Always singing one note – the English vernacular Bible - A tribute to William Tyndale

If you have not yet discovered John Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be downloaded free of charge from the Desiring God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and runs. 

I’ve just listened again today, during a long run, to John Piper’s biography on William Tyndale,  ‘Always singing one note – a vernacular Bible’. You can read or download it here or watch it here.

The following is a 2,000 word precis of Piper’s 7,600 word talk (including references) which is in turn is largely based on David Daniell’s, William Tyndale: A Biography. 

So take your  pick, depending on how much time you have.

2017 marks the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, which started with Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door in 1517.

But the father of the Reformation in England was William Tyndale, who produced the first English translation of the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew.

At 28 years old in 1522, as a young Catholic priest, he spent most of his time studying Erasmus’ Greek New Testament which had just been printed six years before in 1516.

This was the first time that the Greek New Testament had been printed and it is no exaggeration to say that it set fire to Europe. Martin Luther translated it into his famous German version of 1522. In a few years there appeared translations from the Greek into most European vernaculars and these provided the basis of the popular reformation.

John Foxe tells us that one day an exasperated Catholic scholar at dinner with Tyndale said, ‘We were better be without God’s law than the pope’s.’

 In response Tyndale spoke his famous words, ‘I defy the Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.’

Four years later Tyndale finished the English translation of the Greek New Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to smuggle it into England in bails of cloth. By October of 1526 the book had been banned by Bishop Tunstall in London, but the print run was at least 3,000.

For the first time ever in history, the Greek New Testament was translated into English. And for the first time ever the New Testament in English was available in a printed form.

Before Tyndale there were only hand-written manuscripts of the Bible in English. These manuscripts we owe to the work and inspiration of John Wyclif and the Lollards from 130 years earlier but these were based on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.

Before he was martyred in 1536 Tyndale had translated into clear, common English not only the New Testament but also the Pentateuch, Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and Jonah.

All this material became the basis of the Great Bible issued by Miles Coverdale in England in 1539 and the basis for the Geneva Bible published in 1557—‘the Bible of the nation,’ which sold over a million copies between 1560 and 1640.

The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorized Version of 1611, so often praised for unlikely corporate inspiration, took over Tyndale’s work. Nine-tenths of the Authorized Version’s New Testament is Tyndale’s. The same is true of the first half of the Old Testament, which was as far as he was able to get before he was executed outside Brussels in 1536. Probably 70% of our ESV is Tyndale.

Here are some of the English phrases we owe to Tyndale:

‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1:3).

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Genesis 4:9)

‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be merciful unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’ (Numbers 6:24-26).

‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ (John 1:1).

‘There were shepherds abiding in the field’ (Luke 2:8).

‘Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted’ (Matthew 5:4).

‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name’ (Matthew 6:9).

‘The signs of the times’ (Matthew 16:3)

‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ (Matthew 26:41).

‘He went out . . . and wept bitterly’ (Matthew 26:75).

‘A law unto themselves’ (Romans 2:14)

‘In him we live, move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).

‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels’ (1 Corinthians 13:1)

‘Fight the good fight’ (1 Timothy 6:12).

Five hundred years after his great work newspaper headlines still quote Tyndale, though unknowingly, and he has reached more people than even Shakespeare.

Luther’s translation of 1522 is often praised for ‘having given a language to the emerging German nation.’ But the same is true for Tyndale in English.

This was not merely a literary phenomenon; it was a spiritual explosion. Tyndale’s Bible and writings were the kindling that set the Reformation on fire in England.

Erasmus was twenty-eight years older than Tyndale, but they both died in 1536—Tyndale martyred by the Roman Catholic Church, Erasmus a respected member of that church. Erasmus had spent time in Oxford and Cambridge, but we don’t know if he and Tyndale ever met.

On the surface, one sees remarkable similarities between Tyndale and Erasmus. Both were great linguists. Erasmus was a Latin scholar and produced the first printed Greek New Testament. Tyndale knew eight languages: Latin, Greek, German, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and English. Both men loved the natural power of language and were part of a rebirth of interest in the way language works and both believed the Bible should be translated into the vernacular of every language.

Tyndale’s view of human sinfulness set the stage for his grasp of the glory of God’s sovereign grace in the gospel. Erasmus did not see the depth of the human condition, and so did not see the glory and explosive power of what the reformers saw in the New Testament.

Where Luther and Tyndale were blood-earnest about our dreadful human condition and the glory of salvation in Christ, Erasmus and Thomas More joked and bantered. When Luther published his 95 theses in 1517, Erasmus sent a copy of them to More—along with a ‘jocular letter including the anti-papal games, and witty satirical diatribes against abuses within the church, which both of them loved to make.’

What drove Tyndale to sing ‘one note’ all his life – that the Bible might be available in the English vernacular for the common man - was the rock-solid conviction that all humans were in bondage to sin, blind, dead, damned, and helpless, and that God had acted in Christ to provide salvation by grace through faith.

This massive dose of bondage to sin and deliverance by blood-bought sovereign grace is missing in Erasmus. This is why there is an elitist lightness to his religion—just like there is to so much of evangelicalism today. Hell and sin and atonement and sovereign grace were not weighty realities for him. But for Tyndale they were everything. And in the middle of these great realities was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This is why the Bible had to be translated, and ultimately this is why Tyndale was martyred.

This is the answer to how William Tyndale accomplished what he did in translating the New Testament and writing books that set England on fire with the reformed faith.

It is almost incomprehensible to us how viciously opposed the Roman Catholic Church was to the translation of the Scriptures into English. John Wyclif and his followers called ‘Lollards’ had spread written manuscripts of English translations from the Latin in the late 1300s. In 1401 Parliament passed the law de Haeretico Comburendo—‘on the burning of heretics’—to make heresy punishable by burning people alive at the stake. The Bible translators were in view.

This statute meant that you could be burned alive by the Catholic Church for simply reading the Bible in English. John Foxe records . . . seven Lollards burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.

Tyndale hoped to escape this condemnation by getting official authorization for his translation in 1524. But he found just the opposite and had to escape from London to the continent where he did all his translating and writing for the next twelve years. He lived as a fugitive the entire time until his death near Brussels in 1536.

He watched a rising tide of persecution and felt the pain of seeing young men burned alive who were converted by reading his translation and his books. His closest friend, John Frith, was arrested in London and tried by Thomas More and burned alive July 4, 1531, at the age of 28.

Why this extraordinary hostility against the English New Testament?

There were surface reasons and deeper reasons why the church opposed an English Bible. The surface reasons were that the English language is rude and unworthy of the exalted language of God’s word; and when one translates, errors can creep in, so it is safer not to translate; moreover, if the Bible is in English, then each man will become his own interpreter, and many will go astray into heresy and be condemned; and it was church tradition that only priests are given the divine grace to understand the Scriptures; and what’s more, there is a special sacramental value to the Latin service in which people cannot understand, but grace is given. Such were the kinds of things being said on the surface.

But there were deeper reasons why the church opposed the English Bible: one doctrinal and one ecclesiastical. The church realized that they would not be able to sustain certain doctrines biblically because the people would see that they are not in the Bible. And the church realized that their power and control over the people, and even over the state, would be lost if certain doctrines were exposed as unbiblical—especially the priesthood and purgatory and penance.

Thomas More’s criticism of Tyndale boils down mainly to the way Tyndale translated five words. He translated presbuteros as elder instead of priest. He translated ekklesia as congregation instead of church. He translated metanoeoas repent instead of do penance. He translated exomologeo as acknowledge or admit instead of confess. And he translated agape as love rather than charity.

These words undercut the entire sacramental structure of the thousand year church throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa. It was the Greek New Testament that was doing the undercutting.

And with the doctrinal undermining of these ecclesiastical pillars of priesthood and penance and confession, the pervasive power and control of the church collapsed. England would not be a Catholic nation. The reformed faith would flourish there in due time.

What did it cost William Tyndale under these hostile circumstances to stay faithful to his calling as a translator of the Bible and a writer of the reformed faith?

He fled his homeland in 1524 and was killed in 1536. He gives us some glimpse of those twelve years as a fugitive in Germany and the Netherlands in one of the very few personal descriptions we have from Stephen Vaughan’s letter in 1531. He refers to:

‘. . . my pains . . . my poverty . . . my exile out of mine natural country, and bitter absence from my friends . . . my hunger, my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am everywhere encompassed, and finally . . . innumerable other hard and sharp fightings which I endure.’

All these sufferings came to a climax on May 21, 1535, in the midst of Tyndale’s great Old Testament translation labors, when he was betrayed by an Englishman, Henry Philips. He was imprisoned, formally condemned as a heretic and degraded from the priesthood. Then in Brussels on 6 October he was tied to the stake and then strangled by the executioner, then afterward consumed in the fire.

Foxe reports that his last words were, ‘Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!’ Tyndale was forty-two years old, never married and never buried.

Tyndale’s wrote to his best friend, John Frith, in a letter just before he was burned alive for believing and speaking the truth of Scripture:

‘Your cause is Christ’s gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. . . . If when we be buffeted for well-doing, we suffer patiently and endure, that is thankful with God; for to that end we are called. For Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow his steps, who did no sin. Hereby have we perceived love that he laid down his life for us: therefore we ought to be able to lay down our lives for the brethren. . . . Let not your body faint. If the pain be above your strength, remember: “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it you.” And pray to our Father in that name, and he will ease your pain, or shorten it. . . . Amen.’

The greatest gift of a Christian leader to his people is his own personal holiness – a reflection on John Owen

If you have not yet discovered John Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be downloaded free of charge from the Desiring God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and runs. 

I’ve just listened again today, during a long run, to John Piper’s biography on John Owen, ‘The Chief Design of My Life: Mortification and Universal Holiness’.

John Owen (1616 – 1683) was an English Nonconformist church leader, theologian, and academic administrator at the University of Oxford. 

He was also briefly a member of parliament for the University, sitting in the First Protectorate Parliament of 1654 to 1655 under Oliver Cromwell.

He also chaired the committee which in 1658 drew up the Savoy Declaration, the statement of faith that became the foundation document for the Congregational Churches. So Owen takes me right back to my childhood roots.

His influence on subsequent church leaders has been immense and yet most people today—even pastors and theologians—don't know much about him. 

Owen was born in England in 1616, the same year that William Shakespeare died and four years before the Pilgrims set sail for New England. This is virtually in the middle of the great Puritan century (roughly 1560 to 1660).

Puritanism was at heart a spiritual movement, passionately concerned with God and godliness. It began in England with William Tyndale the Bible translator, Luther's contemporary, and was essentially a movement for church reform, pastoral renewal and evangelism, and spiritual revival.

Owen was born in the middle of this movement and became its greatest pastor-theologian as the movement ended almost simultaneously with his death in 1683. He was also responsible for the publication of John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, the best-selling book in history outside the Bible.

Piper’s whole study is worthy of careful study (or listening) but I was particularly struck today by his comments on Owen’s guiding passion, his quest for personal holiness. The following notes are abridged from Piper.

The words of Owen which come closest to giving us the heart and aim of his life are found in the preface to the little book: Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers which was based on sermons that he preached to the students and academic community at Oxford:

‘I hope I may own in sincerity that my heart's desire unto God, and the chief design of my life ... are, that mortification and universal holiness may be promoted in my own and in the hearts and ways of others, to the glory of God, that so the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be adorned in all things.’

Even in his political messages—the sermons to Parliament—the theme was repeatedly holiness. He based this on the Old Testament patter— that ‘the people of Israel were at the height of their fortunes when their leaders were godly’. So the key issue for him was that the legislature be made up of holy people.

This humility opened Owen's soul to the greatest visions of Christ in the Scriptures. And he believed with all his heart the truth of 2 Corinthians 3:18 that by contemplating the glory of Christ ‘we may be gradually transformed into the same glory’. And that is nothing other than holiness.

Owen grew in knowledge of God by obeying what he knew already. In other words Owen recognized that holiness was not merely the goal of all true learning; it is also the means of more true learning. 

This elevated holiness even higher in his life: it was the aim of his life and, in large measure, the means of getting there.

Thus Owen kept the streams of the fountain of truth open by making personal obedience the effect of all that he learned, and the means of more. Owen passionately pursued a personal communion with God.

J I Packer says that the Puritans differ from evangelicals today because with them:

‘ ... communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small  thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not. The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it. When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.’ 

From Owen’s writings, and from the testimony of others, it seems fair to say that the aim of personal holiness in all of life, and the mortifying of all known sin really was the labour not only of his teaching but of his own personal life.

This was the conviction that controlled him:

‘A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them; yea, he knows not but the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us .’

Charles Simeon quizzes John Wesley on the tenets of Calvinism

I’ve just listened again today, during a long run on my day off after a fantastic CMF National Students' conference, to John Piper’s biography on Charles Simeon, ‘Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering’ .

If you have not yet discovered Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be downloaded free of charge from the Desiring God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and runs. 

The following, extracted and adapted from Piper, is I hope a useful taster.

Charles Simeon (1759 – 1836) was an English evangelical clergyman who lived through the American Revolution, the French Revolution and not quite into the decade of the telegraph and the railroad.

Jonathan Edwards, the major figure of the Great Awakening in the US, died the year before Simeon was born but the Wesleys and Whitefield were still alive, and so the Methodist awakening was in full swing.

In his 54 years at Trinity Church, Cambrdige, Simeon became a powerful force for evangelicalism in the Church of England. His position at the university, with his constant influence on students preparing for the ministry, made him a great recruiter of young evangelicals for pulpits around the land. But not only around the land. He became the trusted advisor of the East India Company, and recommended most of the men who went out as chaplains, which is the way Anglicans could be missionaries to the East in those days.

Simeon had a great heart for missions. He was the spiritual father of the great Henry Martyn. He was the key spiritual influence in the founding of the Church Missionary Society, and was zealous in his labours for the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. In fact, on his death bed he was dictating a message to be given to the Society about his deep humiliation that the church has not done more to gather in the Jewish people.

Probably most of all, Simeon exerted his influence through sustained Biblical preaching year after year. This was the central labour of his life. He lived to place into the hands of King William the Fourth in 1833 the completed 21 volumes of his collected sermons.

In this sermon Piper reports on a debate between Simeon and John Wesley on the subject of Calvinism.

Simeon did not want to be labelled a Calvinist or an Arminian. He wanted to be biblical through and through and give every text its due proportion, whether it sounded Arminian as it stands or Calvinistic. But he was known justifiably as an evangelical Calvinist and was uninhibited in his affirmation of what we would call ‘the doctrines of grace’.

However he had little sympathy for uncharitable Calvinists and did not let his passion for truth divide from others, believing that ‘kindness and concession are far better than vehement argumentation and uncharitable discussion’ (Horae Homileticae, Vol. 15, p. 357).

An example of how he lived out this counsel is seen in the way he conversed with the elderly John Wesley. He tells the story himself:

Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions. Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart?

Yes, I do indeed.

And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?

Yes, solely through Christ.

But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?

No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last.

Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?

No.

What then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?

Yes, altogether.

And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?

Yes, I have no hope but in Him.

Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree. (Moule, 79f)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones – a passion for Christ-exalting power

John Piper’s Christian biographies are a must if you enjoy inspirational MP3s. I listened to his fascinating treatment (both script and audio) of Martyn Lloyd-Jones again today on a ten mile run.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones (20 December 1899 – 1 March 1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century who for thirty years preached from the pulpit at Westminster Chapel in London.

Many called him the last of the Calvinistic Methodist preachers because he combined Calvin's love for truth and sound reformed doctrine with the fire and passion of the eighteenth-century Methodist revival.

From the beginning to the end the life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a cry for depth in two areas—depth in Biblical doctrine and depth in vital spiritual experience. Light and heat. Logic and fire. Word and Spirit.

Again and again he would be fighting on two fronts: on the one hand against dead, formal, institutional intellectualism, and on the other hand against superficial, glib, entertainment-oriented, man-centered emotionalism.

Lloyd-Jones was not what we call a cessationist. In fact he came out very strongly against the Warfield kind of cessationism. In 1969 he wrote against ‘A Memorandum on Faith Healing’ put out by the Christian Medical Fellowship which relied explicitly on Warfield's arguments that the sign gifts (like healing) were ‘accompaniments of apostleship’ and therefore invalid for today since the apostles were once for all.

‘I think it is quite without scriptural warrant to say that all these gifts ended with the apostles or the Apostolic Era. I believe there have been undoubted miracles since then.’ 

When Lloyd-Jones spoke of the need for revival power and for the baptism of the Spirit and for a mighty attestation for the word of God today, it was clear that he had in mind the same sort of thing that happened in the life of the apostles.

Piper’s talk is a study of revival and the baptism of the Holy Spirit Lloyd-Jones teaching and is well worthy of study. He sums it up as follows:

‘Could we not then say, in putting all this together, that signs and wonders function in relation to the word of God, as striking, wakening, channels for the self-authenticating glory of Christ in the gospel? Signs and wonders do not save. They do not transform the heart. Only the glory of Christ seen in the gospel has the power to do that (2 Cor. 3:18-4:6). But evidently, God chooses at times to use signs and wonders alongside his regenerating word to win a hearing and to shatter the shell of disinterest and cynicism and false religion, and help the fallen heart fix its gaze on the gospel.’

I can imagine this raising eyebrows in some evangelical churches today, but Lloyd-Jones was equally critical of some of the excesses of the Pentecostal movement and Piper’s talk includes a fascinating critique (fully referenced in his text) which I reproduce below.  

Lest you think Lloyd-Jones was a full-blown charismatic incognito let me mention some things that gave him balance and made him disenchanted with Pentecostals and charismatics as he knew them.

1. He insisted that revival have a sound doctrinal basis. And from what he saw there was a minimization of doctrine almost everywhere that unity and renewal were being claimed. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and revival will be shallow and short-lived without deeper doctrinal roots than the charismatic tree seems to have.

2. Charismatics put too much stress on what they do and not enough emphasis on the freedom and sovereignty of the Spirit, to come and go on his own terms. "Spiritual gifts," he says, "are always controlled by the Holy Spirit. They are given, and one does not know when they are going to be given".

You can pray for the baptism of the Spirit, but that does not guarantee that it happens ... It is in his control. He is the Lord. He is a sovereign Lord and he does it in his own time and in his own way.

3. Charismatics sometimes insist on tongues as a sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit which of course he rejects.

It seems to be that the teaching of the Scripture itself, plus the evidence of the history of the church, establishes the fact that the baptism with the Spirit is not always accompanied by particular gifts.

4. But even more often most charismatics claim to be able to speak in tongues whenever they want to. 

This, he argues is clearly against what Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:18, "I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all." If he and they could speak in tongues any time they chose, then there would be no point in thanking God that the blessing of tongues is more often given to him than to them.

5. Too often, experiences are sought for their own sake rather than for the sake of empowerment for witness and for the glory of Christ.

The aim is not to have experiences in themselves but to empower for outreach and making Christ known ...

We must test anything that claims to be a movement of the Spirit in terms of its evangelistic power...

The supreme test of anything that claims to be the work of the Holy Spirit is John 16:14—"He shall glorify me".

6. Charismatics can easily fall into the mistake of assuming that if a person has powerful gifts that person is thus a good person and is fit to lead and teach. This is not true. Lloyd-Jones is aware that baptism with the Holy Spirit and the possession of gifts does not certify one's moral fitness to minister or speak for God. The spiritual condition at Corinth, in terms of sanctification, was low and yet there was much evidence of divine power.

Baptism with the Holy Spirit is primarily and essentially a baptism with power ... [But] there is no direct connection between the baptism with the Holy Spirit and sanctification ... It is something that can be isolated, whereas sanctification is a continuing and a continuous process.

7. Charismatics characteristically tend to be more interested in subjective impressions and unusual giftings than in the exposition of Scripture. Be suspicious, he says, of any claim to a "fresh revelation of truth". (In view of what he said above concerning how the Holy Spirit speaks today in guidance, he cannot mean here that all direct communication from God is ruled out.)

8. Charismatics sometimes encourage people to give up control of their reason and to let themselves go. Lloyd-Jones disagrees. "We must never let ourselves go". A blank mind is not advocated in the Scriptures. The glory of Christianity is what we can "at one and the same time ... be gripped and lifted up by the Spirit and still be in control" (see 1 Cor. 14:32). We must always be in a position to test all things, since Satan and hypnotism can imitate the most remarkable things.

But I’m giving you only a taster. Let me recommend again John Piper’s MP3 (or, if you prefer, the online transcript).

David Brainerd – Reflections on the life and ministry of this great inspirer of missionaries

On a run this morning I listened again to John Piper’s excellent biography on the life of David Brainerd, widely known as the missionary to the American Indians.

I love Piper’s missionary biographies and listen to them again and again always picking up something new.

In this one Piper particularly recommends Jonathan Edward’s ‘Life of Dave Brainerd’ which he says has never been out of print, but the only copies I could find on the web were several hundred dollars each so I will have to give that a miss. The biography though is an inspiration in itself and well worth the listen (or read).

Piper begins as follows:

‘David Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718 in Haddam, Connecticut. That year John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards turned 14. Benjamin Franklin turned 12 and George Whitefield 3. The Great Awakening was just over the horizon and Brainerd would live through both waves of it in the mid thirties and early forties, then die of tuberculosis in Jonathan Edwards' house at the age of 29 on October 9, 1747.’

He then outlines how he was present at Yale University at the beginning of the Great Awakening when Whitefield visited. Later he was thrown out of the university for his part in it, but God turned this disappointment into 'His appointment'.

‘Brainerd preached to the Indians at the Forks of the Delaware for one year. But on June 19, 1745 he made his first preaching tour to the Indians at Crossweeksung, New Jersey. This was the place where God moved in amazing power and brought awakening and blessing to the Indians. Within a year there were 130 persons in his growing assembly of believers.’

He then sums up the impact he has had upon other great missionaries who followed:

‘It was a short life: twenty-nine years, five months and nineteen days. Only eight of those years as a believer, and only four of those as a missionary. Why has Brainerd's life made the impact that it has? One obvious reason is that Jonathan Edwards took the Diaries and published them as a Life of Brainerd in 1749. But why has this book never been out of print?

Why did John Wesley say, "Let every preacher read carefully over the 'Life of Brainerd'"? Why was it written of Henry Martyn that "perusing the life of David Brainerd, his soul was filled with a holy emulation of that extraordinary man; and after deep consideration and fervent prayer, he was at length fixed in a resolution to imitate his example"? Why did William Carey regard Edwards' Life of Brainerd as a sacred text? Why did Robert Morrison and Robert McCheyne of Scotland and John Mills of America and Frederick Schwartz of Germany and David Livingston of England and Andrew Murray of South Africa and Jim Elliot of modern America look upon Brainerd with a kind of awe and draw power from him the way they and countless others did?

Gideon Hawley, another missionary protégé of Jonathan Edwards spoke for hundreds when he wrote about his struggles as a missionary in 1753, “I need, greatly need something more than human to support me. I read my Bible and Mr. Brainerd’s Life, the only books I brought with me, and from them have a little support.”’

Piper speculates as to why Brainerd’s life had such an impact and asks specifically why reading about Brainerd has encouraged him to press on in the ministry and to strive for holiness and divine power and fruitfulness in his life.

He concludes that Brainerd’s life ‘is a vivid, powerful testimony to the truth that God can and does use weak, sick, discouraged, beat-down, lonely, struggling saints, who cry to him day and night, to accomplish amazing things for his glory’.

He then outlines the struggles Brainerd faced as follows, expanding on each in turn:

1. Brainerd struggled with almost constant sickness.
2. Brainerd struggled with relentlessly recurring depression.
3. Brainerd struggled with loneliness.
4. Brainerd struggled with immense external hardships.
5. Brainerd struggled with a bleak outlook on nature.
6. Brainerd struggled to love the Indians.
7. Brainerd struggled to stay true to his calling.

Piper concludes as follows:

‘I think the reason Brainerd's life has such powerful effects on people is that in spite of all his struggles he never gave up his faith or his ministry. He was consumed with a passion to finish his race and honor his Master and spread the kingdom and advance in personal holiness. It was this unswerving allegiance to the cause of Christ that makes the bleakness of his life glow with glory so that we can understand Henry Martyn when he wrote, as a student in Cambridge in 1802, “I long to be like him!”

Brainerd called his passion for more holiness and more usefulness a kind of “pleasing pain.” “When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirstings after holiness the more unquenchable; ... Oh, for holiness! Oh, for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God ... Oh, that I might not loiter on my heavenly journey!”’

Meditations on the Life of Charles Simeon

I took a day off today after an excellent CMF Junior Doctors’ conference where Giles Cattermole was preaching on the life of Solomon. Amongst other things I went on a run (it is two weeks since I did the Cardiff half marathon) and as I often do took along my Zen Micro (yes sadly that is my somewhat dated level of technology!) along with my John Piper Christian MP3 biography series.

If you have not yet discovered Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be downloaded free of charge from the Desiring God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and runs.

I have listened to most of them several times and always pick up new gems along the way. Piper puts a huge amount of time into preparation going to primary source material, so unless you are a scholar of Christian biography you will almost certainly find new encouragements in them. Today I listened to his talk on Charles Simeon. The full version is available on line but I have pasted some of the main points below.

Meditations on the Life of Charles Simeon

In April, 1831, Charles Simeon was 71 years old. He had been the pastor of Trinity Church, Cambridge, England, for 49 years. He was asked one afternoon by his friend, Joseph Gurney, how he had surmounted persecution and outlasted all the great prejudice against him in his 49-year ministry. He said to Gurney, 'My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory' (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 155f.).

His Trials

1. Himself - The most fundamental trial that Simeon had –and that we all have – was himself. He had a somewhat harsh and self-assertive air about him.

2. His Congregation - The parishioners did not want Simeon as pastor. They wanted the assistant curate Mr. Hammond. So they would not let him preach on Sunday evenings for twelve years.

3. The University - As the students made their way to Trinity Church, they were prejudiced against the pastor by the hostile congregation, and for years he was slandered with all kinds of rumors.

4. Physical weakness - In 1807, after twenty-five years of ministry, his health failed suddenly. His voice gave way so that preaching was very difficult and at times he could only speak in a whisper.

How Simeon Endured and Flourished Through Opposition

How did Simeon endure these trials without giving up or being driven out of his church?

1. Simeon had a strong sense of his accountability before God for the souls of his flock, whether they liked him or not.

2. His preaching in the midst of conflict was free from the scolding tone.

3. Simeon was no rumor-tracker.

4. Simeon dealt with his opponents in a forthright face-to-face way.

5. Simeon could take a rebuke and grow from it.

6. Simeon was unimpeachable in his finances and had no love for money.

7. Simeon found ways to look at discouraging things hopefully.

8. Simeon saw his suffering as a wonderful privilege of bearing the cross with Christ.

But where now did this remarkable power and fruit come from? This is not an ordinary way of seeing things. This is not an ordinary way of life. What was the root of all this fruit. We get a step closer to it when we notice that . . .

9. Simeon strengthened himself with massive doses of meditation and prayer.

My conclusion is that the secret of Charles Simeon's perseverance was that he never threw overboard the heavy ballast of his own humiliation for sin and that this helped keep his masts erect and his sails full of the spirit of adoration.

‘I love simplicity; I love contrition. . . . I love the religion of heaven; to fall on our faces while we adore the Lamb is the kind of religion which my soul affects.’ (Moule, 83) As he lay dying in October of 1836, a friend sat by his bed and asked what he was thinking of just then. He answered, ‘I don't think now; I am enjoying.’

He grew downward in the pain of contrition and he grew upward in the joy of adoration. And the weaving together of these two experiences into one is the achievement of the cross of Christ and the deepest secret of Simeon's great perseverance.

William Wilberforce was an extraordinary reformer but what was the secret of his motivation and perseverance?

John Piper’s Christian biographies are a must if you enjoy inspirational MP3s. I listened to his masterly treatment of William Wilberforce for the third time today on an eight mile run and still found it profoundly refreshing.

William Wilberforce was the British Parliamentarian who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade and just three years ago we celebrated the bicentenary of his success in 1807. He has inspired many social reformers and those who desire to shape public policy today can still learn a great deal from studying his methods.

But Piper’s account goes right to the heart of understanding where Wilberforce’s motivation, inspiration and dogged perseverance actually came from. As always Piper draws on original sources and in particular Wilberforce’s own book, A Practical View of Christianity, which was first published in 1797.

‘What made Wilberforce tick’, says Piper, ‘was a profound biblical allegiance to what he called the "peculiar doctrines" of Christianity. These, he said, give rise, in turn, to true affections – what we might call "passion" or "emotions" – for spiritual things, which, in turn, break the power of pride and greed and fear, and then lead to transformed morals which, in turn, lead to the political welfare of the nation.’

In other words Wilberforce’s political ambitions - and principally his lifelong commitment to abolishing slavery - were the direct product of his evangelical Christian faith. He said, ‘If . . . a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should . . . gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare.’

Piper goes on to explain that Wilberforce ‘believed with all his heart that new affections for God were the key to new morals and lasting political reformation. And these new affections and this reformation did not come from mere ethical systems. They came from what he called the "peculiar doctrines" of Christianity. For Wilberforce, practical deeds were born in "peculiar doctrines." By that term he simply meant the central distinguishing doctrines of human depravity, divine judgment, the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross, justification by faith alone, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the practical necessity of fruit in a life devoted to good deeds.’

Wilberforce in fact felt so strongly about the real root of his commitment to abolishing slavery that he called the practice of ‘considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines’ a ‘fatal habit’.

However don’t let me spoil it for you. If you want a brilliant introduction to the life of Wilberforce based on his own writings which goes far deeper than the 2006 movie ‘Amazing Grace’ to describe his early life and conversion, his relationship with John Newton, the story of slavery’s abolition, the identity of his other main lifetime ambition, his family life, mystery illness and the secret to his amazing perseverance then you can’t do much better than John Piper’s MP3 (or, if you prefer, the online transcript).