Cosmology
Cosmology is a branch of astronomy concerned with the studies of the origin and evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to today and on into the future. It is the scientific study of the origin and eventual fate of the universe. Physical cosmology is the scientific study of the universe's origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, its ultimate fate, as well as the laws of science that govern these areas; the term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's Glossographia, in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher Christian Wolff, in Cosmologia Generalis. Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological and esoteric literature and traditions of creation myths and eschatology. Physical cosmology is studied by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, philosophers of space and time; because of this shared scope with philosophy, theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions, may depend upon assumptions that cannot be tested.
Cosmology differs from astronomy in that the former is concerned with the Universe as a whole while the latter deals with individual celestial objects. Modern physical cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which attempts to bring together observational astronomy and particle physics. Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as a "historical science" because "when we look out in space, we look back in time" due to the finite nature of the speed of light. Physics and astrophysics have played a central role in shaping the understanding of the universe through scientific observation and experiment. Physical cosmology was shaped through both mathematics and observation in an analysis of the whole universe; the universe is understood to have begun with the Big Bang, followed instantaneously by cosmic inflation. Cosmogony studies the origin of the Universe, cosmography maps the features of the Universe. In Diderot's Encyclopédie, cosmology is broken down into uranology, aerology and hydrology.
Metaphysical cosmology has been described as the placing of humans in the universe in relationship to all other entities. This is exemplified by Marcus Aurelius's observation that a man's place in that relationship: "He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is." Physical cosmology is the branch of physics and astrophysics that deals with the study of the physical origins and evolution of the Universe. It includes the study of the nature of the Universe on a large scale. In its earliest form, it was, the study of the heavens. Greek philosophers Aristarchus of Samos and Ptolemy proposed different cosmological theories; the geocentric Ptolemaic system was the prevailing theory until the 16th century when Nicolaus Copernicus, subsequently Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, proposed a heliocentric system. This is one of the most famous examples of epistemological rupture in physical cosmology.
Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, was the first description of the law of universal gravitation. It provided a physical mechanism for Kepler's laws and allowed the anomalies in previous systems, caused by gravitational interaction between the planets, to be resolved. A fundamental difference between Newton's cosmology and those preceding it was the Copernican principle—that the bodies on earth obey the same physical laws as all the celestial bodies; this was a crucial philosophical advance in physical cosmology. Modern scientific cosmology is considered to have begun in 1917 with Albert Einstein's publication of his final modification of general relativity in the paper "Cosmological Considerations of the General Theory of Relativity". General relativity prompted cosmogonists such as Willem de Sitter, Karl Schwarzschild, Arthur Eddington to explore its astronomical ramifications, which enhanced the ability of astronomers to study distant objects. Physicists unchanging. In 1922 Alexander Friedmann introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter.
Around the same time the Great Debate took place, with early cosmologists such as Heber Curtis and Ernst Öpik determining that some nebulae seen in telescopes were separate galaxies far distant from our own. In parallel to this dynamic approach to cosmology, one long-standing debate about the structure of the cosmos was coming to a climax. Mount Wilson astronomer Harlow Shapley championed the model of a cosmos made up of the Milky Way star system only; this difference of ideas came to a climax with the organization of the Great Debate on 26 April 1920 at the meeting of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D. C; the debate was resolved when Edwin Hubble detected Cepheid Variables in the Andromeda galaxy in 1923 and 1924. Their distance established spiral nebulae well beyond the edge of the Milky Way. S
Fall of man
The fall of man, or the fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. Although not named in the Bible, the doctrine of the fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis chapter 3. At first and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. After doing so, they became ashamed of their nakedness and God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and becoming immortal. For many Christian denominations, the doctrine of the fall is related to that of original sin, they believe that the fall brought sin into the world, corrupting the entire natural world, including human nature, causing all humans to be born into original sin, a state from which they cannot attain eternal life without the grace of God. The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts the concept of the fall but rejects the idea that the guilt of original sin is passed down through generations, based in part on the passage Ezekiel 18:20 that says a son is not guilty of the sins of his father.
Calvinist Protestants believe that Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice for the elect, so they may be redeemed from their sin. Judaism does not have a concept of "the fall" or "original sin" and has varying other interpretations of the Eden narrative. Lapsarianism, the logical order of God's decrees in relation to the Fall, is the distinction, by some Calvinists, as being supralapsarian or infralapsarian; the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man represents a tradition among the Abrahamic peoples, with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. The doctrine of the fall of man is extrapolated from Christian exegesis of Genesis 3. According to the narrative, God creates the first man and woman. God places them in the Garden of Eden and forbids them to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the serpent tempts Eve to eat fruit from the forbidden tree, which she shares with Adam and they become ashamed of their nakedness. Subsequently, God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, condemns Adam to working in order to get what he needs to live and condemns Eve to giving birth in pain, places cherubim to guard the entrance, so that Adam and Eve will not eat from the "tree of life".
The Book of Jubilees gives time frames for the events that led to the fall of man by stating that the serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit on the 17th day, of the 2nd month, in the 8th year after Adam's creation. It states that they were removed from the Garden on the new moon of the 4th month of that year. Christian exegetes of Genesis 2:17 have applied the day-year principle to explain how Adam died within a day. Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8 and Jubilees 4:29–31 explained that, to God, one day is equivalent to a thousand years and thus Adam died within that same "day"; the Greek Septuagint, on the other hand, has "day" translated into the Greek word for a twenty-four-hour period. According to the Genesis narrative, during the antediluvian age, human longevity approached a millennium, such as the case of Adam who lived 930 years. Thus, to "die" has been interpreted as to become mortal. However, the grammar does not support this reading, nor does the narrative: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden lest they eat of the second tree, the tree of life, gain immortality.
Catholic exegesis of Genesis 3 claims that the fall of man was a "primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man." Traditionally, the fall of Adam and Eve is said to have brought “four wounds” to human nature. These are enumerated by St Bede and others St Thomas Aquinas They are original sin, physical frailty and death, darkened intellect and ignorance; these negated or diminished the gifts of God to Adam and Eve of original justice or sanctifying grace, integrity and infused knowledge. This first sin was "transmitted" by Adam and Eve to all of their descendants as original sin, causing humans to be "subject to ignorance and the dominion of death, inclined to sin." Although the state of corruption, inherited by humans after the primeval event of Original Sin, is called guilt or sin, it is understood as a sin acquired by the unity of all humans in Adam rather than a personal responsibility of humanity. Children partake in the effects of the sin of Adam, but not in the responsibility of original sin, as sin is always a personal act.
Baptism is considered to erase original sin, though the effects on human nature remain, for this reason the Catholic Church baptizes infants who have not committed any personal sin. Eastern Orthodoxy rejects the idea that the guilt of original sin is passed down through generations, it bases its teaching in part on Ezekiel 18:20 that says a son is not guilty of the sins of his father. The Church teaches that, in addition to their conscience and tendency to do good and women are born with a tendency to sin due to the fallen condition of the world, it follows Maximus the Confessor and others in characterising the change in human nature as the introduction of a "deliberative will" in opposition to the "natural will" created by God which tends toward the good. Thus, according to St Paul in his epistle to th
Dwight L. Moody
Dwight Lyman Moody known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with the Holiness Movement, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers. One of his most famous quotes was “Faith makes all things possible... Love makes all things easy.“ Dwight Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, as the seventh child in a large family. His father, Edwin J. Moody, was stonemason, his mother was Betsey Moody. They had a daughter before Dwight's birth, his father died. Their mother struggled to support the nine children, but had to send some off to work for their room and board. Dwight too was sent off, where he received cornmeal and milk three times a day, he complained to his mother, but when she learned that he was getting all he wanted to eat, she sent him back. During this time, she continued to send the children to church. Together with his eight siblings, Dwight was raised in the Unitarian church.
His oldest brother was not heard from by the family until many years later. When Moody turned 17, he moved to Boston to work in an uncle's shoe store. One of the uncle's requirements was that Moody attend the Congregational Church of Mount Vernon, where Dr. Edward Norris Kirk served as the pastor. In April 1855 Moody was converted to evangelical Christianity when his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, talked to him about how much God loved him, his conversion sparked the start of his career as an evangelist. Moody was not received by the church when he first applied in May 1855, he was not received as a church member until May 4, 1856. According to Moody's memoir, his teacher, Edward Kimball, said: I can say, in saying it I magnify the infinite grace of God as bestowed upon him, that I have seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than was his when he came into my Sunday School class; the first meeting I saw him at was in a little old shanty, abandoned by a saloon-keeper. Mr. Moody had got the place to hold the meetings in at night.
I went there a little late. I thought,'If the Lord can use such an instrument as that for His honor and glory, it will astonish me; as a result of his tireless labor, within a year the average attendance at his school was 650, while 60 volunteers from various churches served as teachers. It became so well known that the just-elected President Lincoln visited and spoke at a Sunday School meeting on November 25, 1860. D. L. Moody "could not conscientiously enlist" in the Union Army during the Civil War describing himself as "a Quaker" in this respect. After the Civil War started, he became involved with the United States Christian Commission of the YMCA, he paid nine visits to the battlefront, being present among the Union soldiers after the Battle of Shiloh and the Battle of Stones River. On August 28, 1862, Moody married Emma C. Revell, with whom he had a daughter, Emma Reynolds Moody, two sons, William Revell Moody and Paul Dwight Moody; the growing Sunday School congregation needed a permanent home, so Moody started a church in Chicago, the Illinois Street Church.
In June 1871 at an International Sunday School Convention in Indianapolis, Dwight Moody met Ira D. Sankey, he was a gospel singer, with whom Moody soon began to collaborate. Four months in October 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed Moody's church building, as well as his house and those of most of his congregation. Many had to flee the flames, saving only their lives, ending up destitute. Moody, reporting on the disaster, said about his own situation that: "... he saved nothing but his reputation and his Bible."In the years after the fire, Moody's wealthy Chicago patron John V. Farwell tried to persuade him to make his permanent home in the city, offering to build a new house for Moody and his family, but the newly famous Moody sought by supporters in New York and elsewhere, chose a tranquil farm he had purchased near his birthplace in Northfield, Massachusetts. He felt. Northfield became an important location in evangelical Christian history in the late 19th century as Moody organized summer conferences.
These were attended by prominent Christian preachers and evangelists from around the world. Western Massachusetts has had a rich evangelical tradition including Jonathan Edwards preaching in colonial Northampton and C. I. Scofield preaching in Northfield. A protégé of Moody founded Moores Corner Church, in Leverett, it continues to be evangelical. Moody founded two schools here: Northfield School for Girls, founded in 1879, the Mount Hermon School for Boys, founded in 1881. In the late 20th century, these merged, forming today's co-educational, nondenominational Northfield Mount Hermon School. During a trip to the United Kingdom in the spring of 1872, Moody became well known as an evange
Salvation
Salvation is being saved or protected from harm or being saved or delivered from a dire situation. In religion, salvation is the saving of the soul from its consequences; the academic study of salvation is called soteriology. In religion, salvation is the saving of the soul from its consequences, it may be called "deliverance" or "redemption" from sin and its effects. Salvation is considered to be caused either by the grace of a deity. Religions emphasize the necessity of both personal effort—for example and asceticism—and divine action. In contemporary Judaism, refers to God redeeming the people of Israel from their various exiles; this includes the final redemption from the present exile. Judaism holds. Jews do not subscribe to the doctrine of original sin. Instead, they place a high value on individual morality as defined in the law of God — embodied in what Jews know as the Torah or The Law, given to Moses by God on biblical Mount Sinai. In Judaism, salvation is related to the idea of redemption, a saving from the states or circumstances that destroy the value of human existence.
God, as the universal spirit and Creator of the World, is the source of all salvation for humanity, provided an individual honours God by observing his precepts. So redemption or salvation depends on the individual. Judaism stresses that salvation cannot be obtained through anyone else or by just invoking a deity or believing in any outside power or influence; the Jewish concept of Messiah visualises the return of the prophet Elijah as the harbinger of one who will redeem the world from war and suffering, leading mankind to universal brotherhood under the fatherhood of one God. The Messiah is not considered as a future divine or supernatural being but as a dominating human influence in an age of universal peace, characterised by the spiritual regeneration of humanity. In Judaism, salvation is not limited to those of the Jewish faith; when Jews refer to themselves as the chosen people of God, they do not imply they have been chosen for special favours and privileges but rather they have taken it upon themselves to show to all peoples by precept and example the ethical way of life.
When examining Jewish intellectual sources throughout history, there is a spectrum of opinions regarding death versus the afterlife. An over-simplification, one source says salvation can be achieved in the following manner: Live a holy and righteous life dedicated to Yahweh, the God of Creation. Fast and celebrate during the appropriate holidays. By origin and nature, Judaism is an ethnic religion. Therefore, salvation has been conceived in terms of the destiny of Israel as the elect people of Yahweh, the God of Israel. In the biblical text of Psalms, there is a description of death, when people go into the earth or the "realm of the dead" and cannot praise God; the first reference to resurrection is collective in Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, when all the Israelites in exile will be resurrected. There is a reference to individual resurrection in the Book of Daniel, the last book of the Hebrew Bible, it was not until the 2nd century BCE that there arose a belief in an afterlife, in which the dead would be resurrected and undergo divine judgment.
Before that time, the individual had to be content that his posterity continued within the holy nation. The salvation of the individual Jew was connected to the salvation of the entire people; this belief stemmed directly from the teachings of the Torah. In the Torah, God taught his people sanctification of the individual. However, he expected them to function together and be accountable to one another; the concept of salvation was tied to that of restoration for Israel. During the Second Temple Period, the Sadducees, High Priests, denied any particular existence of individuals after death because it wasn't written in the Torah, while the Pharisees, ancestors of the rabbis, affirmed both bodily resurrection and immortality of the soul, most based on the influence of Hellenistic ideas about body and soul and the Pharisaic belief in the Oral Torah; the Pharisees maintained that after death, the soul is connected to God until the messianic era when it is rejoined with the body in the land of Israel at the time of resurrection.
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus said "salvation is from the Jews." This is in accordance with the Jewish concept of salvation, is a possible reference to Isaiah 49:6. Christianity’s primary premise is that the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ formed the climax of a divine plan for humanity’s salvation; this plan was conceived by God consequent on the Fall of Adam, the progenitor of the human race, it would be completed at the Last Judgment, when the Second Coming of Christ would mark the catastrophic end of the world. For Christianity, salvation is only possible through Jesus Christ. Christians believe that Jesus' death on the cross was the once-for-all sacrifice that atoned for the sin of humanity; the Christian religion, though not the exclusive possessor of the idea of redemption, has given to it a special definiteness and a dominant position. Taken in its widest sense, as deliverance from dangers and ills in general, mos
Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission. Taylor spent 51 years in China; the society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who began 125 schools and directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces. Taylor was known for his sensitivity to Chinese zeal for evangelism, he adopted wearing native Chinese clothing though this was rare among missionaries of that time. Under his leadership, the CIM was singularly non-denominational in practice and accepted members from all Protestant groups, including individuals from the working class, single women as well as multinational recruits; because of the CIM's campaign against the opium trade, Taylor has been referred to as one of the most significant Europeans to visit China in the 19th century. Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life: No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor.
Taylor was able to preach in several varieties of Chinese, including Mandarin and the Wu dialects of Shanghai and Ningbo. The last of these he knew well enough to help prepare a colloquial edition of the New Testament written in it. Taylor was born on 21 May 1832 the son of a chemist and Methodist lay preacher James Taylor and his wife, but as a young man he ran away from the Christian beliefs of his parents. At 17, after reading an evangelistic tract pamphlet entitled "Poor Richard", he professed faith in Christ, in December 1849, he committed himself to going to China as a missionary. At this time he came into contact with Edward Cronin of Kensington—one of the members of the first missionary party of the Plymouth Brethren to Baghdad, it is believed. Taylor was able to borrow a copy of China: Its State and Prospects by Walter Henry Medhurst, which he read. About this time, he began studying the languages of Mandarin, Greek and Latin. In 1851, he moved to a poor neighborhood in Kingston upon Hull to be a medical assistant with Robert Hardey, began preparing himself for a life of faith and service, devoting himself to the poor and exercising faith that God would provide for his needs.
He practised distributing open-air preaching among the poor. He was baptized by Andrew John Jukes of the Plymouth Brethren in the Hull Brethren Assembly in 1852, convinced his sister Amelia to take adult baptism. In 1852 he began studying medicine at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London, as preparation for working in China; the great interest awakened in England about China through the civil war, erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by Karl Gützlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of the Chinese Evangelisation Society, to the service of which Hudson Taylor offered himself as their first missionary. Taylor left England on 19 September 1853 before completing his medical studies, departing from Liverpool and arriving in Shanghai, China, on 1 March 1854; the nearly disastrous voyage aboard the clipper Dumfries through an Easterly passage near Buru Island lasted about five months. In China, he was faced with civil war, throwing his first year there into turmoil.
Taylor made 18 preaching tours in the vicinity of Shanghai starting in 1855, was poorly received by the people though he brought with him medical supplies and skills. He made a decision to adopt the native Chinese clothes and queue with shaven forehead, was able to gain an audience without creating a disturbance. Previous to this, Taylor realised that wherever he went he was being referred to as a "black devil" because of the overcoat he wore, he distributed thousands of Chinese Gospel tracts and portions of Scripture around Shanghai. During his stay in Shanghai, he adopted and cared for a Chinese boy named Hanban. Scottish evangelist, William Chalmers Burns, of the English Presbyterian Mission began work in Shantou, for a period Taylor joined him there. After leaving he found that all of his medical supplies, being stored in Shanghai, had been destroyed by a fire. In October 1856, while traveling across China he was robbed of nearly everything he owned. Relocated in Ningbo by 1857, Taylor received a letter from a supportive George Müller which led to Taylor and his co-worker John Jones deciding to resign from the problematic mission board which had sent them, instead work independently in what came to be called the "Ningbo Mission".
Four Chinese men joined them in their work: Ni Yongfa, Feng Ninggui, Wang Laijun, Qiu Guogui. In 1858, Taylor married Maria Jane Dyer, the orphaned daughter of the Rev. Samuel Dyer of the London Missionary Society, a pioneer missionary to the Chinese in Penang, Malaysia. Hudson met Maria in Ningbo where she lived and worked at a school for girls, run by one of the first female missionaries to the Chinese, Mary Ann Aldersey; as a married couple the Taylors took care of an adopted boy named Tianxi while living in Ningbo. They had a baby of their own that died late in 1858, their first surviving child, was born in 1859. Shortly after she was born, the Taylors took over all of the operations at the hospital in Ningbo, run by William Parker. In a letter to his sister A
Baptists
Baptists are Christians distinguished by baptizing professing believers only, doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the tenets of soul competency/liberty, salvation through faith alone, scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ordinances: baptism and the Lord's supper. Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians, their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship. Historians trace the earliest "Baptist" church to 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. In accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christ's atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect.
Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religion. Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious conflict with English dissenters under King James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the First and Second Great Awakening increased church membership in the United States. Baptist missionaries have spread their faith to every continent. Baptist historian Bruce Gourley outlines four main views of Baptist origins: the modern scholarly consensus that the movement traces its origin to the 17th century via the English Separatists, the view that it was an outgrowth of Anabaptist traditions, the perpetuity view which assumes that the Baptist faith and practice has existed since the time of Christ, the successionist view, or "Baptist successionism", which argues that Baptist churches existed in an unbroken chain since the time of Christ.
Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the 1600s, the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations. This view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal, it was a time of considerable religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical "truth" had been discovered. During the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation. There were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Church's direction, some chose to stay and try to make constructive changes from within the Anglican Church.
They are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction and became known as the Separatists. Historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, he had broken his ties with the Church of England. Reared in the Church of England, he became "Puritan, English Separatist, a Baptist Separatist," and ended his days working with the Mennonites, he began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of "great danger." The persecution of religious nonconformists in England led Smyth to go into exile in Amsterdam with fellow Separatists from the congregation he had gathered in Lincolnshire, separate from the established church. Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers.
In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and baptized the others. In 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled "The Character of the Beast," or "The False Constitution of the Church." In it he expressed two propositions: first, infants are not to be baptized. Hence, his conviction was that a scriptural church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith, he rejected the Separatist movement's doctrine of infant baptism. Shortly thereafter, Smyth left the group, layman Thomas Helwys took over the leadership, leading the church back to England in 1611. Smyth became committed to believers' baptism as the only biblical baptism, he was convinced on the basis of his interpretation of Scripture that infants would not be damned should they die in infancy. Smyth, convinced that his self-baptism was invalid, applied with the Mennonites for membership, he died while waiting for membership, some of his followers became Mennonites. Thomas Helwys and others kept their Baptist commitments.
The modern Baptist denomination is an outgrowth of Smyth's movement. Baptists rejected the name Anabaptist. McBeth writes that as late as the 18th century, many Baptists referred to themselves as "the Christians commonly—though falsely—called Anabaptists."Another milestone in the early dev
Charles Spurgeon
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains influential among Christians of various denominations, among whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers", he was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the Church in agreement with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith understanding, opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day. Spurgeon was the pastor of the congregation of the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years, he was part of several controversies with the Baptist Union of Great Britain and he left the denomination over doctrinal convictions. In 1867, he started a charity organisation, now called Spurgeon's and works globally, he founded Spurgeon's College, named after him posthumously. Spurgeon was a great author of many types of works including sermons, one autobiography, books on prayer, magazines, poetry and more. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime.
Spurgeon produced powerful sermons of penetrating precise exposition. His oratory skills held his listeners spellbound in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and many Christians hold his writings in exceptionally high regard among devotional literature. Born in Kelvedon, Essex, he moved to Colchester at 10 months old. Spurgeon's conversion from nominal Anglicanism came on 6 January 1850, at age 15. On his way to a scheduled appointment, a snow storm forced him to cut short his intended journey and to turn into a Primitive Methodist chapel in Artillery Street, Colchester where, he claimed, God opened his heart to the salvation message; the text that moved him was Isaiah 45:22 – "Look unto me, be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, there is none else." That year on 4 April 1850, he was admitted to the church at Newmarket. His baptism followed at Isleham; that same year he moved to Cambridge, where he became a Sunday school teacher. He preached his first sermon in the winter of 1850–51 in a cottage at Teversham while filling in for a friend.
From the beginning of his ministry his style and ability were considered to be far above average. In the same year, he was installed as pastor of the small Baptist church at Waterbeach, where he published his first literary work, a Gospel tract written in 1853. In April 1854, after preaching three months on probation and just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon only 19, was called to the pastorate of London's famed New Park Street Chapel, Southwark; this was the largest Baptist congregation in London at the time, although it had dwindled in numbers for several years. Spurgeon found friends in London among his fellow pastors, such as William Garrett Lewis of Westbourne Grove Church, an older man who along with Spurgeon went on to found the London Baptist Association. Within a few months of Spurgeon's arrival at Park Street, his ability as a preacher made him famous; the following year the first of his sermons in the "New Park Street Pulpit" was published. Spurgeon's sermons had a high circulation.
By the time of his death in 1892, he had preached nearly 3,600 sermons and published 49 volumes of commentaries, anecdotes and devotions. Following his fame was criticism; the first attack in the press appeared in the Earthen Vessel in January 1855. His preaching, although not revolutionary in substance, was a plain-spoken and direct appeal to the people, using the Bible to provoke them to consider the teachings of Jesus Christ. Critical attacks from the media persisted throughout his life; the congregation outgrew their building, moved to Exeter Hall to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues Spurgeon preached to audiences numbering more than 10,000. At 22, Spurgeon was the most popular preacher of the day. On 8 January 1856, Spurgeon married Susannah, daughter of Robert Thompson of Falcon Square, London, by whom he had twin sons and Thomas born on 20 September 1856. At the end of that year, tragedy struck on 19 October 1856, as Spurgeon was preaching at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall for the first time.
Someone in the crowd yelled, "Fire!" The ensuing panic and stampede left several dead. Spurgeon was devastated by the event and it had a sobering influence on his life. For many years he spoke of being moved to tears for no reason known to himself. Walter Thornbury wrote in "Old and New London" describing a subsequent meeting at Surrey: a congregation consisting of 10,000 souls, streaming into the hall, mounting the galleries, humming and swarming – a mighty hive of bees – eager to secure at first the best places, and, at last, any place at all. After waiting more than half an hour – for if you wish to have a seat you must be there at least that space of time in advance... Mr. Spurgeon ascended his tribune. To the hum, rush, trampling of men, succeeded a low, concentrated thrill and murmur of devotion, which seemed to run at once, like an electric current, through the breast of everyone present, by this magnetic chain the preacher held us fast bound for about two hours, it is not my purpose to give a summary of his discourse.
It is enough to say of his voice, that its power and volume are sufficient to reach every one in that vast assembly.
