1889
Grey dawn was streaking the sky, when they who had so lovingly watched Him to His burying were making their way to the rock-hewn tomb in the garden. Considerable as are the difficulties of exactly harmonizing the details in the various narratives–if, indeed, importance attaches to such attempts–we are thankful to know that any hesitation only attaches to the arrangement of minute particulars, and not to the great facts of the case. And even these minute details would, as we shall have occasion to show, be harmonious, if only we knew all the circumstances.”
That is how Alfred Edersheim began Chapter 17 of a book that appears in any substantial Christian library: The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Chapter 17 describes Christ’s resurrection.
Reared a Jew, Alfred was able to shine inside light on the Gospel narratives. Born in Vienna of Jewish parents on March 7, 1825, he was brought up in the Jewish faith. It was not until he tutored in Pesth that Alfred converted to Christianity when John Duncan, a Scottish Presbyterian chaplain, led him to Christ. Edersheim went with Duncan to Scotland and studied at the University of Edinburgh. Later, he entered the University of Berlin. His studies complete, he was ordained in the Scottish Presbyterian Church and spent a year as a missionary to Rumanian Jews before pastoring in Scotland. At times, ill health forced him to retire. Following one of these periods of retirement, he entered the Church of England. It was while serving as Vicar of Loders in Dorset, that he researched and wrote the Life and Times, a book that took him seven years to complete.
He had already published several works by that time. These included The Home and Synagogue of the Modern Jew; The Temple, its Ministry and Service in the time of Jesus Christ; a Bible History, and Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah. Scholars still benefit from these works.
All of Edersheim’s books were written to help Christians understand the Jewish customs and the history behind Scripture, but Edersheim was not just interested in increasing Bible knowledge. He wrote that it was important for Christians not merely to know the meaning of the narratives of Scripture, but to “realize their spiritual application; to feel their eternal import; to experience them in ourselves…that is the only profitable study of Scripture, to which all else can only serve as outward preparation. Where the result is ‘doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness,’ the Teacher must be the Spirit of God,… But the end of all is Christ… He in whom all the promises of God are Yea and Amen.'”
Sixty-four year old Alfred Edersheim died at Mentare, France on this day, March 16, 1889. We believe that he met face to face the Messiah about whom he had written so eloquently.
1895
John A. Broadus was famed as a preacher able to present the truths of the Bible so simply that the simplest listeners could understand them. In fact, the first person he led to Christ was a simple-minded man who ever afterward said to him, “Thankee, John” whenever he saw him.
Born in 1827, John became a Christian at sixteen when a friend urged him to claim Christ’s promise “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” John did. Thereafter he witnessed, taught Sunday school, lived out his faith and gained what education he could.
He planned to become a doctor. However, a sermon on Christ’s parable of the talents convinced him he should study to become a minister. He was a minister who did not pastor a great deal, however, concentrating more on seminary teaching, although at one church he baptized 241 converts, including a girl who later became famous as a missionary–Lottie Moon. Although he often filled pulpits, preached at conferences and to troops during the Civil War, his life’s work was as a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in which he taught homiletics (the art of preaching). He often told his students, “If you forget everything else I have told you, don’t forget to treat the Scripture in a commonsense way.”
Just how conscientious he was is shown by the fact that he once revised his entire course notes for a single blind student. He studied the sermons of the most effective preachers of all time to learn how they should be put together. When it looked as if the seminary would go under because of the Civil War, John said to the other professors, “…perhaps the seminary may die, but let us resolve to die first.”
John stressed the importance of preaching: “We know that preaching deserves the highest excellence since it is the chosen instrument of the Savior of the world, who himself came preaching.” He worked hard on his own sermons, wearing a path into the grass near the school, pacing as he fixed key points in mind. He learned what many pastors never learn, to preach so as to persuade listeners to take spiritual action based on the truths presented.
As an example of his style, take these words from his sermon He Ever Liveth to Intercede: “Here then is hope for us. ‘If any man sin,’ much as he ought to deplore it, he need not despair. Our advocate with the Father ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God through him, and through him we may find mercy. And here is no encouragement to sin, but the very contrary. If we truly trust in, truly love our interceding Lord, we shall be supremely anxious for his dear sake to turn from sin, to live for him who died for us; yea who ever lives as our Savior.”
On this day March 16, 1895 John Albert Broadus died. True to his word, he had done all in his power to keep the seminary alive and it lives today. His Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew is one of his better-known writings and his book On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons was widely used as a textbook for decades.
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