A Brand Plucked from the Burning

On February 9, 1709, the Epworth rectory in Lincolnshire, England, burst into flames in the dead of night. Susanna Wesley — already mother to more children than most women could count — scrambled through smoke and chaos to account for each one. But five-year-old John was still trapped upstairs in the burning house. The staircase had collapsed. Neighbors formed a human ladder beneath his window, and a man hoisted onto another's shoulders pulled the boy free just moments before the roof caved in. Susanna clutched her son and later wrote that he was "a brand plucked from the burning," borrowing the prophet Zechariah's words.

The forces that tried to consume young John Wesley that night did not succeed. He grew into the preacher whose open-air sermons would ignite a spiritual awakening across England and America, changing the landscape of Christianity for centuries.

In Revelation 12, John the Apostle describes a woman in agonizing labor while a great dragon waits to devour her child the moment he is born. Yet the child is caught up to God and His throne, and the woman is carried to a wilderness place the Almighty has prepared for her. The dragon rages, but he cannot undo what God has purposed.

Every force of darkness that conspires against what the Most High is bringing to birth will fail. He who guards His purposes never slumbers, and no flame — however fierce — can consume what He has determined to preserve.