A Little Pulpit in Scotland

Welcome to another week on Things Unseen. If you know the story of George Whitefield, the Englishman who was so instrumental in the First Great Awakening in the eighteenth century in the United States, in the time of Ben Franklin and people like Jonathan Edwards, you maybe know that whenever he went back to the University of Oxford in England where he’d been a student, he went to kiss the spot where he remembered his experience of God’s saving grace.

Now, I don’t think Whitefield believed that some places or spaces are more holy than others, but it’s true, isn’t it, that if what we eat and drink is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, there are some places that are kind of sanctified to us—at least made special to us—and have been sanctified to us by God because of what happened there.

And this week I thought I’d reflect on some of the places in my own life that are like that, not because my life is so important you need to hear about it, but because I hope my own reflections will stimulate you, this week at least, to look back and to be filled with a sense of gratitude to God for what He has done for you, perhaps in certain particular places. You remember the old hymn, “Count your blessings, name them one by one; and it will surprise you what the Lord has done,” and we do so easily forget.

The screensaver on my computer at one time was a photograph of the old pulpit that once stood in St. George’s Tron Church in Glasgow in Scotland. It’s no longer there, actually, but it was significant to me. The pulpit itself was unusual. The whole thing was white and stood maybe twenty feet high and was reached by a spiral staircase. But the pulpit itself was just a small circle. Maybe two people could stand in it if they didn’t need a lot of private space. It was surrounded by a gallery on three sides, and some of the seats were near enough that people sitting in them could almost hit the preacher if they’d carried a long stick. When I was fourteen, almost fifteen, I came to faith in Jesus Christ sitting in a seat on the south side of that gallery, listening to a sermon on John 8:12. The one thing my conversion has in common with John Wesley’s is that I think it was somewhere between eight o’clock and nine o’clock in the evening.

And as it happens, when I finished my theological studies, I was appointed assistant minister in that congregation and had the privilege several times every month of preaching from that pulpit. I later became the senior minister in the church. And often when I was preaching, especially in the evening, I’d look over to that place where I’d been sitting and wonder if there was another young fourteen-year-old sitting there who was being drawn to Christ.

As I said, that pulpit isn’t there any longer, nor, in fact, is the congregation still in the building because they felt they could no longer remain in the denomination they were in, and so they had to sacrifice it. I have no idea where the pulpit is. For all I know, it’s an ornament somewhere, or maybe even broken down and gone forever. But it will always remain a special memory for me because from it the gospel was preached to me and to thousands of others. And from it, I was able to preach the gospel.

I’m grateful to God for that, and I honor those who preached to me from it. I can recall sermons, others preached from it and their memorable impact on my Christian life. But I think the one I remember most of all was the first one I heard there as a fourteen-year-old on Jesus’ words, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” And although the pulpit is gone, the words I heard from it that night have remained, and they’ve been true to me, for the Lord Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And I’m so grateful that there, sitting in the gallery, looking at the high white pulpit, I heard Jesus’ voice calling me to follow Him.

I often think of the lovely hymn by Horatius Bonar:

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“I am this dark world’s Light;
Look unto me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy days be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In him my Star, my Sun;
And in that light of life I’ll walk,
Till trav’ling days are done.

All true, all so wonderfully true for me. I hope my story stimulates you to think of your story, and to be thankful again for the place where you first came to faith in the Lord Jesus and became His disciple, and for the people who pointed you to Him. Or if you’ve listened to sermons from the pulpit in your own church and perhaps never come to Christ, why not take hold of this promise that meant so much to me from John 8:12, that Jesus is the light of the world and those who trust Him as their Savior and Lord will walk in the light. If you take hold of Jesus and that promise, then He reassures you that you will never walk in darkness.