Iain Murray

— Samuel Davies (1724–1761), as quoted by Murray in Revival & Revivalism

One of the books I am presently reading is Revival & Revivalism by Iain Murray. The following quote refers to a revival that took place in Virginia in 1787–1790.

The most important consequence of the Great Revival for the Presbyterians was the new ethos which came to prevail in the churches. Old Side prejudices lost their hold and a ‘unanimity of sentiment’ came to distinguish the denomination in the South. The main cause for this was undoubtedly the priority now given to experimental religion. Prayer was restored to its rightful place and ‘fervent charity’ came to be expected among all Christians. The same influence inevitably brought a return to biblical standards of church membership. It was no longer assumed that those who attended church from birth were Christians, nor was ‘profession of faith’ henceforth taken as sufficient evidence of conversion. Ministers and elders considered how people lived, and what they did, as well as what they said. It was understood afresh that the true usefulness of the church is bound up with her spirituality and her unity. The premature admission of men and women and young people to the Lord’s Table (communicant membership), which had formerly been too common, now gave way to a more faithful examination of candidates. The wisdom of the counsel of John Blair Smith was universally recognized: ‘He advised those who were awakened not to be too hasty in professing conversion, and urged them to examine the foundations of their hopes well before they entertained a hope they had made their peace will God . . . Generally months, and in some instances a year or more was suffered to pass before they were received into the church."

William Hill believed that the revival ‘gave a character to the Presbyterian Church of the South for vital, exemplary piety which has pervaded several States and given a tone to religious exercises far and wide’. How this affected the churches in practical way is well illustrated by a statement of principle drawn up by one of the many new churches of the 1790s:

1. A church is a society of Christians, voluntarily associated together, for the worship of God, and spiritual improvement & usefulness.
2. A visible church consists of visible or apparent Christians.
3. The children of visible Christians are members of the visible church, though in a state of minority.
4. A visible Christian is one, who understands the doctrines of the Christian religion, is acquainted with a work of God’s Spirit in effectual calling, professes repentance from dead works, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and subjection to him as a king and whose life and conversation corresponds with his profession
5. Sealing ordinances ought not to be administered to such as are not visible Christians.
6. A charitable allowance ought to be made for such, whose natural abilities are weak, or who have not enjoyed good opportunities of religious instruction, when they appear to be humble and sincere.
7. Children and youth, descended from church members, though not admitted to all the privileges of the church, are entitled to the instructions of the church, and subjected to its discipline.

What would our churches look like today if this represented the general practice of congregations?

From Revival & Revivalism by Iain Murray:

From the general introduction to the period of the Second Great Awakening we turn to some particular observations.
   In the first place, if it be asked, What special means were used to promote these revivals? The answer is that there were none. The significance of this fact will be more apparent in later pages. This is not to say that the spiritual leaders of this new era held the view that the gospel could be advanced without means being employed. They were united in regarding such an attitude as a serious abuse of the doctrine of divine sovereignty. As Ebenezer Porter affirmed:

The God of this universe is not dependent on instruments . . . He could fill the world with Bibles by a word, — or give every inhabitant of the globe a knowledge of the gospel by inspiration. But he chooses that human agency should be employed in printing and reading and explaining the Scriptures. God is able to sanctify the four hundred millions of Asia, in one instant, without the agency of missionaries; but we do not expect him to do this without means, any more than we expect him to rain down food from the clouds, or turn stones into bread.

These men were united in the belief that God has appointed the means of prayer and preaching for the spread of the gospel and that these are the great means in the use of which he requires the churches to be faithful. There are no greater means which may be employed at special times to secure supposedly greater results. It is therefore the Spirit of God who makes the same means more effective at some seasons than at others.    This has perhaps not always been as evident as it was in 1800. Sometimes revivals have coincided with the emergence of hitherto unknown preachers whose abilities have been credited with securing change. But in the case of the Second Great Awakening, nearly all the preachers prominent at the outset had already been labouring for many years. . . .
   The facts are indisputable. A considerable body of men, for a long period before the Second Great Awakening, preached the same message as they did during the revival but with vastly different consequences — the same men, the same actions, performed with the same abilities, yet the results were so amazingly different! The conclusion has to be drawn that the change in the churches after 1798 and 1800 cannot be explained in terms of the means used. Nothing was clearer to those who saw the events than that God was sovereignty pleased to bless human instrumentality in such a way that the success could be attributed to him alone. . . . Jeremiah Hallock, a leader in Connecticut, wrote: ‘As means did not begin this work of themselves, so neither did they carry it on. But as this was the work of the Omnipotent Spirit, so the effects produced proclaimed its sovereign, divine author.’ Asahel Hooker, another eminent Connecticut pastor, drew the same conclusion after seeing the same change among his own people: ‘It is the evident design of Providence to confound all attempts which should be made by philosophy and human reason to account for the effects wrought without ascribing them to God, as the marvelous work of the Spirit and grace.’

The following quote from Revival & Revivalism by Iain Murray continues in the same vein as the one posted earlier this week.

. . . A Baptist author, . . . describing the revival at Hartford in 1798–1800 , wrote: ‘The Lord seems to have stepped out of the usual path of ordinances, to effect his work more immediately in the displays of his Almighty power, and outpouring of his Spirit; probably to show that the work is his own.’
   Thus what characterizes a revival is not the employment of unusual or special means but rather the extraordinary means of blessing attending the normal means of grace. There were no unusual evangelistic meetings. No special arrangements, no announcements of pending revivals. Pastors were simply continuing in the services they had conducted for many years when the great change began. That is why so many of them could say, ‘The first appearance of the work was sudden and unexpected.’ Their theology taught them that there is no inherent power in the truth to convert sinners and they rejoiced in the knowledge that the size of the blessing which God is pleased to give through the use of means is entirely in his own hands. As William Rogers of Philadelphia wrote to Isaac Backus in 1799, ‘The revivals of religion which you speak of are peculiarly illustrative of the glorious doctrines of grace, — “the wind bloweth where it listeth”.’
   On the subject of means, something needs to be said more particularly on prayer. As with the truth that is preached, prayer has no inherent power in itself. On the contrary, true prayer is bound up with a persuasion of our inability and our complete dependence of God. Prayer, considered as a human activity, whether offered by few or many, can guarantee no results. But prayer that throws believers in heartfelt need on God will not go unanswered. Prayer of this kind precedes blessing, not because of any necessary cause and effect, but because such prayer secures an acknowledgement of the true Author of the blessing. And where such a spirit of prayer exits it is a sign that God is already intervening to advance his cause. One thing that can be said with certainty about the 1790s, before any general indications of a new era were to be seen, is that there was a growing concern among Christians to pray. Later on, when the evidence of records from those years was compared, it was recognized that across the Union, from Connecticut to Kentucky, the 1790s were marked by a new spirit of intercession.

—Iain Murray, Revival & Revivalism, 128-129

Iain Murray writes of “Five Leaders in the Northeast” during the Second Great Awakening:

The secret of the influence of these men was that in their being much with Christ they were indeed the reflectors of ‘his beams’.
   But if it be asked how they attained to being such close disciples the answer may be surprising. It was not that they had reached some higher ground in the way of holiness. On the contrary, what marked them most was their low views of themselves. ‘The leading element of Doctor Griffin’s Christian character’, remarked Sprague, ‘was a deep sense of his own corruptions and of his entire dependence on the sovereign grace of God.’ ‘I fear that I am little better than a cumberer of the ground,’ Spring recorded in his diary, and Payson, similarly, often noted the pain of his unworthiness and his failure as a Christian. On 18 December 1817 he recorded in his diary: ‘Began to think, last night, that I have been sleeping all my days; and this morning felt sure of it . . .  How astonishingly blind have I been and how imperceptible my religious progress.’ again, in 1821 he told a ministerial friend, ‘My parish, as well as my heart, very much resembles the garden of the sluggard; and what is worse, if find that most of my desires for the melioration of both proceed either from pride, or vanity of indolence.’
   Statements such as these show us the nature of the relationship with God that these men had. Their felt need lay behind their frequent prayer and their dependence on Christ. Earnestness in prayer, says Payson, requires a true view of oneself: ‘You cannot make a rich man beg like a poor man; you cannot make a man that is full cry for food like one that is hungry: no more will a man who has a good opinion of himself cry for mercy like one who feels that he is poor and needy.’

—Iain Murray, Revival & Revivalism, 218-219

The life of John Knox is largely a narrative of persecution. I was already aware of this as I began reading Iain Murray’s A Scottish Christian Heritage, but I was surprised to learn that among his experiences was nineteen months spent as a slave in a French galley, chained to a bench with six other men pulling a fifty-foot-long oar. Following his release in 1549, he enjoyed a scant four years of peace in England before “Bloody” Mary Tudor ascended to the throne and restored Roman Catholicism as the state religion (her half-brother and predecessor, Edward VI, had been Protestant). Knox fled England, ending up finally in Geneva. His exile ended in 1559, when Mary Tudor died, and the Protestant faith was publicly restored in England.

His years of exile served as preparation for difficult years to come. “Of the lessons he had learned during that period,” Murray writes, “there are three which stand out:”

   1. Knox became a man of prayer. Prayer as ‘an earnest and familiar talking with God’, is not natural to us. It is be sanctified trouble and by the recognition of our own helplessness that were learn to pray. ‘Out of weakness made strong’ is the biblical principle. ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble’, became a promise of special significance to Knox. His first writing when the Marian persecution broke in England in 1554, was on What True Prayer Is, How We Should Pray, and For What We Should Pray. In another place he says that the Apostle Peter, as he sought to cross the water to Jesus, was allowed to sink because there was in him too much ‘presumption and vain trust in his own strength’. ‘Unless it had between corrected and partly removed,’ he comments, Peter ‘had never been apt or meet to feed Christ’s flock’ this was surely what Knox himself was being taught. He says that he wrote so much on prayer because,

I know how hard is the battle between the spirit and the flesh, under the heavenly cross of affliction, where no worldly defence but present death does appear. I know the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh . . . calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour utterly to fall from God. Against which rests only faith, provoking us to call earnestly and pray for assistance of God’s Spirit; wherein, if we continue, our most desperate calamities shall be turned to gladness, and to a prosperous end. To thee alone, O Lord, be praise, for with experience I write this and speak.

   . . .

   2. Knox’s lone exile made him and international Christian. Had he remained always in Scotland he might have remained as parochial as some of his contemporaries. It was in God’s design that he spent most of his time away from home among the English. These were the people against whom his forefathers had fought but in Christ the old enmity was gone. He was ahead of his time in foreseeing a common Protestant faith binding the two nations together, and that hope became central to his life. ‘Grant, O Lord,’ he prayed, ‘we never enter into hostility against the realm and nation of England.’ . . .

   3. It was during Knox’s exile, and especially in the final years in Geneva, that the master-principles which governed his thought on Reformation came to maturity. In outline, they may be stated as follows:
   i. We exist for God’s glory; therefore zeal for the honor of God is essence of true piety; conversely, to despise God, to offend his majesty, is the darkest form of human depravity. The indignation Knox felt against Roman Catholicism sprang from this source. He saw it as a system bound up with giving to men and to idols that which belongs to God alone. . . .
   ii. Christians are bound to a universal obedience to the Word of God, no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences. More particularly, nothing is lawful to the church unless it is to be found in Scripture. To quote the Reformer’s later words to Queen Elizabeth: ‘Whatsoever He approves (by his eternal word) that shall be approved, and what he damneth, shall be condemned, though all men in the earth should hazard the justification of the same.
   iii. The true church is to distinguished from the false church in this manner; the true has Christ as its living head, it hears his voice it, follows him, and a stranger it will not follow. This church, further, is to be kept separate from the world by the faithful exercise of discipline in order that reproach is not brought upon God by the character of it’s members, so that the good is not affected by the evil, and so that those corrected may be recovered.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 13–15.

I love reading of the last days of great saints. While death is a fearsome thing to most, for the believer it is a gateway into life — life like we have not yet known, and cannot imagine. At long last, we will be at home with the Lord, free from all pain and suffering, disappointments and failures, and, most wonderful of all, free from sin. It is a day we should all long for, and be able to say with John Newton, “It is a great thing to die.” John Knox was such a man, and so was able to pass from this world in peace. Iain Murray writes,

   In the spring of 1572, while Knox was still in St. Andrews, there was a marked decline in his health, yet in August he was able to return to Edinburgh, and, after thirteen months absence, preach again in the pulpit of St. Giles. But the vast congregation could no longer hear his now feeble voice, and thereafter he chose the pulpit of the much smaller Tolbooth Church where he began to preach on the crucifixion on 21 September. The English ambassador reported on 6 October, ‘John Knox is now so feeble as scarce can he stand alone, or speak to be heard of any audience,’ Yet he was able, on Sunday, 9 November, to preach at the installation of his successor, James Lawson. It was the last time he was to leave his home. The following Thursday he had to lay aside reading and on the Friday, confused which day it was he declared he meant to go to church and preach on the resurrection of Christ. A week later, with increasing difficulty in breathing, he ordered his coffin to be made and waking hours were now spent in hearing Scripture read (especially Isaiah 53, John 17 and Ephesians), saying good-bye to friends, and speaking brief words of testimony and prayer: ‘Live in Christ. Live in Christ, and then flesh need not fear death – Lord, grant true pastors to thy Church, that purity of doctrine may be maintained.’
   On Monday, November 1572, he insisted on rising and dressing but within half an hour he had to be put back to bed. To the question of a friend, Had he any pain?, he replied: ‘It is no painful pain, but such a pain as shall soon, I trust put an end to the battle.’ There was further intermittent conversation that day and the last reading of 1 Corinthians 15 at which he exclaimed, ‘Is not that a comfortable chapter?’ About eleven o’clock that evening, he said, ‘Now it is come’, and, lifting up one hand, he passed through his final conflict in peace. In the words on his secretary, Richard Bannatyne,

In this manner departed this man of God: the light of Scotland, the comfort of the Church within the same, the mirror of godliness, and pattern and example of all true minister.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 32–33.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)

The following rather humorous anecdote from the life of the Scottish preacher Robert Bruce (1555–1631, not Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, 1274–1329) is also a good reminder to all preachers, as well as anyone who would be a witness for Christ. In other words, every Christian.

On a day when Bruce was engaged to preach twice at the church, the interval between the services was extended longer than usual due to the preacher’s absence. Some noblemen who were present became anxious because of the time on account of the distance they had to ride to their homes later that day. They therefore asked the bellman to find Bruce and request him to begin the service in view of the journey they had before them. The bellman knew where Bruce was – in a room in a house near the church which he commonly used before the afternoon service. On going to the door the man knocked, but declined to enter when he heard the preacher talking to someone inside. He went back to those who had sent him and explained that he could not tell how long Bruce would be: ‘I think he shall not come out the day at all, for I hear him always saying to another that he will not nor cannot go except the other go with him, and I do not hear the other answer him a word at all.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 62.

Another testimony in death, this one from the Scottish preacher Robert Bruce:

Bruce was now some seventy-five years of age, his wife had been dead for several years and he was also ready for home. “I wonder why I am kept here so long,” he would say to friends. The following year, while having breakfast, his daughter, Martha, was about to prepare him another egg when he said, “Hold, daughter, hold; my Master calleth me.” He then asked that the house Bible, the Geneva Version, be brought. Unable himself to read it, he said, “Cast me up the 8th of Romans,” and he began to recite much of the second half of the chapter until he came to the last two verses: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “Set my finger on these words,” he asked. “God be with you my children. I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup with my Lord Jesus this night. I die believing these words.”

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 56–57.

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), little known today, has been described by one biographer as “the greatest spiritual force Scotland saw in the nineteenth century.” He is credited with the recovery of Presbyterianism in Scotland, leading to the “Disruption of 1817” (a schism between Church of Scotland “moderates” and “evangelicals” over how much influence the State had in appointing ministers). Iain Murray writes that “He was at the centre of a recovery which brought the churches of Scotland from mediocrity, indifference, and unbelief to new conditions of spiritual vitality.”

But Chalmers had not always been the great man of God that he became. At the young age of eleven, he entered the University of St Andrews, and began his theological studies at fifteen with the intent of pursuing professional ministry. Of this time he wrote, “St Andrews was at this time overrun with Moderatism, under the chilling influences of which we inhaled not a distaste only but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly gospel.” Chalmers became one of these Moderates. His view of ministry was that it was a good profession for making one’s name in the world. He devoted little time to pursuits of actual ministry, often leaving preparation for preaching until Sunday morning. “After the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties,” he wrote, “a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure . . .”

In 1808, his career plans were interrupted. Intending to go to London “to get introduced into some of the literary circles,” he instead found himself at the bed-side of a sister, who soon died. Then it was the death of a beloved uncle, followed by his own severe illness, which kept him in his own room for four months. During that time, Chalmers was converted, and his life was dramatically changed. Previously, ministry had consumed little of his attention, and genuine spiritual issues none at all. His energies had been directed towards the study of science and mathematics. Murray writes:

Chalmers was to confess that he was then blind to the lesson which even those scientific studies should have taught him: ‘What, sir, is the object of mathematical science?’ he had replied. ‘Magnitude is the proportion of magnitude. But then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes. I thought not of the littleness of time — I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 83.

Chalmers’s ministry was dramatically effected by his conversion. Murray quotes biographer William Hanna:

His regular and earnest study of the Bible was one of the first and most noticeable effects of Mr Chalmers’ conversion. His nearest neighbor and most frequent visitor was old John Bonthron, who, having once seen better days, was admitted to an easy and privileged familiarity, in the exercise of which one day before the memorable illness, he said to Mr Chalmers — ‘I find you aye busy, sir, with one thing or another, but come when I may, I never find you at your studies for the Sabbath.’ ‘Oh, an hour or two on the Saturday evening is quite enough for that,’ was the minister’s answer. But now the change had come, and John, on entering the manse, often found Mr. Chalmers poring eagerly over the pages of the Bible. The difference was too striking to escape notice, and with the freedom given him, which he was ready enough to use, he said, ‘I never come in now, sir, but I find you aye at your Bible.’ ‘All too little, John, all to little’, was the significant reply.

—ibid., 84–85.

Iain Murray Summarizes some of Thomas Chalmers’ thoughts on the work of the ministry:

   1. The governing principle upon which the strength of all ministerial duties depends is regard for the approval of God. If a minister lacks that principle his public work will be dominated by regard for himself or for the approbation of men. Where that principle is truly present it will operate first in the sphere of the preacher’s own inner life; he will not ‘strenuously urge sanctification’ without attending to that duty himself. His primary concern in all things must be to see that God approves him. ‘By far the most effective ingredient of good preaching’, he writes, ‘is the personal piety of the preacher himself.’ ‘How little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the one side, and of admiration on the other! and surely it were a sight to make angels weep when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bosom to regale his hearers by the exhibition of himself, than to do, in plain earnest, the work of his Master.’
   2. Ministers should never rest satisfied without growth in personal holiness of life. Chalmers’ private diary reveals a great deal of this: ‘Advance the power and life of religion in my own heart’ was his prayer. To friends he writes in similar terms: ‘Pray unceasingly for the progress of His work in your heart . . . Strike the high aim of being perfect even as God is perfect . . . Never let go your aspirings . . . Oh! with what unceasing progress towards perfection should we be enabled to advance did we cast all self-seeking and self-confidence away from us — did we consent be altogether guided by His strength, and be altogether accepted in His pure and unspotted righteousness.’
   Andrew Bonar, one of Chalmers’ students, used to repeat a saying heard when he was entering the ministry: ‘Remember that very few men, and very few ministers, keep up to the end the edge that was on their spirit at the first.’ It was a warning which could well have been heard from Chalmers. The prayerfulness and the desires after greater holiness which marked his early Christian life were with him to the end.
   3. Ministers must give themselves wholly to their true work: ‘Be assured that a single and undivided attention to the peculiar work of a Christian minister is the way of peace and of pleasantness.’ One of the greatest struggles which Chalmers ever had was to break free from the many secular duties and activities which had come to be expected of ministers. For him it was imperative, if the church was to be revived, that preachers should be left to concentrate exclusively upon their proper calling. In Glasgow he had found that ministers were continually required to be at funerals (four at one funeral was considered a ‘respectable number’), at committees of all the societies, at public functions of every kind, and so on. At one committee meeting, for example, arranged on behalf of the Town Hospital, he found himself with an honoured place among ‘some of the gravest of city ministers, and some of the wisest of the city merchants’ to engage in a solemn and, at length, warm discussion on whether pork broth or ox-head should be served to the inmates of the Hospital! After such experiences at that time in his life he wrote: ‘I am gradually separating myself from all this trash, and long to establish it as a doctrine that the life of a town minister should be what the life of a country minister might be, and his entire time disposable to the purposes to the purposes to which the Apostles gave themselves wholly, that is, the ministry of the word and prayer.’ Speaking again of the secular duties to which so many ministers had given in, and which turned a preacher from being ‘a dispenser of the bread of life into a mere dispenser of human benefits’, he says, ‘This I have set my face against, and though I have a great deal of opposition to encounter, yet I am persuaded that I will have the solid countenance and approbation of all who value the pure objects of the Christian ministry.’
   4. A minister must deal directly with the men concerning their need of salvation. ‘Let us pray for that most desirable wisdom, the wisdom of winning souls.’ ‘A single human being called out of darkness, though he lived in putrid lane of obscurity, is a brighter testimony than all the applause of the fashionable.’ This meant plain, direct preaching to the heart and conscience. Commending Alleine’s Alarm, he warned against the ‘diseased touchiness’ of the age which disliked the urgent preaching of repentance. He told his prospective candidates for the ministry that their work must ot be to show their hearers the consistency between geology and the Bible, rather these hearers must be won ‘by entering into the chambers of their consciences and telling them of that sin which is their ruin and of that Saviour who alone can hush the alarms of nature’.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 94–96.

The Holy Spirit is seen by many as a source of extra-biblical revelation to those who are “sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.” The spiritually mature, those who are “spirit-filled,” may receive a “word from the Lord,” a “word of knowledge,” or just some added insight that can’t be had simply by reading the Bible. But the Spirit does not work that way. He uses a tool given for this purpose: the sword of the Spirit. Thomas Chalmers wrote:

   The Holy Spirit’s office, as defined by the Bible itself, is not to make known to us any truths which are not contained in the Bible; but to make clear to our understandings the truths which are contained in it. He opens our understandings to understand the Scriptures. The Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. It is the instrument by which the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us any thing that is out of the record; but all that is within it he sends home, with clearness and effect, upon the mind . . .

—Thomas Chalmers, quoted in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 101.

Some time ago, I was asked why, if I had already read the Bible, I would want to read it again, not just once, but over and over, as long as I live? Obviously, this question came from an unbeliever. But I’m afraid many Christians feel little need for repeated readings of God’s Word. Many who have professed faith for years still have portions of their Bibles that remain unread.

Robert Moffat (1795–1883), Scottish missionary to Africa, would have been bewildered by such attitudes. Moffat dedicated his life to bringing the gospel to the Bechuana tribes of South Africa. Much of that time was spent in translating the entire Old and New Testaments into Sechuana (the native language). Yet, near the end of his life, he still felt inadequate in his knowledge of Scripture. In a letter to Mary, his wife, he wrote:

It was only yesterday, after laying down the Bible, that I wondered what kind of a mind I would have had if I had not the Book of God, the Book containing the astounding idea of ‘from everlasting to everlasting’, the development of all that is worth knowing . . . One would think, that as I have critically, and, I think, devoutly read and examined every verse, every word in the Bible, some a score of times over, I should not require to open the pages of that unspeakable and blessed Book. Alas, for the human memory! I read the Bible today with that same feeling I ever did, like the hungry seeking food, the thirsty when seeking drink, the bewildered when seeking counsel and the mourner when seeking comfort. Don’t you believe all this? For alas, I read it sometimes as a formal thing, though my heart condemns afterwards . . . I am yet astonished at my own ignorance of the Bible!

—Robert Moffat, quoted in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 266–267.

Our generation is not the first to doubt the sufficiency of Scripture to change lives. In Robert Moffat’s day, many believed that civilization needed to precede the gospel. Moffat and other pioneer missionaries challenged and disproved that theory. In 1816, Moffat was formally commissioned as a missionary of London Missionary Society and was sent to South Africa. Twenty-six years later, he could testify to the power of the gospel to transform lives.

‘It is now demonstrated,’ [wrote Moffat] in 1842, ‘that the Gospel can transform these aceldamas [fields of blood], these dens of crime, weeping and woe, into abodes of purity, happiness, and love . . . We are warranted to expect, from what has already occurred, great and glorious results.’ A moral improvement in society in general is not needed to prepare the way for spiritual success. On this point Moffat wrote:

Much has been said about civilizing savages before attempting to evangelize them. This is a theory which has gained extensive prevalence among the wise men of this world, but we have never yet seen a practical demonstration of its truth. We ourselves are convinced that evangelization must precede civilization. It is very easy in a country of high refinement to speculate on what might be done among rude and savage men, but the Christian missionary, the only experimentalist, has invariably found that to make the fruit good the tree must first be made good. Nothing less than the power of Divine grace can reform the hearts of savages, after which the mind is susceptible of those instructions which teach them to adorn the gospel they profess.

   This lesson needs to be remembered wherever the moral decay of society tempts Christians to suppose the plain preaching of the gospel cannot meet the situation. Moffat was certain that only one source is adequate to answer the effects of sin upon society, whether these are among ‘barbarians’ or ‘the civilized nations of Europe’: ‘Nothing but the Bible can save man from his woes.’

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 269–270.

The demands on a pastor are many: he must be a scholar, a teacher, a preacher, and a counselor, just to name the most obvious of his duties. But before he can be an effective shepherd, he must meet a much more basic requirement: he must have a genuine love for the people in his care. Iain Murray offers an example of this pastoral love in the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661):

   For a seventeenth-century example of the closeness of pastors and people Samuel Rutherford’s Letters are unforgettable. Separated from his parish in days of persecution, he was forced to resort to letters, and the personal issues about which he writes show how his pastoral work was conducted, The spiritually cold, the sorrowing, the individual struggling with temptations, the believer lacking assurance, and many more, all have his attention and sympathetic interest. To an old man about whom he had some doubt he can write:

My soul longeth exceedingly to hear how matters go betwixt you and Christ; and whether or not there be any work of Christ in that parish that will bide in the trial of fire and water. Let me be weighed of the Lord in a just balance, if your souls lie not weighty upon me. Ye go to bed and rise with me: thoughts of your soul, my dearest in the Lord, depart not from me in my sleep. You have a great part of my tears, sighs, supplications, and prayers. Oh, if I could buy your soul’s salvation with any suffering whatsoever, and that ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow, when we shall stand before our judge! [Letters of Rutherford, p. 344]

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 126.

The gospel that saves souls and changes lives is not merely a message that inspires the emotions. It is a message that first brings the truth of God’s Word to the minds of listeners.

   The existence of real Christianity requires a stronger basis than feeling. The nature of that basis is clear in Paul’s injunctions to Timothy and Titus: it is ‘sound doctrine’, ‘sound words’, ‘the word’ (1 Tim. 1:10; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:2–3; Titus 1:9; 2:1).
   The reason for this apostolic priority is twofold: first, as already said, it is the mind of man that has first to be engaged and convicted; second, it is the Word of God that the Spirit of truth honours and nothing will convince without his witness. These convictions were the starting point for the evangelical preachers of Scotland. They did not see themselves as in charge of the situation. They were only the spokesmen for God and real preaching must have with it something more vital than their speaking. It must be ‘in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God’ (1 Cor. 2:4–5). Andrew Bonar understood this when he noted in his diary, ‘It is one thing to bring truth from the Bible, and another thing to bring it from God himself through the Bible.’
   If the content of preaching is biblical, it follows that it will be ‘theological’, that is to say, it will concern the knowledge of God. ‘Brethren,’ Spurgeon could tell his students, ‘if you are not theologians, you are in your pastorates just nothing at all. We shall never have great preachers until we have great divines.’ Closeness to Scripture and love for sound doctrine belong together.
   History has proved that when the influence of true preaching is at its greatest, commitment to sound doctrine will ever be present.

—Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 330–331.

We read last week of the need for preaching that engages the mind with sound doctrine. We must add to that imperative the truth that preaching can be doctrinally sound and yet lifeless. The preacher must not merely know the message, he must be owned by it. He must have experienced it, and lived it, in order to preach it as he ought.

Ought not preachers themselves to live on the great fundamental truths of the gospel? Ought not our souls to be continually fed from them, and our hearts continually thrilling with them? Ought not a fresh glow to come over our hearts every day as we think of Him who loved us, and washed us from sin in His blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and to the Father? Give us the plainest preacher that ever was; let him preach nothing that a whole congregation do not know; but let him preach with a thrilling heart; let him preach like one amazed at the glory of the message; let him preach in the tone of wonder and gratitude in which it becomes sinners to realise the great work of redemption, — not only will the congregation listen with interest: they will listen with profound impression . . . We greatly need preachers for the people. A preacher to the people needs to be very clear in his views, homely in his style, full of illustration, direct and courageous in his application, rich in brotherly sympathy, and very warm and vigorous in delivery. Alas! they are not common. I believe that if only every tenth student that passes through our hands were a man of this stamp, we should soon see a change on the face of society.

—W. G. Blaikie, cited in Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Banner of Truth, 2006), 333–334.

It is with great pleasure, as usual, that I pick up another Iain Murray volume from Banner of Truth. This one, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, is different from the others I’ve read in a couple of ways. First, it’s a paperback. (I pause here to direct a frown in the Banner’s direction. It was never published in hardcover, so I couldn’t even track down a used copy, as I often do, and I can't set it next to my cloth-bound Murray volumes on the shelf.) Second, it turns our critical eye one hundred and eighty degrees from its usual orientation, away from the Arminians, and toward the hyper-Calvinists.

Murray begins with a little biographical information, and comments on the remarkable scope of Spurgeon’s influence. Spurgeon’s preaching ministry in London spanned thirty-seven years, from 1854–1891. During that time, “If we take into account [Murray writes] both his spoken and written words, it is estimated that each weak his ‘congregation’ amounted to about a million people.” Beginning in 1855, his sermons were published weekly, and also compiled in annually, the 63rd and final volume published twenty-five years posthumously. And that was just his preaching. In addition, he published “about 50 other works and edited 28 volumes of The Sword and Trowel.” His publishers, Passmore and Alabaster, were kept busy — and in business — with publishing Spurgeon’s works alone. Murray writes:

   The obvious question is, how could any man retain such influence over so many people through such a long period? How can we account for the enduring interest? How could a man speak so often, and write so much, without losing his freshness and his appeal? It is true Spurgeon possessed unusual gifts, and that he worked very hard, but we cannot get anywhere near the real answer if we think merely in terms of what he was or did. The explanation lies in the Book that was in his hands, the Book that was his constant companion, and which he lived to preach and study. All the blessing he attributed to that source. His own thoughts, his own opinions, would have achieved nothing:
   ‘“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul”; nothing else but the living Word of God will convince, convert, renew and sanctify. He has promised that this shall not return unto him void; but He has made no such promise to the wisdom of men, or the excellency of human speech. The Spirit of God works with the Word of God . . . All his paths drop fatness; but man’s paths are barrenness.’
   In possessing the Bible Spurgeon believed that the church has an inexhaustible source of light and heat. What he said once of John Bunyan could be equally said of himself, ‘Prick him anywhere and his bloodline is bibline’. The content of his sermons and his books is plain, you might say, ordinary, Scripture. The energy of his prayerful adherence to Scripture is the true explanation of his work:
   ‘The Bible is a wonderful book . . . You can use it for a lamp at night. You can use it for a screen by day. It is a universal book; it is the Book of books, and has furnished material for mountains of books; it is made of what I call bibline, or the essence of books . . . This one book is enough to last a man throughout the whole of his life, however diligently he may study it.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 12–13.

Throughout most of Spurgeon’s ministry, both he and his wife suffered greatly with ill health. But rather than remonstrate bitterly with God, he recognized trials as a necessary part of his sanctification, and as a part of fitting him for ministry. As Iain Murray writes, Spurgeon believed that without without difficulties,

he would have been ruined. Fallen men, though Christians, cannot long be surrounded by popularity and success without the special help of God. ‘Our God takes care always to have the security that, if He works a great work by us, we shall not appropriate the glory of it to ourselves. He brings us down lower and lower in our own esteem . . . Some trumpets are so stuffed with self that God cannot blow through them.’ ‘You may rest quite certain that, if God honors any man in public, he takes him aside privately, and flogs him well, otherwise he would get elevated and proud, and God will not have that.’ ‘Many a man has been elevated until his brain has grown dizzy, and he has fallen to his destruction. He who is to be made to stand securely in a high place has need to be put through sharp affliction. More men are destroyed by prosperity and success than by affliction and apparent failure.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 17–18.

At the end of his notes on John 6:3, Charles Spurgeon wrote the following comment:

Read, write, print, shout, – “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” Great Saviour, I thank Thee for this text; help Thou me so to preach from it that many may come to Thee, and find eternal life!

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 50.

Iain Murray presents four reasons for Spurgeon’s vehement opposition to Hyper-Calvinism. The first is the universal invitation of the gospel, which the Hyper-Calvinists denied and assiduously avoided.

Spurgeon believed that historic evangelicalism differed from Hyper-Calvinism over the persons to whom the promises of the gospel are to be preached. Hyper-Calvinism views gospel preaching solely as a means for the ingathering of God’s elect. It argues that such words as, ‘Trust in Christ and you will be saved’, should only be addressed to elect sinners for it is their salvation alone which the preacher should have in view. For a preacher to convey to his hearers the impression that they are all called to receive Christ, and to believe in him for salvation, is to deny, in the opinion of Hyper-Calvinists, the sovereignty of divine grace. It is to represent salvation as available to those whom God has excluded by the decree of election. Gospel preaching for Hyper-Calvinists means a declaration of the facts of the gospel but nothing should be said by way of encouraging individuals to believe that the promises of Christ are made to them particularly until there is evidence that the Spirit of God has begun a saving work in their hearts, convicting them and making them ‘sensible’ of their need.
   Spurgeon rejected the placing of such a restriction upon the invitation of the gospel. The gospel is ‘good news’ which God would have proclaimed throughout the world and to ‘every creature’. Its message is not simply a statement of facts. It also contains clear, unrestricted general promises, such as, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned’ (John 3:18); ‘Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (Rom. 10:13); ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely’ (Rev. 22:17). So the preacher has not done his work when he has spoken of Christ and proclaimed the historic facts of salvation. From there he must go on to urge the reception of Christ upon all men. In the name of God he must assure all of the certainty of their welcome and forgiveness on their repentance and faith. Thus Paul said to all his hearers at Antioch in Pisidia: ‘Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses’ (Acts 13:38–9). The apostle evidently knew of no limitations. Christ was to be preached, ‘warning every man’ — any one, every one — ‘and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus’ (Col. 1:28). Words could scarcely be more embracing and individual.
   Hyper-Calvinists argued that gospel promises and invitations cannot be made universal because saving grace is special and particular. Spurgeon replied by asserting that the language of Scripture can be given no other meaning. In a sermon entitled ‘Apostolic Exhortation’, on Peter’s words to all his hearers, ‘Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out’ (Acts 3:19), he says:
   ‘Peter preached the Christ of the gospel — preached it personally and directly at the crowd who were gathered around him . . . Grown up among us is a school of men who say that they rightly preach the gospel to sinners when they merely deliver statements of what the gospel is, and the result of dying unsaved, but they grow furious and talk of unsoundness if any venture to say to the sinner, “Believe”, or “Repent”. To this school Peter did not belong — into their secret he had never come, and with their assembly, were he alive now, he would not be joined.’
   In another sermon he refers to brethren who ‘do not think it to be their duty to go into the highways and hedges’ and bid all, as many as they find, to come to the supper. Oh, no! They are too orthodox to obey the Master’s will; they desire to understand first who are appointed to come to the supper, and then they will invite them; that is to say, they will do what there is no necessity to do [i.e., present the gospel to those who are already saved]. In contrast with this, the apostles ‘delivered the gospel, the same gospel to the dead as to the living, the same gospel to the non-elect as to the elect. The point of distinction not in the gospel, but in its being applied by the Holy Ghost, or left to be rejected of man.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 69–71.

Last week, I began looking at four reasons why Spurgeon rejected Hyper-Calvinism. The first was the universal invitation of the gospel, denied by the Hyper-Calvinists. The second is

that it turned individuals away from their only sure warrant for trusting in Christ, namely, the objective commands and invitations of the gospel. Hyper-Calvinism denies such a universal warrant, applicable to all, and claims, instead, that Scripture only addresses invitations to specific people — to the penitent, the ‘heavy laden’, to the convicted, to the ‘sensible’ sinner and so on. Under such preaching, gospel hearers must first find some warrant within themselves for thinking that Christ’s invitations are addressed to them personally. Subjective experience is thus made a kind of necessary preliminary and qualification before anyone can trust in scriptural promises. Against this, Spurgeon held that the scriptural warrant for the unconverted to trust in Christ rests on nothing in themselves; the warrant lies in the invitation of Christ. His entire presentation of the gospel turned on the truth that no sinner has any more warrant than any other for trusting in Christ. The warrant lies in Scripture alone. Before a man has any willingness to be saved, it is ‘his duty to believe in Christ, for it is not man’s willingness that gives him a right to believe. Men are to believe in obedience to God’s command. God commandeth all men everywhere to repent, and this is his great command, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved”.’ Christ’s ambassadors are authorised to call ‘on all people of every clime and kindred, to believe the gospel with a promise of personal salvation to each and every one that believes.’ The message is not, ‘Wait for feelings’, it is, ‘Believe and live’. ‘I find Jesus Christ says nothing to sinners about waiting, but very much about coming.’
   To this the Hyper-Calvinists replied that if all are called to trust in Christ then such trust must involve them in believing a falsehood because Christ has not died for all. In their view, to preach a universal warrant is to deny that redemption is definite and particular. This was a further ground for charging Spurgeon with inconsistency, for he believed in particular redemption and yet summoned all to believe in Christ. But Spurgeon, along with Scripture, did not make, ‘Believe that Christ died for you’, part of faith to which the unbeliever is summoned. The call to the sinner is to commit himself to Christ, not because he has been saved but rather because he is lost and must come to Jesus in order to be saved.
. . .
   To deny a universal warrant, and to require subjective experiences before Christ is trusted, is bound to lead to confusion and legality. Such teaching makes men look at themselves instead of the Saviour. It leads people to suppose that possessing a broken heart and feeling the burden of sin are some kind of qualification for believing. But this is to require a discernment on the part of would-be converts for which Scripture does not ask. The truth is that individuals under conviction are unable to understand themselves and it is common for those who are most burdened to fear that they have no true sense of sin at all. The Holy Spirit is indeed given to convict of sin but Scripture says nothing about him assuring the convicted of their convictions prior to faith. On this Spurgeon says in the same sermon on ‘The Warrant of Faith’:
   ‘I believe the tendency of that preaching which puts the warrant for faith anywhere but in the gospel command, is to vex the true penitent, and to console the hypocrite; the tendency of it is to make the poor soul which really repents, feel that he must not believe in Christ, because he sees so much of his own hardness of heart. The more spiritual a man is, the more unspiritual he see himself to be . . . Often the most penitent men are those who think themselves the most impenitent.’
   ‘If we begin to preach to sinners that they must have a certain sense of sin and a certain measure of conviction, such teaching would turn the sinner away from God in Christ to himself. The man begins at once to say, “Have I a broken heart? Do I feel the burden of sin?” This is only another form of looking at self. Man must not look to himself to find reasons for God’s grace.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 71–74, 77–78.

The third reason given by Murray for Spurgeon’s rejection of Hyper-Calvinism was the denial of human responsibility.

Spurgeon regarded an emphasis on man’s free-agency as absolutely essential to true evangelism. Because Scripture teaches that conversion is the work of God, Hyper-Calvinism fears to appeal for human action lest it interferes with God. But Scripture also presents conversion as the work of man and recognizes no inconsistency in calling upon men to be reconciled to God. Because it does not recognize this, Hyper-Calvinism fails to tell the unconverted that it is heir fault alone if they remain unsaved under the gospel and that their damnation will be their own work. Not only is faith in Christ a duty, but as Spurgeon often showed from Scripture, a refusal to believe on Christ will be found at last o be a greater offence than the iniquities of Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘Is it not the very summit of arrogance and the height of pride for a son of Adam to say, even in his heart, “God, I doubt thy grace; God, I doubt Thy love; God, I doubt Thy power”? I feel that, could we roll all sins into one mass, — could we take murder, blasphemy, lust, adultery, fornication, and everything that is vile, and unite them all into one vast globe of black corruption, — they would not even then equal the sin of unbelief.’’
     In his autobiography Spurgeon reports how in his early days, before he came to London, he found himself with some ministers and others of Hyper-Calvinistic views ‘who were disputing whether it was a sin in men that they did not believe the gospel.’ The shock he felt on that occasion was to remain with him all his days: ‘Whilst they were discussing, I said, “Gentlemen, am I in the presence of Christians? Are you believers in the Bible or are you not?” They said, “We are Christians, of course.” “Then,” said I, “does not the Scripture say, ‘of sin, because they believe not on Me?’ And is it not the damning sin of men, that they do not believe on Christ?”’
     Spurgeon used this incident in the second sermon of the first volume of the New Park Street Pulpit, entitled ‘The Sin of Unbelief, and, as we have seen, much of the contention of Hyper-Calvinism against his preaching concerned this point. ‘I hold,’ he says, ‘as firmly as any man living, that repentance and conversion are the work of the Holy Spirit, but I would sooner lose this hand, and both, than I would give up preaching that it is the duty of men to repent and believe and that it is the duty of Christian ministers to say to them, “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.”’
     Spurgeon frequently spoke against Hyper-Calvinism in his sermons. He did so at some length in an ‘Exposition of the Doctrines of Grace’ at the time of the opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861 when he forcefully repudiated any idea of fatalism and insisted, ‘If he be lost, damnation is all of man; but, if he be saved, still salvation is all of God.’ God did not make men to be damned but, as Spurgeon showed from the Westminster Assembly’s Larger Catechism, wrath is only inflicted on men on account of sin: ‘This is no more than what the Methodist and all other Evangelical bodies acknowledge — that where men perish it is in consequence of their sin.’
     In his Preface to the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit for 1863 he made what was possibly the last of his open appeals to those whom he describes as ‘led captive by ultra-calvinistic theories’, calling upon them to ‘preach the whole gospel, instead of a part’: ‘Divine sovereignty is a great and indisputable fact, but human responsibility is quite as indisputable . . . Faith is God’s gift, but it is also the act of renewed manhood. Damnation is the result of justice, not of arbitrary predestination. O that the time were come when seeming opposites would be received, because faith knows that they are portions of one harmonious whole. Would that an enlarged view of the dispensations of God to man would permit men to be faithful to the human race, and at the same time true to the Sovereign Lord of all.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 84–87.

Spurgeon, contra Hyper-Calvinism, believed in the universal love of God for all men. He also believed, contra Arminianism, in the particular electing love of God for his chosen bride.

From what [Spurgeon taught] on the universal love of God, Hyper-Calvinists deduced that Spurgeon did not believe in a special electing love which secures the salvation of all those for whom Christ died. Sometimes Christians of Arminian persuasion, with a superficial knowledge of Spurgeon, have reached the same conclusion on Spurgeon’s position. But this is the same mistake as can be made in reading the Bible itself. All references to divine love in Scripture are not to be interpreted as universal (Arminianism), neither are they all to be made particular (Hyper-Calvinism). There is a differentiation observable in Scripture. In speaking to Christians Spurgeon would often make the difference clear: ‘Beloved, the benevolent love of Jesus is more extended than the lines of his electing love . . . That [i.e. the love revealed in Matthew 23:37] is not the love which beams resplendently upon his chosen, but it is true love for all that.’ God’s special love ‘is not love for all men . . . There is an electing, discriminating, distinguishing love, which is settled upon a chosen people . . . and it is this love which is the true resting place for the saint.’
   Arminianism, by making universal benevolence the only love revealed in Scripture, denies the sovereignty of grace and leads men to suppose that God had to make salvation equally available to all. Hyper-Calvinism, on the other hand, denies, in the words of John Murray, ‘that there is a love of God that goes forth to lost men and is manifested in the manifold blessings which all men without distinction enjoy, a love in which non-elect persons are embraced, and a love that comes to its highest expression in the entreaties, overtures and demands of gospel proclamation.’
   While holding firmly to these important theological distinctions, Spurgeon did not believe that they were ones which had necessarily to be introduced in presenting the gospel to the unconverted and he warned against the kind of preaching which appears more concerned to safeguard orthodoxy than to save the lost. ‘Many good people think they ought to guard the gospel . . . When we protect it with provisos, and guard it with exceptions, and qualify it with observations, it is like David in Saul’s armour.’
   He refused to explain how men could be held accountable for not trusting in a Saviour in whom they were never chosen, on the grounds that Scripture itself offers no explanation. It was enough for him that there is a salvation to be preached with love to all and that he call all to come to Christ and to say, ‘If he died for all those who trust him, I will trust him; if he has offered so great a sacrifice upon the tree for guilty men, I will rely upon that sacrifice and make it the basis of my hope.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 97–99.

Iain Murray lists four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day. The first concerns the divisiveness of the Hyper-Calvinists, which Spurgeon deplored. Murray writes:

   Genuine evangelical Christianity is never of an exclusive spirit. Any view of the truth which undermines catholicity has gone astray from Scripture. This was the point which played a considerable part in Spurgeon’s inability to join with the Strict Baptists. He could speak of them as ‘about the best people in the world,’ but the practice of many of their churches in restricting the Lord’s table to Baptists grieved him. Christians may be divided over their beliefs concerning the outward sign; they are not divided in the spiritual reality of symbolized: ‘I always say to Strict Baptist brethren who think it is a dreadful thing for baptized believers to commune with the unbaptized: “But you cannot help it; if you are the people of God you must commune with all saints, baptized or not. You may deny them outward and visible sign, but you cannot keep them from the inward and spiritual grace.” If a man be a child of God, I do not care what I may think about him – if he be a child of God I do commune with him and I must.’
   But he saw this professed separation of Strict Communion Baptists from the rest of the visible church was frequently made the more serious by the tenets of Hyper-Calvinism. Its teachers, from Huntington onwards, has commonly made faith in election a part of saving faith and thus either denied the Christianity of all professed Christians who did not so believe, or at least, treated such profession with much suspicion. In so doing they had spread the idea that Calvinism is necessarily exclusive, that there is something inherent in its tenets which lead men to separate from others. Spurgeon deplored the way that the abuse of the doctrine of election had thus been used to foster division:
   ‘We give our hand to every man that loves the Lord Jesus Christ, be he what he may or who he may. The doctrine of election, like the great act of election itself, is intended to divide, not between Israel and Israel, but between Israel and the Egyptians, – not between saint and saint, but between saints and the children of the world. A man may be evidently of God’s chosen family, and yet though elected, may not believe in the doctrine of election. I hold there are many savingly called, who do not believe in effectual calling, and that there are a great many who persevere to the end, who do not believe the doctrine of final perseverance. We do hope that the hearts of many are a great deal better than their heads. We do not set their fallacies down to any willful opposition to the truth as it is in Jesus, but simply to an error in their judgments, which we pray God to correct. We hope that if they think us mistaken too, they will reciprocate the same Christian courtesy; and when we meet around the cross, we hope that we shall ever feel that we are one in Christ Jesus.

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 110–112.

The second of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day:

   This controversy brings out the danger which is created when biblical truths are constantly presented to the non-Christian in the wrong order. Spurgeon believed all the truths commonly called Calvinistic but he did not believe that all the truths commonly so designated had to be presented to sinners in order to their conversion. As noted, he wanted to see both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The tendency of Hyper-Calvinism was to make sinners want to understand theology before they could believe in Christ, as though ‘they cannot be saved until they are theologians.’ But the non-Christian can hear ‘the soul and marrow of the gospel’, that is, Christ as the Savior, and see his responsibility to repent and believe, without understanding ‘the doctrines commonly called Calvinistic’. It is with his responsibility, says Spurgeon, that ‘the sinner has the most to do’, whereas God’s predestining grace is the subject of with which ‘the saint has most to do. Let him praise the free and sovereign grace of God, and bless his name’.
   In so thinking Spurgeon was surely siding with what the wisest preachers in the church had always taught. While Reformed Confessions may begin with statements on the doctrine of God and divine decrees, that is not where preachers and teachers need to begin in addressing men about salvation. In the apostolic teaching to the lost, recorded in the book of Acts, nothing is said of the doctrine of election, while in the Epistles ‘it is scarcely ever omitted’. In accordance with his approach, Calvin, in the later editions of his Institutes, moved his treatment of election to follow teaching on justification. He recognized that Scripture generally introduces the doctrine of election to show believers the security and certainty of their salvation and to make clear who made them to differ. But when election is constantly introduced as a preliminary to hearing the gospel it inevitably comes to be seen as though it were designed to limit or obstruct the salvation of men and women. No one put this point better than John Bradford, the English reformer, whose words were often quoted by Whitefield, ‘let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance, before he goes to the university of election and predestination.’
   It ought not to be the business of the evangelist to teach God’s decrees to the unconverted. It is certainly God’s decree of salvation which is fulfilled in conversion but knowledge of that decree is no part of saving faith. As Crawford says, God’s decrees are his fixed purposes and his ‘secret designs for the regulation of his own procedure; but they are not rules of laws prescribed for the guidance of others . . . The doctrine of election is not to be regarded as what an apostle calls “milk that babes have need of,” but as the “strong meat that belongs to them who are of full age.” It ought not, therefore, to be prefixed to the calls of the Gospel, or placed in the fore-front of the calls and invitations which are therein addressed without restriction to all sinners. When so placed, it is apt to perplex and disquiet humble souls . . . No man can be of the number of the elect if he utterly neglects the appointed means of salvation; and no man can be of the number of the non-elect if he truly repents and unfiegnedly believes the Gospel. The salvation of a sinner is actually brought to pass, according to the plainest declarations of the Holy Scripture, in the way of faith and repentance, and no otherwise.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 114–117.

The third of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day is the vanity of expecting to answer every question satisfactorily to human reason. Murray writes:

This controversy directs us to our need for profound humility before God. It reminds us forcefully of questions about which we can only say, ‘behold, God is great, and we know him not’ (Job 36:26), and, ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’ (Rom. 11:33). We do not know why God has purposed to save some and not others, nor why, given his desire for the good of all, many are left in their sin. We cannot say why his love to all men is not the same to the elect. We do not know how God works in us ‘to will and to do’ and yet leaves us wholly responsible for our own actions, nor how invitations to all to believe on Christ are to be harmonised with electing grace. As Crawford said, various attempts have been made to solve such mysteries, ‘but, it must be owned, they have been signally unsuccessful.’ He concludes: ‘We do well to be exceedingly diffident in our judgments respecting matters so unsearchable as the secret purposes of God.’
   It is to be feared that sharp contentions between Christians on these issues have too often risen from a wrong confidence in our powers of reasoning and our assumed ability to draw logical inferences. It is arguable that in the eclipse of Calvinistic beliefs at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when ‘reason’ was being made the test of all religious belief, the would-be defenders of orthodoxy who became Hyper-Calvinistic fell into the very mistake which they were seeking to correct. As J. I. Packer writes, ‘In an increasingly rationalistic age, the reaction itself was rationalistic, within the Reformed supernaturalistic frame.’ Joseph Hussey, the standard bearer of the movement, certainly gave justification of that charge. The contentious spirit in which he advocated his views was a discredit to the truth. John Newton was not the only Calvinist to complain that in Hussey’s writings, ‘I frequently found more bones than meat, and seasoned with much of an angry and self-important spirit.’
   Spurgeon, like all the children of men, had to learn humility, and he was not always entirely blameless in this regard in his early years, but it was given to him to see how a system which sought to attribute all to the grace of God had itself too much confidence in the powers of reason. His mature judgment on that point, given below, constitutes a statement of great value. Probably as a young man Spurgeon was, at times, over concerned to assert his agreement with Calvin but in his deepening humility before God, and his refusal to trust in human reason, he truly followed in the spirit of that leader and of all true teachers in the church of God. It was Calvin, shortly before his death, who, on the words, ‘have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?’ (Ezek. 18:3) said this: ‘If any one again objects – this is making God act with duplicity, the answer is ready, that God always wishes the same thing, though by different ways, and in a manner inscrutable to us. Although, therefore, God’s will is simple, yet great variety is involved in it, as far as our senses are concerned. Besides, it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light, so that we cannot judge how God wishes all to be saved, and yet has devoted all the reprobate to eternal destruction, and wishes them to perish. While we now look through a glass darkly, we should be content with the measure of our own intelligence (1 Cor. 13:12).’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 117–119.

We will take a momentary break from our holiday frivolity to bring you a final installment from Iain Murray’s Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism. We will return tomorrow with more pointless drivel.

The last of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day is that doctrine not kept in perspective can become a master rather than a servant. Iain Murray writes:

The final conclusion has to be that when Calvinism ceases to be evangelistic, when it becomes more concerned with theory than with the salvation of men and women, when the acceptance of doctrines seems to become more important than acceptance of Christ, then it is a system going to seed and it will invariably lose its attractive power. As we have seen, in his early ministries Spurgeon was opposed by those who believed that the Hyper-Calvinism of such eighteenth century-Baptists as John Gill represented the purest Christianity under heaven. That interpretation of history he knew to be wrong, not simply because it fell short of Scripture, but because its effect was to reduce endeavors for the conversion of sinners. ‘During the pastorate of my venerated predecessor, Dr. Gill, this Church, instead of increasing, gradually decreased . . . But mark this, from the day when Fuller, Carey, Sutcliffe, and others, met together to send out missionaries to India the sun began to dawn on a gracious revival which is not over yet.’
   In this connection it is noteworthy that just as renewed understanding of the free offer of the gospel led to the age of overseas missions in England it did also – by different means – in Scotland. As James Walker writes, Boston and the Morrow men ‘entered fully into the missionary spirit of the Bible’ and ‘were able to see that Calvinistic doctrine is inconsistent with world-conquering aspirations and efforts.’ Robert Moffat, Scots pioneer missionary in South Africa, was one of the outstanding results of this rediscovery. A Calvinist who made the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly one of the first publications of the infant missions press at Kuruman, Moffat had no hesitation in writing as follows in 1834:
   ‘I see nothing in the world worth looking after if it has not a direct reference to the gory and extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom; and were we always able to have a lively view of the myriads of who are descending into the horrible pit, our zeal would be proportionate. Much depends on us who have received the ministry of reconciliation, assured that God our Savior willeth the salvation of all.’
   To say this is not to deny that there have been preachers of Hyper-Calvinistic views whose preaching has been used In the conversion of many. Spurgeon was thankful for such men as John Warburton and John Kernshaw, men whose Christ-centeredness often enabled them to rise above their system. But in the hands of the general run of men who regarded Hyper-Calvinism as scriptural he believed the tendency of the preaching was inevitably injurious. By distorting and exaggerating truth the system misrepresented vital doctrines and made them offensive instead of appealing to the wider Christian world. He was convinced that the truths called Calvinistic would never be more widely received among the churches if the impression was allowed to prevail that these truths inhibited earnest evangelism, as they commonly did where Hyper-Calvinism became the accepted tradition. ‘I have seen,’ he says, ‘to my inexpressible grief, the doctrines of grace made a huge stone to be rolled at the mouth of the dead sepulcher of a dead Christ.’
   Hyper-Calvinism still exists today but what is needed far more than a renewed controversy on the subject is living evidence that the doctrines of grace are harmonious with true evangelistic preaching. The ministries of such men as Whitefield, Spurgeon, and, more recently, Lloyd-Jones, proved that more than a thousand books could ever do. Such preaching can only come from a baptism of new and deeper devotion to Christ. Much more than a change of opinion is needed. Spurgeon labored all his ministry for purity of doctrine but his final word was always this:
   ‘What is doctrine after all but the throne whereon Christ sitteth, and when the throne is vacant what is the throne to us? Doctrines are the shovel and tongs for the altar, while Christ is the sacrifice smoking thereon. Doctrines are Christ’s garments; verily they smell of myrrh, and cassia, and aloes out of the ivory places, whereby they make us glad, but it is not the garments we care for as much as the person, the very person, of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 120–122.

Pithy statement of the day:

None can trust in the merits of Christ until they have renounced their own.

—John Wesley, quoted in Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 9.

After reading Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, I’m shifting my attention to the other end of the soteriological spectrum in another historical volume by Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed.

I know relatively little about John Wesley. My impression of him, from the little I have read about him, is that he was an Arminian unlike most Arminians I have known, and certainly unlike I was. I am eager to see if my impression is correct. If the following account of an exchange between Wesley and pseudonymous critic “John Smith” is any indication, it is.

‘You seem to me,’ wrote ‘Smith’, ‘to contend with great earnestness for the following system, viz., that faith (instead of being a rational assent and a moral virtue for the attainment of which men ought to yield the utmost attention and industry) is altogether a divine and supernatural illapse from heaven, the immediate gift of God, the mere work of omnipotence.’ With obvious qualification, this was what Wesley believed; faith is supernatural, ‘wrought in us (be it swiftly or slowly) by the Spirit of God’. He replied to ‘Smith’:

Supposing a man be now void of faith and hope and love, he cannot effect any degree of them in himself by any possible exertion of his understanding, and of any or all of his other natural faculties, though he should enjoy them to the utmost perfection. A distinct power from God, not implied in any of these, is indispensably necessary before it is possible that he should arrive at the very last degree of Christian faith, or love, or hope. In order to his having any of these (on which very consideration I suppose St. Paul terms “the fruits of the Spirit”) he must be created anew, thoroughly and inwardly changed by the operation of the Spirit of God, by a power equivalent to that which raises the dead, and which calls the things that were not as though they were.’

—Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 32–33.

John Wesley claimed to be “a man of one book.” Nevertheless, his system of thought, which became Methodism, was clearly molded by extra-biblical influences. Murray names these as “High Church divinity, Christian mysticism, and Moravian evangelicalism,” and adds, “It would be a mistake to suppose that the influence of the first two ended when he embraced the third.”

   High church thinking remained with him in more than one area. On baptism, for instance, he continued to believe that a decisive change occurs when a child receives the sacrament. Before that event original sin operates in its full power in all the sons of Adam, but in baptism the merit of Christ’s death begins to be applied to all and there is a general giving of the Holy Spirit sufficient to enable a response to the gospel. This was his teaching on ‘prevenient grace’. He also believed that the Lord’s Supper could be viewed as a means of conversion. His ‘High’ beliefs about the sacraments likewise may have entered into his readiness to allow unordained preachers to expound Scripture, whereas they were not to baptize or to administer the Lord’s Supper.
   From this same High Church came what can only be called a form of ‘asceticism’ which remained in Wesley’s thinking. High Church and mystical writers majored on self-denial. Certainly, self-denial is a Christian duty, and it was to contribute largely to the spirituality and vigour which would characterize Methodists. In Wesley, however, it could pass into asceticism, not simply in such things as early rising and abstinence from tea-drinking but, more seriously, in his whole view of marriage. To a young preacher who nearly fell into matrimony he could write, ‘I congratulate you on your deliverance . . . remember the wise direction of à Kempis, “Avoid good women, and commend them to God.”’ . . . [Wesley’s own] marriage was a disaster. This might have been the case whoever he had married, given his estimation that celibacy remained a higher state, and that marrying for happiness was somehow beneath a Christian: ‘I married because I needed a home’, he tells a correspondent, ‘in order to recover my health; and I did recover it. But I did not seek happiness thereby, and I did not find it.’ Who can be surprised?
   . . .
   Asceticism is not a charge which Wesley would have recognized, but there was another strand in his thinking that he willingly attributed to his early reading of High Church authors and the mystics. This was his teaching on ‘Christian perfection’ . . . in its final form his teaching, in brief, was that the mature or ‘perfect’ Christian . . . can attain to loving God with heart and soul and strength before death, and so overcome all inbred sin that sinning may be said to have ceased. To describe this attainment he used several terms, ‘full sanctification’, ‘pure love’, ‘Christian perfection’, and less commonly, the ‘second blessing’. This condition might be received by faith in an instant. ‘Full deliverance from sin, I believe, is always instantaneous.’ . . .
   . . . it is no conjecture to believe that Wesley’s ‘evidence’ for the opinion rested quite as much upon alleged experiences as upon any interpretation of Scripture . . . although Wesley criticized the mystic writers with the words, ‘each of them makes his own experience the standard of religion’, a propensity to depend on experience as a guide to truth also remained with him. For example, to support his assertion, given above, that full deliverance from sin, I believe, is always instantaneous’, he adds, ‘at least, I never yet knew an exception.’

—Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 44–48.

In a Previous post on Wesley and Men Who Followed, I offered my impression of John Wesley as “an Arminian unlike most Arminians I have known.” The “men who followed” seem to fit that description as well. Among those men was William Bramwell (1759–1818). Bramwell was zealous for the purity of the church, and lamented the fact that, in some instances, individuals were being received into membership without having proven the genuineness of their conversion. He deplored such lack of discipline, and avoided practices which might encourage false professions of faith.

   In regard to seekers and the distressed there is a significant difference between Bramwell’s practice and that of a later generation. Whereas he would sometimes invite the awakened and the concerned to meet with him separately for spiritual advice, there is no record of his calling people to meet at the communion rail or ‘the penitent’s bench’ at the end of a service. When the latter practice was first adopted by the Methodists it was only as a means to make counseling more easy and immediately available; but this was to prove a half-way to the practice of making coming to the front necessary for securing immediate professions of conversion. When that final stage came, the prevailing understanding of evangelism was very different from that of Bramwell’s generation. And the final development encouraged the very danger of a premature profession that the earlier generation had tried to avoid. Bramwell’s generation wanted to see repentance resulting in a changed life before they accepted any Christian profession.

—Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 124–125.

When John Wesley arrived in Ireland, he discovered a situation similar to ours in the United States. Substitute “secular humanist” for “Roman Catholic,” and “evangelical” for “protestant,” and see if you don’t agree.

[Wesley] described his first contacts in Dublin as people who exceeded all he knew for their ‘sweetness of temper, courtesy and hospitality,’ but they were ‘English transplanted into another soil.’ They belonged to the Protestant establishment and it was from their number that the members of his first Society in Dublin came. Noticeably absent from the Society were the native Irish-speaking people, of whom Wesley said, ‘At least ninety-nine in a hundred remain in the religion of their forefathers.’ For this sullen majority he had genuine sympathy and regarded it as no surprise that they should live and die as Roman Catholics ‘when the protestants can find no better ways to convert them than penal laws and act of parliament’.

—Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 139.

Among the early Methodists used by God to cultivate the hard ground of Catholic Ireland was Gideon Ouseley (1762–1839). Ousely serves as an example to those of us who would, because we lack great abilities or knowledge, do nothing. Iain Murray writes:

In a lonely part of Ireland [Ouseley] acted simply because he was constrained to do so. In some respects he lacked the knowledge that was needed, and he was aware of it, but when the lack prompted him to stay silent other thoughts compelled him. He would say to himself, ‘Do you not know the disease? And do you not know the cure?’ And his conclusion had a divine authority about it, ‘go then and tell them these two things, the disease and the cure; never mind the rest.’

—Iain Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Banner of Truth, 2003), 166–167.

Today, I test the results of yesterday’s post.

I am too young to have known of the decline of Billy Graham as it happened. I have always been under the impression that his slide into ecumenism and theological liberalism began fairly late in life. Reading Evangelicalism Divided by Iain Murray, I am learning a different story. By the time Graham gained prominence on the word stage, his journey of compromise was already well underway. And while his descent into heterodoxy can be described as a slide, his embrace of ecumenism can only be called an enthusiastic leap — with a decidedly pragmatic motivation.

Murray writes of a time in 1965 when Graham was seeking support for his crusade in London from Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey, who

did not hold all Scripture to be the authoritative Word of God, nor did he believe in such doctrines as the penal, substitutionary atonement. . . .
   At first Ramsey opposed Grahams beliefs as heretical but he seems to have been charmed by the American’s amicableness when the two met at the New Delhi Third Assembly of the World Council od Churches. The evangelist has recorded how their friendship began on that occasion when he asked the archbishop, ‘Do we have to part company because we disagree in methods and theology? Isn’t that the purpose of the ecumenical movement, to bring together people of opposing views?’ Thereafter there was no more opposition.

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 40–41.

When criticizing an evangelical idol like Billy Graham, one is often challenged with the claim that, as so much good is done, faults should be overlooked. Setting aside the seriousness of the faults in question, and the corresponding impossibility of letting them slide, we need to ask, has so much good really been done? Are these methods which we deplore really producing as advertised?

The record says, “No.”

In 1968 the Evangelical Alliance, BGEA’s first sponsor in Britain, published a report on evangelism that included a survey of eighty-five churches which had participated in Graham’s shorter London crusades of 1966–67. Its authors (a large committee) concluded:

On mass evangelism generally, the recurring theme was that the crusade did not make a lasting effect on the complete outsider. Even when they went, they either made no response, or made no lasting response . . . Church members, whether they went forward or not, found blessing and encouragement from the services, but the complete outsider tended to go back outside again. in the words of one comment, ‘If they asked, “What shall we do?” they seem to have been given little answer beyond “to decide for Christ” . . . On inquiry they were unable to give any real answer as to what this meant, other than they desired to live a better life.

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 56–57.

Now, let’s go back a century and a half and examine the record of one of Graham’s most famous predecessors. Charles Finney preceded Graham in implementing results-oriented methods. Finney claimed that the right use of the right means was guaranteed to produce conversions, and there is no denying that his methods produced massive results. But what results? In Revival and Revivalism, Iain Murray reported that

. . . the permanent results were considerably fewer than had initially been claimed. In the course of time, Finney himself admitted this. Joseph Ives Foot, a Presbyterian minister, wrote in 1838: ‘During ten years, hundreds, perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is easily admitted, that his [Finney’s] real converts are comparatively few. It is declared even by himself, that “the great body of them are a disgrace to religion”.’

—Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (Banner of Truth, 1994), 288–289.

Evangelical icon worshippers — those who have not already skedaddled, that is — will be relieved to know that this will probably be my last mention of Billy Graham for the present time.

Compromise with people of all theologies was a common thread running through Billy Graham’s ministry. In the effort to garner support for his evangelistic crusades, it seems there was no heresy he was not willing to let slide. As time passed, it was not merely his associations that were unorthodox; as the following account* of his embrace of inclusivism will demonstrate, his thinking was altered as well.

   Achieving common ground with the Roman Catholicism is one of the things for which Mark Noll commends Graham. But agreement with non-evangelicals has gone still further. In 1978 McCall’s magazine quoted Graham as having said, ‘I used to believe that pagans in far countries were lost if they did not have the gospel of Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that.’ That statement alarmed supporters BGEA and Christianity Today was quick to claim that the evangelist had been misquoted. Subsequent disclosures would appear to show that it was Graham’s paper rather than McCall’s which was inaccurate, for a Graham interview with Dr Robert Schuller on 31 May 1997 put the matter beyond doubt. Schuller has attained fame as the promoter of a liberal ‘self-esteem’ gospel which he preaches in his Crystal Cathedral in California. In the course of his discussion with Graham, conducted by means of a television link-up, Schuller asked for the evangelist’s view on the future of Christianity. Graham answered by giving his belief about the final make-up of the body of Christ. That body would be made up, he affirmed,

from all the Christian groups around the world, outside the Christian groups. I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. And I don’t think that we are going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole world to Christ at one time. I think James answered that — the Apostle James in the first Council in Jerusalem — when he said that God’s purpose for this age is to call out a people for his name. And that is what he is doing today. He is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.

   Surprised by this, Schuller was anxious for clarification: ‘What, what I hear you saying, that it’s possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life, even if they have been born in darkness and have never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?’
   ‘Yes, it is’, Graham responded in decided tones. At which point, his television host tripped over his words in his excitement, and exclaimed, ‘I’m so thrilled to hear you say this: “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy”.’ To which Graham added, ‘There is. There definitely is.’

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 73–74.

* Those who doubt the veracity of this account can easily find video of the Graham-Schuller exchange on YouTube.

Last week, when I wrote about the need to be willing to objectively examine those whom we have admired, I had no problem following that with a few excerpts from Iain Murray’s Evangelicalism Divided on Billy Graham. I have always been in almost total disagreement with Graham’s theology and methods, and extremely dubious of their alleged results.

The experience changes considerably when the spotlight is turned toward those whose work I have appreciated. In that same volume, Murray turns his attention toward evangelicals within the Anglican church, most notably, J. I. Packer and John Stott, and how they, Packer in particular, incrementally sold their evangelical birthright for a mess of unity-pottage. The story is exceedingly disheartening and difficult to summarize in a short space.

The struggle during the 1960s and ’70s within the Church of England was between evangelicals and liberal anglo-catholics. In the beginning, evangelicals wanted to insist that the relatively evangelical Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (the church’s official statement of faith) define who was an Anglican. The anglo-catholics wanted to accept anyone, regardless of profession, who was baptized into the church.

As unity was pursued, compromise led to compromise, until those who had held the evangelical position became willing to call virtually anyone a Christian who wished to be called one. As Murray records, “Those who deny the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ, [Dr Stott] affirmed, do not ‘forfeit the right to be called Christians’” [Evangelicalism Divided, 119.].

How sad that these evangelical Anglicans forgot the words of their own Bishop Ryle:

Divisions and separations are most objectionable in religion. They weaken the cause of true Christianity . . . But before we blame people for them, we must be careful that we lay the blame where it is deserved. False doctrine and heresy are even worse than schism. If people separate themselves from teaching which is positively false and unscriptural, they ought to be praised rather than reproved. In such cases separation is a virtue and not a sin . . . The old saying must never be forgotten, “He is the schismatic who causes the schism’ . . . Controversy in religion is a hateful thing . . . But there is one thing which is even worse than controversy, and that is false doctrine, allowed, and permitted without protest or molestation.

—J. C. Ryle, quoted in Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 141.

The twentieth century conflict between evangelicals and anglo-catholics in the Church of England was not the first of its kind. Two hundred years earlier, George Whitefield and John Wesley had preached the necessity of conversion, and defined the word “Christian” in specific terms. It did not go over well with their Anglican colleagues. Iain Murray wrote:

   The clergy immediately complained that such preaching was disturbing the baptized members of the church. As early as May 1742 Wesley and Whitefield were required to present themselves before the Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite their attempts to avoid causing needless offense, this was only the beginning of the trouble. Given the situation, they knew that opposition was inevitable. Whitefield believed: ‘It is every minister’s duty to declare against the corruption of that church to which they belong.’ Thus when the Bishop of London accused him of saying that he preached ‘a new gospel unknown to the generality of ministers and people’, far from modifying his words, Whitefield replied:

’Tis true, My Lord, in one sense, mine is a new gospel, and will always be to the generality of ministers and people, even in a christian country, if your Lordship’s clergy follow your Lordship’s directions.

Whitfield then went on to quote the bishop’s counsel that a preacher should ‘leave no doubt’ in their [sic] hearers ‘whether good works are a necessary condition of your being justified in the sight of God’.

Was the great apostle of the Gentiles now living, what anathemas would he pronounce against such Judaizing doctrine? . . . This is the great fundamental point in which we differ from the church of Rome. This is the grand point of contention between the generality of the established clergy and the Methodist preachers: we plead for free justification in the sight of God, by faith alone, in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, without any regard to works past, present, or to come.

   In Whitefield’s eyes the bishop’s counsel on the need for good works was as needless as it was false, and not surprisingly, for ‘our pulpits ring of nothing more than doing no one any harm, living honestly, loving your neighbor as yourselves, and to do what you can and then Christ is to make up the deficiency.’

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 159–160.

The Archbishop of York went as far as to quote the Council of Trent against the evangelists: “If any man shall say that justifying faith is nothing else but a confidence in the divine mercy, remitting sins for Christ’s sake, and that this confidence is that alone by which we are justified, let him be accursed. ” The response of Whitefield and Wesley stands in stark contrast to that of Packer and Stott. Rather than enter into dialogue with enemies of the gospel, they stuck by their guns and, with direct confrontation, did not allow the fundamental issues to be obscured.

   Neither Wesley nor Whitefield would be drawn into a general debate on the theology of the sacraments. Nor did they attempt to explain how the teaching of the Articles was consistent with the language of other parts of the Prayer Book. They simply stuck to their witness as evangelists and scorned the idea that baptism was enough to identify a Christian. Wesley writes:

I tell a sinner, ‘You must be born again.’ ‘No,’ says you: ‘He was born again in baptism. Therefore, he cannot be born again now.’ Alas, what trifling this is! What, if he was then a child of God? He is now manifestly a child of the devil; for the works of his father he doeth. Therefore do not play upon words. He must go through an entire change of heart. In one not yet baptized, you yourself would call that change, the new birth. In him, call it what you will; but remember, meantime, that if either he or you will die without it, your baptism will be so far from profiting you, that it will greatly increase your damnation.

—Ibid., 163.

Iain Murray offers one of the reasons he believes evangelicals of the twentieth century have not followed in the footsteps of the Whitefields and Wesleys two centuries prior:

There is a prominent feature in the evangelical history of the eighteenth century which may explain why many evangelicals in Britain and the United States have taken a different course in these last fifty years. As we have seen, evangelical leadership today has been much concerned with a matter about which their predecessors took a very different view, that is, the approval and support of non-evangelical clergy and denominational leaders. Wesley and Whitefield lost any possibility of gaining the good opinion of their peers at the very outset of their work. But far from moderating themselves in an attempt to win it back, they regarded the very idea as a temptation to be resisted. In the midst of a worldly church they saw the bearing of reproach as a necessary part of being a Christian. ‘In our days,’ said Whitefield, ‘to be a true Christian, is really to become a scandal.’
   The church leaders of the eighteenth century did their utmost to hinder other clergy from turning evangelical and one of the principal threats was the certain loss of reputation and preferment. Wesley said the ‘great pains were taken’ to keep the number willing to take a bold stand few in number. Anyone who did so ‘could give up at once all thought of preferment either in Church or State; nay, all hope of even a Fellowship, or a poor scholarship, in either University’.
   For Wesley and Whitefield resistance to such threats was the duty of all who did not live for the approval of man. To clergy who failed to make such a stand a Scripture commands, Wesley said: ‘You dare not: because you have respect of persons. You fear the faces of men. You cannot; because you have not overcome the world. You are not above the desire of earthly things. And it is impossible . . . till you desire nothing more than God.’

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 169–170.

The following excerpt from Evangelicalism Divided is a good warning to those who abandon scriptural inerrancy and confidence in the actual words of Scripture. It should also be an encouragement to those ministers who remain faithful.

   The ministry of J. C. Ryle, first Bishop of Liverpool (1880–1900), was devoted to teaching what Scripture says, and the result has been the abiding faithfulness and relevance of his writings. By 1897, and estimated twelve million copies of Ryle’s tracts and booklets had been sold and his writings continue to be read world wide-today. Compare this with the work of his son, Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and ultimately Dean of Westminster. Herbert Ryle, in contrast with his Father, believed that verbal inspiration was ‘irretrievably shattered’. He probably agreed with his biographer that the tendency of the Evangelical Revival was towards ‘bibliolatery’. From the year 1916, Herbert Ryle was at work on a Commentary on the Minor Prophets and much of the work was done by the time of his death in 1924. Yet it was never published. A professor of theology, asked to evaluate it, considered the manuscript, ‘the work of a tired man’. It was probably already out of date. Today no one reads Dean Ryle of Westminister.

—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 205.

The statement above concerning Herbert Ryle’s Commentary on the Minor Prophets — “It was probably already out of date” — deserves attention, as it exposes the dilemma of liberal scholarship. That dilemma is that, in order to be relevant, one must be on the cutting edge of current scholarship. In plain terms, that means the cutting edge of what liberal scholars are saying right now. Keep up, or be relegated to the dustbin of yesterday’s fads.

The scholar who only seeks to be faithful to God’s Word has no such worries. Everything that really matters was written two thousand or more years ago. Everything since then only builds on that foundation. There is no pressure to be novel, only the responsibility to guard and accurately teach the ancient truths of God (1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 2:15).

This is exciting. Banner of Truth, my favorite publisher, is publishing a biography by Iain Murray, my favorite historian, of John MacArthur, my favorite preacher.

This interview from the 2011 Shepherds Conference includes commentary on Murray’s biography (the relevant section begins at 31:40).

John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock will be available from Westminster Bookstore in June. Clicking that link will contribute to the operation of this site, which is also one of my favorite things.

Outside of a tremendous mustache, there is not much to like about Friedrich Nietzsche. I only half agree with his most famous statement, which titles this post. That half is illustrated in real life by the persecuted church.

John MacArthur shares lessons learned from ministry in the former Soviet Union:

Over the years I have ministered quite a lot in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The church in those countries, repressed by Communism for so many decades, is nonetheless vibrant and dynamic today. One of the significant things that struck me when I first began to minister there was the terminology that virtually all Russian-speaking believers us to describe conversion. They do not speak of accepting Christ as one’s personal Savior. They would never say merely that someone ‘made a decision for Christ’ or that the person ‘invited Jesus into his or her life’. The language they use is simple and entirely biblical: the new believer is someone who has repented. If a person shows no evidence of repentance, he or she would not be embraced as a Christian, no matter what sort of verbal profession of faith was made . . . by contrast, we live in a culture of such shallow religion that most o what goes by the name ‘Christian’ in Western society has little or no emphasis on repentance of any kind. The call to repentance has been deliberately omitted from the most popular gospel presentations of our generation.

—John MacArthur, quoted in Iain Murray, John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock (Banner of Truth, 2011), 152.

Observing the vibrant spiritual life of the church “repressed by Communism for so many decades,” he wrote,

Your church’s greatest enemy isn’t the government, the culture, Hollywood producers, or the liberal media. Scripture states and history confirms that churches are strengthened under persecution and adversity. If our churches are to be destroyed, or rendered ineffective and stagnant, that will happen at the hands of her own people . . . One of my greatest fears for the church I pastor is that we would unwittingly abandon the vital principles that keep us healthy, growing, and strong. The day we cease clinging to those principles is the day we grow cold and dishonor God before a watching world. —Ibid., 153.

On the American penchant for turning faith into a means of “getting more from God”:

As I have studied God’s word and experienced both the exhilaration of spiritual victory and the discouragement of failure, I’m convinced the key to powerful living is not on getting more from God. The key is just the opposite. The moment we stop making demands on Him and offer ourselves as a living sacrifice is the moment we begin to please Him . . . From my own experience I know that being a living sacrifice is not an easy path. But sacrifice is absolutely necessary if we are ever to know the fullness of God’s blessing and render to Him the service He is due. —Ibid.

John MacArthur has lately been criticized for claiming never to have suffered from depression. It is thought that that can’t possibly be true, or if it is, it exposes some great defect. I believe it is an evidence of grace in his life, and not difficult to believe at all. The source of that emotional stability, I believe, can be seen in the following excerpt from Iain Murray.

The greatest privilege of my ministry that I have, is not the time I spend with people, it is the time I get to spend with Him. And the cultivation of the knowledge of Him in the study of the Word of God, and prayer and meditation, is the heart and soul of my life and the greatest joy of the ministry for me. Whatever may happen out there, or might not happen out there, whatever changes or doesn’t change, whatever disappoints or encourages, the Lord never changes; and it is in His love that I find the constancy for my life, the strength for ministry, and the joy as well.

—John MacArthur, quoted in Iain Murray, John MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock (Banner of Truth, 2011), 238.

How much more spiritually, mentally, and emotionally stable might we all be if our thoughts were more focused on our Lord and his Word, and our expectations invested wholly in him?