John Wesley's Seal
John Wesley's Seal
It was a friendship forged in the providential love and leading of our Lord Jesus Christ. The serious and as yet unsaved John Wesley was desperately seeking faith and he was to meet a friend in Peter Bohler who would firmly lead him to fulfillment in his search for saving faith.
FEBRUARY- DAYS OF FRUSTRATION
John Wesley had witnessed peace and joy in other believers lives which he did not have. He felt the loneliness of his condition. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top. (Psalm102.7) John required help; he desperately needed a friend, yet felt like Job. My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. (Job 16.20) again he would know of Job’s cry, my kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. (Job 19.14) the coldness of those February days in 1738 was matched by the chill of his spiritual condition.
FAVOURED WITH FRIENDSHIP
The ‘Adorable Trinity’ in the heavens was aware of the heaviness and loneliness of this clergyman who was seeking
fulfilment of faith, had seen his tears and heard his lonely cry and prayerful supplication. Time was nearing for a cold heart to be strangely warmed it involved a book shop and a man from the land bulbs and windmills - Holland. Divine design is always a strong and positive design, always strong and always sure. The finger of the Lord selects each friend in the link of faith for each would be believer.
FITTING FOUNDATIONS
Back in London, he lodged with John Hutton a clergyman and a friend of John Wesley’s father. His son James kept a bookshop – picturesquely advertised as ‘The Bible and Sun’ near Drury Lane. Now we see the complexity of the Lord’s working in using people from different backgrounds and countries and persuasions of belief.
At the home of a Dutch merchant named Weinantz, Wesley met a group of Moravians, just landed from Germany.
Amongst them a man whom God had selected as his pedagogue (a slave to look after his master’s son) to bring him to Christ. He was a pedantic teacher and destined to lead Wesley in instruction in the evangelical faith his name was of course Peter
Bohler.
FELLOWSHIP WITH A FRIEND.
Peter was a remarkable ordained young man aged twenty-six years of age. He had turned his back on medicine to work in the ministry. He moved in influential circles and possessed a charm which disarmed even those who disagreed with him; both John and his brother Charles held Peter in high regard. On Friday the 17th February John travelled with Peter to Oxford and over the weekend they were in each others company and engaged in long deep conversations. Peter
Bohler was the chosen instrument who was to set the frustrated Fellow of Lincoln on the road to peace and certainty.
FUNDAMENTAL NEED NOW IN FOCUS
Wesley later admitted “I understood him not, and lest of all when he said, ‘My brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away!” (Journal, Vol.1, p440.February, 1738.) Peter
Bohler rejected every idea of God which was derived, however indirectly, from any general principle of human reason.
He would allow only THE JESUS CHRIST OF THE BIBLE. He repudiated all natural theology, which was at the time highly regarded in English thinking in the contemporary enlightenment.
This was Wesley’s primary need to purge, abandon and get rid of man made philosophy concerning God and all the unbiblical associated ethics that went with it. Wesley loved a logical argument, but his friend Peter firmly and lovingly advised him to trust in the ‘Jesus Christ of the Bible’ alone.
John Wesley was now aware of a new dimension regarding full assurance of faith.
Next article we will listen as ‘Wesley preached to Wesley’
