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Friday, September 06, 2019

Sometimes a light surprises

The following excerpts are from Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book Living Water: Studies in John 4.


Let me tell you about A. B. Earl, a man who was greatly used in America in the last [nineteenth] century. He was born in 1812 and began preaching in 1830 after his conversion at the age of eighteen. He was a good preacher and for the next thirty-three years had a successful ministry. But in 1863 he began to feel that there was something lacking, that he was just an advocate instead of being a witness—and what a difference there is between the two! The advocate talks about what has been happening to others; he has his brief, but he is outside it. The witness, on the other hand, tells what has happened to him; he is giving his testimony. This is what A. B. Earl says:

I felt that I must have in my heart something that I did not then possess. Before I could be filled with the fullness of Christ’s love I must be emptied of self. Oh, the longing of my heart for what I then believed, and now believe, to be sweet and constant rest in Jesus. I believed I should receive and thought it was near...I soon found it was easier to resist temptation. I began to trust Christ and his promise more fully. With this mingling of faith, desire, and expectation I commenced meeting on Cape Cod. After rededicating myself, in company with others, anew to God, I was in my room alone pleading for the fullness of Christ’s love, when all at once a sweet, heavenly peace filled all the vacuum in my soul, leaving no longing, no unrest, no dissatisfied feeling in my bosom. I felt I knew that I was accepted fully in Jesus. A calm, simple, childlike trust took possession of my whole being; then for the first time in my life [he was fifty-one then, remember] I had the rest which is more than peace. I had felt peace before but feared I should not retain it. Now I had peace without fear and which really became rest. This change occurred about five o’clock on the evening of the second day of November 1863, and although I never felt so weak and small, yet Jesus has been my all since then. There has not been an hour of conscious doubt or darkness since that time. A heaven of peace and rest fills my soul. Day and night the Savior stands by me. My success in leading souls to Jesus has been much greater than before. Temptation is presented, but the power of it is broken. I seem to have a present Savior in every kind of need, so that for several years I have done the trusting and Jesus the keeping.

Now that is Christianity, and that is a man in the nineteenth century.

"Ah," you say, "but there again is a preacher, an evangelist, a man whom God was using in a special manner."

Well, consider the experience of a woman who became a minister’s wife [Hester Ann Rogers], a very able woman who had been born into a wealthy family and was brought under conviction and converted, as a result of which she suffered a lot, even at the hands of her own mother. But though she was a true Christian, she was still not satisfied. She describes how she was listening to a sermon on Trinity Sunday in June 1776 and tells how the preacher had been preaching about the Holy Spirit:

He spoke also much of the near union and communion with God that believers might enjoy, especially those perfected in love. My soul was led into depths unspeakable and saw such a fullness of God ready for me to plunge into that what I now felt seemed only as a drop compared with the ocean. As I came into the chapel yard I felt peculiar communion with the adorable Jesus in all his offices of redeeming love, and that verse of a hymn was so powerfully sweet as I had never felt it before:

The opening heavens around me shine
With beams of sacred bliss,
If Jesus shows his mercy mine,
And whispers, I am his.

I was deeply penetrated with his presence and stood as if unable to move and was insensible to all around me. While thus lost in communion with my Savior, he spake these words to my heart: "All that I have is thine. I am Jesus in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. I am thine. My Spirit is thine, my Father is thine, and they love thee as I love thee; the whole Deity is thine. All God is and all he has is thine; he even now overshadows thee; he now covers thee with a cloud of his presence." All this was so realized to my soul in a manner I cannot explain that I sank down motionless, being unable to sustain the weight of his glorious presence and fullness of love.

At the altar this was renewed to me but not in so large a measure. I believe indeed if this had continued as I felt it before but for one hour, mortality must have been dissolved and the soul dislodged from its tenement of clay...

I grew through boundless mercy and free grace in increasing intercourse and communion with my God every day. I live and move in him alone. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I feel the presence of the great Three in One. Yea, he dwelleth with me and shall be in me. This is his promise to my soul. I feel I am under his loving eye and the continual guidance of his Spirit. I do indeed dwell in God, and God in me. O love unsearchable to such a worm! I loathe myself when God I see, and into nothing I fall.

Here is a final quotation from that life. She describes how her husband was suddenly stricken by illness. He had fallen down as suddenly as if he had been shot and was still unwell.

Yet in secret prayer the Lord assured me that he should not die at this time but live. Oh, what should I do at a time like this if I had not a constant intercourse with God. But blessed be his dear name, I have access to him. He is indeed my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, and fills my soul with strong consolation.

These are but two illustrations out of a large number, a great host, that I could have given you. I have quoted elsewhere the experience of some of the Puritans. John Flavel said that in one moment of this realization of the manifestation of the Son of God, he had learned more than he had learned from all his books and all his own preaching and teaching over fifty years. The same is true of John Howe. How often have I quoted from Whitefield’s journals! How often have I reminded you of what happened to D. L. Moody and Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Now these are men and women of different types, of great abilities and ordinary abilities. In revival, as I say, some of the most ordinary people have had some of the most amazing experiences of the direct and immediate presence of the Lord.

You say, "Is this enthusiasm [emotional excess]?"

All I can say is that if it is, God grant that we all may become enthusiasts. These are sane, balanced people—people of intellect, people of knowledge, people of understanding, many of them people with great training, people who have been benefactors to the church, to their own families, and to the community at large. These are nothing but people who through the running centuries are verifying in their experience precisely what we are told in the New Testament is possible to every Christian. These examples I have just given are but examples and illustrations of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rejoicing in the Savior "with a joy unspeakable and full of glory," so conscious of him, and of his nearness and of his presence, his love and his glory and his power, that it was almost more than their physical frames could stand.

(From the sermon "Joy beyond Words".)


There is a book with the title Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel Gardiner. This was written by the famous Philip Doddridge, the hymn-writer, a preacher of two hundred years ago, a man who ministered at Northampton and kept an academy there to train young preachers. I am saying all this to tell you that by nature Philip Doddridge was one of the most careful and judicious of men—not a hothead, not an excitable person, but a calm and cool and highly rational person. He wrote this account of his friend Colonel Gardiner, and Colonel Gardiner, again, was a man who was famous for and characterized by his judicious spirit, not only in his military career but in every respect.

With some reluctance, Colonel Gardiner told this story, emphasizing that he told it only for the glory of God. He was a man who had done well in his profession, but he was living an utterly godless life, until one night when a great experience came to him. He had spent the evening drinking and talking, not to excess, but amusing and entertaining himself. Then he had gone back to his room to wait until midnight when he planned to meet with another man's wife. Not knowing quite what to do while he waited, he casually picked up a book, a religious book, which his good mother or aunt had slipped into his suitcase without his knowledge. The title of the book was The Christian Soldier or Heaven Taken by Storm, and it was written by Thomas Watson. As Colonel Gardiner was holding this book and glancing through it, an impression was made upon his mind that drew after it a train of the most important and happy consequences.

What happened? Well, this is what he describes. He repeated it more than once to Philip Doddridge, and he also repeated it to another spiritual leader. Philip Doddridge writes:

He thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall on the book while he was reading, which at first he imagined might happen by some accident in the candle. But lifting up his eyes he apprehended to his extreme amazement that there was before him, as it were, suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded on all sides with a glory, and was impressed as if a voice or something equivalent to a voice had come to him to this effect (for he was not confident as to the very words), but the voice said, "O sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these the return?" But whether this were an audible voice, or only a strong impression on his mind, equally striking, he did not seem very confident, though to the best of my remembrance he rather judged it to be the former.

Struck with so amazing a phenomenon as this, there remained hardly any life in him, so that he sank down in the armchair in which he sat and continued he knew not how long insensible. But however that were, he quickly after opened his eyes and saw nothing more than usual. But, of course, from that point on he was a new man, a complete change in his life, he became a great saint.

Like Philip Doddridge, I quote this to you for one reason only, and that is to warn you not to put limits upon what the everlasting God may do. We must not deny these things; we must not dismiss them as belonging to the realm of fancy, a disordered brain, enthusiasm, or dangerous ecstasy. We do not seek them; we seek the spiritual manifestation. But we must not deny that in his own time and according to his own sovereign will, God may choose to do to some what he did to Colonel Gardiner on that amazing occasion.

(From the sermon "Experiences of the Lord's Presence".)


Let me give you an example from the history of the church, just to show that genuine worship is not confined to biblical times, neither the Old Testament nor the New. Worship happens in every time of revival and reawakening, and you also find it in the individual experiences of people who have had some extraordinary manifestation of the glory of God, who have been filled with the Spirit and have been greatly used of God. Let me give you one illustration; you will find it in the journal of John Wesley for January 1, 1739. I often think this was a more important and vital experience in the life of John Wesley even than that which happened to him at Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738. He and his brother Charles, George Whitefield, Joseph Ingham, and some others were in the room in Fetter Lane where they used to meet. They were having what they called a "love feast" and had been together for hours. This is what Wesley writes:

About 3 o'clock in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us inasmuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from the awe and the amazement at the Presence of his majesty we broke out with one voice, "We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord."

They began to sing the Te Deum, which is often sung today. But do you see the difference? They did not sing it because it was announced at a given point in the service. No; they "broke out with one voice." They knew they were in the presence of God. As John Wesley put it, "as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us."

(From the sermon "True Worshippers".)


I am just going to give you something out of the diary of Augustus Toplady, the author of "Rock of Ages" and other great hymns. Here it is:

To have a part and lot in God’s salvation is the main thing; but to have the joy of it is an additional blessing which makes our way to the kingdom smooth and sweet. Here let me leave it on thankful record for my comfort and support if it please God in future times of trial and desertion, that I was never lower in the valley than last night, nor higher on the mount than today. The Lord chastened me but did not give me over unto death, and he never will. He may indeed for the small moment hide his face from me, but with everlasting kindness will he have mercy on me.

From morning until now (that is to say, eleven at night) I have enjoyed a continual feast within. Christ has been unspeakably precious to my heart, and the blessed Spirit of God hath visited me with sweet and reviving manifestations.

(From the sermon "All in Christ Jesus".)


Now, again, the devil has obviously been very busy at this point, and that is where the whole notion of transubstantiation has come in. Transubstantiation, which is the idea that the bread changes into our Lord’s very body, is an attempt to make his presence real, “the real presence,” as it is called. But it is not a real presence at all; it is a mere figment. But the idea behind that was right, in a sense, and that was that people should realize that they were not only eating bread, they were not doing something in a mechanical manner in connection with someone who now belonged to the past. The idea was to realize his presence. But the way we understand that is to say that he is present spiritually. This has been the great Reformation declaration on the Lord’s Supper—the spiritual presence of the Son of God.

You say, "But is he in the bread?"

No, he is not, and he is not with the bread, as Luther taught. He himself has said in effect, "As you do this in remembrance of me, in accordance with my command to you, I will be with you. I will manifest myself to you."

And thus, as you read the long history of the church, you will find that there have been glorious manifestations of the Son of God at various Communion seasons. I have often referred to that famous occasion at Cambuslang, now part of Glasgow, in the eighteenth century, that famous Communion season when George Whitefield was present and was preaching. That is perhaps one of the most astounding manifestations of the Son of God among his people ever recorded in history. It was a great revival, a great outpouring of the Spirit of God, and came about through the medium of the Communion service. As the Lord’s death was declared and remembered, suddenly he appeared among his people. So that is one of the reasons for partaking of this sacrament.

[...]

Let me give you one further example to stimulate you yet more, a practical example of what I mean. I shall read something written by a most remarkable man, a man by the name of John Lilburne. He is a man of interest, quite apart from his Christian experience. He was the real founder of the people who became known as the Levellers, and in many ways he is the father of democracy in this country [Britain]. Here is a man who, three hundred years ago, agitated for certain things that have only come to pass in this present [twentieth] century. But he was first and foremost a highly spiritual man, and he had amazing experiences. Listen to this:

I assuredly know that all the power in earth, yea and the gates of hell itself shall never be able to move me or prevail against me, for the Lord, who is the worker of all my works in me and for me, hath founded and built me upon that sure and unmovable foundation, the Lord Jesus Christ...for which with courage and rejoicing I now bear witness to and am a prisoner in bonds [he was in prison when he was writing this], lying day and night in fetters of iron, both hands and legs. If even worse things should be inflicted upon me, I should sing, rejoice, and triumph in them all, for my God makes me glory in my tribulation, and my soul is filled so full of that sweetness and joy that it finds in my God alone that my tongue and pen are never able to the full to express and utter it...

He hath crucified the world and all things here below unto me and hath enabled me to account and esteem all things beside himself as dung and dirt, not being worth of casting any affectionate eye upon them. I am as merry, yea, more cheerful than ever I was in any condition in my life and can sleep as soundly in my boots and irons as Peter did between the two soldiers when he was in prison.

There is a man enduring in the Fleet Prison in London the most cruel imprisonment, yet who is able to say that he is having the full experience of the apostles. He does not hesitate to claim that he has as much joy and peace and happiness as Peter when he was asleep that night before he was due to die, lying between two soldiers and bound with chains (Acts 12). Here is a man, a man like ourselves, a man of ability and understanding, not this strange, ascetic kind of person that the psychologists would speak of, but a man who was intensely practical in his outlook. Here he is, having such experiences that he is able to say, "If even worse things should be afflicted upon me, I should sing, rejoice, and triumph." He has reached a place in which he is so certain of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit that he is quite immune to anything that man in his malice might do to him.

(From the sermon "Finding the Lord's Presence".)

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