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Words to Winners of Souls
by Horatius Bonar; 1979, 76 pp;
Baker Book House (reprint).

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Reviewed by Bob Selph

Horatius Bonar (1818-1889)

I am delighted to review Bonar's small treatise on a "living ministry." This little booklet was given to me fourteen years ago by Pastor Walt Chantry. He stated then that his own practice is to work through it once or twice every year. Since then I have adopted the same practice.

This is 48 pages of constant conviction. A Scottish Presbyterian preacher of 1866, Bonar has much to teach us "evangelistic baptists" about the subject of soulwinning -- from a sovereign grace foundation. These "smart bombs" of undisputed truth target the coldness, complacency, and barrenness of our ministries--ministries that otherwise convince onlookers that we are doing the work of the gospel ministry.

To Bonar, the fruitfulness of our ministries is the winning of souls and the edifying of believers (with emphasis upon the former). To Bonar, life begets life. Where a minister's own private walk with the Saviour causes his ministry to be "drenched in Christ" and in the issues of eternity, and where there exists the attendant signs of seriousness, boldness, and broken-heartedness, there will be fruit. To be sure, he would say, the amount of fruit will vary from man to man as God has sovereignly dealt to every man the measure of faith. Nevertheless, the tendency to rest in ministerial busy-ness, fulfilling all our pastoral duties, even with business-like precision, while excusing the fact that sinners are not being changed, and that there is no sorrowing over sin, nor any broken hearts seeking after God for mercy, can be nothing but a cop-out--laying the result of our laxness at the door of the sovereignty of God. Might we be strangers to soul anguish and urgency? Might our time be found consumed with lesser things? Might we be ministerially acceptable yet lukewarm?

The fourth chapter of the five is part of a ministerial confession of sin, composed by a gathering of Church of Scotland ministers in 1651. From this, Bonar launches off into stating fourteen areas of specific sins pertinent to the work of the ministry. This chapter is powerful! It could be used at solemn assemblies or simply for an annual "judgment seat" that a pastor holds privately for himself.

The booklet's final chapter is an appeal for concrete steps to be taken to see the infusion of the Spirit's life into our lives and ministries. Begin doing the things that make a difference; things that will increase solemnity, urgency, and humility in our own lives as ministers of the gospel; things that will make our preaching more earnest, more gripped with eternity, and will bring us the experience of Whitefield, who preached a "felt Christ."

This challenging little X-ray machine is not meant to discourage us, but it does seek to keep before us the high calling of a herald of Christ who stands between sinners and eternity with the best of Books in his hand, the Law of Truth on his lips, the world behind his back, and a tear in his eye, pleading with men, "Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" It is easy in our daily experience to lose the edge of a spiritually hot life and ministry that has the unpretentious countenance of a "dying man speaking to dying men." We must not give up by settling into a casual, relaxed pastorate.

May the Lord use this diminutive volume to create such a passion for the lost in us that concerted efforts will be made to put the Biblical Gospel in the ears of more and more sinners out of hearts experimentally pulsating with the realities of Christ and eternity.

 
 
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