Waiting for Jack to give the thumbs up. Okay, thumbs up. Here we go. Let’s pray.
Lord, we are thankful that You are the worthy One. Lord, as we have considered You this morning, we see that there is only one worthy One. And we are so blessed to be those who can call You our Brother.
We are thankful that You have not left us alone. We have an elder Brother who walks with us, who keeps us, and who is that very present help. Lord, we are looking for Your very presence as we come to Your Word this morning.
Lord, as we want to continue to look at the history of the testimony of Jesus, boy, it is about You. We want to continue to be those who are learning more and more of You, considering the fullness of the great work You have done throughout the centuries, and considering the call You have upon our lives in these last days.
We are thankful that we can offer ourselves to You, that You could be working within each of our hearts and lives, that Your testimony would shine forth through us to Your glory and honor. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
There is a Scripture I would like for us to start with. It is in Ephesians 3:17-19, and I think, to me, this Scripture really speaks of the nineteenth century, which we will be considering this time and probably the next time or so.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
and that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
You know, during this nineteenth century that we will be considering, you really see the love of God manifest in its fullness in so many wonderful ways.
You see the height of it, because there is this revelation where ones start to gather a glimpse of what is the church, the true unity that we have been called into in Christ, and the heavenly nature of the church. There is a height that we are brought up to.
Also, during the nineteenth century, there is a depth of God’s love that we are brought into through movements like Keswick and some other movements that teach us this matter of the inner life, the deeper life, the exchange life that we have with Christ: Christ in us, and us in Christ. There is a depth there that goes on during this century.
There is also a width that we see among the love of Christ being expressed, where all believers are embracing one another in a marvelous way. There is a standing and a gathering with one another, really seeing the love of Christ made manifest to one another.
And also, there is the length of the love of Christ. The length that it goes to is seen in the spread of the gospel throughout the world. Where it had mainly been in Europe, it spread throughout China, India, and many other places. We see the length of God’s love expressed to those who in those days were called heathen, and we are thankful for it.
As we look at the nineteenth century, it is helpful to get a glimpse of what was going on during that time through some of the significant world events. I am going to group these in a way.
We see the consolidation of some powers. The United States is growing. Napoleon is there at his zenith of power. We see Victoria and the British Empire being strengthened.
Also, after this first part, after Napoleon’s death, there is a period of general peace throughout the world until World War I. There was not the turmoil that existed in the latter part of the eighteenth century, except, obviously, in this country during the Civil War. There was a general peace and prosperity going on.
But also, we see Freud during this time with his writings; Darwin with On the Origin of Species; Karl Marx with The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital; and Nietzsche with Thus Spake Zarathustra. The Superman is introduced. Man is not of any use anymore; there is going to be a Superman to take over.
So, even though God is working, there is also this counterwork going on. If you look at those four men—Freud, Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche—you see the impact that four men used of the enemy could have upon mankind. We are still suffering from that in this day and time, and believers are having to stand against it.
Also, from an expansion point of view, the world starts to grow a little closer together. We have the first telegraph cable all the way across the Atlantic. Now Europe and the United States can communicate with one another. Tremendous revolution there.
In the United States, there is the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The golden spike was nailed at that point. The Suez Canal also made transportation so much easier.
If you read many of the prophetic messages during this time, things were starting to go back and forth so much easier than in the past. They literally thought that the Lord’s return was near because, in Daniel 12:4, when it speaks of the end times, it says:
Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
When the transcontinental railroad was finished, that golden spike was a great prophetic moment. Everybody said, “People can go to and fro across the United States now. The Lord is coming soon.”
So we see how all of these movements were really awakening people to what God is doing and what He continues to do. That is kind of the situation of the world in a very broad, general way.
But we are more interested in what is going on among God’s people. There are many significant things, and we are just going to look at the first couple this morning.
There is obviously an increased burden for worldwide missions, and also independent groups are birthed throughout the United States, Europe, and Britain. Probably next time we will look at the Oxford Movement, which was a liberal movement; Christianity in Russia, which we have not touched on much; the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting; the Keswick Convention; and many great preachers whom we benefit from today who ministered during this time.
So there is a lot that goes on during this century. We see what God is doing in a wonderful way to express the height and depth, the length and breadth, of His love for all mankind.
First, we will start with this worldwide mission movement. As we look at these ones, it is actually hard to pick just a few. I have picked a few here, but there are many others who are not on this list.
These first three—William Carey, Robert Morrison, and David Livingstone—were really pioneers in the areas of India, China, and Africa. If you measured them by the fruit of their labors, none of them were, quote, “that successful.” But what they did was go in and lay a foundation. They broke the ice, we could say, for others to follow and come in.
You know, we love to measure success in one way, and God measures it another way. These were the ones, the pioneers, who went in.
They were not only facing opposition from the heathen to whom they went, but the attitude within much of the church at that time is reflected in William Carey’s interview when he was getting ready to go to India.
He was expressing his burden to those in leadership where he gathered, and he was abruptly interrupted and told, “Young man, sit down. You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting you or me. He can do it without your help.”
Okay, what a word of encouragement to go forth. I mean, the sovereignty of God is a true statement, but not in the spirit of God or in what He desires among His people. But praise God, that did not impact William Carey. He still went forth to India.
Carey went into northern India. The Moravians had been in southern India in the previous century and had a wonderful testimony there, but Carey was in northern India. One thing he was doing was translating the Bible into many of the various languages and dialects of India.
One of the quotes that really touched my heart from Carey, and I think is so applicable for us wherever we are in life, is this:
I am not afraid of failure. I am afraid of succeeding at things that do not matter.
You know, our careers, our sports careers, our hobbies, and all of this stuff—I am afraid of succeeding at things that do not matter. What a convicting thing: really putting the Lord in His rightful place and allowing Him to have that preeminence in our lives.
Carey really went in and opened the door there for India, as others came in afterward. We are very thankful for him.
Then we go over to Robert Morrison. He went to China and was in the Canton region. At that point, they were restricted; they could not go into inland China but could only stay right along the coast.
It is amazing what these ones went through. As Morrison was sailing on the boat over to China, the captain said, “Mr. Morrison, do you really expect to make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese Empire?”
And he answered, “No, sir, but I expect God will.”
Praise God. He knew he had a right perspective and a right attitude. That is encouraging for us. Maybe for some of the ones who are still in school or at work, people may ask, “Do you really think you are going to have an impression on those in your school? Are you going to have an impression on those at work?”
No, but God will. Are we going to let Him work through us for His testimony and for His sake? You know, that is what it is about. That was the attitude of these dear ones.
As Morrison was in China, Britain and China were having many discussions over opium. Morrison was trying to negotiate a settlement between Britain and China. He ended up dying, and then they had the First Opium War. That is beyond our history here.
But he did translate the New Testament and the Old Testament into Chinese. During his time there, he saw only ten Chinese baptized. Through all of his efforts and years there, he was laying a groundwork for others. We are thankful for that.
Then one who went into Africa was David Livingstone. Now, Livingstone was both an explorer and a missionary. His goal, besides the gospel, was to find the source of the Nile River. Where does the Nile start?
As he went over there, he was mainly traveling through the region that is now called Zambia. He married Mary Moffat, the daughter of another missionary, Robert Moffat. They were married seventeen years, but she died of malaria. Malaria was a big thing back then.
When he returned to Africa after her death, he was exploring and meeting many different ones there. He suffered from pneumonia and malaria. When you read about some of these ones and the illnesses they went through, most of them served in a weakened condition.
There were not many of these early missionaries who were full of physical strength. Because of the conditions they were in, something—pneumonia, malaria, or some other illness—had really weakened them physically. It is a testimony to the grace of God keeping them in spite of their physical conditions.
Probably one of the things the world knows about Livingstone is when Stanley came and met him. Stanley was looking for him because everybody wanted to hear about Livingstone’s explorations.
One of the stories is that Stanley greeted him, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” He was the only white guy in Africa, so—but nobody is quite sure whether the story is real or not, because Stanley put it in his diary and then deleted it later. So we do not know.
Livingstone ended up living his whole life there. He died of malaria and internal bleeding due to dysentery.
Now, those of you with a tender stomach, just close your ears for a minute. He was so honored there that, when he died, they cut his heart out and buried it there in Zambia, and there is still a marker there. Then they embalmed his body and took it back. The rest of him is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Okay, you can open your ears again now, if you are too tender.
I appreciated Livingstone and the value he placed on service to the Lord. He said:
I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.
And then, as he looked at his call to go out to Africa:
If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?
People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. It is emphatically no sacrifice, but rather it is a privilege.
You know, that is the life. We talk about how we might have to give up this or that, but these ones laid down their lives. They had a heavenly vision of what the Lord had called upon their lives. They saw Christ, considered Him, and He was a reality to them.
You do not go through some of these things merely with a concept. There is a knowing of Him in a very special way, and we are thankful for them.
One we are a little more familiar with is Hudson Taylor. He was able to get into China even more.
When Hudson Taylor was born, his father prayed, “Lord, grant that he may work for You in China.” He came from a very godly family, and his family really committed him to the Lord even from birth.
At the age of twenty-one, he sailed for China and arrived at one of the treaty ports of Nanking. Because of the relationship between China and the Western world, there were certain ports along the coast that foreigners could come to, basically for commerce and trade. There were five ports, called treaty ports, but one could not get into the rest of China.
One of the revolutionary things Hudson Taylor did was that, when he got there, he saw how some of the other Western missionaries were still dressed in coat suits and ties. They lived separately and were trying to Westernize the Chinese.
But Taylor felt from the Lord that the way to reach them with the gospel was to go and be with them. So he started dressing like a Chinese man. He grew one of the little pigtails, learned to speak Chinese, and lived among them. He did not separate himself from them, but identified with them.
He wanted them to know that Christ identified with them, and therefore he was going to identify with them and share the love of Christ.
He started one mission work in Ningpo, but it did not last that long. He married Maria, who also had a wonderful passion for China. When they first got married, they had such a heart that they burned out in two or three years and had to return to England for a period of rest.
When he was in England, he again had this burden for China. This was when he formed the China Inland Mission that we are familiar with today.
A year later, he sailed from England with his family and sixteen China Inland Mission missionaries whom he had gathered together.
The principles he set with the China Inland Mission may not sound so dramatic to us, but they were revolutionary back then.
They were really looking to Him as the Lord, their Provider. Praise God, throughout the history of Taylor and the China Inland Mission, the Lord honored that.
He also wanted the China Inland Mission work to be overseen in China, not by some foreign home office. Oftentimes mission work was monitored and controlled by a home office back in England or the United States, and they had no idea what was going on on the ground over there. He saw the necessity of leadership being there.
Also, they were going to press into the interior of China. In China, and it is pretty similar today, a huge percentage of the population lives right along the coast—in Shanghai and the various cities there. Then you have this huge inland country where there are not as many people.
Most of the missionaries at that time were right along the coast, but Taylor had a burden for those in the interior parts of China, the more difficult areas too. That is what he wanted to do.
He also said that, when they were with the Chinese, they would not only speak Chinese but continue to wear Chinese clothing and worship in Chinese-style buildings. Some people would go over to China and build a church building in the style of London, then rebuild it in China.
He said, “No, if we are in China, we need to be as the Chinese.” Whatever country you are in, if they have a certain style of architecture, that is what you would do—not import something from another country.
Something else that was very dramatic at that point was that single women were fully capable of serving as missionaries. People just did not believe that at that point in time, but Taylor saw the value of how single women could go and serve just as anybody else. Many of them were greatly used by the Lord in a wonderful way to spread the gospel.
One of the things that happened as Hudson Taylor went on was that, in 1869, he experienced what he called the exchange life. Through all of his service, he had never entered into rest. He always felt like he had to prove himself to the Lord.
He was struggling. He wanted to find faith, wanted to be faithful, and was really exerting himself and striving to please God, to be at rest with Him, and to be at peace with Him. But he never could find this place of rest. All of his efforts were exhausting to him.
Finally, he found the exchange life. It is summarized in this letter to his sister. He was pretty honest here:
When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus, as I had never known it before.
McCarthy was another China Inland Mission missionary. Praise God, Taylor saw the oneness. He came into seeing how he was in Christ and Christ was in him. There was a strengthening, liberating effect that came.
He said:
McCarthy had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, and he wrote me: “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”
He came into a rest. He entered into resting in Him, not striving to strengthen his faith and being like that little engine: “I know I can’t. I know I can’t. I have to have more faith.” He entered into a rest when he saw the fullness of who the Lord was and what He had done.
He continues:
As I read, I saw it all. “If we believe not, He abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus, and saw. And when I saw, oh, how joy flowed! That He had said, “I will never leave you.” Ah, there is rest! I thought, “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I will strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me, never to leave me, never to fail me?” And, dearie, He never will.
Praise God for the rest that he entered into. Because of this, he had that little booklet, The Exchange Life. Many believers’ lives have been transformed through this exchange life, the transaction that Hudson Taylor had in coming into rest in Christ and abiding in Christ, in spite of all the difficulties and challenges of life.
It is a tremendous ministry that he has, and we are all deeply indebted for what the Lord showed him and how he was able to share it.
Sadly, after this, his dear wife Maria died in 1871. He married again, to another sister, Jennie Faulding, who was a missionary over there. By then, the China Inland Mission had grown to about fifty-two missionaries and continued spreading inward.
Taylor had mapped out China, saw all the different provinces, and wanted certain missionaries to go to each area.
In 1885, a group called the Cambridge Seven came to China. The most famous one was C. T. Studd, and one of the Cambridge Seven ended up leading the China Inland Mission after Hudson Taylor’s retirement.
The Cambridge Seven were seven young men who had just finished university at Cambridge. They were all from very aristocratic, elite families. They were medical doctors and lawyers, very high up in society. The Lord touched their lives through Hudson Taylor’s ministry, and they gave up everything they had and moved to China to serve the Lord.
They were so famous that, before they left, they would go throughout England and the British Isles and attract huge crowds. Perhaps some of this went to their heads, because on the long boat ride to China they refused to study and prayed to receive the Chinese language supernaturally.
They had such confidence in the Lord: “Lord, we do not have to study Chinese. You are going to teach us. Give us a Chinese tongue.” Well, the Lord did not. They got there and studied. Okay.
But you appreciate their zeal and their faith in Him. Maybe their heads did get a little puffed up, but the Lord had a way of humbling them and using them.
Tragically, later on, about 1900, the Boxer Rebellion occurred. This was a tremendous rebellion against foreigners. It was anti-foreign, anti-Christian, and anti-imperialist. A Chinese group of people from a certain area, nicknamed the Boxers, went around slaughtering Westerners.
Fifty-eight China Inland Mission missionaries were killed. There were about 136 missionaries killed in total, plus Roman Catholic priests and nuns, thirty thousand Chinese Catholics, and a couple thousand Chinese Protestants. We do not really know who knew the Lord or what, but it was a massive slaughter.
There was a reaction against the Westernization that was coming into China, and they said no.
But Hudson Taylor faithfully made it through this. He ended up dying and was buried there in China, in Hunan Province. This one man, at a young age, had a great vision. He sought the Lord, and the Lord honored him.
I appreciate some of his quotes:
God is not looking for men of great faith. He is looking for common men to trust His great faithfulness.
You know, that is the thing: His faithfulness.
There are three stages in the work of God: the impossible, the difficult, and the done.
It starts with the impossible, then moves to only being difficult, and then it is done. That is the work of God. Praise God for that.
Taylor also said:
It is not so much the greatness of our troubles as the littleness of our spirit which makes us complain.
In the country he was in, and in the difficult situations he faced, there were plenty of opportunities for complaint. They had reasons for complaint. But he saw that it was not the situations; it was the littleness of his spirit, the littleness of how much he was really entering into the Lord. It changed his attitude.
He also said:
Let us never forget: what we are is more important than what we do.
Christ in us—that what we are is far more important. It is like we looked at in the prophet Haggai: the message was in the messenger. That is the key there. The Lord is wanting His life formed in us. He is far more interested in that than in what we are doing.
Sometimes we place service, the doing, far above anything else.
Mary Slessor’s hero in life was David Livingstone. He was her whole inspiration. She went to what is now called Nigeria, to Calabar, and ended up there with such a wonderful reputation that she was called the White Queen of Calabar.
She grew up in a really difficult situation. Her father was an alcoholic, and she was forced to work in a factory. She was not able to get an education. But at about the age of twenty-eight, on her own, she sailed to Nigeria as a missionary and teacher.
She was there pretty much the rest of her life, except for some trips back home after she had gotten sick. She set up various stations and gained the respect of the tribal chiefs there in Africa.
One thing she was able to accomplish, because she gained their respect, was to stop the infanticide of twins. In their superstition, if twins were born, they thought they were cursed. They thought one of the fathers was the devil.
They could not tell which one of the twins was of the devil and which one was natural, so they killed them both.
One evening, she found little twins wrapped in a blanket outside a tribal area. They would abandon the twins out in the woods for the animals to eat them. She rescued this pair, discovered what was happening, and began confronting the tribal chiefs.
She was a little lady, but she would get in their faces: “Why are you doing this?” They gained respect for her. At times, they would have tribal meetings with all the chiefs from the surrounding tribes, and she was included in the meetings to express her opinion on what they should and should not be doing.
When you think about this little lady, what she had was the power of God.
Another thing she was able to stop in Nigeria was the practice of drinking poison to prove one’s innocence. There was a poisonous plant, and if they were trying somebody and did not know whether they were guilty or not, they would say, “Okay, drink this poison. If you are innocent, you will be okay.”
Well, if it is poison, it did not matter a lot—you were dead. So she was finally able to get them to stop that.
At her death, she was so well known that there was a great joint British and Nigerian state funeral.
One thing I appreciated about her spirit is that many people would say, “You are just a single lady out there.” She said:
Why should I fear? I am on a royal mission. I am in the service of the King of kings.
Some would point out her power as a woman, and she said:
When you think of the woman’s power, you forget the power of the woman’s God. I shall go on.
She was not there as a women’s liberator. She was there to represent the Lord. She saw prayer as the greatest power God has put into our hands for service.
Praying is harder than doing—at least I find it so. But the dynamic lies that way to advance the kingdom of God.
Praise God. Sometimes we can be so busy, and it can be easier to do than to pray. We need to be those who stop and pray.
Also, we have C. T. Studd, this famous English cricket champion. He was challenged in the Lord by D. L. Moody through his father. He was one of the Cambridge Seven that we spoke of.
When his father died and he gained all of his father’s inheritance—the millions and millions—he gave it all away. He gave it to the Lord. He went to China first, then India, and then, in 1910, he traveled to Africa, to what was then called the Belgian Congo and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He served there until his death.
Studd was a famous English cricketer. That may not mean much to us, but it was kind of like Steph Curry or Tom Brady giving it all up and walking away. That is what it was at that point in time.
I appreciate his zeal for the lost:
Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell;
I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
He was there to rescue them. He was pretty blunt:
Christ does not want nibblers of the possible; He wants grabbers of the impossible.
I appreciate his fighting spirit:
I pray that when I die, all hell will have a party to celebrate the fact that I am no longer in the fight.
He wanted to be a fighter. He said, “I want to fight so much that hell would even celebrate when I die.”
Then he said:
True Christianity is like smallpox. If you get it, you give it to others, and it spreads.
Okay, that is the gospel going forth there.
Then we come over to Amy Carmichael. Many are familiar with her and her writings. At a young age, she decided to follow Jesus.
At about the age of eighteen, she established what was called the Welcome in Belfast for the Shawlies. Do you know why they were called Shawlies? They wore shawls around their dresses. They could not afford coats and various things. These were girls who worked in the mills and were really enslaved there.
Then they asked her to move to Manchester, England, to serve there, and she had a great gospel outreach. She heard Hudson Taylor share at Keswick on the missionary life, so she made her first missionary journey to Japan.
She became ill and returned to England. Then, in 1895, she moved to India to serve and stayed with a family called the Walkers in southern India. They taught her the language.
In 1901, she started what was called the Dohnavur Fellowship to rescue young girls. At that point in time, young girls in India were put into temples and served there as prostitutes for the temples.
There was one young girl named Preena. She was in the temple, and Amy Carmichael was becoming aware of the activities. Preena escaped from the temple and came and hid with Amy Carmichael. This was before she had the work going.
Carmichael knew she could not just turn her back in. So she opened up her home, and they ended up having Dohnavur for the protection of these young girls.
It was a tremendous work and really went against the culture at that point in time. With the old caste society in India, many of the younger ones were either sold or abandoned. They would go into the temples as prostitutes for the priests and as money-making for the gods there. It was really tragic.
Later on, she added a home for young boys. Sadly, in 1931, there was a tragic accident. She was surveying an area where she was thinking about buying a building, and there was a ditch that was supposed to have been filled in, but it was not.
She fell and broke her leg and ankle, and also damaged her hip and back pretty severely. She was bedridden for the rest of her life. But out of that came books like Rose from Brier, many precious books to encourage one.
She was bedridden, but it did not stop her ministry. She continued to minister in what would appear to be a helpless state. Finally, she passed away in Dohnavur in 1951.
She started off young, caring for the ones, and she got a little older there and was called Amma, which means Mama, mother, tender loving mother.
With her quotes, she said:
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
She also said:
Satan is much more in earnest than we are. He buys up the opportunity while we are still wondering how much it will cost.
And here is her testing of the love of the Lord:
If the praise of others elates me, and their blame depresses me;
if I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself;
if I love to be loved more than to love, to be served more than to serve,
then I know nothing of Calvary love.
She said she would rather burn out than rust out. She wanted to keep on burning for the Lord.
Her prayer in this regard was expressed in a little poem:
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire.Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, O Flame of God.
She wanted to stay burning, on fire for the Lord, in a very precious way. That was her.
As we have seen these various ones, we see the length the Lord went to in the love of God and how He captured their hearts in a wonderful way.
Also, during this time, the Lord was moving throughout the world in many wonderful ways to raise up various independent assemblies.
There were several factors. It resulted from the Great Awakening that we had seen throughout the United States and Britain, with ones really coming to the Lord. There was also greater access to Bibles, and literacy was increasing. People could read; they could have a Bible in their language and read it.
So ones were starting to see what God’s heart and purpose was in gathering together. Many were gathering together. They did not have to gather under a certain name or in a certain form, but could gather in the simplicity of Him.
In fact, in 1818, there was a group in New York City that sent a letter out and published it in many newspapers, seeking to find ones meeting like them. Within a couple of years, they had received over forty responses from the United States, Britain, and Europe.
These were groups meeting like them in the simplicity of gathering around the Lord’s Table, the simplicity of being in the Word, and being a testimony unto Him.
Various ones were used throughout Scotland, Wales, Britain, and Europe to really put forth the Word. We are thankful for how there was a clarity of the testimony that they had at first, and they were generally faithful for about a generation.
Sadly, many of these ended up becoming denominations later on. The work in Scotland that had started independently eventually became the Free Church of Scotland, as opposed to the official church. Even in the United States, ones who started off just on their own ended up becoming the Disciples of Christ, the Church of Christ, and various other things.
Probably the best-known movement to us is the Brethren movement. I am just going to use that term. They did not call themselves that at first; they referred to themselves as brothers. But because they referred to themselves as brothers, people called them the Brethren.
There was a growing awareness of the need for the demonstration of true fellowship in localities based on the Lord and not church membership. Some of these dear brothers would visit different churches, and unless they became members of that church, they were not welcome there and could not participate.
But they saw in the Scripture that there was another way.
In 1825, Edward Cronin and Henry Hutchinson broke bread together in Cronin’s house. At the same time, in another part of Dublin, John Parnell and various ones were meeting. They joined with Anthony Norris Groves, Cronin, Wilson, and others, and moved to the home of Hutchinson.
These two groups in Dublin finally became aware of each other in 1827 and started meeting together. They came from all types of backgrounds. Some were doctors, some lawyers, and some were just what we would call regular old folk. But they referred to each other simply as brother. They did not go by names or titles.
During this time, we also had prophetic conferences going on, first at Albury under Henry Drummond, and then later at Powerscourt Castle.
Powerscourt Castle was owned by Lady Powerscourt. She was similar to Lady Huntingdon of the previous century: a very rich widow who had a heart for the Lord and was totally given to Him.
She had been stirred by Drummond’s prophetic teachings and also became acquainted with the Brethren. She would host conferences at her estate, and the Brethren would meet there. She was very supportive of them.
That was her little home there. Cecilia, you have been there, right? Is Cecilia in here? All right. Yeah, she has been there. You can actually go tour it now.
Lady Powerscourt was a really powerful lady. She almost married Darby. The stories vary about whether they were officially engaged or not, but many of the Brethren recommended that Darby not marry her because of the call that God had upon his life. So he broke off the relationship.
That makes some think perhaps she died of a broken heart, because she died at the age of thirty-six. We do not know that, but we see how the Lord used her in a powerful way to help the Brethren at this time.
Then Darby enters the picture. In 1828, he starts to meet with them in Dublin. At this time, he writes one of the clearest pamphlets and testimonies about the church, called Considerations on the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ.
It shows our oneness in Christ and the true heavenly calling of the church. Darby’s writings are not always so easy to understand, but there is a clarity here of the burden. He summarized and captured the call that God had shown.
Really, all throughout England and Ireland, other similar meetings were starting.
In 1829, Groves left for Baghdad and India. He felt the Lord’s call, and there was a witness there. He suffered greatly. He lost his wife and youngest child in a plague in Baghdad, but pressed on to India.
Groves is called the father of faith missions because he did not ask for money or let his needs be known. He just pressed on and knew God would provide, and He did.
In 1832, Darby moved to Plymouth. This became the most famous assembly, which is why they are often called the Plymouth Brethren in the sense of referring to all of them.
Also at that time, George Müller and Henry Craik began their work at Bethesda Chapel in Bristol and opened their first orphan home pretty soon after that. Robert Chapman moved to Barnstaple to minister. We will talk a little more about Robert Chapman in a minute.
Darby was accepting more and more invitations to spend time in Europe, in Switzerland and elsewhere. Then, after seven years, he returned to the meeting in Plymouth and accused Newton that some of what Newton was preaching was heresy.
After six months, Darby announced that he was quitting the meeting. Robert Chapman later told him, when Darby said, “I waited six months,” “You should have waited six years.”
Chapman was that apostle of love whom we will touch on in a minute. Soon after Darby left that meeting, they started another meeting in Plymouth with some other Brethren.
By 1847, within a couple of years, Newton had been confronted with the error of his ways. Newton was not a very clear speaker. He was very obtuse, which means you are not very clear in the way you speak.
If you liked Newton, you would take what he said one way. If you did not like him, you could take it another way. But as these things were pointed out to him, he publicly wrote a statement and a pamphlet acknowledging certain doctrinal errors he had committed.
Sadly, even after he repented and humbled himself, he was still rejected by his accusers. They would not receive him back.
To me, this is one of the most tragic things in history. He was trying to repent, and ones did not accept his repentance. That is a slippery slope, brothers and sisters, when we start judging one’s repentance.
Only God can do that. Sadly, throughout history, there have been many times when ones have repented but others have not accepted that repentance. Brothers and sisters, when we start evaluating and judging the genuineness of someone’s repentance, it is a slippery slope, and it is tragic.
That is where the value of fellowship comes in. Love covers a multitude of sins, and love suffers long. What is true will come out in the Lord’s timing. What is not of Him will also come out.
I wish Darby had waited a little longer. Maybe they could have had more fellowship. I do not know all the detailed circumstances, but there was a way through. The only thing I know is that there was a way through in the Lord for this. It did not have to go this way.
Would we find the Lord’s way in this and be able to keep pressing on?
A couple of years later, two brothers from Plymouth visited Bethesda Chapel, where Müller and Craik were. After Darby heard about this, he wrote to Bethesda and said that since ones had come from the Plymouth meeting, where in his opinion there was heresy, Bethesda should exclude them from fellowship.
Bethesda did not respond at first, so Darby wrote again. Then Bethesda responded, “We are a separate locality and will not judge what goes on in other places. If ones bring heresy to us, we will judge it.”
Because of this, Darby disagreed with that conclusion. He excommunicated the Bethesda Assembly and said that if anyone could go to the Bethesda Assembly, they could not go to his.
That brought about a great division within the Brethren movement. It is tragic how, within twenty years, what started so wonderfully ended up being one of the shortest-lived testimonies in history.
The enemy came in like a flood, but flesh and blood opened the door. There was flesh and blood between Darby and Newton. Whatever their personality differences, flesh and blood opened the door, and the enemy took advantage of it. How tragic it is.
That division led to what are now called the Open Brethren, who were more with Müller and the ones gathered with him, and the Exclusive Brethren, who were more with Darby. It continues to today.
The sad thing is that, with certain ones among the Open Brethren, you can become more and more open to anything. You become so open that you lose the testimony.
The Exclusive Brethren, on their part, become more and more exclusive, excluding different ones. There are various testimonies of ones in the Exclusive Brethren who, at the end of their lives, could only have a brother, husband, and wife together. They could not fellowship with anybody else. Nobody met up to their criteria.
Once you draw the line here, then something else occurs and you draw another line. The line just keeps going. It is one of the great tragedies that we have.
We have been influenced by the Brethren here in this assembly, and that is one reason we are probably more familiar with it. But there is a great lesson there that we need to learn.
Within this room, we have varied opinions, thoughts, and personalities. There are plenty of opportunities in this room for division, okay?
But the one reason we are together is Christ. That Table—that is why we are here.
We are not here because we believe this or that, because we have various interpretations of the Lord’s coming, the way an assembly should be structured, the way music should be handled, how children should be taught, or what books should be read.
Everybody has all their various things. But we need to see that our oneness is in Christ. We have to fight for that.
There is a unity that we have in Christ that is under attack in this day of attack. We have to be fighting violently for that, or else we will just continue to have one or two picked off here and one or two picked off there.
Brethren, we are for each other. It is a great battle. We are not perfect by far. What are we here? We are a room full of sinners. We are a room full of sinners saved by grace. That is it.
All of our knowledge about this and that is really of little value when it comes down to the reality of maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace that we have in Christ. That is the issue, brothers and sisters. That is what we have to strive for and maintain.
We must maintain it so that these ones who are a little bit younger, if the Lord delays, will have something to enter into. They can enter into the goodness of the Lord.
As you read history, one of the challenges you face in reading Brethren history is whether you are reading a Brethren history book by the Open Brethren or a Brethren history book by the Exclusive Brethren.
The Open Brethren paint Darby as a devil. The Exclusive Brethren paint Darby as a saint. Who was Darby? Darby was like each one of us.
We are saints, but we are sinners. He was a great man of God with great faults. Watchman Nee, T. Austin-Sparks, whoever you want to name: great men of God, but with great faults. We all have sin. We are sinners saved by grace. May we learn some lessons here.
Many are familiar with George Müller and the great work that he did with orphanages. I am just going to touch on it. If you want to know anything at all about George Müller, we actually have an expert here. Talk to Bob. Bob is Mr. George Müller.
I am sharing about George Müller with fear and trembling because I know Bob is sitting there. Now that I have utterly embarrassed him, forgive me, brother.
Müller was born in Prussia and educated in Halle, where Zinzendorf had been educated and Franke had started the work. As he came to London, he got sick and was introduced to a brother named Henry Craik, who introduced him to the Brethren.
Müller married Anthony Norris Groves’s sister, Mary. Then they moved to Bristol to serve at Bethesda Chapel. When they went there, the people who had served there before had a salary, but they gave up their salary. They never had a salary.
In 1836, they opened their first children’s home for thirty children. By 1870, they had housing to accommodate two thousand children and two hundred staff. Over his time there, they cared for and educated over ten thousand children. They fed them—praise God.
Never once did they ask for funds, make their needs known, or do any fundraising. They did not even do it in a subtle way.
There is the story of the old preacher who never would ask for a raise, but he would lead the congregation in prayer from the front of the pulpit while kneeling and facing forward, with holes in his shoes. No subtle hints or anything like that.
There are wonderful testimonies of the Lord’s provision. The first home was on Wilson Street, and then there was the big complex that he finally ended up with—the orphan homes. You can still visit it today. It is there because Bob visited it. Oh, both of them did. Okay.
With Müller’s quotes, one I love is this:
My eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God who controls every circumstance of my life.
This came about because one time he was sailing across the Atlantic. He had a speaking engagement in Quebec and was off the coast of Newfoundland when a great fog came in and encapsulated the boat. The captain could not see and said, “We just cannot move. We cannot go any further.”
Müller talked with the captain and knew the captain was a believer. He said, “Well, let us go up to your cabin, to the wheelhouse there, and let us pray.”
The captain said, “Well, this fog is pretty bad, but we can go pray anyway.”
Müller prayed a very simple prayer: “Lord, part the ways. Lord, open the doorway,” whatever. Then the captain started to pray, but Müller stopped him and said, “Do not pray. You do not believe it anyway. You do not believe God can do it.”
They walked outside, and the fog lifted. They sailed on, and he made it to Quebec for his speaking engagement.
Müller was a great man of faith and a great man of prayer. He said:
Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in what is humanly possible. Faith begins where man’s power ends.
Müller, being a good German, kept good records—very detailed records. In his journals, he recorded over fifty thousand answered prayers during his time with the orphanage. Thirty thousand of them, he wrote, were answered within one day or one hour of when they were prayed.
One example was when they had about three hundred children in the orphanage, and they were waiting for breakfast. They did not have any food in the kitchen.
Müller brought all the children in. They sat down ready for breakfast, but there was no food there at all. He prayed, “Lord, provide breakfast.”
There was a knock on the door. A baker was there. The Lord had woken the baker early, and he was told to make some extra bread and take it over to Müller. So he did, and they had bread.
As soon as the baker left, there was another knock on the door. It was the local milkman. His cart had broken down right in front of the orphanage, and he said, “Look, if I leave my cart here and go back to try to get the part to fix it, everybody will steal my milk. Here, you take all the milk.”
So the Lord provided breakfast. They had milk and bread for breakfast. That is just one simple little example of the way the Lord continued to provide for them in great ways.
As far as some other Brethren, we have mentioned Chapman and Mackintosh. We have his books, and I would recommend both of these for your library: the Notes on the Pentateuch and The Treasury.
George Cutting wrote a gospel tract, Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment. That gospel tract is still used today and is probably one of the most popular gospel tracts in the history of Christianity.
To mention the name James Deck: he was the hymn writer of the Brethren, and we actually have about fifteen of his hymns in Christ in Song that we sing.
Chapman was known as the Apostle of Love. He showed love in such a wonderful way that his reputation was that everybody in England knew of him.
There was a letter sent from Australia to him addressed, “Robert Chapman, Apostle of Love, England,” and the post office got it to him. They did it.
He was such a precious testimony. His desire in life was this:
There are many who preach, but not so many who live Christ. My aim shall be to live Christ.
When Chapman moved to Barnstaple, he bought a home large enough to serve as a place of hospitality and refuge for other missionaries or servants of the Lord who were tired and needed a place to come and rest. His home was always open for ones to come and stay there.
He had this practice in his home: whenever you stayed there, he would have you put your shoes outside your door at night, and he would clean them for you so they would be clean in the morning.
When ones rejected that and said they would not do it, he would not relent. His little comment was:
It is not the custom in our day to wash one another’s feet. That which most clearly corresponds to this command of the Lord is to clean each other’s boots.
So when you stayed at his house, you got a clean pair of boots. Boots got dirty in those days. It was a wonderful, precious way of how he served.
Even in spite of the weakness of the Brethren after twenty years, there were many precious things that they did recover and that we were able to see through them.
Darby’s writings recovered the heavenly calling of the church and the unity of the body of Christ. They actually practiced the universal priesthood of all believers. It was not just a concept; it was practiced.
There was also a recovery of the awareness of the Lord’s second coming and many other end-times prophetic truths.
As we look at this century, we see the love of God manifested in many different ways: the height and the depth, the length and the breadth.
It is that we would know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, and be filled with the fullness of Him. That is the purpose of the love of God. The love of God is to draw us to Himself, to fill us so that we could know more and more of Him.
We are thankful how the Lord had vessels that He could use, both in spreading the gospel throughout many heathen lands and in bringing together various ones throughout the world as precious testimonies unto Him—these various assemblies gathering in the simplicity of Christ.
We can be encouraged to press on too. May our hearts be captured in a fresh way also, and be rooted and grounded in the love of God, that He can accomplish in us what He desires to do also. Let’s pray.
Lord, we do come this day with worshipful hearts. Lord, it is always amazing how You can take a vessel and use them, equip them for the Master’s use.
Lord, most of these had no idea how their lives would go. All they did was fall in love with You and then make themselves available to You. You used them as You desired.
Lord, that is what we want to do. We want that love to grow deeper within our hearts. We would fall in love with You over and over again.
Lord, that we could be those who are available to You, that You could use us as You desire to use us in the days we are living in.
Lord, defend us from ourselves. Defend us from the enemy. Help us to be wise, knowing the longsuffering love of God, that we would be those who strengthen Your testimony and not weaken it in any way.
In Thy name we pray. Amen.