Throughout church history, sinners have come to faith in nearly every conceivable way and through the most unlikely people.
Justin Martyr, one of the earliest Christian apologists, was evangelized by an elderly man on a beach. A young John Owen found Christ through listening to a substitute preacher. And the light of salvation has shone in good weather and bad. John Newton, the slave-trader who eventually penned “Amazing Grace,” was converted in the hull of a ship during a thunderstorm. Charles Spurgeon accepted Christ when a snowstorm led him to a small Primitive Methodist chapel, where he heard the words of Isaiah 45:22: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”
Like the apostle Paul, some were born again in a dramatic Damascus Road experience. Abolitionist Sojourner Truth was blinded by a flash of light on a New York back road, where she heard Jesus’s voice. Richard Allen, the father of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, burst into tears after receiving salvation: “All of a sudden my dungeon shook, my chains flew off, and, glory to God, I cried. My soul was filled. I cried, enough, for me the Saviour died.”
Whether in a barn (where Methodist bishop Francis Asbury was saved) or in a Sunday school classroom (where evangelist Dwight L. Moody first believed in Christ), all these conversions had one thing in common: by hearing the good news of salvation (Rom. 10:17). These believers were born again by the Word of God (1 Pet. 1:23).
While John 3:16 has long been regarded as the most well-known verse in Scripture, and while every book of the Bible is equally inspired, no book has more transformed the course of human history than Paul’s epistle to the Romans.
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Obbie Tyler Todd is teaching pastor and theologian in residence at Cross Community Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, and adjunct professor of church history at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Let Men Be Free: Baptist Politics in the Early United States (1776–1835) and The Beechers: America’s Most Influential Family. You can find Obbie at his website.
