Book Description

The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd is of much more than merely historical interest. The first internationally recognized biography ever to be published, it has had a profound impact on successive generations of Christians around the world.

The Diary covers the period from April 1742 to October 1747, and although written as a private and personal record, was published in abridged form by the great New England pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards in 1749.

Brainerd wrote the Journal, which covers the twelve months from June 1745 to June 1746, at the request of the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, which was supporting his missionary work amongst the indigenous peoples of North America. As Sir Marcus Loane has noted in They Were Pilgrims, ‘the Diary and Journal were each written for a distinct purpose, and each had its separate character. The Diary is a remarkable record of the interior life of the soul, and its entries still throb with the tremendous earnestness of a man who whose heart was aflame for God. The Journal is an objective history of the missionary work of twelve months, and its details are an astonishing testimony to the grace of God in the lives of men.’

Jonathan Edwards’ own ‘Reflections and Observations’ on Brainerd’s life, included in this volume, are, according to Iain H. Murray in his Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, ‘among the most important descriptive pages on the Christian life which Edwards ever wrote.’

Between 1742 and his death in 1747 David Brainerd took the gospel to the North American Indians of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He willingly ran any risk and accepted any hardship to fulfil his calling as a missionary. The amount of work which he achieved in such unpromising and difficult circumstances now seems almost incredible. Moreover his total dedication to the cause of making Christ known inspired the finest of missionaries who followed in his footsteps.

Few books have done so much to promote prayer and missionary action as The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd.

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Endorsements

‘Brainerd’s life is a vivid, powerful testimony to the truth that God can and does use weak, sick, discouraged, beat-down, lonely, struggling saints, who cry to him day and night, to accomplish amazing things for his glory.’ JOHN PIPER

‘I was much humbled today by reading Brainerd. O, what a disparity betwixt me and him! He always constant; I as inconstant as the wind.’  WILLIAM CAREY

‘Oh! blessed be the memory of that beloved saint! No uninspired writer ever did me so much good.’  HENRY MARTYN

Reviews

• Review by Kevin Macleod
• Review by Al Baker

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‘To read the work of a Puritan doctor of the soul is to enter a rich world of spiritual theology to feed the mind, heart-searching analysis to probe the conscience, Christ-centred grace to transform the heart, and wise counsel to direct the life. This series of Pocket Puritans provides all this in miniature, but also in abundance.’– SINCLAIR B. FERGUSON

Book Description

According to Jonathan Edwards, heaven will be a world of holy love. God himself is the source of this love, and in heaven he will impart it perfectly to all his people. Edwards unfolds the nature, expression, effects, and enjoyment of this best of all the gifts God ever bestows on those who believe. From Jonathan Edwards’ Charity and Its Fruits

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Jonathan Edwards is widely recognized today as perhaps the greatest of all North American thinkers and philosophers. Such was the depth and power of his intellect that annually new books and articles on his work come into print. But Edwards was supremely a Christian thinker. His great goal in life was to know and glorify God through Jesus Christ and to encourage others to do the same. Consequently it is in his sermons that we find the real heart of the man. Here he is thinker, herald, pastor and theologian all in one.

This selection of ten of Edwards’ sermons provides a fine sample of the God-centredness of his ministry. In them he shows the seriousness of man’s sinful condition, the riches of Christ’s grace, and the marvels of the Christian life. To read Edwards is, almost invariably, to be led into the presence of God. That was the great aim of his preaching, and echoes of it will be heard in reading these pages.

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Jonathan Edwards was one of the few truly great theologians of the English-speaking world, an intellectual and spiritual giant. When he began his ministry at Northampton, Massachusetts, New England had drifted from the Puritanism of its founders. Resisting the current trend, Edwards preached the whole counsel of God, and God plainly honoured his ministry. Yet to all appearances his life ended in tragedy; voted out of his pastorate by the people of Northampton, he died of fever at Princeton, only two months after taking over as President of its College.

Apart from his contribution to the Church in his own lifetime, Edwards left posterity in his debt by his prolific writings. His sermons and treatises have a timeless character. Special interest attaches to this volume, containing one of his most analytical treatises on revival, Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, and his justly famous Narrative of Surprising Conversions. The Narrative is both a detailed account of the famous revival of religion at Northampton in 1735 and a broad over-all Spiritual view and assessment of the work. It is hoped that this new edition will help further to familiarize evangelicals with one of their great forbears.

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Jonathan Edwards was one of the few truly great theologians of the English-speaking world, an intellectual and spiritual giant. When he began his ministry at Northampton, Massachusetts, New England had drifted from the Puritanism of its founders. Resisting the current trend, Edwards preached the whole counsel of God, and God plainly honoured his testimony. Yet to all appearances his life ended in tragedy; voted out of his pastorate by the people of Northampton, he died of fever at Princeton, only two months after taking over as President of the College. Edwards is perhaps best known as the theologian of revival, a subject on which he was uniquely qualified to write, by reason of his theological grasp and a first-hand experience of awakenings. Of his several treatises in this field, The Religious Affections ranks as the ‘magnum opus’.

The author’s object in this book is to distinguish between true and false religion by showing the marks of a saving work of the Holy Spirit in men. In his Preface, Edwards stresses the importance of using ‘our utmost endeavours clearly to discern…wherein true religion does consist’. For ’till this be done, it may be expected that great revivings of religion will be but of short continuance’.

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Review

• Review by P Wilkins

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The full edition of Edwards’ Works, in two volumes. Dr. D. M. Lloyd-Jones said ‘In my early days in the ministry there were no books which helped me more, both personally and in respect of my preaching, than this two-volume edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards…I devoured these volumes and literally just read and read them. It is certainly true that they helped me more than anything else. If I had the power I would make these two volumes compulsory reading for all ministers! Edwards seems to satisfy all round; he really was an amazing man.’

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Here’s What You Said About Jonathan Edwards

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The only full edition of Edwards’ Works currently available. Dr. D. M. Lloyd-Jones said ‘In my early days in the ministry there were no books which helped me more, both personally and in respect of my preaching, than this two-volume edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards…I devoured these volumes and literally just read and read them. It is certainly true that they helped me more than anything else. If I had the power I would make these two volumes compulsory reading for all ministers! Edwards seems to satisfy all round; he really was an amazing man.’

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We asked people how reading Edwards had benefitted them; this is what they said …
Here’s What You Said About Jonathan Edwards

The post The Works Of Jonathan Edwards appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

The only full edition of Edwards’ Works currently available. Dr. D. M. Lloyd-Jones said ‘In my early days in the ministry there were no books which helped me more, both personally and in respect of my preaching, than this two-volume edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards…I devoured these volumes and literally just read and read them. It is certainly true that they helped me more than anything else. If I had the power I would make these two volumes compulsory reading for all ministers! Edwards seems to satisfy all round; he really was an amazing man.’

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We asked people how reading Edwards had benefitted them; this is what they said …
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The scope of A History of the Work of Redemption is vast. From a deep extensive knowledge of Scripture, Jonathan Edwards sets out to survey the whole of the redemptive work of God in history, from the Fall of man to the consummation of all things.

A thrilling conclusion emerges: Everything in human history from start to finish is subservient to Christ’s work of redemption. Not only can nothing thwart that work, but, in the wisdom of God, all that comes to pass actually serves to advance it.

In a series of thirty sermons preached in Northampton, New England, in 1739, Edwards sought to establish his congregation in this mighty truth. Later in his ministry he hoped to write a book expounding the same theme, and was even reluctant to accept the presidency of Princeton College for fear this project would be hindered.

Although he did not live to carry out his intention, we can see the substance of what the intended book would have contained in this new edition of the sermons of 1739. Here readers can catch Edward’s vision of the mighty advance of the cause of Christ in the world, and gain encouragement for all gospel labours from the certainty of its triumph.

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On one has tasted and tested the experience of revival like Jonathan Edwards. In this book (as everywhere) he navigate biblically between intellectualism and emotionalism, doctrinaire and doctrineless Christianity, paralyzing self-condemnation and arrogant self-exaltation, the presumptuous pursuit of revival and indolent passivity. In my experience Edwards is second only to the Bible. , JOHN PIPER

Book Description

1742 was a year of great blessing but also of growing controversy. The Great Awakening of 1740 was still in progress, but a few dissenting voices were starting to make themselves heard. In Thoughts on the New England Revival Jonathan Edwards spoke out, not for the first time, in defence of what he considered to be ‘the glorious work of God’.

In this book, he enlarges and develops the arguments put forward in his The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, with the aim of defending this unprecedented period of revival against the unjust words of its critics and the overzealous excesses of its friends, both of which, he feared, would quench the Spirit and put a stop to the blessing.

What is a revival? How is it to be recognized? Is it a genuine work of the Spirit of God? If it is, then how is revival to be guarded against the spurious errors and unspiritual tendencies of its over-zealous promoters? These are the questions taken up and ably answered by ‘the theologian of revival’, who, in God’s providence, has supplied future generations of Christians with a sure guide on this vital subject.

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Few Christian leaders since the Reformation have been as gifted as Jonathan Edwards. A man of intense personal devotion to Christ, he was a leader of revival, and a creative Reformed theologian as well as being a missionary and a philosopher fully meriting Hugh Martin’s description of him as ‘that greatest of metaphysical divines’.

Yet it is likely that he would have preferred to be remembered simply as ‘pastor of the Church of Northampton’. Preached in 1738 (the same year that Edwards published A Narrative of Surprising Conversions), Charity and Its Fruits gives us an insight into his regular pulpit ministry in the years between the Northampton revival of 1735 and ‘the Great Awakening’ of 1740.

Entirely free from sentimentality this moving exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, like the better known Religious Affections, reveals Edwards’ insistence both that true Christian experience is ‘supernatural’- Spirit produced and Christ centered- and that ‘all true Christian grace tends to practice’. These sermons show how it is possible to steer between Arminianism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other. The concluding chapter on heaven as a world of love is perhaps the most beautiful in all Edwards’s writings.

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