Yours Till Heaven with Ray Rhodes Jr

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One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Well, welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport. We're glad to have you with us.

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So lovethepodcast .com slash rap report to leave us a review, and that will be in the show notes.

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So if you look in the show notes, that is there. So today we're going to interview a personal friend of mine.

02:52

I don't know if he'll admit to that. We'll see. We'll see if he does. But Ray Rhodes, the author of both

02:58

Susie, which is his first book based on Susie Spurgeon, and his latest book that just released at the time of this airing,

03:07

Yours Till Heaven. So Ray, welcome to The Rap Report. Well, thank you, Andrew. It's great to be with you, my friend.

03:15

I've had the pleasure of spending time with you, staying in your home, had privilege of preaching at your pulpit, and having a lot of fun sitting and playing board games with your daughter.

03:27

So that was fun, while you guys were cooking and doing other things, and we were just having fun playing cards and whatnot.

03:35

But you've written the first book, and that did very well. You now have another one that just released.

03:43

But I want to first give you a chance, because we want to talk about both books, but before we do, I want to give you a chance for you to introduce yourself to our audience.

03:51

Let them know where you pastor, in case anyone is in the area down in Georgia to attend a good church.

03:58

And then following that, I want to ask you to go into why you studied

04:04

Susie Spurgeon, because she's not someone that I've seen many books on. In fact, other than yours,

04:09

I don't know of any other book on Susie Spurgeon. So if you could just introduce yourself and tell us why you studied

04:15

Susie. Yeah, yeah, thanks, Andrew. And the board games were fun, by the way. Abigail enjoyed that, my youngest daughter.

04:22

I'm Ray Rhodes, married to Lori for 33 years. Make sure I get that right. Pastor of Grace Community Church in Dawsonville, Georgia.

04:31

We are a conservative, evangelical, Reformed, expository preaching church.

04:37

So if you're in North Georgia, we'd love to see you come by and come by and visit with us.

04:43

We have six, Lori and I have six daughters. We have five grandchildren, soon to be six.

04:49

And we are just thankful, God's grace in our lives. Susie Spurgeon, right, there's only been one other book about her, and it was done in 1903, the year of her death.

05:00

And it was by Charles Ray and The Life of Susanna Spurgeon. And it is being, it's republished by Banner of Truth, and also includes, their edition includes one of her devotional books.

05:11

She wrote three devotional books, two other books as well, and contributed to others. So she was quite an author.

05:17

But yeah, I got fascinated with Susie. I went to seminary, went back to seminary late in life. My first tour was in 19, graduated in 1988 from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

05:28

Went back to school in 2013, and got my D -Min at the

05:33

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. And while I was there, I did my doctoral thesis on the spirituality of Charles and Susanna Spurgeon.

05:44

And so during that time, I got to know Susie Spurgeon. You're right, Andrew, there's little information about her out there.

05:52

This first biography was just tiny. It was very encouraging and helpful, but it's just a small biography. And the more

05:57

I studied about Charles and Susie's spirituality, the more I learned about her. Of course, there's tons of books about Spurgeon.

06:04

When he died, for the next two years, there was 24 biographies of Spurgeon that came out within two years.

06:10

That's amazing. But really, not much about her until her own death in 1903, the one biography that did come out.

06:19

But she's a wonderful woman. Not only was she married to Charles Spurgeon, but she was an author, as I mentioned, of five books.

06:25

She started the Mrs. Spurgeon's Book Fund in 1875, when Spurgeon released his first volume of lectures to my students.

06:34

And by the time she died, she'd given away about 200 ,000 books to poor pastors. She was all invested in giving books and ministering to poor pastors and numerous other ministries that she had a heart for and the

06:48

Lord used her for. So she had quite a ministry herself. But her greatest legacy was in supporting

06:58

Charles and promoting his legacy after he died.

07:03

And I don't think we have the Charles Spurgeon that we have today if he had not had the wife that he did. She made sure she gave her all of her energy, her efforts, she gave money, everything she could to support getting his sermons out, his books out, his ministry out.

07:17

And the interesting thing about her late in life, after Charles died in the mid -1890s, she helped to plant a church south of London.

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Just think about this. We have an afflicted widow who's getting up in age, and she is the primary influence behind planting a church.

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So that doesn't mean anybody's sort of, you know, they come up with ideas on what kind of person should plant a church.

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An elderly afflicted widow is usually not listed as the primary church planting kind of person.

07:57

But it tells you a lot about her character. I mean, the fact that she wasn't going to stop, she didn't seem to want to stop doing what the

08:05

Lord would call her to do. That's exactly right. I mean, after Spurgeon, he died in southern France at a place called

08:11

Montan, which is on the French Riviera. If you're going to, you know, that's not a bad place to die, by the way. I've been there.

08:16

It's a beautiful, beautiful place. And his body was sent back to London, and she stayed behind.

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I mean, she had really poor health. She didn't attend any of his funeral services or any of the activities surrounding his death in London.

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She stayed back, and she found some refuge at a friend's home there, and she prayed about what

08:40

God would have her to do next. And she came to the conclusion, well, I'll just continue doing what I have already been doing, primarily focusing on the book fund.

08:49

And Andrew, it's true today as well. There are many pastors who are very poor and just struggle in their ministry.

08:55

They have to do all sorts of things to provide for their family. And Spurgeon's day, it was just of epidemic proportions.

09:05

The pastor, many pastors that were poor, they had a lot of children. They had a difficult time affording any kind of health care.

09:12

And so they could barely put clothes on their own back and their family's backs.

09:18

So they were not going to spend money on books when their first priority was feeding their family.

09:23

And so they were very limited in their ability to in their ministries. And so Susie Spurgeon got a vision for that.

09:29

And so she said, if we can get good books into the hands of these poor pastors, it will help their preaching.

09:38

And as a result, it will strengthen their churches. And as a result, the gospel will spread further. And so that was her vision for that.

09:46

And you know how pastors are today. You get a box of books in the mail, and it's a very exciting moment.

09:54

The mail truck comes up, and they've got a brown box. Well, obviously, you know, Grace Community Church knows that.

10:00

And that's why when you go to Shepherd's Conference, the first thing they do when you get to Shepherd's Conference is you go pick up a box of books, because they know exactly how to get pastors' attention.

10:11

And these pastors throughout England would weep, because they had not had a new book in some cases in years.

10:20

I mean, they had like three or four or five books total. And so she sends this parcel with a number of wonderful books, and their family would rejoice, and they would weep.

10:31

And they would immediately start getting into those books, and it would influence their sermons for Sunday.

10:38

And it was just a blessing. She also sent clothing at times to help the pastor's family.

10:43

She would send funds to help. She just had a burden for pastors, and that's one reason every pastor and every pastor's wife really ought to get to know

10:52

Susie Spurgeon. And that's one way that she loved her husband well, too. She extended his ministry through the ministries of pastors across the

11:00

British Isles and around the world, ultimately. Yeah, I mean, the thing that is amazing is, you know, you said we wouldn't have the

11:08

Spurgeon without Susie. I mean, that's true for every pastor. But the reality, though, is their love story.

11:17

I remember hearing, and maybe you could verify if this is true, the story that Spurgeon, I guess before they were married, was preaching and left her at an event and basically said, like, this is what he's called to do is to preach, and she would have to know that.

11:38

I've never been able to verify if that story is true, that he left her at a, just kind of abandoned her at an event that they were at.

11:46

Yeah, that story is actually true. It was not purposeful. He went to her home.

11:52

This is when they were engaged, and he had dinner with her mother and Susie, and then he took her with him to this event at a facility there in London.

12:04

It was packed to capacity, and so he helped her out of the carriage, goes to the front door with her.

12:09

He makes the turn to go down one of the aisles towards the pulpit, and he was so focused on what he was to do that he literally just forgot

12:21

Susie, and this was not unusual for him. She would come into his study area before he was about to preach on a

12:29

Sunday morning when she was able to attend services, and he would stand up and extend his hand and introduce himself.

12:37

He was so absorbed with the task at hand. Well, anyway, the particular night he forgot her, she was just really upset, and she left the event.

12:46

Her family lived about a mile away, and she, from what I can discern, she ran home to her mother, and their marriage was, their engagement was in jeopardy at that moment, and so after the sermon is over,

13:03

Spurgeon says, where's Susie? I mean, he's completely oblivious to what's happened, and so he also runs to her home or catches a carriage or whatever, and he gets to her home, and thankfully, she has a godly mother who realizes this man loves my daughter, but also he is not an ordinary guy.

13:24

Her mother had the discernment to recognize that Charles Spurgeon, even in, that would have been in 1855, they were married in 1856, that Charles Spurgeon was not going to be the ordinary kind of pastor.

13:37

There was something unique about him. Of course, no one could have imagined then the sort of fame that he would have, but already in 1855, he's very famous.

13:47

The crowds are flocking to him, and so her mother helped her to see that.

13:52

She brought them together. She was a godly mother, a future mother -in -law then, and they worked it out, and their engagement was saved, their marriage was saved, and she became really the most important individual in Spurgeon's life and in his ministry, and thankful.

14:09

So we owe part of that at least to his mother -in -law, and her name also first revealed in the book

14:15

Susie, her name is Susanna also. Now, you know, when you think about this, we have so much on Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

14:24

There's books written on him, we have collections of his sermons. You have decided to focus in on your first book on Susie herself, this one on their love story.

14:37

So what was it about their love story that got your interest? Yeah, you know, as I peel back the layers on Charles and Susie's lives,

14:46

I mean, it's really, there's no scandal there. It's not that they were perfect, but there's no glaring sort of issue.

14:56

You know, we look, we study many of our heroes, and there's something about them, whether it's Jonathan Edwards that, you know, we love

15:01

Edwards, we love Whitfield, but they both were slave owners, and that causes problems still today. Spurgeon was opposed to slavery, for example.

15:10

There's just, there's no, there's nothing that we can really attach to Spurgeon that causes us great concern.

15:17

And so I wanted to know what made them tick? How did their marriage work? Because, as you know,

15:24

I mean, Spurgeon was a very unusual guy. He's away from home frequently. He's preaching sometimes 10 or 12 times a week.

15:31

So they're separated. The first 10 years of their marriage, she travels with him as often as she can.

15:38

But after 1869, from 1869 onward, she is so afflicted with poor health that she's really never able to travel with him again, and she's seldom able to attend church again, which is just a traumatic thing for their marriage.

15:55

So I wanted to know more about them, and one of the things I discovered, there are lots of great things, is that though they didn't have a perfect marriage, they had a very godly marriage.

16:05

They had a spiritual marriage, and the book opens up pretty soon, I think chapter two, with the spirituality of Charles and Susanna Spurgeon, their prayer life, how they studied the

16:13

Bible, family worship, those sorts of means that God used to give them a foundation to stand upon that they can endure.

16:22

I mean, the very first year of their marriage, they get married in January. In October, they have twin sons, and also in September, they have twin sons.

16:32

October is the great music hall disaster, where people are trampled to death at a Spurgeon preaching event, and many others are hospitalized.

16:41

So people die, people are hospitalized, the press is all over Spurgeon. So the first year of their marriage, they're being assaulted by the press, they're facing great personal difficulty, and at a very time when they have newborn, they have twins, all the excitement and joys of their life, and Spurgeon may have quit the ministry without Susie as his wife, without the strong spiritual foundation that both of them had.

17:08

And so they weathered controversy, they weathered suffering, both their own individual suffering, as well as bearing the weight that came with knowing that he was preaching at an event, 10 ,000 people inside, 10 ,000 people outside, clamoring to get in.

17:25

Someone yelled, fire, fire, and there was no fire, it was just mischief makers. And so people panicked, they started running out of the building, trampling one another, people leapt from the balconies, it was a horrific, horrific event.

17:38

And Spurgeon never got over it. The rest of his ministry, he had just trauma as a result of this particular event, and it caused him depression and emotional distress in various ways, and yet he persevered, he was joyful, he had

17:54

Susie praying for him, supporting him, encouraging him, and then when she gets sick, so I said, how do they do this?

18:01

I mean, this is a lot of stuff. His wife is sick, he is sick, often throughout his ministry, they've got the disaster, they've got controversy, they've got criticism coming from left and right, and one of the ways that they did this was through their prayer, their

18:15

Bible study, through family worship, their Christ -centered view of ministry and of life, but also through their communication, and that entire chapter devoted to how they communicated with one another, so it's just a fascinating story all the way around, and they were so romantic with one another.

18:35

They spoke so kindly, so romantically, so graciously to one another in their conversation, but also in their letters, and I argue in the book that I think that Spurgeon's, two of Spurgeon's great influences helped him with this.

18:52

One was George Whitfield. Whitfield also was married, but no one would describe his marriage as a romantic marriage the way we would describe

18:59

Charles Spurgeon. Whitfield was singularly committed to his public ministry, and his marriage was somewhere after that, and the

19:08

Puritans, Spurgeon's also very influenced, especially by the English Puritans. If you read some of their letters to home, they're like Spurgeon's.

19:18

They talk about their wives in the most romantic, many of them in the most romantic of terms, so Spurgeon was

19:25

Whitfield, and Spurgeon was the Puritans in that regard. As Whitfield, he was also singularly devoted to his public ministry, and Susie as well committed to not hindering him in any way in his ministry, but also he was like the

19:38

Puritans in that he was very expressive in his feelings and his love for Susie.

19:44

Yeah, it seems very much that she was very supportive of the ministry in a lot of different ways.

19:51

Just the character of her, you know, we sit and examine people, we read biographies about people to learn about them, but with her, there's just so much, it seems like, tragedy in her life.

20:05

What was the illness, I had forgotten now, what was the illness that she had had? Yeah, it's not for certain, and part of that's because of the

20:12

Victorian era. They would keep these things quiet, but the doctor who operated on her, his name's

20:19

Simpson, he was really the father of modern gynecology, and so we were pretty certain there was some issue related to some gynecological, yeah, that word,

20:30

I can't get that out, related to gynecology. So I don't know if she had a hysterectomy or what, but it was some female issue that afflicted her, and after she had the surgery, she did improve some, but she was pretty much an invalid for much of the rest of their marriage, at least.

20:50

She improved some after Spurgeon died, and she would describe days in which she was in such pain that she couldn't lift her hands, she couldn't lift her head, and some ladies that I've talked to say that's sort of like endometriosis as well, the sort of pain that they can feel in their body as a result of that, and medicine was much more primitive than it is now, so yeah, it was, that's our theory at least, and I think that's right, some sort of female issues that afflicted her, and also that they never had children again, and in the

21:25

Victorian age, people tried to have as oftentimes as many children as they could because so many children would die.

21:31

You know, Charles Dickens had 10 children, and he and Spurgeon are contemporaries to a point. I mean, Dickens died in 1870,

21:38

Spurgeon died in 1892, but that was relatively common to have large families or at least attempt to have large families, and Spurgeon loved children so much, and the orphanages tell us that, and so I think they would have had children if they could have had children, and I think they really could not have children.

21:56

Well, I want to first give a plug for where people can get this book, and after that, what I want to do is talk about their romance.

22:03

You have, you start off your book talking about it not being so Victorian romance, but so for folks, if you want to get the book, yours till heaven,

22:11

I'm going to tell you two places you can go. You go to Moody Press. I'll have a link in the show notes. You can go to Moody Press, get it from there.

22:18

It's available everywhere else on Amazon and all that, but let's give our money to Moody Press instead of to Amazon, so go to Moody Press, get it there, but if you want an autographed copy, if you would like a copy that is autographed, well, then go to rayrodesjr .com,

22:37

and I'll have the link there as well that you can get a autographed copy, and you can buy it right from Ray if you want to send it to someone else, and guys, just letting you know,

22:47

Valentine's Day is coming. You need something as a gift, maybe a love story about Charles Spurgeon and Susie Spurgeon, maybe the thing.

22:58

It might be something to give both of you, something to enjoy reading, so that might be a good gift to get for this

23:05

Valentine's Day, which is coming up soon, so I encourage you to get the new book, Yours Till Heaven by Ray Rhodes Jr.,

23:14

and that is who we're speaking with now, so Ray, can you go into the romance of Charles and Susie Spurgeon?

23:24

Yeah, you know, there are a lot of descriptors about Spurgeon that you've heard that most pastors know.

23:31

Spurgeon was the prince of preachers, you know, that's the most common descriptor that's given to Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, and I give a list of the different ways

23:41

Spurgeon is described in the book, but one of the descriptors that I use I don't think has ever been used before, and it's essentially that he was a great lover.

23:49

He was a lover of one woman and one woman only. The title of the book comes from a letter that he wrote to Susie.

23:57

It was in December of 1855, just before Christmas. They were going to be married in January of 1856, so just a few weeks from their wedding, and he writes, so he says goodbye to her.

24:11

He's going to visit his parents. He's in London. He's going to visit his parents in Colchester, which is, I think, about an hour train ride north, kind of northeast of London, if I get my geography right there.

24:23

Anyway, time he gets on the train, he pens this letter to her, and he closes it like this, yours till heaven, and it includes two other words that in the epilogue of the book

24:34

I deal with, but yours till heaven, and then, and then, and the and then means that he believed that he and Susie wouldn't be married in heaven, but that they would worship

24:47

God together. They would know one another. They would love one another, and they would worship God together eternally.

24:53

So there's the and then, and that yours till heaven really describes their relationships.

24:59

It was an exclusive relationship. There's, again, no scandal attached to Spurgeon. There's no question about his commitment to one woman and one woman only, yours till heaven.

25:11

Till death do us part. I mean, that was Spurgeon's commitment. Susie had no questions about that.

25:17

She had no doubts about that. He loved her. He loved her only, and he would love her until he died, and then he anticipated loving her eternally in heaven before the throne of God, and they both wrote about that.

25:29

I have an entire chapter about their eternal vision, so they had quite a phenomenal love story, and part of that is seen in the way they communicated one to another in their letters.

25:41

He talked about daydreaming of his wife, while he's away. So we've got this vision of Spurgeon.

25:48

He wrote about 150 books. We've got 63 volumes of sermons in the New Park Street and the

25:53

Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit that you can still get today. They were reproduced in Texas at Pilgrim Press.

26:03

I think the guy's name was Bob Ross. He just died, and I don't know really what's going to happen to those, so I would encourage everybody to get on eBay to go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is one place you can get some of those try to fill in that set.

26:16

I don't know if they'll ever be published again, because it's print, the challenges with print media, so another story, but he's a great author.

26:26

He's a fantastic preacher. He's one of the world's great celebrities. Of course, he's not in the way we think.

26:34

Spurgeon was not interested in being a worldwide celebrity for the entertainment value of that, but the fact is he was.

26:41

Everywhere he went, people wanted to get close to him. People sold his hair.

26:48

I mean, they tried to find pieces of his hair, and it was sold. Spurgeon, you've heard of that with movie stars and music stars.

26:56

That's the way many people thought of Spurgeon. They wanted a piece of him, and advertisers would try to use his name, and when he would find out about that, he'd be very unhappy.

27:06

For example, Spurgeon loves cigars. But later in his life, he walked by a store, and it said, smoke the cigars that Spurgeon smokes, and he didn't like that.

27:16

Eventually, he gave up cigars because he didn't want that to be connected to an advertising campaign, but Spurgeon suffered with depression, and Susie was often lonely, but their communication with one another is just so tender.

27:32

The way he would describe his affections for her and to her, and I forget the question.

27:40

I got so involved in this story, and I love to talk about that.

27:46

Well, he wrote to her every day, Andrew. Every day. With, while preaching, while writing, while counseling, and yet writing to her while he was traveling.

27:57

Exactly. Every single day. That's the amazing thing of it, and after this break,

28:05

I want to talk about, you mentioned earlier how they had a very spiritual marriage, a very godly marriage, and so I want to go into that.

28:17

What did their marriage look like that you'd say that it was a very godly marriage? Let's do that right after this break.

28:22

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What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe, and you will get

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Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. And Ray, I believe you know that voice.

29:24

He lives not too far from you, and you actually had a son -in -law that worked for Todd, right?

29:29

Yeah, yeah, it's great to see Todd Frill recommending your book, brother. That's great. Yeah, he's a friend of mine.

29:36

He's preached to our church a number of times. Yeah, well, he doesn't live all that far, so that makes it easier. Yep, it does.

29:43

So you talked about the Spurgeons having a godly marriage, and for folks who are listening, we're interviewing with Ray Rhodes Jr.,

29:51

the author of Yours Till Heaven, dealing with the love story of Charles Spurgeon and his wife

29:59

Susie. So what do you mean when you describe their marriage as being a very godly marriage? Yeah, well, as you know,

30:06

Spurgeon was Christ -centered in everything. You read any Spurgeon sermon, and it doesn't take very long into the sermon before you're hearing the gospel.

30:16

The gospel is throughout his sermons. It was a part of his everyday conversation, very naturally.

30:22

He wasn't sort of contrived, you know, trying to throw the gospel in. It just bled through him.

30:27

It was his oxygen. And he wrote that, you know, as he thought about the various sciences and various disciplines of study, he said, once when

30:39

I read books, I put all my knowledge together in glorious confusion, but ever since I have known

30:44

Christ, I put Christ in the center as my son, and each science revolves around it like a planet, while minor sciences are satellites to these planets.

30:56

So that gives you the picture of his marriage. Christ was at the center, and his marriage revolved around that center.

31:04

It got its light from the center, which is Christ. And so how did they know

31:10

Christ like that? Well, the way we know Christ is through his word. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

31:17

So the way we know Christ is through the proclamation, the reading, the scriptures.

31:23

And so Spurgeon and Susie came to know Christ through the word of God, both through the preaching of God's word.

31:29

And then how do we grow in our knowledge of Christ? Well, we, you know,

31:35

Jesus said, sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. So the way we grow is through studying the word of God, through praying through the scripture, and through applying the scripture, reading the word, knowing the word, memorizing the word, meditating the word, and then asking

31:50

God to help you to skillfully apply God's word in life. And that's what they did. So they read

31:56

God's word together. Spurgeon said it is through God's word that he speaks to his people.

32:03

That's so different from what we hear often in our day and time. People want God to speak in their dreams, and they want to have visions, they want to hear voices, and all the rest.

32:12

Well, Spurgeon said God does speak to us. You want to hear God speak? You know, if someone said, read the Bible out loud, you know,

32:18

God speak audibly. Yeah, it's a quote from Justin Peters, and he says, if you want to hear

32:24

God speak, read the Bible. If you want to hear him speak, read the Bible out loud. Or he says, if you want to read the

32:31

Bible, if you want to hear God read the Bible, if you want to hear God speak, read the Bible out loud. That's the quote.

32:37

That's exactly right, and that's what they did. And regularly, Spurgeon, you know, he started a college called the

32:44

Pastor's College, and the students would come over to their home, sometimes once a week, and he would let them ask him any questions, and sometimes he would bring

32:52

Susie out as well. And so one of the students asked him about how to read the

32:59

Bible, and this is what Spurgeon did. He turned to Susie, and he said, wifey can tell you about that.

33:05

He called her wifey a lot. Wifey can tell you about that. She's read the book through many times, and he turned to Susie.

33:12

He said, how many times, Susie, have you read the Bible? And at this particular time, she said, I've read it 14 times, and that means about three chapters a day to accomplish this in a year.

33:22

So she read the Bible three chapters a day, read through the Bible every year, and she said, that's one way, that's an important way to get to know the full scope of the

33:33

Bible. But she also had another way that she read the Bible, and that was that she would focus on small portions, a verse or two, and meditate on those little sections of Bible, and that's where she would really get some of the joy, and where she would become more centered in her

33:52

Bible reading. And so Spurgeon turned to the students after she spoke, and he said, gentlemen,

33:58

I advise you stick to the text. And that's what we need to do in our daily reading of Scripture, is stick to the text.

34:07

And then we preach the Word, stick to the text. The Bible is God's authoritative, infallible, inerrant, and it's sufficient.

34:14

We need pastors that will preach God's words faithfully. We need daddies that will teach their children the

34:20

Word of God. We need husbands and wives who will read the Word of God individually, and together, and pray, and that's what

34:27

Charles and Susie did. And so they read the Scripture, they meditated on the Scripture, and Spurgeon said, that's like taking grapes and crushing them to get the wine.

34:36

And so meditation is doing that. It's like taking the grapes, crushing them, getting the good wine of Scripture, getting it into your system.

34:43

And as he said of John Bunyan, you cut him, he bleeds Bible. That's what Spurgeon was, that's what he wanted, and that's what

34:50

Susie believed as well. So they read the Bible, they meditated on the Scripture, they prayed, and they asked

34:56

God for what they needed very simply. They said, Lord, this is what we perceive as a particular need we ask you for, and they trusted

35:04

God to provide exactly what they needed. It is so amazing to me to think about, here's a woman who is either at that point almost an invalid or an invalid, yet she's got all these students coming to her home, which for any wife, they know when company is coming, it's like, oh,

35:24

I got to get the house clean, I got to get everything prepared, and then you got to cook, and you got to do all that. And she did all this.

35:31

It speaks so much to the character of Susie Spurgeon that she saw her goal in life, her mission of supporting

35:41

Charles. It's such a far cry, I think, to what we see in our generation, where so much of it is everyone trying to make a mark for themselves.

35:51

Everyone wants to make a difference. That's the big thing you see with the Millennials. Everyone thinks they're going to change the world, and I guess their way of changing is rioting on the streets.

36:02

I think that's making a good mark, I guess. But you don't think of someone like Susie Spurgeon who, she sees her value in making, really,

36:12

Charles Spurgeon. I mean, Charles Spurgeon is known around the world. He's the most quoted preacher in history, and like you said, we wouldn't have that Charles Spurgeon had it not been for Susie, and yet nothing's ever written on Susie.

36:26

There's no discussion on Susie, and I think that's the value your writings bring to the

36:32

Christian community, to Christians, to be able to see that we know and value and love

36:37

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, what he gave to Christians in writings and preaching, and yet what's been lost has been his wife

36:47

Susie. What's also been lost is the deacon who led

36:52

Spurgeon to Christ. His name has been lost to history. But I think this is the value your books give.

37:01

I mean, Susie, your reason your first book, Susie, was just such a, it was this eye -opening thing of going, it tells you so much about her character.

37:09

Here we're about the love story they have. They had a lot of children that had some difficulties with that as well, right?

37:17

I mean, there was a lot of, as you already said, people lost children at early ages, and I think they had some struggles with that in their marriage as well.

37:29

Can you talk to some of their, just because I want to get into their raising of children as well, but as far as how they dealt with the hardships of the time with the loss of children and sick children, things like this, especially with her being sick?

37:45

Yeah, they only had the twin children, and again, I think they couldn't have any more after that because of her particular affliction.

37:52

But they were certainly connected with people who were losing children to death and to sickness, and their own children, of course, faced various trials.

38:02

I think one of the challenging things about Spurgeon as a father was he was gone so often, and his sons would talk about that.

38:11

There's a book about Spurgeon and his friendships that talks a little bit about the sons, and they were not as close to him on an intimate level as they might have been had he been present.

38:23

But interestingly, they both revered him, and one of those sons, it was

38:29

Charles, his oldest son. They're twins. He came out first, so he's the oldest.

38:34

But Charles was asked about writing a biography of his father, and he said he just didn't think he could do it.

38:40

He so revered his dad that he couldn't be objective, really, at all. And they both loved their dad, and interestingly, neither of them, though, came to know

38:49

Christ directly at the moment of conversion. It was not through Charles or Susie.

38:56

It was through someone else who was sharing the Gospel with them. But both of them talk about the influence of Charles and Susie on their lives, and both of them would really direct their salvation and their spirituality probably more to her than to Charles, because she's there day after day after day pouring her heart and life into them.

39:16

But you have a time where so many people are having lots of children, dying young, having illness.

39:23

Here you have a couple who cannot, at least we assume, cannot have more children, because like you said, we can't be positive on that.

39:31

But how does that end up affecting, A, their marriage and their counsel to people?

39:38

Because obviously, if you want to have more children, and you're counseling people that are having children and they're passing away, this becomes a stressful thing if you want to have more children.

39:50

Do you see how in that time, not being able to have the children or more children, is there stuff that you ended up from in that aspect with the

40:03

Victorian era? Yeah, I would just say that they didn't have a magic pill to counsel people with.

40:11

It was simply what we call the means of God's grace. And so it was the promises of God.

40:17

Spurgeon wrote one of my favorite Spurgeon books. Morning and Evening is great when it was devotional. It was morning by morning and evening by evening initially, and now it's morning and evening.

40:26

That's wonderful. Everybody have a copy of that. And it's pretty common in the Victorian era to have those sorts of devotional books.

40:32

But he wrote another devotional book called The Checkbook of Faith. And that book is all about the promises of God and how

40:40

God's word is that we have. We have the scripture, and it is based on the character of God.

40:47

We know that everything God says is true, because God cannot lie. Almost every child will ask their parents at some point,

40:55

Daddy, Mommy, is there anything God can't do? And that's one of the things we say, well,

41:00

God can't lie, and his word is true. And so Spurgeon took promises from scripture and says we can pray

41:07

God's promises in their context, and we can trust that God is true, that God will comfort the downcast, that God is a very present help to us in our time of trouble, that the sufferings in our life that God uses to teach us not to rely on ourself, but on the

41:22

Lord who raises the dead in 2 Corinthians. So that entire book is filled with that. So Spurgeon and Susie would counsel people with simply the scriptures.

41:31

They trusted that the scriptures were sufficient, and that the scriptures that God would comfort his suffering children, whether they had lost babies or suffering some other family tragedy, that God would use his word.

41:43

And they could absolutely trust the promises of God. And it's like taking a check to the bank, he said, you know, and God assigned the check.

41:51

And it wasn't like a prosperity thing, but the promises of God in context, in scripture, that we can take those promises,

41:59

God is a very present help to his children. Let not your hearts be troubled, Jesus told his disciples.

42:06

You believe in God, believe also in me, and my Father's house and many mansions. You know, we can trust the promises of God.

42:12

I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. And we find comfort in that. And so they encouraged them by what they did in their own families, scripture reading, prayer, and family worship.

42:23

And in the Spurgeon household, family worship happened every day. Spurgeon wrote a book called The Interpreter. It's very difficult to get a copy of that.

42:30

I'd like to find one myself. I've not been able to get one. And he just sort of assumed that many families were going to have family worship, not once a day, but twice a day.

42:40

But he wrote the book so that families who were having family worship twice a day could use the book.

42:46

But also he realized that some people in certain circumstances, they could only manage family worship once a day.

42:52

But one thing that wasn't an option was that none a day. They expected that Christian families were going to gather for family worship.

43:02

And that simply meant reading the scripture, giving some brief explanation of scripture, praying and singing.

43:09

Susie played the piano, they'd gather the family around the piano, just like Martin Luther did, with his family, and they would sing hymns.

43:16

They loved Arasenki sounds, Deal Moody's songwriters. Spurgeon and Moody were very close friends, and they loved singing the

43:25

Moody songs in their home as well. So that's the same thing. The same thing they did, they counsel others to do.

43:31

Read the word, pray the word, meditate on the word, family worship, and go to church.

43:38

Get under the preaching of God's word. Get in a biblically -minded church. And Spurgeon, I forget the number, he started so many churches.

43:47

London was radically different, and England was radically different because Spurgeon existed. And part of that is in sending students out to plant churches and pastor churches.

43:59

I think there's folks who've done studies on what London and what England would have been like if Charles Spurgeon never existed.

44:07

Well, I think that's actually a testimony to everyone complaining about politics nowadays. This is an example of the right way to do this.

44:16

You don't go and trust Trump or the Republicans or politics or government. It's the word of God.

44:23

So you covered a little bit with the children. You talked in the book about their mutual support, their expressive communication.

44:31

Could you kind of dig into that a bit? Yeah. And again, their support was mutually.

44:36

For the first years of their marriage, Susie said she had the privilege of really ministering to him and his various challenges.

44:45

And then when she was afflicted, she said the roles were reversed in many ways. In the physical part of it, is he had to make sure that she was cared for.

44:54

Now, so folks say, well, how did he support her when she's physically sick when he's gone so often?

45:00

Well, he made sure that she had people around her. She was never left alone. Now, Spurgeon's unusual circumstances, again, he's world famous.

45:10

He's writing books. He's preaching sermons. He's got 60 institutions connected to his ministry.

45:18

So his home becomes like Grand Central Station for lots of things happening. And also, lots of money is coming into Spurgeon's world, and he's giving it away.

45:28

But he's also using it to help support this thing. And part of that meant having household employees that they treated like family.

45:35

So eventually, they would have cooks, they would have gardeners, they would have dressmakers.

45:41

So they had people that were connected to their lives. And so when Spurgeon's away, it's not like he's just abandoned

45:47

Susie, fend for yourself. She's got people around her that care for her.

45:53

And part of the success of Charles Spurgeon is not just his great mind, but he had a team.

45:59

He had two secretaries who were frequently with him, male secretaries. He had people at the church, people at the pastor's college, people at the orphanages that were serving alongside of him.

46:10

So he didn't have to do every single thing himself, but he did a lot. So they supported one another physically, they supported one another's ministry.

46:17

In 1875, when Spurgeon was releasing his first volume of lectures to my students, he gave Susie an advanced manuscript of that.

46:25

He says, what do you think about this? She's, oh, it's wonderful. I wish, this is what my wife said about my book. It's wonderful. It's wonderful.

46:33

I wish we could give a copy to every pastor in England. And he looked at her and he says, why don't you make it happen?

46:39

And that's the beginning of Mrs. Spurgeon's book fund that ultimately gave away the 200 ,000 books. And then, so he supported her by publishing information and publishing stuff she wrote as well in his monthly magazine that he started in 1865 called

46:54

The Sword and the Trial. And that is just a treasury of Spurgeon knowledge in that Sword and Trial.

47:00

So he supported her and he would help her with editorial work when she was too sick. He would write the report for her.

47:06

And of course, as we've already said, she's all involved in getting a sermon, helping get his sermons translated into languages, being a refuge at home.

47:14

Spurgeon would come home on a Sunday night, for example, and he was just exhausted. Every preacher can tell you how they feel after preaching a sermon on Sunday.

47:23

They're exhausted and they're empty. And so he's been ministering all day and he would often get depressed on Sunday night.

47:30

And she would read to him. Sometimes she would read the poetry of George Herbert.

47:36

And other times, they would start weeping together. And she said, he wept so broken on the inside.

47:45

And she wept simply because she loved him. So he had a wife that would just get down on her, on the floor with him and pray with him and let him know that she loved him.

47:56

And he would do the same. There's a story of people who are often in the

48:01

Spurgeon home. Sometimes they're on a Saturday and Spurgeon is always going to involve them in family worship and prayer.

48:07

And he goes and he puts his arm around Susie during this prayer time and he prays for his beloved wife in the presence of everyone there.

48:14

There's one thing, you know, the Song of Solomon says that the banner over her was love. It was obvious that the woman was loved.

48:21

That's what Charles's son, Thomas, said about their marriage. There was no doubt. Everybody knew. Everybody knew.

48:26

He put it down in print and he made it obvious in his speech. He loved his wife. I remember reading an article maybe a couple of years ago.

48:35

So one of the dangerous signs in social media is when a pastor or Christian leader never says anything about his wife in his post or in his pictures or anything like that.

48:47

He says so often he's found that when that is happening, you don't see anything or hear anything about the person's wife in their conversation.

48:54

There's often a problem at home. And sometimes there's a real serious, serious problem.

49:01

But Spurgeon didn't have that. He loved his wife. She loved him, and they supported one another like that.

49:06

Well, of course he didn't have that. He didn't have Facebook. If he had, he had Facebook. He would have used that thing.

49:13

He'd be posting pictures of him and his wife. Yes, you know, my wife doesn't want me posting pictures.

49:19

But it is interesting. I didn't realize, I never realized the impact that it could have. Every time

49:26

I leave an event, you know, I leave Shepard's Conference, and there's a guy I've gotten to know at Shepard's Conference.

49:32

He's always volunteering there. And a couple years ago, he said, you know, one of the things I always look forward to after Shepard's Conference is over is going to your

49:41

Facebook wall because I always know you're going to post as soon as you get to the airport saying, I can't wait to be with my bride.

49:47

And he says, I just love that you do that. I never thought twice about it. But to wrap up with our time,

49:57

I want to cover two other chapters that you dealt with. One was learning together, and then a time to laugh.

50:06

Laughter is not exactly the thing I think of with Spurgeon, you know, with the depression he struggled and things like this.

50:12

But could you just, you know, quickly just give us an overview of those two chapters? Yeah, the first time to laugh, let's talk about that.

50:21

You know, Spurgeon was a very happy guy and a very joyful guy, and he loved a good joke.

50:27

And he told plenty of them. And one time he was criticized for telling one of his, a person attending his church, not one of his members, the person attending, criticized him for using humor in the pulpit.

50:39

And he said to the person, if you knew how much I held back, you would not criticize me, you would commend me.

50:48

He said, there's more I want to say than I don't say. He didn't use humor inappropriately, but he thought that a good laugh was the expression of the joy of the

50:59

Lord. And many times in the Victorian era, some of the highbrow churches, the last thing you can imagine is a pastor cutting a joke in the pulpit.

51:10

Yeah, but there is an advantage. I've told people that, you know, I have found that humor at the pulpit is a way, when you see people starting to doze off and their eyes are, humor wakes them up and they stay awake the rest of the time.

51:23

So it is something that, you know, you don't want to just be a comedian, but a good application of it can help with that.

51:33

So I agree with him. And yes, I've been criticized as well. But, you know, the thing

51:40

I just, I never think of him in all that, you know, granted, we only know him through writings.

51:46

I know him through really reading his sermons and all. And so it's very different there. And I don't think of him as just with knowing his depression and all,

51:54

I don't think of him as a jolly guy. And, you know, so thinking of him just laughing is just not the perception that I had had of him.

52:04

Yes. There's an entire chapter in his autobiography entitled Pure Fun. And his friends knew him.

52:12

I mean, he was this character that would pull a joke on a friend. One time he was out with some of his friends and they had some guns, they were doing some shooting and whatnot.

52:24

And he worked it out with the owner of the property who had this fake deer on the property.

52:29

We see those still today. And so he said this, the owner of the property said, you could shoot this deer who's out in the pasture every day.

52:38

And of course, it's not even a real deer. But the guy was about to shoot and realized

52:43

Spurgeon's over there laughing his head off, rolling on the floor, laughing, rolling on the ground, laughing that he had caught him in this.

52:51

And one of his friends, he never laughed so much as when he was in Spurgeon's presence. And the interesting thing about him, he would be laughing one moment and then he was like, let's pray.

53:01

And they'd be walking through the woods or something and they would hit their knees and start praying.

53:07

And then he'd pick up with the conversation and they'd be laughing again. He loved people. He was not a loner, even though he was sinking into these times of depression.

53:16

And some of it, I think, was physical. Some of it was the traumatic effect of the music hall, lots of reasons for it.

53:23

But he was a person who loved to be with people and he loved to laugh.

53:30

And he saw that if you couldn't laugh, it was really an expression that you didn't understand the joy of the

53:36

Lord. And he thought the joy of the Lord was going to produce in you, sometimes tears, but oftentimes laughter.

53:43

Yeah, well, the scriptures do say that humor is good medicine for the soul. So I think that's an appropriate place for us to wrap up.

53:52

Folks, again, if you want to get your copy of Yours Till Heaven, I hope that this caused you to have a desire to look into the marriage of Charles and Susie Spurgeon.

54:04

Go to Moody Press and get Yours Till Heaven. If you want to get an autographed copy, and again, in the show notes,

54:11

I have all the links, you can get an autographed copy of Yours Till Heaven at RayRhodesJr .com.

54:19

So here's what I'm going to do for folks. I'm going to be purchasing three autographed copies to be giving away.

54:27

We're going to give those away. All you have to do to enter is to write a review on the podcast.

54:33

Give us a review, let us know you listened, and we will choose three people to get a free copy.

54:39

All you got to do to leave a review is go to lovethepodcast .com slash rap report.

54:46

That's R -A -P -P report. So just go there, leave us a review, and then let us know that you left a review so that we could get your email.

54:56

You could do that by emailing us at info at strivingforeternity .org.

55:02

That's info at strivingforeternity .org. That will also be in the show notes.

55:07

So we're going to give away three copies of this book. So if you want to get one of those, one of the copies of Yours Till Heaven signed by Ray Rhodes, just leave us a review and shoot us an email so that we know you.

55:22

So really, so we have your email address. Let us know what your user handle is because some of the review names, I can't figure out.

55:29

So Ray, anything that you want to share with folks before we tune out? Yeah.

55:35

Well, Andrew, you and I both, I think we would agree, we want to love our wives well. We want to glorify God in our marriage.

55:41

And so we need to know God's word. We know what the Bible says about marriage. I think it's very useful to us to read

55:47

Christian history, to find out how other people, the positives and the negatives. We go to John Wesley, Spurgeon loved many things about Wesley.

55:54

His marriage was a disaster. So we can learn the negatives, and then we can, there's a picture of the book if anybody sees this, but I think reading

56:03

Spurgeon's love story, it makes me well up with tears. I'm convicted. I'm encouraged and I'm challenged to love my dear wife well.

56:13

I've often fallen short of God's glory and that Jesus never fell short.

56:18

That's the gospel. We put our trust and confidence in Jesus and his perfection, his righteousness.

56:24

And then we learn from his servants that are left on the earth imperfect as they are how to do better.

56:30

That's iron sharpening iron. So I can be sharpened by you the time you are in our home, sharpen me up.

56:36

I can learn, I can be sharpened by reading books and the love story of Spurgeon. So I pray that this book would glorify

56:42

God by strengthening marriages, helping husbands and wives to love one another well. So why not use this

56:47

American holiday, Valentine's Day as a way to do that? Well, and my encouragement is going to be, you know, there's some churches

56:54

I know that will sometimes give away things to married couples for Valentine's Day. I think this is a perfect gift.

57:02

Get a case of them from Moody Press and give them to all the married couples in your church.

57:08

It would be a great way to take a strange holiday that celebrates a guy with wings floating around and shooting arrows of love to people.

57:19

But it would be a great way to actually get folks to take a look at what a godly marriage looks at and something we all strive to have and reading something that gives us an example may help with that.

57:33

So that would be my encouragement for folks is to get a copy of this book, Yours Till Heaven by Ray Rhodes Jr.

57:41

And while you're at it, you might as well pick up a copy of the book on Susie Spurgeon as well.

57:47

They're great together. So that is something I encourage you guys to do. Until next time, this is a wrap.

58:13

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