Last Sermon by Puritan John Bunyan – Preached July 1688
John Bunyan playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4B11CC7D2B75ABF2
John Bunyan – (1628-1688), Puritan author
John Bunyan had very little schooling. He followed his father in the tinker’s trade, and he served in the parliamentary army from1644 to 1647. Bunyan married in 1649 and lived in Elstow until 1655, when his wife died. He then moved to Bedford, and married again in 1659. John Bunyan was received into the Baptist church in Bedford by immersion in 1653.
In 1655, Bunyan became a deacon and began preaching, with marked success from the start. In 1658 he was indicted for preaching without a license. The authorities were fairly tolerant of him for a while, and he did not suffer imprisonment until November of 1660, when he was taken to the county jail in Silver Street, Bedford, and there confined (with the exception of a few weeks in 1666) for 12 years until January 1672. Bunyan afterward became pastor of the Bedford church. In March of 1675 he was again imprisoned for preaching publicly without a license, this time being held in the Bedford town jail. In just six months this time he was freed, (no doubt the authorities were growing weary of providing Bunyan with free shelter and food) and he was not bothered again by the authorities.
John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in two parts, of which the first appeared at London in 1678,which he had begun during his imprisonment in 1676. The second part appeared in 1684. The earliest edition in which the two parts were combined in one volume came out in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693. The Pilgrim’s Progress is the most successful allegory ever written, and like the Bible has been extensively translated into other languages.
John Bunyan wrote many other books, including one which discussed his inner life and reveals his preparation for his appointed work is Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a very voluminous author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a Puritan, but not a partisan. He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but that he knew thoroughly. He also drew much influence from Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.
Some time before his final release from prison Bunyan became involved in a controversy with two theologians of his day: Kiffin and Paul. In 1673 he published his Differences in Judgement about Water-Baptism no Bar to Communion, in which he took the ground that “the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of the communion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint of the word, the Christian that walketh according to his own light with God.” While he agreed as a Baptist that water baptism was God’s ordinance, he refused to make “an idol of it,” and he disagreed with those who would dis-fellowship from Christians who did not adhere to water baptism
Kiffin and Paul published a rejoinder in Serious Reflections (London, 1673), in which they set forth the argument in favor of the restriction of the Lord’s Supper to baptized believers. The controversy resulted in the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists leaving the question of communion with the unbaptized open. Bunyan’s church permitted pedobaptists (those who baptize children, such as the Calvinistic Presbyterian Church) to fellowship and eventually, Bunyans church even became a pedobaptist church.
On a trip to London, John Bunyan caught a severe cold, and he died at the house of a friend at Snow Hill on August 31, 1688. His grave lies in the cemetery at Bunhill Fields in London.
John MacDuff – The World’s Pleasures (Christian devotional)
John MacDuff playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=229C974C428D7BE8
1 Chronicles 4:10New International Version (NIV)
10 Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.
1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father[a] is not in them.
JOHN MACDUFF (1818 – 1895)
“For sound doctrine, presented Scripturally
and devotionally, with its application to the
Christian life, you cannot go beyond MacDuff.”
“MacDuff writes popularly, yet he is by no
means shallow. For an hour’s pleasant and
holy reading, commend us to MacDuff!”
—Charles Spurgeon
Macduff, John Ross, D.D., second son of Alexander Macduff, of Bonhard, near Perth, was born at Bonhard, May 23, 1818. After studying at the University of Edinburgh, he became in 1842 parish minister of Kettins, Forfarshire, in 1849 of St. Madoes, Perthshire, and in 1855 of Sandyford, Glasgow. He received the degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1862, and about the same time also from the University of New York. He retired from pastoral work in 1871, lived at Chislehurst, Kent and died in 1887. He has published many practical and devotional works which have attained a wide circulation. In 1857 he was appointed by the General Assembly a member of their Hymnal Committee. His 31 hymns appeared in his Altar Stones, 1853, and were also included with his later poems in his The Gates of Praise, 1876.
A large video collection of classic hymns, contemporary Praise and Worship songs, and the works (audio books, devotional readings, and sermons) of men greatly used of God, such as: Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Tozer, A.W. Pink, John Owen, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray, E.M. Bounds, John Bunyan, George Whitefield, and many more, covering topics on many aspects of the Christian life. May your time spent here be blessed.
http://vid.io/x3F
Kenneth Stewart Sermon – Signs And Weakness
Judges 6:36 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised— 37 look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” 38 And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water. 39 Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” 40 That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.
Kenneth Stewart Sermons playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzOwqed_gET1oeBpxhSLRurtYEDNq4-y9
Link to my “Christian Devotional Readings” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Devotional-Readings/196846270398160?ref=hl
Charles Spurgeon Sermon – Samson Conquered
http://www.puritanaudiobooks.net
Judges 16:20 She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. 21 Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison.
Charles Spurgeon Sermon Playlist 2: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAFB98CCADC2677AF
Link to my “Christian Devotional Readings” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Devotional-Readings/196846270398160?ref=hl
http://www.sermonaudio.com/main.asp
Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (June 19, 1834 January 31, 1892) was a British Reformed Baptist preacher who remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is still known as the “Prince of Preachers.” In his lifetime, Spurgeon preached to around 10,000,000 people, often up to 10 times a week at different places. His sermons have been translated into many languages. Spurgeon was the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years. In 1857, he started a charity organization called Spurgeon’s which now works globally. He also founded Spurgeon’s College, which was named after him after his death.
Spurgeon was a prolific author of many types of works including sermons, an autobiography, a commentary, books on prayer, a devotional, a magazine, and more. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime. Arguably, no other author, Christian or otherwise, has more material in print than C.H. Spurgeon.
A large video collection of classic hymns, contemporary Praise and Worship songs, and the works (audio books, devotional readings, and sermons) of men greatly used of God, such as: Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Tozer, A.W. Pink, John Owen, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray, E.M. Bounds, John Bunyan, George Whitefield, and many more, covering topics on many aspects of the Christian life. May your time spent here be blessed.
http://vid.io/x3F
A. W. Tozer Sermon – The Deeper Life
Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
A. W. Tozer playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=66987CD6E419E258
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.”
Dr. James White – The Foundation of Truth (Romans 1)
Dr. James White playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA6856749491A71CA
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries ( http://www.aomin.org/ ), a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a professor, having taught Greek, Systematic Theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics. He has authored or contributed to more than twenty books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter’s Freedom, and The God Who Justifies. He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than one-hundred moderated, public debates with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormonism, as well as critics such as Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and John Shelby Spong. He is an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, has been married to Kelli for more than twenty-eight years, and has two children, Joshua and Summer.
A large video collection of classic hymns, contemporary Praise and Worship songs, and the works (audio books, devotional readings, and sermons) of men greatly used of God, such as: Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Tozer, A.W. Pink, John Owen, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray, E.M. Bounds, John Bunyan, George Whitefield, and many more, covering topics on many aspects of the Christian life. May your time spent here be blessed.
http://vid.io/x3F
James Smith – God is Love (Christian devotional)
1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
James Smith playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=096D74E48C1F1243
The links to my recently released new album, “A Message of Hope.” The album is available on iTunes and Amazon:
https://itunes.apple.com/album/a-message-of-hope/id731510259
Link to my “Christian Devotional Readings” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christian-Devotional-Readings/196846270398160?ref=hl
A Treasury of Ageless,
Sovereign Grace,
Devotional Writings http://www.gracegems.org/
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!
End Times / Last Days – Oswald Chambers
Oswald Chambers playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=10F140787559EB2B
Last Days End Times playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLB227FC75AC58D3E4
Premillennialism: Christ’s Second coming before a literal one thousand year period, known by some as a thousand-year sabbath, is preceded by a gradual deterioration of human society and behavior, and the expansion of evil through an endtime government or kingdom. This school of thought can be divided into three main interpretations: Dispensational, Mid-tribulation/Prewrath and Historic Premillennialism or Post-Tribulation viewpoint.
Dispensational Premillennialism: The rapture of the church occurs just prior to the seven-year tribulation, where Christ returns for his saints to meet them in the air. This is followed by the tribulation, the rise of the Antichrist to world-rule, the return of Christ to the Mount of Olives and Armageddon, resulting in a millennial reign of Messiah over the Jews, centered in restored Jerusalem.
Prewrath/Mid-tribulation View: The rapture of the church occurs in the midst of the seven-year period. Mid-tribulation view holds that the rapture occurs halfway through; Prewrath holds that the rapture occurs some time in the midst of the tribulation in the latter 3.5 years, but before God’s wrath is poured out upon the nations.
Historic Premillennialism or Post-Tribulation View: The rapture of the church (the body of true believers) happens after a period of great tribulation, with the church being caught up to meet Christ in the air and will accompany him to earth to share in his (literal or figurative) thousand year rule.
Postmillennialism: Christ’s Second coming is seen as occurring after the one-thousand years, which many in this school of thought believe is ushered in by the church. This view is also divided into two sub-schools of interpretation:
Revivalist Postmillennialism: the millennium represents an unknown period of time marked by a gradual Christian revival, followed by widespread successful evangelism. After these efforts is the return of Christ foreseen.
Reconstructionist Postmillennialism: the Church increases its influence through successful evangelism and expansion, finally establishing a theocratic kingdom of 1,000 years duration (literal or figurative) followed by the return of Christ.
Amillennialism: Non-literal “thousand years” or long age between Christ’s first and second comings; the millennial reign of Christ as pictured in the book of Revelation is viewed now as Christ reigning at the right hand of the Father. It can be hard to draw a fine line between Amillenialism and Revivalist Postmillenialism. Amillenialism tends to believe society will, through growing rebellion, continue to deteriorate, while Postmillenialism believes the Church will influence the world producing greater righteousness.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) was born July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Converted in his teen years under the ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he studied art and archaeology at the University of Edinburgh before answering a call from God to the Christian ministry. He then studied theology at Dunoon College. From 1906-1910 he conducted an itinerant Bible-teaching ministry in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.
In 1910, Chambers married Gertrude Hobbs. They had one daughter, Kathleen.
In 1911 he founded and became principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham, London, where he lectured until the school was closed in 1915 because of World War I. In October 1915 he sailed for Zeitoun, Egypt (near Cairo), where he ministered to troops from Australia and New Zealand as a YMCA chaplain. He died there November 15, 1917, following surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Although Oswald Chambers wrote only one book, Baffled to Fight Better, more than thirty titles bear his name. With this one exception, published works were compiled by Mrs. Chambers, a court stenographer, from her verbatim shorthand notes of his messages taken during their seven years of marriage. For half a century following her husband’s death she labored to give his words to the world.
My Utmost For His Highest, his best-known book, has been continuously in print in the United States since 1935 and remains in the top ten titles of the religious book bestseller list with millions of copies in print. It has become a Christian classic.
Dr. Cornelius Van Til – The Christian View of Education and Culture
Cornelius Van Til Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987), born in The Netherlands, was a Christian philosopher, Reformed theologian, and presuppositional apologist.
Born on May 3, 1895, in Grootegast, The Netherlands he was the sixth son of Ite and Klazina Van Til, who emigrated to the United States when “Kees,” as he was known to friends, was 10. He grew up helping on the family farm in Highland, Indiana.
Van Til graduated from Calvin College in 1922, receiving a ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1925 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1927. He began teaching at Princeton, but shortly went with the conservative group who founded Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for forty-three years of his life as a professor of apologetics.
He was also a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church from the 1930s until his death in 1987, and in that denomination, he was embroiled in a bitter dispute with Gordon Clark over God’s incomprehensibility known as the Clark-Van Til Controversy in which, according to John Frame, neither man was at his best and neither quite understood the other’s position.
Van Til is perhaps best known for the development of a fresh approach to the task of defending the Christian faith. Although trained in traditional methods he drew on the insights of fellow Calvinistic philosophers Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd to formulate what he viewed as a more consistently Christian methodology. His apologetic focused on the role of presuppositions, the point of contact between believers and unbelievers, and the antithesis between Christian and non-Christian worldviews.
He didn’t particularly care for the label describing his approach as “presuppositional,” which more accurately represents the apologetical method of Gordon Clark, but he (and his students) accepted it as a matter of convention because it is at least useful in grouping methods into those which deny neutrality and those which do not.
In Van Til: The Theologian, Frame, a sympathetic critic of Van Til, describes Van Til’s contributions to Christian thought as comparable in magnitude to those of Immanuel Kant in non-Christian philosophy. He indicates that Van Til identified the disciplines of systematic theology and apologetics, seeing the former as a positive statement of the Christian faith and the latter as a defense of that statement — “a difference in emphasis rather than of subject matter.” Frame summarizes Van Til’s legacy as one of new applications of traditional doctrines:
Unoriginal as his doctrinal formulations may be, his use of those formulations — his application of them — is often quite remarkable. The sovereignty of God becomes an epistemological, as well as a religious and metaphysical principle. The Trinity becomes the answer to the philosophical problem of the one and the many. Common grace becomes the key to a Christian philosophy of history. These new applications of familiar doctrines inevitably increase [Christians’] understanding of the doctrines themselves, for [they] come thereby to a new appreciation of what these doctrines demand of [them].
