A new book by Dr. Michael Haykin: Ardent Love for Jesus: Learning from the eighteenth-century Baptist revival

By Dustin Bruce

9781850492481

Building on years of teaching experience, D.A. Carson is quoted at saying, “students don’t learn everything I teach them. What they learn is what I am excited about, the kinds of things I emphasize again and again and again and again.” Michael Haykin’s new book, Ardent Love for Jesus, is this concept translated into book form. Each chapter may be compared to having one’s ear to the door of a classroom, listening intently as Haykin delivers a passionate lecture on a favorite subject: a band of eighteenth-century Baptists whose pursuit of the Risen Lord changed their denomination and the world.

Haykin begins by setting the context of the Baptist revivals, establishing a complicated British history and the rise of hyper-Calvinism as the winds that cooled the piety of Baptist churches in Britain. Yet, with men like John Gill, who fought to preserve the ember of orthodoxy among Baptist ranks, the spark remained for a fresh awakening when the Spirit would blow and ignite Baptist churches once again.

This book is about that fire of revival experienced by eighteenth-century Baptist men and women and what it can teach us today.

Chapters include:

  1. ‘A very dunghill in society’: The Calvinistic Baptists and their need for revival

  2. ‘The Saviour calls’: The ministry and piety of Benjamin Francis and Anne Steele

  3. ‘A little band of brothers’: Friendship and revival in the life of John Ryland Jr.

  4. ‘I wish I had prayed more’: John Sutcliff and the Concert of Prayer for revival

  5. ‘A dull flint’: Andrew Fuller and theological reformation

  6. ‘What a soul’: The revival piety of Samuel Pearce

  7. ‘A wretched, poor and helpless worm’: Revival activism–the legacy of William Carey

Appendix: Eighteenth-century Baptists and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in revival

I encourage you to pick up this helpful volume and have your heart warmed in love for Jesus.

Available at Amazon and The Book Depository.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Spirituality at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.