After finishing Arnold Dallimore's biography of Spurgeon, I am beginning to understand why. Spurgeon appears to be one of the most incredible men of God the world has ever known. As a young boy, he began to read by reading Puritan works. John Owen, Richard Baxter, you name it - as a child, he was reading them. Can you believe that?!
Spurgeon became a preacher and a pastor as a teenager. And not just any preacher or pastor, the boy could PREACH! But despite his incredible abilities, he was absolutely dependent on the Lord in prayer. The kind of prayer that was not just words from your lips, but passionate, whole hearted, putting all his energy into communicating with God prayer.
Spurgeon also produced a prolific breadth of ministry. His church grew to some 4,000 to 5,000 members, he started a pastor's college, Sunday schools, orphanages, almshouses, kept up a magazine, planted churches, preached 10 times a week, was heavily involved with missions, started a colpeurter's ministry - sending out workers to sell tracts/books as an evangelistic ministry, just to name a few. In total, he started and was responsible for 66 ministries.
I guess this explains Spurgeon's very poor health. He physically suffered greatly. Ministry is hard. He regularly had to take breaks and was sent to southern France to recuperate for months at a time typically every winter. He literally gave his life for Christ.
This book was not very quotable as you will read below. But the book as a whole was inspiring. I recommend it to all. Here are some quotes:
- A spiritual experience which is thoroughly flavored with a deep and bitter sense of sin is of great value to him that hath it. It is terrible in the drinking, but it is most wholesome in the bowels, and in the whole of the after life. Possibly, much of the flimsy piety of the present day arises from the ease with which men attain to peace and joy in these evangelistic days. We would not judge modern converts, but we certainly prefer that form of spiritual exercise which leads the soul by the way of the Weeping-cross, and makes it see its blackness before assuring it that it is 'clean every whit.' Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Saviour. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.
- When someone once asked Spurgeon the secret of his success, he replied, 'My people pray for me.' He meant not prayer in the usual formal and unexpectant manner but wrestling with God in living faith that He would answer.
- The [Metropolitan] Tabernacle [his church] was a place of almost constant activity. On each of the 7 days of the week the doors were open at 7:00 in the morning and did not close till 11:00 at night, and there were persons coming and going all the time.
- Spurgeon required that everything in the Lord's work be done well, and he allowed nothing to be let go in a careless manner.
- All manner of reasons were given for this sad condition [the decline and closing of churches due to a "New Theology" that proposed that the Bible is not inerrant among other false doctrines], but the prime cause was the lack of the gospel in the pulpit. All attempted substitutes failed to attract the people. Where there is no acceptance of the Bible as inerrant and a belief in the great fundamentals of the faith, there is no true Christianity, the preaching is powerless and what Spurgeon declared to his generation a hundred years ago is the outcome.
- During the 1880's a group of American ministers visited England, prompted especially by a desire to hear some of the celebrated preachers of the land...[after visiting Joseph Parker's church, the City Temple] the Americans came away saying, 'What a wonderful preacher is Joseph Parker!' In the evening they went to hear Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The building was much larger than the City Temple, and the congregation was twice the size. Spurgeon's voice was much more expressive and moving and his oratory noticeably superior. But they soon forgot all about the great building, the immense congregation, and the magnificent voice. They even overlooked their intention to compare the various features of the two preachers, and when the service was over they found themselves saying, 'What a wonderful Savior is Jesus Christ!'
When I lead praise on Sunday mornings, I regularly tell our praise team the same thing - hopefully, after we are done on Sunday mornings, people will NOT say how great praise was today but will instead say, 'How great is our God and Savior!'
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