On February 4th in 1555, John Rogers was burnt to death here for believing you could be saved
by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
John Rogers had been a Roman Catholic priest, but his friend William Tyndale had explained
the gospel to him.
He became pastor of a church around the corner from here, he got married, he had a family,
but then in 1555, Queen Mary came to the throne.
And she hated the gospel.
She had at least 198 people burnt to death, and the first would be John Rogers.
The pressure on Rogers that day was intense.
This man really going to die for a message of what someone else has done.
This gospel doesn't flatter you.
This gospel tells you the only thing you bring is your sin.
You really going to die for that?
All you bring to it is faith.
All you do is accept him.
You're going to die for that?
We know what happened though, because the French ambassador Antoine Nwai was a witness,
and he wrote a letter explaining what he'd seen.
What he said was that John Rogers, when he walked to Smithfield, he walked as if he
was going to a wedding.
But it was here that scores of men and women died simply because they believed you could
be saved by faith in what Jesus Christ has done.
And perhaps because they did, we can.