John Brown, Scotland, Farmer
May 1. John Brown. John lived in an era known as The Killing Time—a time the government brutally executed people who taught that the Bible was the true rule of a man's life not the King’s laws.
John was still a boy when the King ripped 300 pastors out of their churches and sent them into exile. Many ended up living in caves and wherever—along the coasts of Scotland—the area traditionally left to robbers and crazies.
Turns out many of those robbers and crazies—having been ministered to by the exiled pastors— found their way into the Kingdom of God. And it was those pastors who taught and nurtured young John. He grew up to be a man of character, so much so that he was nicknamed: Christian Carrier. The neighboring farmers trusted him to take their produce to market, sell it, and bring back the proceeds to them. In his capacity of carrier, he also served as a messenger, often bringing his neighbors news of what their fellow Christians were suffering.
On this date in 1685, John Brown was shot dead for refusing to deny Christ. Here’s what happened.
In Christ, we find faith to live and even the courage to die.
Along the coastal moors of Scotland, three miles northeast of Muirkirk, stands a single pillar. It’s surrounded by a rectangle of mossy stones on a lonely tract of pasture known as Priesthill Farm. Here on May 1, 1685, in front of his wife and children, a Scottish officer shot John Brown—to death.
“What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?” the executioner asked.
“I thought ever much good of him, and as much now as ever,” she said.
John Brown was a Scottish Presbyterian, and men like him were called Covenanters.
For the Covenanters, God was the only one who had all right, all authority, all power, and all wisdom. That entitled God to be in charge. And God’s authority superseded any earthly king’s or queen’s or pope’s. They signed covenants—like sacred contracts—and fiercely held onto their beliefs even when the government demanded they stop preaching, teaching, meeting—being anything but allied with the Church of England.
In 1660, King Charles II reinstituted bishops in the Church of England Many people cooperated with this re-organization, but the Covenanters refused.
To safeguard the truth of the Gospel, they held secret services in isolated fields and private homes. But anyone caught attending risked punishment by death.
The farmer John Brown was smart, and he loved God. He so wanted to be a preacher, but he stammered and found God used him best as a teacher of the young. So he held Bible classes in his barn and welcomed other Covenanters to his home.
He’d already asked his wife if she was willing to lose him for the cause of Christ. He seemed to know he would suffer a martyr’s death, and she was willing. The pastor who’d joined John’s and Isabel’s hands in marriage, warned Isabel to save a sheet to wrap John in, as she would not be able to enjoy him for long.
Early one morning in 1685, John was outside cutting peat, when the muted specter of soldiers broke through the hazy dawn. It was John Graham and his mounted dragoons out hunting Covenanters.
They dismounted and forced John back to his farmhouse, and they ransacked it, looking for weapons and “treasonable papers.” They found what they were looking for and demanded that John take an oath—an oath against the Covenanters, against everything he believed.
John Brown refused. And he didn’t stutter.
The soldiers told John to take to prayer because he was going to “immediately die.”
Brown prayed aloud. And his powerful prayer was interrupted three times as John Graham appeared anxious to get the execution done. On the grassy knoll outside the family home, Graham now held a burnished pistol. He allowed John Brown to kiss his family goodbye. A few tearful words were spoken, and John Brown was ready to surrender his life.
Some report the soldiers could not immediately pull the trigger at command—paralyzed by the heart-wrenching scene, so that Graham lifted his pistol first and shot John Brown in the head.
“I have been crucified with Christ: and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the real life I now have within this body is a result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20, TLB).
If you must suffer a great loss to do God’s will, are you willing to do it at all costs? In Christ, we find faith to live and even the courage to die. https://drmarkjardine.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-killing-of-john-brown-of-preisthill-on-1-may-1685-walkers- version/ http://reformedanglicans.blogspot.com/2015/05/1-may-1685-ad-scottish-covenanter-john.html, (reference given to Dr. Rusten, Rusten E. Michael and Rusten, Sharon, The One Year Christian History, Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003.) https://drmarkjardine.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-killing-of-john-brown-of-preisthill-on-1-may-1685-walkers- version/
Story read by Blake Mattocks Story written by Toni M Babcock, https://www.facebook.com/toni.babcock.1
Would You Like to Learn More About This Man?
This is the title page of a biography of John Brown published in 1839.
At this link, you’ll find photographs of Muirkirk. The church shown here was built in 1631. https://youtu.be/aBep1W57z1U.