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193 pages

English

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A collection of Writings that Shaped the Life and Ministry of Charles SurgeonMore than 100 years after his death, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) is still known as the Prince of Preachers. It is estimated that he spoke to ten million people in his lifetime. A British Baptist pastor, he remains highly influential among Christians of many denominations. In his writings and sermons he often warmly alluded to writers and their works. The selections in this volume touch on areas of importance and interest to today's readers. This book belongs in every pastor's and thinking Christian's library.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christianity

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 mars 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441270115
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0518€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2012 by James Stuart Bell
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7011-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Other versions are used in the excerpts but not identified.
Cover design by John Hamilton Design
Author is represented by Whitestone Communications, Inc.
I dedicate this book to Greg Shaw, friend and neighbor, who has a passion for the writings of the spiritual giants who’ve gone before us.
Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Worship: The Chief End of Man
2. The Power of Prayer
3. Exhortations and Prophetic Words
4. Jesus Christ: Savior and Friend
5. Missions and Evangelism
6. God’s Word and Christian Doctrine
7. Life in the Kingdom of God
8. Obstacles and Adversaries
Author Biographies
Excerpts Taken From . . .
Author Index
About the Author
Back Cover
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the staff at Bethany House, especially Kyle Duncan, for supporting the value of exploring the libraries of great Christians and sharing those contributions to the spiritual formation of these men used powerfully by God. This volume follows From the Library of A. W. Tozer , and it is my hope that Spurgeon’s library will be just as edifying to the reader. I also want to thank my colleague Sam O’Neal for his invaluable assistance.
Introduction

A fifteen-year-old boy was sitting in the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Colchester, England, when the preacher turned his way and said: “Young man, you look very miserable. You always will be miserable miserable in life and miserable in death if you don’t obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment you will be saved.”
The young man on the receiving end of this admonition was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text in question was Isaiah 45:22, where God says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”
Spurgeon did look unto God in that moment, and what he saw made an immediate and profound impact. “I had this vision,” he later recalled in his autobiography, “not a vision to my eyes, but to my heart. I saw what a Savior Christ was. . . . Now I can never tell you how it was, but I no sooner saw whom I was to believe than I also understood what it was to believe, and I did believe in one moment.”
One moment changed the course of Spurgeon’s life forever. More, it changed the course of the church he served more than forty years, eventually establishing himself as one of the finest preachers the world has ever known.
A Short Biography
Born in 1834, C. H. Spurgeon was raised alternately in the homes of his father and grandfather, both of whom were nonconformist (non-Anglican) ministers in the Calvinist mode. Even so, the man later called “the Prince of Preachers” didn’t mesh well with the family faith in his early years. In his autobiography, he described his formative years as spiritually depressing: “I was years and years upon the brink of hell I mean in my own feeling. I was unhappy, I was desponding, I was despairing. I dreamed of hell. My life was full of sorrow and wretchedness, believing that I was lost.”
When Spurgeon’s spiritual situation changed in 1850 at the Primitive Methodist Church, his attitudes quickly changed with it. In 1851 he broke from the denomination of his father and grandfather, choosing instead a rare hybridization and functioning as a Calvinist Baptist. He began distributing tracts and visiting the poor, and soon he joined the lay preachers’ association.
Herein Spurgeon found his calling. He preached his first sermon at Teversham in Cambridgeshire and accepted his first pastorate, as a teenager, in the village of Waterbeach. He was an immediate success; within two years he accepted a call to fulfill a six-month preaching engagement at New Park Street Chapel in London. He moved to the city and never moved out.
Throughout the course of his ministry Spurgeon preached all over London including the halls at Exeter and Surrey Gardens and other parts of England. In 1861 his congregation moved into the newly completed Metropolitan Tabernacle, which could hold nearly six thousand per service.
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In 1856 Spurgeon founded a pastor’s college that moved to the Tabernacle in 1861. It subsequently was renamed Spurgeon’s College in 1923 and still exists today. He also presided over an orphanage, which he founded in 1867, and a publishing arm that distributed books and pamphlets.
This latter endeavor quickly became an influential ministry wing. In 1865 Spurgeon began editing a monthly magazine called The Sword and the Trowel , and he continued for twenty-eight years until his death. All told, he wrote and edited more than two hundred books, albums, and pamphlets the most famous being The Treasury of David (a commentary on Psalms) and a daily devotional called Morning by Morning; Evening by Evening. Most impressive, his sermons were published weekly in various periodicals, a practice that started the year after he arrived in London. Today his collected sermons fill sixty-three volumes, each holding more than fifty sermons.
There’s no doubt Spurgeon was a beloved and popular preacher the most heard of his time, in fact. But his ministry was not without criticism and controversy. He was regularly lampooned by the secular press, most notably a publication called the Saturday Review. And he received regular criticism from fellow Protestants for his dramatic style and affinity for sentimental stories. Spurgeon’s response to these latter reproaches is telling: “I am perhaps vulgar, but it is not intentional, save that I must and will make people listen. My firm conviction is that we have had enough polite preachers.”
The most notable controversy connected with his ministry is known historically as the “Down-Grade Controversy,” which began in 1887. In several Sword and the Trowel articles , Spurgeon criticized members of his denomination (and the broader Protestant church) for “down-grading” biblical doctrine and theology through liberal interpretations. Specifically, he felt three essential doctrines were being abandoned: biblical infallibility, substitutionary atonement, and the finality of judgment for those who die outside of Christ.
Spurgeon’s claims were met with intense opposition and an increasing furor, which he attempted to diffuse by resigning from the Baptist Union. This did not work, and the debate that raged on more than a year ultimately resulted in Spurgeon’s being censured by the Council of the Baptist Union, the denomination suffering a damaging schism, and Spurgeon’s own health taking a turn for the worse.
C. H. Spurgeon preached his final sermon in June of 1891. He died six months later and was survived by his wife and twin sons. More than sixty thousand came to pay homage during the three days his body was displayed at the Metropolitan Tabernacle; more than a hundred thousand lined London’s streets to watch the funeral parade that officially announced the Prince of Preachers had finished his earthly work and had been faithful.
Why You Should Read This Book
C. H. Spurgeon was an extraordinary man, but one of the most remarkable elements of his story is his lack of formal education. His schooling as a youth was spotty at best, and he accepted his first pastorate without having earned a degree.
So how did this relatively uneducated man rise to take his place among the most influential preachers the world has ever seen?
The primary answer is that Spurgeon was a ferocious learner despite his lack of formal training a characteristic driven by his voracious capacity for reading. At the time of his death, his library held more than twelve thousand volumes, many of which bore his handwritten comments and notations.
Much of Spurgeon’s intellectual and spiritual formation was contained in those volumes. He committed himself to learning from the spiritual giants who’d gone before him, and in part because of his devoted study he took his place among them.
Thus this book’s value. These pages contain more than 150 excerpted readings from those whose writings were instrumental in Spurgeon’s development. The highlighted writers are some of the most famous and influential minds in the history of Christianity, and the excerpts provided below represent the pinnacle of their achievements.
Why should you read this material? Because C. H. Spurgeon did, and it played a significant role in his spiritual growth. These served as his textbooks and professors combined, and they can serve you as well.
How to Read This Book
Each of this book’s eight chapters emphasizes a major theme from Spurgeon’s life and writings from the power of prayer, to evangelism, to God’s Word and Christian doctrine. The short readings themselves focus on subjects that are important to your life and your connection with God.
One approach could be to make this book a part of your daily devotional experience. Consider reading one excerpt each day, along with a passage of Scripture. As you do, be sure to allow yourself times of silent reflection in order to think deeply about what each author is communicating. You may even want to read this book in concert with Morning by Morning; Evening by Evening (current editions are titled Morning and Evening ) or another of Spurge