Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Christmas Evans – The Fisher of Men
PART FOUR
Baptists, in the south in particular, inherited much of their fervent and yet doctrinally sound religion from their Welsh and Scottish ancestors. Like Jonathan Edwards, they knew one did not have to divorce emotion from doctrine. One can, in fact must be, sound in doctrine and fervent in spirit.
Christmas described himself as a fisher of men. He said: “(my) line should not be of fine silk but of strong thread interwoven with the hemp of truth and dipped in the spirit of prayer, for what was wanted was not something nice to look at, but a line with a hook on one end to bite.”
The preceding quote emphasizes a Baptist distinctive of preaching for decision. Our forefathers were doctrinally sound as can be seen in Evans’ reading of such weighty stuff as the complete works of John Owen. They also believed in a religion of the heart. They preached to see men and women soundly converted. To the wayward saints, they preached for godly sorrow which leads to repentance.
Early in 1790 he was ordained to the pastoral office; this took place at meeting-house called Salem, and the officiating ministers were Messrs. John Evans of Roe and Thomas Morris of Anglesea. During the same year he was united in marriage to Catherine Jones, a member of the church under his care. She was a young woman of strong mind, with much aptitude for theology, and proved herself a help meet to him for many years.
His labours here, amongst a very poor people and extended over a large neighborhood, calling him out in all weathers and keeping him out from his home, night after night, and for a remuneration that barely sufficed to procure him and his wife the veriest necessaries of life, were abundantly blessed.
A special benediction rested upon him; “a breeze from the New Jerusalem,” he writes, many years afterwards, “descended upon me and on the people, and many were awakened to eternal life.” During the first year he baptized fifty persons, and not less than eighty sought for church-membership, as the result of his ministry in the course of the second.
Presented by: Thomas E. Kresal from http://www.newble.co.uk/xheroes/evans.html and The Baptist Magazine, February, 1847 pg. 73
