Friday 9 December 2011

"I was going to kill you"

Never forget the power of the gospel to transform people. The following storyabout Archibald Brown, a former minister of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, is a reminder of this power (thanks to Adrian Reynolds at The Proclaimer for this):

A local man was indignant that his wife had been converted. He didn't really understand what it meant, but he was almost certain it was not good and he determined to make an end of Pastor Brown. So one Sunday, he loaded his revolver and found a seat at the front of the side gallery (see picture). He waited until the sermon for his moment to shoot Brown dead. But just before he preached, Archibald Brown read from Isaiah 52-53, his text for the day. As he often did, he commented briefly on the text as he read it. He wasn't shot, and in fact he was visited in the vestry after the service by a repentant man who handed him his loaded gun. "I was going to kill you" he said. But now the gospel had taken hold of him.