Friday Nights at Westminster - a personal testimony

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	Friday Nights at Westminster - a personal testimony

Robert Oliver, Bradford-on-Avon

attended Westminster Chapel on a Friday evening for the first time on 23 November 1956, during my first term as a student at University College, London. Dr LloydJones was preaching from Romans 2:11-16. I had been so gripped by his preaching on the previous Sunday evening that I needed no persuasion to go on Friday. During my years in London I was able to go to Westminster Chapel only occasionally on a Sunday, but I hardly ever missed a Friday evening in term-time until the session closed in May just before my finals. By that time Dr Lloyd-Jones had reached the early verses of Chapter 7. The memory of those times is indelible. How often so many of us felt that we were moved to the very depths of our being, humbled before a holy God, or melted by the glories of the gospel. On more than one occasion I recall looking at my watch and hoping that the preacher was not yet half way through. A few of us would meet afterwards to talk about what we had heard, and travelling back on the bus to my lodgings in North London in that first winter, I would try to recapture from my notes the wonder of the doctrine of justification.

Worship

The Friday evening congregation was perhaps some 1200 or so people - not so many as on a Sunday. It differed in that it included many like myself from other congregations. One recognised ministers from various churches as well as people who worked in London and who stayed late on Fridays to come to Westminster Chapel before taking their journeys back to the suburbs or into the Home Counties and beyond. In addition there were always visitors from farther afield. The service began at 6.30 pm and usually ended at about 7.45 pm. Its format never varied. The Doctor opened with a short prayer which led into the Lord's Prayer and then we sang a hymn, during which latecomers streamed into the building. After that, the Scripture reading was followed by another longer intercessory prayer. The notices followed and then another hymn was sung during which an offering was taken, all remaining seated until the last verse. Again people came in at this point. Noone was allowed to enter during the prayers or the reading of Scripture.

After the second hymn Dr LloydJones expounded for about 50 minutes and then concluded with prayer. There was no final hymn. The prayers all brought home the fact that we were there primarily for the awesome business of the worship of Almighty God and not simply to be instructed, although taught we certainly were. In prayer there was adoration and confession and holy wrestling. In later years when I heard Dr Lloyd-Jones at other places and someone else led in prayer I always felt that we had missed something. Friday evenings at Westminster were not just meetings, they were worship services.

Subdued by God's Word

Dr Lloyd-Jones always insisted that these studies in Romans were sermons and not lectures. They began with careful analysis of the text, always in its broad setting before the details were investigated. They concluded with powerful appeals to the whole man, mind, heart and will. Through these sermons the mighty ministry of the apostle Paul came alive in mid-twentieth century London. It was not simply that the preacher had captured the compelling logic of the apostle. Rather he had been mastered by it. His own considerable powers of analysis and application had been subdued by the Word of God, which he delighted to proclaim. His preaching was empowered by the Holy Spirit and he preached truths which had been burned into his own soul.

I had been a believer for a number of years before I ever went to Westminster Chapel, but those Friday evenings remain unique in my experience. I had already become uneasy about aspects of Hyper-Calvinism without fully understanding the nature of the problem. I had recoiled from Arminianism which I had encountered during my time of National Service. At last I was faced with a ministry, which was biblical, which was faithful to the great Reformed heritage and which shed light on, and indeed gave value to the experiential Calvinism which had surrounded me from childhood. It seems impossible that it is now over 40 years since I was part of that great Friday evening congregation, but I ever thank God that I had that privilege.