Book Review: God’s Love for Muslims: Communicating Bible Grace and New Life

Ibrahim Ag Mohamed, God’s Love for Muslims: Communicating Bible Grace and New Life (London: Metropolitan Tabernacle, 2015), 95 pages. For many in the West today, the very terms Islam and Muslims provoke fear, even hatred, and terrorist acts like the very recent Paris and Mali attacks only serve to reinforce these deep emotions. On the very day when news broke about the horrific attacks in Paris I received this new book by Ibrahim Ag Mohamed, the assistant pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the heart of London. The author, whose roots are among the Tamasheq, the nomadic shepherds of the Sahara known to the outside world as the Tuareg, is deeply familiar with Islam—in fact, before his conversion, his devotion to Islam led him to burn the Scriptures. But, as he has said, the Scriptures “I had burned came and burned my heart.”

His profound familiarity with Islam, and also his extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, is evident throughout this handsomely-produced book in which he deals with Muslim beliefs and practice (9–42), their misunderstandings about the Christian Faith (43–83), and then how believers in the West especially can help Muslims come to true faith in the Lord Jesus (84–95). While much more could be said in each of these sections, what Mohamed includes is germane and very much to the point, and the result is an extremely helpful handbook for Christians to learn about Muslims, some of whom are now their neighbours. The final section, in which Mohamed provides details on how to develop true friendships with Muslims and share the gospel with them, is extremely helpful.

Noteworthy aspects of the book also include Mohamed’s excellent discussion of violence within the Qur’an and its advocacy by many Muslims (38–42), how the Qur’an views women (29–30), and his emphasis on the importance of faith in the Triunity of God: “without the doctrine of the Trinity, there would be no salvation, because only the God-man, Christ, could offer a sufficient sacrifice to atone for the sins of men and women” (51–54, quote from page 54). One small lacuna is that there is very little said about the history of Islam. A few pages could have easily been devoted to outlining this history. If a second edition is done, such could be easily added.

Given the global situation in which we find ourselves today, a work like this is gold! Highly recommended!

Michael A.G. Haykin Professor of Church History The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Coming Soon: A Bitesize Biography of Samuel Pearce by Michael Haykin and Jerry Slate

Book Announcement: Training Laborers for His Harvest: A Historical Study of William Milne's Mentorship of Liang Fa

Baiyu Andrew Song has released a new book with Wipf and Stock titled Training Laborers for His Harvest: A Historical Study of William Milne's Mentorship of Liang Fa. Song (BTS, MTS, Toronto Baptist Seminary) is a Junior Fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. From the Publisher:

In this project, Baiyu Andrew Song explores the mentorship of China's first ordained indigenous evangelist, Liang Fa (1789-1855), by Scottish Presbyterian missionary William Milne (1785-1822) in the early nineteenth century. The biblically and contextually informed model of mentorship Milne employed is examined in detail, which is placed in the historical setting of Milne and Liang's time. This project is particularly important in that it pioneers historical study in the area of the early protestant church history in China, specifically in regard to William Milne.

Endorsements:

"As a missionary who has served in four Asian countries, I have seen the 'fruit' of current trends in missions. Many believe that the Great Commission can be done with great speed: little or no need to learn the language or culture, a commitment of a few months or less is sufficient. William Milne points us in a very different direction. Oh, how we need to re-examine contemporary mission strategy in light of the Bible and the great missionaries of the past!" --Phil Remmers, President, Robert Morrison Project

"Song has written a book marked by exact scholarship, keen theological insights, and evangelical warmth. This volume is filled with details and analysis of their significance, yet admirably succinct. Training Laborers for His Harvest presents a look at a critical moment in the history of Protestant missions to China. It possesses considerable value both for historians and for those who wish to advance the cause of the gospel among the Chinese. I highly recommend it." --G. Wright Doyle, Director, Global China Center

"An inspiring and profitable read. Baiyu has done a great job of introducing William Milne's gospel ministry among nineteenth century Chinese to Christians today. Readers are bound to be encouraged by the missionary zeal of Milne and exhorted to follow in his footsteps of being theocentric in theology and practice." --Jeremy Lee, Pastor, Christ Community Church, Louisville, KY

"More than just an historical recounting of their lives and ministries, Baiyu reminds us of the importance of mentorship when it comes to preparing Christians for service. As a Chinese Christian himself, Baiyu Song's work is another illustration of the fact that although the kingdom of God may start small, in the end it reaches to the ends of the earth." --Kirk Wellum, Pastor and Professor of Systematic Theology, Toronto Baptist Seminary

To order from the publisher, see here.

To order from Amazon, see here.

Book Review: Churches, Revolutions, and Empires: 1789–1914 by Ian Shaw

By Michael A.G. Haykin

Ian J. Shaw, Churches, Revolutions, and Empires: 1789–1914 (Christian Focus, 2012), xii+561 pages.

People tend to view the period between the close of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of the First World War as a fairly sedentary period. Contrary to popular thought, however, this era, the so-called “long” nineteenth century, 1789–1914, was a time of massive political, intellectual and cultural ferment. And this was not without significant impact on the church in the West. Ian Shaw, the Director of the Langham Scholarship Programme in the UK when he wrote this book, capably and confidently charts the course of the western Church through this era of upheaval and change. Shaw’s grasp of primary and secondary sources is impressive as is his ability to synthesize.

Shaw’s chapter on the birth of the modern missionary movement (p.95–130), for example, is typical of the quality of the book. He refuses to locate its origins in the mind and heart of William Carey, as is so often done, but shows with reference to the scholarship of men like W.R. Ward, A.F. Walls, and Brian Stanley that “the cradle of the movement was more truly Halle [with August Francke and the Pietists], or Herrnhut [with the Moravians], than the parlour of the Baptist manse in Kettering [the traditional place where Carey and friends decided to form the Baptist Missionary Society]” (p.128). He also probes the factors that led to the rise of the missionary movement, from the Enlightenment to theology, and concludes that “undoubtedly…the reasons for the expansion of Protestant mission [sic] are complex” (p. 128). Shaw rightly recognizes that this does not take away from Carey’s achievements, which were truly radical in their day (p.129)—as the critic of evangelical missions, Sydney Smith quipped, “if a tinker is a devout man, he infallibly sets off for the East” (cited p.106). But what Shaw is doing in this chapter is setting Carey in the rich context in which his life must be seen if it is truly to be understood.

Each of the chapters that explore topics like the French Revolution and its legacy, the ending of the slave trade and slavery, industrialization, the revolution of Darwinian science does something comparable. This is history on the big scale and an excellent example of such. Shaw’s conclusion is sobering: he concludes that the First World War essentially buried Europe’s Christendom and that the real hope for the historical future of the Church lies in the churches of the Global South, where Carey interestingly enough had been active.

Michael A.G. Haykin Professor of Church History The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

To download the review as PDF, click here. To see other book reviews, visit here.

“Accustomed to the Safety of a Free Government”

By Evan D. Burns

In 1819, English and American missionaries in Burma faced the reality of inevitable opposition and persecution by the Burmese government. Consequently, many missionaries were compelled to pull out and commence work in a more tolerant, peaceful environment. Enduring the scrutiny of such a repressive government, Adoniram Judson’s (1788-1850) devotion to his call remained firm. Judson determined to wait until the government actually forced him to forego his work for the Lord through imprisonment or deportation. His words are timely for Christians who, though once graced with religious freedom, are facing the loss of such liberties. In a letter, he wrote thus:

One malicious intimation to the king would occasion our banishment; and banishment, as the Burmans tell us, is no small thing, being attended with confiscation of all property, and such various abuses as would make us deem ourselves happy to escape with our lives. Such a situation may appear somewhat alarming to a person accustomed to the liberty and safety of a free government. But let us remember that it has been the lot of the greater part of mankind to live under a despotic government, devoid of all security for life or property a single moment. Let us remember that the Son of God chose to become incarnate under the most unprincipled and cruel despot that ever reigned.  And shall any disciple of Christ refuse to do a little service for his Saviour, under a government where his Saviour would not have refused to live and die for his soul? God forbid. Yet faith is sometimes weak—flesh and blood sometimes repine. O for grace to strengthen faith, to animate hope, to elevate affection, to embolden the soul, to enable us to look danger and death in the face; still more, to behold, without repining, those most dear to us suffering fears and pains, which we would gladly have redoubled on ourselves, if it would exonerate them. We feel encouraged by the thought that many of the dear children of God remember us at the mercy seat. To your prayers I desire once more to commend myself—the weakest, the most unqualified, the most unworthy, and the most unsuccessful of all missionaries.[1]

[1]This letter was to William Staughton (1770-1829). Staughton was a friend of Samuel Pearce (1766-1799) and William Carey (1761-1834). See Francis Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D., vol. 1 (Boston: Phillips, Samson and Company, 1853), 197-98.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

An Unsung, but Influential Sermon in the Rise of the Modern Missionary Movement

By Steve Weaver

On April 27, 1791, Andrew Fuller preached a message at a Minister's Meeting at Clipstone. The title of the message was "Instances, Evil, and Tendency of Delay, in the Concerns of Religion." The text was Haggai 1:2, "Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built." In the sermon, Fuller pleaded with his fellow ministers not to delay in regard to the work of missions and to use means for the spread of the gospel among the nations. It was a bold sermon. Not only was William Carey in attendance, but so too were many of those, as Andrew Gunton Fuller tells us, "who had refused — some of them not in the kindest manner — to listen to his proposal." [1] Fuller said in part,

Instead of waiting for the removal of difficulties, we ought, in many cases, to consider them as purposely laid in our way, in order to try the sincerity of our religion. He who had all power in heaven and earth could not only have sent forth his apostles into all the world, but have so ordered it that all the world should treat them with kindness, and aid them in their mission; but, instead of that, he told them to lay their accounts with persecution and the loss of all things. This was no doubt to try their sincerity; and the difficulties laid in our way are equally designed to try ours.

Let it be considered whether it is not owing to this principle that so few and so feeble efforts have been made for the propagation of the gospel in the world. When the Lord Jesus commissioned his apostles, he commanded them to go and teach “all nations,” to preach the gospel to “every creature;” and that notwithstanding the difficulties and oppositions that would lie in the way. The apostles executed their commission with assiduity and fidelity; but, since their days, we seem to sit down half contented that the greater part of the world should still remain in ignorance and idolatry. Some noble efforts have indeed been made; but they are small in number, when compared with the magnitude of the object. And why is it so? Are the souls of men of less value than heretofore? No. Is Christianity less true or less important than in former ages? This will not be pretended. Are there no opportunities for societies, or individuals, in Christian nations, to convey the gospel to the heathen? This cannot be pleaded so long as opportunities are found to trade with them, yea, and (what is a disgrace to the name of Christians) to buy them, and sell them, and treat them with worse than savage barbarity? We have opportunities in abundance the improvement of navigation, and the maritime and commercial turn of this country, furnish us with these; and it deserves to be considered whether this is not a circumstance that renders it a duty peculiarly binding on us.

The truth is, if I am not mistaken, we wait for we know not what; we seem to think “the time is not come, the time for the Spirit to be poured down from on high.” We pray for the conversion and salvation of the world, and yet neglect the ordinary means by which those ends have been used to be accomplished. It pleased God, heretofore, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believed; and there is reason to think it will still please God to work by that distinguished means. Ought we not then at least to try by some means to convey more of the good news of salvation to the world around us than has hitherto been conveyed? The encouragement to the heathen is still in force, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved: but how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?” [2]

Fuller's son records that the "impression produced by the sermon was most deep; it is said that the ministers were scarcely able to speak to each other at its close, and they so far committed themselves as to request Mr. Carey to publish his "thoughts." [3] The next spring, Carey preached his famous sermon at Nottingham based on Isaiah 54:2-3 calling on ministers to "expect great things from God" and "attempt great things for God." In 1792, he also published his "thoughts"—An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (PDF). On October 2, 1792, in the home of Mrs. Beeby Wallis, the Particular Baptist Society for Propogating the Gospel Among the Heathen was launched.

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[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, Andrew Fuller. Men Worth Remembering (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1882), 103. [2] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher, vol. 1 (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 147–148. [3] Fuller, Andrew Fuller, 104.

*This post originally appeared on the author's personal blog on March 1, 2015.

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Steve Weaver serves as a research assistant to the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies and a fellow of the Center. He also serves as senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. Steve and his wife Gretta have six children between the ages of 4 and 15. You can read more from Steve at his personal website: Thoughts of a Pastor-Historian.

A Circle of Friends: Reflections on a Letter from Fuller to Carey

By Steve Weaver

I love a letter from Andrew Fuller to William Carey contained in Andrew Gunton Fuller's 1882 biography of his father.[1] It illustrates beautifully the love and collegiality of the circle of friends among whom the modern missionary movement was birthed. In the letter, Fuller indicates that he had been visiting with John Sutcliff, Baptist pastor in Olney, "on missionary concerns" when a letter from Carey (dated October 10, 1798) had arrived, or as he put it, "while I was there, in bolted Carey!" Fuller’s response to the missionary includes updates on all the major characters associated with the early days of the Baptist Missionary Society. Carey, the Society's first missionary, was the recipient of the letter and Fuller, the secretary of the Society from its beginning until his death in 1815, was the author. Fuller knew that Carey would want to know about the welfare of their mutual friends—John Ryland, Jr. (1753–1825), John Sutcliff (1752–1814), and Samuel Pearce (1766–1799).

The fruits of Brother Ryland's labours at Bristol appear to good purpose, not only in a number of spiritual young men in the Academy, but in so charming a group of missionaries as are now going. Brother Sutcliffe has baptized nine lately. He is appointed to supply you with books, and I doubt not but he will magnify his office. Pearce is a wonderful Christian; he preached here last autumn like an apostle, from Psalm xc. 16, 17. Hall, who preached after him, was dismayed at the thought of following him; not so much at an idea of inequality of talents, but of spirit and unction. But whether we shall ever hear him again, God only knows.

There is also a reference to Robert Hall, the younger (1764-1831), the esteemed preacher and son of Robert Hall, the elder (1728–1791). The reference to Hall, who was well-known as a great orator, is striking. When scheduled to preach after Pearce, who Fuller calls simply "a wonderful Christian," Hall feared to follow Pearce due to the latter's "spirit and unction." This letter was likely written in late 1798 or early 1799. Pearce would die within the year on October 10, 1799. His obvious declining health was the reason Fuller added, "But whether we shall ever hear him again, God only knows."

[1]Andrew Gunton Fuller, Andrew Fuller. Men Worth Remembering (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1882), 150-151.

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Steve Weaver serves as a research assistant to the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies and a fellow of the Center. He also serves as senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. Steve and his wife Gretta have six children between the ages of 4 and 15. You can read more from Steve at his personal website: Thoughts of a Pastor-Historian.

“It Is All Right”

By Evan D. Burns

After the death of Ann Hasseltine Judson (1789-1826), Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) wrote to her mother to inform her of Ann’s death.  In his long letter, he weaves together his heavenly-minded piety with his providentialist piety in order to make sense of Ann’s protracted suffering and in order to comfort Ann’s grieving mother.  Here is a small portion of that letter:

Oh, with what meekness, and patience, and magnanimity, and Christian fortitude, she bore those sufferings!  And can I wish they had been less?  Can I sacrilegiously wish to rob her crown of a single gem?  Much she saw and suffered of this evil world; and eminently was she qualified to relish and enjoy the pure and holy rest into which she has entered.  True, she has been taken from a sphere, in which she was singularly qualified, by her natural disposition, her winning manners, her devoted zeal, and her perfect acquaintance with the language, to be extensively serviceable to the cause of Christ; true, she has been torn from her husband’s bleeding heart, and from her darling babe; but infinite wisdom and love have presided, as ever, in this most afflicting dispensation.  Faith decides, that it is all right, and the decision of faith, eternity will soon confirm.[1] 

 [1]Adoniram Judson, “Letter from Rev. Dr. Judson, to Mrs.Hasseltine of Bradford, (Mass.), Amherst, Feb. 4th, 1827,” in The Baptist Missionary Magazine, vol. 7, 89 vols. (Boston: Lincoln & Edmands, 1827), 261–62.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“One Golden Lamp”: The Judson Bible

By Evan D. Burns

I just returned from Myanmar a few days ago where I was teaching an intensive class to MA students (who are mostly pastors).  Because I am researching the spirituality of Adoniram Judson, I took time to travel with a guide to most of the identified Judson sites.  Some are still there and others are covered with buildings.  But the most impressive aspect of the Judson legacy was not the historical/archaeological places to be seen, but it was the superlative place that the Judson Bible still held in the minds and hearts of the Burmese people.  In my quest to discover the heart of Judson’s piety, I have found that the Burmese Bible stands unrivaled as the gold standard for contextualized theological translation theory, and for evangelicals in Myanmar the Bible is their daily food.  They speak of it as though it were just handed to them hot off the printing press for the very first time in their language.  It's amazing how the Judson Bible translation is still revered today, and even among the Buddhists and secular scholars.  In some ways and to some extent, the Judson Bible has become for Burmese what Tyndale's Bible was to the English language and what Luther's Bible was to the German language.

I preached on July 13 in a Baptist church not too far from the jetty where the Judsons first landed 201 years earlier on July 13.  I spoke of the doctrine of justification by faith and the rediscovery of the Word of God during the Reformation.  Luther’s rediscovery of the centrality of the Scriptures became the ground in which the modern missionary movement grew and the ground upon which Judson and evangelical Bible translators have stood.  Judson himself said it well:

Modern missions have been distinguished from the Roman Catholic, and, indeed, from all former missions since apostolic times, by honoring and sounding out the Word of God; and I do believe that those missions which give the highest place to the Divine Word will be most owned of God, and blessed with the influence of the Holy Spirit.  There is only one book in the world which has descended from heaven; or, as I tell the Burmans, there is only one golden lamp which God has suspended from heaven to guide us thither.[1]

[1]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 318-319;  Wayland, Memoir, 2:126-127.  For a very similar statement, consider Judson’s address at the ninth annual meeting of the American and Foreign Bible Society, held May 15, 1846; see:  Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 388-391; Wayland, Memoir, 2:235-238.  

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

A Digest of Scripture

By Evan D. Burns

Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) wrote a handful of tracts for his evangelism/discipleship ministry, one of which was a tract called A Digest of Scripture.[1]  It is written like a primer on basic theology for young believers.  Judson outlines some unique aspects of evangelical doctrine and for living the Christian life.  His chapter titles below demonstrate what he saw as the dominant doctrines taught by Scripture and those doctrines in which faithful believers should abide:

1.  Introduction: Scripture and Wisdom

2. The Being and Attributes of God

3. The Trinity

4. The State of Man

5. The Lord Jesus Christ

6. Salvation Bestowed

7. Salvation Accepted

8. The Evidences of Faith

9. The Benefits of Faith

10. Duty to God

11. Duty to Men

12. Duty to One’s Self

13. Prayer

14. The Church

15. The Extension of the Gospel

16. The Afflictions of Believers

17. Death

18. A Future State

19. The Resurrection

20. The Last Judgment

21. The Retribution of Eternity: Hell, Heaven

[1]Adoniram Judson, A Digest of Scripture: Consisting of Extracts from the Old and New Testaments (Maulmain: American Baptist Mission Press, 1840).

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

Propagate or Perish

By Evan D. Burns

At the centennial celebration of Adoniram Judson’s arrival in Burma (July 13, 1813), many mission leaders came together to commemorate Judson’s life and labour and to reflect on the missionary impulse that dawned during the nineteenth century.  In one interesting address, Rev. H. C. Mabie, D.D., of Boston, traced the influence of evangelical theology upon the missionary movement:

The act of Judson in becoming a Baptist under the circumstances en route to India, was the foremost factor in awakening a body of Christians in America to a denominational and missionary self-consciousness which it had not before known.  This action on the part of Judson and Luther Rice, his associate, served also to broaden all Christendom as concerned active endeavours to reach the heathen.  These pioneers, together with Judson’s predecessor, William Carey, as seconded by Andrew Fuller, the ripest theologian of his time, stood out as a new type of religionist even among the people whose name they bore.  The action thus inaugurated proved not a separatist action, but the addition of a new dynamic to Christendom in the epoch of a hundred years now closed.  The combined influence of the men named in England and America was so transforming that every self-respecting evangelical body throughout the world now has its foreign mission work.  It only illustrates the fact that Christianity must propagate itself or perish.  Life must be lost for the sake of others, if it would be saved.  This is the central paradox in Christ’s religion, the law underlying all divine redemption….  They were but simple expositors of apostolic Christianity.  They served in Providence to bring the Church back to its normal ideas and passion.[1]

[1]Rev. H. C. Mabie, D.D., “The Baptists in World Relations,” The Judson Centennial Celebrations in Burma: 1813-1913, (Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press, 1914), 79-80.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“A Supreme Desire to Please Him”

By Evan D. Burns

In addressing the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Adoniram Judson commended the great calling of following Christ on the missionary road.  A supreme desire to please God is the great motive for missionary service.  This statement captures well the prevailing drive in Judson’s life and labor:

It is of great importance that all who engage in missionary efforts should be influenced by evangelical motives.  It is worse than useless to be prompted by ostentation or a love of notoriety.  Neither should we enter on this work to assure ourselves of our own personal interest in Christ, though such assurance may be desirable.  Neither should the salvation of the heathen be the motive—the primary consideration—though this is unquestionably a legitimate end. What, then, is the prominent, all-constraining impulse that should urge us to make sacrifices in this cause?  There is one Being in the universe that unites in himself all the perfections of Deity with all the purest and tenderest of human nature.  He has at great expense set up a kingdom in this world.  He has set his heart on the enlargement of that kingdom, and is constantly exerting his Divine agency to accomplish that purpose.  A supreme desire to please him is the grand motive that should animate Christians in their missionary efforts.  And in every concern of life we should often look up to that lovely Being and inquire, “Does this please him?”

When I commenced my labors in India there was not an individual beyond the Ganges that had any idea of a God.  Now, in all those extensive regions, the people believe in one Supreme Intelligence.  Then there was not an individual that prayed to the Christian’s God.  Now there are many lovely churches and hundreds of happy Christians.  I mention this, not because the Gospel has not been equally successful in other parts of the world, but because I am better acquainted with that field of missionary labor, and I desired to give you some idea of the success of the Gospel in Eastern Asia.[1]

[1]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 384-385.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“Irrevocably Gone, Indelibly Marked”

By Evan D. Burns

On December 30, 1810, in a letter written to Miss Ann Hasseltine, Adoniram Judson mused on the number of his days in light of eternity, that he would live wisely and faithfully (cf. Ps 90:12).  Every moment is gone forever and irreversibly spent, for better or for worse.  He said:

We have a general intention of living religion; but we intend to begin to-morrow or next year.  The present moment we prefer giving to the world.  ‘A little more sleep, a little more slumber.’  Well, a little more sleep, and we shall sleep in the grave.  A few days, and our work will be done.  And when it is once done, it is done to all eternity.  A life once spent is irrevocable.  It will remain to be contemplated through eternity.  If it be marked with sins, the marks will be indelible.  If it has been a useless life, it can never be improved.  Such it will stand forever and ever.  The same may be said of each day.  When it is once past, it is gone forever.  All the marks which we put upon it, it will exhibit forever.  It will never become less true that such a day was spent in such a manner.  Each day will not only be a witness of our conduct, but will affect our everlasting destiny.  No day will lose its share of influence in determining where shall be our seat in heaven.  How shall we then wish to see each day marked with usefulness!  It will then be too late to mend its appearance.  It is too late to mend the days that are past.  The future is in our power.  Let us, then, each morning, resolve to send the day into eternity in such a garb as we shall wish it to wear forever.  And at night let us reflect that one more day is irrevocably gone, indelibly marked.  Good-night.”[1]

[1]Edward Judson,  Adoniram Judson D.D., His Life and Labours, (13).

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“To Hold Myself in Readiness”

By Evan D. Burns

In 1826, God’s bitter providence had called Ann Judson to her heavenly home and left Adoniram Judson to mourn and continue on in his missionary labor.  After her death, in a letter on December 7, 1826, to Ann’s mother, Adoniram’s heavenly-minded piety shone through the dark night:

I will not trouble you, my dear mother, with an account of my own private feelings—the bitter, heart-rending anguish which for some days would admit of no mitigation, and the comfort which the Gospel subsequently afforded—the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which brings life and immortality to light.  Blessed assurance—and let us apply it afresh to our hearts—that, while I am writing and you perusing these lines, her spirit is resting and rejoicing in the heavenly paradise—

“Where glories shine, and pleasures roll That charm, delight, transport the soul, And every panting wish shall be Possessed of boundless bliss in Thee.”[1]

And there, my dear mother, we also shall soon be, uniting and participating in the felicities of heaven with her for whom we now mourn.  Amen.  Even so come, Lord Jesus.[2]

Approximately six months after Ann’s death, their two-year old daughter Maria was also called home.  In a letter to Ann’s mother on April 26, 1827, Judson recounted his horrible grief and his heavenly hope.

All our efforts, and prayers, and tears could not propitiate the cruel disease; the work of death went forward, and after the usual process, excruciating to a parent’s heart, she ceased to breathe…. The next morning we made her last bed in the small enclosure that surrounds her mother’s lonely grave.  Together they rest in hope, under the hope tree, which stands at the head of the graves; and together, I trust, their spirits are rejoicing after a short separation of precisely six months.  And, I am left alone in the wide world.  My own dear family I have buried; one in Rangoon and two in Amherst.  What remains for me but to hold myself in readiness to follow the dear departed to that blessed world, “Where my best friends, my kindred, dwell, where God my Saviour reigns?”[3]

[1]From a hymn by Isaac Watts.

[2]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 222;  Wayland, Memoir, 1:420-421.

[3]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 230.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“The Best of All Is, God Is With Us”

By Evan D. Burns

Adoniram Judson, after many years of pain and thankless labor, witnessed the death of the chief of the Karen people in Burma.  Most deaths led to sadness because they died without the light of the gospel of Christ (since the Bible was still being translated).  But this death was different than most; this Karen chief died in the Lord.  After witnessing the old dying chief’s conversion and baptism, the mysterious providences that clouded Judson’s life and labors didn’t seem so inscrutable anymore.  Judson rejoiced with the chief that God is indeed with us.  Judson wrote:

The dying words of an aged man of God, when he raised his withered, death-struck arm, and exclaimed, “The best of all is, God is with us.”  I feel in my very soul. Yes, the great Invisible is in these Karen wilds.  That mighty Being, who heaped up these craggy rocks, and reared these stupendous mountains, and poured out these streams in all directions, and scattered immortal beings throughout these deserts—he is present by the influence of his Holy Spirit, and accompanies the sound of the Gospel with converting, sanctifying power.  “The best of all is, God is with us.”

“In these deserts let me labor, On these mountains let me tell How he died—the blessed Saviour, To redeem a world from hell.”[1]

[1]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great, 294.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

“Andrew Fuller’s Calvinist soteriology: a brief response to Emir Caner”

By Michael A.G. Haykin

It was extremely gratifying to see Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) cited as a vital theologian at the onset of the modern missionary movement in Dr. Emir Caner’s recent piece on “Historical Southern Baptist Soteriology” that appeared on the SBC Today website. Usually when Baptists are considered in this regard, the name of William Carey (1761–1834) alone receives mention, and Fuller, who was the theological muscle behind Carey, is forgotten. There were, however, some surprising aspects to Caner’s treatment of Fuller, especially as it relates to Fuller’s Calvinist soteriology. According to the article, Fuller really cannot be considered a Calvinist (something that, by the way, would warm the cockles of the hearts of hyper-Calvinist critics of Fuller like William Gadsby). By 1801, Caner reckons that Fuller had given up the concept of particular redemption for a general redemption, affirmed that “faith is not a gift from God,” and rejected “Total Depravity as articulated by some of his contemporary High [that is, hyper-] Calvinists.”

To read my response in its entirety, please download the full PDF here.

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

“We Reap on Zion’s Hill”

By Evan D. Burns

After a life consumed in service to Christ, on April 12, 1850, Adoniram Judson entered his heavenly rest.  Judson’s eminent biographer, Francis Wayland, comments on the effect of Judson’s heavenly-minded piety on his life and virtue.

In treating of his religious character, it would be an omission not to refer to his habitual heavenly mindedness. In his letters, I know of no topic that is so frequently referred to as the nearness of the heavenly glory.  If his loved ones died, his consolation was that they should all so soon meet in paradise.  If an untoward event occurred, it was of no great consequence, for soon we should be in heaven, where all such trials would either be forgotten, or where the recollection of them would render our bliss the more intense.  Thither his social feelings pointed, and he was ever thinking of the meeting that awaited him with those who with him had fought the good fight, and were now wearing the crown of victory. So habitual were these trains of thought, that a person well acquainted with him remarks, that “meditation on death was his common solace in all the troubles of life.”  I do not know that the habitual temper of his mind can in any words be so well expressed as in the following lines, which he wrote in pencil on the inner cover of a book that he was using in the compilation of his dictionary:

“—In joy or sorrow, health or pain, Our course be onward still; We sow on Burmah’s barren plain, We reap on Zion’s hill.”[1]

[1]Wayland, Memoir, 2:381-382.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

Uneducated Ministers?

By Evan D. Burns

Sometimes theological education can be downplayed as though it were an unnecessary hobby for left-brained seminarians.  Unfortunately, rigorous biblical/theological training can be disparaged and treated as peripheral for “real” ministry to “real” people with “real” problems.  Doctrine divides, Jesus unites; deeds, not creeds; practical application, not propositional truth… so goes the post-modern, anti-authoritarian mantra.  One of the most oft-cited examples supposedly in support of this anti-intellectualism is that Jesus chose uneducated simpletons to be his disciples, not the highfalutin scribes and Pharisees, as though pure spirituality corresponds to untrained simple faith.  However, this is not the case.  Eckhard Schnabel explains in Early Christian Missionvol.1, 277-278:

The calling of the twelve disciples in Galilee must not be burdened with the view that Jesus called uneducated Galileans to the task of preaching and teaching.  It is rather probable that Jesus’ disciples, including the fishermen Simon and Andrew, were educated.

According to John 1:44, Peter, Andrew and Philip came from Bethsaida, an up-and-coming town that was granted the status of a polis in A.D. 30 and was located in the vicinity of the Greek city Caesarea Philippi.  Rainer Riesner argues that people “who grew up in such close proximity to a Hellenistic city must have spoken more than a few scraps of Greek.  Thus John 12:21 presupposes that Philip could speak Greek.”  Andrew, Philip and Simon had Greek names, which may not be coincidental.  Riesner observes, “The Galilean fishermen in Jesus’ group of disciples belonged not to the rural lower class but to the vocational middle class.  As the latter had religious interests, we may assume a certain degree of education in the case of the disciples such as Peter and John….  We may assume that several disciples came from that segment of the Jewish people who displayed religious interests and that they received, like Jesus, a good elementary education in the parental home, in the synagogue and in elementary school.”  A Jew who came from a pious background “had a solid, albeit one-sided, education.  He could read and write and he could retain large quantities of material in his memory by applying simple mnemonic devices….  Whether a boy of the lower classes received an elementary education depended on two preconditions:  the piety of the father and the existence of a synagogue in the village.”

The view that Jesus had untutored disciples is a romantic and entirely unwarranted one.  Note, for example, the calling of Matthew-Levi, a tax collector….  A tax collector belonged to the higher levels of society.  His position presupposed not only that he was wealthy but also that he had…education.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

Audio of Conference on Adoniram Judson Now Online

By Steve Weaver

We have posted the audio of our recent mini-conference with Dr. Jason Duesing (Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) on the conference page (see left hand column). There are two lectures on the life and ministry of Judson and a Q&A session with Dr. Duesing.

The audio of the lectures are below:

Lecture 1: The Life and Ministry of Adoniram Judson, Part 1:  Conversion, Consecration, & Commission, 1788-1812 (MP3)

Lecture 2: The Life and Ministry of Adoniram Judson, Part 2:  Baptism, Burma, & the Bible, 1812-1850 (MP3)

Q&A: Q&A on the Life and Ministry of Adoniram Judson(MP3)

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Steve Weaver serves as a research assistant to the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies and a fellow of the Center. He also serves as senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. Steve and his wife Gretta have six children.

Introducing the Ministry of Evan D. Burns

By Steve Weaver

Those who read this blog on a regular basis are not strangers to Evan D. Burns. Evan is one of our most faithful contributors to the blog, regularly providing excerpts from the writings of Andrew Fuller, Adoniram Judson, and others. What you may not realize is that, while he is working on a Ph.D. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Evan and his family are also serving as missionaries in southeast Asia. Evan is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Southeast Asia with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

A few months ago, the Burns put together the video below for their supporters to inform them about their ministry.

[embed width=380]http://vimeo.com/80592098[/embed]

Video Description: Evan and Kristie Burns, and their two sons, live in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Evan works with the Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and Training Leaders International, to train Christian leaders from around SE Asia. This video shares about some of the needs in the region and the work that Evan and his family are doing to meet those needs.

To get in touch with Evan about his ministry, just leave a comment below and I will forward it along to him.

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Steve Weaver serves as a research assistant to the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies and a fellow of the Center. He also serves as senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. Steve and his wife Gretta have six children.