Preachers

As the old saying goes:'Be careful what you wish for'...If you got too close to Spurgeon you might detect the oder of a french cigar:laugh: If you sat under Rice; make sure your wife didn't have bobbed hair:smilewinkgrin:

 

All very true! :laugh: At least until Spurgeon quit his cigars and Rice mellowed in his later years.

 

John Rice mellowed?

 

Did

Yeah, I know. Hard to believe. But he did mellow on a few items. His more controversial books (the ones people accuse of being legalistic) were published in the 1930's to the 1950's, such as Bobbed Hair Bossy Wives and Women Preachers (1941) and Amusements for Christians (1958). By the late 1960's he didn't even mind eating at a restaurant that sold liquor! (Gasp! )

He stayed strong on the things most important to him, though: soul-winning, revival, standing for the fundamentals of the faith, opposing liberalism, all the things that made him great. :thumbsup:

 

JoJ, if this is a hijack, I will start a new thread...and if it's too much to answer, then I'll just wallow in my ignorance...:tongue3:

Did he ever talk about what caused his "mellowing?"

 

No, he never talked about mellowing in my hearing. There were no big incidents later in his life that might produce mellowing. I think it was just a natural result of the Christian condition. I think if we walk with the Lord for nearly eighty years we too will get stronger on our core beliefs and less vocal on things that don't matter a lot.

For a little historical perspective, what might be the last controversy of his career occured when he put out a book of sermons in 1979 at the age of 83 entitled, Was Pope John Paul I a Born-Again Christian? It caused a minor stirr among Fundamentalists, the book title being the lead sermon, with the second sermon being "Pope John XXIII Seemed to Put His Trust in Christ." The second sermon was the controversial one, and he wrote in the book's introduction, "About Pope John XXIII, there is some sweet evidence of a forgiven heart, of a trusting soul, of one who personally knew the Lord Jesus and loved and trusted Him" (p. 7). His purpose in both sermons and in the book was to make sure the reader himself was trusting Christ as Savior, so his emphasis on the Lord Jesus continued to the end of his life.

To relate this to the OP, I think the sign of any great preacher is that heart that puts Christ first from the beginning to the end of his ministry.