[In his Introduction to John Owens' The Death of Death
in the Death of Christ, J.I. Packer states, "One of the most urgent tasks facing
evangelical Christendom today is the recovery of the Gospel." We agree. Easy believism
and the invitation system may make for large numbers of so-called Decisions, but how many
of them are true conversions? In light of this, voices from the past may help us find
our way home---Editors.]
Thomas Goodwin: "You see that salvation is no slight thing and that believing and turning to God is no slight matter. . . Can you appoint God the time when it shall be done? No. 'It pleased the Father,' saith the apostle 'to reveal his Son in me.' It is the Father draweth, and it is the Son that must take hold of you, and it is the Holy Ghost that must come down into your hearts. . . [T]hough the Gospel is preached, and sets forth Christ the great object of faith, yet all do not believe. What is the reason? 'No man can come to me unless the Father draw him.'"
Asahel Nettleton: "If every effect must have a cause, then this cause must be prior to the effect, then no sinner ever did, or ever will, put forth a holy choice until this ineffable tendency to sin be removed, and succeeded by an infallible tendency to holiness; unless an infallible tendency to sin can be the cause of a holy choice. . ."
Archival Malay: "In my ministry it has been my aim to keep back nothing profitable to my hearers, but to declare unto them 'all the counsel of God.' The leading theme of my preaching has been Christ crucified, as the only Savior of lost sinners. I have shown the universal and total depravity of man; that every unconverted sinner is under the dominion of a carnal mind, which is at enmity to God and not subject to his law; that a change of heart, a heavenly birth, is absolutely necessary to see the kingdom of God and enter therein; that the same power that created the world, and raised our Lord from the dead, must quicken the sinner dead in sins, and make him alive to God; that if saved from sin and hell, it must be by free, sovereign, efficacious grace, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and that nothing can meet the necessities of a sinner awakened to a sense of his guilt of the teaching of the Holy Spirit, but what satisfied divine justice, the full atonement of Jesus Christ."
George Whitefield: "I see poor, trembling, Christless, wretches, standing before the bar of God, crying out, Lord, if we must be damned, let some angel, or some arch angel, pronounce the damnatory sentence: but all in vain. Christ himself will pronounce the irrevocable sentence. Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, let me persuade you to close with Christ, and never rest until you can say, 'The Lord our righteousness'." Who knows but the Lord may have mercy on, nay, abundantly pardon you? You need not fear the greatness or number of your sins. For are you sinners? So am I. Are you the chief of sinners? So am I. Are you backsliding sinners? So am I. And yet the Lord . . .is my righteousness."
Ezekiel Hopkins: "The preaching of the Word is the great means which God hath appointed for regeneration": 'Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.' (Romans 10:17) When God first created man, it is said that he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, but when God new creates man, he breathes into his ears. This is the Word that raiseth the dead, calling them out of the grave; This is that Word that opens the eyes of the blind, that turns the hearts of the disobedient and rebellious. And though wicked and profane men scoff at preaching, and count all ministers' words, and God's words too, but so much wind, yet they are such wind, believe it, as is able to tear rocks and rend mountains; such wind as if ever they are saved, must shake and overturn the foundations of all their carnal confidence and presumptions. Be exhorted therefore more to prize and more to frequent the preaching of the Word."
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