Featured A. W. Pink

There was some discussion about A. W, Pink on another thread. I think it may be helpful to give a short biography and some book recommendations. I no longer have Iain Murray's biography, and these details come either from my memory or other sources.

Arthur Pink was born in Nottingham UK in 1886, the oldest child in a Christian family. In his teens, however, young Arthur rebelled against that and became enmeshed in Theosophy and quickly began to be a leader. He later confessed, "I was a medium, practising clairvoyance, psychomancy and magical healing." This naturally upset his father, and one day as 22 year-old Arthur brushed past him, he quoted Proverbs 14:12: 'There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death'

That word of God deeply affected Pink, and immediately changed his life. He was due to speak at a Theosophy meeting two days later, but when he came to speak it was to confess Christ as his Lord and Saviour, to the shock and chagrin of his audience.

Almost immediately, Pink felt the call to preach, and in 1910, after a rigorous regime of home study for two years, he travelled to America to study at the Moody Institute. He stayed there for just six weeks; the teaching was most elementary. One of his lecturers procured him a pastorate at Silverton, Colorado, and from there, having become convinced of Believers' baptism, he moved to California in 1912 where he pastored the First Baptist Church of Garden Grove, Los Angeles where 37 new converts were quickly brought into membership and Pink married Vera Russell, a Kentucky girl, so they moved to KY to pastor a church in Spartanburg.

During this time Pink became associated with some of the leaders of the Fundamentalist movement, including Philip Mauro and Harry Ironside. Mark Dever's great-grandfather, Leaman Winstead, was a close friend. During this time he also discovered the Puritans and read them voraciously. In 1919 he noted that he had read 45 books in 3 months! He had also begun to write: The Sovereignty of God and The Divine Inspiration of the Bible.

In 1920, Pink was asked by an evangelist called Thompson to help him with a tent mission in San Francisco. Ironside was also involved. Between them they preached to between 700 and 1,000 people each night who listened 'with breathless interest throughout. They saw many conversions, giving the lie to the belief that Pink's preaching was never blessed by God.

In 1922, Pink began his most important work, a monthly magazine called Studies in the Scriptures, with 24 pages of articles and Bible studies to supply each month. Overwork produced a nervous breakdown and depression, and Vera became convinced that Pink's main calling was to write. However, in 1925 a call came to preach in Australia, so off they went.

In Sydney, Pink was involved again in evangelistic campaigns. Sixty years later, Iain Murray met people there who remembered Pink's ministry to be an outstanding spiritual time. However, he found it hard to discover a congregation that shared his belief in the Doctrines of Grace. Eventually he settled at a church which had 'Gospel Standard' (i.e. Hyper-Calvinist) roots. Pink was assured that evangelistic preaching was acceptable and so accepted a position there. There are those who believe that Pink was 'hyper.' Here's an extract from his preaching to prove otherwise:

'.....Why not believe in Him for yourself? Why not trust in the precious blood for yourself and why not tonight? Why not tonight, my friend? God is ready. God is ready to save you if you believe on Him. The blood has been shed, the sacrifice has been offered, the atonement has been made, the feast has been spread. The call goes out to you tonight, "Come, for all things are now ready!"

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Pink saw a large number of conversions in the two years he was at the Belvoir Street Church. However, two smaller churches associated with Belvoir Street had trust deeds which outlawed invitations to the lost. So Pink felt he had to resign, and 40% of the church resigned with him! 26 of them founded a new church with Pink as Pastor and numbers quickly doubled. But Pink felt that he was causing a schism and made the decision to leave, departing for England in 1928.

In England he again found Bible-believing, evangelistic Calvinist churches very rare. The 'downgrade' warned of by Spurgeon had arrived with a vengeance. At some point his parents died and he and Vera inherited enough money to make them independent. In the light of Pink's continuing depression, they decided to concentrate on producing Studies in the Scriptures.

In 1940, Pink's house near London was bombed and destroyed by the Luftwaffe. He and Vera nearly lost their lives. Pink may have been suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress when he decided to depart for the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where they remained until Pink's death in 1952. He had found it impossible to worship at any of the churches in Lewis which may have had to do with his mental frailty at this time, but also with the deadness of the churches at that time. The revival that later broke out there came almost at the very time Pink died.

Most, though not all, of Pink's books may be found here: COLLECTION OF A.W. PINK'S WRITINGS I have by no means read all of them, but here are a few I can recommend.
The Sovereignty of God. This book has been greatly used by God to bring people to an understanding of the Doctrines of Grace.
Profiting from the word
Spiritual Growth
The Seven sayings of the Saviour from the Cross
The Holy Spirit (the best book I've read on this subject)
An Exposition of Hebrews (the commentary I turn to first; full of meat!)
The Life of David, the Life of Elijah, Gleanings from Elisha. These biographies are extremely helpful.
The satisfaction of Christ & The Doctrine of Reconciliation. Two really comprehensive books on the cross.
Gleanings from Paul and A Guide to Fervent Prayer. These are expositions of the prayers contained in the NT letters.
The Doctrines of Election and Justification.

 

Two other books that I forgot:
The Divine Covenants. An excellent companion to some of the good stuff coming out of 1689 Federalism.
Studies in saving faith. A very scary book for supporters of 'Easy Believism. John MacArthur encouraged the re-printing of this book and wrote the foreword.

When Pink died in 1952, he had been pretty much forgotten. The readership of Studies in the Scriptures .had been decimated by the war and not rebuilt. Christian publishing houses had ceased to be interested in the older theology that Pink offered, and no one was interested in re-printing any of his works. But among his surviving readership at his death were Ernest Riesinger and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The latter discovered Pink in 1942 and found him extremely helpful. "Don't waste time reading Barth or Brunner," he wrote to a young man training for the ministry; "You will get nothing from them to aid you with preaching. Read Pink!"

In the providence of God, a resurgence of interest in Reformed theology and the Puritans began in the late 1950s and has continued ever since. New publishing houses like Banner of Truth have brought Pink's works to a much wider audience and gave him almost cult status in the '70s and '80s. @John of Japan said that the books of John C. Rice outstripped those of Pink. I have no way of knowing if this is so, but I can say that Rice is totally unknown in Britain. I had never heard of him before coming on this forum, and have never read a review of one of his books or seen one on sale in a Christian bookshop. This is not a criticism of Rice; I'm sure he's excellent and the loss may well be ours, but that is the case. On the other hand, it is small American publishers like Pietan Publications that are re-printing Pink's lesser known works and selling them to this day, all around the world. Truly Pink is one of whom it can be said, 'he, being dead, still speaks.'

 

Apologies for not replying earlier. I have been away at the Gideons UK Conference.

I think, not crotchety but sad and depressed, as other Christians like Spurgeon and Brainerd have been. As early as 1919, he was apparently putting too much strain on himself, lost weight, experienced severe headaches and suffered from low blood pressure. His wife described him as ' quite despondent, nervous, irritable and unable to sleep.' (Geoff Thomas, writing in the Banner of Truth mag). No doubt at the end of his life he was in breach of that Scripture which tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. But whatever the cause, I for one stand hugely in is debt for the help I received from his writings.

One feature of Pink's writing is his forthrightness. You never find yourself asking, "What's he trying to say? Why doesn't he come off the fence?" Since starting this thread I have begun reading again his Doctrine of Election. Pink is very dismissive of those who disagree with him. Lloyd-Jones thought this was a weakness:

Dr Lloyd-Jones certainly did not believe that discussion of the doctrines of grace should be carried on in an atmosphere of controversy. To present those doctrines in an argumentative way to evangelical Christians of a different understanding, or to make a direct attack on their beliefs and practices, is unlikely to be beneficial. He thought that A.W. Pink had made a mistake at this point and that in doing so he had lost an opportunity to influence numbers who were incapable of suddenly receiving meat in the place of milk. Reflecting on this in later years, he was to say:

If I had behaved like Pink did, I would have achieved nothing. Nothing at all. I could see that the only hope was to let the weight of the truth convince the people. So I had to be very patient and take a very long term look at things. Otherwise I would have been dismissed and the whole thing would have been finished. [Iain Murray: D. Martyn lloyd-Jones, Vol. 2, page 232]

Maybe there's a lesson there for us all. I will say that Lloyd-Jones made the same criticism of more that one American Fundamentalist.

Thank you for your kind words. I have the same respect for you I would have replied to you on the other thread, but it closed before I could do so.
I meant no disrespect to your grandfather, who was, I'm sure, a fine servant of the Lord and much used by Him.