Truth That Never Dies

The Dr. G. R. Beasley-Murray Memorial Lectures 2002–2012

Nigel G. Wright, Wright

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625644763
  9781498227896
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877477
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The Dr. G. R. Beasley-Murray Memorial Lectures were delivered between 2002 and 2012 with the aim of extending the legacy of this significant New Testament scholar and church leader into the twenty-first century. Themes addressed include baptism, ministry, preaching, mission, and theological faithfulness. Having first been delivered at the annual Assembly of the Baptist Union of Great Britain the lectures in this volume are now made available to a wider audience and will be of interest to church leaders across the denominations and across the world, and not least to those who stand in Beasley-Murray's own Baptist tradition. George Beasley-Murray died in 2000.

1

Fearless for Truth1

Paul Beasley-Murray

Earlier this year I made the long journey from Chelmsford to Carlisle and back again all for the sake of ten minutes. In those ten minutes I was given the opportunity of convincing a group of salesmen that my biography of my father was the best thing since sliced bread! I began by acknowledging the difficulty of the task.

First of all, biographies are not normally the most gripping of books. It was the British biographer Philip Guedalla who said, “Biography is a region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”

Secondly, biographies written by relatives or friends can often be sickly sweet. For that reason Arthur Balfour, the former Tory Prime Minister, said “Biography should be written by an acute enemy.” Thirdly, in Christian circles biographies which sell tend to major on the miraculous and the dramatic. People will buy The Cross and the Switchblade, but a biography of a theologian seems to have the kiss of death on it before it has even seen the light of day.

So why on earth was Paternoster publishing the biography of George Beasley-Murray? Indeed, as far as the ordinary punter is concerned, who was George Beasley-Murray? Billy Graham we’ve heard of, Martin Luther King we’ve heard of, but who was George Beasley-Murray?

I answered that question in various ways. I stated that my father was one of the greatest Baptists of the twentieth Century. Not for nothing did lengthy obituaries of him appear in The Times and The Independent. I went on to say it was thanks to my father’s courageous stand that the Baptist Union of Great Britain retained its cutting evangelical edge and so was saved from the continued decline experienced by all the other mainline churches in Britain. I mentioned his more than twenty books on the New Testament; I drew attention to the fact that long before Bill Hybels had drawn his first breath, my father was into seeker-services with a vengeance. What’s more, he conveyed his passion for communicating the gospel to generations of students at Spurgeon’s College.

But these facts of themselves do not sell a biography. Indeed, “worthiness” bores most readers stiff. Rather, I suggested, that the secret of this biography lies in its title: Fearless for Truth.2 It was my father’s courage and his passion for truth which makes this biography stand out from others. It is this aspect of my father which I wish to highlight in my lecture this afternoon. Needless to say, if you want the full story, then you must buy the book!

The title of the biography was my mother’s idea. I believe that she was absolutely right. No title better sums up my father’s life than this. For one of his essential characteristics was his passion for truth, wherever that may lead. Not surprisingly, more than one person wrote to me and likened him to Bunyan’s “Valiant-for-Truth.” Throughout his life my father was concerned for gospel truth, however costly that search might be. Although an unashamed evangelical, he refused to be bound within any one particular evangelical mould, but rather sought to allow the Scriptures to mould his thinking.

To what extent he would have recognized “fearless for truth” as a description of himself, I do not know. For in many ways my father was not a self-conscious person. Indeed, it was precisely this lack of self-consciousness that enabled him to speak and act without worrying how this might affect his standing with others. If he believed something to be right, then he would happily speak and act accordingly, even if those words and actions were to complicate life for him. His approach to life is well-summed up in a short prayer he wrote based on Matt 14:1–12: “Lord, help me to grow into your likeness, to stand fearlessly for your truth, to love the unlovely and to forgive those who treat us spitefully.”3

So, with that general introduction, let us now look at nine examples of his fearlessness for truth.

His Decision to Follow Jesus

My first example comes from a mission to Leicester by two Spurgeon’s students, when my father resolved to follow Jesus Christ. My father described his feelings as a fifteen-year-old boy coming from a nominal Roman Catholic home.

One evening the preacher took the theme of the meaning of Christ’s death. For the first time in my life I, who had seen crucifixes since I was a child, learned that the cross was for my sake; that the love of Christ shown on it embraced me as truly as it did anyone, and that I personally could know forgiveness for ever and eternal life. When that dawned on me it was like the coming of day. I could not hold back from Christ. I went forward to express my desire to receive Him—and went home walking on air.4

It took courage to decide to follow Jesus and then stand by that decision, for he received no support from home. Not only was there a lack of understanding on the part of his family, there was a good deal of mockery on their part too. And when it later became clear that this decision to follow Jesus entailed giving up a promising career as a concert pianist in order to respond to a call to ministry, there was consternation and opposition. It took a good number of years before their attitude began to change. For my father following Jesus involved being cut off from his family. Reflecting on that experience he wrote:

The words of Jesus to his disciples after the refusal of the rich young ruler to become a disciple struck me very forcibly: Mark 10:29–30: “I tell you that anyone who leaves home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and for the gospel, will receive much more in the present age. He will receive a hundred times more houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and persecutions as well.” I learned, in fact, what Jesus meant in teaching us that God was our Father with the corollary that the church was our family.

Life between Death and Resurrection

My second example relates to his views about life between death and resurrection, the so-called intermediate state. In an article for Young Life, my father wrote,

Such references as we have to the condition of the departed do not favour the idea that they are in a state of unconsciousness. The latter conception is largely due to taking literally the metaphor of sleep as a figure of death. An example of intense and joyous activity in the world of spirits this side of the Second Coming is the preaching of our Lord to “the spirits in prison,” which, I am persuaded, has to be taken as it stands and not made to refer to the preaching of Noah to people once living but now dead. And this preaching was done by our Lord before His spirit was clothed in resurrection!5

My father repeated these views in an evening lecture course he was giving during the summer of 1947 for the newly formed London Bible College. Unfortunately his view did not find favor with the Council of the China Inland Mission, and so his lecturing career at that stage was brought to an abrupt halt. It would appear that, in this particu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Fearless for Truth
• Chapter 2: Faith-Baptism
• Chapter 3: Preaching the Gospel and Liszt
• Chapter 4: New Humanity Church
• Chapter 5: A Missionary Union
• Chapter 6: The Downgrade Controversy
• Chapter 7: Catholicity and Confessionalism
• Chapter 8: “Living like Maggots”
• Chapter 9: In Praise of Incompetence
• Chapter 10: Renewing a Vision for Mission among British Baptists
• Chapter 11: Sustaining Evangelical Identity