| John Nelson was the pioneer of Yorkshire Methodism.
He happened to be working as an ornamental stonemason in London when
he heard John Wesley preaching in the open air at Moorfields. He was
soon converted and a year later returned to Yorkshire where he assisted
Benjamin Ingham before he accompanied John Wesley on a preaching tour
of Cornwall. Thereafter he became an intrepid evangelist, sometimes
in the face of fierce persecution, throughout the north of England
and then the Midlands.
Although John Nelson was a noteworthy revivalist, his journal
is not filled with remarkable conversions, either in quality or
quantity, though there are conversions enough mentioned in its pages.
Rather it is a narrative of the struggles and hardships (as well
as the joys) that go with “obeying God rather than man.”
It is the story of one man whom God called and who obeyed that call
despite intense opposition both from the common people and, sadly,
from those who name the name of Christ. It is filled with a passionate
commitment to be faithful to all of God’s truth, not just
the comfortable bits, and of the conflicts that arise from that.
It is encouraging by being challenging rather than by being soothing.
May God challenge you as you read it.
As there are no chapter heading in the book we have place around
one third of its contents on one web-page. The remainer can be located
on the CD ROM
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