ReGrace

by Frank Viola

  Spurgeon is reported to have also said this on the subject:

  Why, a man may think it a sin to have his boots blacked. Well, then, let him give it up, and have them whitewashed. I wish to say that I’m not ashamed of anything whatever that I do, and I don’t feel that smoking makes me ashamed, and therefore I mean to smoke to the glory of God.7

  3. Spurgeon believed going into debt was not acceptable.

  He felt so strongly about this that he was willing to sell his means of transportation (which was necessary for him to travel and minister) to avoid debt.

  I paid as large sums as I could from my own income, and resolved to spend all I had, and then take the cessation of my means as a voice from the Lord to stay the effort, as I am firmly persuaded that we ought under no pretense to go into debt. On one occasion I proposed the sale of my horse and carriage, although these were almost absolute necessities to me on account of continual journeys in preaching the Word.8

  Spurgeon felt everyone should spend well below their means and the first thing they should cut out was beer money. Here’s a quote:

  If our poor people could only see the amount of money which they melt away in drink, their hair would stand on end with fright. Why, they swallow rivers of beer, seas of porter, and great big lakes of spirits and other fire waters. We should all be clothed like gentlemen and live like fighting cocks if what is wasted on booze could be sensibly used. We would need to get up earlier in the morning to spend all our money, for we would find ourselves suddenly made quite rich, and all that through stopping the drip of the tap. . . . If young men would deny themselves, work hard, live hard, and save in their early days, they need not keep their noses to the grindstone all their lives, as many have to do. Let them be teetotalers for economy’s sake; water is the strongest drink, it drives mills. It’s the drink of lions and horses, and Samson never drank anything else. The beer money would soon build a house.9

  4. Spurgeon thought the idle (those who didn’t work) were beyond hope and it wasn’t worth wasting time trying to improve them.

  Spurgeon was a workaholic and put immense pressure on others to work hard, just as he did.

  On this score, he said,

  Lazy lie-a-beds are not working men at all, any more than pigs are bullocks or thistles apple trees. All are not hunters that wear red coats, and all are not working men who call themselves so. I wonder sometimes that some of our employers keep so many cats who catch no mice. I would as soon drop my halfpence down a well as pay some people for pretending to work. It only irritates you and makes your flesh crawl to see them all day creeping over a cabbage leaf. Live and let live, say I, but I don’t include sluggards in that license. “They who will not work, neither let them eat.”10

  According to one of Spurgeon’s biographers,

  His [Spurgeon’s] first words of rebuke are for the idle, for whom he, as a busy man, seems to have had a great antipathy. . . . He saw no use for idlers except to make the grass grow in the churchyard when they die.11

  5. Spurgeon did not believe in allowing music in worship.

  Spurgeon “tolerated an American organ in mission services,” but otherwise, he allowed no instruments at all except on very rare occasions. In general, “Spurgeon had a rooted objection to instrumental music in the worship of God.”12

  6. Spurgeon leaned left in his politics.

  Spurgeon experts have pointed out that he was essentially a “left-winger” politically. Spurgeon typically aligned himself with the political views of Prime Minister William Gladstone (who was liberal) instead of the more conservative Benjamin Disraeli, especially when it came to military expansion.

  Spurgeon was an advocate of civil rights for people considered “minorities.” In the 1800 election, he is said to have single-handedly swung the election in favor of the Liberals against the Conservative Party.13

  From his own lips, Spurgeon said, “I am as good a Liberal as any man living, and my loving admiration of Mr. Gladstone is the same as ever, hearty and deep.”14

  That said, Spurgeon was also strongly pro-life, railing against the wickedness of abortion which he believed was infanticide. He also believed that God blesses nations who honor Him. So while Spurgeon was often liberal in his politics, he was conservative on some social issues.15

  7. Spurgeon believed that the supernatural healing of sicknesses still occurred.

  While this won’t be shocking to contemporary Charismatics and Pentecostals, many of his own tribe (Baptists and Reformed) would find it shocking.

  Knowing the latter, Spurgeon hesitated to champion divine healing publicly. Because he didn’t want people to view him as a faith healer, he would often pray for the sick incognito, in sickrooms and private studies.16

  He kept his remarkable encounters with healing close to his vest, again, probably to keep people from lumping him in with faith healers.17

  8. Spurgeon believed that even the strongest of Christians may face seasons of depression, despair, and doubt.

  This may come as a surprise to those who believe that the Christian life should always be full of victory, faith, and joy.

  Spurgeon struggled with depression often. He allegedly owned over thirty books on mental health, and he called his depression “a prophet in rough clothing.”

  Note his words:

  This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry; the cloud is black before it breaks, and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy. Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing, a John the Baptist, heralding the nearer coming of my Lord’s richer benison.18

  9. Spurgeon believed he heard God’s voice, and it told him to keep preaching without a college education.

  While this won’t surprise many Charismatics or Pentecostals, the fact is, Spurgeon was Reformed. While not all Reformed people deny the present-day function of miraculous gifts, many do. Scholars debate whether the voice that Spurgeon heard was audible or merely an impression. Spurgeon himself said the voice “may have been a singular illusion.”

  Referring to Spurgeon’s decision to continue preaching without a college education, one biographer writes,

  But it is certain that Mr. Spurgeon evidently believed it was the voice of God. At all events, he allowed it to guide him to the most important decision of his life and ever after kept the saying of that voice vividly before his mind to determine his actions in situations of great difficulty.19

  In Spurgeon’s words:

  That afternoon having to preach at a village station, I walked slowly in a meditating frame of mind, over Midsummer Common, to the little wooden bridge which leads to Chesterton, and in the midst of the Common I was startled by what seemed to me to be a loud voice, but which may have been a singular illusion; whatever it was, the impression it made on my mind was most vivid; I seemed very distinctly to hear the words, “Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not!” This led me to look at my position from a different point of view, and to challenge my motives and intentions.20

  10. Spurgeon believed in what some would call giving “prophetic words” to people, knowing things about them beyond natural means.

  Spurgeon not only believed in the current operation of the prophetic gift, he even exercised it, calling out the sins of people he didn’t know. Here is an example:

  At the Monday evening prayer-meeting . . . [Spurgeon] mentioned the sermon at Exeter Hall, in which he suddenly broke off from his subject, and, pointing in a certain direction, said, “Young man, those gloves you are wearing have not been paid for; you have stolen them from your employer.” At the close of the service, a young man, looking very pale and greatly agitated, came to the room which was used as a vestry, and begged for a private interview with Mr. Spurgeon. On being admitted, he placed a pair of gloves upon the table, and tearfully said, “It’s the first time I have robbed my master, and I will never do it again. You won’t expose me, sir, will you? It would kill my mother if she heard that I had b
ecome a thief.”21

  The result was the young man’s conversion.

  In another example, Spurgeon made this remark, exhibiting a supernatural “word of knowledge”: “There’s a man in the gallery with a bottle of gin in his pocket.”22

  11. Spurgeon believed God answered the prayers of people before they were converted to Christ.

  Speaking of himself, Spurgeon said, “God had answered my prayers while I was a child, and before I was converted.”

  This belief was radical in a society that believed God only heard the prayers of Christians. And some of Spurgeon’s hyper-Calvinist detractors found fault with it.

  There’s no question that Spurgeon is one of the greats in church history. However, seeing that much of what he believed would raise the eyebrows of many believers today, how about extending more grace to those fellow Christians with whom you disagree?

  Let’s now look at the individual who many believe to be the father of modern evangelism.

  13

  The Shocking Beliefs of D. L. Moody

  God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

  ~ Oswald Chambers

  D. L. Moody is one of my favorite movers and shakers in church history.

  He—along with A. W. Tozer, Charles Spurgeon, G. Campbell Morgan—was a powerful witness to God’s sod-turning tendency for mightily using people who didn’t possess a formal theological education, much like the first followers of Jesus Himself (Paul of Tarsus being the exception).

  In Moody’s case, he was poorly educated across the board, yet the hand of God was undeniably on his life. According to one historian, “The first time he applied for church membership, it was denied him because he failed an oral examination on Christian doctrine.”1

  In fact, an eighteen-year-old Moody couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to a basic Sunday school question.

  Moody was asked, “What has Christ done for you, and for us all, that especially entitles Him to our love and obedience?” Moody’s response was, “I think He has done a great deal for us all, but I don’t know of anything He has done in particular.”

  Because of that answer, there was not “satisfactory evidence of conversion.” Moody was subsequently mentored and was received into membership at his second examination.

  Moody’s answer was probably due to his being raised in the Unitarian Church, and it was only at seventeen years old that he was exposed to the gospel.2

  So if we can be patient with a young Moody (especially seeing how he turned out), let’s be patient with each other, eh?

  Moody served the soldiers in the Civil War, and President Lincoln visited his famous Sunday school. In addition, President Grant attended a revival meeting led by Moody.

  It’s speculated that he reached 100 million people through his speaking (and writing) in a day when televangelists, radio preachers, podcasts, blogs, and Al Gore (ahem, the internet) didn’t exist.3

  Have you ever heard the statement, “God hates sin, but loves the sinner”? Moody helped popularize that statement.

  Here are three other “Moodyisms”:

  Character is what a man is in the dark.4

  If there had been a committee appointed, Noah’s ark would never have been built.5

  And my favorite one of all,

  You know that some men grow smaller and smaller on an intimate acquaintance; but my experience is that the more and more you know of Christ, the larger He becomes.6

  Armed with a fifth-grade education, noted as a horrible speller with a poor vocabulary, and void of any theological training, Moody managed to found several schools. The Bible college and publishing house that carry his name still exist. This is quite surprising given how poorly educated he was.7

  Moody was essentially a “lay evangelist.” He wasn’t an ordained minister nor a trained theologian or scholar. In fact, firsthand observers got the impression that he was little more than a country bumpkin. Yet he was incredibly effective in reaching people with the gospel of Christ.8

  Another thing that impresses me about Moody was his heart for the poor. When he began his ministry in the Chicago slums (called “Little Hell” because of its danger), Moody was barely into his twenties. He had a heart for the least, the last, and the lost, spending all of his savings to help the indigent, even risking harm to himself.9

  All told, here are some beliefs that Moody held that were shocking during his time, some of which may unsettle some evangelicals today.

  1. Moody seldom preached on hell.

  This was shocking in a day when eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalists and evangelists made “hell” a major point in their preaching.

  When Moody caught criticism for this, his response was, “A great many people say I don’t preach on the terrors of religion. I don’t want to—don’t want to scare men into the kingdom of God.”10

  Because the love of God broke his own heart, Moody opted to preach God’s love and avoid the subject of hell in most of his sermons.11

  2. Moody espoused the idea of premillennialism (that Jesus would return before the millennium).

  While this view isn’t shocking to fans of the Left Behind films and books, Moody “was the first premillennial evangelist of note in North American history (the rest were postmillennialists).”12

  He was also important to the entire history of the development of dispensationalism and the eventual rise and dominance of premillennialism.

  That said, Moody was not precise about the details of Christ’s second coming, so we cannot be sure of his exact views on the subject. In a sermon entitled “When My Lord Jesus Comes,” Moody said, “You should study the Bible for yourself, and come to your own conclusion.”13

  So for those who believe that certainty about last things (eschatology) is a requirement for ministry, Moody’s lack of certainty to the timing of the rapture and his lack of dogmatism on end times in general would alarm some Christians today.

  3. Moody embraced the Christian evolutionist Henry Drummond as being the most Christlike man he ever met.

  Such an “endorsement” was shocking in Moody’s day. And it will certainly raise the ire of Christians who damn other believers with the guilt-by-association card.

  Moody was viciously attacked as a “heretic” simply because he allowed Drummond to speak at some of his Christian conferences. There’s good reason to believe that he lost sizable financial support as a result.

  Drummond was written off by many Christians because he believed that God created humans through the mechanism of evolution. Drummond wrote the book The Ascent of Man, published in 1894. The book attempted to harmonize Christianity and evolution, as a number of people tried to do in the early stages of the popularity of evolutionary theory. Even one of my Reformed heroes, B. B. Warfield, dabbled with the legitimacy of evolution.

  Moody rejected evolutionary theory, but that didn’t dissuade him from befriending and endorsing Henry Drummond. Nor did it dissuade others from condemning Moody with the same vitriol that they leveled against Drummond. (Regrettably, this sort of thing still happens today in the Christian world.)14

  4. Moody didn’t exclude women from ministry and even allowed them to preach to the congregation.

  Again, a shocker for his time. And in the minds of contemporary Christians who believe women should be muzzled (I mean excluded) from ministering to men, what Moody believed about this is considered “unbiblical.”15

  5. Moody didn’t believe in making doctrine an issue.

  For this reason, some Calvinists and Arminians claimed him on the one hand, but they were infuriated by him on the other.

  The Arminians broke out in hives over his “once in grace, always in grace” view. And Calvinists were livid over his emphasis on human responsibility, faith-is-a-choice view, and his belief in the universal provision of salvation.

  According to Moody, “I don’t try to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s free agency.”16

  That stat
ement didn’t endear him to either Calvinists or Arminians.

  6. Moody believed in interdenominational ecumenicism.

  This also disturbed hard-core Calvinists and Arminians.

  Moody embraced the liberal causes of social reform, church unity, and ecumenicism, but he also embraced the conservative causes of premillennialism in his evangelistic efforts (believing that the world was a sinking ship, and Christians were obligated to rescue as many as possible before the ship sank).

  Moody was seen as a bridge between conservatives and liberals, combining issues that polarized both sides. This quote by Moody captures his heart on the matter:

  Talk not of this sect and that sect, this party and that party; but solely and exclusively of the great, comprehensive cause of Jesus Christ . . . there should be one faith, one mind, one spirit. . . . Let us . . . contend for Christ only. . . . Oh that God may so fill us with his love and the love of souls, that no thought of minor sectarian parties can come in; that there may be no room for them in our atmosphere whatever; and that the Spirit of God may give us one mind and one spirit here to glorify His holy name.17

  Over the course of his ministry, Moody learned, however, that transcending the hard-core left and the hard-core right is a dangerous place in which to live, because both sides take dead aim at you!

  7. Moody found some of the Roman Catholic mystics to be helpful.

  This one would have gotten him tarred and feathered by a number of Christian groups today. In his One Thousand and One Thoughts from My Library, Moody cites 225 authors; included are the Christian mystics, Madame Guyon and Madame Swetchine. (Guyon’s writings have been frowned on by many in the Roman Church, so much so that at one point they were placed on the list of prohibited books index!)18

  Regarding Moody’s views on Catholic teaching, “he preached against transubstantiation . . . and the confessional and priestly absolution,” but he also “advocated co-operation with Roman Catholics in world evangelization” and “‘gave a handsome sum’ to build a Roman Catholic church in his home town.” In addition, Moody once asked a “Roman Catholic bishop to pray for him.”19