Life of D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 2 Vol. Set

When Martyn Lloyd-Jones, physician, preacher and Christian Leader, died in 1981, after more then 40 years in London, few knew the remarkable story of his formative earlier years which, in the authorised biography, is now told for the first time. From his rural Welsh background to St Bartholomew’s Hospital (where at the age of 23 he was Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician), then, suddenly at 27, to a struggling Calvinistic Methodist Church in Aberavon, South Wales, he appears successively as schoolboy, dairyman’s assistant, political enthusiast, debater, doctor, and finally Christian preacher.

Some regarded his change of career as romantic, others as foolish. The one thing of which Dr Lloyd-Jones was sure was that his settlement amid the industrial depression of South Wales was no sacrifice: ‘I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honour God can confer on any man to call to be herald of the gospel’.

Volume 1 traces the unforgettable events of his first pastorate, his wider ministry in Wales (where, by 1933, the press reported, ‘he draws thousands to hear his message in all parts of the Principality’), his first visits to North America, and finally his settlement at Westminster Chapel, London,on the eve of World War II. While some saw him as ‘the modern Moody’, and others as ‘the last of the Calvanistic preachers’, Iain H. Murray’s work makes constant use of the hitherto unpublished material, and is able to present Dr Lloyd-Jones’ own view of his life and ministry.

Volume 2 contains much source material now in print for the first time and will be a primary text on evangelicalism in the twentieth century. At all vital points Iain Murray, the authorised biographer, is able to give his subjects own understanding of what happened. But neither public ministry nor controversy dominate the story. There is much on Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ personal life. The foremost impression left is of the overruling of divine providence and of the spiritual grace which shown in him as a Christian. Though in the eyes of the other Christians he was ‘full of faith and of the Holy Spirit’, yet in his own eyes he was, ‘ nothing but an old sinner saved by the grace of God’.

Table of Contents:

Volume One: The First Forty Years 1899-1939 

1. ‘A Welshman Now’

2. Schooldays: Tregaron and London

3. The World of Medicine

4. ‘All Things New’

5. The Call to the Ministry

6. Aberavon

7. A Different Preaching

8. Early Days at Sandfields

9. A Leader without a Party

10. Revival

11. The Church Family

12. Enlarged Work

13. In North America

14. The Pauline Note

15. Mainly through Welsh Eyes

16. Leaving Aberavon 

17. Wales or Westminster?

18. The First Year’s Work in England

Appendix: In Memoriam – A Tribute to Henry Lloyd-Jones

Volume 2: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981

Part One: A Decade of Surprises, 1939-49

1. War

2. The Message for the Hour

3. Inside the Family 

4. A Leader in Britain

5. New Agencies

6. Westminster Chapel, 1943-44

7. The Year 1945

8. Overseas Visits, 1946-48

9. The Rebuilding of a Congregation

10. ‘Last of the Calvinistic Preachers’ 

11. Wales and the Summer of 1949

Part Two: When the Tide Turned, the 1950s

12. A New Generation and New Thought

13. Sunday Mornings in the 1950s

14. Summer Travels

15. The Changing Religious Scene

16. Evangelism

17. ‘Great Purposes of Grace’ 

18. 1959 and the Burden for Revival

19. The Ministry of Others

20. Pastoral Counseling

Part Three: Sifting Times

21. Unity: Ecumenical or Evangelical?

22. Conversations and Journeys 

23. Cross Winds

24. 1965: The Approaching Crisis

25. 1966: The Call to Decision

26. Controversy

27. Controversy: An Assessment 

28. The End of an Era

Part Four: Working for an Evangelical Succession

29. The Last Visit to America 

30. A World Pulpit

31. Understanding in the 1970’s

32. ‘Rejoice in the Lord Always’

33. A Pastor of Pastors

34. Keeping On

35. ‘Dying…He Worshipped’

36. ‘The Best of Men..’

Appendices 

1. A Personal Letter

2. Miraculous Healing

3. Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Audio

4. Dr. James Packer and Anglican Evangelicalism

5. Tapes

6. Bibliography of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones 

Author

Iain Hamish Murray, born in Lancashire, England, in 1931, was educated at Wallasey Grammar School and King William’s College in the Isle of Man (1945-49). From 1956 he was for three years assistant to Dr Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel and there, with the late Jack Cullum, founded the Banner of Truth Trust in 1957. He left Westminster in 1961 for a nine-year pastorate at Grove Chapel, Camberwell. With the world-wide expansion of the Trust, Iain Murray became engaged full-time in its ministry from 1969 until 1981 when he responded to a call from St Giles Presbyterian Church, Sydney, Australia. Now based again in the UK, he and Jean live in Edinburgh. 

Endorsements

"If D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ life were a novel it would be panned by critics as too unrealistic. Because his life is a historical reality we are left to wonder at the providential energy that could have effected such an astonishing career. …This book is an electrifying apologetic for the powerfully theologized pulpit emphases of the Reformers and Puritans." — CHRISTIANITY TODAY

"This provides great encouragement and instruction for pastors seeking a ministry given to scriptural and doctrinal edification of the Bride of Christ." — TOM NETTLES

"The two-volume biography of Martyn Lloyd- Jones, the most powerful twentieth-century influence on my life." — MICHAEL HAYKIN