July 22, 2019 Show with Mack Tomlinson on “The Brainerd Brothers & Early Colonial American Gospel Ministry to Unreached Groups”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living globally, listening to IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 22nd day of July 2019, and I'm so thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests to interview, who's also a financial supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We thank him and his church from the depths of our hearts for enabling us to keep on the air. I'm speaking about Mack Tomlinson, who is an author, a conference speaker, and a pastor at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and today we are going to be addressing the theme of a new book he is working on, The Brainerd Brothers, An Early Colonial American Gospel Ministry to Unreached Groups, and we're also going to be talking about the Fellowship Conference of New England in Portland, Maine, which is coming up very soon, another event that is sponsored by and orchestrated by Mack Tomlinson, who's also on the speaking roster at that event.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Mack Tomlinson.

Thanks, Chris. It's always a blessing to be with you.

And let me give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they want to send in questions. Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

And first, before we go into the theme of the Brainerd Brothers, very significant figures in Christian history, tell our listeners, for those of them that are unfamiliar with you and Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, let our listeners know about this congregation.

Well, we are a Reformed Baptistic Church of about 20 years now in the heart of Denton, which is 30 miles north of Dallas-Fort Worth, a university town of 20 ,000 people. We're thankful that we serve Christ here to preach the gospel in His kingdom here in North Texas.

Praise God. And if anybody wants to look up that information for Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, the website is ProvidenceDenton .org, Providence Denton, which is spelled D-E-N-T-O-N dot org.

And, as I said, our theme today involves a book you are working on. I'm not sure how close to the finished product you are at the moment, but tell us who the Brainerd Brothers were.

Well, one of them has become very famous in American church history and history of missionary among the colonial New England colonies.

And amongst Native American Indians.

Yes, right, that was his whole life's work. Short life among the Native Americans, and he would have been forgotten had not Jonathan Edwards, his close friend, David Dodd, published the journal and got widely used for generations to our missionaries and Christian leaders.

And so David is well known. John is the forgotten Brainerd because nobody virtually knows anything of him. He was a no-brainer. I'm only kidding, sorry. Well, he was forgotten because he had one biography written by one of his descendants 100 years later.

It was not really kept. David was the famous one and John was the forgotten one, but they had an eternal link in the gospel in not really New England even, further south, which we'll get into.

Great, and we'll be getting more into the Brainerd Brothers, obviously, since that is our theme, but I also want you right off the bat to mention something about the Fellowship Conference New England, which is going to be held once again in Portland, Maine, at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland.

And tell us about those who will be speaking there. And I know that your conference is unusual, unless something has changed about it, in that you don't have a central theme. You let whatever is burdening the hearts and minds of the speakers, you let them basically choose any theme, even if they are disconnected from what the others are going to be presenting.

Obviously, united in the gospel of sovereign grace, but maybe disconnected as far as a specific theme. Yeah, we never have.

It just seems to be the history of New Hampshire. Who's our guest tomorrow, by the way? Nathan is a wonderful preacher and pastor in New Hampshire. He speaks every year, and he'll speak twice this year.

Pastor Anthony Mathenia from Redford, Virginia, who pastors Christ Church.

He's also Paul Washer's pastor.

Yes, well, that'd be a hard thing to be. But somebody's got to do it. So Anthony is capable. He's a wonderful brother, former missionary himself. And he will be for the first time in our conference. So he's ministered in New England before, and he's a wonderful entity.

And then one of our elders, Lee Dodd.

And he's going to be our guest on the show on the 31st of July.

Yes. Lee's a wonderful preacher, an excellent theologian, and he's a real blessing. So the four of us, Nathan Pickowitz, which I could give a plug actually for next year, because some of your listeners might want to pencil this in on the calendar.

Next year, we have committed in the 2020 Fellowship Conference New England, Jeffrey Thomas from Wales, and Joel Beakey from Grand Rapids, Michigan, our honorary speakers. Wow. So the heavyweights next year will hit New England, and it'll be the lot.

If there's any listeners that can get away this year, there is a small registration fee, but you can show up and register at the door. So come and join us if your schedule allows August 1st through the 3rd.

Great. And the website to register is fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Well, now let's return to the main theme, the Brainerd Brothers and Early Colonial American Gospel Ministry to Unreached Groups.

And, well, you've already given us a little taste, a little peek into who the Brainerd Brothers were, David being the much more well-known one and John being the sadly forgotten one, largely forgotten.

What was the catalyst for you to write this book? Because there have been biographies on especially David Brenner in existence and other books that have reflected on their lives to some extent, even if they were included in a larger work that contained the lives of multiple figures from history.

But what was specifically the driving force? And what will be unique about this book on the Brainerd Brothers?

Anyone who's read the diary and journal of David Brainerd, always in print, any Christian, the diary and journal of David Brainerd, is simply almost an unbelievable, were in hard conditions among the colonial Indians, did there among one tribe.

My wife and I, 12 years ago, we were in Scotland for a month, well, actually Britain for a month. When I was at Edinburgh for a week, I pulled down a volume off of the library where I was staying, the life of John Brainerd by Thomas Brainerd.

And I said, well, surely, maybe they were connected to David. Sure enough, John, younger brother by two years, took it off the shelf and I read it that week in Edinburgh. And I was just floored of the account, caliber of man, even Jonathan Edwards said that about John.

Same caliber of man, then forgotten. And so, I then wrote within the Forgotten Brainerd on John's life. And that article can be found online, the Forgotten Brainerd. I always then said, the more I talked about it, the story of John Brainerd and the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, is missing among contemporary Christians.

Nobody knows about John. Nobody knows what happened. This needs to be working on it for the last year. Anyone who loves mission work and the Brainerd history, local accounts of revival in the 18th century, will find the story of John Brainerd inspiring.

Praise God. And what can you tell us about the religious upbringing of these two brothers, if any? How they providentially came to be drawn to embrace the gospel and Jesus Christ and his inerrant word, and then how they came to be missionaries and evangelists.

Well, of course, the bulk of the 18th century. John was born two years later, 1720. He lived 61 years until his death in 1781. The Brainerd family had a long history in Connecticut. That's where they were established after they had immigrated.

And David and John were the sixth and seventh children of nine children, born and bred in Connecticut, a Puritan stock. They were raised in church. David had inspiration to become a minister. He always wanted to.

He realized in the summer of 1739, preparing to go to Yale, he came to see he wasn't a Christian at all. He realized it wasn't real that he was born. That summer of 1739, David was converted and saved.

Two months later, he enrolled at Yale. As a freshman in 1739, the largest college. It wasn't Yale University yet. Yale College, the largest class ever, and David's a freshman.

And it's such a tragedy. There may be people listening who know nothing about Yale as it began. They may know nothing about the roots of Yale, which were so thoroughly biblical and rooted in the inerrant scriptures, that they just know about the current-day Yale, which is a liberal, leftist, predominantly apostate university slash seminary.

Although I can say that there are some wonderful graduates of Yale today who are ministering faithfully and preaching the true gospel, in spite of the leftist education that they had to face. But they also, ironically, are the primary place where Jonathan Edwards' works have been archived.

And there are people who want to preserve faithfully what he actually wrote and taught and the legacy that he left, even though the current state of Yale is abysmal.

Many of those colleges, universities, many of them were started as schools to train preachers of the gospel. That was the reason they were founded. And so you're right, the evolution of faith and liberalism.

If you were going to be a minister of the gospel in the Presbyterian Church, you had to go to Yale, Europe. You couldn't even be ordained in the Presbyterian Church or Harvard. That's why David went there.

Two months after his conversion, he found himself at Yale, enrolled as a student. You can interrupt me any time, Chris. David entered Yale in the years in those colonies. George Whitefield in Northampton.

This would have been the 18th century.

Yeah, right, 18th century. Edwards was preaching in Northampton and true revivals in various places. And those revivals, the awakening preachers like Gilbert and William Tennant and Whitefield, they were preaching in those villages and towns.

And the colleges were being greatly affected. When that happened, there was always a division that would happen. If they were anti-revival, keep the revival flame from getting inroads among the students.

But the students were being greatly affected, and the Brainerd brothers were. They led ultimately to the biggest event in David Brainerd's life ever. As a junior, leader of the class, one of the tutors, Whitsley, had led in prayer in the chapel.

And later, back in the room, David Brainerd made a comment to one of his classmates about the lack of spirituality in that tutor. And I think Brainerd was quoted, graced. Yeah. Well, perhaps a little.

Someone's walking by the door, and they heard the statement. They reported it to someone. A third party heard it, a lady, and she determines to find out what student is responsible. She traces it to David Brainerd.

He gets called before the trustees, and he's demanded by them to come before the whole university, student body, and all the faculty, and publicly apologize for a private comment. He said, I will apologize to them, but they wouldn't hear of it.

The trustees expelled for a few days, and it became a public, shameful thing. Edwards and others, they appealed, they lobbied, but to no avail. And so Yale would not personally. He is a man without a country.

He can't be ordained now into the presbytery. He doesn't know what to do. He goes home. He's waiting. Early 20s. And then Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the SPCK, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, they were a mission agency that supported missionaries and laborers.

David Brainerd was recommended to the SPCK as a missionary, that he had the caliber, he had the character, he had the theological mind, and they approached him, and they asked him, interviewed him, and they approved him to go as their first missionary.

He did. The hardest providence ever in his life led to the greatest hope of what God would do in missionary law ever in America.

Revival, the Great Awakening, and the Brainerds at Yale

Well, what we're going to do now is we are going to our first advertising break, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question about David Brainerd and his brother John, or even just about theology in general, our guest is a pastor, and a pastoral question will be acceptable.

He happens to be a Sovereign Grace-believing Baptistic pastor, just to let you know where he is coming from theologically. And so we would welcome questions on a broader sphere of topics than specifically the Brainerds, but we primarily would love to have you ask questions about the Brainerds or about colonial period evangelism and so on.

Our e-mail address is ChrisOrensen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, and please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and always remain anonymous—I mean, I should say, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We will be right back with our guest, Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and the life and legacy of David and John Brainerd. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with just about 90 minutes to go is my dear friend Mack Tomlinson, a generous supporter financially of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, in addition to being a dear friend and a biblically solid pastor whom I can recommend without hesitation.

He's an author, conference speaker, and pastor at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and today we are addressing the Brainerd Brothers, an early colonial American gospel ministry to unreached groups.

Our e-mail address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. And please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Pastor Mack Tomlinson, you mentioned something earlier about the Brainerd Brothers being in favor of revival. Now, that may seem like a bizarre statement because you would think any Bible-believing Christian is going to be in favor of revival, but you and I also know that throughout history there have been true and false revivals.

They have been sometimes distinguished with the phrases revival versus revivalism, the second being a caricature or a charade of what genuine revival is. But if you could tell us exactly what you're talking about here in regard to the Brainerd Brothers being in favor of revival and what kind of opposition they faced having that view, and why anyone would be opposing the Brainerd Brothers or disagreeing with them on revival.

Yeah, well, it's a great question. The 18th century was really marked by, you know, it's considered obviously the first Great Awakening in American history. The primary leader, when we talk about revival in the first Great Awakening, we're talking about the Holy Spirit.

We're talking about an authentic, suddenly, and at times surprisingly, normally through the God-ordained means of preaching a biblical, doctrinal gospel. And that's what those New England leaders did.

Well, the Cologne Bridge was in New England, and they were preaching a doctrinal, evangelistic... It was under that preaching the Holy Spirit began to move and began to save people. Suddenly. And so the Brainerds, they heard that preaching.

They were affected by it. And ultimately converted of the right view. No revival if you want to... Because they experienced the atmosphere of awakenings. And that was the result. And they were supporters of the revival movement.

Chris, could I go back to something earlier that's important? Absolutely not. I'm only kidding. Go ahead. This is really a remarkable history. And it's an amazing lesson. The principle is, the hardest thing that ever happened to David Brainerd, humanly speaking, was his...

Yale had been the legacy, and it was for 200 years, even after... And the descendants of the Brainerds, many of them went to Yale. And John, when David was expelled, he had to endure four years of grief and being tempted to be bitter against...

He remained faithful. He maintained a right heart. Well, after David... The hardest thing he ever faced, two Yale graduates, Jonathan Dickinson, pastor of the Presbyterian Church, and they were Yale graduates, and now they were distinguished leaders in the colonies.

They were so upset that David Brainerd was wrongly treated, too severely treated, that they took it on themselves. They established the... Which was later, guess what? Directly as a result of the Brainerd-Yale expulsion.

Her friends lived in a college by Archibald Avenue. It's a marvelous book. It also summarizes... Alexander said in there, and I quote, Both of these men, Dick, distinguished graduates of Yale, but just at this time, their minds probably experienced some alienation from their alma mater because of the harsh treatment.

And so, if it had not been for the treatment received by Mr. Brainerd at Yale, New Jersey College... Wow. So here's a little more of that history. The Presbyterians founded Princeton. The Baptists founded Brown.

Reformed Congregationalists founded Dartmouth. And at the heart of some of these movements, there was an essential motivation component, at least in the founding of Princeton and Dartmouth, that David Brainerd were a direct influence on.

So that's quite an amazing providence how God uses things.

Amen. We have a listener question from your neck of the woods, actually. Let's see here. I just had it in front of me. Let me try to find it again. We have Ryan from Providence Village, Texas. What were some of your biggest takeaways from researching John Brainerd's life, and what has it taught you with regards to the Christian life?

Could you repeat the question quickly, Chris?

Okay. I've got to bring it back up on my screen here. Sorry about that. And while I'm bringing it back up on my screen, anybody else who would like to join us? Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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Okay. Ryan in Providence Village, Texas asks, what were some of your biggest takeaways from researching John Brainerd's life, and what has it taught you with regards to the Christian life?

Great question, Ryan. Some of this actually, here's how I would say it. David and John were very close as brothers spiritually. Even in those Yale years, they had it in the kingdom of God. John was the same when you read his life.

It's just remarkable. He didn't become as famous, and he didn't see rival poured out in his years the way David did. But he stayed ten times longer than David, five years. And what stands out about their life is, think about this.

Here are two men, young men, on horseback by themselves. They ride from horseback, suffered loneliness, riding into areas where they knew there were dangerous Indian tribes. They didn't know if they were going to be friendly or murderous.

And so the courage, and others like them. John Elliott before them. Thomas Mayhew before them. In the 17th century, they took the gospel to colonial Indian groups, Massachusetts, and then even others, the Moravians.

They were like a pietistic group, right? The Moravians somehow were breakaways from Lutheranism, I believe, perhaps?

Yeah, and they weren't liberal in those days. They were not Calvinistic reformed in their theological views, but they were some of the great times.

In fact, John Wesley was led to Christ, was he not, when he was on a ship that was being tossed about in a dangerous storm, a violent storm, and he saw the faith and the confidence and the peace of mind of the Moravians praying, I believe?

Yes, that's right. Well, the Moravians established missions among the New York, even before the 18th century, when pioneer missionary John Sargent in 1733 came to Stockbridge, which is the place later Jonathan Edwards, when he was expelled to Northampton, Edwards went to Stockbridge to be there.

There was this long legacy of these courageous young men, Mayhew, that pioneered the way, and Brainerd, the Brainerds were cut out of the same cloth. Solid theology, a courageous heart, they were men among men.

They took the gospel in those hard areas. It was a, as David Brainerd called it, a waste-howling wilderness. David Brainerd built a log cabin by himself each year in those three Indian missions, a place protected from the elements, so he'd have a place that was more quiet to pray.

So John Brainerd, he was cut out of the same cloth. Amazingly courageous. I mean, think of riding your horse in the winter in the colonies. David Brainerd rode his horse in those three years among the Indians.

A tenurant, evangelist. The Forks of the Delaware, the Delaware in near present-day Bethlehem, between Princeton and Philadelphia, Las Weekson, New Jersey. Now, go ahead, brother.

I can begin to talk about... Before you switch subjects, being a native Long Islander, I'm utterly fascinated by this because I had never heard before David Brainerd's travels to Long Island. Do you happen to know from your research what areas of Long Island he visited and evangelized?

Well, there was a place, I don't know if it still has the same name, Kaunameek, K-A-U-N-A-M-E-E-K.

That may exist out in eastern Suffolk because there are a number of Native American Indian names for towns out in the eastern Suffolk area, some of which I discover periodically for the first time. But I am not familiar with the name of that town.

Yeah, well, that's where he started.

The SBCK, Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, commissioned David Brainerd to go to Long Island first. Now, what is the SBCK? Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge out of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Wow. Go ahead. I know of a Native American Presbyterian church that still exists in eastern Suffolk County. I believe in one of the Hamptons, but I'm not sure if it's still biblically faithful. I'll have to do some research on that.

But I'm wondering if it has something to do with Brainerd's evangelism out there.

Well, David went to Long Island. He was in 1943 to 1944 to establish a work among the Indians. He established and he went to another town the next year. We'll get to those in a minute. But he would go in among the Indian tribes, and God gave him favor because they often did not like white men, especially the white businessmen who would try to use them or cheat them or steal from them.

And it happened all the time to the Native Americans in those various colonies. But David went to Long Island for that year. He honestly didn't see much success. He was able to teach many of them. We would be talking about sometimes groups of 50 Indians, 75, 20, 25, or 40 miles away.

He taught them for a year, and he began to teach them things. He even purchased the colonial sewing machines to give to some of the women, and they were able to learn to the whole tribe. So, yeah, it's an amazing story.

These things would be in the Diary and Journal. A journal gives an account of the work. His diary is more intimate. By the way, I want to quick plug one of our sponsors.

Who carries all of Banner of Truth's titles. It's CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. CVBBS .com if you want to look up the diary of David Brainerd there. What's the exact title of that book?

The Diary and Journal, either the Journal and Diary of David Brainerd. It includes both, Diary and Journal. Okay. Banner of Truth.

Great. Well, we are going now to our elongated break. Our midway break is always longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle because they air Iron Trip and Zion Radio twice a day in a prerecorded format, morning drive and in the evening, and they air, by FCC regulations, their own public service announcements and commercials in the midway break while we air our globally heard commercials here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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We hope to hear from you with your questions for Mac Tomlinson on the life and legacy of David and John Brainerd, and we will have our guest answer them to the best of his ability. Send in those emails to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Mac Tomlinson after these messages from our sponsors.

Hello, my name is James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRVS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. The Word of God says, If a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing. Do you have the desire to serve Jesus Christ in pastoral ministry?

Twenty years ago, the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary, California was born. For those two decades, these institutions worked together to train men for ministry in Reformed Baptist churches.

It has been a wonderful partnership. Now we have advanced our school into an independent seminary offering a full program of courses leading to the Master of Divinity degree. This is IRVS Theological Seminary.

We believe that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired and inerrant Word of God, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh who came to save sinners by his life, death, and resurrection, and that the task of the church is to honor and serve the Triune God in all things.

IRVS Theological Seminary is dedicated by God's grace to preparing godly ministers who will be committed to these doctrines. Do you sense a call to serve Jesus Christ and his church as a pastor? Why not consider IRVS Theological Seminary?