On Sunday, March 1, the Lord took from the evangelical Christian world one of the most influential preachers he has given us in our time, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The Banner of Truth to which he had long been a “constant helper and adviser” devoted a special (May) issue to him and his labors. From it we print two excerpts of his addresses which may be especially interesting to our readers. The address of the Banner of Truth is 3 Murrayfield Road, Edinburgh, Scotland (Its U.S. address is P.O. Box 621, Carlisle, Pa. 17013.)

THE FIRST REPORTED ADDRESS: ‘THE TRAGEDY OF MODERN WALES,’ MARCH 1925

Extract from 36 pages of hand-written notes

A nation given whole-heartedly to worldly success cannot possibly produce a great pulpit. Preaching today-again please note the glorious exceptions-has become a profession which is often taken up because of the glut in the other professions. I have already referred to the method adopted in the choice of ministers and we are reaping what we have sown. It is not at all surprising that many of our chapels are half-empty, for it is almost impossible to determine what some of our preachers believe. Another great abomination is the advent of the preacher-politician-that moral–mule who is so much in evidence these days. The harm done to Welsh public life by these monstrosities is incalculable. Their very appearance in public is a jeer at Christianity. Is it surprising that the things that I have already mentioned are so flagrant, with all these Judases so much in evidence? We get endless sermons on psychology, but amazingly few on Christianity. Our preachers are afraid to preach on the doctrine of the Atonement and on predestination. The great central principles of our belief are scarcely ever mentioned, indeed there is a movement on foot to reword them so as to bring them up-to-date. How on earth can you talk of bringing these eternal truths up-to-date? They are not only up-to-date, they are and will be ahead of the times to all eternity.

DECLARING EVANGELICAL DOCTRINES

From an address at the Royal Albert Hall December 3, 1935

What is it that accounts for the present state of the Church of God on earth? Realizing that things are not as they should be, and bemoaning the present state of affairs, the first question we must ask is not so much ‘What can we do?’ but rather ‘Why are things as they are?’

The War and the spread of education, the improved social conditions, the amelioration of the injustices in life, the motor-car, the cinema, the wireless, and all these things which we mention so frequently as causes of the present condition of spiritual decline, are in my opinion, mere secondary causes, the results and by-products of something else which is very much deeper and much more important. The real cause of the present state of the Church is to be found in the Church’s voluntary departure from a belief in the Bible as the fully inspired Word of God, and from a stressing and emphasizing of the great evangelical doctrines which had been so stressed and emphasized especially in the eighteenth century.

From the moment that philosophy was given the place of revelation, things began to go wrong. Of course people continued to attend church and chapel in fairly large numbers, partly out of mere habit and custom, without realizing exactly what was happening, but we can be perfectly certain that the Church lost her authority and her power from the moment that she ceased to believe firmly in the authority of the Word of God, and when she became doubtful and hesitant in her presentation of its doctrines to the people. From the moment that the idea began to gain currency that the Bible was the history of the quest of mankind for God, rather than God’s revelation of Himself and the only way of salvation to mankind, the Church began to decline and to wane in her influence. From the moment the Church jettisoned the great evangelical doctrines and substituted for them a belief in the moral and spiritual evolution of mankind, and began to preach a social gospel rather than a personal salvation, from that moment church attendance really became a mere matter of form, or a merely pleasant way of gratifying one’s appetite for ceremony and ritual and oratory and music. Church attendance was no longer vital and no longer absolutely essential. At that point, I suggest, the rot set in which has led to the present painful and pathetic state of affairs . . .

I do not want to be controversial, but must we not admit and confess that there is far too much heard at the present time of the word ‘decision,’ as if the great thing is that you and I should decide for Christ, rather than that He should do something for us? Yea, is not there a tendency on our part to emphasize results at the expense of regeneration?

Let us face this question quite honestly. Can yve, I wonder,from the Word of God itself, justify all the present tendency .to concentrate on youth and on youth movements? Let me go still further. Can many of the evangelistic methods which were introduced some forty or fifty years ago really be justified out of the Word of God? As I read of the work of the great evangelists in the Bible I find they were not first and foremost concerned about results; they were concerned about proclaiming the word of truth. They left the increase unto Him. They were concerned above all else that the people should be brought face to face with the truth itself. I watch St. Paul going into the town of Corinth, and I like to listen to him as he soliloquizes just outside the city. I imagine he might have thought of many expedients in order to win the town of Corinth. He might have consulted the Mayor of the town. He might have thought of many other expedients which I am not going to mention, in order to have results. ButI hear him say: ‘I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’ The great Apostle was afraid of rhetoric, eloquence, oratory; I think he was terrified lest a man might join a church simply because he had been carried away by Paul’s own speaking. I am very certain he would be afraid of many of the evangelistic methods that are being freely employed at this present moment. No, no, my friends, our business, our work, our first call is to declare in a certain and unequivocal manner the sovereignty, the majesty, the holiness of God; the sinfulness and the utter depravity of man, his total inability to save and to rescue himself; and the sacrificial, expiatory, atoning death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on that Cross on Calvary‘s Hill, and His glorious resurrection, as the only means and the only hope of human salvation.