"Aside from Primitive Baptists, few are the numbers of Christian groups in our day who do not in one way or another subscribe to the teachings of Andrew Fuller. Who was Andrew Fuller? What did Fuller teach? Why do we object to his teachings?..."
What is the Problem with Fullerism? - Elder Joe Holder. Elder Holder addresses this important topic and sheds light on the truth of Fullerism and its error.
www.littlezionpbc.org
Your link to 'Elder Joe Holder" proves one thing: Holder has (had?) never read anything by Andrew Fuller. All his criticisms of Fuller are quotations from a chap called George Ella. I have met Ella on several occasions, heard him speak twice and had some sharp discussions with him on line. He is an Anglican (despite living in Germany) and an avid paedobaptist. He is also a hyper-Calvinist.
Fuller was one of the men who rescued the Particular Baptists from the desert of hyper-Calvinism. All the early (17th Century) Baptists, like Kiffin, Knollys, Bunyan and Keach believed in the free offer of the Gospel, and under them the Baptist cause grew mightily in England and Wales. In 1715, there were 220 Particular Baptist churches, where 80 years before there were effectively none.
From around 1720, what was at that time was called 'High Calvinism' came into many of the churches, and the growth was choked. I am reluctant to speak ill of John Gill, who did much to rescue Britain from Unitarianism, but under his ministry, his church barely saw any growth, although it was in Central London in the middle of the 'Great Awakening.' God may have blessed some of his teaching, but He did not bless his preaching. By contrast, Benjamin Beddome, who pastored a church in a tiny village called Moreton-on-the-Marsh, saw huge growth, with people walking 20 or 30 miles each way just to hear him preach. Beddome held to the 1689 Confession when many were falling away from it and making the Baptist cause in truth, "a very dunghill in society."
Andrew Fuller came 50 years after Gill, and lived in another small village called Soham. As a youth he sat under the ministry of a man called John Eve, whose preaching, according to Fuller, was "not adapted to awaken the conscience' and he 'had little or nothing to say to the unconverted."
I won't go any further lest I make this post too long, Suffice it to say that Fuller, along with John Ryland, John Sutcliffe and Andrew Pearce, supported the first modern foreign missionary, William Carey when he went to India, and brought real revival to the Baptist cause. That Fuller made some mistakes and sometimes overstated his position is undeniable, but Spurgeon thanked God for him and declared him to be the foremost theologian of the 18th and early 19th Centuries.
A good book to read on this subject is
Ardent Love for Jesus by Michael Haykin (Brynterion Press; ISBN: 978 1 85049 248 1). It covers not only Fuller, but some of the men who worked alongside him.
