Few people have had such an impact on their century and those to follow as has John and Charles Wesley. Rupert Davies wrote, "...hardly any historical personage from outside the New Testament has attracted to himself in modern times so many books, dissertations, essays, chapters and articles, at every level of scholarship and its substitutes, as John Wesley." (A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain.) Historians credit the Wesleys with enabling England to avoid the revolutions which wrecked France and even America as the oppressed rose up to assert themselves. Even the contemporary journalist, George Will, credits John Wesley as saving London from what he called the devastation of cheap gin. He writes: "John Wesley happened. A religious movement seized the [London] culture by the lapels and shook it."

When John Wesley was born in 1703 the "Age of Reason" had just been ushered onto the scene. In 1687 Isaac Newton's Principia had introduced the world to the modern scientific method, and Parliamentary Government had just been established. In 1702 the first daily newspaper was published in Britain, the first step toward mass communication. With such dramatic achievements, yet such primitive "advances," it remains a remarkable wonder that John Wesley could write so much, preach to so many, cover so many miles, and be admired and banished by so many. The brothers went hand in hand in song and word to forge a club, group, society, sect, and ultimately (though reluctantly) a denomination - the people called Methodist.

Despite their single-minded determination and all they accomplished the Wesleys remain something of an enigma. There is so little consensus about them among scholars. Their "dispraisers" applauded John Wesley as "formed of the best stuff." (Bishop Warburton). While those who praise him as "a major theologian" (Alexander Knox) are rarely noted or quoted. Yet John and Charles Wesley founded, formed, gave song and verse and discipline to a denomination of the Protestant church that has grown and served as few others have. John Wesley ably followed Peter Bohler's exhortation to "Preach faith till you have it and then because you have it, you will preach faith." (Journal I)

John and Charles Wesley were evangelists in tension and torment. Everywhere they went they stirred up commotion around them. Time after time John was forbidden to preach in this or that pulpit, and was run out of town by a mob. Yet, clearly triumph had the final word. As Albert Outler has said, John Wesley developed a

"...theological fusion of faith and good works, Scripture and tradition, revelation and reason, God's sovereignty and human freedom, universal redemption and conditional election, Christian liberty and an ordered polity, the assurance of pardon and the risks of 'falling from grace,' original sin and Christian perfection."

The Wesley brothers, John and Charles, were truly evangelists. "The world is my parish," said John as he defended his right to take his story of God's grace to all people wherever they may be. Their work led to the development of one of the world's most successful Protestant movements.

I will begin now, in January of 1999, to make my case for John and Charles Wesley as "Men of the Second Millennium." Surely they as much as anyone shaped the world during their time and beyond. Furthermore, whereas most "People of the Year" awards are related to what a person does, the Wesley Brothers should be honored as "Men of the Millennium" not only for what they did, but for what their ministry prevented.