James Smith was a predecessor of Charles Spurgeon at New Park Street Chapel in London from 1841 until 1850. Early on, Smith’s readings were even more popular than Spurgeon’s!
The habit of laying up a text of Scripture in the morning, to be meditated upon while engaged in the business of this world through the day—is both profitable and delightful. It is as a refreshing draught to a weary traveler!
Love Photographs them in the Heart! – William Thoseby (Christian devotional)
Isaiah 57:1 The righteous perish,
and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil.
2 Those who walk uprightly
enter into peace;
they find rest as they lie in death.
William Thoseby (1835-1905)
Early years
William was born on 20 July 1835 at Grassington, Yorkshire to parents James and Mary. William was baptised on 2 August 1835 at Linton in Craven, Yorkshire. When William was very young the family moved to Mount Tabor, nr Halifax and when he was 8, the family moved to Keighley.
William was converted in June 1856 after attending a Sunday School Anniversary service at Morton Banks, nr Keighley. William immediately set himself to spiritual growth and mental improvement. Two years later he became a local preacher.
William supplied for Rev John Nassau at Keighley in 1859 from July to September. He then moved to Kings Lynn, Norfolk; the circuit from which he was pledged the following year.
Ministry
William was involved in building a chapel, schoolroom and minister’s house at Colne, Lancashire. It was there he met W. P. Hartley who laid a memorial stone and assisted with the fundraising. It was the day of the opening of that chapel that William lost his wife, Hannah, following the birth of a daughter.
In his last appointment, William was responsible for building the church and school at Knaresborough.
William attended conference twice and was a General Committee delegate in 1895.
He was thoroughly evangelical in his preaching; his sermons and speeches were full of pathos, interest and point, and were well thought out from a mind richly stored with biblical history and general knowledge. He sent the truth home to the hearts of the people with power and conviction.
As a public speaker he was frank, fearless and oftentimes eloquent.
Family
William married Hannah Holmes (1837-1881) on 6 July 1864 at Queen St Chapel, Keighley, Yorkshire. Rev John Harvey officiated. Census returns identify seven children.
Paulina Mary (1865-1942) – married William Boothman, a council school caretaker (1911)
Hannah Maria (b1868) – a dressmaker (1891); known as Annie; married Richard Eatough, a railway goods clerk
Alice Octavia Agnes (1869-1959) – a clerk; married William E Ashworth in 1930
Albert Edward Victor (1872-1947) – a secondary school teacher
Helena Gertrude (1874-1922) – married Richard Henry Horsfield, a stone quarry manager (1901)
Lily Rose (1875-1963) – married Hartley Wood, a draper
Hannah Louisa (1881-1968) – married Edwin Kitching, a joiner
William married Isabella Lonsdale (1854-1930) in the spring of 1882 at Colne, Lancashire. Census returns identify five children.
Ethel Isabella (1883-1911) – an assistant school teacher (1911)
Winifred Sophia (1885-1971) – an assistant school teacher (1911)
John Norman Lonsdale (1887-1956) – doctor
Daisy Grace (b1888) – married Frederic Vivian Preston, a civil servant
William Arthur (1890-1892)
William died on 15 January 1905 at Knaresborough, Yorkshire.
Living as Christians in an evil world; the opportunity for evangelism; facing the facts; the inward man; the renewal of the inward man.
The Inward Man – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Sermon
2 Corinthians 4:16New International Version (NIV)
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (20 December 1899 — 1 March 1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
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Puritan Thomas Boston – Take Heed Therefore How Ye Hear
Luke 8:18 Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.
Born in 1676, in the town of Duns, in the Border country of Scotland, Thomas Boston learned through his childhood experiences to sympathise with the Presbyterian cause. His father, John Boston, was a strong opponent of Prelacy; and for this Nonconformity, he suffered a period of imprisonment. Thomas spent at least one night in Duns jail with him “to keep him company.” When James II, in 1687, gave liberty of worship to dissenters from the Established Church—which he did out of regard for his RC subjects, John Boston was not slow to avail himself of his new-found liberty. He used to wait on the ministry of Henry Erskine, the father of Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, with whom Thomas Boston was to be so closely associated in after years in making a stand for the free offer of the Gospel. It was while attending one of these services that Thomas, then a boy of 11, was converted. He refers to the event in his Soliloquy on the Art of Man-fishing, which he published while still a young licentiate.
After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he was licensed as a preacher of the gospel in 1697. But he was not ordained until 1699, when he became minister of the parish of Simprin. It was there that he first preached the sermons which were later published under the title of Human Nature in its Fourfold State. Simprin was a discouraging field of service, but under his zealous ministry it became, to quote his own description, “a field which the Lord has blessed.”
In 1707, Boston was transferred to the parish of Ettrick, where he found the people sadly divided by separatism. The Cameronians, who repudiated the Revolution Settlement of 1688, stood aloof from his ministry, and, while among the parishioners generally there was much zeal for the church, there was but little vital godliness. Not until 1710, three years after his induction to Ettrick, did Boston dispense the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper there; and, indeed, even after laboring for a further five years there, he concluded that all had been in vain. But when, in 1716, he received a call to Closeburn, his people at Ettrick showed the utmost anxiety at the prospect of losing their minister. But the transferral never took place. Boston stayed at Ettrick and witnessed a great work of grace in what had been a spiritual wilderness. It is noteworthy that whereas at his first dispensation of the Lord’s Supper there, only some 60 persons communicated, at his last communion, in 1731, the number of participants was 777.
It was during his Ettrick ministry that his Fourfold State was first published, and by it his ministry was extended far and wide. But the doctrinal content of those discourses had been greatly influenced by his discovery, in a humble home in Simprin, of Edward Fisher’s treatise The Marrow of Modern Divinity. This little book had the effect of giving Boston a fuller insight into the grace of God as the sole cause of salvation; and it immediately “gave a tincture,” as he put it, to his preaching.
Boston was a man of scholarly attainments, a first-class Hebraist, and a theologian of such eminence that Jonathan Edwards judged him to have been “a truly great divine.” Never a robust man, he had a full share of tribulation, as his Autobiography so touchingly shows. He left behind him 12 volumes of collected writings. The two books which did most to extend his ministry throughout Scotland, and even England and America, were The Crook in the lot and Human Nature in its Fourfold State.
Into the presence of God; an accusing conscience; the pollution of sin; a sincere heart; a new and living way; a firm foundation; it is sufficient; one remaining problem.
The Power of Prayer – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Sermon
Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (20 December 1899 — 1 March 1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
Thank you to the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recordings Trust for permission to use this audio sermon. http://www.mljtrust.org/
Content Users may not:
Sell the Content, or cause the Content to be sold, or use the Content for any commercial purpose;
Edit the Content or use abbreviated clips from the Content (if the Content is to be broadcast or copied, sermons must in all cases be copied or broadcast in their entirety).
1 Timothy 1:15 This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. 16 Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. 17 Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Dr. Joel R. Beeke is president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, a pastor of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, editor of Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books, president of Inheritance Publishers, and vice-president of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society. He has written, co-authored, or edited seventy books (most recently, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life, Living Zealously, Friends and Lovers: Cultivating Companionship and Intimacy in Marriage, Getting Back Into the Race: The Cure for Backsliding, Parenting by God’s Promises: How to Raise Children in the Covenant of Grace, Living for the Glory of God: An Introduction to Calvinism, Meet the Puritans, Contagious Christian Living, Calvin for Today, Developing a Healthy Prayer Life, and Taking Hold of God), and contributed 2,000 articles to Reformed books, journals, periodicals, and encyclopedias. His Ph.D. is in Reformation and Post-Reformation theology from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia). He is frequently called upon to lecture at seminaries and to speak at Reformed conferences around the world. He and his wife Mary have been blessed with three children: Calvin, Esther, and Lydia.
A. W. Tozer Sermon – Whom Having Not Seen, Ye Love
1 Peter 1:7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory
Shortly before his death, Tozer wrote: “Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne.” I am convinced that Aiden Wilson Tozer himself was such a man.
In his 1948 classic The Pursuit of God, Tozer challenged the stiff and wooden quality of many Christian lives. He noted: “Complacency is the deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people.” Indeed, Tozer believed that thirst for God was the sign of coming revival.
Tozer’s passion for a deeper knowledge of God led him to study the great devotional writers of the past. “These people know God, and I want to know what they know about God and how they came to know it,” he observed. Prayer and worship were the hallmarks of his life. One biographer states that his preaching as well as his writings were simply an extension of his prayer life. Another noted that Tozer spent more time on his knees than at his desk.
He called for a return to astonishment and wonder at the majesty of God. Then he added: “The God of the modern evangelical rarely astonishes anybody. He manages to stay pretty much within the constitution;very well-behaved, very denominational and very much one of us.”
In modern evangelicalism, contended Tozer, we work, we have our agendas–in fact, we have almost everything except the spirit of true worship. He defined worship as a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe, astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of the unspeakable Majesty. He reminded the pastors, “We’re here to be worshippers first and workers only second; Out of enraptured, admiring, adoring souls God does His work. The work done by a worshipper will have eternity in it.”
Tozer believed that worship rises and falls with our concept of God and that if there was one terrible disease in the modern church, it was that we do not see God as great as He is: “We’re too familiar with God. …that is why I do not believe in these half-converted cowboys who call God `the Man Upstairs’.”
In the Preface to The Knowledge of the Holy, his last book, Tozer stated how important our view of God is: “The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. .. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error.”
Tozer addressed the state of the evangelical church even more bluntly in Keys to the Deeper Life. In a chapter entitled “No Revival Without Reformation”, he stated: “A widespread revival of the kind of Christianity we know today in America might prove to be a moral tragedy from which we would not recover in a hundred years.” The imperative need of the day, he affirmed, was not simply revival but a radical reformation that went to the root of our moral and spiritual maladies: “Prayer for revival will prevail when it is accompanied by radical amendment of life; not before.”
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
John Fullerton MacArthur, Jr. (born June 19, 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is a United States evangelical writer and minister, noted for his radio program entitled Grace to You. MacArthur is a fifth-generation pastor, a popular author and conference speaker, and has served as the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969, and as the President of The Master’s College (and the related The Master’s Seminary) in Santa Clarita, California.
Theologically, MacArthur is a conservative Baptist, a strong proponent of expository preaching, a dispensationalist and a Calvinist. He has been acknowledged by Christianity Today as one of the most influential preachers of his time, and is a frequent guest on Larry King Live as representative of an evangelical Christian perspective.
MacArthur has authored or edited more than 150 books, most notably the MacArthur Study Bible, which has sold more than 1 million copies and received a Gold Medallion Book Award. Other best-selling books include his MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series (more than 1 million copies), Twelve Ordinary Men, (more than 500,000 copies), and the children’s book A Faith to Grow On, which garnered an ECPA Christian Book Award.
The son of Jack MacArthur (an accomplished preacher in his own right), John MacArthur was an athlete and attended Bob Jones University before transferring to Los Angeles Pacific College (now Azusa Pacific University). He later obtained his Masters of Divinity from Biola University’s Talbot Theological Seminary, in La Mirada, California. He graduated with honors. From 1964 to 1966, he served as an associate pastor at Calvary Bible Church, in Burbank, California and, from 1966 to 1969, as a faculty representative for Talbot Theological Seminary. Then, in 1969, he became the third pastor in the then-short history of the nondenominational Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California.
His daily radio program, Grace to You, which is now broadcast throughout much of the world, began as an audio recording ministry to provide cassettes of his sermons to church members who were unable to attend. They were first broadcast in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1977.
In 1985, MacArthur became the president of The Master’s College (formerly Los Angeles Baptist College), an accredited, four-year, liberal arts Christian college; and, in 1986, he founded The Master’s Seminary.
MacArthur received a doctorate from Talbot Theological Seminary and an honorary doctorate from Grace Graduate School.
Archibald Brown (Christian devotional) – Actions, Words, Desires
Psalm 84:2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Psalm 42
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
In his biography of Archibald G. Brown, Iain Murray writes that instead of following his father to wealth in commerce and banking, Archibald Brown built a church to hold 3,000 in the East End of London while still in his twenties. Five thousand eight hundred were to join in 30 years. Almost simultaneously he led mission work among the poor, being described by the Daily Telegraph newspaper as possessing ‘a larger practical acquaintance with the homes, and the social horrors of the foulest corners of the East of London than anyone who could well be cited.’
When his health demanded a change, AGB (as he was popularly known) served other churches, including the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, before a last decade of extensive travel with a temporary home in South Africa. After Spurgeon died (1892), Brown was a foremost leader among those for whom Christian preaching still meant ‘love, blood, and power’. It was written of him in 1913 ‘No man of modern times, of his school of thought, can command larger audiences.’ Few spoke with more sympathy and tenderness, characteristics deepened by bereavements and the heart-felt realization that, ‘We have to perform our service in the same Spirit in which our Lord worked, and our measure of power will be according to the measure of Christ’s Spirit which we possess.’
After days of revival, AGB lived to see adverse changes in the churches. What a majority accepted as progress, he saw as apostasy, and as the Christian faith waned in Britain, his life came to be remembered by few. But truth that comes from Scripture cannot die. Those who read him today will find him alive, and his life opens a window on New Testament Christianity.
A Christian Manifesto, by Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer
This address was delivered by the late Dr. Schaeffer in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is based on one of his books, which bears the same title.
“Christians, in the last 80 years or so, have only been seeing things as bits and pieces which have gradually begun to trouble them and others, instead of understanding that they are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one; things such as overpermissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things.
“All of these things and many more are only the results. We may be troubled with the individual thing, but in reality we are missing the whole thing if we do not see each of these things and many more as only symptoms of the deeper problem. And that is the change in our society, a change in our country, a change in the Western world from a Judeo-Christian consensus to a Humanistic one. That is, instead of the final reality that exists being the infinite creator God; instead of that which is the basis of all reality being such a creator God, now largely, all else is seen as only material or energy which has existed forever in some form, shaped into its present complex form only by pure chance.
“I want to say to you, those of you who are Christians or even if you are not a Christian and you are troubled about the direction that our society is going in, that we must not concentrate merely on the bits and pieces. But we must understand that all of these dilemmas come on the basis of moving from the Judeo-Christian world view — that the final reality is an infinite creator God — over into this other reality which is that the final reality is only energy or material in some mixture or form which has existed forever and which has taken its present shape by pure chance.”
Francis Schaeffer (January, 30 1912 – May 15, 1984) was an internationally known Christian scholar, thinker, and pastor who, along with his wife Edith, founded L’Abri Fellowship. He is known for his prominent stance against both Secular and Religious Modernism (Liberalism), Existentialism, and Secular Naturalism. His sweeping analysis of historical movements, culture, the arts, and government, and his writings have continued to influence many in fields from philosophy, theology, and the arts to general science. Likewise, his particular take on presuppositional apologetics has continued to be a significant discussion in Christian apologetics. Numerous Christian scholars today give credance to Schaeffer’s teaching for both opening their intellect, as well as having been a substantial influence in their lives and ministries.
Schaeffer is known for a significant group of teachings that both encapsulate the historic Protestant Christian position and also form a significant response to Liberalism. Here is a general list:
An emphasis on the inerrancy of scripture.
The Biblical emphasis on the dignity of mankind as created in the image of God.
The stance for santity of LIFE and the stance against abortion, infanticide and euthenasia.
The understanding of “true-truth,” as substantial truth for life and godliness.
A moment-by-moment spirituality that brings reality in the Christian walk.
The call to a life of prayer.
An intellectual spirituality and apologetic that engages both the heart and the mind.
The belief in the need to give honest answers to honest questions.
An emphasis on the role of sincere hospitality in evangelism.
A proper Christian worldview and worldview thinking.
A cultural apologetic that engages culture and informs the mind.
The application of Biblical truth to the whole of life, even government.
Standing for Biblical truth without compromise in the midst of a post-Christian culture.
The practice of a proper balance of truth and love. (“Truth without love is ugly and love without truth is compromise.”)
The belief that pre-evangelism is no soft option.
The emphasis on a presuppositional approach to apologetics.
The “Final Apologetic,” (Jn. 17:20-21) the practice and balance of living out an observable love toward true Christians without compromise, as a demonstration to a watching world, so that the world may know that God sent His Son.
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