152 – June 01 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

Stennett, Samuel

 

He followed his father

 

The name “Stennett” for many years was associated with “Baptist preacher” in England, for Samuel Stennett’s “great-grandfather Edward, his grandfather Joseph, and his father…whose name was also Joseph, were well known Baptist ministers and citizens in that day.” Also his brother Joseph Stennett, and his son, Joseph, were also Baptist ministers.” Samuel however was the most famous of this preaching family. Born in Exeter, he became proficient in the Greek, Latin, and Oriental languages. He fell under conviction as a young man and was baptized by his father which began an association with the Baptist church in Little Wild Street that would last for over fifty years. On June 30, 1747 the church called him to assist his father and ten years later he assumed the pastorate and was ordained on June 1, 1758, which was led by the famed theologian, John Gill. On entering the pastorate, he said to his congregation, “I tremble at the thought.” For forty-seven years Stennett served the church and was an outstanding leader for religious liberty. Numerical growth was experienced and the church buildings rebuilt. Stennett wrote several volumes, but more importantly, several of his hymns have survived the test of time one of which is, “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand.” Another is Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned.” These hymns of adoration and anticipation have lasted for more than two hundred years. The death of Mrs. Stennett was a great blow to the man of God. His sermons were especially remembered during that time for their blessing. He said to his son, “Christ is to me the Chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” On Aug. 25, 1795, at 68 years, he passed into glory and his body was buried in Bunhills Fields among the Baptist dissenters.

 

Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson/, p. 225.

 

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122 – May 01 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

America’s victory over England secured England’s liberty too
1748 – Dr. John Rippon of England,in a  letter addressed to Dr. James Manning, president of Brown University, said: “I believe all of our Baptist ministers in town, except two, and most of our brethren in the country were on the side of the Americans in the late dispute….We wept when the thirsty plains drank the blood of our departed heroes, and the shout of a king was among us when your well bought battles were crowned with victory; and to this hour we believe that the independence of America will, for a while, secure the liberty of this country, but if that continent had been reduced, Britain would not have long been free.” Dr. Rippon was one of the most influential Baptist ministers in England during the 19th century. At the age of 17, Rippon attended Bristol Baptist College in Bristol, England. After the death of John Gill, he assumed Gill’s pastorate, the Baptist meeting-house in Carter Lane, Tooley Street, which moved in 1833 to the New Park Street Chapel in London, from 1773 at the age of 20 until his death, a period of 63 years. Rippon’s church was later pastored byCharles Haddon Spurgeon before moving to the Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle inSouthwark.
Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: John T. Christian, A History of The Baptists (1922; reprinted., Nashville:  Broadman Press, 1926), 2:228
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328 – Nov. 24 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

He baptized over 3,000 converts

 

1802 – D.R. Murphy was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee. His father William, had served in the Revolutionary War and was a nephew of the famous “Murphy Boys” who were Baptist ministers during the struggles of the early Virginia Baptists. D.R. was a wicked young man but had a glorious salvation experience, and was          immersed and united with the Mill Spring Baptist Church on Sept. 3, 1832. He began preaching immediately and was ordained in 1834, and then spent the next five years preaching in Tenn. He married Lucy Carter in 1822 and they had ten children, then hearing of the great spiritual needs of the west, he moved his growing family to Missouri in 1839, and began his itinerant ministry. He established a church in Enon, Missouri in April of 1840. In August in the same county he had enough converts to found the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. In July of 1841, he organized the Coon Creek Baptist Church in St. Clair County. In thirty-five years he started thirty churches. When you consider the scattered population his feats were amazing. Families lived in small log cabins with dirt floors, a side door with wooden chimneys, often ten miles apart. Amazingly he baptized over three-thousand believers. In the last seven years of his life Mrs. Murphy became very ill and after her death he remarried a widow, Mrs. L.A. Cedar who labored with him until his death on Aug. 28, 1875 at 73. Her testimony follows. “My husbands death was a most triumphant one. He suffered intensely for four months, and was patient and meek…The last song we sung was, ‘I am going home to die no more…” [R.S. Duncan, A History of the Baptists in Missouri (Saint Louis: Scammell and Company, Publishers, 1882), p. 604. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 643-44.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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321 – Nov. 17 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

The first to minister in North Carolina

 

1742 – Mr. Henry Sater deeded an acre of land to Henry Loveall, the first pastor of the Chestnut Ridge congregation for a church site, because the church had been organized in Sater’s home. Sater had come to America from England and had purchased land about nine miles northwest of Baltimore Town. He frequently cared for travelers, quite often Baptist ministers, who would be invited to preach. Being encouraged by the numbers in attendance, this sincere Christian erected a place of worship on his own land at his own expense. The church was organized with fifty-seven members. The church covenant began: “We…the professors of the Gospel of Christ, baptized on a declaration of faith and repentance, believing the doctrine of general redemption (or free grace of God to all mankind), …bind and settle ourselves into a Church.” It was signed on July 10, 1742, and the church continued on until the Revolutionary War. The church began as the Chestnut Ridge Church, but was later known as the Sater’s Baptist Church. The pulpit was temporarily filled by George Eglesfield of Penn., and later by Paul Palmer, whose ministry resulted in nine baptisms, who was also the first to minister the Word in N.C. as early as 1720. However, Henry Loveall, from N.J. is regarded as the first pastor, who baptized forty-eight converts in the four years that he was there. This activity was made possible because in 1649 the Colonial Assembly, through the inspiration of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, passed an act of religious toleration. Though it was not as expansive as R.I., it did allow Baptists the right to exist. [ George F. Adams, A History of Baptist Churches in Maryland (Baltimore: J.F. Weishampel Jr., 1885), p. 27. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 628-30.]    Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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254 – Sept. 11 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

“Grace is not Hereditary, Depravity is”

 

1783 – Rev. Isaac Case began his ministry in Readfield, Maine, and until his death at age 91 on Nov. 3, 1852 his life was spent in the preaching of the gospel. The Revolutionary War being over, the message of Christ expanded along with towns and settlements, so his work was the planting of many Baptist churches in those areas. He established the First Baptist Church of Thomaston and Readfield. They only counted converts that were actually baptized in those days, and he baptized scores wherever he went. In 1904 Dr. A.R. Crane presented a paper at the Maine Baptist Missionary Convention entitled The Baptist Ministers in Maine (from 1804-1904) and listed Isaac Case as one of the most important. He said that he heard him preach in his old age, and considered him to have as much power with God as any man he had ever heard, but couldn’t understand why his grown son never attended church services. Asking Case’s son that question one day, the son said, “Grace is not hereditary, depravity is”. (Rom. 5:12)
[Henry S. Burrage, History of  the Baptists in Maine (Portland, Maine: Marks Printing House, Printers, 1904,), p. 68. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 497-99.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

133– May 13 – This Day in Baptist History

 

“The Conversion of a Church”

 

The Congregational church in Sedgwick, Maine, had enjoyed the ministry of the Reverend Daniel Merrill for twelve years. During that time it became one of the largest of the denomination’s churches in the state. However, when several of his ministerial students became Baptists, the rev. Mr. Merrill determined to restudy the matter of baptism and write a book on the subject which would protect against such losses, and such a volume would be invaluable to many in refuting what he considered heresy taught by the Baptists. After more than two years of studying the scriptures he concluded that the Bible did not support his long-held position of sprinkling.

 

The matter came to a head when a group of children were presented to be sprinkled and the pastor could no longer with good conscience perform the rite. For several months Merrill continued in agony of heart for, as he confessed, he “could not bear the idea of being called one [a Baptist].

 

On February 28, 1805, after a series of sermons on the biblical mode of baptism, the congregation voted unanimously to call for a council of Baptist ministers to administer New Testament immersion, to constitute them as a Baptist church, and to ordain Daniel Merrill as their pastor. In all, sixty-six candidates were baptized on May 13, 1805, and nineteen more were baptized on the following day.

 

Thus concluded the remarkable story of the conversion of a pastor and his people, to the principles of the Baptists.

 

Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: This Day in Baptist History, Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson /, pp. 195-196

 

 

21 – Jan. 21 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

They had no other ambition but the glory of God.
 On Jan. 21, 1788, one of the most, humble, yet historically significant events took place in the study of the College Lane Baptist Church in Northamptonshire, England that this old world ever know.  Four Baptist ministers met together for a day of prayer and fasting.  Neither of these four men knew that each, in years to come, would be memorialized in the history of the Christian world as well as the Baptists.  They simply met as four friends who shared a longing for greater personal godliness, holiness in their churches, and the evangelism of the world.  They had no other ambition but the glory of God.  They were none other than John Ryland, Jr. John Sutcliff, Andrew Fuller, and William Carey.  In that room were the founders of the modern missionary movement.  Ryland recorded the holy event.  “… read the Epistles to Timothy and Titus; Abraham Booth’s charge to Thomas Hopkins; Richard Blackerby’s Life, in John Gillies; and John Rogers of Dedham’s sixty memorials for a Godly life: and each prayed twice.  Carey [prayed], with singular enlargement and pungency.  Our chief design was to implore a revival of godlinesss in our souls, in our churches, and in the churches at large.”  God surpassed their expectation when He used them to start a missionary movement that continues to this very day.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. IIII: Cummins, pp. 43-44.