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The Salvation Testimony Of Don Fortner
In May of 2019, the New Focus Conference was held at Gornal Baptist Church, Robert Street, in Dudley, West Midlands, England. Among the speakers was Don Fortner. He prefaced his sermon with a personal testimony on how the Lord brought his soul to a saving knowledge of Christ. Unknown to me at the time, my wife recorded the two minute testimony, for which I am forever grateful; not only to have a record of his testimony in his own voice, but to know that my grandfather, Jewell Smith, was the preacher under whom the Lord was pleased to open his understanding to the grace of God. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has not only put me into the ministry, but has been pleased…
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Paul Gerhardt And The Poetry Of Piety
Nowadays, it appears that our congregations seldom sing hymns depicting the sacrificial sufferings of Christ on the cross. When biographer Hugh I’Anson Fausset read William Cowper’s triumphant atonement hymn ‘There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins’, he reacted in disgust, calling the language ‘crude salvationism’, ‘barbarous’ and ‘hysterical’. This is perhaps why most of Paul Gerhardt’s 150 hymns, often sung by our fathers in the faith, are now almost unknown to the Christian youth of today. So, too, Gerhardt combined his teaching of Christ’s shed blood with hymns of solemn warning to unrepentant sinners and backsliding saints. Again, hardly themes for modern wishy-washy evangelism where Christ is presented as ‘Everybody’s Saviour’ whom we must love out of a sense of duty. …
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James Petigru Boyce (1827-1888): The Forgotten Baptist
When Christian conversation comes round to the topic of Systematic and Historical Theology, everybody seems to have a favourite. The first major theological book I ever owned on the subject was Berkof’s Systematic Theology given to me by my mother almost forty-five years ago. His Historical Theology soon followed. I then read Sheldon, Fisher, Bicknell, Gibson, Griffith Thomas, Dagg, the Hodges, Bavinck, Dabney, Shedd and others whose names I have long forgotten. I never forgot Berkof and still turn to him regularly for guidance. In recent years, however, he has received some earnest competition. In 1998, during a visit to a Founders’ Conference in Mansfield, Texas, I was given a copy of J. P. Boyce’s Abstract of Systematic Theology. When I confessed my ignorance of…
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The Life And Ministry Of Joseph Tanner
For some little time before his last short but severe illness, he had been unusually better in health, and remarked to a dear friend, with whom he was walking from chapel on the last Sunday he ever left his home, how much better and stronger he felt; and his voice in preaching that day was observed to be particularly clear and full. He preached in the morning from Job 5:17, 18. On Tuesday morning, Jan. 22nd, he was seized with his last fatal attack, commencing at first with every symptom of a severe cold and bilious sickness, accompanied by spasmodic pain; but he was able to sit up until evening, when his bed was warmed and he went to it, never more to rise. Having…
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Jan Laski (1499-1560) Pan-European Reformer
We Reformed Evangelicals often mope that our age is the least spiritual and Bible-believing on record but there is one advantage we have over previous years, namely the rapid improvement taking place in our knowledge of former saints. It appears that our sovereign Lord is now equipping us with examples from the past to help us establish the faith in our spheres of service for the future. In my youth, few Christians had heard of George Whitefield, John Cennick, Ambrose Searle, James Hervey, Robert Traill, William Huntington, Joseph Hall, John Gill or even Jonathan Edwards. Their precious memory had fallen into oblivion. Nowadays, their works are easily available alongside those of Abraham Booth, John Brine, John Newton, John Jewel, Joseph Hall, George Abbott and other…
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The Life And Ministry Of Polycarp
The life of Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, and bishop of Smyrna, a martyr and faithful minister of Jesus Christ. His character was excellent to a very high degree. The Christians of his time speak of him with the greatest respect, declaring that he was adorned with eminent piety, a teacher truly apostolical; and even spoken of by the Gentiles themselves as an eminent teacher and a famous martyr. After having been 86 years a shining ornament of Christianity, he was crowned with martyrdom, by being burnt at Smyrna, aged 100 years. Polycarp was born towards the latter end of Nero’s reign, that is, about seventy years after the incarnation of our blessed Lord; The place of his birth is not certainly known; some…
Further Study
70. Polycarp
