Listening to the Giants

Jonathan Edwards could have stayed quiet. His reputation was beyond reproach and his theological influence was spreading like “wildfire”.  Yet conviction compelled him to do different, to take a different course. This is the testimony of Edwards explaining the issue and his own position: “A very great difficulty has arisen between my people, relating to qualifications for communion at the Lord’s table (this is the issue). My honored grandfather Stoddard, my predecessor in the ministry over this church, strenuously maintained the Lord’s Supper to be a converting ordinance, and urged all to come who were not of scandalous life, though they knew themselves to be unconverted. I formerly conformed to his practice but I have had difficulties with respect to it, which has been long increasing, till I dared no longer to proceed in the former way, which has occasioned great uneasiness among the people, and has filled all the country with noise.” For Edwards, his Grandfather’s ap...

Do you think you were a “bad kid”? Maybe you were, but so was George Müller. Here is a look at his early years: “His own brief account of his boyhood shows a very bad boy and he attempts no disguise. Before he was ten years old he was a habitual thief and an expert at cheating. In time, card-playing and even strong drink got hold of him. The night when his mother lay dying, her boy of fourteen was reeling through the streets, drunk; and even her death failed to arrest his wicked course or to arouse his sleeping conscience. And—as must always be the case when such solemn reminders make one no better—he only grew worse.” (pgs. 18-19) Yet God is in the business of rescuing lost sinners and being patient with them, as this account below will show: “Of course a man that had been so profligate and prodigal must at least begin at conversion to live a changed life. Not that all at once the old sins were abandoned, for such total transformation demands deeper knowledge of the word and ...