Welcome back to another episode of Five Miss in Church History. On this episode, it's my pleasure to welcome back our good friend Dr. Steve Lawson. Dr. Lawson, it's good to have you.

Steven, always a joy and a pleasure for me to be with you.

I managed to get a little bit of time with you here at Ligonier's National Conference, and I want to talk to you about a great figure.

And it's going to be hard to do this in one episode, Dr. Lawson.

Yeah, I know.

So let's make it, too.

Okay, let's go for a double header.

So we'll do this on Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Wow.

Let's talk about Spurgeon before he stepped into the pulpit of Metropolitan Tabernacle, meaning the years before?

The early Spurgeon, and some of the factors that went into his life.

Well, the early Spurgeon was fiery and passionate. The first six volumes, it's called the New Park Street Pulpit, are really just doused with gas and set on fire.

The rest, which is the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, there's some mellowing and pastoral discretion, but Young Spurgeon was just set on fire from heaven.

He began preaching at age 15 and began pastoring at age 16, and was called to London at age 19, and his reputation had already spread all the way to London.

And it was the largest reform Baptist church in all of England.

It was very famous, but it had become empty.

And so they called Young Spurgeon at age 19, and he was given a six-month trial basis to see if they would vote him in his pastor.

Oh, wow. How interesting.

It is interesting.

So he began preaching, and the building began to be filled, not just Sunday morning and Sunday night, but you had to have a ticket to get into the building even for prayer meeting in this week.

This goes from an empty building to, there's a line out the door.

Yes, it held about 1200 people, and they were less than 200. So they're like babies in a barrel in there.

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