Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
The Bible is filled with biography – one character after another parade across the pages. God loves to teach lasting lessons through the lives of individuals. With that in mind, Stephen Davey has undertaken a special biographical series illustrating biblical truths through the lives of contemporary believers. These ordinary men and women provide a wonderful legacy. They are influenced and influential because of their faith in God. They are Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith.
Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
William Cowper: A Story of Faith, Redemption, and the Transformative Power of God's Love
Are you prepared to be inspired by tales of faith and redemption? Prepare to be moved as we weave the story of William Cooper, a believer who stared unflinchingly into the abyss of depression and found an unexpected lifeline in his faith. His personal struggles reveal a profound truth: personal frailties are not a sign of God's displeasure or rejection, but an invitation to lean on His mercy and grace. Cooper's journey, fraught with hardship and moments of despair, is a testament to the transformative power of unwavering faith and God's enduring grace.
Finally, we wrap up our narrative with an in-depth exploration of Romans 3, a passage that illustrates the principle of redemption. It's a compelling reminder that we are all fallible, that we all need saving, and that the gospel offers us just that - salvation. It's the perfect conclusion to our fascinating journey through the lives of these modern Christian heroes. So join us, and find fresh inspiration and hope in the power of the gospel.
INTRO Welcome to Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. With Stephen Davy, I'm your host, scott Wiley. In this series, stephen explores the lives and legacies of ordinary people whose faith had a profound impact. Stephen is the president of Wisdom International. You can learn more at wisdominternational. In today's episode, you'll meet William Cooper. Discouragement is one of Satan's most powerful tools against believers and unbelievers alike. This was true of 18th century poet and him writer, william Cooper, whose life was riddled with bouts of severe depression and asylum stays, but the Lord used one such residency to reveal to Cooper the truth of the gospel. His life of struggle demonstrates several valuable truths for us today.
Speaker 2:And so I want you to take your Bibles for our study today and go to Romans, chapter three. This verse is gonna impact the life of the individual I'm gonna bring to you. What we'll do today is cover of the life of William Cooper. It's spelled C-O-W-P-E-R. You might pronounce it Calper. I believe correctly it's Cooper. Next we'll look at Catherine Luther, a former nun and wife of Martin Luther the reformer, an interesting woman I believe will be encouraging to you. And then we're gonna study the life of an African-American pastor by the name of Shadrach Meshach Lockerich. You thought I'd say a bendigo, no Lockerich. And because of that, that's probably why he decided to go through life with just his initials S-M Lockerich, who died a couple of decades ago. And then we'll wrap it up with a look at a converted surgeon by the name of Vigo Olson.
Speaker 2:In Romans three, paul is describing justification and our redemption and in fact, if you back up to verse 23, you'll recognize more than likely that text, which is fairly well known, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He's making a declaration that we're all in trouble. None of us are getting into heaven. We all, because we're sinners, fall short of the glory of God, that is in the end of the story. Being justified, that is made, just, as it were, as a gift. You don't work for it, you don't join the church to get it. Being justified as a gift by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly they're on the cross as a propitiation in his blood. Now, whenever you refer to redemption or the gospel or salvation, you might use terms like atonement or sacrifice or offering or substitution or redemption. More than likely, the first word that pops into your mind is not propitiation, probably because we can't pronounce it without practicing, but it is a deep word that's difficult to translate. Some texts out there will translate it sacrifice, but that's too limited. If you pulled out a copy of a systematic theology that I hope you have in your library at home, perhaps the one by Wayne Grudem and you look up the word propitiation, it simply means a sacrifice that endures the wrath of God to the very end, thereby turning the wrath of God into the favor of God. So you can see the volume bound up in that one word. To simply call it a sacrifice isn't sufficient. It's a sacrifice that endures the wrath of God. It exhausts, as it were, the wrath of God, what Spurgeon said of Christ when he took the cup of damnation and drank it dry. It's the idea.
Speaker 2:Now, the reason propitiation isn't all that popular isn't just because it's a big word and hard to pronounce, but because of what it represents. The world doesn't want to hear about the wrath of God, that we might be in trouble, that God judges sin and judgment is eternal. There's a growing popular myth around today it didn't know, but it's sort of finding a resurgence that the God of the Old Testament was this angry, vindictive, wrathful God. But I mean, just make it through that and get into the New Testament. He's a God of love and mercy and grace. Well, anybody that says that hasn't read the Old and New Testament very carefully, because you find those attributes in both testaments. In fact, all you have to do is read the New Testament to find that that's a flawed myth.
Speaker 2:Paul introduces us in this letter to the Roman church in chapter one is a God who is revealing his wrath from heaven, chapter one in verse 18. The writer of Hebrews describes God. He says our God is a consuming. What Fire? Not a warm, comfortable fireplace or a nice little soft candle, but a blow torch, set at the hottest, setting A consuming fire. He writes to the Thessalonians, paul does in 2 Thessalonians, chapter one when God, the Son, returns, he'll be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire dealing out retribution to those who do not know God. The apostle Peter describes the coming judgment on planet earth in this future horrific event where he says the present heavens and earth are being, by his word, reserved. They're being kept, reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. Second Peter, 3.7. Jude describes eternal judgment and he describes, in fact, someone being saved as someone being snatched from the fire, jude 23.
Speaker 2:Mankind doesn't like the idea, obviously, that God being filled with righteous anger and wrath against sinners and, unlike the bad news of the gospel, that we're all in trouble. None of us are going to heaven. We've all fallen short because we're all sinful and, by the way, the thing we consistently do every day we're gonna do it today and tomorrow is sin, sin, our sinful, depraved minds and hearts are interrupted periodically by something good. It isn't the other way around. We're in trouble. This demands our deliverance and this is the glory and relief and joy from the good news that God sent his son to be a propitiation, that is, he sent his son to experience to the fullest the wrath of holy God and he drank the cup of our damnation dry. So we, being in him, are safe. I've used this illustration before, but I frankly can't come up with a better one.
Speaker 2:I remember reading as a kid about prairie fires and one midwestern fire that was sweeping across the prairie, devastating crops and houses, homes in its path, anything that stood in its path. One particular farmer saw the smoke far off, knew the direction of the wind would bring that fire to destroy his own home. Their own lives were in danger. They had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Speaker 2:Then he did something unusual. He started his own field on fire and it burned ahead of that coming prairie fire. And then he gathered his family and put them on the wagon and drove into the middle of that smoldering fire. He had set afire and waited. That prairie fire rushed toward them, that great wall of fire, and it reached that burned out field and, having nothing to satisfy it, it licked its way around the edges and then onward and away from them. They were safe, why? Because they were standing on ground that had already been burned the ground they were standing on was their propitiation, that is, it had already satisfied the fire, it had already met the demands of that fire and endured it already. The person who stands in Christ will never face the fiery judgment of God because you are standing in the one that has already faced the fire, his alreadys that were been burned by the wrath of God, and you and him now are safe. There's nothing that can burn again against the one that's met all the demands. You're safe in Christ forever.
Speaker 2:Never was this truth more desperately needed and wonderfully applied than in the life of one of England's most famous poets, his name William Cooper. He was born in England in 1731, died just before his 70s. His father was a pastor, more than likely unconverted, as many pastors during the time of the Great Awakening were unconverted. Like Whitfield and Wesley complained that they had trouble finding a pastor who was saved, just as we in our own country find the same trouble today, with many men in pulpits throughout this land today who are actually unconverted To them. It's a profession and a nice thing to do, cooper would say. He could remember, in fact, as a little boy, watching people who'd gotten up at four o'clock take their lanterns and move to some field where they would hear Whitfield preach. His father wasn't interested in hearing Whitfield and he never heard of himself, but he can still remember those early days as the Great Awakening was taking hold.
Speaker 2:His mother was a sweet and devoted mother, suffering the death of five of her children. One would be one of two that would live, but at the age of six years old she died. Her death marked William. He never forgot that sorrow and unfortunately his father gave him no sympathy. In fact, two households, servant girls, used to manipulate him, promising him that if he were a perfect boy she would come back. You can imagine what this did to this little boy, who tried his best to be perfect and she never returned. He never got over losing her. He was sent off to a boarding school, which is everything you would imagine. It was a terrible experience for this sensitive, artistic boy. He was bullied mercilessly, beaten, often by other students, mostly left to himself. He endured seven years of it, finally graduated from that particular system and then entered a system where he would spend a dozen or so years preparing for a life of politics and law, because that's what his father wanted him to do At the age of 23,.
Speaker 2:Having failed at an interview to enter law, he experienced his first paralyzing depression. It would be the first of four battles in his life. He would experience hallucinations, he would hear voices, have nightmares. His breakdowns would be so severe he would do nothing more than stare out a window for months at a time In his day. There was little treatment. If he were living in our generation, he probably would have been diagnosed as schizophrenic or bipolar and would have had medical treatment or help for his depression. That was embryonic in its understanding in his generation, so there was little help. He was introduced to the poetry of a believer who'd written poems 150 years earlier, a man I'd never heard of and that seemed to bring him out of this state. He eventually was released.
Speaker 2:He had 10 years of relative health, wandering, couldn't keep a job, struggling. 11 years after that internment he suffered another complete breakdown and this time God providentially had him placed in the St Albans Institute or Asylum for the Insane. And I say providentially because its director, dr Nathaniel Cotton, was a 58-year-old, passionate follower of Jesus Christ who determined to not only try to help his patients with their medical conditions but deliver to them the gospel. He would often place Bibles throughout the hospital, open to certain passages and pray that God would bring just the right patient at just the right time to read that passage of Scripture. He engaged, william Cooper, in long conversations about the Lord, and the gospel was virtually unknown to Cooper, even though being raised in a pastor's home, and he was interested in the gospel.
Speaker 2:One morning, by the grace of God, william Cooper sat on a window bench waiting for breakfast to be served and next to him on the window ledge, fluttering in the breeze, was an open Bible. He reached down and he picked it up and he began reading immediately at Romans, chapter 3, and verse 24 and 25, being justified as a gift by his grace, made right not by our perfection, but as a gift of God's grace. He read on through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood, a satisfaction that he endured the wrath of God. He paid the price. Cooper would later write I saw immediately the sufficiency of Christ's atonement, my pardon sealed in his blood. I believed the gospel. I think I died with gratitude and joy, my eyes filled with tears and I could only look up to heaven in overwhelmed love and wonder.
Speaker 2:Several months later, william Cooper was released from the madhouse. They called it St Albans. But his battles were not over and one of the reasons that I have read his biography and I wanted to deliver it to you is it is important to understand the fact that when you come to Jesus Christ, you're still fallen and flawed and frail and needy. I'm afraid we provide a bill of sale to an unbelieving culture that if you come to Jesus everything's fixed. He's better than any pill, any treatment or therapy. Come to him and life immediately gets better. And then, as a church or as believers, we're left to struggle personally with why isn't that happening to me? Why hasn't this all disappeared? Why don't I always see the sun shining? Why do I struggle? As Spurgeon admitted one day before his own congregation that he needed to stop gazing into the black hole of his own soul. I don't have the time to really go into details of what would happen next in Cooper's life as a believer.
Speaker 2:I will tell you at least a little bit that he fell in love with a cousin back in the days when I guess you could marry your cousins, and they were engaged to be married and then her father stepped in and refused the marriage broke them apart and they never saw each other again, though still in love with one another. She never married, followed privately his poetic career as he became a household name in England. At one point in his life, destitute, she sent through a friend anonymous financial support on which he lived, and he never knew it was her. Well, he knows now, but he didn't know that Following their breakup he had another breakdown and sat in front of a window for 16 months without ever smiling. He did write to a friend that in his mind he always seemed to have three threads of despair to one thread of hope. He had that one string or thread of hope, but he was always tangled up into three threads that would never leave him. He became convinced all over again that God did not love him. In fact, he would write that he would be the only person in the human race that had believed the gospel, trusted in Christ, only to have God reject him after he died. He was convinced of that. It was a battle that he would wage his entire life.
Speaker 2:But in the midst of it all, william Cooper would write poems about faith and grace and redemption that the church is still singing nearly 300 years later. Well, let me kind of back up and start over again and try to summarize his life and I'm going to structure it around five principles that we can observe and believe and follow. The first is this personal frailties may be unrelenting, but they do not signify the displeasure of God. It's kind of long and you'll need to know that for the quiz, so let me say it again Personal frailties may be unrelenting, but they do not signify the displeasure and, I might add, and the rejection of God. Frankly, it's tragic for any church, any author, any believer to look down on other believers who struggle with mental illnesses as if they are less loved by God or maybe less faithful or maybe less diligent in their faith. Frankly, I believe that as you read and as you learn, as you look at the footprints of others who've left their footprints on the sands of time, you discover that some rather heroic believers struggled with mental illnesses.
Speaker 2:Beloved the brain is as fallen as your arthritic shoulders and knees. And what do you do about it? You go and you get therapy and you get medicine and you get help, and then you talk to everybody about your aches and pains. In fact, you gather in groups of people who had this surgery or have that aching pain or whatever. We don't talk about this other stuff. If we were all honest today, we would all admit to periods of discouragement and even despair. Certainly defeat.
Speaker 2:The person who thinks that those mature in faith will never struggle ought to go visit Job, sitting on the ash heap, who said, in his despair, with 29 physical ailments, having experienced the deaths of his children, the loss of his finances, and he would say to those men who attempted to be his counselors I wish I had been stillborn, I wish my mother had miscarried me. God has abandoned me. We'd probably try to slip him a verse and add him to our prayer list. He obviously doesn't have any faith. Study the lives of Moses and Elijah, and Jeremiah and Jonah. In fact, have you ever thought about the fact that the two men who come back and they're standing with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, remember when Jesus reveals the glory, kind of pulls back the curtain and they're robed in splendor and Jesus is talking to Moses and Elijah and Peter wakes up and sees what's going on and tries to build a shrine. Remember that story, that narrative? Has there ever occurred to you that those two men that are standing and they're talking to Jesus had this in common Both of them had asked God to kill them. They had said we wanna die. Well, cooper was there.
Speaker 2:Often, in fact, he went further In his own struggle and despair. He attempted to take his life several times. On one time occasion he tried to drink poison but couldn't get his fingers to open the bottle, no matter how hard he tried. On another occasion he tried to hang himself, but just after passing into unconsciousness the rope broke and he revived. I mean, you talk about despair and depression, instability, but God had not forsaken him. In fact, over the years, god would speak through him. And today, without even knowing it, we'll quote a line from a poem, we'll sing a hymn that he wrote while despairing.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a second principle. Personal friends may not eliminate your battles, but they can share them. I don't mind you meeting in a cluster of people who had that surgery, or we talk about this ache and pain and we gather together. That's fine. In fact, I think that's wonderful. Sharing the battles Without medical knowledge or treatment. God would bring him to points of sanity and reason, largely through the influence and encouragement of friends. In fact, on one occasion, when he was released from I think it was his second internment at St Alvin's he rented space in the home of an older woman who became to him for the rest of his life, sort of a mother figure to him, giving him what he belonged for and never had, having lost his mother and by the providence of God, she happened to live next door to the village pastor, who was also a poet, a man who at one point in his life had been a slave trader and never quite got over the shame of it. We sing his song all the time Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a rest like me. They became fast friends.
Speaker 2:In reading several biographies, in fact, of Cooper, I learned more about John Newton than I expected to learn. I did find out that according to John Newton, right or wrong, he believed that the solution to any problem was work, and so he immediately put Cooper to work. He made him visit all the people in the parish and help and, with his hands and carpentry skills and whatever it was, get involved in the lives of people, and no doubt this had a tremendous encouraging impact as he served others. In fact, centuries later, a famous, unbelieving psychiatrist by the name of Menenger you've probably heard of, would teach basically the same thing. He once said that if you felt depression creeping in, you should immediately lock up your house, drive across the railroad tracks to a poor area of town, find someone in need and give your resources and energy in helping them. In other words, take your eyes off the black hole of your soul. Well, this was Newton's practical philosophy.
Speaker 2:He also encouraged Cooper to keep at his poems, and Cooper did. In fact he would write some 68 poems and then add them to Newton's 200 poems, and then they published that collection in a hymnal. They call it the only from the village of only O-L-N-E-Y only hymn collection in 1779. In fact now historians say that was the most influential hymnal. That sort of kept, that great awakening singing the most influential hymnal for nearly a century.
Speaker 2:Let me quickly add another principle, number three painful struggles might not eliminate ministry opportunities. They may enlarge them. His suffering provides a kind of depth and a kind of insight that would find unusually deep and insightful statements in his hymns. He wrote a poem entitled the Task and all it did was describe ordinary life. But he integrated into that poem the gospel, and that poem would be purchased by England. It made him famous. It made him rich, as he introduced people to the gospel.
Speaker 2:Following the publication, though, of that poem, he had another dark episode. He lost sight of God's ability to forgive him and once again was tormented that God had cast him away. In fact, he would write this God, who made me regrets that he did. He decided to drown himself, but when he arrived at the bridge from which he was going to jump, a man was sitting in the place he wanted to jump from, and that distracted him and took the coach back home and then, realizing God had spared his life, again sat down and wrote a poem that, to this day, is probably one of the best descriptions of the providence and sovereignty of God. He probably heard some of it. Some of it goes like this God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never ending skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind the frowning providence, he hides the smiling face. Let me give you another principle worth practicing. Number four personal interaction with nature can't replace God's word, but it can enlighten and encourage you.
Speaker 2:During one period of recovery, some children in the only village brought him three little rabbits who needed tending and he took care of them and they thrived and then multiplied and soon he had a lot of rabbits. He became sort of the repository in this little village for unwanted animals or animals that needed care and he took them in and then he planted a garden to help feed them. It wasn't long before he was growing melons and cabbages and cauliflower and broccoli and all those things that are really great for animals to eat in my opinion. But eventually he had this large collection of guinea pigs, rabbits, a squirrel, pigeons, two canaries, two goldfinches, two dogs, several cats, hens, ducks and some geese, and he wasn't just feeding them or tending to them, he was observing them. He began to draw analogies between them and truths from God's word, characteristics of God's care and creative design. He began writing about them in his journal. He sort of dove in with great passion in his little greenhouse he made and where he would grow all of these vegetables, along with myrtles and pineapples and flowers.
Speaker 2:There's a little doubt that, although William Cooper suffered without friends and service to others and a growing fascination with the creation of God, he would have suffered so much more. He was living at a time when there was no medicinal help. On one occasion he even wrote to a friend and said this. He said caring for animals and plants and working as a gardener helps me fight off melancholy and hypochondria. Interesting, he began to refer to himself as God's under-gardener in paradise.
Speaker 2:The principle is simple and yet it's profound. Take your eyes off yourself, go out and serve someone else. Take care of an animal, ty, would you observe in nature the scripture, the Lord's creative handiwork, the Lord's character, his grace, his design? Maybe write out the analogies like he did, drawing them out, thinking them through as they related to scripture, very practical terms. Maybe today, the best thing you could ever do is go take a walk. He would walk two hours a day. Put up a bird feeder, do it, watch them, feed them, plant some flowers. Get a dog, or a or two dogs. Maybe I almost slipped there but caught myself. Go out in the yard, plant some things. Maybe you're saying I don't have a yard. You can come to my yard and plant flowers any time you like. Okay, let me give you one more principle.
Speaker 2:Powerful faith does not guarantee freedom from suffering, but it does provide a guided tour through it, weak as it is. As an older man, cooper once remarked to a friend that God had marked him out for misery. And his friend said no, god has marked you out for mercy, an object of mercy. To this day we sing of God's gospel of grace and mercy because of what Cooper struggled with and through what he doubted in his despair. But he still clung to that one strand, even though tangled up with the others, his greatest hymn. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from a manual vein. Sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stain. The reason we're singing that today is because it's filled with despair. It speaks the truth and then turns the corner and shows the satisfaction of Christ on our behalf, so that we can believe by faith what God gave us, what converted William Cooper, that we are justified as a gift by his grace. We will never be perfect, we will never measure up. It's a gift of his grace to sinners because of the satisfaction of Christ. So Cooper would summarize it in that hymn when he would write a stanza like this one Dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. And there may I, though vile, as he wash all my sins away. There you have that transparent blend of despair and deliverance, the wrath of God and the favor of God.
Speaker 2:At the age of 69, william Cooper died in his sleep. One of his friends, who saw him just after he died, remarked that William had an expression on his face that could only be described with the word surprised. I love that. Surprised what could it mean in that brief transition between earth and heaven? Perhaps surprised that he was being escorted into a place he felt he would be rejected from? That God was actually satisfied with Christ and Cooper was in Christ. Surprised, maybe, that he is singing what he prophesied in his hymn that he doubted deeply he would ever do.
Speaker 2:In that one stanza or stanza we've been singing now for nearly 300 years. Here's what he dared to write as he struggled In this poor, lisping, stammering tongue. Lies silent in the grave. Then, in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save. I'll sing thy power to save. I'll sing thy power to save. Then, in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing and, by the way, cooper's still singing, and we, because our satisfaction is in Christ who satisfied the wrath of God, we will sing with him the same prophetic truth, now fulfilled in all of our lives, no matter our frailties, our disabilities, our failures, our doubts, we cling to Christ and we shall one day sing his power to save.
Speaker 1:That was Stephen Davy, the president of Wisdom International. You're listening to his series Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. If you enjoyed hearing the story of William Cooper, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening. Stephen has a website filled with resources to help you know what the Bible says, understand what it means and apply it to your life. Learn more at wisdominternational. I'm Scott Wiley. Thanks for listening to Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith.
