O For Friday!

O For Friday!

“O for Friday! O for Friday! O Lord, give me patience to await thy appointed time!”

HIS JAILERS must have shaken their heads in disbelief, for Friday was the day appointed for John Nesbit’s execution.

Like many other Scottish Covenanter martyrs, John Nesbit spent the last days of his life in a jail cell. What set the Covenanters apart from other condemned prisoners was how they chose to spend their final days. They worshiped the Christ whom they would soon meet face-to-face and several wrote a Last and Dying Testimony. These are the words Nesbit left for posterity:

Be not afraid at His sweet and lovely and desirable cross. For although I have not been able because of my wounds to lift up or lay down my head, but as I was helped, yet I was never in better case all my life. . . . God has so wonderfully shined on me with the sense of His redeeming, strengthening, assisting, supporting, through-bearing, pardoning and reconciling love, grace and mercy, that my soul doth long to be freed of bodily infirmities and earthly organs, that so I may flee to His Royal palace even the Heavenly habitation of my God, where I am sure of a crown put on my head, and a palm put in my hand, and a new song in my mouth, even the song of Moses and the Lamb, that so I may bless, praise, magnify and extol Him for what He hath done to me and for me. Wherefore I bid farewell to all my fellow-sufferers for the testimony of Jesus. . . .

Farewell, my children, study holiness in all your ways, and praise the Lord for what He hath done for me, and tell all my Christian friends to praise Him on my account. Farewell, sweet Bible, and wanderings and contendings for truth. Welcome, death. Welcome, the city of my God where I shall see Him and be enabled to serve Him eternally with full freedom. . . . But above all, welcome, welcome, welcome, our glorious and alone God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; into Thy hands I commit my spirit for Thou art worthy. Amen.

John Nesbit’s Friday was December 4, 1685. He approached the gallows with eyes lifted up to heaven, his face shining. Then he jumped up on the scaffold and cried aloud:

My soul doth magnify the Lord! My soul doth magnify the Lord! I have longed sixteen years to seal the precious cause and interest of precious Christ with my blood. And now, now He hath answered and granted my request, and has left me no more ado but to come here and pour forth my last prayers, sing forth my last praise to Him in time on this sweet and desirable scaffold, mount that ladder, and then I shall quickly get home to my Father’s House, see, enjoy, serve and sing forth the praises of my glorious Redeemer, for evermore world without end.

Reflection

Most of us spend our lives in denial regarding death. We think of it as something that happens to other people. We grieve when we hear of friends or relatives who have been told they are going to die. Yet we are all going to die; the only question is how soon. We may not face a martyr’s death, as did John Nesbit, but unless the Lord Jesus returns first, we will all die. In light of this now is the time to prepare ourselves for our death and for standing before our Maker.

You were made from dust, and to the dust you will return.

Genesis 3:19