Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Life and Legacy

The January issue of the Banner of Truth magazine carries a report of a conference exploring the life and legacy of Dr Lloyd-Jones. At much the same time as I read this I had also come across one of the very few letters that I myself had received from the Doctor. This set me thinking. The conference appears to have covered a number of the issues that you would expect, but the letter reminded me that there is usually a rather hidden area of the work of a gospel minister that can seldom be adequately explored in future days by historians. Any who went to see the Doctor after a Sunday service or on a Friday evening will know that the Church Parlour – I think I’m right in calling it that – was transformed into what looked very much like a doctor’s waiting room. There were twenty or more people waiting patiently to go in to see him in turn. Once in his vestry, while the Doctor sat, the ‘patient’ would stand and explain why he or she had come to see him. In many cases it was because of spiritual needs and often deep problems. The Doctor was expert in diagnosis and most helpful in prescribing the remedy.

However, even that must have been only a part of his hidden ministry. Members and regular attenders at the Chapel would have had other opportunities to speak with him; when he was away on preaching trips, by letter and telephone, others would seek his counsel and advice. Who really knows how much private ministry went on, or what the influence of that ministry has effected? When I was invited to go to assist David Fountain at Spring Road Evangelical Church I wrote to the Doctor for his advice. He urged me to go forward (as he had also encouraged David Fountain to invite me – as I found out from his reply to me). How many other ministers, I wonder, owed much to the advice and encouragement which he gave them? People came to Westminster Chapel from all over the world and people who had worshipped there also went all over the world. Only God knows the influence of the Doctor mediated through those whom had be helped in one way or another. The big issues explored – quite rightly – by theologians and historians, may be seen one day to have been not as big as they appeared.

Now for something completely different...

I recently sent an article to RAF St Eval Friends Reunited Association, which I am also posting here. The picture is not of the plane concerned, but I have used a picture of that earlier.

Bermudan Weekend

During 1956/7 there were overseas detachments from at least two of St Eval’s squadrons. 42 Squadron had several planes in Khormaksar, Aden and 206 Squadron the same in Christmas Island, where the atom bomb tests were being carried out. Shackletons were always flying backwards and forwards to these places and sometimes to other destinations. What was suspiciously surprising was the number of them that had various accidents and became u/s in exotic places.

Just before Easter ’57 a plane returning from Christmas Island damaged a tail fin while taxiing at the American Air Force base in Bermuda. There was nothing for it but to send another out with a spare fin while the crew kicked their heels in that idyllic spot! The day before Good Friday a Shack from 42 Squadron took off from St Eval with the needed spare. In addition to the aircrew a full complement of ground crew for routine checks and servicing travelled on it. I went as the wireless mechanic and Bob, who slept in the next bed to me in the billet, was the radar mechanic.

We were only airborne for about half an hour before a message came through that another plane, this time from St Mawgan, had damaged a wheel on landing on the island of Terceira in the Azores and we needed to turn back and pick up a new one. But first we flew back and forth for another three and a half hours using up fuel before we landed at St Mawgan – four hours to travel a couple of miles! We spent the night there and next morning set off once again, taking most of the day, I think, to get to Terceira, where we enjoyed the hospitality of the US Air Force.

The flight to Bermuda on the Saturday took nearly twelve hours – Shackletons didn’t fly very fast. We took off early and arrived with quite a lot of the day left due to the time difference. It was a hot, tedious journey and the Shack lived up to its nicknames of ‘Growler’ and ‘ten thousand rivets flying in close formation’. I sat in the gun turret for a little while but it was far too hot with the sun blazing down. For a while I also lay flat in the rear with my head in the Perspex end. This was a queer sensation, I felt like a bird flying backwards. After a while that too began to pall; the Atlantic looks much the same wherever you are, and there’s an awful lot of it.

On Easter Sunday Bob and I and two aircrew sergeants hired mopeds in Hamilton, the capital, and set off to explore. Most people in Bermuda seemed to get about on these, and we ended up on a glorious beach at one end of the island. Temperature in the middle seventies Fahrenheit scarcely varies there all year round. In the evening I went to the service in the church on the American Air Base. The hymns were right up to date, but the singing uninspiring, and the civilian preacher was speaking at his fifth service that day. In some ways it was disappointing, but it was right to go and I am glad I did.

From what I remember, facilities on the American base were superior to St Eval, and the PX better than the NAAFI, but there was one exception. The toilet cubicles had no doors on them, presumably to prevent anyone from having a quiet read in one. On Monday we were back at the Azores, but this time as guests of the Portuguese Air Force. We were housed overnight in a corrugated Nissan hut. On either side of the central aisle stood ten three-tiered bunks; fortunately there weren’t many of us, how sixty men would get on in the height of summer doesn’t bear thinking about – and the toilets didn’t even have cubicles, let alone doors! On Tuesday we touched down back at Eval and passed through Customs, whose officers came out for the purpose. We had no problem, but it is possibly as well that they didn’t go through the plane with a fine toothcomb. Once in a while when a plane returned they did so, undoing panels and taking things apart wherever they could. It was almost inevitable that a certain amount of smuggling would go on, just as it is not altogether surprising that a few days holiday in some beauty spot was an attractive proposition. For those of us who went to Bermuda it proved an interesting weekend and a break in the normal routine.

Putting a broken man back together again

So another MP has pleaded guilty to charges relating to his expenses, following David Chaytor last week. And these were men who tried to avoid being brought to court by maintaining that they should only be tried by their fellow members of Parliament. Several of David Chaytor's colleagues spoke highly of him as a constituency MP and when he pleaded guilty and was given a custodial sentence he was described as 'a broken man'. Actually he was a broken man while he was living a lie and gaining money by fraud. His guilty plea may be the beginning of his restoration to a proper man - let us hope that it will.

Tomorrow I am preaching on 'Worship' at our evening service. This is one of a series of three sermons on the subject. I am more and more convinced that our great need is for the working of the Holy Spirit. Of course, it is right to see where our worship could be improved, and there is no lack of people to tell us what could/should/might be done. The fact is, though, that churches with different forms of worship can all seem dead and lifeless or can be vibrant, joyful and see spiritual fruit. It is, of course, only too easy to say that we need the presence and blessing of the Spirit, but this is the one factor that makes all the difference. It may be a good thing if nothing else seems to 'work', because then we are cast back upon God. I was impressed by reading again what Jonathan Edwards had to say about the days of revival at Northampton: ‘Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with love and joy, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours. Our public praises were then greatly enlivened; God was then served in our psalmody, in some measure, in the beauty of holiness. Our congregation excelled all that ever I knew in the singing of God’s praises.’

Guidance

Christmas in Northern Ireland and a bout of some sort of viral infection subsequently - perhaps a mild form of flu - though we had our vaccinations, have kept me away from the computer. I have been very impressed by Graham Miller's autobiography, A Day's March Nearer Home, and even more by the character of its author. It is well worth reading and pondering. I have been particularly struck by his reference to Oswald Chambers' definition of guidance:'a deep sense of the rightness of things'. This seems to me to be absolutely correct. It doubtless could be abused, nearly everything can be, but for the person who truly desires to walk in the ways of the Lord this seems to hit the right note.