Guthrie

William Guthrie was a pastor in Fenwick, Scotland in the 17th century. He had a great zeal for the salvation of souls. One time he was traveling home from a meeting when he got lost in the darkness and mist of the moor. He prayed that God would lead him to safety. Eventually he made it to a farmer's house and he was given safe haven that evening. The lady of the house was in the throes of death, and a Catholic priest was there giving her the last rites. After the priest left, Guthrie went to the woman and asked if she had received peace to die. She said she had not. So Guthrie shared with her the gospel, and he prayed with her that her heart would be opened to the truth. His prayer was answered as she died rejoicing in the Savior. When he finally made it home, his worried wife asked where he spent the night: he said, "I came to a farmhouse where I saw a great wonder. I found a woman in a state of nature; I saw her in a state of grace; and I left her in a state of glory."

Truth

"Peace if possible, but truth at all costs." Martin Luther

Joy in Conversion

"From the very early days of my ministry in London, the Lord gave such an abundant blessing upon the proclamation of His truth that whenever I was able to appoint a time for seeing converts and enquirers it was seldom, if ever, that I waited in vain; and usually, so many came, that I was quite overwhelmed with gratitude and Thanksgiving to God. On one occasion, I had a very singular experience, which enabled me to realise the meaning of our Lord's answer to His disciples' question at the well of Sychar, "Hath any man brought Him aught to eat? Jesus saith unto them, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work."Leaving home early in the morning, I went to the chapel, and sat there all day long seeing those who had been brought to Christ by the preaching of the Word. Their stories were so interesting to me that the hours flew by without my noticing how fast they were going. I may have seen some thirty or more persons during the day, one after the other, and I was so delighted with the tales of mercy they had to tell me that I did not know anything about how the time passed. At seven o'clock we had our prayer meeting; I went in, and prayed with the brethren. After that came the church meeting. A little before ten o'clock, I felt faint, and I began to think about what hour I had my dinner, and then for the first time remembered that I had not had any! I never thought of It, I never even felt hungry, because God had made me so glad, and so satisfied with the Divine manna, the heavenly food of success in winning souls."

Autobiography of C.H. Spurgeon

Am I a Soldier of the Cross?

Am I a soldier of the cross,
a foll'wer of the Lamb,
and shall I fear to own his cause,
or blush to speak his name?

Must I be carried to the skies
on flow'ry beds of ease,
while others fought to win the prize,
and sailed through bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace,
to help me on to God?

Sure I must fight if I would reign:
increase my courage, Lord;
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
supported by thy Word.

Thy saints, in all this glorious war,
shall conquer, though they die;
they view the triumph from afar,
and seize it with their eye.

When that illustrious day shall rise,
and all thine armies shine
in robes of vict'ry through the skies,
the glory shall be thine.

Isaac Watts, 1724

Lazy Students of the Bible

A. W. Pink said the following in regard to the study of the Bible:

"The Bible is not designed for lazy people. Truth has to be bought (Prov. 23:23), but the slothful and worldly minded are not willing to pay the price required. That 'price' is intimated in Proverbs 2:1-5: there must be a diligent applying of the heart, a crying after knowledge, a seeking for an apprehension of spiritual things with the ardour and determination that men employ when seeking for silver; and a searching for a deeper and fuller knowledge of the truth such as men put forth when searching for hid treasures -- persevering until their quest is successful -- if we would really understand the things of God. Those who complain that these articles are 'too difficult' or 'too deep' for them, do but betray the sad state of their souls and reveal how little they really value the truth; otherwise they would ask God to enable them to concentrate, and re-read these pages perseveringly until they made their contents their own. People are willing to work and study hard and long to master one of the arts or sciences, but where spiritual and eternal things are concerned it is usually otherwise."

Saturday Evening

The Puritan George Swinnock encouraged his people to prepare their hearts on Saturday evening for Sunday morning worship:

"Spend some time in consideration of the infinite majesty, holiness, jealousy, and goodness, of that God, with whom thou art to have to do in sacred duties . . . thou canst not think the good thou mayest gain by such forethoughts, how pleasant and profitable a Lord's Day would be to thee after such a preparation. The oven of thine heart thus baked in, as it were, overnight, would be easily heated the next morning; the fire so well raked up when thou wentest to bed, would be sooner kindled when thou shouldest rise. If thou wouldest thus leave thy heart with God on the Saturday night, thou shouldest find it with him in the Lord's Day morning."

Pink on Hardship

A.W. Pink wrote the following exposition regarding Joshua 3:

Ponder this incident; visualize the scene before your mind's eye. It was not an army of men only, but a vast congregation of men, women and children, to say nothing of their baggage and herds of animals, and further advance was blocked by the river. Whatever the breadth and depth of the Jordan in recent centuries or today, it is evident that it presented an impassable obstruction in Joshua's time -- moreover, it was in flood at that particular season (Joshua 3:15): and yet they were left to gaze upon it for three days, faced with the fact that they had no means of their own for crossing it! Why? What was the Lord's object in this? Was it not to impress Israel more deeply with a realization of their own utter helplessness? Was it not to shut them up more completely unto himself?

And is not that, very often, the chief design of God's providential dealings with us? To bring us to the end of our own resources, to make us conscious of our own insufficiency, by bringing us into a situation from which we cannot extricate ourselves, confronting us with some obstacle which to human wit and might is insurmountable? By nature we are proud and self-reliant, ignorant of the fact that the arm of flesh is frail. And even when faced with difficulties, we seek to solve them by our own wisdom, or get out of a tight corner by our own efforts. But the Lord is graciously resolved to humble us, and therefore the difficulties are increased and the corner becomes tighter, and for a season we are left to ourselves -- as Israel was before the Jordan. It is not until we have duly weighed the difficulty and then discovered we have nothing of our own to place in the opposite scale, that we are really brought to realize our impotency, and turn unto him who alone can undertake for us and free us from our dilemma. But such dull scholars are we, that the lesson must be taught us again and yet again before we actually put it into practice.

Preaching the Whole Council of God

Spurgeon in making reference to a fair grounds said, "You have seen those mirrors . . . you walk up to them and you see your head ten times as large as your body, or you walk away and put yourself in another position, and then your feet are monstrous and the rest of your body is small; this is an ingenious toy, but I am sorry to say that many go to work with God's truth upon the model of this toy; they magnify one capital truth till it becomes monstrous; they minify and speak little of another truth till it becomes altogether forgotten."

The Tabernacle

"I sometimes think if I were in heaven I should almost wish to visit my work at the Tabernacle, to see whether it will abide the test of time and prosper when I am gone. Will you keep to the truth? Will you hold to the grand old doctrines of the gospel? Or will this church, like so many others, go astray from the simplicity of its faith, and set up gaudy services and false doctrine? Methinks I should turn over in my grave if such a thing could be. God forbid it! But there will be no coming back . . . We cannot return to save the burning mass, nor to rebuild the ruin, but we shall, doubtless, see and know what comes of it." C. H. Spurgeon

Spurgeon on Bunyan

Charles Spurgeon wrote the following about reading John Bunyan:

"Read anything of his, and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself. He had studied our Authorized Version, which will never be bettered, as I judge, till Christ shall come; he had read it till his whole being was saturated with Scripture . . . Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God."

Sovereignty

“This, then, is of faith, that everything, the very least, or what seems to us great, every change of the seasons, everything which touches us in mind, body, or estate, whether brought about through this outward senseless nature, or by the will of man, good or bad, is overruled to each of us by the all-holy and all-loving will of God. Whatever befalls us, however it befalls us, we must receive as the will of God. If it befalls us through man’s negligence, or ill-will, or anger, still it is, in even the least circumstance, to us the will of God. For if the least thing could happen to us without God’s permission, it would be something out of God’s control. God’s providence or His love would not be what they are. Almighty God Himself would not be the same God; not the God whom we believe, adore, and love.” (E.B. Pusey, 1800-1882)

Posted Meg Spear

The Church

Spurgeon said the following regarding the church:

"The chief wonder is that she abides perfect. Not one of God's elect has gone back; not one of the blood-bought has denied the faith. Not one single soul which ever was effectually called can be made to deny Christ, even though his flesh should be pulled from his bones by hot pincers, or his tormented body flung to the jaws of wild beasts. All that the enemy has done has been of no avail against the Church. The old rock has been washed, and washed, and washed again by stormy waves, and submerged a thousand times in the floods of tempest but even her angles and corners abide unaltered and unalterable. We may say of the Lord's tabernacle, not one of the stakes thereof has been removed, nor one of her cords been broken. The house of the Lord from foundation to pinnacle is perfect still: 'The rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house it fell not'; nor a single stone of it, 'for it was founded upon a rock.'"

Pray for Your Pastor

On one of his visits to the United States an American minister said to Charles Spurgeon, "I have long wished to see you, Mr. Spurgeon, and to put one or two simple questions to you. In our country there are many opinions as to the secret of your great influence. Would you be good enough to give me your own point of view?" After a minute's pause, Spurgeon responded, "My people pray for me."

The Church

"The church was not lacking in wealth, nor in men, nor in dignity, but it was sadly lacking in unction and power. There was a general tendency to forget the difference between human learning and the truth revealed by the Spirit of God. There was no scarcity of eloquence and culture in the pulpits, but there was a marked absence of the kind of preaching that broke men's hearts. Perhaps the worst sign of all was the fact that few were awake to these things."

No, this is not a description of the church in our day . . . although it could be. It is from Iain Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon, and it describes church life in England in the 1850's just before Spurgeon thundered on to the scene. So, indeed, there is hope!