Post by JEM on Apr 28, 2009 1:54:51 GMT
May in introduce you to Boy called Charlie who was born in 1834.
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Charlie was the son of a Congregationalist Minister
and because his parents were so busy, for the first few years he was brought up by his grand parents.
He lived in Colchester. He was described as always reading books, rather than digging in the garden or keeping pigeons, like other boys did.
Eventually he was sent to a boarding school.
On the Heraldic Arms of Scotland attached to the Scottish Thistle there is a Latin motto that says
“Nemo me impune lacessit”
meaning “No one touches me with impunity”.
On his first night at boarding school Charlie knelt down by his bed to pray, as was his custom, only to become the target of everyone’s, boots, shoes and slippers.
Rising from his knees he hit out with his fists, knocking several boys to the floor, telling his disturbers that he must not be interfered with, he wasn’t used to it and he would not accept it. He then went back on his knees, completed his prayer and got into bed.
No one ever disturbed him at school again.
When home from school, as a teenager, on Sundays, he used to get up early and go for a long walk finishing up at his Dad’s church for worship.
Personally, He doubted the existence of God.
but he was aware of things in his life that he hated and wanted to change but couldn’t.
He knew he needed help but did not know who to turn to, Certainly not his Dad.
One wintry Sunday morning it began to snow when he was a long way from Dad’s church, so he took shelter in a small Primitive Methodist chapel on the outskirts of Colchester with a very small congregation.
In the pulpit was a young man doing his trial sermon which would determine whether he was added to the list of Methodist preachers or not. He was poorly educated but he was willing,
His text was simple “
Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the Earth” He kept repeating it.
He troubled Charlie. The preacher went on “This is a very simple text. It says one thing LOOK ;
Now that does not take a deal of effort
It aint lifting your foot, or your finger, it’s just LOOK. Then the preacher looked straight at Charlie and said
“Young man you look miserable and you always will be miserable, in life and in death, if you do not obey my text, Young man look to Jesus Christ, look now!!”
Charlie jumped in his seat. He had been willing to do 50 things to find what he needed, but all he had to do was “Look to Jesus” it was all so simple.
Charlie left that church deep in thought and somewhere between there and home he confessed to God how wrong he was and how he needed Jesus as his own Saviour and he got assurance that everything wrong in his life was forgiven and he’d made a fresh start.
Charlie was baptised as a believer by total immersion in the river Lark at Isleham Ferry on May 3rd 1850 aged 16
by a missionary to the West Indies, and wrote years later “The wind blew down the river with a cutting blast, as I waded in and walked a few steps and saw the crowds on either bank and in the many boats, I felt as all heaven, and earth and hell. were watching and I was not ashamed to own myself a follower of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Timidity was gone, I have scarcely met with it since. I lost a thousand fears in that river Lark and found that in keeping God’s commandments there is great reward.”
Charlie became an assistant teacher in a private school near Newmarket.
The Head introduced the idea of ending the week with a short afternoon service which he and the teachers led on a rota basis,
He was so impressed with Charlies performance that he finished up asking Charlie to do it every week.
Charlie trying to find out more about preaching attended a meeting in Cambridge of the Cambridgeshire Preachers Association and the President asked Charlie to visit a house in the village of Teversham the following Sunday to go with another man and keep him company
So the two young men walked the several miles together, and about a mile from the cottage Charlie said to the other guy, I hope you will enjoy talking to these people. The other guy said “I’m not giving any talks, I was sent to accompany you. You are doing the talking.
Stunned rigid Charlie took out his pocket Bible, and was guided to a particular passage and he thought about it and several points stood out and he prayed and when they arrived at the cottage
Charlie spoke the words God had given him, and every one there was impressed by his performance and one young woman discovered Jesus to be her Saviour.
After that visit Charlie was welcomed back again and again and one day a new church began there
Charlie began a small school in 60 Upper Park Street Cambridge
Then Waterbeach Baptist Church invited him to become their pastor He was noted for his sense of humour and his preference for mixing with the humble working people, rather than the rich middle classes, who competed for his attention.
It was suggested that he might learn the role of pastor better, if he attended Stepney Academy, now Regent’s Park Baptist College at Oxford. Accordingly he made an appointment to meet Dr Angus the college tutor at the House of Macmillan the publisher in Cambridge.
Arriving on time a maid ushered him into a room where he sat and waited a couple of hours but Dr Angus did not arrive. In fact he had arrived and had been seated in another room by another maid and having become impatient had returned by train to London, So Charlie never went to college but later started one of his own.
News of Charlie spread across Cambridgeshire and known as the Boy Preacher, invitations to him to preach came in a steady stream and he spoke to large crowds at open air meetings. And to smaller ones in chapels and cottage sitting rooms
In 1854 aged 19 Charlie had become a young minister in London. He had moved there to Southwark to a Church whose building seated 1200 people but had a to a congregation of less than 300, but soon Charlie was attracting more than there were seats for, so they enlarged it to 1800.
That was not enough so they hired the Exeter Hall which seated several thousand.
In the year he moved to London, 1854, Asian cholera broke out in the city slums. Charlie went from door to door visiting the sick and dying, with no thought for his own safety but he too became sick from the weariness and depression of it all. Many of his friends died. He began to feel that he would not survive,
Then one day passing down the Dover Road he noticed in a shoemakers shop, a card board sign on which was written this Bible verse.
“Because thou has made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee neither shall any plague come near your dwelling “
This promise revived his spirit, delivered him from his depression and encouraged him to go on with his work. He was often criticised including in the Daily Papers, but he stuck faithfully to his work.
In 1856 at 21 he got married to Susannah Thompson of Falcon Square and they remained happily married all the rest of his life.
They had 2 twin sons Thomas and Charles who both became Christians when they were boys, and grew up to become Baptist Ministers.
More and more came to listen to Charlie and the Exeter Hall was not large enough, so about 4 months after he visited us at Walden, his deacons hired the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall that seated12,000 and filled it every Sunday for many months.
Charlie was never timid or shy but he did get quite anxious when facing huge crowds but he asked God to take over the situation and give him the strength to do it, and that strength was always supplied.
He was not self confident, but confident that God was with him. He was often awed but not afraid.
On the first night of using the Music Hall some evil doer cried out “FIRE, FIRE” and caused a panic in which 7 people were killed and 28 injured and this unsettled Charlie for weeks.
During the Indian Mutiny in 1857 the Queen called the whole Nation to prayer and Charlie led a prayer meeting in the Crystal Palace attend by over 23,000 people, the largest crowd he ever preached to.
In 1857 he started to train another young man in the responsibilities of being a Christian minister and from that he increased the number of young men he trained and founded and established what became known as THE PASTORS COLLEGE, and is now one if the best Baptist Theological Colleges in Britain where Dom’s Dad trained.
In 1859 a young man in America name Dwight Moody, became a Christian and was thrilled about what he kept reading in the American papers about Charlie’s work in London and he modelled his life on Charlie’s. He went on to visit many countries as an evangelist and lead thousands more to Jesus.
In March 1861 a huge building with 5000 seats was opened near the Elephant and Castle just south of the River Thames called the Metropolitan Tabernacle which became the home of his church for the next 80 years. It was destroyed during world War Two by the Luftwaffa bombers but rebuilt and today remains home to one of London’s largest congregations.
Charlie began to produce a monthly magazine called THE SWORD and THE TROWEL, still published today.
Charlie started a team of people who reached out to people who never went church, going from door to door giving out leaflets, reading the Bible to those who could not read, and selling Bibles and books. We had such a group in Walden from 1822 called The Town Mission”.
Charlie became very concerned about children living on their own on the streets of London, sleeping under the bridges, or in the parks, or in poor conditions in unheated buildings. He raised money and built a series of large houses at Stockwell to provide a home for them called Spurgeon’s Homes where they were properly fed. clothed and educated. Those buildings were later in the 20th century sold but the children were put into smaller family groups in small houses and bungalows or were adopted by other Christians. These homes have been built in other countries too. It was for that, that this church made a special collection last Christmas.
Late in his life a great controversy arose amongst Christians called the DOWNGRADE CONTROVERSY
It stemmed from his firm belief that the every part of the Bible was completely literally right and could never be wrong.
The English Bible that Charlie used and most Protestant Christians had used since 1769, known as the Authorised Version, had been translated from the Greek Bible that had originated at the Church St Paul founded at Antioch in Syria, and had formed the Greek Bible of the great Christian Byzantine Empire which lasted 1100 years based in what is now Moslem Turkey.
But in 1853 two Cambridge Greek Scholars produced a new Greek New Testament from some other manuscripts from Alexandria in Egypt which had originally been used to produce the Latin Bible which had misled the Roman Catholics for centuries.
Also in the 19th century Charles Darwin and others had begun to teach new ideas about how the Universe had formed, that the Earth was many millions of years old not about 6000 years as many then believed, and that living things had take millions of years to evolve and had not all been made in 6 days as the first chapter of Genesis appears to teach.
During the 19th century German scholars had studied all the Bible books and had suggested that some had not been written by the traditionally known authors and some parts were not reliable.
That is called Biblical Criticism and linked with Darwin’s ideas this new thinking was called Modernism and was being taught in the Theological Colleges, but not in Charlie’s College
Charlie opposed the Biblical Criticism, Darwinism and the new Bible,
He believed that the changed ideas undermined the truth of the Bible and Basic Christian teaching.
He took a stand against it in his magazine and at the 1887 Baptist Union Assembly. He expected most other Baptist Ministers would agree with him especially those he had trained.
But nobody agreed with him.
He found he was on his own.
Because of this Charlie resigned from the Baptist Union and took his College and his Church out of it.
It takes great courage to be the only one who is right when everyone else goes the wrong way. or to be wrong when every one else is right, and still stick to what you believe.
To stand alone for a principle, something you believe in so much, when everybody else says you are daft for doing so.
He lost a lot of friends and made some bitter enemies.
The cost of doing what we believed is right can be very painful.
It effected Charlies health and probably caused his early death in 1892 aged only 58.
We too sometimes have to stand up for what is right when all around us want to go another way, it can be a very lonely experience.But to those willing to do it, God gives the strength
After all Jesus did say “Those that support me I will support. Those who deny me I will deny”.
And again “Not all that say Lord, Lord will get into Heaven, only those that do the will of my Father
Charlie was CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
His magazine is still published every month
His great London church continues to prosper
His College remains one of the best in Britain and people trained there are serving all over the world.
There are not many ministers whose work is still being carried on over 120 years after they died.
The Jesus Christ who turned Charlies life round 160 years ago, can still do that today
We are not all called to be preachers but we are all called to preach, for preaching means proclaiming.
What we are to proclaim is the love of God made available to us in Jesus Christ
and that can be done in words and in actions
We have to start by getting our own life sorted out with God’s help. and then go on to whatever He leads us to do.
Charlie was unique. But he would say to us today,
“Don’t look at me. LOOK at JESUS, that is what I did every day after I left that chapel on that snowy Sunday when another young man said to me LOOK to JESUS.
That unknown preacher preaching his trial sermon was an important link in a chain that has helped millions of people.
We can do for Jesus Christ things which can effect the
lives of many people and we can be useful links in chains that will rock the future.
Charlie once said about his work “I received some years ago, orders from my Master to stand at the foot of the Cross until he came. He has not come yet. But I mean to stand there until he does. If I should disobey his orders and leave the simple truths which have been the means of the conversion of many people I don’t know how I could expect his blessing”
After he looked to Jesus, Charlie remained faithful over 40 years and God used him to change the lives of many thousands of people.
God is the same God today and if you are faithful to Him He will enable you to do great things for him too.
####################################################
Charlie was the son of a Congregationalist Minister
and because his parents were so busy, for the first few years he was brought up by his grand parents.
He lived in Colchester. He was described as always reading books, rather than digging in the garden or keeping pigeons, like other boys did.
Eventually he was sent to a boarding school.
On the Heraldic Arms of Scotland attached to the Scottish Thistle there is a Latin motto that says
“Nemo me impune lacessit”
meaning “No one touches me with impunity”.
On his first night at boarding school Charlie knelt down by his bed to pray, as was his custom, only to become the target of everyone’s, boots, shoes and slippers.
Rising from his knees he hit out with his fists, knocking several boys to the floor, telling his disturbers that he must not be interfered with, he wasn’t used to it and he would not accept it. He then went back on his knees, completed his prayer and got into bed.
No one ever disturbed him at school again.
When home from school, as a teenager, on Sundays, he used to get up early and go for a long walk finishing up at his Dad’s church for worship.
Personally, He doubted the existence of God.
but he was aware of things in his life that he hated and wanted to change but couldn’t.
He knew he needed help but did not know who to turn to, Certainly not his Dad.
One wintry Sunday morning it began to snow when he was a long way from Dad’s church, so he took shelter in a small Primitive Methodist chapel on the outskirts of Colchester with a very small congregation.
In the pulpit was a young man doing his trial sermon which would determine whether he was added to the list of Methodist preachers or not. He was poorly educated but he was willing,
His text was simple “
Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the Earth” He kept repeating it.
He troubled Charlie. The preacher went on “This is a very simple text. It says one thing LOOK ;
Now that does not take a deal of effort
It aint lifting your foot, or your finger, it’s just LOOK. Then the preacher looked straight at Charlie and said
“Young man you look miserable and you always will be miserable, in life and in death, if you do not obey my text, Young man look to Jesus Christ, look now!!”
Charlie jumped in his seat. He had been willing to do 50 things to find what he needed, but all he had to do was “Look to Jesus” it was all so simple.
Charlie left that church deep in thought and somewhere between there and home he confessed to God how wrong he was and how he needed Jesus as his own Saviour and he got assurance that everything wrong in his life was forgiven and he’d made a fresh start.
Charlie was baptised as a believer by total immersion in the river Lark at Isleham Ferry on May 3rd 1850 aged 16
by a missionary to the West Indies, and wrote years later “The wind blew down the river with a cutting blast, as I waded in and walked a few steps and saw the crowds on either bank and in the many boats, I felt as all heaven, and earth and hell. were watching and I was not ashamed to own myself a follower of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Timidity was gone, I have scarcely met with it since. I lost a thousand fears in that river Lark and found that in keeping God’s commandments there is great reward.”
Charlie became an assistant teacher in a private school near Newmarket.
The Head introduced the idea of ending the week with a short afternoon service which he and the teachers led on a rota basis,
He was so impressed with Charlies performance that he finished up asking Charlie to do it every week.
Charlie trying to find out more about preaching attended a meeting in Cambridge of the Cambridgeshire Preachers Association and the President asked Charlie to visit a house in the village of Teversham the following Sunday to go with another man and keep him company
So the two young men walked the several miles together, and about a mile from the cottage Charlie said to the other guy, I hope you will enjoy talking to these people. The other guy said “I’m not giving any talks, I was sent to accompany you. You are doing the talking.
Stunned rigid Charlie took out his pocket Bible, and was guided to a particular passage and he thought about it and several points stood out and he prayed and when they arrived at the cottage
Charlie spoke the words God had given him, and every one there was impressed by his performance and one young woman discovered Jesus to be her Saviour.
After that visit Charlie was welcomed back again and again and one day a new church began there
Charlie began a small school in 60 Upper Park Street Cambridge
Then Waterbeach Baptist Church invited him to become their pastor He was noted for his sense of humour and his preference for mixing with the humble working people, rather than the rich middle classes, who competed for his attention.
It was suggested that he might learn the role of pastor better, if he attended Stepney Academy, now Regent’s Park Baptist College at Oxford. Accordingly he made an appointment to meet Dr Angus the college tutor at the House of Macmillan the publisher in Cambridge.
Arriving on time a maid ushered him into a room where he sat and waited a couple of hours but Dr Angus did not arrive. In fact he had arrived and had been seated in another room by another maid and having become impatient had returned by train to London, So Charlie never went to college but later started one of his own.
News of Charlie spread across Cambridgeshire and known as the Boy Preacher, invitations to him to preach came in a steady stream and he spoke to large crowds at open air meetings. And to smaller ones in chapels and cottage sitting rooms
In 1854 aged 19 Charlie had become a young minister in London. He had moved there to Southwark to a Church whose building seated 1200 people but had a to a congregation of less than 300, but soon Charlie was attracting more than there were seats for, so they enlarged it to 1800.
That was not enough so they hired the Exeter Hall which seated several thousand.
In the year he moved to London, 1854, Asian cholera broke out in the city slums. Charlie went from door to door visiting the sick and dying, with no thought for his own safety but he too became sick from the weariness and depression of it all. Many of his friends died. He began to feel that he would not survive,
Then one day passing down the Dover Road he noticed in a shoemakers shop, a card board sign on which was written this Bible verse.
“Because thou has made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee neither shall any plague come near your dwelling “
This promise revived his spirit, delivered him from his depression and encouraged him to go on with his work. He was often criticised including in the Daily Papers, but he stuck faithfully to his work.
In 1856 at 21 he got married to Susannah Thompson of Falcon Square and they remained happily married all the rest of his life.
They had 2 twin sons Thomas and Charles who both became Christians when they were boys, and grew up to become Baptist Ministers.
More and more came to listen to Charlie and the Exeter Hall was not large enough, so about 4 months after he visited us at Walden, his deacons hired the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall that seated12,000 and filled it every Sunday for many months.
Charlie was never timid or shy but he did get quite anxious when facing huge crowds but he asked God to take over the situation and give him the strength to do it, and that strength was always supplied.
He was not self confident, but confident that God was with him. He was often awed but not afraid.
On the first night of using the Music Hall some evil doer cried out “FIRE, FIRE” and caused a panic in which 7 people were killed and 28 injured and this unsettled Charlie for weeks.
During the Indian Mutiny in 1857 the Queen called the whole Nation to prayer and Charlie led a prayer meeting in the Crystal Palace attend by over 23,000 people, the largest crowd he ever preached to.
In 1857 he started to train another young man in the responsibilities of being a Christian minister and from that he increased the number of young men he trained and founded and established what became known as THE PASTORS COLLEGE, and is now one if the best Baptist Theological Colleges in Britain where Dom’s Dad trained.
In 1859 a young man in America name Dwight Moody, became a Christian and was thrilled about what he kept reading in the American papers about Charlie’s work in London and he modelled his life on Charlie’s. He went on to visit many countries as an evangelist and lead thousands more to Jesus.
In March 1861 a huge building with 5000 seats was opened near the Elephant and Castle just south of the River Thames called the Metropolitan Tabernacle which became the home of his church for the next 80 years. It was destroyed during world War Two by the Luftwaffa bombers but rebuilt and today remains home to one of London’s largest congregations.
Charlie began to produce a monthly magazine called THE SWORD and THE TROWEL, still published today.
Charlie started a team of people who reached out to people who never went church, going from door to door giving out leaflets, reading the Bible to those who could not read, and selling Bibles and books. We had such a group in Walden from 1822 called The Town Mission”.
Charlie became very concerned about children living on their own on the streets of London, sleeping under the bridges, or in the parks, or in poor conditions in unheated buildings. He raised money and built a series of large houses at Stockwell to provide a home for them called Spurgeon’s Homes where they were properly fed. clothed and educated. Those buildings were later in the 20th century sold but the children were put into smaller family groups in small houses and bungalows or were adopted by other Christians. These homes have been built in other countries too. It was for that, that this church made a special collection last Christmas.
Late in his life a great controversy arose amongst Christians called the DOWNGRADE CONTROVERSY
It stemmed from his firm belief that the every part of the Bible was completely literally right and could never be wrong.
The English Bible that Charlie used and most Protestant Christians had used since 1769, known as the Authorised Version, had been translated from the Greek Bible that had originated at the Church St Paul founded at Antioch in Syria, and had formed the Greek Bible of the great Christian Byzantine Empire which lasted 1100 years based in what is now Moslem Turkey.
But in 1853 two Cambridge Greek Scholars produced a new Greek New Testament from some other manuscripts from Alexandria in Egypt which had originally been used to produce the Latin Bible which had misled the Roman Catholics for centuries.
Also in the 19th century Charles Darwin and others had begun to teach new ideas about how the Universe had formed, that the Earth was many millions of years old not about 6000 years as many then believed, and that living things had take millions of years to evolve and had not all been made in 6 days as the first chapter of Genesis appears to teach.
During the 19th century German scholars had studied all the Bible books and had suggested that some had not been written by the traditionally known authors and some parts were not reliable.
That is called Biblical Criticism and linked with Darwin’s ideas this new thinking was called Modernism and was being taught in the Theological Colleges, but not in Charlie’s College
Charlie opposed the Biblical Criticism, Darwinism and the new Bible,
He believed that the changed ideas undermined the truth of the Bible and Basic Christian teaching.
He took a stand against it in his magazine and at the 1887 Baptist Union Assembly. He expected most other Baptist Ministers would agree with him especially those he had trained.
But nobody agreed with him.
He found he was on his own.
Because of this Charlie resigned from the Baptist Union and took his College and his Church out of it.
It takes great courage to be the only one who is right when everyone else goes the wrong way. or to be wrong when every one else is right, and still stick to what you believe.
To stand alone for a principle, something you believe in so much, when everybody else says you are daft for doing so.
He lost a lot of friends and made some bitter enemies.
The cost of doing what we believed is right can be very painful.
It effected Charlies health and probably caused his early death in 1892 aged only 58.
We too sometimes have to stand up for what is right when all around us want to go another way, it can be a very lonely experience.But to those willing to do it, God gives the strength
After all Jesus did say “Those that support me I will support. Those who deny me I will deny”.
And again “Not all that say Lord, Lord will get into Heaven, only those that do the will of my Father
Charlie was CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
His magazine is still published every month
His great London church continues to prosper
His College remains one of the best in Britain and people trained there are serving all over the world.
There are not many ministers whose work is still being carried on over 120 years after they died.
The Jesus Christ who turned Charlies life round 160 years ago, can still do that today
We are not all called to be preachers but we are all called to preach, for preaching means proclaiming.
What we are to proclaim is the love of God made available to us in Jesus Christ
and that can be done in words and in actions
We have to start by getting our own life sorted out with God’s help. and then go on to whatever He leads us to do.
Charlie was unique. But he would say to us today,
“Don’t look at me. LOOK at JESUS, that is what I did every day after I left that chapel on that snowy Sunday when another young man said to me LOOK to JESUS.
That unknown preacher preaching his trial sermon was an important link in a chain that has helped millions of people.
We can do for Jesus Christ things which can effect the
lives of many people and we can be useful links in chains that will rock the future.
Charlie once said about his work “I received some years ago, orders from my Master to stand at the foot of the Cross until he came. He has not come yet. But I mean to stand there until he does. If I should disobey his orders and leave the simple truths which have been the means of the conversion of many people I don’t know how I could expect his blessing”
After he looked to Jesus, Charlie remained faithful over 40 years and God used him to change the lives of many thousands of people.
God is the same God today and if you are faithful to Him He will enable you to do great things for him too.