August 26, 2024 Show with Ed Romine on “The Booming Baritone Bell of England: The Pedagogy & Practice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s Open-Air Preaching”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 26th day of August, 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic, I want to remind you of a couple of important things. If you are a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, which will be held Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania.

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The free, biannual Iron Trip Insignia Radio Pastors Luncheon featuring Dr. Joe Boot. I also have another reminder of a prayer request that I announced last week, a very urgent prayer request, a longtime cherished friend of mine, Gary Wolf, who was a member of the same church where I was saved and began my new Christian life in my mid-twenties back in the 1980s.

Gary Wolf, in fact, was a classmate of mine in the same high school where I attended in the seventies, graduating in 1980, Amityville Memorial High School. My friend Gary Wolf was just recently diagnosed with stomach cancer, and he is having more tests being done tomorrow, Tuesday.

I would really appreciate it if you would pray for Gary, not only for physical healing, but for the Lord to give him perfect peace, trusting in his will, whatever that may be, and that Gary may be able to even face this frightening, terrifying battle with confidence in Christ and joy, and that he would be a wonderful, effective ambassador in the name of Jesus Christ to all with whom he comes in contact during this trial in his life.

So please continue to pray for Gary Wolf, and God willing, I will be giving you updates on the progress of his health and hopefully giving you praise reports with good news of healing or good news of diminished cancer and so on.

But I am excited to have a returning guest today on the show. His name is Ed Romine, and he is an author and pastor of education and evangelism at First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. Today we're going to be addressing his latest book, The Booming Baritone Bell of England, The Pedagogy and Practice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon Open Air Preaching.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, Pastor Ed Romine, and it just occurred to me that I probably mispronounced your last name, didn't.

I? No, you did not, no you did not. Most people add an A in that last name and they say Romine, like the lettuce, and nothing drives me nuts more than that. Well, there are things, but not much.

Well, why don't you—.

It's good to be back, dear brother.

Yes, amen. Well, why don't you first and foremost let our listeners know about First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. It might surprise people that there is a Baptist church in Provo, Utah. I understand that Provo has one of the most highly concentrated Mormon populations in the United States, even more than Salt Lake City.

And so it's great to know, wonderful to know, that there is a solid Christian church in the midst of that. So tell us more about First Baptist Church of Provo.

Yes, sir. Well, the First Baptist Church of Provo, as Brother Chris said, is in a mecca for what's officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known amongst Christians as Mormon.

And the First Baptist Church of Provo is a Calvinistic Southern Baptist church. We affirm the abstract principles, and we love and cherish and preach the biblical Jesus Christ from only the Holy Bible.

We do expository preaching through books of the Bible, and I get the joy and privilege of being one of the members and pastors of the First Baptist Church of Provo. My official title, as I think was stated, is the Pastor of Education and Evangelism.

And what that basically entails is I do whatever the church needs me to do. I preach, I teach, I organize our Thursday night Bible studies and whatever other curriculum we may have during the year. And then I also do a lot of evangelism, a lot of open-air preaching in downtown Provo and around the outskirts of Brigham Young University.

And that's another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that Brigham Young University is not in Salt Lake City. It's actually in Provo. That's why there's such a high concentration of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It's because Brigham Young University is right there. And so with that said, it's a wonderful place to do ministry for a lot of different reasons. And the good Lord has been so kind to us. We recently, within the past month, got to celebrate two baptisms.

And if you're in the area, come join us. We love it when Christians from back east or around the USA come visit us. It always encourages our soul. We read the word. We pray the word. We read either the Apostles' Creed or Nicene Creed together each week, reminding ourselves that our faith goes back 2 ,000 years and God's always had his elect.

And then we also have, as I said before, expositional preaching. Pastor Brendan, who is the main preacher, is preaching through the Book of Luke. And then when I preach, I'm going through the Book of Psalms.

So it's just a joy to be a part of First Baptist Provo. God has been so good to us. Our services are at 10 o 'clock a .m. Mountain Time.

Amen. And if anybody wants to find out more about First Baptist Church of Provo, go to FBC, for First Baptist Church, Provo .org, FBC, Provo .org. And God willing, we will remind you of that information later on in the program.

Well, we are about to address, as I already mentioned, the latest book from the pen of Ed Romine, The Booming Baritone Bell of England, the pedagogy and practice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's open-air preaching.

And this book has gained the accolades of people that I know, love, and admire, who I have actually had as guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, some of them multiple times. Let me read a commendation by my dear friend Justin Peters, evangelist with Justin Peters Ministries.

E .G. Romine provides us tremendous insight into the philosophy, hermeneutics, and evangelistic zeal that compelled Charles Spurgeon to herald the gospel not merely behind the pulpit, but also, and especially so, out in the open air to be heard by multiplied thousands at a time.

The Booming Baritone Bell of England ably fills what has been lacking in Spurgeonic scholarship. I enthusiastically commend this work to the pastor, scholar, and layman alike. And also my dear friend Andrew Rappaport, Executive Director at Striving for Eternity Ministries.

Many books have been written on the life and preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. When most people write on the preaching of Spurgeon, they focus on his pulpit preaching. What E .G. Romine has done in this book is focus on the preaching that was so dear to Spurgeon's heart, preaching in the open square.

If you would like to understand Spurgeon better, and even more, to preach like Spurgeon, this book is for you. And there are quite a number of other accolades for this book. Let me just quickly read a couple more.

Ray Rhodes, who is the pastor of Grace Community Church, I believe, and that's in Douglasville, Georgia, if I'm not mistaken. I'll correct that if I'm wrong, but he's been a friend of mine for a long time.

And I've interviewed Ray on his book about the wife of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Susie. But Ray writes, Spurgeon preached everywhere from village cottages to London's vast halls. Buildings couldn't contain the crowds.

Therefore, he also preached outside to the masses. Scholar and open air preacher E .G. Romine is the most qualified person that I know to write a book on Spurgeon's open air preaching. Read this joyful and well-informed book.

And I'll just include one more out of the many accolades for this book. My dear friend Dr. Tom Nettles, Senior Professor of Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in addition to being the current Executive Director of Founders Ministries and Pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral, Florida.

Dr. Nettles writes, E .G. Romine has captured the spirit, zeal, theology, and love of Charles Spurgeon in this volume. If anything showed the true passion of Spurgeon for truth and for people, it was his open air preaching.

His polemics throughout his ministry manifested his love for orthodox, evangelical, and yes, Calvinistic truth. All of that, however, was in service of the purity of the gospel preached to the lost. This excellent work explores the theology, practice, and pedagogy of preaching in the open air.

Romine has given it a charming presentation. Well, those, I should say, are some powerful commendations. And I know that one of the reasons that you wrote this book is because you yourself, in addition to being a pastor like Charles Aden Spurgeon, are an open air evangelist like Charles Aden Spurgeon.

What did you do to discover more information about this aspect of Spurgeon's life? Because as one of the commendations accurately said, and I believe it was Andrew Rappaport's commendation, that most of the time when you pick up a book by Spurgeon, it is either something directly from his pulpit ministry or something that doesn't necessarily focus on his open air evangelism.

So, how did you go about discovering these truths that are largely unknown to your average reader?

Yes, sir. So, to back up just a little bit to answer your question, I first heard about Charles Spurgeon through a gift of a book called The Gospel-Centered Focus of Charles Spurgeon, written by Stephen Lawson.

Yeah.

And it was through that book that I fell in love with Charles Spurgeon. And I started reading what I could get my hands on, like Spurgeon on the Holy Spirit, published by Whitaker House. And I soon realized through some research that that was a bridge.

And we're talking about 2012 when I started figuring out Spurgeon was a big deal to a lot of people, even beyond Reformed and Calvinistic camps. And it was through Lawson's book that I got introduced to Spurgeon.

And in being introduced to Spurgeon, I eventually ran across his lectures to my students. And it was about this time that I ran across his lectures to my students that a dear friend of mine, who actually wrote one of the endorsements, was named Taylor Christian Calvin.

You'll see his name on there. He's currently the pastor of Horicon Baptist Church in Brant Lake, New York. And one of the things I tried to do was to get well-known people and personal ministry friends of mine, and a lot of them are both, like Justin Peters and Andrew Rappaport, to recommend the book.

Nobody knows the name Taylor Christian Calvin unless you went to school with him, but he's a faithful pastor up in upstate New York. And when he was in Bible college himself while I was in seminary, we went to the same school, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He got me involved in street evangelism, tracting, open-air preaching, and all that stuff. And I fell in love with that form of evangelism, and Taylor was willing to take me out in my wheelchair and push me around everywhere, and we would go out and evangelize.

When he first started getting me into this, I told him, I can't do that. I'm disabled. I have several palsy. And said, if you want to come do it, I'll help you get to where you need to go. And I fell in love with the act of open-air preaching as a method for getting the gospel to people.

And then as I was reading lectures to my students, I came across the two lectures that are on open-air preaching that Spurgeon taught to his students. And those two lectures are a sketch of its history, open-air preaching, a sketch of its history, and then open-air preaching remarks their own.

And I started looking around, and I was doing my Master of Divinity at the time, and I started realizing, hold on, nobody's actually written on this. And I asked my professors, and nobody knew, and I thought to myself, this could be an actual contribution if I wanted to run with it.

So I ended up finishing my MDiv, finishing THM, then I went to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where the Spurgeon Library is held in Kansas City, Missouri. And I went through my coursework there, did a bunch of research, and when I was living out in Utah back in 2020, I ended up writing the dissertation, and people have, by God's grace, ended up really appreciating it for those who love Spurgeon.

So I just couldn't believe for something that Spurgeon found so important, nobody had written on it yet. And so many guys, especially when the quote-unquote Young Restless Reform Movement was really in full swing, everybody wanted the Spurgeoning ministry, but nobody was talking about it, about its open-air preaching.

So I'm just really grateful to the Lord that he gave me the endurance to write the book, and to God be the glory.

Hallelujah.

That answers your question.

Yes, it does. And we are going to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Ed Romine about his book, and perhaps even more broadly about Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The 19th Century Prince of Preachers, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

You are having some kind of theological disagreement with your own pastors, for an example. Perhaps you have fallen in love with the teaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and the church where you are a member despises that theology, even if they are unaware that Charles Haddon Spurgeon loved and taught it very dynamically and boldly.

You have a lot of that, the anti-Calvinists who love Spurgeon, allegedly. But whatever the case may be, we will honor your request to remain anonymous. But please, if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be right back with Ed Romine, and we'll be looking forward to hearing from you and your questions to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back.

Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur. I've been a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I highly recommend this show. But today I want to tell you about one of its advertisers, Rare Document Traders, far and away my favorite source for quality Charles Spurgeon memorabilia.

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Don't forget to mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Sign Radio. And I am now back with our guest today, Ed Romine, a pastor of First Baptist Church, or one of the pastors, I should say, at First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah.

And we're discussing his new book on the open-air preaching of Charles Sadden Spurgeon. And we have a listener who is asking something that is somewhat off-topic, but it's about Spurgeon. And since he is, according to his own words, a good friend of yours, Ed, and he's also a very close friend of mine, long-time friend, that's Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah, who is—.

I love Jason Wallace.

Yes, so do I. He is also a very gifted documentarian. I have volunteered my services as a voiceover artist for a number of his documentaries. And Jason asks, what did Spurgeon see as the roots of the downgrade in the Baptist association?

And I would also, obviously, be wise for you to define what the downgrade controversy actually was.

So the downgrade controversy is thought by many Spurgeonic historians to be the heartbreak of Spurgeon's life. And essentially what it was, he decided to withdraw from the Baptist union at the time because the Baptist union was sliding closer and closer into liberalism, denying such things as biblical inerrancy, biblical infallibility, denying the need for justification by faith alone and Christ alone.

And Spurgeon fought hard during that end portion of his life not to leave and to reconcile with people. And even Phil Johnson has said, who is a Spurgeon expert in his own right, that even Spurgeon's brother—I believe it was Thomas, don't quote me on that—Thomas Spurgeon turned against Spurgeon during this time and sided with the Baptist union.

And like I said, many people believe that that controversy alone contributed to the early, humanly speaking, early death of Charles Haddon Spurgeon at the tender age of 57.

Well, as Jason asked, what do you think the roots of the downgrade controversy was? Obviously, there was something occurring in the churches at large in England in the 19th century that began to increase and multiply to the point where it even reached the downgrade controversy.

Right. Yeah, the answer there, the main part of his question, I would say it was a lack of accountability in the union for gospel preaching and gospel shepherding. So, if you do not have accountability, if you do not have mechanisms in place to say, hey, brother, that was doctrinally wrong.

Why are you preaching that? Then what you end up having is a slow sliding away from orthodoxy, and it happens so subtly. But before long, you start denying things that you never thought you'd deny. We see this in Utah, especially.

Somebody gets, quote unquote, saved out of the LDS church and they have systems in place where there's no accountability. There's nobody watching their doctrine, and before long, man's sinful heart's going to be slipping into things that are gospel denying.

So, I think that that's one of the main impetuses that allowed the downgrade controversy to happen. There was no true system of accountability to make sure that there was true gospel preaching going on and true biblical fidelity.

Does that make sense?

Yes, and it's just a reminder to church leaders today that they can never view it to be a loving act to let error go uncorrected. And the tolerance of error is seen by many as an act of love and Christian humility.

Now, obviously, we're not talking about being legalistic, pharisaic, nitpicking, and micromanaging the beliefs of others. But at the same time, we cannot have unity that is truly faithful to the Scriptures.

If it's not based on truth. That's right. That's right. And that's not to say that there's not theological triage. But what you've got to understand is that in the downgrade controversy, people were denying things that you cannot deny and hold on to.

Biblical, evangelical Christianity that we would say goes back all 2 ,000 years.

Well, Pastor Jason, we've got good news. You have just won a free copy of The Booming Baritone Bell of England, The Pedagogy and Practice of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Open Air Preaching. And by the way, I am pronouncing pedagogy the way Spurgeon would, since he was British, and that is the British pronunciation.

If he were an American, we would call it pedagogy.

But how do you prefer pronouncing that word? Oh, I'm a Texas hick. I say pedagogy.

Okay. And why don't you define that for our listeners?

Yeah. So, pedagogy is the art and study of how to teach. And I get that from Spurgeon's second lecture on Open Air Preaching, which is Remarks Their Own. Open Air Preaching, Remarks Their Own. And that's exactly what it sounds like.

If we were to go through that lecture, we'd see such practical things. If I may jump into this, dear brother, as stand with your back against the wall so that nobody comes up behind you and does something mean and nasty to you.

Don't preach. This one's super helpful for today's bad open air preachers. Don't scream your lungs out the whole entire time, because he says people will think that you're angry and you'll lose your voice.

And do such things as preach with a good, full voice, but preach with the wind. If it's windy, don't try to fight the wind. Just such simple things as that, which I find very, very interesting that in today's open air preaching climate, you have those who would call themselves open air preachers, but they're really, as one person did, open air screechers that come to the LDS General Conferences that happen twice a year, and they say such things as, you're not Mormons, you're morons.

That's how one guy opened his quote-unquote open air sermon up. And I told my dear friend I was with at the time, we need to leave this land. I don't want to be associated with it. Really hateful stuff.

Yeah, and that's exactly what ruined the open air evangelism that Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries was involved in to the Mormons, because at one time he didn't have hardly any competition out there, but then the area became flooded with these hateful mavericks who were just there to mock Mormons, had no real interest in seeing them.

Come to Christ. I was going to say, in true open air preachers to follow Peter's admonition and proclaim the excellencies of Jesus Christ, we're out there to make Jesus look good. If I can use a human word to make him almost look attractive as it were.

Spurgeon actually talks about just the beauties of our Savior in the last sermon he ever preached. And during a break, I'll get to it. I would love to read that quote, but it's so warm and so inviting.

And that's how he ended his life, making Jesus look good without making him attractional, but also not downplaying the truth of you must come to him. You must believe in him. That's very different than sitting out there yelling and screaming at people, telling them how bad they are, all wrong, and no Jesus at all.

By the way, yes, and you have 10 minutes to quote that source, if you'd like to do that. Let me repeat our email address, chrisarnson at gmail .com if anybody has questions. Go ahead.

Yes, absolutely. I got to get to you first.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Oh, by the way, Pastor Jason, make sure we have your full mailing address in the Magna, Utah area, where Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, can ship out Ed Romine's book to you.

Have you located that?

Sir, yes, I have. Yes, I have. So, this is the last sermon that Charles Spurgeon ever preached called the Statute of David for the Sharing of the Spoil, and the sermon text that he preached on was from Samuel 30 verses 21 through 26, and he preached this sermon on June 7, 1891.

Listen to Spurgeon here. This is so beautiful. What have I to say lastly is this, how greatly I desire that you who are not yet enlisted in my Lord's band would come to him, because you see what a kind and gracious Lord he is.

Young men, if you could see our captain, you would down on your knees and beg him to let you enter the ranks of those who follow him. It is heaven to serve Jesus. I'm a recruiting sergeant, and I would find a few recruits at this moment.

Every man must serve somebody. We have no choice as to that fact. Those who have no master are slaves to themselves. Depend upon it. You will either serve Satan or Christ, either self or the Savior. You will find sin, self, Satan in the world to be hard masters, but if you wear the livery of Christ, you will find him so meek and lowly of heart that you will find rest unto your souls.

He is the most magnanimous of captains. There never was his like among the choices of princes. He is always to be found in the thickest part of the battle. When the wind blows cold, he always takes the bleak side of the hill.

The heaviest end of the cross lies ever on his shoulders. If he bids us carry a burden, he carries it also. If there is anything that is gracious, generous, kind, and tender, yea, lavish, and superabundant in love, you always find it in him.

These forty years and more have I served him. Blessed be his name, and I have had nothing but love from him. I would be glad to continue yet another forty years in the same dear service here below if it so pleased him.

His service is life, peace, joy, all that you would enter only that once. God help you to enlist under the banner of Jesus even this day. Amen.

Hallelujah. I wonder if that quote was any source of inspiration to Bob Dylan when he wrote the song, You've Gotta Serve Somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you've gotta serve somebody.

Back in the days when... Maybe so. Back in the days when Bob Dylan was actually outwardly appearing to be a faithful servant of Christ. I don't know where he is in regard to his standing before God today.

Oh, yea, I forgot to mention to our listeners that the foreword to this book has been written by Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John MacArthur. And Phil Johnson has been on this program as a guest numerous times, and you heard his voice earlier on in the commercial for Rare Document Traders, which happens to be a phenomenal source for original, authentic Charles Spurgeon memorabilia.

But as far as open-air preaching goes, how did it get to the point when the great open-air preachers that immediately come to people's minds, if they know anything about history, like George Whitfield, for instance, these men were Calvinists.

So, how did we reach the point where Calvinists make up a minority today of open-air evangelists?

That is a fine question. I'll give you my opinion. So, there was also, if you look at Spurgeon's sketch of open-air preaching, Spurgeon doesn't leave out the good gospel-fearing Armenians, the Methodist circuit riders.

And you can go back and read that on your own time. You can read my analysis of it in the book. There have always been, dare I say on this radio show, good open-air, more Armenian persuaded preachers back in the day.

I think, to be more pointed with your question, how did open-air preaching get involved in the hands of outright Belgian heretics, people that are sinless perfectionists, people who denied original sin altogether?

And I think it came about because the reformed and Calvinistics stopped doing it. And where that history comes into play, I'm not exactly sure right now, but maybe you can have me on for another program once I study it.