John Harper's Last Convert

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died Sunday, May 31, 2009.

She was just over two months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the icy North Atlantic, according to AP reporters Meera Selva and Jill Lawless. Dean, 97, died in her sleep “where she had lived – in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship’s ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for America.”

The Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, and sank within three hours. Dean was one of 706 people – mostly women and children – who survived. Her 2-year-old brother and her mother also survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.

John Harper also died that night, and Mark Dever tells this awesome story about him in a chapter of “The Gospel and Personal Evangelism” (Reference: Moody Adams, “The Titanic’s Last Hero: Story About John Harper,” Columbia, S.C.: Olive Press, 1997, 24-25):

John Harper was born into a Christian home in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1872. At about 14 years of age, he became a Christian and began to tell others about Christ. At 17, he began to preach, going down streets of his village and pouring out his soul in pleading for men to be reconciled to God.

After five or six years of preaching on street corners and working in a mill during the day, Harper was taken in by the Rev. E. A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission in London. This set Harper free to devote his whole time and energy to evangelism.

In September 1896, Harper started his own church with 25 members. It numbered over 500 when he left 13 years later. During this time, he was both married and widowed. Before he lost his wife, he was blessed with a beautiful daughter named Nana.

Harper almost drowned several times. When he was two-and-a-half years old, he fell into a well but was resuscitated by his mother. At the age of 26, he was swept out to sea by a reverse current and barely survived. And at 32, he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean.

While pastoring his church in London, Harper continued his fervent evangelism. The Moody Church in Chicago asked him to come to America for meetings. Those meetings went well, and a few years later, Moody Church asked him to return. Harper boarded a ship – the “Titanic” – with a second-class ticket at Southampton, England, for the voyage to America.

Harper’s wife had died just a few years before, and he had with him his only child, Nana, age six. What happened after this is known mainly from two sources. One source is Nana, who died in 1986 at the age of 80. She remembered being woken up by her father a few nights into their journey. It was about midnight, and he said their ship had struck an iceberg. Harper told Nana that another ship was almost there to rescue them, but, as a precaution, he was going to put her in a lifeboat with an older cousin, who had accompanied them. As for Harper, he would wait for the other ship. Nana and her cousin were saved.

An unidentified Scotsman is reportedly the only other source of information concerning Harper’s last earthly actions. Here is that account:

In a prayer meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, some months or years after the Titanic sank, a young Scotsman stood up and in tears told this unusual story of how he was converted.

He said he was on the Titanic the night it struck the iceberg. He had clung to a piece of floating debris in the freezing waters.

“Suddenly,” he said, “a wave brought a man near – John Harper. He, too, was holding a piece of wreckage.

“He called out, ‘Man, are you saved?’

“‘No, I am not,’ I replied.

“He shouted back, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’

“The waves bore (Harper) away, but a little later, he was washed back beside me again.

“‘Are you saved now?’ he called out.

“‘No,’ I answered.

“‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,’ Harper said.

“Then losing his hold on the wood, (Harper) sank. And there, alone in the night with two miles of water under me, I trusted Christ as my saviour. I am John Harper’s last convert.”