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Vavasor Powell’s Testimony to Delivering Providences

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 22, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 8.

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Vavasor Powell’s Testimony to Delivering Providences

By W. A. S.

VAVASOR POWELL was truly an apostle of Wales in the seventeenth century. The Lord wondrously blessed his labors among the Welsh people. He became a Baptist, and as a dissenter suffered for his faith in those days when a state church was wielding the lash of persecution. His was a life of most active service. “There were but few (if any) of the churches, chapels, and town halls in Wales,” says the old record, “wherein he did not preach Christ; yea, very often upon mountains, and very frequently in fairs and markets.”
A little volume in the British Museum, “Life and Death of Vavasor Powell,” published anonymously in 1671, preserves some accounts of special deliverances experienced by this servant of God. Of one occasion, Mr. Powell wrote:—
About the year 1647 the Island of Anglesey in North Wales, being then unreduced, the Parliament forces went to reduce it, and their chief officers sent for me to preach unto that brigade of soldiers, and as I marched with them into the place, either the night immediately before or the night before that, it was revealed unto me in my sleep, that I should be wounded, and two of my fingers cut (and the very fingers were pointed out), which accordingly came to pass; yet when I was in extreme danger between several enemies who fell upon me, receiving that and some other wounds, there being no likelihood to escape, I heard a voice as I apprehended speaking audibly to me, “I have chosen thee to preach the gospel,” to which I answered, “O Lord, then bring me off;” and immediately God guided my horse (though he was very wild and not well commanded) to go backward out of the barricado that I had entered at, and so I was indeed miraculously preserved.
Thousands of miles Mr. Powell journeyed over mountains and through valleys, preaching by day and night. He says:—
One time coming from preaching I lost my way, and being out till it was far in the night in a wood or forest, among lakes, briars, and thorns, I went up and down while I was quite weary. But by looking up to the Lord, I was presently directed into my way. The like experience I had another time, when another preacher and myself had lost our way in a very dark night, and had tired ourselves in searching to and fro to no purpose; at last calling to mind how God had formerly heard in that case where I sought unto him, we called upon the Lord, who immediately pointed out our way, and it seemed as clear to us as if it had been daylight.
The following incident was reported by some of Powell’s intimate friends, after his death:—
One time as he was going to preach, his horse fell lame, and he could not well reach the place appointed on foot. He, being in a great strait, besought himself of the way that one David ap Hugh took in like case, and addressed himself to it; viz., he alighted off his horse and went to prayer, and begged strength of God both for himself and horse to perform his journey, which accordingly was made good to him; for mounting his horse he found his lameness was departed.
After testifying to the Lord’s power in converting a man at a certain service, who had attended the meeting under oath to kill the preacher as soon as he could find him alone, Mr. Powell adds:—
Several other times also I have been delivered from perils by water, by thieves, by enemies purposely lying in wait for me, who yet had no power to hurt me. The Lord converted some, and graciously prevented and terrified others from their purpose.
“These few things of many,” the narrator says, are told, not to boast, “but to keep a memorial of the Lord’s benefits, and to stir up others into whose hands these few notes may come, to have confidence in the power and goodness of God who is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe.”
Again, as we listen to this testimony, we thank God that he is still as in Bible times, the living God in heaven, who “delivereth and rescueth” on earth.
Vavasor Powell was imprisoned for the last time in the Fleet Prison, in London, early in 1669, and died in prison, Sept. 27, 1670. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, London, the old non-conformist burial-ground, where Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and many other valiant witnesses for truth in the days of old are sleeping. On his tombstone was carved the epitaph: “A successful teacher of the past, a sincere witness of the present, and a useful example to the future age; who, in face of the defection of many, found mercy to be faithful, for which, being called to many prisons, he was there tried, and would not accept deliverance, expecting a better resurrection.”
W. A. S.