your life be
> cast so that you can withstand the current talking
> you to death and hell?
> Observe John Knox. How was that first anchor of his
> soul cast? I have tried
> to piece the records together. Paul never forgot the
> day on which he saw
> Stephen stoned; John Knox never forgot the day on
> which he saw George
> Wishart burned. Wishart was a man "of such grace" -
> so Knox himself tells
> us - "as before him was never heard within this
> realm." He was regarded with
> an awe that was next door to superstition, and with
> an affection that was
> almost adoration.
> Are we not told that in the days when the plague lay
> over Scotland, "the
> people of Dundee saw it approaching from the west in
> the form of a great
> black cloud? They fell on their knees and prayed,
> crying to the cloud to
> pass them by, but even while they prayed it came
> nearer. Then they looked
> around for the most holy man among them, to
> intervene with God on their
> behalf. All eyes turned to George Wishart, and he
> stood up, stretching his
> arms to the cloud, and prayed, and it rolled back."
> Out on the borders of the town, however, the
> pestilence was raging, and
> Wishart, hastening thither, took up his station on
> the town wall, preaching
> to the plague-stricken on the one side of him and to
> the healthy on the
> other, and exhibiting such courage and intrepidity
> in grappling with the
> awful scourge that he became the idol of the
> grateful people.
> In 1546, however, he was convicted of heresy and
> burned at the foot of the
> Castle Wynd, opposite the Castle Gate. When he came
> near to the fire, Knox
> tells us, he sat down upon his knees, and repeated
> aloud some of the most
> touching petitions from the Psalms. As a sign of
> forgiveness, he kissed the
> executioner on the cheek, saying: "Lo, here is a
> token that I forgive thee.
> My harte, do thine office!" The faggots were
> kindled, and the leaping flames
> bore the soul of Wishart triumphantly skywards. And
> there, a few yards off,
> stands Knox! Have a good look at him! He is a man
> "rather under middle
> height, with broad shoulders, swarthy face, black
> hair, and a beard of the
> same color a span and a half long. He has heavy
> eyebrows, eyes deeply sunk,
> cheekbones prominent, and cheeks ruddy. The mouth is
> large, the lips full,
> especially the upper one. The whole aspect of the
> man is not unpleasing;
>
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