Who Was Charles Spurgeon?

Last updated on: June 14, 2016 at 4:17 pm by Jack Wellman

Who Was Charles Spurgeon? 2016-06-14T16:17:07-05:00 Jack Wellman

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Who was Charles Spurgeon? Why did they call him the “Prince of Preachers?”

Charles Spurgeon

Charles Hadden Spurgeon (1834-1892) was born in Kelvedon, Essex in England in 1834 to non-conformists parents. Spurgeon’s father and grandfather were non-conformist ministers, meaning that they lived a simple, pious life and were not of the Anglican Church. Spurgeon became obsessed by the martyrs of the Christian faith and loved John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Fox’s Book of Martyrs. When Spurgeon turned 15, he decided to become a Baptist but he attributed it to divine sovereignty because he was forced to seek shelter from a snowstorm in an old Methodist church. It is there, he says, that he heard the gospel in its fullest sense, for the very first time. Even though four months later, he was baptized and joined a Baptist church, he marks that that day as the day of his new birth, which is sometimes called being born again (John 3:3-8). It didn’t take long for Spurgeon to receive his very special calling from God and at a very young age!

Who was Charles Spurgeon?

Charles Spurgeon was saved as a youth, and amazingly, only four years after his conversion, he was selected to be the pastor of the New Park Street Church, which was formerly pastored by a Bible scholar, known as John Gill, the great Baptist theologian, so Spurgeon had a very long shadow cast before him. As a youth, he did try attending school but never did earn a degree, however he always had an intense interest in the Bible and wanted to learn Greek from a tutor to gain some insight into Scripture, but he also devoured every Puritan book he could place his hands on. Spurgeon was only 15 when he broke away from his family’s faith and became a Baptist, no doubt heavily influenced by the so-called “Dunkards,” which he had been reading about (Puritan books). The so-called “Dunkards” got their name from submerging or dunking under the water (baptizing) as was their custom. The Puritans and the German Brethren Church were called Anabaptists (or re-baptizers) because they refused to accept infant baptism. They believed in the full-submersion baptism that resembled what the early church practiced but the Puritans and the Brethren suffered severe persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death for their beliefs. Charles Spurgeon was drawn to such devotion to Christ.

Spurgeon’s Passion

Charles Spurgeon believed in preaching only biblical messages. He never spoke a word on the pulpit but that every other word, or at least sentence, referred to or literally quote Scripture. He did use real-life stories or examples that would lead into his sermons, but he understood that this was where the power of God resided (Rom 1:16; 1st Cor 1:18). His belief in the power of the Word was even more established as on one occasion where he was trying out the acoustics in a new tabernacle and said “Behold, the Lamb of God!” Suddenly, a maintenance worker came and fell at his feet, feeling convicted because he had never been saved and the fear of Christ’s appearance made him realize that he needed saving. Spurgeon never forgot that. He was often accused of being vulgar, but not using profanities, and he did admit, “I am perhaps vulgar, but it is not intentional, save that I must and will make people listen. My firm conviction is that we have had enough polite preachers.”

The Last Years

The end was swiftly approaching for the ministry of Charles Spurgeon as he began to run into some controversy called the Down Grade Controversy, when he began exposing some of the evils of ritualism, hypocrisy, but mostly Modernism. His church attendance began to sharply decline because most of his congregants had jobs that were part of the Industrial Revolution. That was also about the same time that Charles Spurgeon’s health was failing him. Charles Spurgeon suffered a lot during his mid to latter years. He suffered from bouts of depression but also suffered from gout, rheumatism, and Bright’s disease, where blood is found in the urine. When Charles Hadden Spurgeon died on January 31st, 1892, there were over 100,000 mourners who lined the streets of London to form a funeral parade. That reveals just how great of an impact this “Prince of Preachers” had left on the nation. Over 60,000 people came to give their respects as he lie in state at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Flags flew at half-staff in England, pubs closed down, and London went into mourning in that late January day in 1892.

Conclusion

Charles Spurgeon was highly evangelistic and he taught his church to be also because of the imperative command given by Christ to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20). Believing in the sovereignty of God and knowing that God will save whom He chooses to save, he was nonetheless trying to reach the lost by means of the saved. He stressed the fact that God will and has used people as a means to be saved as they point them to Christ. The “Prince of Preachers,” during his later years of suffering and disenfranchisement, understood that eternity will so overshadow today, that it’s beyond comparison (Rom 8:18).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.

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