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Order of Contents
Articles
Booklet
Historic Story
On the Great Commission’s Relation to the Pastoral Ministry & Church
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Articles
1800’s
Alexander, Archibald
The World to be Reclaimed by the Gospel, Missionary Paper #10, search for “Alexander”, 1800 12 pp.
An Introduction to the Memoir of the Rev. Joseph W. Barr, Late Missionary 1833 16 pp.
Anonymous – Do You Ever Attend the Missionary Prayer Meeting? 1845 4 pp., starting on p. 101, appended to Samuel Miller’s Letters on the Observance of the Monthly Concert in Prayer
Kennedy, John – Hyper-Evangelism: Another Gospel, though a Mighty Power Buy 1874 with a 6 paragraph introduction by Rev. Sherman Isbell
This is a spiritually insightful critique of the American, revivalist style, D.L Moody crusades in Scotland, that emphasized quick external professions of faith to the detriment and exclusion of a substantial, balanced and persevering Christian life. This is must reading and directly applicable to our day of Fast-Food Christianity.
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1900’s
Beeke, Joel
John Calvin: Teacher and Practitioner of Evangelism no date 22 pp.
Puritan Evangelism: A Biblical Approach no date 28 paragraphs
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Booklet
Beeke, Joel – Puritan Evangelism Buy 78 pp.
The best and most Biblical work on how to share your faith with others in a way that brings God’s Word home to the heart.
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Historic Story
Watt, Hugh – ‘Moderator, Rax me that Bible’ about John Erskine (1721-1803) in the 1796 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
‘Rax me’ means ‘reach me’ or ‘hand me’.
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On the Great Commission’s Relation to the Pastoral Ministry & Church
Samuel Rutherford
The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 2
p. 204
“Answer. First, we hold that by a calling or ordination he is made a pastor; by election he is restricted to be ordinarily the pastor of his flock.
Secondly, a pastor is a pastor of the catholic Church, but he is not a catholic pastor of the catholic Church, as were the apostles.
Thirdly, the Reformed Churches may send pastors to the Indians, for that which Acosta says of Jesuits, we may with better reason say it of our selves: That pastors are as soldiers, and some soldiers are to keep order and remain in a certain place; others run up and down in all places; So some are affixed to a congregation, to feed them; others may be sent to those people who have not heard of the Gospel, which sending is ordinary and lawful in respect of pastors sending and the pastors who are sent, because in pastors, even after the apostles be dead, there remains a general pastoral care for all the Churches of Christ. Thus sending is not ordinary, but extraordinary in respect of those to whom the pastors are sent; yet is it a pastoral sending [as opposed to this being absent in congregationalism in such a case].
…but a pastoral care for the Churches is not proper to apostles only, but only such a pastoral care by special direction from Christ immediately to preach to all, 2. Backed with the gift of tongues and of miracles; and this essentially differences the apostle from the ordinary pastor; but the former pastoral care to preach the Gospel to all nations, and to convert, is common both to the apostle and pastor.”
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pp. 207-8
“It is true, they [the Independents] object that the apostles, Mt. 18, were commanded to preach to all nations, but pastors are not so now, but are commanded to feed the flock over which God has appointed them, Acts 20:28; but it is as true [that] the apostles were commanded to preach to all nations, in opposition to the charge that the prophets of old were to speak to the people of Israel only, and the apostles, Mt. 10, [were] forbidden to preach to the Samaritans and gentiles; and it is as true that God’s Spirit limited the apostles to preach to Macedonia, not to Bithynia;
Now because this particular direction for places is wanting in the Church, it is certain that a man is yet a pastor in office in relation to as many as God’s hand of providence shall send him unto, though he be chosen by a people to feed ordinarily one determinate flock, and though he be not an extraordinary and immediately inspired planter of Churches, or the first planter, as were the apostles, yet is he a pastor in relation to all. And if this be not said:
1. It were simply unlawful for pastors now to plant churches and spread the Gospel to those nations who have not heard it, because all pastors now are ordinary [according to congregationalists], and none are immediately inspired apostles: but it is certain what the apostles did by an extraordinary gift, as such immediately called pastors, it is unlawful for ordinary pastors to attempt to do, as to attempt to speak with tongues, and to plant Churches by speaking with tongues and confirming it with miracles is unlawful. Papists, as Bellarmine, Suarez, Acosta, ascribe this to the Pope and his apostles.
Our divines answer that the apostles that way have no successors; But what the apostles did by an ordinary pastoral gift, as to preach the Word, administrate the Sacraments, to erect and plant Churches by ordinary gifts, where the pastors can speak to the Churches by an ordinary gift in their own language, they are obliged both within and without the congregation, to preach as pastors, because where God gives gifts pastoral to pastors, he commands them to exercise these gifts, else they dig their Lord’s talent in the earth: but God gives to pastors pastoral gifts to preach to others than their own congregation, and to administrate the seals to them also, and to plant churches. Therefore, it is presumed that the Church does give authority and an external ministerial calling to the exercise of these gifts.”
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A Survey of the Survey of that Sum... (London, 1658), bk. 4, ch. 2, pp. 353-4
“Mr. Hooker [a congregationalist]: ”The Apostles’ (says Mr. Rutherford) ‘stand in the room of the whole catholic ministerial guides when they revealed the keys.’ [Hooker’s] Answer [to Rutherford]: The apostles in that commission were extraordinary persons sent to all the world to lay the foundation of the Gospel, by an apostolic power; and in this sense they have no successors, nor stand in the room of any.’
[Rutherford’s] Answer:
[1.] If the apostles represent none in this sense, Mt. 28:19; Mk. 16:15; Jn. 20:21, ‘Go and teach, etc.’, ‘Whose sins ye remit, etc.’, then none succeed the apostles to teach, baptize, remit and retain sins; pastors then must do these without a commission from Christ, or these ordinances must cease.
2. Mt. 28; Jn. 20, He sends the apostles and says, ‘Behold, I am with you to the end of the world,’ in preaching and baptizing. The apostles, Mt. 28:19-20; Jn. 20:21-22, when they received power to preach and baptize, did represent all ordinary teachers to the end of the world, or then ordinary teachers want [lack] all calling. But the apostles do not live to preach and baptize to the end of the world; therefore that ministerial presence of Christ must be promised to some represented by the apostles. So the English Divines, Calvin, Beza, Diodati [held], as apostles gifted with power of working miracles, etc., they represented none, nor had they any successors. So [in] Mt. 28, the pastors have the power of the keys and of office given them…”
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