August 26, 2016 Show with Gary W. Long & Terry Wolever on “Susannah Spurgeon: The Princess of the Prince of Preachers” PLUS a Discussion of Susannah Spurgeon’s Book, ‘A Cluster of Camphire’

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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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.

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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.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Friday on this 26th day of August 2016.

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I'm delighted to have two guests on the same time at the same time today who have never been on the broadcast before and I'm eagerly looking forward to interviewing them and promoting their very valuable ministry.

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First of all, we have on the program with us today Pastor Gary Long.

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He is pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church of Springfield, Missouri since 1997 and he serves as president of Particular Baptist Press.

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He was on the board of Friends of the Spurgeon Library when it was at William Jewell College, served as host of the

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Spurgeon Pastors Conferences held annually at William Jewell in the 1990s and was chairman for Baptist History Celebration held at First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina in 2007.

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And we also have joining us Terry Woolliver who is a graduate of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

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He is the author of The Life of John Gano who lived from 1727 to 1804 and he was at one time a pastor of the

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First Baptist Church in Manhattan and happened to read a phenomenal biography written by my friend

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John Thornberry about one of his successors, Spencer Cone, which

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I highly recommend but we'll discuss that later. Terry Woolliver's special regional interest is in the early regular baptists of the northeastern

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United States and he serves as full -time editor for Particular Baptist Press and teaches at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri and it's my honor and privilege to welcome both of you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Thank you very much. And let me right away give our email address out.

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It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

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and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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that's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Well, first of all, I'd like to hear something about the church you pastor, Pastor Gary.

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Sovereign Grace Baptist Church started in 1970 and we've been existing since then.

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We meet on the southwest corner of Springfield, Missouri and it's a small congregation but a very solid congregation.

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Great. And obviously you believe in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, hence the name and those are commonly called the theological distinctions of Calvinism or Reformed Theology or just Sovereign Grace or sometimes even

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Free Grace and something that happens to be near and dear to my heart as well.

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And how and when did Particular Baptist Press get started? Terry Wolver was with us in our church back in 1995 and he was going to publish a pamphlet by an unknown

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Particular Baptist by the name of Joseph Kinghorn and we talked about it and both

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Terry and I are lovers of Baptist history and one thing led to another.

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We asked if there's a possibility that we could reprint his biography. There was a biography done on Kinghorn.

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It had been long out of print and so we did. We started by, we borrowed money from a number of individuals with an unusual situation.

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We told them there'd be no interest paid on their money and that there was no timeline as to when we could pay them back and if we couldn't pay them back we'd give them their money back in books because if it didn't work.

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But the Lord blessed it. That was in 1995 and so we produced The Life and Works of Joseph Kinghorn Volume 1.

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That was our first book. Well, how many books do you have in print now? We have about, well there's over 45 books.

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We're working on, we're working toward 50. We're probably at 48 right now. And I know that you do really high quality binding and everything.

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These are not cheap books by any stretch of the imagination. Very attractive, very excellent binding and so on.

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Yes. Terry insisted on that when we started. We weren't going to, we have done a paperback or two but that's been at a request.

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But we try to do the good quality bindings and we try to put dust jackets on it when that can be afforded.

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Yeah, well obviously you want these books to last as long as possible and the kind of binding that you provide, they could last centuries.

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Right, right. And so what are the different kinds of books that you have in print? We have different series of books.

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Most of them are the American series, which we did those in the blue jackets. And then we have the

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British series, which we do in red jackets. We have a missionary series and a commentary series.

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And we have a number in each one of those series. And how are these books funded?

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Well, most of them have been funded by either individuals or churches that have come alongside and wanted to participate in this ministry.

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We are really, we don't make a profit on this at all. And we just have to have most of our books have to be funded.

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Many of them are not, but most of them have. All of our commentary series have been funded.

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Almost all of our missionary series have been funded. Some of the American and some of the British have been funded by outside sources.

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And before we even go into the book by Susanna Spurgeon that is the main topic of our program today,

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I want to know more about a book you have published called Baptist History Celebration 2007.

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That book was the result of a meeting. The meeting itself was an experiment in Baptist history.

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It turned out to be a successful experiment because we met in 2001 at William Jewell, a steering committee made up of every kind of Baptist that we could get to work with us.

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And we had a good group show up, people that normally have nothing in common, and that was discussed with the people.

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We have nothing in common theologically, we have nothing in common even in our methodology, but we do have the same history.

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So we used that as a ground and from there we met a number of years at different places and finally the meeting came off in 2007 and the book is a result of that meeting.

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We had plenary sessions and we had breakout sessions and sessions on hymnody and biographical sketches and we felt that it was a successful ministry and endeavor.

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We had two college presidents come up and ask us if we would ever do it again. They would like to host the meeting, but it was just more than what we could handle.

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So we counted a real blessing to have been a part of that. The Lord just blessed something that had never been done before, but it worked.

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Now you have a missionary series that consists of six different volumes, but five of the six are about Isaac McCoy.

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Why is that? Well, Terry Wolver had found that Isaac McCoy had done four annual registers of Indian Affairs and we got interested in him and we had noticed on the internet that someone had an original 1835 annual register and they were asking $10 ,000 for it.

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So we found all four, we copied them, we expanded them and made them, cleaned them up, enlarged them, and we hand made, we put these together by hand, about 15 copies and from there it is just expanded and we sold out immediately.

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So that became our first book and Isaac McCoy himself has become our hero at our press.

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He was a Calvinistic Baptist missionary that was to the American Indians and at a time when

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America was enamored with the Jetsons and those who were over in Burma and India and so he didn't have the support and backing that others did, but he accomplished.

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His biographer George Ella says that there are tribes in existence today only because of Isaac McCoy.

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He's our hero. What is the best seller that you have over a particular

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Baptist press? Probably the three Mrs. Judsons that we did in our missionary series.

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We've had to reprint it twice and actually the Cluster of Camphor has been our second best.

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It's in its second printing for us. So those are our two best sellers. Well that's the title that we are discussing today, a

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Cluster of Camphor. Camphor is a flower, is it not? Yeah, I'm going to let

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Terry take it. Yes, it's a medicinal plant and actually today we call it

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Camphor. And you can see it in such products as Camphophenic, all these medicinal uses that it's used for.

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It's basically a balm for wounds. And when Mrs. Spurgeon chose that title for her book, her subtitle is,

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Words of Comfort, of Cheer and Comfort to Sick and Sorrowful Souls.

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So she was looking at this book as a balm for sick and sorrowful souls. Well, a lot of our listeners who happen to be theologically

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Reformed, Calvinistic, believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace. They cherish

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Many of our listeners probably have read much of what

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Spurgeon has written. And for those of our listeners who don't know anything about Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he was a 19th century preacher in London, England, and was the pastor amongst other places.

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But the place he's most well known for pastoring was Metropolitan Tabernacle, which actually still exists today.

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He was a prolific writer and one of the most powerful preachers of his day, and was a thoroughly theologically

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Calvinistic Baptist pastor. No matter what some enemies of Calvinism try to rewrite about him, he was a thoroughgoing, historic, five -point

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Calvinist, thoroughgoing, sovereign grace man. But even less is known, even by perhaps those who are very familiar with Charles Haddon Spurgeon's writing.

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Not many of us know a lot about Susanna, his wife. Why don't you tell us something about Susanna Spurgeon's background?

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Okay. She was born in January of 1832 in London. She lived her entire life in London or its environs.

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She never really left the city except at certain points of time.

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But as a point of interest, she was fluent in French. And so when she and C .H. Spurgeon were married, they spent their honeymoon in Paris.

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And they were married on January 8, 1856 at the Newport Street Chapel.

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He was 21. She was just a week shy of being 24. So she was actually two and a half years older than he was.

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And she lived longer than he did. She outlived him until October 22, 1903.

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She died at the age of 71. And of course, most Spurgeon fans know that he died at the age of 57.

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Yeah. For that time or during that time, was that at a young age even then for someone to pass away?

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Yes, I would think so, yes. Well, how did they first meet?

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Well, when Charles Spurgeon was called to the Newport Street Chapel, that Sunday morning that he first preached there, which was in October of 1853, she was not there at the morning service.

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And as a matter of fact, there were very few people there at that morning service. But he so enthralled those who were in attendance that they put out a call to the rest of the members and the rest of the persons who had been attending to come that evening.

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And so the first time she saw him was that evening at the evening service, and she was not impressed with his appearance.

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And when he came out, she thought, well, who is this youth coming into the pulpit of John Rippon and John Gill?

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And anyway, she disliked his haircut and his Colchester accent.

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But then she realized after he preached that this was a man who truly knew the

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Lord. And so meetings were arranged later at the home of the

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Olneys, and that is where she was actually formally introduced to him and him to her, although neither one of them later were able to recall at what precise time they were introduced, which is interesting.

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Yeah. And you said that she did not like his accent. Was that an accent that was more associated with lower class individuals or something, people of a less education or financial status?

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Well, it was more associated with the country. And remember that Susanna Spurgeon lived in the city, and so she was with the upper class community there in London in her area that she lived, and he was from Colchester.

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And so they had a unique accent there, so she could tell he was from the country by the way he dressed and the way he talked.

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And well, we do have some questions already for you.

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We have Liz in Holtzville, Long Island, who wants to know, this is actually a question about Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

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And Liz asks, do you know whether or not Charles Haddon Spurgeon had ever met or had any kind of communication with the great author of Tale of Two Cities and other works,

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Charles Dickens? Well, we do know that he prized his set of Dickens, and he was always quoting from it, and that was a set that he always kept near his desk.

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But I'm not aware of that. Are you, Gary, or whether he met him? I don't know that. Yes, we have seen when we had this

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Friends of the Spurgeon Library, that set of Dickens was right there in the front and always prized by Mr.

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Spurgeon. Well, guess what, Liz? If you give us your full name and address, you're going to get a free copy of this book that we are offering today, that we are highlighting in our discussion today,

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A Cluster of Camphor. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes. Because if our listeners were to actually look at this word in writing, it would look like an old

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English version of campfire, C -A -M -P -H -I -R -E. But it's obviously, as our guest has already demonstrated, it's not pronounced that way.

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And we look forward to sending that out to you, Liz. And that will be not only given to you as a gift from Particular Baptist Press, who we thank for providing these books, but it's also going to be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

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CVBBS .com, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is a long -time sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron.

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And we thank them for supporting us since our relaunch here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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And thanks again to Todd and Patty Jennings for always supporting Iron Sharpens Iron.

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We also have another listener. We have Latane in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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And Latane wants to know, was

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Susanna a great help to her husband Charles during his seasons of depression that I have heard about?

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And how did she actually cope with that? Terry, you want to start off on that?

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I believe she was a tremendous help, especially after the Surrey Gardens musical disaster.

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And Spurgeon came back. Incidentally, that was just a month after the birth of their twin son. And she was still basically bedridden from her childbirth.

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And he was invited to preach at the Surrey Gardens music hall.

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And there were people who were there who had predetermined that they were going to start yelling fire once the hall was crowded.

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And so he had no longer begun his sermon. And these people started crying fire, buildings falling in from different parts of the auditorium.

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And this incident ended up in several people being trampled to death and a lot of people being injured.

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And Spurgeon, being of such a tender spirit, this greatly impacted him. And he was literally carried out on a stretcher.

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He had passed out. And when he got home, he entered into a very, very dark depression, probably the deepest one he had ever been in.

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And anyway, it was Susanna who actually counseled him and helped him to come back.

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And he was back in the pulpit within a matter of weeks after that. We don't know precisely how she did that or what counsel she gave him.

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And I don't recall reading any specifics about that. There may be, but I don't recall.

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Latane also follows up with another question. She says, I'd also like to know if Susanna helped with any of the research for the

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Treasury of David, which is my absolute favorite book of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I'd also like to know what was her favorite of his sermons and or books.

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I'm sure she did help him with that because we do know that she helped him with other books that he was involved in.

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Actually, it was his lectures to my students that came out in 1875 that he handed her a promotion copy of that.

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After she read it, she said, I wish every pastor in England could have a copy of this. And he challenged her from that remark and said, in essence, and I'm just paraphrasing here, but why don't you do it?

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And how much are you going to give to accomplish that? And so she took that challenge and she established a book fund to help poor ministers to acquire theological books that they couldn't afford.

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And so we know that she was intimately involved in his work and his publishing.

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And she and him would sit in his office and she would help him to find references and things like that for his books when he was writing them and also for his sermon.

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Well, praise God. Latane, if you give us your full mailing address, you have also won a free copy of A Cluster of Camphor by Susanna Spurgeon.

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Thank you so much for writing in. And that's compliments of Particular Baptist Press and also being shipped out to you at no charge to either you or to Iron Sharpens Iron by our friends at CVBBS .com,

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Now, we just mentioned a bit about the background of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's depression and own very great trial in his life.

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What were some of the trials in Susanna's life? Well, we know that after the birth of their twin son, she developed a serious health problem.

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And at one point, we know that she underwent surgery. But to this day, we don't know the cause of her affliction.

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We don't know exactly what it was that she suffered from. But we do know that she was practically an invalid for about 16 years.

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And while her husband was recuperating with his own health problems in Menton, France, she was not able to go over there, but I think maybe once or twice while he was over there, she couldn't even leave her own home.

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And so I know on one occasion, they even had to move because of the smog in London, so badly impacting her that they had to move to higher ground in the city to get above it.

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And did she ever become as well known a public figure in her own right as her husband,

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Charles Edmund Spurgeon? Well, she did after his death, mainly through the book fund.

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And also, she became a skilled writer in her own right. And she not only published this

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Cluster Camper, but she wrote two other books on her work with the book fund.

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And of course, it was her and Spurgeon's secretary, J .W.

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Harold, that compiled the autobiography of T .H. Spurgeon. They put all that together, those four volumes.

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It was originally done in a four -volume set, and it's been recently reprinted in two volumes. But she was aided by J .W.

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Harold in that publication. And then this Cluster Camper was actually a part of a book series of three volumes.

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This is the middle book in that series. And there were two others in that set. Banner of Truth has reprinted the first one of that series, which is called

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The Carolina Bells. And they retitled it Free Grace and Dying Love, which was the subtitle of the original book.

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But I think it was done in 1980. Now, since you said this is one of your bestsellers at Particular Baptist Press, a

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Cluster of Camper, have you received any testimonies from others who have been blessed by this book?

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Yes, we have. Especially one case in particular where a family wrote us that this was of great value to them when they went through the death of their son.

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And they wrote us a letter. And those kind of things are real shots in the arms to us because we want to be used of the

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Lord to minister to people's hearts and souls. And so that letter in particular stood out to us that it was of great benefit to this couple in the death of their son.

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We have had a number of testimonies from people as to the importance that this book has been to them, primarily in comfort, and that's what its design was.

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And we're going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air as well with a question of your own for our guests today, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

27:11

USA. And we look forward to hearing from you after these messages with your questions, so don't go away.

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

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Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org.

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That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our topic of discussion today is the princess of the

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Prince of Preachers. That's Susanna Spurgeon, the wife of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and our guests discussing this today are

30:48

Gary Long and Terry Wolliver, and both are involved with the

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Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri, and they are both also involved in Particular Baptist Press, who has brought back into print

31:05

A Cluster of Camphor, a book written by Susanna Spurgeon. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

31:14

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

31:20

We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, are you familiar with Susanna Spurgeon writing the last couple of chapters of her husband's commentary on the

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Gospel of Matthew because Charles Haddon Spurgeon had passed to glory? That's true, she and Mr.

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Spurgeon's secretary, which is Mr. Herod, they did compile from Spurgeon's notes.

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He already had rough notes made, but they did compile the last two chapters of the commentary on Matthew, which by the way, we published.

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We have published the Gospel of Matthew by Spurgeon, and to make ours a little different, we've added about 40 unpublished letters of Spurgeon and taken some nice photographs of them on glossy paper and put pictures of those letters in the back, and we've also were given permission by a source that remains synonymous to publish some letters on the downgrade controversy that had not been published before, and so there's about 10 to 12 letters in there on the downgrade controversy with a former pastor of the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle, Eric Hayden. He had made some preparations on these letters.

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They had originally belonged to him, and so he made comments about them and would fill in details, and we've added all that in the back of this commentary on Matthew.

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If you could just give a summary of the downgrade controversy, I know that there is an excellent book that Ian Murray had written on this issue, among other things that Charles Haddon Spurgeon confronted in his life,

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The Forgotten Spurgeon, which is published by Banner of Truth, but if you could tell us something, at least in summary fashion, about the downgrade controversy.

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Well, I can start a little, but then Terry will have much to add on that, too. The downgrade controversy was said to have been, by those close to him, the thing that put him in the grave.

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It was a very heart -rending situation. Spurgeon suffered from Wright's disease, which is a disease of the kidneys.

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He did have depression, but the downgrade controversy was what put him over the edge.

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His friends had forsaken him, and the way he said it, his foes assail him, but he remained true to what he believed in, and it was not over Calvinism.

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And he makes that clear in one of the letters in that book that we just said on Matthew. He said, they say that I fight for Calvinism.

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He said, I'm not ashamed of my peculiar doctrines, but he said, that's not the issue.

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The issue was departing from the word of God as a whole. He had no qualms about an evangelical

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Methodist if he proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ. But at any rate, it was a long, drawn -out affair, and Spurgeon at one time just about stood alone in this, and it proved out that he was right.

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Time proved that he was right, and that controversy continued over in our country in what's known as the fundamentalist liberal movements, and that's what he was fighting in early liberalism.

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So it was like the fundamentalist modernist controversy, you mean, here in America? Yes, it carried over into that in our country.

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Terry, you can fill in. Oh, I think that was pretty well said. Let me say one thing,

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Chris, about when we, and I mentioned it, since one of your listeners had asked about Spurgeon and the depression thing, there was a book written by a woman named

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Elizabeth Scoglin called Bright Days, Dark Nights with Charles Spurgeon, and it was on, she just called it

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In Triumph Over Emotional Pain, and she deals with Spurgeon's depression that he suffered, and he did suffer from depression, he admitted that he did.

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She deals with that in a fine, it's a paperback book, it was published by Baker a few years ago, and she deals with it very competently, so if somebody's interested in that, you can look that up,

35:51

Bright Days and Dark Nights. Yeah, and let me shamelessly plug Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service again, because they have probably every single theologically reformed

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Calvinistic or Sovereign Grace teaching book that you can get a hold of, go to CVBBS .com,

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and you can find out more about what they offer, CVBBS .com, that's

36:17

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. And is there a special passage from A Cluster of Camphor that has meant something special to each of you?

36:32

Terry, you can start. Well, the one that stood out to me when I read her chapter on it, it was entitled

36:41

With Jesus Yet Afraid. And by the way, Terry, if you could speak up a little bit, because I have to overmodulate everything in order to really pick up your voice.

36:50

Sure. She had a chapter in the book entitled With Jesus Yet Afraid, and she was addressing the fact that the disciples were in the boat on the

37:02

Sea of Galilee, and when the storm arose, they feared for their lives, even though Jesus was with them on the boat.

37:10

And she equated that to the fact that all believers experience times of fearfulness, even though we have

37:17

Christ dwelling in us, the hope of glory. And so she was trying to encourage weak -hearted saints or those who are constantly fearful, that that basically is a sign of distrust in God and His providence and His goodness towards us.

37:37

And that one especially I thought was good. By the way, I forgot to mention to you, Tyler, I think, perhaps

37:43

I did mention it, but Tyler, you're getting a free copy of A Cluster of Camp for compliments of a particular

37:51

Baptist press and also being shipped to you free of charge by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

37:57

I can't remember if I mentioned that to you or not, Tyler, but thanks again for writing in. By the way,

38:03

Gary, did you have a special part of the book that was a specific blessing to you more than anything else?

38:10

Not any special part. The whole book, it just, it meets its design. It is to be a book of comfort and encouragement, especially for those who are bereaved or who may go into an illness or have someone in their family's illness.

38:26

But to make the book a little different and a little special, what we did is we added two letters that Mr.

38:34

Spurgeon had written to a Dr. Bennett when Susanna was going through some very difficult physical times herself.

38:42

We put a copy of the original letter and then with the transcription that's in the back. There's two letters.

38:48

And then also, we added a chapter on Mrs. Susanna Spurgeon written by Don Theobald that was actually published in British Particular Baptist, a series that we did, and we took her chapter out of there and put it in the back of A Cluster of Camp for so that you not only get her work, but you could learn about her in the back of that book.

39:12

We have a listener in Riverhead, Long Island, New York, Fern, and Fern wants to know how specifically this book is a comfort to those who have lost loved ones.

39:28

Fern and her husband Jerry lost a precious child at the age of 13 about 35 years ago or so.

39:40

And he was riding his bicycle to school and was hit by a truck.

39:47

And in his memory and in his honor, they started a home for homeless, abused, and abandoned children called the

39:58

Timothy Hill Children's Ranch in Riverhead, Long Island. And she wants to know specifically how this book is a comfort for those who have lost loved ones because obviously she and her husband have been through that valley.

40:14

Jerry, you want to try that? Well, the book was written after the death of C .H.

40:21

Spurgeon. And so Susanna Spurgeon, to her, apart from her

40:26

Savior, he was the great love of her life. And so was to be bereaved, and she knew what it was to question the circumstances of her bereavement and to wonder why

40:41

God had brought such providence into her life. And so the book is written from firsthand experience.

40:48

It's written by somebody who knows the pain of loss, the pain of grieving, and also the joys of joyful expectation in the

40:58

Lord and His comfort and grace. So if I could say anything to recommend that it would be that, that she knew what she was writing about.

41:08

But not only that, Susanna Spurgeon, as the wife of a pastor of a large church where there would be many deaths and all kinds of deaths, old and young, that she would be very much involved in the ministry of Spurgeon to that death.

41:26

And that would have come out in her, why she did a cluster of campers. So she was very much involved.

41:33

And then her own self, being a crippled lady and almost confined to her bed many times, that she writes this from a standpoint of experience of the trials and difficulties of life.

41:47

And yet the victory that we have in Christ Jesus. Amen. Well, Fern, guess what?

41:56

You're getting a free copy of the book by Susanna Spurgeon, A Cluster of Camper.

42:01

So if you could please give us your full mailing address as well, we'll be happy to ship that out to you.

42:08

What can you tell us about Charles and Susanna's two sons, Thomas and Charles?

42:15

Well, they were twins. As we mentioned earlier, they were twins, although they were not exactly identical twins.

42:22

They looked more alike when they were younger than they did when they were older. But Charles was considered the oldest, and yet he was the one who died the last.

42:31

He died in 1926. Thomas was named after the

42:36

Thomas in the Bible, whose name Didymus means twin. Spurgeon was aware of that, so he named his son.

42:44

After the twin in the Bible. And he died in 1917. But both of them were converted about the same time, and they were both baptized by their father.

42:55

And both served as pastors, and each one, we could say, were blessed in their respective ministries.

43:03

Both of them had health problems as well, which caused them to leave England at different times.

43:09

And one of them went to Australia, and the other one went to South Africa before they returned to England.

43:17

And they had ministries there. And I'm going to repeat our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of their own.

43:24

It's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

43:31

What have you both learned by being involved in this book?

43:37

Terry Wolver, you're the editor of the book. And obviously, Gary, you had a lot to do with this being brought back into print.

43:45

Tell us your own blessings that you've received and what you've learned. Well, I can tell you, my situation was this book was brought to our attention by one of our board members who lives in Arkansas, Tom Lundstrom.

44:01

And he had bought a copy of this and had read it and been blessed by it himself and said that he would like to see this book in print.

44:10

And so he and another man, they funded the printing of our first reprint of Cluster Camper.

44:19

And so it came to us in that form that someone was blessed and wanted to see it back in print.

44:25

And we were able to, he made it possible, another one of our board members made it possible that we could do that.

44:31

So that's been the blessing to me to see how it came about. Just how a book can be bought in a secondhand store and have such an impact, an old book that here we are, we've reprinted it.

44:43

So I count that a real blessing. We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, did

44:54

Susanna share Charles's convictions about the doctrines of sovereign grace before they were married?

45:05

I would assume that she did, only on this basis, that she attended the

45:11

New Park Street Chapel, and I don't think she would have attended there if she had been of the

45:20

Armenian persuasion. Now that's a supposition, but I think it's a pretty good one.

45:26

It's safe. And Susan, you've also won a copy of the book,

45:32

A Cluster of Camphor, thanks to our guest today, their publishing ministry, and you'll be getting that shipped to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

45:44

A lot of people who are, most of their bookshelves are filled with modern books by contemporary authors.

45:57

Now, I don't want to broad brush, because there are many wonderful, gifted, and blessed contemporary authors, but obviously there are also a lot of authors today that,

46:10

I'm sure that if Charles Haddon Spurgeon were alive and he were to pick up one of them, after about a minute of reading, many of them would be immediately tossed into the fireplace.

46:27

As far as the modern reader, what is the value of these books, such as A Cluster of Camphor?

46:35

Carey, you can do that one. Well, I think the value is that we serve the same

46:42

God, that Charles Spurgeon, we read the same

46:48

Bible that they read, we have the same Holy Spirit that regenerated our souls. And so, anything that a person would write that we would esteem for the gospel's sake is relevant to today, whether we can see that relevance or not immediately.

47:07

But these were spirit -taught men and women of God, just as much as we would expect ourselves to be spirit -taught.

47:16

And so, if I can use an illustration, one time I gave a copy of our commentary on Hebrews by James Aldane to a man who was going on the mission field.

47:29

And anyway, I gave it to him complimentary and thought that it would help him in ministry.

47:35

And I got it back, packaged back, two or three days later in the mail, and he said,

47:40

I appreciate your considering me, but he said this was written in 1846, and so it has no value to me today.

47:48

And I thought, that's tragic for us to write off these great men and women of God who were spirit -taught individuals and who had a deep knowledge of the

47:59

Word of God. And just because something is old doesn't make it necessarily good, nor because it's new is it necessarily bad.

48:09

But we should be open to the fact that there were godly men and women in the past that we can learn a lot from.

48:18

Yeah, I have been amazed at how often, when I have read Spurgeon, how the issues that the church faced in the 19th century are very similar to what we face today.

48:30

And even his criticism of churches parading celebrities around as the key way to win converts, the celebrities who have made professions of faith and so on, that kind of thing is rampant today.

48:47

Obviously, you'll have a church or parachurch ministry immediately wanting to thrust forward into the public limelight somebody just because they have been a well -known sports hero or actor or musician or singer or just some well -known figure, beloved figure.

49:12

They will want to thrust that person into the limelight just because they've made some kind of a profession.

49:19

And very often that backfires and the church or ministry winds up being embarrassed because the person proves to be a false convert.

49:29

But if you could discuss for a little bit the timelessness, it seems, of the writings of Spurgeon and other of his contemporaries and even men that have written before him.

49:41

It's amazing sometimes the Puritans even, the things that they write about, other than the language that they are using that may be a bit archaic when we're talking about the

49:54

Puritans or somebody earlier. Sometimes it's just amazing how they are spot on with things that are happening right now in our culture.

50:03

I think, Chris, that one of the things that's evident is if you would go into a

50:08

Christian bookstore 100 years ago to what you would go into the average one today, and there are less and less.

50:16

Books are becoming less popular. But in the average Christian bookstore, most of it is fluff.

50:24

It's not substantial material that is designed to teach the soul and to establish the person in the faith.

50:33

It's pretty much just what we would call fluff. And that's a reflection on the times we live in because this is what the average person is taught in church.

50:44

It's what we did and that's what we're after. And we're just, our nation reflects as a whole what's going on in the churches.

50:54

And it's just, it's tragic and it's a pitiful situation that we're in. I think even a lot of Christians that are involved in this kind of type of ministry see that the fluff is not building anything.

51:07

There's no stability. The churches of this kind of fluff are having the same kind of problems that the world's having.

51:17

We've tried to produce books that have a substance to them that's going to carry people through difficult times and establish them in the faith.

51:31

Well, praise God for that. And yeah, it's not only fluff very often, it's downright heretical.

51:40

And it's also very often seeking to meet the interests of Christians or even just the general public in areas that are infinitely less important than the gospel and the things that are our greatest need to hear about, especially our own sin and the only remedy for that sin.

52:09

And the only cure for that sin and the only preventative from us entering into a

52:16

Christless eternity. And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Brother Chris, could

52:22

I add one more point while we're on this? Sure. Spurgeon, you know, has been called the prince of preachers.

52:28

And yet, he's got a lot of his theology from men that lived 200 years before him.

52:34

That's right. And so if we think we can't learn from people 200 years before us, then what does that make us?

52:43

Yeah. And although he was a very strong Calvinist, he even was eager to learn from men before him that did not share that theology like John Wesley and so on.

52:57

Right. That's right. And we do have a listener in Clinton Township, Michigan, who writes,

53:06

I remember reading something about Charles Spurgeon not being able to get in the pulpit at times due to emotional weight and trouble and his grandfather speaking to him about this and encouraging him.

53:18

Can you elaborate on this at all? I don't recall that.

53:25

And I'm sure he's probably, I've got a number of biographies on Spurgeon, but I don't recall him ever being able to physically get into a pulpit to preach.

53:36

I do know there were times where he got physically ill before he would preach. He would throw up and that sort of thing.

53:44

Maybe that's what he's referring to. I don't know anything about Spurgeon's grandfather.

53:50

Is this question, is our listener being given accurate information about his grandfather being some kind of a help to him?

54:02

I don't think his grandfather was involved with, his grandfather was not a Baptist, so I don't know that he would be a

54:10

Congregationalist. We would understand it, but I don't know that he, you know one of the more recent biographies on Spurgeon was done by Dr.

54:21

Tom Nettles from Southern Seminary, and I don't know if he deals with that.

54:29

There is supposed to be another biography being done by Spurgeon by Dr.

54:36

Christian George of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and they are going to republish 700 unpublished sermons by Spurgeon that were discovered over in the

54:49

Spurgeon College in London, and so that's going to be coming out. I don't know who's going to publish it, probably

54:55

Broadman is going to publish it, but there's another biography that's going to come out.

55:02

Hopefully it will cover things just exactly like what the question is being asked. Well, I apologize

55:08

Jeff, but we ran out of books, so you're not getting a book today, but we appreciate you writing in and we hope that you continue to join us on the program with questions.

55:19

Thanks a lot, Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan, and we hope to hear from you again soon.

55:26

Let's see here, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know if to your knowledge was

55:40

Spurgeon at all affected by the theory of evolution and Darwinianism, and I don't think that Darwin even wrote

55:55

The Origin of the Species until Spurgeon's death perhaps, or after his death.

56:02

Do you know anything about that? He touches on it in one of the letters that Spurgeon wrote, and matter of fact it was on the downgrade controversy when he wrote it, but he had said that some of the things that we're fighting against, he mentions evolution as one of them, post -mortem, salvationist, evolutionist, and I forget what the others were, but he does mention that as a serious problem that was making inroads.

56:36

Oh, that's interesting. Now, post -mortem, salvationist, who would have been espousing that? I'm assuming that is people who teach you can have the possibility of salvation after you're dead.

56:51

Mormonism was making its impact into London at that time, and of course

56:56

I believe in being baptized for the dead, and undoubtedly Spurgeon would have been, had reference to them and that.

57:04

Yeah, in fact I know of, I'm not going to mention him by name, but I know of one person who is a very well -known radio evangelist, perhaps even on television,

57:19

I'm not sure of that, but he was, and perhaps still is, a very popular conservative

57:27

Baptist speaker who had a reputation for theological soundness for a long time, but then he developed his own understandings, novel understandings of basically what you were just saying, post -mortem conversion possibilities, and he coined a phrase called trans -dispensationalism that basically says that he believes some men will have the opportunity to embrace

57:57

Christ as their Savior after they're dead. Well, I know that I have the letter here in front of me, and it's in our book on Matthew, but in this letter

58:10

Spurgeon had said, and his quote was, there is an underlying gospel common to all true churches, and this is assailed by evolutionists, post -mortem salvationists, restorationists, and the whole school of the new theology, which is no theology at all.

58:29

He said, unbelief is in the very air, and all churches will have yet to deal with it, though I believe yours to be least of all affected by it.

58:38

But, and he doesn't say, I don't know who this was addressed to, but that was his quote. Is that dated,

58:44

Gary, that particular letter? That one, that was dated 1888, February.

58:51

Well, we're going to another break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

59:00

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com. Don't go away.

59:06

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01:04:03

That's the Thriving story. Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in, our guests today are

01:04:20

Gary W. Long and Terry Wollover. Well, Wollover, sorry about that,

01:04:27

Terry. That's all right. And they are pastor and teacher at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri.

01:04:34

And they also operate the ministry of Particular Baptist Press. We are discussing

01:04:40

Susanna Spurgeon, the princess of the church, of the Prince of Preachers. She was wife of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

01:04:47

And we've also been discussing a book written by Susanna Spurgeon that Particular Baptist Press has brought back into print,

01:04:54

A Cluster of Camphor. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:05:07

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, wants to know if Susanna Spurgeon lived during the women's temperance movement, and if it had any effect on her, and if she had any friendships with the women involved in it.

01:05:25

That I'm not aware of, no. I'm not either. I wouldn't think that she would.

01:05:33

Spurgeon made it, for instance, I do have a letter that Spurgeon wrote to a woman regarding she was wanting him to promote the cause, she had a cause for women.

01:05:48

And he told her that he would not do that from his pulpit. And he just outright refused.

01:05:55

And it was something that they were wanting. And he said, I don't know why you would want it anyway.

01:06:01

I mean, he made that comment. But it was a woman's movement. But he would not endorse it from his pulpit.

01:06:07

Hmm. And I'm sorry, it sounded like somebody was going to say something there.

01:06:14

I don't think that Susanna would certainly go against any wishes of her husband. Okay. But it seems like a lot of men out there could learn something about how

01:06:28

Charles Haddon Spurgeon appreciated the gifts of his wife. And he did not have any kind of stereotypical misogyny or male chauvinism that one might expect for a man of his time in the 19th century.

01:06:43

It seemed that although he obviously would have been somebody who believed in biblical gender roles, he seems like he included his wife in his ministry, even the fact that you had confirmed that she must have helped him on a couple of his writing projects.

01:07:05

Right. That's right. Very much so. As a matter of fact, in a joking way, she used to refer to him as your highness.

01:07:16

But I mean, you know, she never did that other than she loved and respected Charles. But they were husband and wife and would enjoy times together.

01:07:24

But they worked together. And the very fact that she had taken on the ministry of the book fund was an amazing thing and a great support of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

01:07:39

So I mean, they worked together closely on all the projects they were working on.

01:07:47

And let's see. Oh, our guest, or not our guest, our listener,

01:07:54

Jeff, says that he found where he had read about Charles Haddon Spurgeon's grandfather in The Soul Winner.

01:08:08

And he has printed or emailed an excerpt from that book,

01:08:17

The Soul Winner. I'm assuming that's by Charles Spurgeon. And it says, I remembered the answer

01:08:23

I received when I once said to my venerable grandfather, I never have to preach, but that I feel very terribly sick, literally sick.

01:08:34

I mean, so that I might as well be crossing the channel. And I asked the dear old man whether he thought

01:08:41

I should ever get over that feeling. His answer was, your power will be gone if you do.

01:08:48

Oh, that's good. So my brethren, when it is not so much that you have got a hold of your subject, but that it has got a hold of you and you feel its grip with a terrible reality yourself, that is the kind of sermon that is most likely to impress others with it.

01:09:07

So mind that your sermons always have something in them which shall really impress both yourself and the hearers whom you are addressing.

01:09:16

I appreciate Jeff finding that. Good quote. That's a good quote. And thank you very much,

01:09:22

Jeff. Spurgeon's grandfather raised him and told that he was very close to his grandfather.

01:09:29

And when he did leave his grandfather, it was very difficult as a boy for him to leave.

01:09:37

His grandfather told him that one of the ways that they could meet is he said, you go out and you look at the moon and I'll be looking at the moon and we'll meet there.

01:09:45

Just in the heart and in prayer. And he loved his grandfather very much. But that's a good quote.

01:09:51

I appreciate that. Well, thank you. Thanks again, Jeff. We have, let's see, we have

01:10:01

BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who said, I believe that years ago someone emailed me an audio file where Thomas Spurgeon, the son of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, was one of the very first to use what was at that time the new technology of gramophone recording.

01:10:27

And I heard, I believe, Thomas's voice reading something that his father wrote.

01:10:34

Am I correct in my memory? I believe that's right. And I believe you can get that on the internet.

01:10:41

Google it. Yeah, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had actual audio sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon today?

01:10:52

That'd be something. Do we know anything about, what can you tell us about from what we know about the way people described

01:11:00

Spurgeon's preaching about what kind of presence he had in the pulpit?

01:11:09

For instance, we know from history that Jonathan Edwards was somebody who read his sermons and did not really, to my knowledge, raise his voice or things like that, where I believe

01:11:23

I've read that Spurgeon very much urged preachers to raise their voice and be very dynamic from the pulpit.

01:11:33

But what can you tell us about Charles's preaching? Oh, well, I can just make reference that his voice was what he was known for.

01:11:43

They called it the golden voice. But there was a book done years ago,

01:11:50

Modern Masters of Pulpit Discourse by Wilkinson. And in there, he begins to, and Spurgeon is one of the men that he covers, and I can't tell you how many pages he covers on just Spurgeon speaking how his diction is, how he did reflections in the voice.

01:12:11

And I mean, he goes into great detail just because he's looking at Spurgeon from that standpoint, just from the voice.

01:12:18

But Spurgeon wanted to make sure that he could be heard anywhere in the tabernacle speaking in a regular tone without having to raise his voice.

01:12:27

But of course, he certainly did. Did Susanna Spurgeon write anything else?

01:12:35

After or before or after A Cluster of Camphor? Yes, she did.

01:12:42

She wrote about the book fund. She put out two books, two separate books on the book fund.

01:12:49

One was 10 years in the book fund, and the second,

01:12:55

I might be able to come up with the other title. But anyway, she did write two additional books besides these.

01:13:01

By the way, Terry, what you just did, whatever you did to change the volume of your voice was perfect because the last part of your sentence was much clearer than the earlier part.

01:13:13

Okay. I appreciate it. Okay. Those two titles are 10 Years of My Life in the

01:13:19

Service of the Book Fund, which was published in 1886, and then 10

01:13:24

Years After, a sequel to 10 Years of My Life in the

01:13:30

Book Fund, incidentally by C .A. Spurgeon's publisher, Passmore & Alabaster. What we have, let's see here, we have

01:13:42

John from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, did

01:13:51

Susanna Spurgeon leave any instruction that other wives of pastors can benefit from?

01:14:03

Oh my, I'm sure she did. Just in the Autobiography of C .A. Spurgeon, she would add notes and comments in there, and someone could glean a lot just by looking at those notes and comments in the

01:14:16

Autobiography of C .A. Spurgeon, the full one, the four -volume set, and also throughout her other writings, what she would comment on and say about her husband and about ministry in general.

01:14:29

But her life itself would probably reflect more than anything else. She was a dedicated wife and servant of the

01:14:37

Lord. Now did she seem, from what you know, and perhaps you don't know because there's not enough information available, but do you know if she was pleased or disappointed with the that the leadership took the mantle from her husband after he went home to glory?

01:15:00

Was there any disappointment in the way that that ministry was run or with the preaching or anything like that?

01:15:07

Well, actually, I think one of her sons took over after Charles passed away, correct? I understand, yes.

01:15:14

Now, was he the pastor there all the way through and perhaps after Susanna went home to glory?

01:15:22

Or was he no longer the pastor while she was still alive?

01:15:29

That's a good question. I don't know, but that's a good question. The answer to that is available.

01:15:36

We just don't have it. And as far as the doctrines of grace are concerned, there's a lot of rewriting of history by those who despise the doctrines of grace, who want to at the same time uphold

01:15:55

Spurgeon as a hero, and then in the same breath they want to denounce the doctrines of grace or Calvinism.

01:16:03

And of course, very often the claim will be made that what

01:16:10

Spurgeon believed on paper, he didn't believe in his heart because his preaching and his life were not consistent with the deadening of Calvinism as people will very often describe it.

01:16:24

But I've heard that the Metropolitan Tabernacle, by Spurgeon's design, did not maintain a focus on the doctrines of grace after he passed on.

01:16:43

That was not of major concern to him and so on. This is really rewriting history, isn't it?

01:16:49

Sure it is. The Metropolitan Tabernacle right now, Peter Masters, is a very strong Catholic.

01:16:57

Some of the pastors before him, we know of Eric Hayden, who was also a strong Catholic. All the ones that we know of,

01:17:04

James Smith, were all Calvinistic people. I don't see where the

01:17:10

Tabernacle would be willing to call, although Spurgeon let Moody preach, and there were other men.

01:17:18

He let Methodists preach for him. He requested Methodists to come and speak at the orphanage, but they were

01:17:26

Methodists that he knew and trusted. Brother Chris, I do have an answer for that previous question.

01:17:34

Thomas Spurgeon took over the Tabernacle in 1892. They had previously had

01:17:40

A .T. Pearson filling in. He was there until 1906, so he would have been there after Susanna passed on.

01:17:50

What do we know about A .T. Pearson's theology? The Church approved of him.

01:17:57

As a matter of fact, there was somewhat of a rivalry there when they were going to have

01:18:03

Thomas come in. There were some who wanted A .T. Pearson back, so he must have been a tremendous preacher in his own right.

01:18:12

However, A .T. Pearson was baptized at the

01:18:21

Tabernacle after he had been the pastor, so they had called him the pastor before he had been immersed as a

01:18:27

Baptist, but he was immersed there. So was he a

01:18:32

Congregationalist? I believe that's his background. That would be very interesting to go to your own pastor's baptismal service.

01:18:44

Yes, it would be. Let me repeat our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air.

01:18:51

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:18:59

We have Teresa in Massapequa, Long Island, New York, who wants to know if Susanna ever lived to be a grandma.

01:19:13

That is possible. I don't know for sure. This obviously is one of your best -selling books for Particular Baptist Press, as you've already mentioned.

01:19:30

Tell us about some of the other things that you're offering and why is it that Christian biographies are so appealing to us on so many different levels?

01:19:45

I'd like for Terry to tell you about the book that he wrote, which we published on John Gaino.

01:19:52

One of the things that we do at the Press, and we didn't set out to do this, but we started doing some biographical works, and it turned out that we did a number of them on Baptist chaplains in the

01:20:06

Revolutionary War. We did a book on David Jones. We did the book on John Gaino.

01:20:12

We've done the book on Hezekiah Smith. We've done a book on Daniel and Abraham Marshall.

01:20:17

These men all served as Revolutionary War Baptist chaplains, which that in itself was kind of interesting, but the book that Terry wrote and did a great deal of research, and it is a tremendous book, and he won't tell you that, but I will.

01:20:36

It's a tremendous book, and all of our books are as valuable to genealogists as they are to Baptists and people who want to learn about Baptist history, because our books are indexed, detailed indexed, and the names in all of these books are valuable to genealogists, people who are into genealogy.

01:20:57

But Terry did the book on John Gaino, and if there is an expert in the world today on John Gaino, it would be

01:21:05

Terry Wilford, and I'll let Terry tell you about that. Well, Brother Chris, first I'd like to get back to the question that was earlier asked about whether Susanna Spurgeon lived to be a grandmother, and I did look up here that Thomas had a baby son,

01:21:21

Thomas Harold Spurgeon, on July 2nd, 1891, who was born in Auckland, New Zealand, so that would have meant that both

01:21:29

Charles and Susanna were grandparents at one point. Oh, great. But John Gaino, there is some controversy

01:21:40

I know involved in an account of him baptizing George Washington by believer's baptism, and you have those who believe that it is undoubtedly true, and you have skeptics who say that they don't believe it at all.

01:21:59

What's your position on it? Well, I researched that pretty thoroughly, and I've got an appendix at the back of my

01:22:06

John Gaino book, Did John Gaino Baptize George Washington? And my position

01:22:12

I took was that it can neither be proven nor can it be disproven.

01:22:18

But to commend it, we have another president who was also secretly immersed, and that was

01:22:24

Abraham Lincoln. And that was not established as a fact until some diaries came out from his housekeeper, and people had roundly dismissed that idea until those diaries came out and were transcribed.

01:22:42

And now it's pretty much accepted by historians that he was indeed immersed by a Dunker preacher before he took office in the

01:22:50

White House. Now, the last part, you were speaking about Abraham Lincoln? Yes.

01:22:55

Okay. My opinion on the baptism of George Washington is that those who oppose it, they argue from the position of silence that there were 42 witnesses, and for them to have not come forward was an impossibility.

01:23:14

And so they make their arguments based on silence rather than upon facts.

01:23:20

So yes, it's difficult, but Terry researched it very well and made a fair presentation on it.

01:23:26

Now, when was the artist commissioned to paint the portrait of George Washington being baptized by John Gaynor?

01:23:38

Well, I have an appendix on that as well and give all the details behind that painting.

01:23:44

And we don't know who the artist was, but we do know who commissioned it. We do know that it was painted in Manhattan and that it was in a church, the

01:23:53

North Baptist Church, for many years, and now it's at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.

01:24:01

Well, I actually happen to have a print in my living room of John Gaynor praying along with, or leading the prayer, with troops during the

01:24:14

Revolutionary, or actually after the Revolutionary War had ended. And this was supposed to be a historical account where Washington asked

01:24:23

Gaynor to pray, and it's a really beautiful print of a really gorgeous painting of Gaynor praying, and there are predominantly the colonists' troops there, but you do have some

01:24:40

British troops in the background also bowing their heads in the painting. So it's quite beautiful, actually.

01:24:46

Yes, that was painted by Don Troiani, who's considered the premier military artist in America, and prints of that are still available by Historical Art Prints in Connecticut, and you can order those online.

01:25:01

Yeah, that's where I got mine. So it's the highlight of my living room.

01:25:08

Good. As I said earlier, I also absolutely loved the biography that my friend

01:25:17

John Thornberry wrote about Spencer Cone. Have you read A Pastor in New York? The Life and Times of Spencer Cone?

01:25:24

Yes, yes, it's a good book, and Spencer Cone's a wonderful minister in his own right, and we were glad to see him do that.

01:25:33

And he was, just so in case any of our listeners tuned in late, Spencer Cone was a successor of the pastorate after John Gaynor at First Baptist Church in Manhattan.

01:25:43

Right, he was about the fourth one after Gaynor. And that,

01:25:49

I believe, that book that Brother Thornberry wrote could be a movie.

01:25:56

I mean, quite a fascinating life that Spencer Cone had. All the different vocations he had, and careers, and so on.

01:26:05

And he was an actor, a lawyer, a teacher, a war hero in the

01:26:11

War of 1812. He was a pastor. And during a time when it was very unpopular,

01:26:19

I believe he led interracial Bible studies and things like that. And there was just a whole bunch of things that were utterly fascinating about him.

01:26:28

We have a new biographical essay on him coming out in our Noble Company Series, Volume 8, that is written by Matthew Hoskinson, who's the current pastor of First Baptist.

01:26:39

Yes. And he has used the original sources, and he's bringing out some original material on Spencer Cone for that essay, and it is very good.

01:26:50

Oh, that's terrific. I've met Matthew, and I would love to have him on the program.

01:26:58

I haven't done so yet, but I know he's a very busy guy. But I also know that my friend

01:27:06

John Thornberry's son, Greg, is the current president of the

01:27:11

King's College in Manhattan. I haven't known him yet.

01:27:18

I've heard that. Yeah. Well, we have to go to our final break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, we've got about a half hour left, so try to do that as soon as possible.

01:27:30

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:27:36

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

01:27:42

USA. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more on Susanna Spurgeon.

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01:30:34

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in for the entire two -hour program today, our guests have been

01:30:40

Gary W. Long and Terry Wulliver, and I'm sorry,

01:30:47

Wullever, right? Wulliver. Wulliver. I'm sorry about that. And they are pastor and teacher at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Springville, Missouri.

01:30:58

And we have been discussing not only Susanna Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, and her book that has been brought back into print,

01:31:06

A Cluster of Camphor, that has been brought back into print by our guests through Particular Baptist Press.

01:31:12

But we've also been discussing other issues that were contemporary of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and his wife and other books that have been either brought back into print or have been written for the first time by our friends at Particular Baptist Press.

01:31:31

And some of our listeners may want to know the origins of that phrase, Particular Baptist.

01:31:37

They may think these are just fussy Baptists, but obviously that is not the root of that phrase.

01:31:44

If you could tell us about that name or that phrase, Particular Baptist. Go ahead,

01:31:50

Terry. Well, the Particular Baptists in England were distinguished by the fact that they believed in particular redemption.

01:31:58

That is, that God had a people from all eternity that he had sent

01:32:03

Christ into the world to save. And they were known as Particular Baptists in distinction to the

01:32:10

General Baptists who believed in a general redemption. And so we thought that that best described our foundations here at Particular Baptist Press.

01:32:23

And so we chose that old name for two reasons. One for its historical significance and the other for its theological preciseness.

01:32:33

But also we wanted to identify with our roots in England, among the

01:32:40

Baptists there in England. And so we thought it was a good name and it also helps us to educate modern

01:32:47

Americans about the Particular Baptists because we are constantly being asked, What are you so particular about?

01:32:58

And today, as you both know, the

01:33:03

Baptists that are Particular Baptists or Sovereign Grace Baptists or Calvinist Baptists or Reform Baptists, we are in a minority, perhaps even a tiny minority today, although it seems to be growing.

01:33:16

And there are a number of very gifted men who are writing and whose sermons are being widely circulated on YouTube and other places on the internet that have brought a resurgence of interest and popularity in regard to the

01:33:36

Doctrines of Grace. But wasn't there a time when those that were Calvinistic Baptists were actually in the great majority?

01:33:45

Absolutely. That's what our country was founded on was the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which is the oldest association of the

01:33:55

Baptists in America. They started in 1707 and they were the predominant leaders of the

01:34:02

Baptists and they were the Particular Baptists. That's why they adopted in 1742 the

01:34:09

Philadelphia Confession, which is exactly the same as the London Confession of 1689 with the addition of the laying on of hands and of public congregational singing, which was important to the

01:34:24

Welsh. They added that. What about the congregational singing? Can you repeat that? They added one of the chapters in the

01:34:33

Philadelphia on congregational singing, approving of it. There was a lot of debate over whether congregational singing should be involved in the church service, and so they took the position that there should be and they added that in the

01:34:46

Philadelphia. Wow, I didn't even know that. I knew that there was controversy and still is in regard to exclusive psalmody and acapella versus hymns and instrumental music, but I had not known that there were churches that forbid the congregation from singing in a worship service.

01:35:11

Benjamin Keech was one of the first that had to face that and it caused a huge church split in his congregation because he believed that the congregation should sing and there were those who believed that they shouldn't.

01:35:24

Now, did anybody sing in the worship service? Was it the leaders or the pastor or nobody? I don't know.

01:35:31

They didn't believe that the unsaved should be singing. And so they didn't like promiscuous, what they call promiscuous singing.

01:35:43

Well, that's interesting. Yeah, because, you know, not that I would advocate that view, but there is some logic in connection with it.

01:35:55

If, for instance, most men that I know whose theology

01:36:00

I respect and agree with would say that it is improper for a

01:36:07

Christian to worship with a nonbeliever in the sense that you are praying with them.

01:36:15

There's a difference between praying with them and for them. And so that I could see that there being some kind of a connection with that.

01:36:25

But obviously, to take it to the extreme, you're violating a command in the scripture, isn't the singing supposed to be a part of what

01:36:33

Jesus Christ has established as a blueprint for a worship service?

01:36:39

But as you know, music is such a varied thing. And now we've lost all concept of any kind of control or dignity.

01:36:51

Music is just whatever feels good, do it. But it's always been a problem. Even Spurgeon wouldn't allow instruments.

01:36:59

That's right. The human voice was the finest instrument there ever was. So they sang acapella, although Iris Sankey did bring his little plump organ in, and Spurgeon did allow that.

01:37:11

I heard that Spurgeon made him play it in the basement or something. Well, as far as I know,

01:37:20

I think he allowed it for Sankey to lead. But it's always been a problem.

01:37:29

Music, one kind or another, it still is today. If you think about it, even psalters, the verses are versified.

01:37:39

And so the scripture is not actually presented verbatim, even in a psalter or psalm -only book.

01:37:47

In other words, Isaac Watts did a psalter, and those are all Isaac Watts arrangements of the word of God.

01:37:55

So you're really not singing the pure psalms, you're singing Isaac Watts' understanding of the way he versified it.

01:38:04

And just out of curiosity, I know that there are some Baptists today and other

01:38:12

Christians who agree with Spurgeon on not using instrumental music in worship.

01:38:17

What is your opinion on it? Well, I mean, I think it's just an opinion.

01:38:25

I'm not bringing drums and a rock band in. And I think it ought to be dignified and God -honoring in every respect.

01:38:33

But I know that there are those who have rock and roll music that they feel is God -honoring, though to me it certainly isn't.

01:38:42

But I think it's more than a matter of taste. It makes it very difficult.

01:38:50

There is no scripture that tells us that we can't or can have a certain kind of music.

01:38:56

And so we have to trust the leadership in a church, and we have to just do what we feel is right with as much scripture as we can possibly find and use.

01:39:07

Singing, making melody in our hearts to the Lord, that's used by Church of Christ and others, for the primitive

01:39:14

Baptists to not use instruments. Mm -hmm. And I actually love the harp singing of the primitive

01:39:22

Baptists, but I do have some serious problems with some of their hyper -Calvinism, and I have to make sure

01:39:31

I don't broad brush the whole movement. But wouldn't you say that some of the primitive Baptists are guilty of hyper -Calvinism, where the gospel, the preaching of the gospel, is not used of the

01:39:43

Lord to bring souls to regeneration? The primitive Baptists today are the old, and they were started in the early 1830s, late 1820s, and they were known as the anti -mission

01:39:57

Baptists. They were against not just the missions as we understand it, but they were against mission boards and societies, and they thought that everything should go to the

01:40:09

Church, but that just developed into becoming anti -everything. They became anti -school, anti -using notes in the pulpit, anti -musical instruments, and they just became against everything.

01:40:26

But yes, they were the anti -mission Baptists, and they were known, and today they would be the hyper -Calvinists.

01:40:34

And by the way, going back to Spurgeon's forbidding musical instruments in worship,

01:40:41

I was wondering if you could verify this story that I had heard, because I know that there is folklore that has passed around about Spurgeon that isn't true, or unverifiable.

01:40:52

But I heard the story of someone asking Spurgeon, is it acceptable to have an organ in your church?

01:41:00

And Spurgeon said, absolutely, if the pipes are filled with cement. Now, is that true?

01:41:06

Do you know if it's true? I don't know. That's a cute story. I don't know if it's worth quoting.

01:41:18

Anyway, now, as far as your books, because the books that you have brought back into print are obviously books that seem to be primarily intended for people who love and cherish writers of the past and so on, have you been surprised in either direction by specific books, or books of yours in general, from particular

01:41:49

Baptist press, that have either been very strongly welcomed and enthusiastically embraced beyond what you thought, and perhaps the other way as well, where they've been ignored?

01:42:06

Terry? Yes, definitely. When we published The Three Mrs. Judsons, we didn't know it was going to become our best seller.

01:42:15

That just happened. But there was something about that book that appealed to the public. And the trials of those three women and what they went through just touched a chord with a lot of people.

01:42:27

We do have other books that we thought were going to be big sellers that didn't, like we have the

01:42:34

Life Ministry and Journal of Hezekiah Smith. And this was the first time publication of this man's journals.

01:42:42

And he was a chaplain during the Revolutionary War, and just has so many interesting facts in there dealing with Baptist history, and even in secular history.

01:42:52

He was a witness to the Battle of Saratoga, and he records what the generals were speaking about at the surrender time.

01:43:00

And we thought that that would be a more popular book than it was, and it hasn't done well at all. And then, as far as other books, our

01:43:11

Calvinism and Communion in Victorian England is a treasure trove of information on early

01:43:17

Baptist history, and especially the Communion controversy that used to emboil

01:43:22

Baptist churches back in the 19th and 18th centuries, and even the late 16th century.

01:43:29

But people just haven't taken on to those, haven't latched on to those particular books like we thought they might have.

01:43:37

But we still think they're good books, and we consider them sleepers, and maybe eventually they'll take off.

01:43:44

Can you expand a little bit more about this Communion controversy? Yes, John Bunyan and William Kiffin stood on opposite sides of the

01:43:56

Communion controversy in the 17th century. John Bunyan taking the open Communion position, that is, that any believer in Christ should be admitted to the

01:44:07

Lord's table. Whereas, William Kiffin took the closed Communion position, that only baptized believers should partake of the

01:44:15

Lord's table in Communion. That controversy was dormant in the early 1800s until it was revived by Robert Hall, Jr.,

01:44:27

and then Joseph Kinghorn took up the closed Communion position again and argued very well against open

01:44:34

Communion. And then that carried on through the 19th century, and today it's pretty much a dormant issue again, although there are avid proponents on both sides of the issue among Baptist churches.

01:44:50

But it does give you a very interesting overview of that very important issue in Baptist life over a two or three hundred year period.

01:45:06

And the thing that you brought up earlier that still fascinates me about A .T.

01:45:14

Pearson being baptized after he was already a pastor there, did

01:45:20

Spurgeon, I mean this obviously occurred after Spurgeon went home to glory, but did Spurgeon believe that Pato Baptist should be welcomed into membership even apart from being baptized as believers by immersion?

01:45:37

There is actually, I've included an appendix in that very book, Calvinism in Communion in Victorian England by Jeffrey Breed, on Spurgeon's view on Communion, because he was known as an open

01:45:50

Communionist. And yet when William Hatcher, a pastor from Virginia, went over to England and had an interview with Spurgeon, a personal interview,

01:46:01

Spurgeon told him, he said, if I was in America and I was among the Southern Baptists, I would be a closed

01:46:06

Communionist. But he said, you don't understand our situation here. And Hatcher said, how can you make

01:46:15

Communion a term of geography? Yeah, that seems to be kind of odd there.

01:46:24

But as far as the baptism issue, did he know that Mr. Pearson was not baptized as a believer by immersion?

01:46:35

You know, I'm curious as to how A .T. Pearson became a member of that church, being a

01:46:41

Pato Baptist prior to the point where he was finally convinced to be immersed. Yeah, I'm not sure that he was received as a member.

01:46:49

We do know that he was called as a pastor, but he could have been pastoring a church in which he was not a member because he hadn't been baptized.

01:46:58

Moody was invited, not being a Baptist, to preach from the pulpit. And Pearson did.

01:47:05

And then I think they called him, when Spurgeon was in such bad condition, to be pastor.

01:47:12

And that's what he's termed as, is the pastor. But it's later on that he was baptized and became a member of that church.

01:47:19

Yeah, he was basically doing pulpit supply while Spurgeon was ill, but he was the pastor of the church.

01:47:28

Yeah, that's interesting. Even the concept of being a pastor of a church and not a member of it is a very novel concept.

01:47:38

And perhaps it's not that novel. I just haven't really heard of it occurring. But some of your readers and listeners might be interested to know that Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is in Kansas City, Missouri.

01:47:53

And they have purchased Spurgeon's library from William Jewell College. So that now, their whole goal of that school is to become, and this is the words of the president, to become the

01:48:07

Spurgeon capital of the world. They have his library, and it is a beautiful setting.

01:48:13

But they have Mr. Spurgeon's preaching rail that Spurgeon used. That is predominantly set out in that library.

01:48:22

And they have a number of things that were from Spurgeon's memorabilia. But it's a marvelous thing, and it's just something that the public can go in and see it.

01:48:32

They do like to take people on a tour of the library, so you need to make arrangements ahead of time.

01:48:38

But there's enough to see there. If you want to learn anything about Spurgeon, you can do it right there at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

01:48:47

And do you happen to have handy the contact information for the seminary? Oh, you can just pull it up.

01:48:53

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and then it'll have one of their links on there is the Spurgeon library, and they'll give you all of that.

01:49:02

And does Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary adhere to the same theology as Spurgeon had held to?

01:49:10

Well, I will say definitely their president does, Dr. Jason Allen, and maybe

01:49:17

I shouldn't be saying names, but their curator of the museum, of the library, does also, and a number of the professors do.

01:49:25

So the answer would be yes. Well, praise God for that. I'm happy because, as I said, it always has disturbed me when those who do not believe in the doctrines of grace,

01:49:39

I mean, I'm obviously thrilled when the non -Reformed or the non -Calvinist or the

01:49:46

Arminian are enthusiastically reading and enjoying

01:49:52

Spurgeon, but when they begin to rewrite history, that is disturbing to me, as I know that, unfortunately, some of the non -Calvinist fundamentalists have done in the past, and actually changed some of the wording in his writings.

01:50:08

That's right, that's right. Chris, when we were publishing some of our commentaries, we were friends with the librarian up at the

01:50:19

Spurgeon Library when it was at William Jewell, and we wanted to reprint the book on Hebrews by James Haldane.

01:50:29

Probably a lot of your listeners would be familiar with Robert Haldane, who did a famous commentary on Romans.

01:50:35

His brother James did two commentaries. Both of these men had been Presbyterians and converted and became

01:50:41

Baptists. Both of them did excellent commentaries, but James Haldane did one on Hebrews and one on Galatians.

01:50:53

Well, they loaned us Mr. Spurgeon's personal copy of Hebrews, and we copied

01:50:59

Mr. Spurgeon's personal copy, and that's what we used, and so our reprint of that is from Mr.

01:51:06

Spurgeon's personal copy. Praise God for that. By the way, I happened to look up online, just so I could announce the website of the

01:51:16

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for those listening who want to tour the

01:51:23

Spurgeon Library and so on. It's mbts .edu,

01:51:29

M -B for Midwestern Baptist, T -S for Theological Seminary, dot edu.

01:51:36

So we hope that a number of you listening take advantage of that.

01:51:43

It's a treasure right here in the Midwest. It's a marvelous thing to see. And we do have a listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, Erin, and she asks,

01:51:59

I have to enlarge her question because I'm going blind, so I have to enlarge her email.

01:52:09

I loved the General Baptist information as my grandfather and great -grandfather were both

01:52:17

GP heretical preachers, and she's making a joke out of that there. Actually, so I guess that was not a question.

01:52:27

I was too quick on the trigger finger. I thought this was going to be a question. But I guess she's speaking of the

01:52:36

General Baptist who did not believe in particular redemption. Right. In America today, the two

01:52:43

Baptist groups that deny and are full five -point

01:52:50

Arminian are the General Baptist, and there's still lots of General Baptists around, and the Free Will Baptist.

01:52:57

So they believe that not only is salvation comes through the free will of man, but you can also lose your salvation.

01:53:04

So they are not in what we'd call mainline Baptists. Yeah, because even

01:53:11

Baptists that are non -Calvinistic or even anti -Calvinistic, most

01:53:17

Baptists who have a strong view of the free will of man, the autonomous free will of man, they would not believe that you could lose your salvation, at least the majority of them.

01:53:31

Right. Yeah, they would claim to believe in eternal security, but not perseverance and preservation of the saints.

01:53:40

Well, I want to make sure that you men in about the five minutes or so that we have left really say what you most believe needs to be etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we leave the program.

01:53:56

Well, let me just say it's been a privilege to be on the program and trust that someone will get some interest.

01:54:03

You can Google us at pbpress .org and see the books that we have for sale, and we think that it's a marvelous collection.

01:54:15

And we've dedicated this to the Lord. As long as it glorifies

01:54:20

Him, we want to stay doing what we're doing. When it doesn't glorify Him, we're ready to shut it down.

01:54:26

But we have standing orders with over 80 colleges, universities, and seminaries around the country.

01:54:34

They'll take anything we print because nobody is printing what we're doing, and we do a very high quality and a thorough, detailed index.

01:54:43

And then we have individuals with standing orders. And if any of your listeners are interested in that, they can just look at that on our web page of Particular Baptist Press.

01:54:53

pbpress .org Right. And I don't want to leave out your church website for Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri.

01:55:03

Right. It's sgbcspringfield .org. That's S -G for Sovereign Grace, B -C for Baptist Church, Springfield.

01:55:13

pbpress .org And, Terry, do you have any final comments?

01:55:19

Yes, I just wanted to put in a good word for the series that we're working on right now called

01:55:25

A Noble Company, and it's subtitled Biographical Essays on Notable Particular Regular Baptists in America.

01:55:34

And this is going to be, Lord willing, a 12 -volume set. The volume 12 will be on the

01:55:41

Canadians, and it will be edited by Dr. Michael Haken. Oh, yeah. And the first 11 volumes

01:55:48

I'm editing myself, and we've already got seven volumes in print, and we're working on volume eight.

01:55:55

But our goal and our purpose in this is to reacquaint Calvinistic Baptists in America with their forefathers, because most

01:56:04

Baptists in this country can only name, on one hand, the Baptists that they know that were

01:56:09

Calvinistic in the past. And so we want to show that, like you had pointed out earlier, this was a mainstream in Baptist life up until the middle of the, or early part of the 20th century.

01:56:24

And so we are not a fringe group. We are actually the mainstream. And we want people to know who their

01:56:33

Baptist forefathers were in the faith. And we've received a lot of good comments on this.

01:56:40

And we have not only the well -known figures, but a lot of the unknown figures. And we've had people tell us that they appreciate learning about the unknowns as much as the knowns.

01:56:50

Yeah, amen. I always enjoy that, too. I always love discovering a great writer or preacher or teacher from the past that I had not known of before, including,

01:57:01

I don't know if you've ever read anything by a 19th century low -church

01:57:06

Anglican, Stephen Ting. But he also pastored in Manhattan in the 19th century and is a really phenomenal writer.

01:57:19

Obviously, Episcopalians and Anglicans like him today are harder and harder to find.

01:57:24

They do exist, but... Right, right. But... In closing, can I just mention that we are running a special on the cluster of camper and we're going to extend that.

01:57:35

It goes through this month. But on 10 copies, we give 40 % off and we are paying the shipping on that.

01:57:44

So, I mean, that just... Matter of fact, it may figure out to more than 40 % off.

01:57:50

But there has to be 10 copies. And people order these and they give them to friends and loved ones and people they know who are sick.

01:57:57

We know of funeral homes that have given these to people who are going through difficulties.

01:58:03

Churches who have traveling groups that take these with them and give them to pastors and their wives.

01:58:10

And so, I mean, it's a useful book and I think it is 50 % off. And it is done in a pocket edition, so you can carry it in your pocket or in your purse.

01:58:19

Yeah, I loved that fact myself when I saw them arrive in the mail. Very handy for bringing into hospitals and so on.

01:58:29

Well, I want to thank you brothers so much for being a part of my program today.

01:58:34

And let me repeat one more time the website for Particular Baptist Press.

01:58:42

It is pbpress .org. Yes, easy to remember. pb for ParticularBaptistPress .org.

01:58:50

And I do want to remind the listeners that thanks be to God, I'm going to be,

01:58:56

God willing, at the G3 conference, January 19th through the 21st in Atlanta, Georgia, featuring

01:59:03

Paul Washer, Stephen J. Lawson, D .A. Carson, Voti Baucom, James R. White, Conrad M.

01:59:10

Bayway, who is one of the most powerful preachers on the planet Earth from Kibwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Phil Johnson from Grace to You Ministries of John MacArthur.

01:59:22

And many more speakers are going to be there. I'm going to have an exhibitor's booth and I hope to see you there at G3conference .com

01:59:30

is where to go for more information. G3conference .com, that's G, the number three, conference .com.

01:59:37

And I hope you can come and I pray that the Lord enables you to find a way to get there if you don't think you can go right now.

01:59:46

And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.