Lessons from Christians of the past

In the Apostle’s Creed it is confessed: I believe a holy, catholic church, the community of the saints. Contact with experienced and exercised believers, can be a great help for believers who just started the run the race of faith and surely not only for them. We can not only learn from Christians of the present but also from Christians of the past. Witnesses whose lips have fallen silent, but who speak through their writing sand the stories of their lives.

The Bible tells us that God is the Lord of history. He fulfills his council in history. We know its content to save the whole church for which He sent his Son to the world. The Bible does not only tell about God’s saving acts in history but also how his grace is applied to believers, how they are drawn from darkness to light and start and continue to walk with Him.

Every real Christian loves the Biblical story. Every Christian ought to have an interest in church history. Church history gives us a testimony that despite attacks from outside and heresies within God cared for his church and sustained here.

When you want to make a start in learning from church history or deepening you knowledge of it, I can heartily recommend you Silent Witnesses: Lessons on theology, life and the church from Christians of the past. Its author is dr. Garry J. Williams, director of the John Owen Centre at London Theological Seminary and visiting professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadephia, USA.

In Silent Witnesses he describes both famous and less well-known figures from the fourth to the twentieth century drawing lessons from their lives and theological insights. Williams divides his book in three parts. The first covers some of the essentials of theology: the Bible, the incarnation, the cross, grace and justification.

The second looks at issues related to the Christian life: loving God, suffering, identity. The third section is especially addressed to pastors and elders and concerns the priorities the church ought to have. Names of the first part are among others William Tyndale, John Calvin and Owen. In the second we read again about Calvin in relation to trusting in God in trials. We hear the voice of the Puritans in general to learn from them what it means to love God with all our heart. 
Calvin is the theologian and Christian for whom our attention again is asked in the third section. We can learn from him what priorities we must have in the church. I found the chapter on Luther and preaching very instructive and also delightful. He may have his theological shortcomings, but Luther not only as a theologian and reformer but also a Christian with such a joyful character is a great gift of God to the church.

Williams finishes with an epilogue. He strongly states that God has revealed to us his view of history. Aware of our failings and shortcomings we must be humble historians, but not neglect to tell the story of what God has done in the church of the church and that with the aim of glorifying Him. I would also share the insight of Williams that Christian historian should be optimistic. 
It is only the gospel that provides a foundation for all knowledge. We may be sure that the Lord Jesus Christ will win. ‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,  Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.’ (Heb. 12:1–2).

Garry J. Williams, Silent Witnesses: Lessons on theology, life and the church from Christians of the past (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2013) hardcover 240 p., £9,60 (ISBN 978-1-84871-217-1).

Learning from Church History: A readable biography about Joseph Archibald Alexander

A Christian has a love for history. About a half of the content of the Bible consists of historical narratives. God is a God who really lives. He acted and spoke in history. The history recorded in the Bible has a peculiar character. Because of the inspiration of the Bible what is recorded there is of a normative character in the absolute sense.

We cannot say that about church history. That does not mean that we can neglect church history without spiritual damage. Although the canon is closed God still works in history. Christ as the King of the church gathers and protects her. The history of the church testifies of Christ’s care for his church.

Biography is a specific form of writing history. With regard to the church history we can learn a lot by reading good biographies about living members of the church. EP Books publishes in the serie Bitesize Biographies short and readable biographies about well known and also lesser known Christians. I can heartely recommend the series as a whole.

Here I ask your special attention for the biography written by Alan Harman on Joseph Addison Alexander (1809-1860). Harman himself has taught Hebrew and Old Testament in several countries. Currently he is research professor at Presbyterian Theological College, Melbourne, Australia.

The subject of his biography is one the nineteenth century members of the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary. His father Archibald was the first professor of this prestigious seminary. Joseph Addison Alexander was a formidable linguist and a brilliant biblical scholar.
Graduating at the age of seventeen from Princeton College he amazed his fellow students with his ablities. Today he is remem-bered for his scholarly commentaries on Isaiah, the Psalms, Acts and Mark. Alexander remained a bachelor his whole life. This great scholar was known by his intimates and his family for his love to entertain children by inventing plays and telling them stories.

When he was twenty years of age there a spiritual change in his life. Up to that time he was outwardly religious. He always attended the church on the Lord’s day, the weekly prayer meeting and a Bible class on the afternoon of the Lord’s day, but he was stranger of the saving power of the gospel. When the Christian Faith became for him a matter of the heart, that brought about a marked change in his reading. He began to study the Bible very intensively and besides that started to read a wide variety of theological works.

In 1830 Joseoh Addison Alexander was appointed as adjunct professor of Ancient Languages and Literature of Princeton College. After an European tour and study he became in 1834 the assistant of Charles Hodge in the Oriental Deparment of Prince-ton Theological Seminary. During his years as faculty member of Princeton Theological Seminary he was in turn professor of Old Testament, Church History and New Testament.

A year after his death Charles Hodge commented in a sermon: ‘I never saw a man who so constantly impressed me with a sense of his mental superiority – with his power to acquire knowledge and his power to communicate it. He seemed ale to learn anything and to teach anything he pleased.’ Even more striking is the comment of dr. John Leyburn, a presbyterian minister. He wrote in an obituary: ‘His splendid intellect and his vast resource were all brought into subjection to the Christian faith.’

Allan M. Harman, Joseph Addison Alexander of Princeton, Bitesize Biographies, EP Books Darlington 2014; ISBN 978-085234-960-1; pb. 120 pp., price £5,99

Lessons from the Church History of Wales

We know that Christ gathers, defends and preserves church and will continue to do that until the end of world. One of the reasons to study church history is to detect the work of Christ in the past and drawing lessons for the present. Church history can be done in a cold and detached way.
Without loss of objectivity it can also be done it a passionate. We must never forget that objectivity is not the same as neutrality. Nobody is neutral with regard of Christ and the same is true with regard of the history of his church.
Especially will written biography can show us the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians, while at the same time we can learn from their deficiencies and shortcomings. Several countries and regions have a very rich spiritual history. Among others this is true for Wales, one of the parts of the United Kingdom. Especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Wales was visited by God’s Spirit in a remarkable way.
In the nineteenth century John Morgan James, a Calvinist Methodist minister, and William Morgan, son of Calvinist Methodist minister, wrote two volumes in Welch in which they recorded the great works of God done in Wales. These volumes were appreciated very highly by the late dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones who was originally from Wales. They were continually in his hand.
Again and again he was spiritually refreshed by reading in them. John Aaron undertook the great job to translate these volumes in English and the Banner was willing to publish them under the title The Calvinist Methodist Fathers of Wales. Now a much greater public can benefit from them. We must congratulate both the translator and the publisher with this publication.
In the first volume we read of Griffith Jones. This Anglican clergyman must be considered the precursor of the Evangelical Revival in Wales. The two great names in the first period of the Revival were the clergyman Daniel Rowland and the exhorter Howell Harris. Their con­version is recorded. Daniel Rowland and Howel Harris were convinced Anglicans.
As a result of the Revival scores of so called societies of Methodists were formed in South Wales. The societies were distinctly understood to be part of the established church and every attempt at estranging them there from was sharply reproved; but persecution made their position anomalous. The Societies were served by exhorters who used to have an intenerating ministry.
In 1795, persecution led the Calvinist Methodists to take the first step towards separation from the Church of England. Heavy fines made it impossible for preachers in poor circumstances to continue without claiming the protection of the Toleration Act, and the meeting-houses had to be registered as dissenting chapels. In a large number of cases this had only been delayed by so constructing the houses that they were used both as dwellings and as chapels at one and the same time.
The lay element, with the help of Thomas Charles and a few other stalwarts, carried the matter through ordaining nine exhorters at Bala in June 1811, and thirteen at Llandilo in August. Thomas Charles was the man who took the initiative to form a Bible Society when he had met a poor young Welsh girl, named  Mary Jones, who walked 26 miles to purchase a Bible from him at Bala.
The Revival influenced in first instance only South Wales. In due time, the transforming work of the Holy Spirit also affected North Wales. In North Wales men as Thomas Charles and John Elias were mightily used by God. In their second volume John Morgan James and William Morgan tell us this exciting story
The Methodist Revival was in fact not one revival but a succession of revivals, some being national in scope, many affecting a region and countless of local significance. The conversion Daniel Rowland and Howel Harris in 1735 can be seen as the starting point of the Revival.
Doctrinal differences between Rowland and Harris ended up in a rupture of the Connection of Calvinist Methodist Societies. We must honestly say that Rowland was more mature in doctrinal respect than Harris.
Harris was sometimes led away by his emotions. It was a great blessing when as a result of a fresh awakening in 1762 the breach was healed. This year and the revival connected with can be seen as a landmark in the history of the Calvinist Methodists. Between 1762 and 1860 hardly a year passed without a visitation of God upon some district in Wales.
John Morgan Jones and William Morgan provide us in their two volumes of The Calvinist Methodist Fathers of Wales with number of full bio-graphies of Daniel Rowland, Howel Harris, Thomas Charles, John Elias and several others.
The strength of these Calvinist Methodists in the eighteenth century and also the greatest part of the nineteenth was that their Calvinism was not of an abstract, cold and pure intellectual nature. Their Calvinism was of an affectionate, passionate and experimental nature.
All Christians but especially ministers and students of the gospel ministry can profit by reading these volumes where the preaching of the gospel in demonstration of the Spirit and power is recorded. A preaching that was signally blessed by God. It many and many cases it was received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worked also in them that believed (See 1 Thes. 2:13).

John Morgan James and William Morgan, The Calvinist Methodist Fathers of Wales, two volumes, translated by John Aaron, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, UK 2008; ISBN 978-0-85151-997-5; hb. 1522 p., price ₤32.