Post by John on Jan 11, 2014 8:23:49 GMT -5
JOHN FAWCETT - APOSTLE TO WAINSGATE & HEBDEN BRIDGE
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In the purpose of God
BLESSED BE THE TIES THAT BIND.
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above”
In Carter Lane, Bermondsey close to the South bank of the Thames close to Southwark, stood a chapel belonging to a Baptist Church, where the first exploratory meeting took place in 1812 of pastors of the Particular Baptist Churches that led to the creation in 1813 of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. The building is no longer there and the district is now part of Southwark and opposite Southwark Cathedral on the other side of London Bridge Road. However the congregation still meets in a large building faced with columns, the Metropolitan Tabernacle opposite the Elephant and Castle Inn.
The Church, that is the people, who met in Carter Lane, went on to do great things effecting for good the lives of thousands in the UK and around the world, but too their leadership a young man was called in 1772 who declined to accept their invitation and who served a much smaller congregation in Yorkshire on a pittance of what he could get in London and his decision turned out right for God had got other plans for him.
John was an orphan at the age of 12. He was then apprenticed to a tailor for 6 years, which prevented him further pursuing his education. He laboured like a slave for 14 hours a day apart from Sunday.
His only joy was one of two books he owned . The book being “The Pilgrim's Progress” by John Bunyan, a Christian classic since translated into over 100 languages, and made into a film.
Young John read it stealthy by candlelight on the floor of his cold attic bedroom shielding it's glow by a bushel so his master would not see it, This was the root of his Christian experience for there was no Parish church or any church where he was living around Bradford and Wainsgate. The Baptists occasionally sent an itinerant preacher but the day came when a great preacher came. The Evangelist George Whitefield.
From dawn people began arriving in a field in the countryside next to a cornfield of ripened wheat. By the time George arrived there were about 20,000 people gathered .George mounted a portable wooden pulpit and having led the crowd on singing several well known hymns George began to speak from John's Gospel chapter 1 and verse 14 which referred to a serpent on a pole set up years before by Moses which when a disease plagued people looked at it they were healed by God. George told the crowd they had all been bitten by a venomous serpent – SIN. They were as a result all doomed to die and the poison had got a great hold on their lives and unless something happened they would all shortly perish.
Then he pointed them to Jesus nailed to a Roman gibbet outside the walls of Jerusalem by whose death, the shedding of His blood, all humans could be saved, forgiven, given a new life. A new beginning. He repeated a verse from Isaiah the prophet “Look unto Me and you be saved all the ends of the earth”
That day hearing that message released the teenage John from his fears of the future, the burden of his sins, the misery of his life and gave him a fresh start. John pressed through the crowds to talk to George and confided in him his consecration and desire one day to preach the Gospel. It was one of John's greatest moments in his life when George prayed for him and blessed him. John's life seem electrified and every spare moment of his time he spent reading his other little used book, that most glorious of books, the Bible. Which comes alive to those who trust God, and believe what it teaches. John joined himself to a small group who met in private homes. Their he found a new family, friends he could rely upon.
At 18, his apprenticeship completed he married Mary, a fine Christian girl five years older than him.. Visiting preachers urged John to go out into the villages and preach the Gospel and so they went the two of them together.
At Wainsgate , described as “ a few straggling houses on a bald hill” in 1763 a group of believers asked John to be their pastor. There was little to be pastor of, A small horribly dark and damp chapel with no furnishings but a few stools was all they started with. Gladly John accepted their invitation and on July 31st 1765 John was ordained there and began his ministry
There was no house for him and Mary to live in. They boarded round staying with different members of the congregation, by which they got to know and love them all. John and Mary found so many ways to serve their hosts. In a couple of years it became necessary to build a balcony in the chapel to house the growing crowd of disciples. In such lack of privacy they brought into the world 4 children in 5 years. Eventually they got a house of their own but their meagre salary was about £300 pound per year To help them their friends offered them a 25% rise if they would take payment in wool and potatoes. Both of which were well worth having to help feed and clothe,
About this time John visited London to preach at Carter Lane. The people their warmed to him and invited him to be their pastor. Mary was in favour and John decided that they should move as God clearly had a big opportunity in the capital of the developing British Empire.
Back home at Wainsgate the congregation went into mourning. How could they manage without them? Nevertheless arrangements were made and 6 or 7 carts were loaded with baggage for the trip to London. As the last box of books was loaded and their children were set in their places, John and Mary began the last round if “goodbyes” Most of the congregation were there, many of them weeping. Finally overcome by the grief of their people. John and Mary sat on a packing case and wept bitterly. Mary refused to get off the packing case and said to her husband “Oh John, John, I cannot bear this. I know not how to go!” John replied “ Nor I, either , nor will we go. Unload the wagons and put everything back in the places they were before. “
Quickly the news spread. Sorrow turned to joy, tears to laughter. Pastor and People were bound together in greater ties of love. A letter was sent to London declining the offer with an explanation. Next Sunday John preached from Luke 12 verse 15 “ A man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” John finished his sermon with a hymn he had written at midnight the night before.
Blessed be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above”
Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one.
Our comforts and our cares.
We share our mutual woes
Our mutual burdens bear:
And often for each other flows
The sympathising tear.
More than ever before John Fawcett fed and guarded his flock of people. A new Church building seating 600 people was built just a few miles away at Hebden Bridge.
There John opened a Day School, and a training school for young preachers. He went on to write many things of value. His “Essay on Anger” delighted King George the Third who offered him any benefit he could bestow. John replied that he lived among his own people, enjoyed their love, and he needed nothing which even a king could supply.
For 54 years John and Mary served that congregation first at Wainsgate and then at Hebden Bridge. In 1816 aged 76 John's health failed and he decided the time had come to give up his pastoral work. A Grand Meeting was organised. Friends and co-workers came together from half a century of his ministry all alike gaining the presentiment that they “would see his face no more”. He rose and preached from Joshua 23 verse 14 “I am this day going the way of all the earth”. The earthly ties that had been so strong were superseded by heavenly ties, first formed 62 years earlier at that great meeting of 20,000 in the field where George Whitefield had preached, and on July 25th 1817. John in his 78th year went to be forever with the LORD.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall soon be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again
This glorious hope revives
Our courage by the way.
While each in expectation lives
and longs to see the day.
From sorrow, toil and pain,
And sin, we shall be free:
And perfect love and friendship reign
Through all Eternity.
The Lord greatly blessed the Carter's Lane congregation calling to it Dr John Rippon who served it for over 60 years. The Lord also blessed the Wainsgate congregation as He can bless you, and your congregation. His people in your hands.
Any minister or preacher reading this see that it means you, and some young people too who are on the threshold of committed lives of service.
Yet everyone of us touch the lives of other people and through us God can help and bless them even those who at present do not believe and even deny the existence of God, for God's power is greater than any of us, or all of us together.
So at the beginning of a new year take heart, exercise courage, be faithful to those around you, trust God and let Him work through you.