May We Spend the Night on Death Row?

September 25, 2007

From John Piper, in Let the Nations Be Glad!, 2nd ed: The Supremacy of God in Missions

Charles Wesley gives us an example of how one might obey Hebrews 13:13 and go “outside the camp” and bear the abuse he endured. On July 18, 1738, two months after his conversion, Charles Wesley did an amazing thing. He had spent the week witnessing to inmates at the Newgate prison with a friend named “Bray,” whom he described as “a poor ignorant mechanic.” One of the men they spoke to was “a black [slave] that had robbed his master.” He was sick with a fever and was condemned to die.

On Tuesday, Wesley and Bray asked if they could be locked in overnight with the prisoners who were to be executed the next day [this is outside the camp!]. That night they spoke the gospel. They told them that “One came down from heaven to save lost sinners.” They described the sufferings of the Son of God, his sorrows, agony, and death.

The next day the men were loaded onto a cart and taken to Tyburn. Wesley went with them. Ropes were fastened around their necks so that the cart could be driven off, leaving them swinging in the air to choke to death.

The fruit of Wesley and Bray’s nightlong labor was astonishing. Here is what Wesley wrote:

They were all cheerful; full of comfort, peace and triumph; assuredly persuaded Christ had died for them, and waited to receive them into paradise…. The black [slave] … saluted me with his looks. As often as his eyes met mine, he smiled with the most composed, delightful countenance I ever saw.

We left them going to meet their Lord, ready for the Bridegroom. When the cart drew off, not one stirred, or struggled for life, but meekly gave up their spirits. Exactly at twelve they where turned off. I spoke a few suitable words to the crowd; and returned, full of peace and confidence in our friends’ happiness. That hour under the gallows was the most blessed hour of my life.¹

¹Charles Wesley, Journal, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 120-23.

Posted in Book, Book Review, Charles Wesley, John Piper