The Intercessor John Welsh – Part 2
In 1595, Welsh was offered and accepted a pastorate in the town of Kirkcudbright. Welsh and his wife could not find anyone in Selkirk, except one poor young man by the name of Ewart, that would lend them any assistance in moving their furniture to their new destination. Needless to say, I am sure Welsh felt relief as he knocked the dust of that city from his shoes and headed toward his new home. For all practical purposes it was not much different from Selkirk. Kirkcudbright was a hotbed of Catholicism, and its previous Reformed Scottish Church minister, Andrew Blyth, was murdered as a heretic in the town square for preaching reformation. It was his shoes that Welsh was sent to fill. Buoyed by his amazing prayer life, Welsh entered that town and pulpit wearing the full armor of God and wielding the Sword of the Spirit.
From the first day he arrived, the town was shaken by his powerful preaching. Worldliness and a religious spirit were the first strongholds he began to tear down. He next attacked the worship of idols and observation of man-made doctrines: “These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with the lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines of God the commandments of men.” Matthew 15:8-9
Next he preached against the lack of true repentance for sins, saying: “There is a godly sorrow which leads a man to life; and this sorrow is wrought in a man by the Spirit of God, and in the heart of the godly; that he mourns for sin because it has displeased God, Who is so dear and so sweet a Father to him. And even if he had neither a heaven to gain, nor a hell to lose, yet he is still sad and sorrowful in heart because he has grieved God.
Converts began to trickle in and soon the harvest was plentiful. The reformed Presbyterian message of Welsh and a few others soon overflowed into a great revival throughout Southern Scotland. It wasn’t only the people, but also the ministers, who were experiencing this wonderful “refreshing from the Lord.” By 1596 a General Assembly in Edinburgh was called, and over 400 men were present for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The business of the Assembly was prayer and the confession of ministerial sin. Many were humbled to tears of conviction and repentance for the sins of their office. The hours and hours of prayer that John Welsh spent over the years now seemed to be bearing fruit. David Calderwood described the scene on a Tuesday morning: “While they were humbling themselves, for the space of quarter of an hour, there were sighs and sobs, with shedding of tears…everyone provoking another by his example…. so that the place might worthily have been called Bochim; for the like of that day was never seen in Scotland since the Reformation, as every man confessed.
