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GOD'S  GIFT  TO  A  NATION

J. Elwyn Davies

The task of attempting so soon after his passing a brief assessment of Dr. Lloyd-Jones' ministry, and in particular of his influence on church life in Wales, is well-nigh an impossible one. The impact of his life and ministry, extending over more than half a century, has been so profound that one is truly at a loss to know where to begin. The words of the Welsh hymn, sung with such fervour by the company of relatives and friends who were gathered around his grave at Newcastle Emlyn, say it all. It is from the vantage point of 'heavenly Jerusalem's towers' alone that we shall be able with any measure of certainty to trace the path along which we have been led through 'the desert' of this life.

To attempt to do this is incumbent upon us, however, if only to enable us to return thanks to God for all that He achieved through the ministry of His servant.

And we would be doing a gross injustice to that story if we failed to start with his remarkable period of ministry at Sandfields, Aberavon. In a very real sense the eleven years he spent there served to shape and to determine his lifelong convictions. His subsequent ministry at Westminster Chapel with its world - wide ramifications - through the publication of his sermons and the many thousands of foreign students and others who worshipped there over the years - could so easily dazzle our eyes to the remarkable years of his first period of ministry. Most certainly, no account of his impact and influence on the Welsh religious scene could ignore this formative period in his life.

No one who knew Dr. Lloyd-Jones would be left in any uncertainty as to his love for Wales and for its people. Thus, when he felt called to leave the field of medicine and to devote his life to the work of the ministry, it seemed right to him that he should offer his services to the Forward Movement of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. But there was a further reason why he chose to do this. In a television interview with the late Aneurin Talfan Davies he once explained that his father's radical views and his concern for the poor and underprivileged had had a profound effect upon him. This was why he was particularly anxious to minister in the kind of areas that were then being served by the Forward Movement.

That the hand of God was upon him, inclining him in the direction that was eventually to bring him to the church at Sandfields, Aberavon, was made evident by the many tokens of blessing and favour that attended his labours there. From the working - class community of that town and neighbourhood, through his anointed labours, God called and redeemed many remarkable trophies of grace. Soon a sizeable congregation of men was to gather regularly on a Saturday evening to attend the Doctor's 'brotherhood discussion session'. And before he left, eleven years later, the congregation had grown to such proportions that an annexe had to be built alongside the church building, enabling the overflowing numbers to follow the services through the open windows of the chapel.

News of Dr. Lloyd-Jones' call to the ministry and the fame of his preaching spread far and wide, and it was from that town, so strategically placed in South Wales, that God sent His servant, in what became a regular mid-week ministry, bearing the message of salvation to all parts of Wales and beyond. It may be difficult for us today to imagine what it was like. Those were days when, in Wales at least, the chapels were full, and the entire population, it seemed, was in membership in some chapel or other. To a young lad in his early teens at the time it also seemed as though everyone went to hear the Doctor, wherever he preached.

Looking back over those years, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was well aware that there were Christians in Wales at that time who were disappointed that he had felt unable to identify himself wholeheartedly with their testimony. And it is true to say that the Doctor himself could not fully explain at the time why it was that he could not bring himself to be associated with, for example, some of the pentecostal and Keswick traditions which had emerged in Wales following the '04-'05 Revival.

These were the years when he was possessed with one consuming passion - to tell men that in and through the Lord Jesus Christ they could know God. They were also the years when for the first time, following upon his distinguished medical career, he was able to give himself avidly to the study of theology and Christian doctrine. There is the famous story of how he was challenged at the close of a service in Bridgend by a minister who commented provocatively, 'I cannot make up my mind what you are. I cannot decide whether you are a hyper - Calvinist or a Quaker.' On being asked why the comment was being made, he was told, 'You talk of God's action and God's sovereignty like a hyper-Calvinist and of spiritual experience like a Quaker, but the Cross and the work of Christ have very little place in your preaching.' Assuring him that he was not a hyper-Calvinist, the Doctor's response was to ask the Rev. Vernon Lewis - later to be made Principal of the Memorial (Congregational) College at Brecon when he called the following Monday morning, what he could read on the Atonement. He was referred to the works of P. T. Forsyth, R. W. Dale's The Atonement, and Denney's The Death of Christ - such was the dearth of truly evangelical literature at the time.

Commenting on this incident in later years, the Doctor explained that in his early preaching he was like Whitefield. First and foremost he preached regeneration: man's own efforts were useless; he needed power from outside himself. 'I assumed the Atonement but did not distinctly preach it or Justification by faith.'

A little later, in a second-hand bookshop in Cardiff he came across the two-volume edition of the works of Jonathan Edwards, and later still to his great delight on a visit to the United States, the entire works of Warfield. Years afterwards the Doctor was to explain that what kept him from identifying himself with the traditions to which we have referred was his knowledge of what God had done in the past through men like Daniel Rowland of Llangeitho, Howel Harris and others. He was looking for those who shared their view of doctrine, but, more, their view of experimental religion and of revival.

And such people were at a premium in the denomination to which he was attached, as they had been. To us today it seems so regrettable that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Wales when it was too late even for a person of his gifts and convictions to influence the issue of whether the denomination should adopt a Shorter Confession, and thus to all intents and purposes relegate the old Confession of Faith to the status of an historical document. Such was the case, however, and even though at one time Dr. Lloyd-Jones had reason to hope that the common people, in response to his preaching, would reject the arrogant views of the vast majority of liberal and modernist preachers who by then were occupying the pulpits of our land, this was not to be.

With his grandson Christopher in front of the Daniel Rowland statue,
Llangeitho, 1957

On one occasion he was given what seemed to him a most promising portent for good. He had been invited to preach in the same Association meeting as the Rev. Tom Nefyn Williams, probably the most radical of all the liberal preachers of the day, a man of considerable talent and charm. The Doctor would recount the story of how he came down to breakfast on that occasion, only to sense as soon as he entered the room that an uncomfortable silence had fallen upon all those who were at the tables. Upon making discreet enquiry, he was asked chidingly, 'Don't you know what's happening? They are all debating who will get the bigger congregation, Tom Nefyn or yourself.' At the first of the two services at which they were to preach, each man's congregation had been more or less equal. But at this first service Dr. Lloyd-Jones was given remarkable liberty in preaching, so that by the second service his meeting was full to overflowing, while the Rev. Tom Nefyn's congregation had been considerably reduced.

But it was not to be. A few years later Dr. Lloyd-Jones was given incontrovertible proof that if the common people were prepared to hear him gladly, a good number of the religious leaders of his denomination had been considerably irked by his uncompromising adherence evangelical faith. They were to the prepared to resist quite openly a proposal which, if accepted, could have meant his sphere of influence within the denomination being very considerably enhanced. After eleven years of intensive work at Port Talbot it was suggested that he be appointed, in a year's time, to the staff of the Theological College of the Presbyterian Church of Wales at Bala, under the Rev. David Phillips as Principal. Although the proposal was favoured by the Associations in the South and East, the North Wales Association kept deferring a decision - a deliberate ploy, on the part of some of the leaders at least, to avoid the opprobrium of an outright rejection, whilst at the same time making it obvious to the Doctor and others that his services were not welcome.

In the meantime, while his own heart was very much inclined towards the Bala vacancy, Dr. Lloyd-Jones had been invited to assist Dr. Campbell Morgan at Westminster Chapel. Within six weeks of going there he had been invited to continue on a permanent basis. But from October 1938 until after Easter 1939 he refused to commit himself, still waiting for a firm invitation to the College at Bala - an invitation which never came. The Doctor had persuaded the friends at Westminster Chapel to await the decision of the North Wales Association's meetings to be held at Chester. Three ministers had fully intended going to those meetings and pressing for a favourable response, but for different reasons all three were unable to be present, and the matter was once again left on the table. The Doctor had no alternative but to accept the invitation to become co-pastor with Dr. Campbell Morgan and thus to commence his 35 years of ministry at Westminster Chapel.

As is so often said on such occasions, 'Wales's loss was surely England's gain.' In the hindsight of close on half a century we now know that that step, which to some might have seemed so regrettable at the time, proved to be possibly the most far-reaching and consequential development this century in the history of the evangelical cause in Britain, if not throughout the world. However influential the Doctor's ministry might have been in a finishing college devoted primarily to pastoralia, how can one begin to compute the influence for good of this prince among preachers, this wise counsellor and spiritual leader, through his pulpit ministry, his Friday evening lectures, his meetings for ministers, the Westminster Conferences, his wider preaching ministry, his availability at all times for counsel and advice - a ministry which is to continue through his printed works and through the kind providence that has enabled his spoken word to be preserved, so that to an uncanny degree we are able to hear the Doctor as though he were yet with us? All these things, we now know, hinged upon his ministry at Westminster Chapel. We can only say with the Apostle, 'How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!' (Romans 11:33).

It proved to be 'Wales' gain also, despite the fact that after the 1939-45 war, when it was evident that Nonconformity was losing its grip on the people, Dr. Lloyd-Jones would occasionally be criticised for forsaking Wales in its hour of need. One writer even suggested that he had done so for a more lucrative and Comfortable ministry in a big church in London! Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. He never lost touch with the situation in Wales, nor did he ever show any sign of rancour or bitterness as a result of what had happened. He continued to preach to vast congregations in many centres in Wales. In 1977, for example, he celebrated his fiftieth consecutive annual visit to preach at Carmarthen. There were many similar instances. His sermons too had a wide circulation.

But it was in the years after the war that his links with Wales assumed a completely different role and significance. Prior to this, his ministry had been that of a visiting preacher, preaching to vast congregations. Now it assumed more that of a friend and counsellor to a body of young men whose labours were eventually to lead to the emergence of faithful evangelical ministries in churches of all denominations in Wales; to the emergence also of what became known - on the Doctor's own suggestion at the Annual Welsh Conference held in Denbigh in 1955 - as 'The Evangelical Movement of Wales', and, later, to the establishing of avowedly evangelical causes free of all denominational entanglement.

The Doctor's interest was first alerted to a movement of the Spirit that occurred in the Colleges of Wales in the years 1945-50. It seemed to have two focal points one in the South, which because of a strong Presbyterian background was more doctrinal in its thrust, and one in the North which had a more experimental emphasis. In the providence of God, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was brought into close touch with both streams at the very outset and, in ways which today we can see were graciously ordained of God, was able to assert from the beginning a most salutary, formative and unifying influence.

As a consequence of his remarkable preaching ministry at Westminster Chapel, he had by now been greatly used by the UCCF (or the IVF as it was then known). In his own words, 'I became the theologian of the IVF.' When it was suggested that the work in the recently reinvigorated Welsh Christian Unions would benefit from meeting together in an annual conference, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was the obvious choice as speaker. For the first three years he took the main conference addresses, each year taking one major tenet of the Christian faith as his theme. His ministry had a profound effect on the students. One student, who later succeeded to his pulpit at Sandfields, Aberavon - the late Rev. J. B. E. Thomas would often remark that he had learned more of Christian theology in those conference addresses than in all the lectures he had ever attended at his Theological College.

No sooner had the blessing broken out in the North than Dr. Lloyd-Jones was to speak at a student mission at the University College, Bangor. There he learned with immense satisfaction of the spontaneous work of the Spirit among the students. Later he was to give his full endorsement to an experience of a further enduement of the Spirit which some of the students had known - an endorsement which coincided with his own renewed interest in the subject of the sealing of the Spirit and revival.

When some of these students came to realise a little later that there was not a single publication in the Welsh language committed to the evangelical faith, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was asked to write in the first issue of a new Welsh - language magazine which they published. When, later, they decided to invite the readership of the magazine to a conference, his daughter Elizabeth attended the first, held at Bala in 1951, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones was the main speaker at the second, held at Caernarfon the following year. When, a little later, the need was felt for an equivalent provision in English, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was once again the main speaker, returning to the delight of his many friends, to his pulpit at Sandfields, Aberavon. When some of the students from both North and South Wales were to attend the National Eisteddfod for the first time to sell the new Welsh - language magazine and to witness to their people, Dr. Lloyd- Jones met them twice and addressed a late - evening gathering in one of the local churches. Finally, when some of those students had themselves become ministers, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was able to offer invaluable advice which led to the emergence both of the Ministers' Fellowships associated with the Evangelical Movement of Wales and also of its Annual Ministers' Conference. Barring periods of ill-health, the Doctor attended that conference without fail, and every year would lead the two discussion sessions and deliver his memorable closing addresses. Had Dr. Lloyd-Jones not been with us at that time, there is little doubt that the work of the gospel in Wales would have taken a very different form.

Some of the evangelical ministers in South Wales were anxious to meet in a monthly ministers' fellowship restricted to brethren of a reformed persuasion. They were anxious to invite the Doctor to the first of what would become an annual gathering of ministers of the same persuasion from all parts of Wales. Dr. Lloyd-Jones agreed to be present on condition that they widened the basis of their fellowship - a step which was to lead to incalculable gain and benefit to the cause of the gospel in Wales, and of the reformed faith in particular.

With Mrs. Lloyd-Jones at Llangeitho, 1968

And so the story continued. Throughout the 30 years that followed, the Doctor's interest and support were unfailingly available to all who sought his counsel; his presence and ministry were a source of strength and encouragement to all who knew him. Indeed, so intimately involved was he in the ongoing situation in Wales that for many months, if not years, it will be extremely difficult to accept the fact that he is no longer with us.

Our comfort is surely that of the pastor's wife who, as she glanced at the congregation that sang the hymn at his graveside on March 6th, suddenly noticed how many ministers were present. Dr. Lloyd-Jones had been pastor and friend to them all. With the support and constant encouragement of his dear wife and partner Mrs. Lloyd-Jones, he had while physical strength remained preached in their pulpits and attended all their conferences. In him the words of our Lord had been gloriously fulfilled: 'Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.' In many things he excelled, but in this most of all.

Wales had never lost one of its ablest sons. Allowed to function freely in a church unfettered by any element of compromise or apostasy, he had continued to serve his people. And now, taken to be with the Lord on St. David's Day, 1981, he had come home again, to rest awhile - till He come.

The author is General Secretary of the Evangelical Movement of Wales.