JOHN WESLEY, FOUNDER OF METHODISM & AN ARMINIAN, SAID HE DID NOT LOVE GOD & WAS "AN HONEST HEATHEN"

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• published: 08 Jun 2012
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See our playlist "Dealing with Predestination, Arminianism & Calvinism" with 77 videos at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA932903698A56780. John Wesley, the famous founder of the Methodist religion, lacked faith in the God he preached. "I do not love God. I never did ... I have never believed ... I am only an honest heathen ... I have no direct witness ... of anything ... invisible or eternal" said John Wesley in a letter to his brother Charles Wesley in June 1766. Wesley's confession to his brother was long after his supposed "conversion" to Christianity. Larry Wessels, director of Christian Answers of Austin, Texas/ Christian Debater (see YouTube channel: CANSWERSTV; see our 19 playlists on numerous topics at http://www.youtube.com/user/CAnswersTV?feature=mhee; websites: http://www.BIBLEQUERY.ORG, http://www.HISTORYCART.COM, & http://www.MUSLIMHOPE.COM) presents this theological analysis of the Roman Catholic mystical background of John Wesley, Wesley's hybrid brand of Arminanism taken from James Arminius & Wesley's own claim to be a non-Christian "heathen." In a letter to his brother Charles in June 1766, the hybrid Arminian evangelist John Wesley, now in his sixties, confesses that he does not and never did love God, believe or have the direct witness of divine sonship or even of things invisible or eternal. Here's his testimony: "In one of my last [letters] I was saying that I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery), I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed, in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen ... And yet, to be so employed of God! And so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there was never such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I ever have had that faith, it would not be so strange. But I never had any other evidence of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all, unless such as faintly shines from reason's glimmering ray. I have no direct witness (I do not say, that I am a child of God, but) of anything invisible or eternal."(quoted in Stephen Tomkins, John Wesley, A Biography [Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2003], p. 168) It is an interesting fact that Wesley's childhood was steeped in the Mystics. His parents were great fans of the mystical writers and Charles and John grew up in a home surrounded by their works. Initially John was wholly accepting their teachings, and they made and left a deep impression on him during the formative years of his life. Eventually, he became involved in a protracted internal struggle with mysticism which never really abated. John Wesley wrote to his brother Samuel on 23rd Nov.1736: 'I think the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the Mystics'. And in this connection he specifically names Johann Tauler and the Spanish Quietist, Miguel de Molinos. In his Preface to the Collection of Hymns and Sacred Poems in 1739, John Wesley writes: 'Some verses, it may be observed, in the following Collection, were wrote upon the scheme of the Mystic Divines. And these, it is owned, we had once in great veneration, as the best explainers of the Gospel of Christ. But we are now convinced that we therein greatly erred, not knowing the Scriptures neither the power of God. And because this is an error which many serious minds are sooner or later exposed to, and which indeed most easily besets those who seek the Lord Jesus in sincerity, we believe ourselves indispensibly obliged, in the presence of God, and angels, and men, to declare wherein we apprehend those writers not to teach "the truth as it is in Jesus"'. And he then lays out the argument under four headings: They lay another foundation; their manner of building on it is the opposite of that prescribed by Christ (He commands us to build up one another. They advise: 'To the desert! To the desert! and God will build you up'); their superstructure has no correspondence with that laid down by the Apostle Paul; they teach another Gospel. Again, in his diary on 5th June 1742, Wesley writes: 'I just made an end of Madam Guyon's "Short Method of Prayer" How many evangelicals today read Madame Guyon? Or, rather, how many will actually admit it? In Wesley's journal dated 5th February 1764 is written: 'I began reading Mr Hartley's ingenious Defence of the Mystic Writers. Wesley was a complex character who never really shook off the foundations of the mystical teaching he had imbibed. As J. Brazier Green says in John Wesley & John Law (Epworth Press, 1945, p.179): 'Although Wesley uttered substantial indictments of the Mystics in 1739, 1756 and 1764, he was also publishing and commending their writings in his Christian Library (1749-55) and until the last years of his life'. See http://www.cephasministry.com/ecumenism_evangelical_attraction.html.