Conclusion

CONCLUSION

This, then, in very broad outline, is the teaching that is sometimes called Calvinism. Far from being an innovation of man, it is the doctrine of the Word of God clearly formulated and set forth. The perennial question, however, is sure to be raised: ’But does not this Calvinism hinder the work of the gospel?’ The most casual glance at the history of the church of Christ in this world is sufficient to invalidate such an opinion. The gospel of Christ has flourished most where and when the Lord’s people have held these doctrines of grace close to their hearts. We think of the zeal of William Carey that drove him from his shoe-maker’s shop to evangelize for Christ in India. Carey was a solid Calvinist, as also was Andrew Fuller, another great Baptist who helped form the Baptist Missionary Society. Consider these words of the godly David Brainerd, the man who believed that the Red Indians of America as well as the white men had souls; ’I then had two desires’, he writes in his journal, ’mine own sanctification, and the ingathering of God’s elect.’ One of the greatest evangelists of modern times was the Calvinistic George Whitefield, yet his Calvinism never hindered his preaching the gospel of Christ: ’With what divine pathos’, it was said of him, ’did he exhort the sinner to turn to Christ.’

Calvinism, if we can use that word and not be misunderstood, was the gospel of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, as it was of Andrew Bonar, and William Burns, that great leader of revival and missionary to China. Martyrs, Reformers, leaders of Christ’s church on earth, when they tell of the gospel that they preached and died for, tell out the gospel of God’s saving grace to His own elect flock. How could one begin to list them? Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, Latimer, Knox, Wishart, Perkins, Rutherford, Bunyan, Owen, Charnock, Goodwin, Flavel, Watson, Henry, Watts, Edwards, Whitefield, Newton, Spurgeon, are but a few of God’s noble army of witnesses to the truth of sovereign grace. Was any of their work for the Lord hindered by what they believed? And what did they believe? They believed that God was sovereign Lord. They dared to believe that they worshipped and served a King who ’worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.’ Well did that prince of preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, put it when he said, ’I have known men bite their lip and grind their teeth in rage when I have been preaching the sovereignty of God . . . the doctrinaires of today will allow a God, but He must not be a King.’ Did Spurgeon hinder the gospel? And yet, how many rose up in strife against him on account of his doctrine! ’We are cried down as hypers,’ he could say, ’scarcely a minister looks on us or speaks favourably of us; because we hold strong views upon the divine sovereignty of God, and His divine electings and special love towards His people.’

Perhaps a word from that same giant of the church should set a closing exhortation before us to lay firm hold upon these blessed truths of God’s Word and tell them forth to the praise of His Name. ’The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth, I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel; that which thundered through Scotland, must thunder through England again.’

Amen and Amen.