June 13, 2016 Show with Mack Tomlinson on “The Lives & Legacies of Leonard Ravenhill and Conrad Murrell”

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September 14, 2016

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host Chris Arnton. Good afternoon
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet earth, listening via live streaming.
01:14: This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 13th day of June 2016.
01:23: I'm so delighted to have back on the program my brother and friend
01:28: Pastor Mac Tomlinson who is the pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas and we are going to be discussing the lives and legacies of two brethren in Christ who are now on the other side of heaven.
01:45: They are in glory with Christ through eternity. The first being Leonard Ravenhill and the second being
01:52: Conrad Murrell and perhaps our brother Mac Tomlinson can correct me on the pronunciation of Conrad's last name.
02:02: I'm not sure I have it right but in addition to discussing the lives and legacies of these two great men of faith, we're also going to be promoting the books, the biographies that Mac Tomlinson has written about each of them and we will be also discussing the
02:21: Fellowship Conference New England in Portland, Maine that's going to be held in August from the 4th through the 6th on the theme
02:30: The Impossible and that is something that I may even try to get to from Pennsylvania to attend myself.
02:40: God willing I was reading about the lineup and hearing some sermon clips by some of the speakers and it looks like a really powerful event but let me without further ado welcome my friend
02:54: Pastor Mac Tomlinson back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thanks Chris, always nice to be with you.
03:02: And in studio with me is my co -host Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello again.
03:09: And Pastor Mac before we even go into our topic at hand, why don't you let our listeners know something about Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.
03:21: Some of our listeners may not have heard you the last couple of times you were on the program. Well we are a
03:28: Reformed Baptistic Church in Denton, Texas which is 30 miles north of Dallas.
03:33: Our website for those interested is providencedenton .org and we are a church that is serious about loving the
03:45: Lord Jesus Christ, loving his word, true fellowship with one another and true proper biblical evangelism and missions.
03:54: So we welcome anyone in the North Texas area to find us at Providence Chapel in Denton.
04:01: You're very welcome to come. And I just want by the way, go ahead.
04:09: Oh I was just going to give your website it's providencedenton .org providencedenton .org
04:15: if you could, I'm sorry, continue. Two things I would mention by way of correction. Conrad Merle's last name is pronounced
04:25: Merle and he is not yet in heaven. He's still on the earth.
04:33: He's 88 years old. You did not know but he still lives in Louisiana.
04:44: Man of prayer. His health is failing but he is yet to go to heaven.
04:50: Well I hope I didn't shock anybody who was listening live and didn't know that Conrad was still with us.
04:59: I'm so sorry about that. But Leonard Ravenhill is certainly in heaven now.
05:07: Not living among us any longer here on earth. Correct.
05:12: Yes sir. Before we go into their lives, which is the main theme of the discussion today, if you could,
05:23: I'd like you to respond because it just happened yesterday morning, technically.
05:30: What has been identified on the news as the largest mass murder by shooting in the nation's history and in fact
05:41: I'm gonna have to do a little investigation because I think that may be incorrect. I believe it's possible that the
05:49: Mountain Meadows Massacre that took place in the 19th century, ironically on September 11th, that may be actually a larger mass murder.
06:03: I just don't know if, well first of all it was a larger mass murder numerically, that is certain, but I don't know if they were all executed by gun.
06:15: But it was many of them were executed by gun and it was a larger group of people that the
06:21: Mormons enacted upon innocent pioneers crossing through the
06:29: Utah territory at the time. They were executed by command of Brigham Young and some honest
06:37: Mormons admit that today, but others stick with Brigham Young's story that this was a rogue act of his son -in -law who did this without the authority and permission of the
06:51: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. But having said that, yesterday as everyone no doubt knows who is listening, a homosexual nightclub or a nightclub frequented by homosexuals was invaded by a individual claiming to be
07:15: Muslim and acting with the blessing of ISIS, at least according to what he said and what they are taking credit for.
07:27: And over 50 lives were taken and many others injured and there is all kinds of reaction about this going on in the media.
07:41: And I'd like you, if you could, at least to start off the program as a pastor and since this is really fresh on the heels of that horrific incident, if you could just give your own comments about what had occurred.
07:57: Well, you know, Chris, obviously these kind of random killings and attacks, not only in America but Europe and worldwide, are increasing more and more.
08:13: And my comments would be brief and to the point. Obviously, whether it's a homosexual group in Florida where this just happened in a gay nightclub or a shooting in a school in New England or in a movie theater in Colorado, it has nothing to do with the groups themselves.
08:40: Although apparently this Muslim radical, even earlier in the week,
08:46: I think in Florida, a Muslim leader had given a lecture and was saying that homosexuals should be executed, that death should be their sentence.
08:59: So, it obviously is just a reflection of the continuing decline in America and in society we see in Romans 1.
09:10: And I don't think any Christian should obviously take their spin or their perspective from social media, because only the
09:22: Christian in this world can view these things properly from a biblical worldview.
09:29: Obviously, whether these were homosexuals in Florida or otherwise, it's a tragedy.
09:38: And I think it's very poor when evangelical believers or professing evangelicals go publicly.
09:48: It's a poor example and it's always misinterpreted and twisted when evangelicals begin to call this the judgment of God, etc.
09:59: Well, obviously, any time such things happen, it can be the judgment of God.
10:05: But we know, the Bible tells us that tragedies come to the righteous and the unrighteous, to the righteous and to the wicked, both.
10:16: And so, Job, of course, in the Old Testament is a primary example of that. And so,
10:23: I thought today of Luke's gospel, chapter 13, when the
10:30: Lord Jesus spoke of towers falling and of terrorists attacking. Of course, some who were around Christ brought up this slaughter, the terrorist attack, really, if you will, among the
10:46: Galileans, where Pilate attacked a place of worship and slaughtered those within it, and they were killed during their time of sacrifice.
11:01: And then Christ brings up, without someone else mentioning it, a tower in Siloam, providentially falling.
11:10: The first attack was done by men. The second one was a providential occurrence, not perpetrated by men.
11:19: It fell and killed 18 people. And so, it's very interesting, the teaching of our
11:28: Lord Jesus Christ, He doesn't blame anyone. He directly says, everyone who hears about such events, they themselves should take it to heart to repent, because their life can end at any moment as well.
11:45: Right. They shouldn't be necessarily be overly focused on the lives of those who were victims of any kind of catastrophe, whether or not they were living rightly before God, but they should be turning the focus in their own hearts to see if they have truly repented.
12:08: Exactly. Any act of terrorism or tragedy, the main lesson to every heart should be, life is fragile, life is brief,
12:22: I must be ready to die any time. And above all that, it amazes me sometime when believers will speak out publicly about God being involved in such tragedies, that God was involved in 9 -11.
12:43: And people get angry about that. People who don't even have any profession of Christianity, they'll get angry that you bring
12:51: God into it. But we know that the Bible says that our times are in His hands, that the time of our birth and the time of our death are appointed by God, and He rules over all things.
13:06: And men don't want God involved in such events, because they don't want
13:12: God involved in their lives. So we must view this as God, it was these people's time in Florida, it was their time to die and to go into eternity.
13:27: And whether that's through a shooting or through someone dying of cancer or a plane crash,
13:33: God is sovereign, and it's a wake -up call to all the living. And even though God in His sovereignty uses evil men to bring about events that He Himself has ordained, that does not make those evil men or their actions any less evil.
13:58: And were this crazed gunman to survive this act of terror that he performed,
14:10: Christians, rightly thinking, would want that man brought to justice and would not want him to be looked upon as some kind of a hero or something just because they disagreed with the lifestyles of the victims.
14:26: Exactly right. And another final comment I would give, the secular world does not believe in the spiritual world, and the most modern men today don't believe in the demonic world or in the spiritual realm.
14:43: So we know that evil forces and demonic powers energize evil men to do such things, and believers can interpret that properly and see
14:57: Satan himself at work, though the secular man, he has no compass intellectually or morally or spiritually to even interpret.
15:12: He doesn't have a category for the spiritual realm, so they cannot interpret such events properly ever.
15:21: Yes, so we would ask you to pray for the families and friends of those victims in Florida that they may come to know, especially the only one who can save them from their sins, someone who could actually bring about some sense of purpose in all that happens on this earth, and that only one who can do any of those things is the
15:54: Lord Jesus Christ, who is a friend of sinners, although he is a righteous and holy and perfect and sinless king.
16:04: And as I close my program every day on Iron Sharpens Iron, I quote the great
16:11: Puritan Christopher Love with the words that I want my listeners to remember for the rest of their lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater
16:21: Savior than you are a sinner. And I hope that my listeners will always remember that and if anybody involved with the family and friends of the victims of this atrocity,
16:38: I pray for them and I hope that you join me in praying for them as well.
16:44: Now we are going to move into the topic at hand, the first being that of the life and legacy of Leonard Ravenhill.
16:55: And actually, briefly before we enter into that topic, I'd like you to discuss the upcoming
17:04: Bible conference that you are a part of in Portland, Maine. In fact, my co -host,
17:10: Reverend Buzz Taylor, has spent a good portion of his life living in Maine, and so if you could let our listeners know about that.
17:20: Yes, well about four years ago, some Christians in Portland, Maine and in Upper New England, asked some colleagues of mine and I, some pastors around the country, if we would be willing to start a
17:38: Christian conference, summer conference in Portland. Because many believers there, of course obviously
17:45: New England is a very dark area, churches are very liberal or they're extreme in other areas, and there are very few solid biblical churches.
17:57: And there was no conference up in Upper New England that was meant to benefit edified believers and strengthen pastors.
18:07: So four years ago, we began the Fellowship Conference New England, and it's always held in Portland, Maine, usually in the first part of August.
18:18: And this year it's August 4th through the 6th they're in Portland, Maine.
18:25: It's held at a church that graciously lets us use their building, the
18:31: Deering Community Church, Deering Crossing Community Church. But I can give the website and then
18:38: I could comment on the conference. Sure. It's fellowshipconferencenewengland, all one word, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.
18:51: And it's Thursday through Saturday, August 4th through the 6th. It is not a large conference, but it has grown and doubled in size each year.
19:02: And there will be four seasoned pastors who are very solid theologians and true pastors, men of prayer, who will be preaching.
19:14: They'll be nine sessions over three days. And the preaching is biblical, it's pastoral, it's to the heart, it's edifying.
19:24: We're not on any soapboxes about any or any tangents. It's strictly from the
19:30: Bible about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the saving power of the gospel.
19:39: There will be both evangelistic messages as well as pastoral preaching on doctrinal themes.
19:47: There is a morning prayer meeting. This year, we are having a lecture and a tour to the grave of Edward Payson, a famous 19th century
20:01: New England pastor. He's buried two blocks from where we have the conference.
20:06: Wow. Praying Payson, I remember. Praying Payson of Portland. Yes. And his daughter was
20:13: Elizabeth Prentiss, correct? Correct. So we'll visit his grave one afternoon and have a brief lecture on his life and revival in New England during that time.
20:28: So there will also be a lunch for women on that Friday that's free and a lunch for church leaders and young men aspiring to the
20:41: Christian ministry on that Friday. There is a registration cost. It's very minimal.
20:47: So anyone that wants more information could contact us or simply go to the website, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.
20:57: Great. Well, the first massive volume that we're going to address that you wrote, the biography of Leonard Ravenhill, which you call
21:09: In Light of Eternity, The Life of Leonard Ravenhill. This is a massive book.
21:16: This is a book that exceeds 580 pages.
21:24: And first of all, let our listeners know why you chose to write at such great length about this particular figure from church history who is a rather recent figure from church history.
21:41: It was not that long ago that Brother Ravenhill went home to be with the Lord. But if you could let our listeners know why you chose to write about him.
21:57: Well, I chose for really a personal reason. I knew him well the last 17 years of his life from 1977 really to 1994 when he died.
22:11: He lived in various places in the U .S. after moving here in 1958 from Britain.
22:20: But his final years were in Texas, were in East Texas near Lindale, Texas, which is about 80 miles east of Dallas.
22:30: And I got to know him by hearing him. I was a seminary student in Fort Worth, Texas, and he would come there to the city to preach regularly.
22:40: So myself and other seminary students would go hearing. And I had never heard such powerful, eloquent preaching in my life.
22:51: And so my wife and I then, starting in 1979, we had the privilege of going to Leonard Ravenhill's Friday night prayer meeting where people would come far and wide and he would speak for an hour, we would pray for an hour.
23:08: The famous now deceased young Christian singer Keith Green, who's well known,
23:14: Keith would play the piano and lead the hymns in the prayer meeting. And it was like heaven on earth, three hours of worship,
23:23: Ravenhill preaching, and then we would truly pray. So we went to many of those prayer meetings over those years in the 1980s.
23:31: And he just became a dear mentor to me and was one of the godliest men
23:40: I was ever around in being a over 40 plus years.
23:46: So when his son told me that no one was going to write a biography,
23:53: I just felt like it had to be done. And I kind of had an inside track, his sons knew me,
23:59: I knew Leonard well in these final years, I knew his heart, I knew his message.
24:06: And so after he passed, and then after Mrs. Ravenhill died, actually, the day before 9 -11, she died in September 10, 2001.
24:21: After that, his son supported my beginning to work on the biography.
24:29: So I worked on it part time in the midst of a pastoral ministry. And so I spent six years on it, including the research, but I wanted to do it right, because the whole story of his life in ministry needed to be told.
24:45: And it's interesting that you as a Reformed Baptist have taken upon yourself this work to help the legacy of Leonard Ravenhill live on in writing.
25:02: You are a Reformed Baptist, but this was not his own background, was it? Not at all.
25:08: He was an old Wesleyan Methodist. Right. He was educated in England only for about a year under Samuel Chadwick at Cliff College, which was not at all a
25:21: Reformed place. But it was an atmosphere of true prayer, of serious living for Christ, of living a true holy life.
25:35: And Ravenhill was like A .W. Tozer, they were close friends, very similar in their views.
25:42: He was not Reformed. But at the same time, you would often hear him speak about things.
25:49: He loved the Puritans, and he hated what he would call cheap grace and decisional regeneration.
26:00: He didn't give altar calls at all when he would preach. And so he had a strong view that the
26:07: Holy Spirit had to work in people's hearts. But his message was the seeking of God, true repentance, genuine spiritual revival and awakening, and holiness of life.
26:21: And that was really the note that he sounded. He was an evangelist who traveled for, well, 28 years in Britain, all over Britain.
26:32: He walked across England with friends preaching more than once. And then he had 36 years in America, and so he never pastored churches.
26:44: He was a voice crying in the wilderness to become serious about the kingdom of God and the
26:52: Lord Jesus Christ. So he was a holy man of God. And that's what
26:58: I appreciated about him. If we have a different doctrinal position, we still need to have a
27:05: Catholic spirit. And Ian Murray, one of my friends in Scotland, he's been an example to me in this because he wrote a biography on John Wesley and the early
27:17: Methodist preachers. And so we need to appreciate them, even if they're not right in line with how we would view things.
27:26: Right, because they are truly regenerate men with a gift for preaching and a gift for writing, and because they are saturated with God's Word, they will very often sound as if they are in complete harmony with the great
27:44: Reformed men of old and of present, because they share the same
27:50: Bible. And sometimes they may not have even realized their own inconsistency with some of the things they said, but it's a wonderful inconsistency when somebody can preach on grace that sounds like it is thoroughly from the gospel of the
28:08: Reformation, and yet it wind up being a Wesleyan or another non -Reformed
28:15: Christian speaking the words or writing them. So you said he wasn't a pastor though, huh?
28:21: He was a conference speaker? An itinerant evangelist. Yeah, in Britain, he had 28 years in Britain, and to give a basic summary, there was a group, it's mentioned in the biography, called the
28:38: Trekkers, and it was a group of men who were called to do it who walked across Britain pulling a cart with a tent in it and their own belongings, and they would walk into a town and plan to stay there three weeks, and they would preach in the open air in the market, and then they would hold meetings at night.
29:10: They were true old -fashioned evangelists like Whitefield and Wesley.
29:17: They would go into towns and they would stay until they began to see people converted, and they were courageous, they were compassionate, they were true men of prayer, and in different towns in England, they saw at times hundreds broken with true conversion, and they saw churches spring up, and sometimes
29:43: Ravenhill or others would stay behind and would pastor those churches briefly until they could secure someone who was a pastor to come among them.
29:57: So he did pastoral work at different times briefly, but he served as an attendant evangelist all his life, and in 1950 he began to come to America, and there was a publishing house,
30:16: Bethany House Publishers in Minneapolis. Yes, it still exists. It does, and they had a missionary training school, and they invited
30:27: Ravenhill to come. They would have conferences in the summer for their staff and for believers and churches, and Ravenhill began to come in 1950, and he had such a powerful ministry preaching on prayer and on church history or on revival that that kept inviting him back each year.
30:51: Well, the more he would come, the more churches in the U .S. would want him to come, so finally by 1958, he came seven years in a row to America in the summer.
31:03: He had more invitations in America than he did in Britain, and so Bethany House invited him to come to America, and he and his wife and sons moved to the
31:15: U .S. in 1958. Wow. He was in Minneapolis only for a couple of years, and then
31:22: David Wilkerson had started the New York City Teen Challenge in the days of Nicky Cruz and the
31:29: Gangs of New York. That's another providential occurrence because my co -host Reverend Wes Taylor worked for Teen Challenge.
31:38: Well, that's fine. David Wilkerson invited Leonard Ravenhill to come and be the chaplain at the
31:46: New York City Teen Challenge, and so Ravenhill moved there, and he often joked, he said, those young converts at the
31:57: Teen Challenge in New York City, they all thought that every chaplain would have a British accent and would preach three hours.
32:07: So he had a great ministry in New York, and then basically he began to have invitations in conferences, large conferences, churches, widely, and so he settled down and just lived.
32:24: He lived in the Chicago area, west of Chicago. He lived in Louisiana.
32:32: He lived in the Bahamas for a couple of years and had extensive ministry there and ended up in Texas, but he was preaching widely and everywhere all the time.
32:44: Yes, many years ago, well, it wasn't that many years ago, but it was back in the early 90s,
32:50: I believe, maybe late 80s, when I was a member of what was then called
32:55: Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, and our mutual friend Mike Gaydosh was the pastor there, and he had just started
33:05: Calvary Press Publishing, and I believe the very first publication was
33:12: Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle, and Leonard Ravenhill was kind enough to write an endorsement for that,
33:19: I remember. Well, Ravenhill, he loved those English Calvinists, Ryle and all of them, really, and by the way,
33:28: I will just quickly mention his books. He wrote about seven books, mainly on prayer and revival, and they're easily found on the internet at a very affordable price, so everyone who's interested in Ravenhill should secure his books and read them.
33:48: They're very stirring, and also you can find his sermons all over the internet. And we're going to be going to a break right now.
33:55: If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor Mac Tomlinson about the life and legacy of Leonard Ravenhill, our email address is
34:05: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
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38:20: Iron Sharpens today. Welcome back.
38:25: This is Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Mack Tomlinson. The first hour of this broadcast, we are discussing the life and legacy of Leonard Ravenhill, about whom
38:37: Mack wrote a biography titled In Light of Eternity, The Life of Leonard Ravenhill.
38:45: And coming up on the second hour, we are going to be discussing
38:51: Conrad Murrell and the biography that our guest wrote about him,
38:57: Grace and Truth. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,
39:05: chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.
39:11: And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, if outside of the
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39:54: And before we go to a few listeners who are already patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered,
40:02: Pastor Mack, you said that Leonard Ravenhill was from the
40:08: Wesleyan -Arminian background. Was there any specific denomination he was affiliated with?
40:15: And my second question was, due to his affiliation with David Wilkerson, was he also charismatic of any kind?
40:24: Well, not really. I can speak in general terms, but I think they're accurate. First of all, when he was converted as a 15 -year -old boy in England, he was born and raised in Leeds, England, which is north of London, a good ways in the north of England.
40:44: His father was a very godly man. His father had been a drunkard and was powerfully converted.
40:52: And Leonard saw the powerful change in his life, and then his dad began to go to serious good prayer meetings among the
41:02: English Methodists. It was really the days before even the
41:08: Nazarene Church formed, and the
41:14: Nazarene denomination formed early in England and then later in America.
41:20: But it was among such people that Leonard Ravenhill worshipped, and they were serious -minded.
41:28: They did not practice the popular charismatic gifts they would have, at least in church.
41:35: They were serious about preaching and singing hymns and true prayer that was very real.
41:43: And it was in that atmosphere that Ravenhill began his early Christian life as a 15 -year -old.
41:50: And then he went to Cliff College, which was more or less a Methodist missionary school under Sam Chadwick, who was one of the leading preachers in Britain of the day, and he had a large influence.
42:07: He was well -respected. But the churches that formed under Ravenhill's preaching and his colleagues ultimately became
42:17: British Nazarene churches. But he didn't become a Nazarene.
42:23: He stayed pretty much as an independent. He would have classified himself as an old
42:30: Wesleyan Methodist. And he preached in a lot of charismatic circles by invitation, but he said on more than one occasion that he did not speak in tongues.
42:44: He thought a lot of it was false and counterfeit, and he wasn't about that.
42:52: He was about the greater things. But even though he did really believe in the authentic power of the
42:59: Holy Spirit in revival, that's where his heart was. Well, didn't they also believe in the baptism of the
43:07: Holy Spirit as a second work of grace minus the initial sign of tongues?
43:15: Well, he did believe in what he called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He did not use the term second work of grace because he believed what, let's say even what
43:31: Martyn Lloyd -Jones or George Whitefield or others would believe, that there is an empowering of the
43:37: Holy Spirit after conversion, not receiving the
43:43: Holy Spirit for the first time because Ravenhill believed anyone that was a true Christian at conversion received the
43:50: Holy Spirit permanently then. But he believed in empowerings of the Holy Spirit that he called at times of baptism, but he didn't believe it was a one -time event.
44:00: He believed that preachers could be empowered or Christians could be empowered at any time over and over being filled with the
44:08: Holy Spirit. That was really his position. Okay, we do have a listener in Randleman, North Carolina, Seth, who asks, what does
44:20: Pastor Tomlinson think the late Ravenhill would say to the current church state, or rather about the current state of the church?
44:32: Also, if time, what is his favorite Ravenhill book and why? Well, I think
44:42: Ravenhill, he was always grieved at the condition of the professing church because he saw compromise and negligence and he always addressed it.
44:57: He had a holy impatience about him that if churches or pastors were not being true to Scripture and true to Christ, he had very little patience with that.
45:11: So he died in 1994 and he was grieved at the national religious scene and the decline.
45:19: He never really saw in America a revival happen that he so longed to see and prayed for.
45:27: But if he saw the condition today, he would be even more grieved.
45:37: That would be the case. He wrote seven or eight books, most of them on prayer.
45:43: His most famous book is Why Revival Tarries and then Revival Praying.
45:51: He wrote a very unique book that is very profitable though called
45:57: Tried and Transfigured. It's a study of Christ's temptation in the wilderness and his transfiguration with the disciples.
46:10: It's basically a rich devotional look at Christ in his wilderness temptation and the transfiguration experience.
46:20: That's a wonderful book, one of my favorites. He also compiled a book from the writings of E .M.
46:29: Bounds on prayer, The Treasury of Prayer. It was compiled and edited by Ravenhill from some of E .M.
46:40: Bounds' best material on prayer. So those would be the ones that I would mention. Well, Seth, if you could, you gave me your city and state, but I've got a surprise for you,
46:49: Seth. Since you're a first -time listener, or should I say a first -time questioner, to my recollection, you're going to get a free
46:59: New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. And if you could give me your full address as soon as possible, we'll make sure that one is shipped out to you free of charge,
47:13: God willing, even this week. So we look forward to getting your full address, Seth. We thank you for listening and writing into Iron Sharpens Iron.
47:23: And we do have another listener who asked a question that you've already touched on, but perhaps you can expand on it.
47:31: Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, asks, what do you think of our brother
47:37: Ravenhill's legacy as being a man of prayer? Well, it was an amazing legacy.
47:47: I mentioned that his father, after Leonard was converted, took him to an all -night prayer meeting.
47:57: They would have an all -night prayer meeting in his city once a month.
48:03: And it was serious, real prayer. It wasn't charismatic type praying. They were praying for conversions.
48:10: They were praying for revival. They were praying like any good prayer meeting you and I might be in today.
48:17: And it was an atmosphere of prayer that ignited Leonard Ravenhill's heart. So from the time he was a teenager, he dedicated himself.
48:27: He said, Lord, even if you don't ever make me a preacher, make me a man of prayer.
48:34: And he would discipline himself. And he began to pray privately hours every day.
48:41: And that would vary. But I can honestly say that he probably had three seasons of prayer every day of his life.
48:52: He would have a morning season of prayer, probably an hour and a half after breakfast.
49:01: He would have an afternoon time of prayer. And it was real prayer. He prayed for many preachers by name every day.
49:10: I'm talking about some well -known preachers, friends, pastors of churches that were small that nobody knew.
49:19: He loved people and he loved preachers. And so he would have a season of prayer in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening with his wife,
49:28: Martha. And then they would both go to bed about 10 -30 after watching some news.
49:37: Their sons were all scattered on the mission field in South America and Papua New Guinea and other places.
49:47: And so they always, of course, there was no internet. So they would listen to the nightly news to see if there was any international news at all.
49:56: And then Martha and Leonard would go to bed. He would sleep about an hour. He would get up and he would be in his study from midnight to three or four in the morning, reading, studying, praying.
50:11: So he probably prayed usually a total of five to six hours a day.
50:19: And I prayed with him many times in prayer meetings and in his home, at his office.
50:26: And over the 17 years I knew him, I cannot hardly remember any time he didn't pray with true tears.
50:35: He prayed passionately. It was eloquence in prayer, really. It was very moving.
50:42: And he wasn't praying to be heard of men or to impress people. But Ravenhill could pray for hours, walking or kneeling or sitting.
50:54: I mean, he was preeminently a man of prayer. And that's what marked his life. And really, that's what gave power to his preaching.
51:05: And just out of curiosity, in those years that you knew Leonard closely, were you at the time yet a thorough believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, also known as Calvinism?
51:19: And did it cause any conflict with your friendship with Leonard? I was.
51:26: I had become Calvinistic in my views before I ever heard him or heard his name.
51:33: Through reading books. Tom Nettles, the famous, pretty well -known Southern Baptist church historian who just retired from his teaching at Southern Seminary.
51:44: Yes, he's been a guest many times on my show. Dr. Nettles was my church history professor in the mid -1970s at Southwestern Baptist.
51:52: So, I was under his ministry. I was reading good books. So, I was already
51:58: Calvinistic in my views before I ever heard the name of Leonard Ravenhill. And so,
52:05: I got my passion and my devotional emphasis from Ravenhill, and I got my theology from Calvinist.
52:16: It was a beautiful blend. It was a beautiful thing. So, there was never any conflict.
52:22: I would give Leonard good books by Calvinistic authors, and he loved them. And at the end of his life, the last, probably the last 10 years of his life, he was mainly reading the
52:35: Puritans, and he was giving away William Gurnall's Christian in Complete Armor, the big one.
52:43: He'd give that away to many young preachers. So, he loved the truth immensely, and we never had any conflict over doctrinal things.
52:55: We respected one another, loved one another, and it was beautiful.
53:04: And I was just going to say something that flew out of my head. Well, I want to make sure that you have, in the few minutes we have left for the first hour, that you really unburden your heart about Leonard Ravenhill and leave our listeners with what you most want them to remember and what you most want to use to whet their appetites for them to get your biography about Leonard Ravenhill in light of eternity.
53:34: Well, the biggest thing I would say is to go on the internet and hear some of his sermons, and I can give three websites where Leonard Ravenhill's sermons can be heard.
53:50: So, I'll give these ravenhill .org, just his last name, r -a -v -e -n -h -i -l -l, ravenhill .org,
54:00: and then sermonaudio .net and sermonindex .net.
54:06: Many, many Ravenhill sermons there. His books are easily found online,
54:13: Amazon and other places. So, hearing Ravenhill and reading him is just a breath of fresh air.
54:21: It's very convicting, and people don't need to let Ravenhill's ministry.
54:29: It was kind of a one -note sounding repentance, holiness, revival, prayer, and man's responsibility.
54:39: And so, there's actually been people that have become imbalanced and somewhat in bondage because they go overboard and they overreact.
54:49: But Ravenhill's ministry through sermons and books is marvelous. The biography can be found at ravenhillbiography .com.
55:01: Just one word, ravenhillbiography .com, and it is, as you said, almost 600 pages.
55:09: It's a definitive biography from his birth to his death with quite several, well actually, three appendices in the back of Ravenhill's quotes and material.
55:24: And so, it's a full definitive look at his life and his ministry, also with many pictures.
55:32: So, I just commend the life and ministry of Leonard Ravenhill to all Christians. One book he wrote that I failed to mention,
55:43: America, You're Too Young to Die. That's one of his latter books, and it was a call to the
55:51: American church to become serious about our nation's decline. America is too young to die, and that would be a great read.
56:03: Let me also give a plug to a few other publishing ministries that you can use to pick up our guest book.
56:13: Free Grace Press would be one. That's freegracepress .com. Also, our mutual friend,
56:20: Mike Gaydos of Solid Ground Christian Books, who is a sponsor of this program. You know, another sponsor of this broadcast,
56:34: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. cvbbs .com
56:41: is their website. And by the way, I don't know if you gave, accidentally, a wrong website or URL for Sermon Audio, but the
56:52: Sermon Audio that I have is sermonaudio .com, not .net,
56:58: so I'm not sure if that was... Well, thank you for that correction. That might be right, but people can find out.
57:04: Yeah, well, I know that sermonaudio .com is definitely a correct website for them.
57:11: Good, good. Thank you. And we're going to be going to our break now, and at the top of the hour, we're going to be switching gears and discussing
57:21: Conrad Murrell's Life and Legacy, the other biography that you have written,
57:27: Grace and Truth, about this dear brother who is still with us, not in heaven yet, but I'm sure longing to be there, a senior saint that has had a life filled with good works and great evidence of his dedication to his
57:46: Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we hope that you stay tuned for the second half of this program to learn more about this unsung hero,
57:56: I believe, of Christianity, Conrad Murrell. I have to admit that I first discovered his existence through our guest,
58:03: Mack Tomlinson, so I'm looking forward to learn more about him. If you would like to join us on the air with questions of your own about Conrad Murrell, or about Christianity in general, about the doctrines of sovereign grace, you can email a question to our guest,
58:24: Pastor Mack Tomlinson, to be read and answered on air at chrisarnson at gmail .com.
58:32: That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
58:43: USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Mack Tomlinson. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am
58:51: I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,
58:58: I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a
59:03: Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
59:10: We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
59:19: That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.
59:25: We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
59:38: If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.
59:44: You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our
59:55: TV program, entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org,
01:00:02: that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor
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01:02:39: Lending faith, finances, and generosity. That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.
01:02:55: This is Chris Arnz. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full hour, he was already on an hour, and he's on for an hour more,
01:03:03: God willing. And we already discussed the life and legacy of Leonard Ravenhill, a brother who went home to be with the
01:03:12: Lord not that long ago, and who left such a powerful impact on our guest's mind and heart,
01:03:21: Mac Tomlinson's mind and heart, that he took it upon himself to write a very in -depth biography, nearly 600 -page biography, on Leonard Ravenhill called
01:03:33: In Light of Eternity. The Life of Leonard Ravenhill. And we hope that you pick up a copy of that as soon as possible.
01:03:44: And if you want more information on this book, you could go to ProvidenceDenton .org,
01:03:53: ProvidenceDenton .org, which is the website of Providence Chapel. And we'll be giving you more information on other websites that you can go to, including the website for Free Grace Press and other websites where you can order the book.
01:04:11: But what we are now going to be discussing, his second biography that we are highlighting today,
01:04:18: Conrad Murrell, Grace and Truth. And this is another massive work. This one is even longer.
01:04:25: This is a work that is nearly 700 pages of content.
01:04:32: And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own about Conrad Murrell or any other question regarding theology and Pastor Mac's church, etc.,
01:04:42: our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
01:04:53: And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
01:05:01: USA. And I might as well, in case I forget to later, give you right up front an address, a
01:05:09: URL for this book, conradmurrell .com. That should be easy to remember.
01:05:15: It's C -O -N -R -A -D -M as in Michael, U -R -R -E -L -L dot com.
01:05:22: But it's interesting that you write in a description of this book and also of the subject of this book,
01:05:33: Conrad Murrell. You say that you have a perspective regarding Conrad Murrell that was expressed well by Andrew Bonar about his close friend
01:05:47: Robert Murray McShane in 1838 and is what you feel about Conrad.
01:05:53: And the quote is, what amazes me about his life more than anything else is his desire to show
01:05:59: God's grace to others and to feed upon himself. If you could explain that quote.
01:06:09: Well, for those who know of Robert Murray McShane who died in his late 20s when he was about 28 years old,
01:06:20: McShane was close friends with Andrew and Horatius Bonar in Scotland and others who studied under Thomas Chalmers in Edinburgh.
01:06:33: And those men were preeminently pastors who were theologians, evangelists, missionary minded men of prayer.
01:06:42: And McShane was really their leader. And his life, the holiness of his life was preeminently what impacted people.
01:06:53: His preaching apparently from every record in history and his biographer shows that his preaching was always powerful.
01:07:03: But it was his holy life that impacted people. And that's what
01:07:09: I was saying in the quote that Conrad Murrell not only understood grace, the grace of God in the gospel very accurately, and he could proclaim it very powerfully.
01:07:22: But that grace, the presence of Christ emanated from his life.
01:07:29: He was a holy, gracious, loving man. So his life was as powerful as his preaching.
01:07:37: How did you first become aware of Conrad Murrell? Well, it was even before I met, heard of Leonard Ravenhill.
01:07:44: I had a friend in Texas who sent me a book by Conrad Murrell and some sermons on cassette tape back in those days.
01:07:57: And it was phenomenal how powerful his ministry was, a ministry of truth.
01:08:05: And I was very much affected. I was a college student. And then later when my wife and I married in the late 70s,
01:08:15: I continued to hear some of those tapes. And it became a watershed time for me of understanding deeper truth.
01:08:28: And I was talking earlier about how reading and one of my college professors influenced me theologically.
01:08:35: It was Conrad Murrell that answered many questions for me that solidified my thinking theologically and doctrinally.
01:08:43: And so he would put out a letter every three months to readers that would have theological articles, but it would also give his itinerant ministry where he was going to be in the dates.
01:08:58: And so we saw in 1979 that he was going to be preaching near us.
01:09:04: So that was the first time I heard him in a town near Fort Worth, Texas. And we went to hear him preach every night.
01:09:12: And it began a time then for years of hearing him preach when we could.
01:09:19: And he was coming to our church annually to do a Bible conference. And then finally, his church in Bentley, Louisiana sponsored three
01:09:30: Bible conferences a year for preachers and their families, pastors and their church members.
01:09:37: And we began to frequent those conferences every year with much profit.
01:09:44: So we knew Conrad twice as long as Leonard Ravenhill, because Conrad is still alive.
01:09:52: We've known him 35 years and his public ministry is now over. He lives there in Louisiana.
01:10:00: And we had a great privilege of hearing him from our years of being in college and seminary until now.
01:10:11: By the way, do you know if he's listening today? I do not know if anyone has told him or not.
01:10:17: Okay, well, I want to extend personally my deep apologies and regrets for having the blooper in the beginning of the program when
01:10:28: I announced his demise before it has actually happened. So I hope that you have a sense of humor,
01:10:36: Conrad, if you're listening. And please accept my apologies for that. Tell us something about his own background.
01:10:44: What kind of religious background, if any, was Conrad raised in? And tell us about how he came to faith and so on.
01:10:53: Well, he was raised in rural Louisiana in Bentley, which is near Alexandria.
01:11:00: It's two hours southeast of Shreveport, Louisiana, a very rural area.
01:11:06: His parents were godly people who really loved the Lord. They were Baptists who became members of the
01:11:13: Assembly of God church. And so that was the atmosphere Conrad grew up in.
01:11:20: But through high school, he was unconverted. He believed in God.
01:11:25: He was moved by the gospel and by his parents' example, but he had not come to faith himself.
01:11:35: And so when he graduated from college, from high school, excuse me, in, let me think, it would be about 1942, 43, it was a very hard time to find a job.
01:11:52: And so his brother lived in Houston, Texas, which was six hours to the southwest of Louisiana, where Conrad was.
01:12:02: Conrad moved the summer after high school to Houston and got a job working at a basically it was oil field machinery company that produced oil field machinery.
01:12:16: And he got a job working. Finally, soon, when he was 17, two years after high school, met a young lady there in Texas.
01:12:28: They married. Both of them were not Christians. And after they had had established their home, he excelled in his business.
01:12:38: He became an engineer with that firm, did some college time, but he did not go to church at all.
01:12:46: Well, his father came to Houston temporarily to look for some work and lived with Conrad and Eunice, his wife.
01:12:57: And Conrad had an inner conscience toward his father and a reverence for his father. So his dad wanted to go to church.
01:13:04: So Conrad went to church with his dad on a Sunday. And it was that very
01:13:10: Sunday that through the ministry at that church service that Sunday morning,
01:13:17: Conrad was suddenly struck with conviction of sin. And he was converted that morning.
01:13:24: It was surprising. He had not been under conviction. He had not been to church. But suddenly
01:13:30: God arrested him and he was converted. And then his dad went back to Louisiana.
01:13:38: Six months later, his wife, Eunice, was converted. And within a year, he immediately joined a
01:13:45: Baptist church in the Houston area, began to grow. And within a year, he knew he was called to the ministry.
01:13:53: And so he began to start a mission church in North Houston soon after in his early years of his conversion.
01:14:03: And so he pastored ever since then. And what was the events in his life that actually led him to believe that he had a call from God to become a preacher of the gospel?
01:14:21: Well, he was in a church that really equipped younger men to answer the call to the ministry.
01:14:28: A number of young men in the church felt called to ministry. And Conrad was a very brilliant intellectual.
01:14:36: He had a genius mind. And he had insight into scripture from the beginning.
01:14:42: And he felt a desire and a motivation to pursue ministry.
01:14:48: So his local church nurtured that and cultivated it.
01:14:54: And then out of the context of his church, he entered ministry. So what were the things that made him another figure that stood out in the crowd of Christians who have lived and departed this earth and also those who are still with us, but who may be retired from their ministry like Conrad?
01:15:17: What made Conrad stand out as someone I've got to write a very lengthy biography about this brother in Christ?
01:15:29: Well, there's so much I could say about that. And I'll try to be brief and concise.
01:15:36: Conrad was a genius in his mind. He was as deep a thinker,
01:15:42: I believe, in the 20th century as you could have found. He was on the level with the
01:15:48: Martyn Lloyd -Jones or an R .C. Sproul or a Burkhall. He had that level of a mind.
01:15:57: Theology became crystal clear to him. And so he wrote some books to deal with theological error.
01:16:08: He wrote a book on a right view of salvation called Salvation When to correct the error that salvation is just a quick decision somebody makes on their own and God's grace doesn't have to initiate it.
01:16:26: He wrote a book called Faith Tumma to correct the contemporary erroneous view of the charismatic view of faith as a prosperity doctrine.
01:16:40: The book Faith Tumma showed that faith was a gift of God, divinely initiated, and that men couldn't just work up faith anytime they wanted to.
01:16:51: And so he was a theological mind that addressed very important issues. After he began to pastor, he was never theologically trained formally.
01:17:05: He never went a day to Bible school. And I would compare his preaching ministry in some ways to C .H.
01:17:15: Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd -Jones from this standpoint. None of the three men,
01:17:21: Merle, Spurgeon, or Lloyd -Jones, ever went to Bible college or seminary. They were prolific readers.
01:17:30: They were brilliant minds who grasped the truth. And then they were equipped with amazing preaching gift to declare to preach the
01:17:40: Bible with authority. That was Conrad Merle. I'm sorry.
01:17:47: I was just going to say Martyn Lloyd -Jones read Conrad Merle's writings and wrote him letters of appreciation.
01:17:55: Wow. And there is some difference of the level of education there because Dr.
01:18:01: Martyn Lloyd -Jones was a doctor, a medical doctor. So obviously, he went through a lot of education and training.
01:18:09: What kind of secular education did Conrad Merle have, if any?
01:18:16: Really very little. When he was an engineer in Houston with the oil field equipment company, he did some classes at the
01:18:28: University of Houston, but it was just for one year. So that was it. He was never a college graduate or anything else.
01:18:36: But after entering the ministry, he read deeply. He would read the
01:18:43: Reformers, the Puritans, the great Baptist theologians, the great
01:18:49: Presbyterian theologians. But the thing that set him apart was he had the brilliant mind where he could grasp all of it at a high level.
01:18:59: Yeah. Sounds a lot like John Bunyan. Very, very similar because Conrad had the ability to preach with power like Bunyan had.
01:19:12: And John Owen commented, I would give up all my learning for the power of John Bunyan in his preaching.
01:19:20: And so Conrad Merle was that way. Yeah. John Owen, who was a very learned man, was humble enough to even have
01:19:27: Bunyan preach from his very own pulpit. Yes. And we do have a listener,
01:19:37: B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, this man
01:19:43: Conrad Merle you speak of sounds like an extraordinary man of God. Why is it that it appears he is known very little in this day and age?
01:19:57: Well, it's a great question and it's an important question. The answer is
01:20:03: Conrad lived all his life in rural Louisiana. He pastored a small
01:20:08: Baptist church along with a wider itinerant ministry. And so the
01:20:16: Apostle Paul was spoken of as, he spoke of himself and he said he was well known, but also unknown.
01:20:25: In the larger sphere of the evangelical world, large churches or seminaries,
01:20:34: Conrad was never known because he conducted his ministry among usually smaller churches.
01:20:42: There were exceptions. He'd preach in large conferences, but he mainly had a ministry to smaller churches and Bible conferences in the
01:20:53: Midwest and South. He did preach as far east as Pennsylvania and Virginia and as far west as Arizona and California.
01:21:04: But for the most part, it was in the Midwest and the South among Calvinistic and Southern Baptist churches.
01:21:14: And so outside of those circles, he wasn't really known. Inside those circles, he was the greatest influence that many hundreds of churches ever had.
01:21:26: Hmm. There have been some preachers of old, well, it wasn't that long ago comparatively, but obviously
01:21:35: I'm talking about decades ago, who were such passionate preachers, such gifted preachers that even some fundamentalists who were not
01:21:49: Calvinists became great admirers of them. Would that have been also someone like Conrad Merle?
01:21:57: That would exactly be right. He preached in some popular conferences that were fundamentalist conferences.
01:22:06: One in particular was the Milldale Bible Conference in Zachary, Louisiana, north of Baton Rouge, was a very popular large conference.
01:22:19: Conrad preached there, and there were such men as R .G. Lee who preached there.
01:22:25: I could name other names. The famous James A.
01:22:30: Stewart, the Presbyterian Scottish evangelist, preached there. Many men. Duncan Campbell, the
01:22:37: Scottish revival priest in the Hebrides of Scotland when real revival broke out, knew
01:22:44: Conrad, so he preached with such men, but he was lesser known than some popular figures.
01:22:54: We do have C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, who says,
01:22:59: In light of some of the uneducated men, that is, men who did not receive formal education, who have become great shepherds of Christ's flock and great gifts to the church in their writing and in their preaching, would you say that those denominations that absolutely insist on seminary educations for their pastors are in error?
01:23:28: Well, it's a delicate thing to answer that question in a way because God does use seminaries, the right kind that are sound, especially if they have a good balance between scholarship and devotion.
01:23:47: Obviously, God still wants scholars who can teach Greek and Hebrew and church history and Old and New Testament.
01:23:56: He needs men of training to teach those things in the future. But that being said,
01:24:03: I would agree with the caller that questions this because it is not essential to have a seminary degree to be used of God.
01:24:15: It's obviously not a biblical requirement, obviously. No, no. In fact, if the truth is known, seminary education is a modern thing.
01:24:27: Mm -hmm. In the days of Jonathan Edwards and before, men were trained for the ministry.
01:24:35: Of course, they often went to Princeton or Yale or Harvard, and those were schools at that day that were raised up to train men for the preaching of the gospel, but men would train under a local pastor.
01:24:51: And so, it's not essential, and often some of the greatest men, including those
01:24:56: I've already mentioned as well as A .W. Tozer and others, never had formal education theologically, but they were men of the
01:25:05: Bible. They were men that studied and prayed and applied themselves, and the grace of God and the calling to the ministry is what made them to be used of God.
01:25:19: Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania says, unlike Ravenhill, you seem to have more theologically in common with Murrell.
01:25:29: Is there anything that you disagreed with Murrell on? Well, that's a good question.
01:25:35: By the way, Ravenhill and Murrell knew each other well, and they preached together. Hmm. Interesting.
01:25:42: Yeah. In the 1970s, Leonard Ravenhill and Conrad Murrell preached together all up and down the
01:25:52: West Coast in California and Oregon, and they were dear friends. One was a strong Calvinist.
01:25:58: One was an Armenian. They loved each other. They respected each other. They complimented each other, and they remained friends until Ravenhill's death.
01:26:08: Did they ever debate, even in a friendly fashion? Probably. I'm thinking of the friendship between George Whitefield and John Wesley, and they had a polar opposite view on unconditional election, and yet, even though they had very heated discussions in writing on it where they disagreed, they remained friends.
01:26:33: In fact, Whitefield, as you probably know, requested that Wesley preach at his funeral, and he did.
01:26:42: Yeah. Conrad Murrell and Leonard Ravenhill had the exact same type of relationship, but Ravenhill was never rude and harsh the way
01:26:52: John Wesley became at times. Right. Mm -hmm. I will tell you a funny story, and then we'll get back to the question.
01:26:59: Don't let me forget the question. If you've got any disagreements. Yeah. To your point,
01:27:05: Leonard Ravenhill and Conrad told this story they were driving in California between preaching appointments, and Leonard always preached, we ought to get more serious about prayer and pray until revival comes, and Conrad believed in prayer for revival, but he believed
01:27:32: God would send revival sovereignly at the right time. So they were driving together, and Conrad kind of jokingly, he wanted to see how
01:27:44: Leonard would respond, so Conrad said, Leonard, why don't we pull over and get a motel and stay there and pray until revival comes?
01:27:58: And Ravenhill's answer surprised Conrad, and he laughed. Ravenhill replied, well,
01:28:04: Conrad, we must consider the sovereign will of God in this. We also must consider the cost of the hotel nightly.
01:28:16: Back then, the hotels were $8 a night. Anyway, so they never had a conflict.
01:28:27: They respected one another. They viewed each other's ministry as very important and rich, and their gifts were different.
01:28:40: Leonard Ravenhill said of Conrad Murrell, when people hear
01:28:45: Brother Murrell, they will recognize that there's somewhat of a prophet's mantle on this son of the southern soil.
01:28:58: So Ravenhill loved Conrad Murrell. Conrad was 20 years younger than Ravenhill.
01:29:06: And before we go to the question of our listener about any disagreements you may have had with Murrell, I'm going to go to a break, and you can answer that when we return.
01:29:15: And if you'd like to join those other listeners who asked us questions for Mack Tomlinson, you can email us as well at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
01:29:26: That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old
01:29:36: USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Mack Tomlinson and more of his discussion on Conrad Murrell.
01:29:45: Lynbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.
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01:34:27: Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the past 90 minutes and for the next half hour to come has been
01:34:37: Mack Tomlinson, pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and he has quickly become a friend of mine over the past months, and I'm so delighted that even my oldest brother
01:34:53: John out there in Justin, Texas, has just recently made our guest's acquaintance, and I'm looking forward with bated breath to see a friendship blossom and develop there, and I would love to hear a good report on that.
01:35:09: If you just tuned us in, we have been discussing the last half hour the biography that our guest has written about Conrad Murrell, titled
01:35:19: Conrad Murrell, Grace and Truth. It is nearly 700 pages worth of information on the life of this very gifted brother in Christ, who is now in his twilight years and retired from the ministry, and we hope that he eventually hears this broadcast, and if you'd like to join us on the air as well, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:35:43: chrisarnson at gmail .com, and before we went to the break, a listener had asked you if you had any differences of theology or practice with Conrad Murrell.
01:35:58: I'll be glad to address that, Chris. Could I mention something real quick? Oh yeah, sure. It's a little misleading about the biography on Conrad.
01:36:10: If people think that I wrote almost 700 pages on him, there is a full biography on him, but there is a lengthy bit of material at the end of the book, two appendices, appendix
01:36:29: A and appendix B, that make the book worth getting. These are
01:36:35: Conrad Murrell's rare writings from his early years. Appendix A is called
01:36:40: Bread from the Book, and it's a commentary, a devotional theological commentary on many of the
01:36:48: Psalms, and they are phenomenally good. They are, in my opinion, as good as Spurgeon on the
01:36:55: Psalms. So that's appendix A. Appendix B is a number of his best articles that he wrote on various subjects that are filled with insight and wisdom.
01:37:11: So a lot of the book, at the end of it, is Conrad's own rare writings himself.
01:37:19: So I wanted to clarify that. So you plagiarized him then? No. I'm only kidding.
01:37:26: Let him speak for himself. Yeah, that's Christian. I was joking. But anyway, if you could, let us know.
01:37:35: Back to your question. Were there areas I disagreed with Conrad? My answer simply would be very, very little.
01:37:46: You know, I learned early in my Christian life through trial and error to not just swallow what men preached that I respected.
01:37:58: I learned to become, as it says in the book of Acts, a Berean who would search the scriptures to see if the things men were preaching was true.
01:38:11: And so there were times that I recognized Conrad's saying things because he felt them so deeply.
01:38:20: And he thought he had seen truth in a specific area. And when I would hear him address it,
01:38:27: I would think, well, I'm not sure if that's right. I don't know that I can agree with that. But I would go to the
01:38:34: Bible to check it out and make sure. And so at times
01:38:39: I would say, no, I don't think I can quite agree with that. But it never affected my respect and love for him.
01:38:47: Um, there is one chapter in the book, it's chapter, um,
01:38:55: I don't know, chapter six. And it's a, it's a chapter on the atonement where there were some men close to Conrad who began to disagree with him over his definition of propitiation.
01:39:11: And were they were formed men who disagreed with him? Yeah, because of a very technical, uh, scholarly definition of how he defined it.
01:39:22: So it's, I'm mentioning this because it's an example of how men handled disagreements.
01:39:30: These men were close to Conrad, particularly two of them. And for 10 years, they discussed it together.
01:39:39: They wrote letters. And they never came to fully agree with one another.
01:39:45: But there were, I bring out in the chapter, three major lessons for God's people when they don't agree.
01:39:56: And lesson number one is truth is always paramount. Truth is the most important thing above friendships, above denominational loyalties.
01:40:09: So these three men, Conrad being one of them, they saw truth as paramount.
01:40:16: And when they didn't agree, they wanted to, they challenged one another as to what really was the truth because they saw truth.
01:40:26: Um, in fact, as one man stated, truth is never diminished by asking questions, but it stands the scrutiny of the best of men.
01:40:36: Hmm. And so lesson number two was, is godly men don't always agree on important truths.
01:40:46: We all still can see through a glass darkly, as Paul said. So two godly men, both who love the
01:40:53: Lord, both who are equally committed to Christ, they may see some truths differently.
01:41:00: Mm hmm. And we have to allow one another the freedom to see truth as God shows it to us.
01:41:09: And the third lesson, love must reign in all things.
01:41:16: Um, JC Rall said this, humility and love are precisely the graces which men of the world can understand when they do not comprehend
01:41:25: Christian doctrine. These are the graces about which there is no mystery. And they are within the reach of all believers.
01:41:32: The Christian can daily find occasion for practicing love and humility.
01:41:39: Well, that has to be done when we disagree with other believers. Mm hmm. So these three men,
01:41:46: Conrad being one of them, they disagreed for 10 years on a fine point of theology, but it never diminished their love and respect and kindness to one another at all.
01:41:57: Amen. That seems like it is really at the heart of the description that Matthew Henry gave to Proverbs 27, 17, that my show is named after.
01:42:12: Iron sharpens iron. Matthew Henry believed that that text, that iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another, was basically that the goal of every conversation that you should have is to make one another wiser and better.
01:42:29: And that would include yourself. So I'm glad that that seems to be the makeup of what had occurred in this brother's life when those friends of his had opposed him on the finer points of theology.
01:42:49: Right, I give at the beginning of that chapter six, I give two quotes. One is by Martin Luther who said, peace if possible, but truth at any cost.
01:43:01: And then another brother said, we need not all agree, but if we disagree, let us not be disagreeable.
01:43:11: Amen. That's good. Amen. And so this is, in fact, we could do a whole program on that one aspect of Conrad Merle's life because that is something that rages on, it has raged on from the very conception of the church until the present day where brethren in Christ, since we are fallible and finite and sinners until the
01:43:42: Lord comes to claim us on the last day and we are in glory with him. We who are on this earth will never be perfect and therefore it is hard to walk the fine line, is it not, when it comes to disagreement over doctrine and other matters in the scripture of becoming either on the one hand a self -righteous, proud, and arrogant
01:44:13: Pharisee and on the other side of the tightrope there is a compromising, wishy -washy, watered down, ineffective, impotent individual when it comes to important matters of the faith.
01:44:30: I mean, you don't want to be either one and we who are Christians who also are simultaneously sinners, it's very difficult to keep that balance at all times, isn't it?
01:44:41: It certainly is. It is. It's a tightrope and I think we must see that God doesn't bring every
01:44:50: Christian along the same path and truths that he's granted us to see we shouldn't judge other brethren who haven't seen him as quickly as us or not in the same way.
01:45:02: We must not think that they don't love the Lord because we don't quite agree with their position.
01:45:10: We do have a listener in Suffolk County, Long Island who has a question that kind of touches on what we've just been talking about.
01:45:21: Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island asks, you mentioned that Brother Murrell was from an
01:45:29: Assemblies of God background at least at one point in his upbringing. Did his parents have any disappointment or conflict with him when he became a
01:45:41: Calvinist? Well, I don't fully know that history in detail, but after he was converted he never went back to the
01:45:52: Assembly of God church. He became a Baptist, though at times he was invited to preach in those circles and he did, but he did it in an uncompromising way as a
01:46:05: Baptist. But his parents only gave him love and support. They were supportive and the relationship was loving and good the whole time.
01:46:16: And we have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island who asks, what would you say is
01:46:22: Conrad's greatest contribution to the body of Christ? Well, that is a wonderful question and I think
01:46:29: I can answer it simply. Conrad was a true theologian at the highest level and he really became almost a walking seminary to many pastors and churches across the
01:46:47: Midwest and the South. Pastors who had no theological training, who were grappling with hard questions, with confusing questions.
01:46:58: What about the charismatic movement? What about the prosperity doctrine of faith?
01:47:05: What about Calvinism and Arminianism? And Conrad for over, well really for 50 years, had a wide ministry in churches in the
01:47:17: Midwest and the South, and then as far east as I said as Virginia, as far west as California, and he would preach doctrinal truth at a level that even teenagers could get it.
01:47:31: And he was one of the best I ever saw at answering questions. People would ask questions about election or predestination and Conrad was a superb teacher of deeper truth.
01:47:46: So hundreds of pastors and churches really got their theological training under his ministry just by hearing his preaching.
01:47:56: That was his major contribution. What were his greatest influences, or should
01:48:03: I say who were the greatest influences upon him and his theology? Well, you know, he loved to read
01:48:13: Martyn Lloyd -Jones. He loved to read A .W. Tozer. He really profited.
01:48:19: His favorite systematic theology was Burkoff's one -volume large systematic theology.
01:48:25: He was a Pato Baptist, Burkoff not a Baptist, and so those were big influences.
01:48:35: The man initially that was used to turn Conrad toward a Calvinistic view was a man named
01:48:42: Gene Williams, who was a Texas pastor who established an evangelistic association.
01:48:52: And Conrad was good friends with Gene Williams, who later, Dr. Williams became president of Luther Ross Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.
01:49:03: And Gene Williams was Calvinistic before Conrad became that.
01:49:11: And so one day Conrad, this was early in Conrad's Christian life, he was with Gene Williams and Conrad made some snide remark about those
01:49:20: Calvinists. And Gene Williams wisely responded and said, well, what about them?
01:49:29: You know, and Conrad said, well, you know, their view that it's all of grace.
01:49:36: And Conrad, Gene Williams said, well, what was different in you than any other sinner?
01:49:43: Did God see something in you that was better? And Conrad began to think momentarily and said, well, no.
01:49:53: And then Gene Williams said, so anything in salvation then is not in the sinner.
01:49:59: It comes from God's grace. And it was a watershed moment. It was like an epiphany for Conrad.
01:50:06: The light went off and suddenly he realized in that one conversation, salvation had to wholly be of God if it was real.
01:50:15: And that was a turning point. So Gene Williams was the early main influence.
01:50:23: Well, it's interesting that it reveals to us, because I've never heard of Gene Williams, and it reveals to us that we may never believe that God is going to use us for much of anything that has a great impact on the earth, on the church, on the future.
01:50:45: And yet when you see the domino effect of how God has used men who may not be famous, but who are dedicated and loyal to him and his word, and how they could bring about such powerful gifts to the church that are manifest in other men who they have influenced, it's just a reminder of that, isn't it?
01:51:11: It certainly is very much a good reminder. And another thought we should be reminded of, some of Christ's choicest servants serve in obscure places, small places that people have never heard of, and God is using them just as greatly.
01:51:33: Well, before we run out of time, I really want you to make sure that you leave our listeners with what you most want etched on their hearts and minds in regard to Conrad Murrell.
01:51:44: Well, the biography would certainly give a clear, true glimpse of his life and ministry and the influence.
01:51:53: That can be found at conradmurrell .com. It can be purchased there. There are two websites of sermons where people can hear
01:52:04: Conrad Murrell's sermons and his preaching. One is gospelbearers .com.
01:52:10: I'll spell it gospel, g -o -s -p -e -l -b -e -a -r -e -r -s, gospelbearers .com.
01:52:21: And then another one with some of his earlier most powerful sermons is vintagevoices .net,
01:52:28: v -i -n -t -a -g -e -v -o -i -c -e -s, vintagevoices .net.
01:52:37: And then you can find his sermons. In fact, if people want any of his books, they can contact us for those as well.
01:52:48: So, his books are still in print. They're still very helpful. And let's hear, before we go, also something more about the conference.
01:53:02: I don't want those that tuned in late to miss out on the information regarding your
01:53:08: New England conference that's coming up in August. Yes, in Portland, Maine, August 4, 5, and 6, we will have a
01:53:17: Fellowship Conference New England, the fourth annual conference there in Portland.
01:53:24: It will be three days of rich fellowship, preaching, prayer, and a wonderful time.
01:53:31: It's very pastoral, devotional, and wonderful. And people can find information on that and register at fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.
01:53:46: In fact, we do have a listener. We have a
01:53:51: Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know what the cost of that conference is.
01:54:00: If my memory serves me right, it's very small. The registration is $25, and then your meals and lodging are on your own for the three days and three nights.
01:54:15: But the registration is very small. You can see it there at the website, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.
01:54:23: Great. Well, I know that your church, once again,
01:54:29: I don't want our listeners who tuned in late to miss out on your website.
01:54:34: It's providencedenton .org. That's providencedenton, D as in David, E -N -T -O -N dot
01:54:42: O -R -G. And that is the website of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.
01:54:47: And you've also got the website for the book we have been discussing, conradmurrell .com,
01:54:54: C -O -N -R -A -D -M -U -R -R -E -L -L dot com. And we have the website for the
01:55:02: Leonard Ravenhill book that we discussed earlier on. What is that website again, brother? It's Ravenhill Biography, one word,
01:55:11: Ravenhill Biography, R -A -V -E -N -H -I -L -L -B -I -O -G -R -A -P -H -Y, ravenhillbiography .com.
01:55:23: Great. And don't forget about our sponsors who carry all of the books that we mention on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Solid Ground Christian Books, which is run by a mutual friend of my guest and mine,
01:55:40: Mike Gaydosh in Birmingham, Alabama. That's the website for Solid Ground Christian Books is solid -ground -books .com,
01:55:52: solid -ground -books .com. And in addition to that, we don't want to forget the
01:55:59: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, which has been a faithful friend of Iron Sharpens Iron since its relaunching here in Pennsylvania.
01:56:10: Their website is CVBBS .com. That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS .com.
01:56:20: And they have a wide range of excellent books by many wonderful and brilliant authors that have been blessing the church not only from centuries past, but through the present day.
01:56:36: And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their loyalty in supporting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
01:56:45: And I also want to thank the folks at the
01:56:50: Church of God in Marysville, Pennsylvania, for inviting me to speak at an upcoming retreat that they are running.
01:57:03: And perhaps you can join us as I will be speaking to the group there about my program.
01:57:11: And I'm very honored that the pastor, Larry Hale, has invited me to do this.
01:57:19: And I'm going to definitely block that out on my calendar so I can be present there.
01:57:27: And Newville, Pennsylvania is where the actual retreat is. So we hope that you can join us there in Newville, Pennsylvania.
01:57:36: And I will be announcing information, more details on that retreat as soon as I have them available.
01:57:46: I just know that the sponsors of this retreat are the Glenvale Church of God in Marysville, Pennsylvania.
01:57:56: And they're known as the Hospital on the Hill. That's their nickname for the church.
01:58:02: And their website is glenvalecog .com. That's glenvalecog, which stands for churchofgod .com.
01:58:11: So you could go there to find out more information about the retreat as well. And that's going to be held
01:58:17: August 22nd through the 26th at the
01:58:24: Dublin Gap Center in Newville, Pennsylvania. They have a campground there.
01:58:31: I'm actually going to be speaking to the Tuesday, August 23rd at around 11 a .m.,
01:58:38: God willing. Well, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, I hope that you not only return soon to Iron Sharpens Iron as a guest, but I hope you return often.
01:58:49: And I think that I'd like to especially tackle the subject with you on how brethren in Christ should maintain a loving relationship, even in the light of strong differences that we may have on theology, because that seems to be something that is difficult to manage, especially when people love theology, which is a very important factor that is missing in our day and age.
01:59:16: But our love should never turn into pride, should it? That's exactly right. It's very, very important.
01:59:22: And thank you, Chris, for having me on today. It's been a delight, again, very much.
01:59:28: And I just encourage any Christians in New England, if you're hungry for fellowship and biblical preaching in an atmosphere of love and acceptance, please join us in Portland, Maine for the
01:59:40: Fellowship Conference New England, August 4th through the 6th. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater