After forty years of
active association with brother Austin-Sparks in the
things of God, it fell to me to lead the praiseful
funeral service on April 19th, 1971 when a large number
gathered at Honor Oak to magnify the Lord for our
brother's long life and fruitful service. During most of
those years I have been a contributor to A Witness and A
Testimony, so I have gratefully accepted the opportunity
of writing a short appreciation of our brother and his
work for God.
Those who are familiar with his books will recollect that
one of them is entitled The School of Christ. The very
words suggest his conception of what the Christian life
is all about, for He taught that God's principal purpose
for us all is directed towards eternity and directed to
conforming us to the image of His Son. Brother Sparks was
able to help so many of the disciples in Christ's school
because throughout his many years of service he was ready
to occupy the place of pupil as well as teacher.
His discipleship began when, at seventeen years of age,
he walked dejectedly down a Glasgow street on a Sunday
afternoon and stopped to listen to some young people
witnessing in the open air. That very night he committed
his life to the Saviour, and the next Sunday found
himself standing with the same eager young Christians in
their open-air meeting. He continued with them, and
before long opened his mouth to speak some simple words
of testimony, so entering on a life of preaching the
Gospel which lasted for sixty-five years.
Those years were filled with many activities for God, but
preaching was his greatest gift and his chief joy. He
read widely in his desire for spiritual understanding,
and above all he studied his Bible, always in an eager
quest for the treasures new and old which can be found
there by those who are instructed in the kingdom of
heaven. One of his first choices for the supplementary
hymn book which he prepared for use at the Honor Oak
Christian Fellowship Centre was the hymn which carries as
its refrain Pastor John Robinson's famous reminder to the
Mayflower pilgrims that "the Lord has yet more light
and truth to break forth from His Word". How often
we sang those inspiring words at the beginning of an
Honor Oak Conference! And how often they proved true to
the appreciative listeners!
Brother Sparks always set great store on
"revelation", by which he meant not the
original disclosure of truth by inspired writers of the
Scriptures, but Spirit-given illumination and insight
into what the Word really teaches. For this reason most
of his books, and almost all the articles published in
this magazine were transcriptions of spoken messages
which had been given with some real sense of divine
enabling: they seemed to him to be more likely to have a
spiritual impact if they came not only from studying but
also from involvement in some practical situation.
Probably his greatest helpfulness was when he was
speaking of his own experiences, drawing lessons from
what he had learned, not from study only, but from what
had happened to him in Christ's school, where the Father
treats His children with that chastening, or
child-training, which alone can prepare them for true
sonship according to the pattern of the perfect Son. He
was often able to interpret to people the meaning of what
they had been going through, showing them the
significance and purpose of God's dealings with them.
Especially in his earlier years, brother Sparks used to
lay great emphasis on the need for the inward application
of the Cross to the life of the believer. He preached a
Gospel of full salvation by simple faith in Christ's
sacrifice, but he further stressed that the man who knows
cleansing by the blood of Jesus should also allow the
same Cross to work in the depths of his soul in order to
release him from himself, and lead him into a less carnal
and more spiritual walk with God. He himself had gone
through a crisis of self-undoing by his acceptance of the
Cross's verdict on his old nature, and had found this
crisis to be the introduction to an altogether new
enjoyment of Christ's life so great that he could only
describe it as "an open heaven". In the church
life of the people among whom he ministered he had also
seen a striking transformation produced by this message
of the Cross to the believer: it was no wonder,
therefore, that he took every opportunity of affirming
that there is no other way into the full experience of
the will of God than by union with Christ in His death.
Again and again he would revert to the teaching of Romans
6, not just as a favorite topic, but out of a conviction
that such union was the sure means of knowing the power
of Christ's resurrection.
The Cross is always painful, so we can appreciate that
brother Sparks often found God's dealings with him hard
to bear. Until 1950 he was frequently prostrate with
pain, and unable to continue his work; yet again and
again he was raised up, sometimes literally from a sick
bed, and no one could fail to recognize the added
spiritual impact which came from such a background. We
prayed much for him during those years, but with no
lasting relief, until he was able to have the surgical
treatment which proved to be God's gracious means of answering our prayers, so that from then on he
had a further twenty years of activity in many lands, and
until his last illness was a remarkable example of how
divine life can energize the mortal body.
For various reasons many
other sufferings came into his life, but this was
consistent with his own teaching that in the School of
Christ one learns more by suffering than by study or
listening to messages. If, however, the Cross involves
suffering, it is also the secret of abundant grace, as he
certainly proved. His last annual motto, prepared for
this year of 1971, was devoted to the theme of the
sufficiency of God's grace. In November he wrote an editorial in this paper, recording the fact that for
him 1970 had been a year of unusual pressure and
difficulty. Perhaps as an onlooker I may be permitted to
comment that in the eyes of those nearest to him it was
also a year of new and fuller evidence of the grace of
God, and that for my part I have been left with blessed
memories of fellowship in conversation and prayer which
could never have been possible between us without the
triumph of divine grace. To God be the glory!
The Cross is not only painful, it is unifying. Brother
Sparks believed and preached that by it the individual
believer is not only led into an enlarging personal
enjoyment of resurrection life, but also into a true
integration into the fellowship of the Church which is
Christ's body. He could never think of himself as an
isolated Christian, nor of assemblies as isolated groups, but he tried to keep before him the
divine purpose of redemption, which is the incorporation
of all believers into vital membership of the one body.
It has sometimes happened that Christians most anxious to
express this oneness have yet contradicted its spirit by
being betrayed into an attitude of superiority towards
other Christians, so allowing themselves to be wrongly
divided from their fellows in Christ. We here have had to
confess our own failures in this respect, realizing that
our very eagerness to be faithful to the Scriptural
revelation of what the Church ought to be may have
unintentionally produced something of a separateness
among the people of God. If brother Sparks at times
tended in this direction, he certainly moved farther and
farther away from it as he came nearer to eternity, being
growingly careful to show a proper appreciation of all
true believers, whatever their connection.
He must have been tempted at times to move away from
practical fellowship with the church here at Honor Oak,
for perhaps we limited him and we occasionally irked him,
but God gave him grace never to succumb to this
understandable temptation: he stayed with us to the end,
keeping the bond of fellowship intact, showing a loving
interest in the coming generation, and taking his share
with us in worship and prayer so long as he was
physically able. We owe much to his prayers for us, and
he was deeply appreciative of the prayer support which we
were able to give him, especially in his conference
ministries in many places. His last messages to the
church, entrusted to me from his sick bed, were of great
gratitude for our prayers. In the final days of great
weakness, when he often seemed unable to cope with any
other sort of communication, he never failed to give a
whispered "Amen" when prayer was made, showing
that when everything else was growing increasingly unreal, he could still respond to the great
reality of prayer "in the name".
In fact, prayer had been his life, even more than
preaching: in this matter he laid a foundation for the
work and set a standard which by God's grace we will seek
to maintain. While he was still pastor of the local
Baptist church he used every Tuesday to travel up to
spend the lunchtime praying with his two colleagues,
George Paterson and George Taylor, who both worked
professionally in town at that time. After the church had
moved into the present premises in 1926, first Mr.
Paterson and then Mr. Taylor resigned their posts in
order to be fully free for spiritual work, which left
still more opportunity for the united prayer which became
a prominent feature both of life in the church and also
in the adjoining Guest House.
To brother Sparks prayer
had many aspects, as is shown by his book In Touch with
the Throne. He set us an example of the prayer which is
adoration, not requesting or interceding, but just
offering to God the worship and love which are His due;
he constantly stressed the importance of what he called
"executive prayer", by which he meant not just
wishful thinking with the tag of "Amen" at its
end, but the bold claiming of God's promises in the name
of the Lord; he introduced many of us to the reality of
"prayer warfare", for he knew that only by
getting to grips with the unseen enemies of God's will
can the Church apply Christ's victory to actual
situations. Because prayer is a battle he was sometimes
saddened when our prayer meetings tended to flag, but he
would rally us anew to the fight, and was always ready to
rejoice when we seemed to break through into the victory
of faith and to get "in touch with the throne".
Perhaps one of the earliest of his books can best give us
a real clue to his whole life and ministry. It is called
The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This was where he began, and this was where he ended, for
it became noticeable in his closing years that he lost
interest in subjects and concentrated his attention on
the person of Christ. Christ is central! None of us will
claim always to have been "on centre", and he
certainly made no such claim, but it was his life's
objective and the aim of all his preaching and teaching
to recognize that centrality and bow to that supremacy.
At his funeral service there were hundreds who responded
wholeheartedly to the suggestion that brother Sparks had
helped them to get to know Christ in fuller and more
satisfying ways. If anyone can make men realize something
more of the worth and wonder of Christ, so that they love
Him more and serve Him better, then such a one has not
lived in vain. Many worldwide can truthfully say that
through the spoken or written words of 'T. A-S.' this is
what happened to them and, especially with those who
first trusted Christ as Saviour through his ministry,
they will be his rejoicing in the day of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, some of the truths, which were by no means
accepted when he proclaimed them years ago, have now
become widely accepted among evangelical Christians, so
it is possible that in the long run his ministry may
prove to have been more fruitful than at the time
appeared to himself or to others. It is the steward's
business to be faithful, and that he sought to be: only
the Master is competent to judge of his success.
The very first message which I heard him give in 1924 was
an appeal to those present to press on towards the mark
for the prize, and it concluded with a reference to the
abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom which is
promised in 2 Peter 1:11. Now, after forty-seven more
years of the joys and trials of living for Christ, he has
finished his course, and we trust that his entrance has
indeed been rich and abundant. Although he has gone from
us, his message still brings its challenge to us who are
left behind, and although his lips are now silent, his
prayers for us will still be answered.
There seemed something
significant in the fact that he went to be with Christ
immediately after the Easter holiday, for the closing
service of our Easter Monday Conferences was always a
highlight, as many who were present will agree. Brother
Sparks could give long messages, and often did so, but
his closing message then was invariably brief and to the
point. The point was so often the Second Coming of
Christ, and as we gathered in large numbers around the
Lord's Table and concluded with a triumphant song about
"The hope of the coming of the Lord", truly
heaven came down and glory filled our souls. On this
Easter Monday there was no such meeting, but early on the
following morning our brother passed peacefully into the
presence of Christ, to await there the moment when the
hope will have become a glorious reality and we shall all
together meet the Lord "in the air".
Brother Sparks' voice is no longer heard among us, but at
the funeral service the voice of his Lord and ours seemed
to ring through our halls, crying "Surely I come
quickly!" As one man the whole concourse answered
together: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." On this
note we went out into the sunshine to lay our brother's
body to rest and to sing triumphantly round his open
grave: "One day He's coming, oh, glorious day!"