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Sermon 66: The Signs of the Times

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon066

02:521 An Introductory Comment

Since childhood Wesley had understood himself as having a providential vocation, and by the 1780s he was convinced that the Methodist Revival, with its parallels in Britain and America, was one of the landmark events in the whole of church history. He was, therefore, baffled (and offended?) by the steadfast indifference to it on the part of the leaders of the Church of England. The Revival had survived its days of violent persecution by local mobs and magistrates, but the day of recognition of its import for spiritual renewal in England and the world had not yet come—and might never. It was in something of this mood of complaint in the late summer of 1787, at St. Helier, Isle of Jersey, that he ‘finished [this present] sermon on Discerning the Signs of the Times’ (cf. JWJ, August 25, 1787). It is one of the rare examples of the cult-hero taking himself seriously as such, with an elaborate parallelism between the blindness of the Pharisees and Sadducees to ‘the signs of their times’ and equivalent myopias in his own day. It is clear, however, that the main point to the sermon is its concluding appeal to the Methodists that they not fail in their discernment of the signs of their times, but respond appropriately.

This was, apparently, the only time he ever preached from this particular text (Matt. 16:3); the sermon was published in the Arminian Magazine the following year in the March and April issues without title (Vol. XI. 115-20, 172-78), and then immediately, with its present title, as the concluding item in SOSO, V.237-52, the sixteenth in a work advertised for fourteen parts). Like ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’, it seems to have been placed here to fill out a volume rather than as a link in Wesley’s programme as advertised in the preface to SOSO, V-VII.

See above, pp. 455-57.

02:522 The Signs of the Times

Matthew 16:3

Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?

11. The entire passage runs thus: ‘The Pharisees also, with the Sadducees, came, and tempting, desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red; and in the morning, It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?’

22. ‘The Pharisees also, with the Sadducees, came.’ In general these were quite opposite to each other; but it is no uncommon thing for the children of the world to lay aside their opposition to each other (at least for a season) and cordially to unite in opposing the children of God. ‘And tempting’, that is, making a trial whether he was indeed sent of God, ‘desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven’, which they believed no false prophet was able to do. It is not improbable they imagined this would convince them that he was really sent from God. ‘He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red; and in the morning, It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering.’ Probably there were more certain signs of fair and foul weather in their climate than there are in ours. ‘O ye hypocrites’, making profession of love while you have enmity in your hearts; ‘ye can discern the face of the sky,’ and judge thereby what the weather will be; ‘but can ye not discern the signs of the times,’ when God brings his first-begotten Son into the world?

33. Let us more particularly inquire, first, What were ‘the times’ whereof our Lord speaks? And what were ‘the signs’ whereby those times were to be distinguished from all others? We may then inquire, secondly, what are ‘the times’ which we have reason to believe are now at hand? And how is it that all who are called Christians do not discern ‘the signs of these times’?

102:523I. 1. Let us in the first place inquire, What times were those concerning which our Lord is here speaking? It is easy to answer: the times of the Messiah, the times ordained before the foundation of the world wherein it pleased God to give his only-begotten Son

See John 3:16.

to take our nature upon him, to be ‘found in fashion as a man’, to live a life of sorrow and pain, and at length to be ‘obedient unto death, even the death of the cross’;

Cf. Phil. 2:8.

to the end ‘that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life’.

Cf. John 3:16.

This was the important time, the signs whereof the Pharisees and Sadducees could not discern. Clear as they were in themselves, yet so thick a veil was upon the heart of these men that they did not discern the tokens of his coming, though foretold so long before.

22. But what were those signs of the coming of that Just One

See Acts 7:52.

which had been so long and so clearly foretold? And whereby they might easily have discerned those times, had not the veil been on their heart? They are many in number; but it may suffice to mention a few of them. One of the first is that pointed out in the solemn words spoken by Jacob a little before his death: ‘The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.’

Gen. 49:10.

All, both ancient and modern Jews, agree that by ‘Shiloh’ we are to understand the Messiah;

The Hebrew text here is notoriously obscure. Modern commentators tend to reject the translation, ‘Shiloh’, whether as a place or Messianic metaphor; cf. E. A. Speiser, Genesis, The Anchor Bible (1964). But Wesley is right about the traditions of rabbinical interpretation up to his day; cf. Menahem M. Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, Vol. VI: Genesis (New York, American Encyclopedia Society, 1965), p. 169, §§75-77: ‘…until Shiloh—i.e., the royal Messiah—comes…’. See also Abraham Ben-Isaiah and Benjamin Sharfinan, The Pentateuch and Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn, S. S. and R. Publishing Company, 1949-50), I.489: ‘I.e., Messiah, the King, for the Kingdom is his, and thus does Onkelos render it.’ Abraham Cohen confirms this in his Soncino Chumash…An Exposition Based on the Classical Jewish Commentaries (London, Soncino Press, 1956). John Skinner, in his Genesis (1910) in the International Critical Commentary, had realized this: ‘the Messianic acceptation of this passage prevailed in Jewish circles from the earliest times.’

who was therefore to come, according to the prophecy, ‘before the sceptre’, that is, the sovereignty, ‘departed from Judah’. But it did without controversy depart from Judah at this very time; an infallible sign that at this very time ‘Shiloh’, that is the Messiah, ‘came’.

33. A second eminent sign of those times, the times of the coming of the Messiah, is given us in the third chapter of the prophecy of Malachi: ‘Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare my way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.’

Ver. 1.

How manifestly was this fulfilled, first, by the coming of John the Baptist; and then by our blessed Lord himself, ‘coming suddenly to his temple’! And what sign 02:524could be clearer to those that impartially considered the words of the prophet Isaiah: ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!’

Chap. 40, ver. 3.

44. But yet clearer signs than these (if any could be clearer) were the mighty works that he wrought. Accordingly he himself declares, ‘The works which I do, they testify of me.’

Cf. John 5:36 (Notes).

And to these he explicitly appeals in his answer to the question of John the Baptist (not proposed, as some have strangely imagined, from any doubt which he had himself; but from a desire of confirming his disciples who might possibly waver when their master was taken from their head): ‘Art thou he that should come,’ the Messiah? ‘Or look we for another?’

Luke 7:19, 20; cf. Henry, Exposition, for a comment on the basis for John’s implied doubts here.

No bare verbal answer could have been so convincing as what they saw with their own eyes. Jesus therefore referred them to this testimony: ‘He answered and said unto them, Go and show John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.’

Matt. 11:4-5.

55. But how then came it to pass that those who were so sharp-sighted in other things, who could ‘discern the face of the sky’, were not able to discern those signs which indicated the coming of the Messiah? They could not discern them, not for want of evidence—this was full and clear—but for want of integrity in themselves; because they were a ‘wicked and adulterous generation’;

Matt. 16:4.

because the perverseness of their hearts spread a cloud over their understanding. Therefore although the Sun of righteousness

Mal. 4:2.

shone bright, yet they were insensible of it. 02:525They were not willing to be convinced; therefore they remained in ignorance. The light was sufficient; but they shut their eyes that they might not see it. So that they were without excuse, till vengeance came upon them to the uttermost.

See 1 Thess. 2:16.

1II. 1. We are in the second place to consider, What are ‘the times’ which we have reason to believe are now at hand? And how is it that all who are called Christians do not discern ‘the signs of these times’?

‘The times’ which we have reason to believe are at hand (if they are not already begun) are what many pious men have termed the time of ‘the latter-day glory’;

Cf. Jer. 49:39; Hag. 2:9.

meaning the time wherein God would gloriously display his power and love in the fulfilment of his gracious promise that ‘the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.’

Cf. Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14.

22. ‘But are there in England, or in any part of the world, any signs of such a time approaching?’ It is not many years since that a person of considerable learning, as well as eminence in the Church (then Bishop of London), in his pastoral letter made this observation: ‘I cannot imagine what persons mean by talking of “a great work of God” at this time. I do not see any work of God now, more than has been at any other time.’

A blurred memory of Bishop Edmund Gibson’s general disapproval of the early Methodists; cf. CWJ, Oct. 21, 1738 (the date is in error; the meeting between John and Charles and the bishop took place on Friday, Oct. 20), and John’s diary for Oct. 20—he does not mention the event in his Journal. Cf. also CWJ, Feb. 21, 1739; see also John’s diary, Saturday, Mar. 24, 1739, and his reply to the bishop’s ‘Charge to the Clergy’, June 11, 1747, in which the bishop had attacked Wesley, the Moravians, and Whitefield; Gibson’s Pastoral Letter to the People of His Diocese…by way of Caution against Lukewarmness on the one Hand and Enthusiasm on the other (1739, 55pp.), and three other of Gibson’s ‘pastoral letters’. Wesley’s alleged quotation does not appear, verbatim, in any of them. Yet is a clear inference from Gibson’s letters that he did not regard the Methodist Revival as an especially ‘great work of God’, and rejected their claims (Whitefield’s in particular) to ‘a special and immediate mission from God’, etc. (cf. pp. 27-41). It was this inference that Wesley felt free to place here in quotation marks.

Another of Gibson’s pamphlets that comes nearer to Wesley’s mark appeared in 1744, Observations Upon the Conduct and Behaviour of a Certain Sect Usually Distinguished by the Name of Methodists (folio and quarto), Pt. III, Q. 3, 1, ‘Imagination of some great work of which God makes them the instruments’; pp. 22-23: ‘Whether…their astonishment that God should make such “poor mean” creatures as they are his instruments in an extraordinary work which he is bringing about upon the earth is not a means to keep up an opinion in their hearers that all they do and say is directed and dictated immediately by God…’. For Wesley’s reply, see his Farther Appeal, Pt. I, III.2-9 (11:119-30 in this edn.). See also No. 112, On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel, §2. For other references to Bishop Gibson, cf. II.10, below; and No. 68, ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels’, §21.

I believe it. I believe 02:526that great man did not see any extraordinary work of God. Neither he nor the generality of Christians, so called, saw any signs of the glorious day that is approaching. But how is this to be accounted for? How is it that those who can now ‘discern the face of the sky who are not only great philosophers, but great divines, as eminent as ever the Sadducees, yea, or the Pharisees, were, do not discern the signs of those glorious times, which if not begun, are nigh, even at the door?

33. We allow indeed that in every age of the Church, ‘the kingdom of God came not with observation;’

Cf. Luke 17:20.

not with splendour and pomp, or with any of those outward circumstances which usually attend the kingdoms of this world. We allow this ‘kingdom of God is within us’;

Cf. Luke 17:21.

and that consequently when it begins either in an individual or in a nation it ‘is like a grain of mustard seed’, which at first ‘is the least of all seeds’; but nevertheless gradually increases till ‘it becomes a great tree.’

Matt. 13:31-32.

Or, to use the other comparison of our Lord, it is like a little ‘leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened’.

Cf. Matt. 13:33.

44. But may it not be asked, Are there now any signs that the day of God’s power is approaching? I appeal to every candid, unprejudiced person, whether we may not at this day discern all those signs (understanding the words in a spiritual sense) to which our Lord referred to John’s disciples. ‘The blind receive their sight.’

Matt. 11:5.

Those who were blind from their birth, unable to see their own deplorable state, and much more to see God and the remedy he has prepared for them in the Son of his love, now see themselves, yea, and ‘the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.

2 Cor. 4:6.

‘The eyes’ of their ‘understanding’ being now ‘opened’,

Cf. Luke 24:45; Eph. 1:18.

they see all things clearly. ‘The deaf hear.’

Matt. 11:5.

Those that were before utterly deaf to all the outward and inward calls of God now hear, not only his providential calls, but also the whispers of his grace. ‘The lame walk.’

Ibid.

Those who never before arose from the earth, or moved one step toward heaven, are now walking in all the ways of God; yea, running the race that is set before them.

See Heb. 12:1.

‘The lepers are cleansed.’

Matt 11:5.

The deadly leprosy 02:527of sin, which they brought with them into the world, and which no art of man could ever cure, is now clean departed from them. And surely never in any age or nation since the apostles have those words been so eminently fulfilled, ‘The poor have the gospel preached unto them,’

Ibid.

as it is at this day. At this day the gospel leaven—faith working by love,

See Gal. 5:6.

inward and outward holiness, or (to use the terms of St. Paul) ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost’

Rom. 14:17.

—hath so spread in various parts of Europe, particularly in England, Scotland, Ireland, in the islands,

An interesting ambiguity here. This sermon was written on the Isle of Jersey, and Wesley may have had in mind the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man, etc., since the revival had spread to all of them in the period, 1753-83. But the reference to America also suggests the American West Indies, where Nathaniel Gilbert had pioneered in 1760 and where Thomas Coke had carried the work forward in 1786.

in the north and south, from Georgia to New England and Newfoundland, that sinners have been truly converted to God, throughly changed both in heart and in life; not by tens, or by hundreds only, but by thousands, yea, by myriads!

In Wesley’s personal copy of AM, this phrase, ‘yea, by myriads’, has been crossed out—another instance, one supposes, of Wesley’s instinct for compression.

The fact cannot be denied: we can point out the persons, with their names and places of abode. And yet the wise men of the world, the men of eminence, the men of learning and renown, ‘cannot imagine what we mean by talking of any extraordinary work of God’! They cannot discern the signs of these times! They can see no sign at all of God’s arising to maintain his own cause and set up his kingdom over the earth!

55. But how may this be accounted for? How is it that they cannot discern the signs of these times? We may account for their want of discernment on the same principle we accounted for that of the Pharisees and Sadducees; namely, that they likewise were what those were, an ‘adulterous and sinful generation’.

Mark 8:38.

If their eye was single, their whole body would be full of light.

See Matt. 6:22. Cf. No. 31, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XI’, III.4 and n.

But suppose their eye be evil, their whole body must be full of darkness.

See Matt. 6:23. Cf. No. 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, on this text.

Every evil temper darkens the soul; every evil passion clouds the understanding. How then can we expect that those should be able to discern the signs of the times who are full of all disorderly passions, and slaves to every evil temper? But this is 02:528really the case. They are full of pride; they think of themselves far more highly than they ought to think.

See Rom. 12:3.

They are vain; they ‘seek honour one of another, and not the honour that cometh of God only’.

Cf. John 5:44.

They cherish hatred and malice in their hearts: they give place to anger, to envy, to revenge. They return evil for evil, and railing for railing.

See 1 Pet. 3:9.

Instead of overcoming evil with good,

See Rom. 12:21.

they make no scruple of demanding an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

Matt. 5:38.

They ‘savour not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men’.

Cf. Mark 8:33.

They set their affections, not on things above, but on things that are of the earth.

See Col. 3:2.

They ‘love the creature more than the Creator’:

Cf. Rom. 1:25.

they are ‘lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God’.

2 Tim. 3:4.

How then should they discern the signs of the times? The god of this world whom they serve has blinded their hearts,

See 2 Cor. 4:4.

and covered their minds with a veil of thick darkness. Alas! What have these ‘souls of flesh and blood’ (as one speaks)

This may be a garbled echo from Law’s Spirit of Prayer (Works, VII.76); cf. Wesley’s long ‘open letter’ to Law, Jan. 6, 1756: ‘That angels have bodies you affirm elsewhere. But are you sure they have flesh and blood? Are not angels spirits? And surely a spirit hath not flesh and blood.’ Cf. No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §7, where Wesley speaks of ‘eyes of flesh and blood’ and where the term, ‘eyes’, connotes the immaterial self.

to do with God or the things of God?

66. St. John assigns this very reason for the Jews not understanding the things of God, namely, that in consequence of their preceding sins and wilful

Actually an adverbial usage, as in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, I. ii. 255: ‘If ever I were wilful negligent’.

rejecting the light, God had now delivered them up to Satan, who had blinded them past recovery. Over and over, when they might have seen they would not; they shut their eyes against the light. And now they cannot see, God having given them up to an undiscerning mind; therefore they do not believe because of the reason given in that saying of Isaiah,

In both published texts this passage reads: ‘therefore they do not believe because that Isaiah said (that is, because of the reason given in that saying of Isaiah)’. This is obviously awkward; one may suppose that the proofreader failed to realize that the parenthesis was actually an emendation and not an addition.

‘He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, and be converted, and I should heal them.’

John 12:40, alluding to Isa. 6:10.

The plain meaning 02:529is, not that God did this by his own immediate power—it would be flat blasphemy to say that God in this sense hardens any man—but his Spirit strives with them no longer, and then Satan hardens them effectually.

77. And as it was with them in ancient times, so it is with the present generation. Thousands of those who bear the name of Christ are now given up to an undiscerning mind. The god of this world hath so blinded their eyes that the light cannot shine upon them,

See 2 Cor. 4:4.

so that they can no more discern the signs of the times than the Pharisees and Sadducees could of old. A wonderful instance of this spiritual blindness, this total inability to discern the signs of the times mentioned in Scripture, is given us in the very celebrated work of a late eminent writer, who supposes ‘the new Jerusalem came down from heaven’

Cf. Rev. 21:2, 10.

when Constantine the Great called himself a Christian.

Bishop Thomas Newton. See No. 61, ‘The Mystery of Iniquity’, §27 and n.

I say, ‘called himself a Christian’; for I dare not affirm that he was one, any more than Peter the Great.

In JWJ, Jan. 30, 1756, Wesley had voiced his doubt that Peter the Great was a Christian: ‘Undoubtedly, he was a soldier, a general, and a statesman scarce inferior to any. But why was he called a Christian? What has Christianity to do either with deep dissimulation or savage cruelty?’ The probable source of Wesley’s main knowledge of Peter the Great was Alexander Gordon’s two-volume History of Peter the Great (1755), together with John Banks’s History of the Life and Reign of…Peter the Great (1740), both of which Wesley had read. Peter had been a favourite subject for English biographers in the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe in 1723 and John Mottley in 1739 had also published histories of his life.

I cannot but believe he would have come nearer the mark if he had said, that was the time when a huge cloud of infernal brimstone and smoke came up from the bottomless pit.

See Rev. 9:11; 20:1. Cf. also No. 32, ‘Sermon on the Mount, XII’, I.7 and n.

For surely there never was a time wherein Satan gained so fatal an advantage over the church of Christ as when such a flood of riches, and honour, and power broke in upon it, particularly on the clergy.

For other references to the church as a ‘mixed society’, see No. 104, ‘On Attending the Church Service’, §13 and n.

88. By the same rule, what signs would this writer have expected of the approaching conversion of the heathens? He would doubtless have expected a hero, like Charles of Sweden,

Charles XII (1682-1718), one of Sweden’s great warrior heroes, whose untimely death at Frederickshall is cited by way of illustration in No. 124, ‘Human Life a Dream’, §9.

or 02:530Frederick of Prussia,

Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia (1712-86), whose ‘infernal subtlety’ (despite his genius) had lately been commented on by Wesley in JWJ, Aug. 26, 1784; see also Dec. 10, 1787, and May 7, 1789.

to carry fire, and sword, and Christianity through whole nations at once. And it cannot be denied that since the time of Constantine many nations have been converted in this way. But could it be said concerning such conversions as these, ‘The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation’?

Luke 17:20.

Surely everyone must observe a warrior rushing through the land at the head of fifty or sixty thousand men! But is this the way of spreading Christianity which the author of it, the Prince of Peace,

Isa. 9:6.

has chosen? Nay, it is not in this manner that a grain of mustard seed grows up into a great tree.

See Matt. 13:31-32.

It is not thus that ‘a little leaven leavens the whole lump.’

Cf. 1 Cor. 5:6; Gal. 5:9; also Matt. 13:33.

Rather, it spreads by degrees farther and farther, till the whole is leavened. We may form a judgment of what will be hereafter by what we have seen already. And this is the way wherein true Christian religion, the faith that worketh by love,

See Gal. 5:6. Cf. No. 2, The Almost Christian, II.6 and n.

has been spreading, particularly through Great Britain and its dependencies, for half a century.

99. In the same manner it continues to spread at the present time also, as may easily appear to all those whose eyes are not blinded. All those that experience in their own hearts the power of God unto salvation

Rom. 1:16.

will readily perceive how the same religion which they enjoy is still spreading from heart to heart. They take knowledge of the same grace of God, strongly and sweetly

Cf. No. 15, The Great Assize, II.10 and n.

working on every side; and rejoice to find another and another sinner, first inquiring, ‘What must I do to be saved?’

Acts 16:30.

and then testifying, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Saviour.’

Cf. Luke 1:46-47.

Upon a fair and candid inquiry they find more and more, not only of those who had some form of religion, but of those who had no form at all, who were profligate, abandoned sinners, now entirely changed, truly fearing God and working righteousness.

See Acts 10:35.

They observe more and more, even of 02:531these poor outcasts of men, who are inwardly and outwardly changed, loving God and their neighbour; living in the uniform practice of justice, mercy, and truth; as they have time, doing good to all men;

See Gal. 6:10. Notice, however, that Wesley has softened the Pauline ‘as we have therefore opportunity’ to ‘as they have time’—a considerable difference.

easy and happy in their lives, and triumphant in their death.

1010. What excuse then have any that believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God for not discerning the signs of these times, as preparatory to the general call of the heathens? What could God have done which he hath not done

See Isa. 5:4; see also No. 107, ‘On God’s Vineyard’, on this text.

to convince you that the day is coming, that the time is at hand, when he will fulfil his glorious promises; when he will arise to maintain his own cause, and to set up his kingdom over all the earth? What, indeed, unless he had forced you to believe? And this he could not do without destroying the nature which he had given you. For he made you free agents; having an inward power of self-determination, which is essential to your nature. And he deals with you as free agents from first to last. As such, you may shut or open your eyes as you please. You have sufficient light shining all around you; yet you need not see it unless you will. But be assured God is not well-pleased with your shutting your eyes and then saying, ‘I cannot see.’ I counsel you to bestow an impartial examination upon the whole affair. After a candid inquiry into matter of fact, consider deeply, ‘What hath God wrought?’

Num. 23:23, the text of Wesley’s sermon (No. 112) on laying the foundation stone for the New Chapel, City Road, London, Apr. 21, 1777.

‘Who hath seen such a thing? Who hath heard such a thing? Hath not a nation’, as it were, been ‘born in a day?’

Cf. Isa. 66:8.

How swift, as well as how deep, and how extensive a work has been wrought in the present age! And certainly, ‘not by might, neither by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord’.

Cf. Zech. 4:6.

For how utterly inadequate were the means! How insufficient were the instruments to work any such effect! At least those of which it has pleased God to make use of in the British dominions and in America. By how unlikely instruments has God been pleased to work from the beginning! ‘A few, young, raw heads!’ said the Bishop of London, ‘What can they pretend to do?’

Another blurred memory. What Gibson had asked in his Observations (see above, II.2) is as follows: ‘Whether it does not savour of self-sufficiency and presumption, when a few young heads, without any colour of a divine commission, set up their own schemes as the great standard of Christianity. And, how it can be reconciled to Christian humility, prudence, or charity, to indulge their own notions to such a degree as to perplex, unhinge, terrify, and distract the minds of multitudes of people, who have lived from their infancy under a gospel ministry, and in the regular exercise of a gospel worship; and all this, by persuading them that they have never yet heard the true Gospel, nor been instructed in the true way of salvation before; and that they neither are, nor can be true Christians, but by adhering to their doctrines and discipline, and embracing Christianity upon their schemes: All the while, for the sake of those schemes and in pursuance of them, violating the wholesome rules, which the powers spiritual and temporal have wisely and piously established, for the preservation of peace and order in the church.’ Cf. No. 68, ‘The Wisdom of God’s Counsels’, §21, where Wesley quotes Gibson more accurately. See Wesley’s other account of the revival in A Short History of the People Called Methodists, §54, where he speaks of ‘a handful of raw young men’. The added term ‘raw’ may have lodged in Wesley’s memory from Robert South’s contemptuous reference to the Commonwealth preachers as ‘raw, unlearned, ill-bred persons’; cf. South, Sermons (1844), I.111.

They [02:532]pretended to be that in the hand of God that a pen is in the hand of a man. They pretended (and do so at this day) to do the work whereunto they are sent; to do just what the Lord pleases. And if it be his pleasure to throw down the walls of Jericho, the strongholds of Satan, not by the engines of war

Ezek. 26:9.

but by the blasts of rams’ horns,

See Josh. 6:5.

who shall say unto him, ‘What dost thou?’

Cf. John 6:30.

1111. Meantime, ‘Blessed are your eyes, for they see. […] Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things you see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them.’

Cf. Matt. 13:16-17.

You see and acknowledge the day of your visitation—such a visitation as neither you nor your fathers had known. You may well say, ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad therein.’

Cf. Ps. 118:24.

You see the dawn of that glorious day whereof all the prophets have spoken. And how shall you most effectually improve this day of your visitation?

1212. The first point is—see that you yourselves receive not the blessing of God in vain. Begin at the root, if you have not already. Now repent and believe the gospel.

Mark 1:15.

If you have believed, ‘Look to yourselves, that ye lose not what you have wrought, but that ye receive a full reward!’

Cf. 2 John 8.

‘Stir up the gift of God that is in you!’

Cf. 2 Tim. 1:6.

‘Walk in the light, as he is in the light.’

1 John 1:7.

And while you ‘hold fast’

Heb. 3:6, etc.

‘that which you have attained’,

Cf. Phil. 3:12, 16; 1 Tim. 4:6.

‘go on unto perfection.’

Heb. 6:1.

Yea, and when you are ‘made perfect in love’,

1 John 4:18.

still, ‘forgetting the [02:533]things that are behind, press on to the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’

Cf. Phil. 3:13-14.

1313. It behoves you in the next place to help your neighbours. ‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’

Matt. 5:16.

As you have time, do good unto all men, but especially unto them that are of the household of faith.

See Gal. 6:10; and n. 65, above.

Proclaim the glad tidings of salvation ready to be revealed, not only to those of your own household, not only to your relations, friends, and acquaintance, but to all whom God providentially delivers into your hands. ‘Ye’, who already know in whom you have believed,

See 2 Tim. 1:12.

‘are the salt of the earth.’

Matt. 5:13.

Labour to season, with the knowledge and love of God, all that you have any intercourse with. ‘Ye are a city set upon a hill;’ ye ‘cannot’, ye ought not to ‘be hid’.

Cf. Matt. 5:14.

‘Ye are the light of the world.’ ‘Men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel;’ how much less the all-wise God. No, let it ‘shine to all that are in the house’,

Cf. Matt. 5:14-15.

all that are witnesses of your life and conversation. Above all, continue instant in prayer,

See Rom. 12:12.

both for yourselves, for all the church of God, and for all the children of men, that they may remember themselves and be turned unto our God. That they likewise may enjoy the gospel blessing on earth, and the glory of God in heaven.

St. Helier, Isle of Jersey, Aug. 27, 1787

The place and date appear only in AM (1788), XI.178, with the spelling, ‘St. Helliers’.

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Entry Title: Sermon 66: The Signs of the Times

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