JOHN GILL AND THE CAUSE OF GOD AND TRUTH

A Forward and Recommendation

After reading George Ella’s masterful biography, Pastor of Providence, William Huntington, of a much maligned and misunderstood gospel preacher, I wrote to commend him for his scholarly, well-researched work by which one of God’s faithful servants was setforth in much better light than history has given him. Since then, Mr. Ella and I have become friends by correspondence. After reading his manuscript on John Gill and The Cause of God and Truth, I was so delighted to see the name of another faithful servant of God lifted from the muck and mire that has been heaped upon it that I volunteered to write this forward to it and make my recommendation of it.

I began reading the works of John Gill when I was an eighteen year old Bible college student. My first introduction to him was through his Body of Divinity. It is to this day the best theology book I have read. Next, my heart was lifted in the knowledge and worship of Christ by his Exposition of the Song of Solomon. By this time, I was hooked on Gill. On the day my daughter was born, being assured that she was to be a boy, I ordered Gill’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments for my “son.” (Bible College students use whatever excuse they can for buying books.) In subsequent years, as I could find them, I have read with great spiritual profit Gill’s Tracts and Treatises and his Cause of God and Truth.

From the beginning, men who obviously never read Gill warned me of what they called his “tendencies toward Hyper-Calvinism and Antinomianism.” Having read almost everything Gill wrote, I am still searching for even a hint of those “tendencies.” Instead, I have found in all his writings the most faithful exposition of Holy Scripture, a consistent Christ centered, Christ exalting theology, and a constant, robust declaration of God’s free and sovereign grace in Christ. Very few days have passed since my first introduction to Gill in which I have not read something from his pen. He is, by far, my favorite writer.

Until now, no biographer (to my knowledge) has treated Gill fairly, except his successor in the pastorate, John Rippon. Rippon’s work was very good, but far too brief. George Ella has been used of God to give the Christian public an opportunity to understand and appreciate one of the giants of church history in this thoroughly researched biography. As I recommend Gill’s writings to anyone who wants to understand the Bible, I heartily recommend George Ella’s biography, John Gill and the Cause of God and Truth, to anyone who wants to understand Gill.

Don Fortner, Pastor

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

Danville, Kentucky USA