John Harper (1872–1912) was a Scottish Baptist pastor and evangelist who died when the RMS Titanic sank.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of his birth in the village of Houston in northern Scotland. He became a Christian at age 14 and started preaching at 18. As a young adult he was a manual laborer.
In 1897 Harper founded Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow. The church quickly grew from 25 members to 500, and a new building was constructed to accommodate 900.
In 1910, Harper became pastor of Walworth Road Baptist Church in London. The next year the Moody Church in Chicago invited the evangelist to speak three weeks. He spent three months with the church.
Aboard the Titanic
In 1912 Harper was 39 and a widower with a 6-year-old daughter, Annie Jessie (Nana). He made arrangements for Nana and her aunt Jessie Leitch to accompany him to America aboard the RMS Lusitania. He waited another week so they could sail on a ship named Titanic on April 10, 1912. While onboard Harper witnessed to many passengers.
On April 14 at 11:40 p.m. the Titanic hit an iceberg, and water began to fill the ship.
The captain ordered all women and children into lifeboats and several men to be rowers. Making sure his daughter and sister were on a lifeboat, Harper stayed aboard the sinking ship shouting, “Women, children and the unsaved, get into lifeboats.”
Running along the decks, he pleaded with people to accept Christ. He preached until the ship tilted.
Harper jumped into the frigid water swimming to everyone he saw and begging them to turn to Jesus. He witnessed to a young man three times asking him to accept Christ.
As hypothermia set in, Harper disappeared under the water. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m. More than 1,500 drowned. Only six survivors were rescued by assisting ships.
Four years later a young Scotsman named Aguilla Webb gave his testimony in Hamilton, Canada. He said, “Shortly after he went down; and there, alone in the night … I believed. I am John Harper’s last convert.”
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