One day in 737 B.C. a young man of high social standing was in the temple
at Jerusalem. There he saw a vision of the Lord upon His throne. The
experience humbled the young man’s soul, cleansed his lips, and sent him
forth to sound a warning to a people swiftly rushing to their doom. The
temple atmosphere furnished Isaiah with the conditions of communion.
About 625 B.C., when the storm clouds were still hovering near Judah, a
young priest named Jeremiah saw in the presence of the Scythian army on
Syrian soil the possibility of invasion by them and their Assyrian allies.
He warned his people of coming destruction, at the bidding of Jehovah, who
told him that he had been set apart for the task since before his birth.
The peril he saw drawing near his people furnished Jeremiah with the
conditions of communion.
One day a young man named Jesus, His as custom was, entered the little
synagogue at Nazareth. He was one who took part in the meeting. Taking the
roll of the prophet Isaiah, He read from it the words of a commission to
proclaim the day of God under the compulsion of the divine spirit. As He
read, His heart told Him that commission was His own. Jesus heard His
great challenge to duty as He stood in the place of worship reading the
words of those who in earlier centuries had intimately known God.
One day, still later, John saw the curtains of eternity drawn aside to
reveal to him the things that must shortly come to pass. Three things made
his vision possible. He was in a quiet and secluded place. It was the
Lord’s Day. He was in the spirit. Such a situation is very apt to carry
anyone within seeing and hearing distance of God. John met God face to
face by the fulfilment of certain fundamental psychological conditions of
vision and communion.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of May 1738, a young man who had
believed in God all his life, but had sought vainly for a heart experience
of faith, went into a meeting in Nettleton Court, on the East side of
Aldersgate Street, in London. At a quarter before nine o’clock he knelt at
an altar and felt his heart strangely warmed. The altar of a church
furnished John Wesley with the conditions of communion.