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John Gano RESISTED God For Two Years

[ABOVE: John Gano. New York Public Library's Digital Library / Wikimedia. Public domain.]


John Gano became a Christian in his early twenties. He studied the Westminster Catechism, expecting to join a Presbyterian Church—his godly father was Presbyterian. However he balked at the reasons the catechism gave for infant baptism. After a thorough study he concluded the Baptists are right: they teach that a person must be able to understand baptism and to confess Christ. Gano joined a church of Calvinist Baptists in Hopewell, New Jersey.


He began to wonder if God had a purpose for his life and spent a day in prayer to find out.


While I was on my knees, imploring the direction of God, these words powerfully impressed my mind: “Go forth and preach the Gospel.” I remained on my knees pondering over them for some time, and begged of God not to suffer me to be deluded, and that every spirit might be restrained but his own.
These words followed in my mind with equal force: “It is I , be not afraid—be not faithless, but believing;” which words, and others similar to them, reiterated in my soul. I rose, confounded; my breast heaved with oppression.


That night Gano had scarcely laid his head on the pillow before he felt rebellion rise in him. He resented God for calling him to preach and even wished for death. “It is with shame that I write, that nearly two years elapsed, before my pride, my obstinacy, and my unbelief, were so conquered, that I could fully yield to the clearest conviction.”


He did, however, study his Bible during those months. Indeed, he became sick from too much study and not enough exercise. His church urged him to recuperate by traveling through Virginia with evangelists John Thomas and Benjamin Miller. Because of the great spiritual need of that region, Thomas and Miller separated so as to double their outreach. Gano went with Thomas. Although Gano was not licensed to preach, Thomas insisted he do so. In fact, the people themselves implored him to speak, one old man pleading, “...if you have a regard for our souls, do endeavor to say something to us.” 


Upon his return to Hopewell, his home church declared him disorderly for preaching without their license. Rather than condemn him, though, the congregation asked him to give them a sample of his preaching. He did. The upshot was they licensed him to preach and the following year, on this day, 29 May 1754, their leaders ordained Gano.


That was the beginning of an illustrious ministry. 


Gano pastored in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, and Kentucky. He also evangelized throughout the South. Once he had to speak to a convention and was acutely aware of his threadbare clothes and the fact that famous ministers would be listening, including George Whitefield. He steadied himself with the thought that he had only one person to please—Jesus Christ—and got through the ordeal.


He became a friend of George Washington. In later years family and friends insisted that Washington requested adult baptism from Gano, although scholars find the story unlikely.


Of Gano’s bravery, however, there is no question. He acted as a chaplain during the Revolutionary War (which is how he came to know Washington). At the battle of Chattelton’s Hill, when some Patriots abandoned their guns and fled without firing a shot, Gano sprang to the front and remained there. “I durst not quit my place for fear of dampening the spirits of the soldiers or bringing on myself an imputation of cowardice.”


He was as bold spiritually as physically. Thomas Griffiths, a Baptist historian, says Gano was once crossing from Jersey City to New York in an open boat. A fierce storm imperiled all the passengers. An oarsmen cursed violently because a “priest” was aboard. Gano remained quiet. Landing safely, he turned to the boatman and said: “Thank God, there is a Hell for sinners.” At midnight, the man banged on Gano’s door, begging for prayer. Six weeks later, Gano baptized him near the spot where he had done the cursing.


Gospel of Liberty — The revivals of the Great Awakening shook Britain's North American colonies from spiritual slumber during the 1730s, 1740s, and 1750s. John Gano's ministry took of toward the end of that era. Watch at RedeemTV.

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