A. W. Pink: The Pioneer of a Modern Reformation (Pt. 1: A String of Failures)

By Aaron Dunlop - Posted at ThinkGospel.com:

The past sixty years in the evangelical church has witnessed a deepening interest in reformed literature and a resurgence of reformed theology; it is, in some respects, a modern Reformation. Much of this has been attributed to the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) of Westminster Chapel, London. There is no doubt that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was the greatest single influence in this work of God—he was to twentieth-century London, what Spurgeon was in the nineteenth century. His influence, furthermore, has not abated, but has continued to spread around the world since his death in 1981.

There is another man, however, of whom less is known and to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude. That man is Arthur Walkington Pink, who is generally referred to simply as A. W. Pink. Very much forsaken in his day, Pink was one of “the written ministry of A. W. Pink is one of the least noticed facts of major significance in the first half of the twentieth century.” Richard P. Belcher concludes that Pink "is responsible, as much as any man, for the revival of that doctrine known as Calvinism among Baptist and some other groups."

Neither of these men ever met the other although each of them was aware of the other’s existence. Their respective ministries were very different. Arthur Pink suffered all of the hardships and loneliness of a pioneer, far from the madding crowd (some of his isolation was perhaps self-inflicted). Lloyd-Jones, on the other hand, enjoyed the triumphant ride of a vanguard. In their own way, however, each had a profound influence in shaping the future of the evangelical and reformed church in the United Kingdom and in North America.

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