A BRAND PLUCKED OUT OF THE BURNING: …
NOT LEAVING, AFTER HIS DEBTS ARE PAID,
TEN POUNDS BEHIND HIM: PRAYING, GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME, AN UNPROFITABLE SERVANT![1] – John Wesley.

What brand are you made of? Spiritually speaking, we are all wearing a brand just as a brand on a sheep denotes who owns it. John Wesley’s epitaph awakes the church and the leadership to an examination to know who we are, what brand we are wearing, and how we fit into the bigger picture as Jesus’ brand. Our mission and spiritual brands denote our owner and who has our allegiance. The brand we wear has eternal MISSIONAL benefits and consequences; hence the right brand is really a matter of life and death.  John Wesley provides us with helpful means with our personal and church branding. He knew who he was, ‘a brand plucked out of the burning.’[2] He knew his mission and assignment – the message, spreading scriptural holiness across the land.

Church history reminds us that Wesley grew to understand the fire incident as God preserving him for a purpose and referred to himself as “a brand plucked out of the fire.” Prophet Zechariah echoes Wesley’s experience about the Lord’s demand about Joshua: “Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Indeed, Wesley and Joshua were not “sticks plucked from the fire”. They were not charred pieces of wood that had smouldered into uselessness. They were both identified as a “brand” – an object designed to make a mark in life.’ While the devil wanted to kill and strip Wesley and Joshua of their dignity and purpose, God wanted them stripped of their sins and weaknesses. Joshua was not only rescued or got an ordinary change of garments; he was re-dressed in festal robes, a garment designed only for the High Priest. Joshua and Wesley’s purposes remain unaltered. Just as Wesley remained as a brand plucked out of the fire,’ Joshua was “brand snatched from the fire”, and they both made their marks in life (Zech.3).[3]

Prophet Joshua, John Wesley, and Sir Edet Amana present the difference between “sticks plucked from the fire” and “a brand plucked from the fire.” The life challenges or church institutions did not turn them into charred pieces of ‘wood that had smouldered into uselessness.’ They were identified as “brand” – an object designed to make a mark in life. God is no respecter of anyone. He impartially saves everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. We do not have to do any good work to make a mark in life or to go to heaven. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone and in Christ alone.

John, at the age of 51, nearly died of tuberculosis, and he was inspired to write his epitaph as described above. John’s epitaph warns that the concept of branding has expanded to include institutional deployment with the key components that form a brand’s toolbox including a brand’s identity, personality, church design, brand communication, brand awareness, brand loyalty, and various branding (brand management) strategies. Truly, the church never lacks brand of fresh expressions and professionals, making good showing in the flesh, educated Pharisees,’ who do not practice what they preach but leading people astray from worshipping God in truth and Spirit (Matt 7:21).

Sadly, the church is still in decline. Paul tells us that there are people who “desire to make a good showing in the flesh” so they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:12). Today, we have brand of leaders and Christians who mute Jesus Christ’s presence in the church and in our lives to the point that we could not be picked out of a worldly crowd and has led into a n extreme case of mission and spiritual anaemia. The church has become weak and ineffective because we have lost confidence in who we really are in Jesus Christ.

John’s brand narrative is missionally his brand testimony and story that he told through absolutely everything he said, preached, wrote, and did. John’s brand personality came to life when he associated the brand with spiritual and missional characteristics and not just human or institutional traits. Spiritual and missional characteristics give the brand relatability which helps increase brand awakening.[4] The reflection is why did John never thought of himself as anything but “a brand plucked out of the fire” (Zechariah 3:2). At the age 51, John remembered the missional purpose of his divine rescue at age 5 from the flame of fire that engulfed his family rectory at Epworth. John knew he had been plucked from the fire of Hell by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The text of John’s last sermon was, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). John, as a model of spiritual branding, studied and gave leadership to glorify Christ, not just to make money or be in power. On March 2, 1791, when John Wesley spoke his final words, “Farewell,” thousands of people walked by his open coffin in the City Road Chapel in London. John Whitehead preached from II Samuel 3:38 at his funeral, “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?”

The word brand-mark in the Greek is “stigma” (Gal. 6:17). John, as a brand plucked out of the burning provide the answer to the real question, ‘what brand are you made of … with whom are you trying to identify? John with the brand-marks of Jesus points to a name, calling, spirituality, symbols that distinguishes him and his mission from those of other brand of clergies. John’s epitaph points to his personal brand, a culmination of his spiritual encounters, experiences and values that differentiate him from others. John’s epitaph as a model of our spiritual branding and sense of identity warns us that: We have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places; God chose us before the foundation of the world; We have redemption through Jesus’ blood and the forgiveness of sins; We are sealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit of promise; We have obtained an inheritance; We are raised up with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly places; We are His workmanship (poiema in Greek), in other words, His poetic masterpiece!; We have been brought near to  God through the blood of Christ (Eph. 1-2).


Born in 1703, John lives on as one of the most remarkable missional leaders and Christians of all time. Wesley was the fifteenth of the nineteenth children, and second surviving son of Susanna and Samuel Wesley in an atmosphere of Puritan discipline.John Wesley, an ordinary man came to live an extraordinary life for God, riding more than 250,000 miles on horseback (about 45 round-trip flights from New York to LA), and preaching more than 40,000 sermons (that’s an average of two sermons a day for 55 years!).[5]

Other than the Bible itself, the inspiration behind Wesley 100 International, (WIN), a renewing missional global non-denominational network of people who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing, but God is from one of John Wesley’s quotes. In his letter to a fellow believer, Alexander Mather, he said, “No, Aleck, no! The danger of ruin to Methodism (Christianity) does not lie here. It springs from a different quarter. Our preachers, many of them, are fallen. They are not spiritual. They are not alive to God. They are soft, enervated, fearful of shame, toil, hardship… Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.”[6]

Augustine Birrell, Counsel to the King aptly described Wesley in his writing on the bottom of the cover to the book “The Journal of John Wesley,” an abbreviated version of Wesley’s diary during the years of his ministry. Birrell wrote, “No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts. No other man did such a life’s work for England.”[7] The book cover showed Wesley riding a horse with a Bible in his hand. In the background, behind the horse and its rider, was a green-coloured map of England.[8] Wesley’s testimony models undeniable power of God that must have been present in 18th century England and ‘a testimony to the potential of a Christian whose life is surrendered to Christ and under the control of the Holy Spirit.’

The testimony from John’s youth on February 9, 1709, after 11:00 pm made him to refer to himself ‘as a brand plucked from the burning,’ quoting Zechariah 3:2. On this faithful day, there was a fire in the family’s rectory (parsonage) in Epworth. John was missing after all the children were safely removed from the rectory. John, looking out of an upstairs window amid the leaping flames was spotted by a farmer nearby, and neigh bours ‘climbed on each other’s shoulders, ‘till the man on top was able to put his arms around the boy and pull him out of the flames to safety. Only moments after he was rescued, the entire house exploded in flames.’ Wesley’s mother, Susanna vividly described the event: “While Mr. Wesley was carrying the children into the garden, he heard the child [John] in the nursery cry out miserably for help, which extremely affected him; but his affliction was much increased, when he had several times attempted the stairs then on fire, and found they would not bear his weight. Finding it was impossible to get near him, he gave him up for lost, and kneeling down, he commended his soul to God, and left him, as he thought, perishing in the flames. But the boy seeing none come to his help, and being frightened, the chamber and the bed being on fire, he climbed up to the casement, where he was soon perceived by the men in the yard, who immediately got up and pulled him out, Just in the moment of time that the roof fell in, and beat the chamber to the ground. Thus, by the infinite mercy of Almighty God, our lives were all preserved by little less than a miracle, for there passed but a few minutes between the first alarm of fire, and the falling of the house.”[9] John’s miraculous rescue and escape from fire prompted Susanna to provide John’s with spiritual nurturing.

John’s epitaph, as a brand plucked out of the burning invites us to get it right personally and as a church who we are “in Jesus Christ.” Resultantly, we will not take pride in the flesh but boast in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

[1] John Wesley, The Heart of John Wesley’s Journal, ed. Percy Livingstone Parker (New York; Chicago; Toronto; London; Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1903), 213.

[2] http://dejiokegbile.com/john-wesley-310-years-after-a-brand-plucked-out-of-the-fire/

[3] http://dejiokegbile.com/a-friend-of-god-sir-edet-amana-85-a-brand-plucked-from-soldiers-fire-of-bullets-and-grenades/

[4] https://wordsthatdeliver.com/personal-branding-lessons-bible-8-points-consider/

[5] Jacobson, David, https://lansdowneumc.org/2018/03/06/john-wesley-plucked-fire/;

[6] John Wesley, writing at age 87 to Alexander Mather, quoted in Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley (London, 1871), III:632.

[7] Augustine Birrell, “An Appreciation of John Wesley’s Journal,” in The Heart of John Wesley’s Journal, ed. Percy Livingstone Parker (New York; Chicago; Toronto; London; Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1903), xvii.

[8] Hymers, R. L.  Jr, John Wesley – A Brand plucked from the fire, a sermon preached on February 26, 2006, at Baptist Tabernacle, Los Angeles.

[9] George Bourne, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M. with Memoirs of the Wesley Family. To Which Are Subjoined, Dr. Whitehead’s Funeral Sermon, and a Comprehensive History of American Methodism (Baltimore: George Dobbin and Murphy; John Hagerty and Abner Neal, 1807), 67.