Tag Archives: hokiness

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.