by Bill Farley | Dec 9, 2019 | biography, church history
IN 1739 A THIN, FIVE FOOT TWO, thirty-six year old Anglican priest mounted a small eminence in a brickyard just outside the city of Bristol, England. At a time when less than 1% of English men had a college degree, he was an Oxford graduate, and he had been trained to...
by Bill Farley | Nov 19, 2019 | Christian Ministry, church history, Uncategorized
THE GREAT AWAKENING OCCURRED IN 1740-42. It was the greatest outpouring of spiritual power since the first century. It occurred simultaneously in Britain, the Thirteen Colonies, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. During this event, George Whitefield, our subject, was the...
by Bill Farley | Nov 14, 2019 | biography, church history, Puritanism, Puritans
IN THE 1660’S CHARLES II, KING OF ENGLAND, asked John Owen (1616-83) why he went to hear the preaching of an uneducated tinker (an old name for a blacksmith)? The King was amazed that a man of Owen’s prominence would stoop to associate with a tinker. Owen...
by Bill Farley | Nov 11, 2019 | Christian Ministry, church history, Puritans, Uncategorized
PURITANISM WAS A TIME OF DEEP AND PROFOUND Biblical thinking. John Owen (1616-83), a contemporary of Bunyan and Cromwell, is considered by most the greatest Puritan divine. In fact, many consider him England’s greatest theological thinker period. In the opinion of...
by Bill Farley | Sep 18, 2019 | church history, Human Nature, Pride, Sin, theology
LIFE IN FOURTH CENTURY ROME WAS DIFFICULT AT BEST. The population was about 1 million. The next largest city was 300,000. Rodney Stark, in his book Cities of God, notes that “Roman cities were small, extremely crowded, filthy beyond imagining, disorderly,...