Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269901 in Books
• Published on: 1982-12-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 394 pages

Customer Reviews

This is the first of a two-volume work by Murray and is surely the definitive biography on the life of the famous Welch preacher
This two-volume work by Murray is surely the definitive biography on the life of the famous Welch preacher, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In nearly 1200 pages of text Murray traces the life and ministry of this man of God, who in many ways was the final link between the modern church and the great eighteenth century English preachers.

Lloyd-Jones' legacy is somewhat uneven. On the positive side, he welded enormous influence in the effort to return evangelical preachers to sound doctrinal and theological preaching. His expositions of the New Testament epistles are legendary. He preached almost 400 sermons on the book of Romans before his health broke while preaching through chapter 14. The Doctor was an enthusiastic Calvinist and a strong supporter of the writings of the Puritans.

On the negative side, MLJ was at times influenced by his Calvinism and Puritanism to go beyond Scripture. This is most evident in his views on revival. He cut his spiritual eyeteeth in the Calvinistic Methodists denomination, which, while being relatively sound doctrinally, takes a highly mystical approach to the Christian life and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Calvinistic Methodist were deeply involved in The Welch Revival of 1904, and although he was too young to be involved there is a sense in which MLJ never "got over" this revival. He spent the rest of his life looking for another such "movement of the Spirit." This pursuit greatly affected his view of the Christian life and the church. MLJ's commentaries on Romans vividly proves this point. Having read the first six commentaries on Romans, covering chapters 1 through 8:4, I was quite impressed with how biblical most of the teaching was. I could not believe that within a few years after his death the very church that MLJ had pastored had become Vineyard. But volume seven which contains MLJ's teachings on revival and the Holy Spirit explained it all. At this point MLJ all but laid his Bible down and turned to the experiences of past revivals of the church. He then developed his pneumatology on the back of these experiences. The result was calamitous. What a lesson for us all. Here was a man who attempted to base his whole ministry on Scripture but he had a blind spot. And unfortunately that blind spot has caused great damage.

Nevertheless, if you are a fan of the Doctor, and want to understand his ministry, these two volumes are without peer.

A challenging biography wtih lots to teach us today
I've known about Martyn Lloyd-Jones for years. I knew he was a medical doctor who gave up a promising career to become a pastor. I knew he was stern and a gifted preacher who could take years to work through a book of the Bible. I remember being captivated listening to a cassette tape of him preaching on two words: "But God..." But when I kept hearing Tim Keller mention the influence of Lloyd-Jones on his own ministry, I had to learn more. I'm glad I did.

The first thing that struck me as I read this volume is how little things have changed. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking that we are the first to encounter some of the trends and fads that everyone writes about. The landscape of this book seemed familiar to me: churches in decline, a massive rethinking of theology, an emphasis on pragmatism, a loss of confidence in preaching, a desire to be relevant, and an old version of the attractional-incarnational debate. Anyone who is familiar with books and blogs on church life today will recognize many of the same issues in this book, even though Lloyd-Jones lived a century ago.

Lloyd-Jones became an oddity within this context. He believed that the solution to the decline of the church was nothing less than a rediscovery of the Gospel, and a reawakening to the identity of the church. In other words, Lloyd-Jones pressed for a return to first things. He seemed radically out of step with his times, but the result was a greater relevance and impact than if he had tried to be relevant.

Here's an example of the problem as Lloyd-Jones saw it:

"We are not declaring the Gospel with power to a dispirited and disillusioned age; we are not living in the discipline of Gospel fellowship; only in a very imperfect degree are our churches God's resting place and holy habitation. The depressing and alarming thing about our churches is not their tiny congregations, their shabby buildings, their social insignificance, their political impotence. If our churches are in peril it is not because they are less crowded than cinemas, less powerful than the promoters of dog-racing, less correct than Sunday golf, less fashionable even than Romanism or Christian Science. If our churches are in peril, it is because they have forgotten what they are."

Surprisingly, Lloyd-Jones didn't believe in evangelism programs. He believed that when the church understood the Gospel and who she was, and lived in light of that reality, that would have more of a missional impact than any Gospel program. This reminds me of what Dallas Willard said about not making outreach a primary goal.

Even though Lloyd-Jones violated everything that his contemporaries said about effective ministry, his impact was enormous and is still being felt today.

Besides this book's message for today, there is lots to appreciate about the story of his life. I was surprised to read that Lloyd-Jones almost moved to Winnipeg as a boy. As a resident of Toronto, I loved reading of his visits to this city, and how we confronted T.T. Shields, the polemical pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church, and told him to stop being so negative. While staying at 74 St. George Street in Toronto, Lloyd-Jones discovered a series of books across the road at Knox College that significantly shaped his life. And we read that he never tired of visiting Niagara Falls.

A good biography is humbling. This one helped me realize that our problems and the proposed solutions aren't so new, that God uses individuals who are somewhat out of step with the times, and that the solution involves, more than anything else, the Gospel.

I'm looking forward to reading Volume 2.

Compelling story of an Extraordinary Life
If Martyn Lloyd-Jones' life was fiction, it would be a good novel. The fact that it is real and that Ian Murray was personally acquainted with Lloyd Jones and his family makes this a must-read biography, even though it is quite long. Highly recommended!