Our son has a knack of finding something very special as a Christmas gift every year. Nine years ago I knew it was a book as I always get two or three books as Christmas presents. I opened it and was floored. He took my posts up until that time and then put into book form. I've now written nine books.....with one copy of each....all on my own bookshelf....and that's fine with me! After taking the wrapping off of my special present this year there was a manila envelop. He said that I might want to sit at a table to open it?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.....does that name sound familiar? If you are a Christian it probably does.....or at least it should. Spurgeon was the nineteenth century Baptist 'Prince of Preachers' from the once great city of London.....my favorite city of those that I have visited.....but of which I have no desire to visit today....for the sadness on what it is becoming might be overwhelming.....for there was no Cromwell this time....no Admiral Lord Nelson....no Winston Churchill....and no Lady Thatcher.
Spurgeon....born in 1834.....Reformed in his theology....Calvinist in his doctrine....was saved by the grace of God on a snowy winter morning much like what I'm looking at through my window right now. As a fifteen year old he was on his way to church one Lord's Day....merely going to church does not make one a Christian....but a snowstorm had caused a change in his plans....or so he thought. He choose to stop instead at a small Primitive Methodist church that was nearby. The pastor could not even make it that day so an elder....totally unfamiliar with speaking in front of people....had taken the pulpit. As described by Spurgeon it would have been a sermon where people in our modern churches would fall asleep....but God had other plans....one verse....Isaiah 45:22 changed this young man's life.....and led to the salvation of multitudes around the world.....even up to this day....."Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else."
The Christian church in England had begun what Spurgeon called a 'downgrade' where the gospel was weakened in favor of more enlightened means to be a relevant church body. Spurgeon went against the grain and fought this slide.....and remarkably.....almost unbelievably.....this great London preacher so influential in English culture and it's Christian church.....was censured by his own Baptist Union! He died in the midst of this controversy in 1892.
It was Easter morning.....which to the Reformed is but another Lord's Day morning celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. My wife and son and I walked from the The Bailey's Hotel in the Kensington section of London, across the River Thames into Elephant and Castle to Spurgeon's...still standing but somewhat altered by the Luftwaffe bombing...Metropolitan Tabernacle....now pastored by a faithful shepherd Dr. Peter Masters. We heard a wonderful sermon that morning.....walked back by way of the Tower Bridge....and stopped for a while at in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery to watch a Christian ministry presenting the gospel over a loudspeaker system from the base of the 169 foot Nelson's Column...to Londoners and tourists meandering around the popular attraction. All told with getting side-tracked a couple of times we probably walked sixteen to eighteen miles that day.
OK.....all this segue for this.....I opened the Manila envelop and papers fell out. Spurgeon's normal practice was to have someone transcribe his sermon as he preached. He would then go over the shorthand and make corrections. The finished product would then go out around the world to eager Christians awaiting the weakly sermon. There in front of me was one page of an original manuscript from a sermon in 1890.....in the midst of the Downgrade Controversy. The black ink was that of the transcriber.....the purple ink was from Spurgeon's pen and written by his hand. I wasted no time.....it's matted, framed, and on my wall in front of me as I type. My son had done it again!
The following is the final transcription of but one page of Spurgeon's sermon.....a typical sermon of Spurgeon....this two years before his death......titled "Christ Precious To Believers." (1 Peter 2:7) This original transcript....amended in purple ink in by Charles Haddon Spurgeon....is what now hangs on our dining room wall.....
"Unto you therefore who believe He is precious," yet the word is not an adjective, not a noun. Hence the Revised Version translates the text, "For you therefore who believe in the preciousness." His very self is preciousness itself! He is the essence, the substance, the sum of all preciousness! Every Believer will subscribe to this. Many things are more or less precious, but the Lord Jesus is preciousness itself,outsoaring all degrees of comparison! How so Believers show that Christ is thus precious to them? They do so by trusting everything to Him. Every Believer places his hope solely upon the work of Jesus. With regard to the past, the present and the future, he finds rest in Christ. The Lord Jesus is the case into which we have put all our treasures and we prize Him accordingly. All our affection flows toward Him as all our hope flows from Him. Within His sacred name and Person all our outlook is contained. He is...."
metropolitantabernacle.org
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.....does that name sound familiar? If you are a Christian it probably does.....or at least it should. Spurgeon was the nineteenth century Baptist 'Prince of Preachers' from the once great city of London.....my favorite city of those that I have visited.....but of which I have no desire to visit today....for the sadness on what it is becoming might be overwhelming.....for there was no Cromwell this time....no Admiral Lord Nelson....no Winston Churchill....and no Lady Thatcher.
Spurgeon....born in 1834.....Reformed in his theology....Calvinist in his doctrine....was saved by the grace of God on a snowy winter morning much like what I'm looking at through my window right now. As a fifteen year old he was on his way to church one Lord's Day....merely going to church does not make one a Christian....but a snowstorm had caused a change in his plans....or so he thought. He choose to stop instead at a small Primitive Methodist church that was nearby. The pastor could not even make it that day so an elder....totally unfamiliar with speaking in front of people....had taken the pulpit. As described by Spurgeon it would have been a sermon where people in our modern churches would fall asleep....but God had other plans....one verse....Isaiah 45:22 changed this young man's life.....and led to the salvation of multitudes around the world.....even up to this day....."Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else."
The Christian church in England had begun what Spurgeon called a 'downgrade' where the gospel was weakened in favor of more enlightened means to be a relevant church body. Spurgeon went against the grain and fought this slide.....and remarkably.....almost unbelievably.....this great London preacher so influential in English culture and it's Christian church.....was censured by his own Baptist Union! He died in the midst of this controversy in 1892.
It was Easter morning.....which to the Reformed is but another Lord's Day morning celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. My wife and son and I walked from the The Bailey's Hotel in the Kensington section of London, across the River Thames into Elephant and Castle to Spurgeon's...still standing but somewhat altered by the Luftwaffe bombing...Metropolitan Tabernacle....now pastored by a faithful shepherd Dr. Peter Masters. We heard a wonderful sermon that morning.....walked back by way of the Tower Bridge....and stopped for a while at in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery to watch a Christian ministry presenting the gospel over a loudspeaker system from the base of the 169 foot Nelson's Column...to Londoners and tourists meandering around the popular attraction. All told with getting side-tracked a couple of times we probably walked sixteen to eighteen miles that day.
OK.....all this segue for this.....I opened the Manila envelop and papers fell out. Spurgeon's normal practice was to have someone transcribe his sermon as he preached. He would then go over the shorthand and make corrections. The finished product would then go out around the world to eager Christians awaiting the weakly sermon. There in front of me was one page of an original manuscript from a sermon in 1890.....in the midst of the Downgrade Controversy. The black ink was that of the transcriber.....the purple ink was from Spurgeon's pen and written by his hand. I wasted no time.....it's matted, framed, and on my wall in front of me as I type. My son had done it again!
The following is the final transcription of but one page of Spurgeon's sermon.....a typical sermon of Spurgeon....this two years before his death......titled "Christ Precious To Believers." (1 Peter 2:7) This original transcript....amended in purple ink in by Charles Haddon Spurgeon....is what now hangs on our dining room wall.....
"Unto you therefore who believe He is precious," yet the word is not an adjective, not a noun. Hence the Revised Version translates the text, "For you therefore who believe in the preciousness." His very self is preciousness itself! He is the essence, the substance, the sum of all preciousness! Every Believer will subscribe to this. Many things are more or less precious, but the Lord Jesus is preciousness itself,outsoaring all degrees of comparison! How so Believers show that Christ is thus precious to them? They do so by trusting everything to Him. Every Believer places his hope solely upon the work of Jesus. With regard to the past, the present and the future, he finds rest in Christ. The Lord Jesus is the case into which we have put all our treasures and we prize Him accordingly. All our affection flows toward Him as all our hope flows from Him. Within His sacred name and Person all our outlook is contained. He is...."
metropolitantabernacle.org
