105. Charles Spurgeon: Great Baptist? Or GREATEST Baptist?

We all knew this day would come. 

For many of our friends in the Baptist tradition, there is no competition as to who the greatest Baptist is to grace the pulpit. Only a battle for second place. The gold medal belongs to Charles Spurgeon, the cigar smoking, quip quipping, Bible preaching, pulpit shaking, rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the wild, wild west. 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, often known as the Prince of Preachers, built a reputation for bold, spirited teaching in his decades of service to Metropolitan Tabernacle Baptist Church in London, England. 

Join us as we discuss his conversion, transition to ministry, and the harsh trials that he endured through his life of service. 

Also, we'll talk about Taylor's love of acronyms, and we'll geek out about how excited we were to see everyone's Spotify Wrapped from last year. 

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/chumphistory

Transcript

Kim Jung Un (00:00.207)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Charles Spurgeon for Chumps. My name's Taylor and I'm with my...

Sleepy Jay (00:05.848)
Sorry about that guys, just got back from the bathroom. Who hit record? Why are we recording already?

Kim Jung Un (00:11.417)
My lovely co-host, John's.

Sleepy Jay (00:13.378)
Taylor, no, no, no, don't, everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps. My name is John Simon, AKA the hottest free agent in the Baptist circles, and we've got.

Kim Jung Un (00:23.617)
AKA the mean guy who won't let me do a 12 part series on the greatest preacher to grace England in the latter half of the 19th century.

Sleepy Jay (00:34.304)
And we've got Mama Treadway's bestest boy, Taylor Treadway. How are you, man? This is the one that made Tommy quit.

Kim Jung Un (00:44.158)
stop. Getting too Baptist for me.

Sleepy Jay (00:48.522)
Taylor was like, I'm doing Spurgeon by the end of the year or I'm out. And Tommy was like, you can do it, but I won't be there. I, Trump Nation, you guys don't understand how much, how much trouble I found myself in between these two. It's like, it's like the odd couple, but I'm just the house plant in the way. It's awful. It's awful. Listening to these two fight. It is man. It's so hard.

Kim Jung Un (00:57.807)
That's right.

Kim Jung Un (01:13.659)
What are you? my gosh. Yeah, last episode, you and Tommy were ready to go form your anti-AI commune with a sign that says, clankers, while I'm like, I think AI has some benefits, guys. And you're like, get off my property.

Sleepy Jay (01:26.498)
We just...

Sleepy Jay (01:32.174)
Alright, you're just, I think you're just a fan of any acronym. HOA? Fan. AI? Fan. SBC? Fan. WOW? Fan.

Kim Jung Un (01:41.025)
huge fan dude I do love the acronyms I sweat for acronyms

Sleepy Jay (01:46.754)
I think, I think, ew, I don't like that.

Alright, well

Kim Jung Un (01:52.37)
Dude, we have to thank the listeners, man. my gosh.

Sleepy Jay (01:57.678)
We got so, so a lot of you guys listen, you know, big thing around this time of year is Spotify wrapped. So we've got a ton of screenshots from folks who were like, yo, church history for Trumps was in my, was in my top, top podcasts, which is awesome. so Spotify does this cool thing where they kind of give podcasts our own little Spotify wrapped and kind of shows us how we did. Man, 2024, no, 25. That's where we're in.

Kim Jung Un (02:24.657)
2025. It's okay.

Sleepy Jay (02:26.03)
2025 was like a great year for us.

Kim Jung Un (02:29.869)
Our stats, like I watched that video and our stats just kept blowing my mind. Guys, some of our stats, I actually don't think Spotify had a way to track it. One of them was like 999 % and you know that they just stopped counting. They were like, that's enough guys. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (02:33.656)
Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (02:47.694)
They're like, that's enough. Just stop there. Just stop there. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was pretty amazing. And like there were, like I think we get more comments in our Spotify than like 99 % of other podcasts, which is amazing. Cause we're not Joe Rogan. Like we're not like putting up Tucker Carlson numbers, but, yeah, just amazed. So you guys who were

Kim Jung Un (03:13.681)
It's an honor.

Sleepy Jay (03:15.352)
commenting. It's beautiful, dude. It's amazing. I have to do something, Taylor, and I apologize in advance. I've said this kind of subtly in the past. We've done our whole thing about like, Ireland, we had a great week in Ireland this week. what was the, Malta, Malta, always pulling up for Malta. Here's the thing, man. Singapore was the second best listening country.

Kim Jung Un (03:40.091)
Actually, yeah.

You guys killed it. Everybody in Singapore, you crushed Australia, you crushed England. What? There was another one they crushed.

Sleepy Jay (03:44.718)
Yeah, and I know

Sleepy Jay (03:52.586)
It's amazing. The UK. you said, I already said England. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (03:57.478)
We got the top five. Point is, you guys crushed every other western-ish country.

Sleepy Jay (04:04.054)
Yeah, so that's amazing. And I didn't even know that Singapore was a city state. I discovered that. Like there's no capital to Singapore. It is Singapore. Like the country is the city, which is the nation.

Kim Jung Un (04:16.107)
Singapore folks can send us a message or something because I'm just curious if it's like one church that listens to us. Yeah, the pastor's like, hey guys, I found these. Please listen. And then the congregation is like, OK.

Sleepy Jay (04:24.29)
That might be it. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (04:31.522)
What if it's like every Wednesday they have like Church History for Chumps study instead of Bible study where they're just like, all right guys, what'll we listen to this week? Maybe the pastor's a big fan, who knows? I'm excited.

Kim Jung Un (04:36.977)
No, stop it. Stop it, John.

I will say, though, I was very humbled reading that. And I'm sure you guys are curious. We always give you guys some of the behind the scenes. Essentially, John, agree with this or disagree if I'm wrong. But the show basically has doubled. And we have doubled in the last year. And I know that me, John, and Tommy are all blown away, very humbled, very grateful. And we're looking forward to 2026, guys.

Sleepy Jay (04:55.287)
Hit me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sleepy Jay (05:11.244)
Yeah, absolutely right. I'd like to think, I'd like to, we, got another supporter on buy me a coffee. It was, our good friend Elijah. he actually wrote a haiku for us to read. I didn't count the syllables on this cause there's four lines. This one's like six, six, eight, 10. I'm not sure what's going on. He says, I take heart because.

Kim Jung Un (05:12.113)
Follow us on... who are you gonna ask?

Kim Jung Un (05:27.953)
7-7-9-4.

Kim Jung Un (05:33.211)
That's a haiku.

Sleepy Jay (05:40.174)
Church History pod is warm. Maine winter is cold. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas. I didn't count all that. I felt a good amount of warmth in it. I really felt loved by it and I really appreciated it. Thanks, Elijah. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (05:53.362)
Mm-hmm. Thanks, Elijah. What's the, is it 575? I purposely ruin it every time so that I don't actually know what a haiku is. Elijah, thank you for your haiku. I call it a haiku.

Sleepy Jay (06:01.752)
Yeah.

I

It's only remember

Sleepy Jay (06:11.948)
It's a haiku? Yeah, I mean, I think the haikus, like the thing about poetry is there's no rules. It's like music. There's no rules.

Kim Jung Un (06:19.395)
Except except Haiku is the one poetry that there's a rule. Yeah. Follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, say hi. We respond. Comment on Spotify. We got Jackson and L.M. chilling every week. Pick it up, guys.

Sleepy Jay (06:23.735)
It's actually a standard like it's not supposed to be yeah

Sleepy Jay (06:33.964)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we-

Sleepy Jay (06:41.218)
You know, we'd honestly love like some feedback. We get a lot of love from you guys, which we can't say how much we appreciate, we don't often open ourselves up to constructive criticism. And maybe I'm not sure I want to do that. No, I think...

Kim Jung Un (06:52.657)
You, John literally cannot handle it. He literally can't. We got, we got, okay, our, our star rating on Spotify is ridiculously high, but when it dropped down to like 4.95, you stared, you stared at the ceiling. Oh, 4.9. Oh my, you stared at the ceiling awake for weeks. It haunted him, guys.

Sleepy Jay (07:05.038)
I noticed immediately. No, it was 4.9! It was 4.9.

Sleepy Jay (07:13.374)
That's not true. That's not true. Like, here's the thing. Like, you don't have to argue with a thing we say, but you could be like, hey, here's a suggestion. Maybe add chapter markers. We do add chapter markers, but you know, I don't know, a formatting thing. How can we be a better podcast? People are often like, here's how you can be smarter and not so dumb, you idiot hosts.

Kim Jung Un (07:35.057)
Mmm, dude

So one of the things that we did listen to, because people would complain about our banter, and we started adding the marker for when banter ends. So we do. Even if you don't want to listen to everything, we have to say. They're not even listening now. The anti-banter crowd's not listening right now. Boo! You guys are the worst. Boo!

Sleepy Jay (07:47.726)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (07:52.674)
Yep. Yeah. We listen. We try to listen. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (08:05.016)
They haven't, yeah, they stopped. They stopped.

Sleepy Jay (08:10.52)
They stopped. That's true. Yeah, they're not going to skip right past it. They're already in the future. That's exciting. They already know what it's like. Well, I'm excited because I mean, here's the thing. If you'll you don't have to be a Baptist to like Charles Spurgeon, it's like he's like the Beatles. It's like, no, if you like music, you like the Beatles. If you like Christianity, you like he's like he's up in my opinion. He's like C.S. Lewis.

Kim Jung Un (08:12.175)
No, because they haven't, they clicked past this. Isn't that wild to think?

Sleepy Jay (08:39.96)
He's like one of those dudes that like, can, you can, you can mince words over some of his finer details, but the heart is really hard to pick apart. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (08:50.299)
That's right. And so I know I opened with that joke while John was away. But the reality is I did have a conversation as we were planning these episodes. I said, John was like, all right, who's up next? What episode are we doing? And I texted the group back. said, I can do an episode on Susanna Spurgeon, which is Spurgeon's wife. And John was like, wait, what?

Sleepy Jay (08:56.718)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (09:02.135)
Gosh.

Kim Jung Un (09:18.773)
to Charles. And I was like, OK, what if we did like a series on on Char. Well, OK, so what actually happened was I said, what if I did one on Charles and then one on Susanna? And John was like, no, you can have one. And I'm like,

Sleepy Jay (09:33.494)
I literally said, let's just do both. Let's just do both. You just, you just always want to make a series out of something. Everything's a series for you. Okay.

Kim Jung Un (09:39.493)
I know, and let me explain why. As I enter, this is the cold open.

Sleepy Jay (09:44.92)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (09:46.79)
How do you distill a man who wrote, he authored over a hundred books. He's preached, we have hundreds upon hundreds, maybe even thousands of his sermons recorded. The man was a titan. He had charity work.

He was, his sermons were printed and distributed literally across the globe, translated into other languages. How do you distill that man and his life story, his theology, his ecclesiology, his ministry presence? How do you distill him into one episode? I don't know, but we're going to figure it out today.

Sleepy Jay (10:34.638)
Okay, alright. It's kind of a lukewarm open if you ask me.

Kim Jung Un (10:36.257)
So, okay, here, here. It was lukewarm. Here's the thing, guys. Here's the thing about history. And I'm very grateful for John, because John keeps me on the straight and narrow, because I'm aware that the vast majority of you only want to hear one episode on Charles Spurgeon. I am Mr. Nitty Gritty Details, and there is so much to be said about Charles Spurgeon.

that you could easily, we could easily do an eight part series. Easily, and you're like, that's insane. That's like two months of commitment. I know, I know. But then also remember, I'm the guy that's like, well, why don't we just cruise in the Crusades for like two, three, four years? Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (11:03.982)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (11:19.662)
Yeah, yeah, and we're not, we're not doing that. We're not doing either of those things as you suggested. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (11:23.363)
Right. So I have the tendency to want to super detail every little thing and dive into every source material possible. And John keeps me on the straight and narrow. So John, on behalf of our fans, thank you.

Sleepy Jay (11:40.952)
You're welcome. You're welcome. Now let's get into it.

Kim Jung Un (11:43.824)
Yeah, OK, hey, OK, so Charles Spurgeon, if you don't know, he's the Prince of Preachers. He is, I would say, the prototype of kind of your standard evangelical, popular, reformed Baptist guy. was before Piper, before MacArthur, and who else am I missing? David Platt.

Matt Chandler.

Sleepy Jay (12:13.112)
Yeah I was gonna say Matt Chandler, DA Carson, Devor Carson? Carson might not be I'm not sure.

Kim Jung Un (12:17.585)
D.A. Carson. I don't know, is he Baptist? Mark Dever. So Spurgeon came before all of them. So here we go, here we go. So Spurgeon was born June 19th, 1834 in Essex, England. Okay, he was born 1834. So put that early, you know, early 19th century.

Now, do you know when Queen Victoria's reign started?

is 1837. So when you think of Charles Spurgeon, you have to remember the backdrop in what he was operating in was Victorian England. So just some real quick background. So she ascended the throne in 1837, and she died 1901. So Spurgeon was basically alive for the entire reign of Queen Victoria.

Sleepy Jay (13:07.01)
Okay, okay.

Sleepy Jay (13:22.904)
When I think Victorian England, I think like like Downton Abbey, right? Okay.

Kim Jung Un (13:26.809)
Yes. Well, no, Downton Abbey is early 20th century, I think.

Sleepy Jay (13:31.411)
shoot, you're right. So it's more like posh. Everyone's wearing the big powdered wigs and...

Kim Jung Un (13:38.767)
No, I think that was before.

Sleepy Jay (13:40.834)
Gosh dang it.

Kim Jung Un (13:42.468)
So just think this when you think Victorian England. So industrial and economic transformation. So England is shifting from rural agricultural to urban industrial and to like steam engine, railroads, telegraph, all sorts of things sort of created this. But what happened is so that shift makes immense wealth for England. But guess who got all the money,

Sleepy Jay (13:45.742)
Okay, hit me.

Sleepy Jay (14:09.038)
Mmm.

Sleepy Jay (14:13.346)
rich and powerful.

Kim Jung Un (14:14.277)
the rich and powerful, no trickle down economics here. And it led to like overcrowding and poor living conditions in the cities, which is important because that's who Charles Spurgeon is gonna be ministering to. Now, all.

Sleepy Jay (14:17.518)
Sleepy Jay (14:27.15)
Well, this is like the Jane, Jane Austen era. Yeah. Jane Austen. wrote, she no, she wrote Pride and Prejudice. And then like the Bronte, the Bronte's, no, gosh dang it. We're, we're, our, our memory of history is two ships passing in the night.

Kim Jung Un (14:29.637)
I don't know who, who's Jane Austen? What did she write? She wrote Frankenstein? That's Mary Shelley.

and zombies.

Kim Jung Un (14:47.429)
Look, man, here's the problem when you jump all around is like we've lived in the patristic era for like the last year. So when you're like, Ambrose of Milan, we're like, yeah, that makes sense. I remember he did blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we're like, who Queen Victoria?

Sleepy Jay (14:55.799)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (15:05.805)
Anyway, this is also the time in England when Britain's power grew through imperial expansion. You love that, don't you? Good old imperial, right? So that covered about a quarter of the world's population. There was a lot of change, changing and roding, social political change, voting rights, pushing to

improve working conditions, education, and public sanitation, those things. This was also when you had Charles Dickens writing, and apparently Jane Onsten, did you verify that? And you were right?

Sleepy Jay (15:42.146)
did, but she was about 40 years before Spurgeon, but not far. She died in 1817 and Spurgeon was born like two decades later. So this is close.

Kim Jung Un (15:51.826)
That's no, that's not Victorian English. That's fine. Just keep throwing out names. Eventually you'll get somewhere. Charles Darwin. So you have Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin. And then you got like.

Sleepy Jay (15:59.736)
gonna figure them. actually, that would be accurate, right?

Kim Jung Un (16:06.107)
for what?

Sleepy Jay (16:07.768)
for Charles Darwin. Okay. Okay, okay.

Kim Jung Un (16:08.923)
Yes, it is accurate. I verified that one.

Sleepy Jay (16:14.99)
Oh, I got one. Bronte Sisters, let's go. All right. Charlotte, they also wrote books. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, no. Yeah, yeah. So that would have been Victorian, I think. They were collectively born 1816, 1818, 1820. So that should overlap.

Kim Jung Un (16:18.513)
Who... what did they do?

Which ones? Is it Franklin the Turtle? Wuthering Heights. OK. Mm-hmm. OK.

Kim Jung Un (16:38.065)
So here's our first key piece of Charles Spurgeon before I get into like the biographic details. So all of this change in England really led to massive social inequality. England's already operated, dare I say, on a pseudo caste system. I know, it's like, did I want to go on record with that? I guess I did. They have, though, they have, and it like still kind of exists to the day. I mean, it kind of exists-ish in a

Sleepy Jay (16:56.172)
Oof, yikes, okay.

Hey, hey, know, history is history,

Kim Jung Un (17:07.409)
You don't have somebody from Yale marrying somebody that went to Pima Medical.

Sleepy Jay (17:08.814)
Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (17:16.684)
I mean, you are someone who works at circle K or something like that. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (17:19.543)
Right, right. So imagine that, like much more exacerbated. That's England. Now, here's the thing that I want to point about Charles Spurgeon. This guy was the every man's preacher. And if you that's something that you probably heard about him, right, John? Yeah, and I would imagine that a lot of our listeners have heard that, too. So Spurgeon, though, I mean, if you read his sermons, you can click a random sermon and he knows.

Sleepy Jay (17:32.662)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (17:36.45)
Yes.

Kim Jung Un (17:49.232)
his audience. We'll look into some of his sermons in a little bit. He knows who he's talking to though. And for me personally, I think that that is actually a very endearing quality. Spurgeon was not concerned with impressing the elite. He was not at all, and it cost him socially. I mean, the man could have been rubbing elbows with some very hoity-toity people, and it would have benefited him personally.

Sleepy Jay (17:50.83)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (18:06.67)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (18:17.989)
But I mean, his heart was for, you know, was it Dick Van Dyke's character in Mary Poppins? Who was like, I'm just a chimney sweep.

Sleepy Jay (18:28.908)
Right. That was Charles Spurgeon's ideal audience. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (18:32.753)
That's right, dude. Yes. Yes. So yeah, Mr. Chimney Sweep, attending Charles Spurgeon's church and listening to his preaching every single week. okay, let's get into Spurgeon's early life.

Sleepy Jay (18:38.414)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (18:48.014)
So I like how you framed that though. That's really interesting because the backdrop of England is there's all this prosperity, but all this prosperity is very, very top heavy. And I imagine just before you even said it, that the majority of the preachers of this time are probably trying to appeal to the folks with the fancy handbags, right? Like there's probably not too many common folks speaking preachers out there.

Kim Jung Un (19:15.653)
The people that were educated were appealing to other educated people.

Sleepy Jay (19:20.236)
Sure, sure, okay, okay.

Kim Jung Un (19:21.839)
Yes, yes. I mean, there's probably a lot more to say. See, if you gave me my two-month series, I could have given you a whole breakdown on London society. But to answer your question simply, yes. So the educated people talk to the educated people, and they let the riffraff deal with themselves, right? Very utilitarian, unfortunately. So as I said, born 1834. So.

Sleepy Jay (19:27.534)
Gosh, unfortunately.

Sleepy Jay (19:40.846)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (19:47.408)
The first 10 years of his life, he was raised by his grandparents, kind of out in the countryside, where his grandpappy was a pastor. And I think that laid the foundation for his grandpappy was not a Baptist pastor, but he was a Congregationalist. And I think that laid the foundation for who Spurgeon would become. So there was Puritan books hanging around the house. So Spurgeon was heavily influenced by the Puritans.

Which is, I mean, dude, we can't escape them in modern America. I know we haven't done our Great Awakening series yet, but when you just realize how influential those guys' reach goes, I mean, even Charles Spurgeon, heavily influenced by Puritans. So his grandpappy, though, there's a fun little story of him. He writes at length.

Sleepy Jay (20:25.463)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (20:37.838)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (20:46.037)
And it's recorded in his autobiography. So his autobiography is four volumes of tons of his writings where he's talking about his life. But that came out after he died. You say, wait, how's an autobiography put together after somebody dies? Well, his wife Susanna and his secretary, who I cannot remember the name, who was also a pastor, those two, they worked together to put that out. So if you want.

some resource recommendations to read about Spurgeon. I would recommend the C. H. Spurgeon autobiography put together by Susanna Spurgeon. And then if you want something that's actually light reading, I'm dead serious when I say this guys, this is a great Christmas gift for like your nerdy dad. It's.

Sleepy Jay (21:26.03)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (21:39.192)
It's The People's Preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, and it's by Peter Morden. And it's pretty cheap on Amazon. It's got pictures. It's extremely readable. And the thing that I like about this book is it's a very, very, very accessible church history book. it's written by a guy who is like, Peter Morden is like the voice for Charles Spurgeon.

Sleepy Jay (21:45.006)
Hmm.

Sleepy Jay (22:05.774)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (22:06.681)
So he's like one of the experts. so he, yes, yes. And he put together, he worked on this book that is like, dude, a middle schooler could read this. It's that accessible. So that's the People's Preacher, C.H. Spurgeon from Peter Morden, if you want to sneak in a last minute Christmas present to somebody you love who's into church history. So I have my.

Sleepy Jay (22:09.304)
He's like the scholar who knows about Spurgeon.

Sleepy Jay (22:18.478)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (22:37.339)
fun little quote here from Spurgeon's time.

Yes, here it is. OK, so Spurgeon is a very eloquent man, as I think that's probably something you already knew, right? He was really good with words. He's kind of quippy. He's got funny quotes all over the place, wise quotes. One of the things he talks about in his early life is that there was this, his grandfather before he would preach, if he had time on Sunday mornings, there was a little meadow outside the church.

Sleepy Jay (22:57.123)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (23:14.927)
and his grandfather would walk the walking path in the meadow and just kind of pray and prepare. And little Charles was not allowed to bother him during this time, right? And you can imagine like five-year-old Chuckies like, what's grandpa doing, right? Grandma's like, don't bother him. And so he talks about how he viewed this meadow as like a sacred place. This is a holy field. So this is what he said about it. This is from his biography.

Sleepy Jay (23:26.168)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Sleepy Jay (23:38.38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (23:44.472)
I viewed it with no small degree of awe. I love to think of the green and quiet walk at this moment, but I was once shocked and even horrified by hearing a farmer man remark concerning this sanctum sanctorum. It'd grow a good many titers if it were plowed up. What cared he for holy memories? What were meditation and contemplation to him? Is it not the chief end of man to grow potatoes and eat them?

Such on a larger scale would be an unconverted man's estimate of joys so elevated and refined as those of heaven.

Sleepy Jay (24:26.2)
That's so good.

Kim Jung Un (24:26.819)
So I, when I found that quote, was like, surely this is so funny that this has to be on like a t-shirt.

Sleepy Jay (24:32.407)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Kim Jung Un (24:35.755)
Dude, this is like one of the, this is just an unknown little gem just hanging out there. Well, yeah, but like you would think in like the Spurgeon world on the internet at least. So guys, let's make this quote. Is it not the chief end of man to grow potatoes and eat them? Charles Spurgeon.

Sleepy Jay (24:40.206)
That's a deep cut, I've never even heard that one before.

Sleepy Jay (24:54.446)
Bring it back, bring it back. Well, that's the thing is like, I can't think maybe CS Lewis, maybe Billy Graham, but like as far as quotable Christians, he's he's Mount Rushmore. Like I can think of so many quotes that I've just seen in so many different, I guess it also kind of helps that I sort of live in reformed world, especially cause

Kim Jung Un (24:57.956)
Yes.

Sleepy Jay (25:21.806)
You know, when I was chronically online, I was probably part of way too many reformed Facebook groups. But just like, I don't know. He has this way of transforming these truths to be like very quippy and fun, but also like piercing to the soul. I don't know. There's not many dudes who can do that.

Kim Jung Un (25:37.981)
Yes. I've got some more deep cuts for you. On a little anecdotal note, raise your hand if you have heard the quote, I take my text and make a B line to the cross.

Sleepy Jay (25:45.153)
Okay, I'm here for it.

Sleepy Jay (25:57.378)
I think I've heard that one, yeah, I have.

Kim Jung Un (25:58.594)
Yeah, that's a one that's widely attributed to him. And he he never said that. He never said it.

Sleepy Jay (26:02.638)
Is it not him?

Sleepy Jay (26:06.904)
the apocryphal, the apocryphal Spurgeon quotes.

Kim Jung Un (26:09.615)
What's crazy is he's not like, this whole guy, his whole life has basically been recorded. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And yet, you know, we don't, we got something that he said that supposedly, an apocryphal quote. All right. I'm already running low on time. Not really, I'm doing okay. So Spurgeon was,

He was walking one snowy Sunday morning, then one foggy Sunday morning. Is that how the song goes? And the snow, the snowstorm forced him inside a little Methodist church. And he was 17.

Sleepy Jay (26:49.324)
just about.

Kim Jung Un (27:01.445)
and he sat in the back pew and he listened to what he will call basically a very unremarkable sermon from somebody who he's not entirely sure knew what he was doing. But it was in that church that the Lord kind of forced him into because of the weather. Here this little old Methodist pastor rambling. But he was preaching on, gosh, it was Isaiah.

Sleepy Jay (27:09.792)
my god.

Kim Jung Un (27:30.834)
I trust in my s- What's- which one's Isaiah 45? Yes! Did you pull up a- Do you have the wic- Do you have the Wikipedia page up, John Simon? I don't need to know your- your- your sources. That's it though! If the sermon was on Isaiah 45, look unto me and be saved. And Spurge, and despite growing up with grandma and grandpa for 10 years, he would go rejoin his family.

Sleepy Jay (27:31.118)
Is it Isaiah 45?

Is it look unto me and be ye saved? Got it. I'm just following along, brother, don't you worry. I'm just following along, brother, don't you worry.

Kim Jung Un (27:59.726)
After they had enough money to be able to take him again But when he was 17 He heard that sermon and he said that that was the moment he was saved Yes, and so that is so that alongside so his salvific experience Alongside his Puritan readings. It's dude. It's no wonder this guy became a

particular Baptist, right? Which is another word for a Calvinistic Baptist.

Sleepy Jay (28:30.754)
Yeah. Yeah. Is that kind of like a good way, like what would we call particular Baptists? Is that pretty synonymous with like the Reformed Baptists? Like were they, were they London confession of faith followers?

Kim Jung Un (28:45.935)
Yeah, so Calvinistic Baptists, Reform Baptists, Particular Baptists, I think they all have, they're all very synonymous with each other. Now, what I would call, you have MacArthur, who's kind of his own dispensational Calvinistic, which,

Sleepy Jay (28:59.991)
Okay, okay.

Sleepy Jay (29:10.912)
Interesting. So most of these guys would have not been dispensational. that's wild. Okay, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (29:15.129)
Absolutely not. Yeah. So that's where, you get into different classifications of Calvinistic Baptists, it does get interesting. There's varying degrees of liturgical incorporation. So.

Sleepy Jay (29:28.002)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (29:34.028)
And when we say dispensational, dear listener, of course we are referring to basically the theological view that still maintains the relevance of the ethnic and national identity of Israel. It's really just like this belief that Israel will, that the literal Israel by the Jewish people will play some significant role in the

second coming of Christ that usually involves a rapture which other traditions would not necessarily believe in. But yeah, I mean when I think Baptist, especially today, I tend to think dispensational. So that's interesting that this tradition was not quite that.

Kim Jung Un (30:19.461)
That's right. That's right. Thank you for clarifying that. We do try to not use too many. I don't want to. My Sunday school class calls them seminary words. Taylor, that's a seminary word. We don't know what that means.

Sleepy Jay (30:38.19)
Well, just some of us, some of us, know, like when we were, when we were lonely and single young men, we just thought, I know what'll get the ladies a little theological awareness. That's right. Let me just read a little bit of this.

Kim Jung Un (30:48.611)
little reformed theology. You know, my dad makes fun of us. I swear every time I see him, he's like, you guys got to stop using your, you know, mo my epistological framework for the post enlightenment. I he's right. Thank you, Dad.

Sleepy Jay (31:04.034)
And he should, he absolutely should make fun of us for that because there's nothing cool or charming or helpful about those conversations. It's a stumbling block, honestly, I'll say it, it is.

Kim Jung Un (31:16.825)
Yes, yes. So yeah, so he got saved, got baptized, and then immediately started teaching Sunday school and doing itinerant preaching and was handing out Bible tracts. So his first pastorate was at a little church called Water Beach Chapel.

Sleepy Jay (31:18.87)
All right, so tell me about how this guy got into ministry.

Sleepy Jay (31:31.574)
Nice. Okay.

Kim Jung Un (31:44.238)
And from my understanding, and I don't know how much of this is like mythologized. Part of the reason I love Spurgeon history is because there's not a lot of mythology that we have to or myth history that we have to get into. But from my understanding, Water Beach was a kind of like the city that it was in was was rough. It was a it was a rough city. But he.

like through there was a revival in that city and whether you want to say it was like the Lord use Spurgeon or Spurgeon just happened to be brought to that city during the time of revival but like there was high crime all of that kind of nasty stuff and then that went away over the few years that he was preaching and so Peter Morden records it with Spurgeon's ministry began with only 40 people attending chapel regularly after two years of the sort of preaching upwards of 400 regularly came

Sleepy Jay (32:25.358)
Hmm.

Kim Jung Un (32:43.387)
The space problem was partly solved by leaving the doors and windows of the building open so that those unable to get inside could hear. You know, people say, well, we were bursting at the seams. And it's like half the pews were filled.

Sleepy Jay (32:57.815)
right

Yeah, it's like they had to use the balcony.

Kim Jung Un (33:03.289)
Right, the balcony had to get open for the first time in a few years. Which, you know what, celebrate it. Celebrate that victory. But this was actually bursting at the seams. So he did that for a few years. And then eventually he got called to London.

Sleepy Jay (33:06.784)
Right, right, Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (33:28.827)
He got brought to, I wanna make sure it's, I say the church's name.

It's very British. New Park Street. Wanted to make sure, make sure it wasn't New Park Baptist Street or something, but he was brought to New Park Street. And it was there that Spurgeon would basically proceed to blow that church up.

Sleepy Jay (33:40.718)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (33:58.958)
over years. I mean they they went to what was the name of the hall they were in so like they immediately had problems with attendance so they they went to surrey hall i believe is what it was called and then they blew that up and then they had to

Sleepy Jay (33:59.278)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (34:23.631)
They bought their massive, massive building that would become the church would then become the, my gosh. This is what I get for trusting my memory. Yeah, I shouldn't have. It was Exeter Hall, not Surrey Hall. And then they became.

Sleepy Jay (34:37.9)
Mmm, never should do that.

Kim Jung Un (34:48.785)
Tabernacle something. I'm so sorry. Metropolitan Tabernacle. My goodness. How embarrassing. Metropolitan Tabernacle is New Park City. Or New Park Street. Sorry. Yeah, right. Surprised they didn't call themselves, you know. I don't.

Sleepy Jay (34:54.222)
And that was the church he's gonna stay at for a long time,

Sleepy Jay (35:00.334)
Okay, okay. Little rebranding.

Okay. Okay.

Sleepy Jay (35:09.934)
So how did he get into... So he got saved and then what? He kind of got like, discipled and, you know, promoted?

Kim Jung Un (35:20.373)
I was so here's the thing, man. And this is where Presbyterians can kind of get you where you're like, I don't know. This guy was. This guy was clearly probably regenerate for a very long time before he responded, despite what he says. But I'm going to go with what Spurgeon said. I think he was being discipled his whole life, man.

Sleepy Jay (35:27.79)
What was the process?

Sleepy Jay (35:34.99)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (35:40.376)
Sure, sure, sure.

Kim Jung Un (35:41.03)
I mean, he sat around listening to his grandpa preach for 10 years. There's a cute little story of little Charles. His grandpa would talk to grandma about.

this old guy that just hangs out in the pub and we miss him at church dearly. And so there's a story that Charles like walked down to the pub. I think he was like seven or something and like yanked the guy off the bar stool and was like, you're breaking my grandpa's heart. And the guy just starts weeping and then comes back to church and repents openly and stays in church. Yes. Little Charles was, Little Charles was, was being discipled.

Sleepy Jay (36:01.346)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (36:11.746)
He was doing the Lord's work for a long time. sounds like, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (36:20.217)
So he got saved and yes, went straight into ministry. I think compared to what we've been looking at in the patristic era, that's a little extreme. Seeing as like the Cappadocian fathers were like, well, you've been to school for 12 years now. I think you're ready for your first church plant in the countryside.

Sleepy Jay (36:30.808)
Sure. Sure.

Sleepy Jay (36:42.228)
Right. And honestly, even with the fathers, it's like when you like having a good and righteous reputation is just as good as, you know, a bunch of degrees you could have on the wall. And I think that, yeah, even if he hadn't had this, quote unquote, regenerate experience, he, he was certainly a guy of really good and well regarded standing. And that probably contributed to him.

becoming a Sunday school teacher and then a pastor.

Kim Jung Un (37:13.879)
Absolutely. And I think what needs to be noticed here is that he was probably immensely naturally talented. He was a hard worker. There's no doubt about that he was a hard worker. People actually criticize his lack of theology on rest. there's no way that at 18 or I think he might have been 19, point is he was younger than 20 when he took Water Beach Chapel.

Sleepy Jay (37:39.16)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (37:42.258)
And then, you know, in a few years, as we saw, it went from 40 to 400. There's no way he's not good. Right? I think, I think we like to think, well, the Lord was just working. The Lord could use me that way if he wanted. Like, yeah, he could, he could. And he has in the past. But I think that there was, I think the Lord honored Spurgeon's very evangelistic heart.

Sleepy Jay (38:02.988)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (38:11.715)
And I think the Spurgeon was good.

Sleepy Jay (38:14.348)
All right, I got a question for you, which hopefully I'm not jumping the gun. So he, he gets started off in ministry. He's got this incredible style that, that, that pierces to the heart and that speaks to speaks to anybody. can be no education, lots of education and still really like pull from this guy. But I'm also seeing in my, in my cursory glance at Wikipedia, which I feel fine using as a guideline because I did not prep this, this one.

Kim Jung Un (38:41.209)
No, it's helping you follow along.

Sleepy Jay (38:44.352)
It says that pretty much as soon as he got any notoriety, he started getting criticized. And it says that the criticism is pretty much recurring throughout his life. And I did know that was the case, but where is this criticism coming from? What are people mad at?

Kim Jung Un (38:55.226)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (38:59.153)
Dude, I was going to use this as the clothes, but we'll figure out something else for the clothes. So are you familiar with this? It's like 18, 19 church or something like that in Georgia. I can't remember the exact number of combos. But this guy, I got actually convicted because I saw the video clips and he dresses really casual.

Sleepy Jay (39:05.025)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (39:23.985)
And Andy's kind of more emotive in his preaching. But this pastor, this church is blowing up. I saw like AP, like Associated Press did a piece on him. People line up at like 6 AM to make sure they can get inside. this is happening literally this morning in Atlanta. And I thought.

Sleepy Jay (39:39.822)
This is happening currently.

Sleepy Jay (39:44.172)
Wow. Okay, okay.

Kim Jung Un (39:48.708)
When I first saw the clips, I dismissed it because I said, whatever. He's dressing like a clown. He's getting all like, you know, he gets a little yelly. Not like too bad, not like too bad, but he's he's like pet. Yeah, he's animated. And I haven't looked up this shirt yet. So if I'm wrong and it turns out their hair takes whatever. But the point is, I started criticizing him.

Sleepy Jay (40:01.474)
Yeah, very animated.

Kim Jung Un (40:17.263)
And then I started, I heard his story in the sky, this pastor on TikTok, he was sharing about how he wanted to go plant a church where the lost were and the Lord sort of some circumstance stuck him in Atlanta and he was like mad. He was like, this is the Bible belt. Like everyone in the city knows who Atlanta is. And then.

And this is where I realized, like, maybe this guy's the real deal. He started seeing, like, brokenness and sin, and he calls it sin. And he started seeing, like, what was going on in the city and just in the Bible Belt, where supposedly everybody's saved, right? And he was like, no, this is my assignment. And so, and like, dude, he preaches boldly.

Sleepy Jay (41:00.686)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (41:04.825)
like really boldly about against stuff that like culturally gets him a lot of flack. And so to full circle answer your question, who are his critics? John, I think you and I might have been.

Sleepy Jay (41:20.312)
Hmm, okay, okay.

Kim Jung Un (41:21.861)
Potentially. Potentially.

Sleepy Jay (41:24.514)
because his style is very relatable, but you mentioned earlier that he's kind of the prototype of what evangelical Baptist preaching looks like. So it was new.

Kim Jung Un (41:35.15)
Absolutely. You and I being educated, you have a master's degree. I, Lord willing, graduate next year with mine. You and I being educated and blah, blah, blah, blah. Think about what my dad accused me of or accuses us of. It's not even an accusation if it's true, right?

Sleepy Jay (41:49.494)
Right.

Kim Jung Un (41:55.11)
We are the people that would look at somebody like Spurgeon and go, itching ears, am I right? I hope to God not. I hope that we would have the discernment if we were in London at the time. But his criticism came from people that were like, that's not how you preach. That's not how you do church. You just got a bunch of idiots in the pews. And Spurgeon's like, these are my people. And he preached.

Sleepy Jay (42:02.926)
Okay,

Sleepy Jay (42:19.01)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (42:24.995)
like so passionately and kept them in mind. So now I am actually running out of time. I gotta move. I gotta move. So there's a couple, there's like three things of stress, major stressors in Spurgeon's life. Four, you count, I'm not even gonna get to Susanna. That's fine. Susanna, his lovely wife had medical issues.

Sleepy Jay (42:35.074)
You're good, you're good, you're good, okay.

Sleepy Jay (42:49.646)
Mmm.

Kim Jung Un (42:50.885)
that one of the pieces I read referred to her as an invalid at certain points. she, yes, but she's a powerhouse woman, as I already said, she made, she wrote the biography or put together the autobiography. And she also had a very famous thing called the book club where one time Spurgeon got fresh from the printer. He got his copy of lectures to my students and Susanna flipped through it and said, I wish I could put this in the hands of every pastor in England.

Sleepy Jay (42:56.425)
gosh, that's awful.

Kim Jung Un (43:20.249)
And he said, well, do it. And he's like, I'll be the first to donate. And he did. And then she went and raised fines. And they started a book club. They gave out over 200,000 books before she died and a ton of other stuff. OK, there you go. That was the Susanna Spurgeon episode in five seconds. But there was three stressors, not including four if you want to count Susanna's medical issues, but three main things for him. Three main things for him. He had a.

Sleepy Jay (43:20.622)
Mm.

Sleepy Jay (43:31.352)
That's so cool. I love that. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (43:43.662)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (43:49.454)
He had immense criticism, levied at him all the time. And sometimes he was able to write it off and laugh. And other times it really, really hit hard. The second thing is the Surrey Gardens Music Hall. That's where I got the Surrey Gardens Music Hall was the second place that Metropolitan moved into. So at one point when he's preaching, there's like,

Sleepy Jay (44:01.218)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (44:18.417)
Was it 10,000 people?

I think it was 10,000 people. Never let me go off memory for simple things ever again. Because I'm like going over, I'm like preparing and I'm like, I'll remember that. I'll remember that. And then when the moment comes, I don't. Okay. It was like 10,000 people. Somebody shouts fire, fire. While Spurgeon's preaching and there's a mass tramp, like trampling and like six or seven people die.

Sleepy Jay (44:29.742)
gonna remind you.

Sleepy Jay (44:39.224)
Mmm.

Sleepy Jay (44:46.542)
Oh gosh. Was it, but there was no fire, right? So someone was just trying to incite panic basically. Oh, that sucks, dude.

Kim Jung Un (44:48.197)
That wreck, there was no fire.

Kim Jung Un (44:54.893)
Exactly. And they did. like seven people died while Spurgeon was trying to calm everybody down. And that wrecked him. That gave him what one of my friends at school did some research on it. And she said, she's like, I'm pretty sure he had PTSD from that. It was that traumatizing.

Sleepy Jay (45:00.265)
my gosh.

Sleepy Jay (45:15.65)
Yeah.

Well, mean, like you're on a state, I mean, like you're witnessing like the carnage and chaos happening. And I'm sure there's a part of him. Yeah. And there's a part of him. It's like this weird survivor's guilt where it's like, all of these people are here because of me and I didn't yell fire. But if I wasn't here, I wouldn't have gathered these hundreds of people who, you know, trampled each other.

Kim Jung Un (45:24.763)
helpless.

Kim Jung Un (45:42.618)
So this is what Morden says, although Spurgeon recovered, his life remained marked by this disaster. He confessed that he did not think he could have continued his ministry had he been involved in a second similar incident. Like it was that bad. So he did recover though.

Sleepy Jay (45:51.758)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (45:59.31)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (46:06.345)
They would move on to do the, get the Metropolitan Tabernacle built, which I think the Nazis destroyed. There was a fire in 1898. See, why can't I remember that date? But I don't, I'm so annoyed at myself listeners.

Sleepy Jay (46:21.23)
It's okay, hey, it's okay, that's a great little anecdote. I love that I know that now, too.

Kim Jung Un (46:24.611)
Yeah, there was a fire in 1898 and then the Nazis bombed it. So thanks, Nazis. So I don't think it's still standing today. If it is, it's not what it was, right? So Metropolitan Tabernacle goes up. And that is kind of when Spurgeon hits his stride. And that's when he begins the decades-long ministry process. Now, check the time, doing great.

Sleepy Jay (46:37.326)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (46:53.87)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (46:53.981)
Spurgeon had a very, very Baptist church polity, a very, Baptist church ecclesiology. So he was elder-led, congregational, baptism by, like, upon profession of faith, and you had regenerate church membership.

Sleepy Jay (47:17.026)
Okay.

Kim Jung Un (47:18.403)
And that was it. And so like, you're wondering, well, how does this massive mega church keep track of church memberships? The elders would meet with people on Wednesday nights and interview them.

Sleepy Jay (47:31.316)
wow. Like for membership or just like, wow, okay, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (47:32.082)
And I think, yes, yes, for membership. And I think they would have business meetings where everyone's required to give a testimony or something like that. But they took the regeneration part very, very, seriously. So that was like you had to be, if you're listening and you're not sure what regenerate means, essentially like born again.

Sleepy Jay (47:49.134)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (47:58.842)
So you had to be a real Christian to be a church member, which was not. That sounds, think, for your average Western Protestant, that sounds like, well, duh, of course you do. But no, you got to remember, like, for 1,500 years-ish, the Catholic Church was baptizing everybody.

Sleepy Jay (48:03.15)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (48:27.533)
in the country into the church.

Sleepy Jay (48:30.114)
Well, and this was England's too. like England had always been a very nominal Christian place, even under the rule of the Protestants. So yeah, it was, everyone was going to say they were a Christian, but then they could be a Christian and, you know, be out, you know, sleeping with, with prostitutes and getting mega drunk every night and still talking about, you know, going to church on Sunday.

Kim Jung Un (48:47.633)
Right. Right.

which was the city that he was in originally that experienced revival. So, so yes, so that was kind of Spurgeon's ecclesiology elder led. I will say this as a short little anecdote. I would bet a lot of money that even though they were elder led and everyone was an equal elder, that there was not a chance that his elders told him no.

Sleepy Jay (48:59.342)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (49:25.8)
I have a little,

Sleepy Jay (49:26.294)
I don't know about that. I don't know. Because wasn't, and this is, I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but wasn't one of the stressors that he did not get along well with his, like with the other Baptists? Like, wasn't there like some denominational?

Kim Jung Un (49:42.927)
You're getting ahead of the story, my friend.

Sleepy Jay (49:45.706)
I am. Okay, alright, that's why I asked. See, I'm laying you up right now. Alright.

Kim Jung Un (49:48.048)
That's right. That's good. That's good. Yeah, I don't think they would have told him no. His elders. I think Charles Spurgeon, if I had enough time, I could make an argument that Charles Spurgeon operated more as a bishop. I'm OK with the office of bishop, so that doesn't like super bother me. But like about this, keep landing on bishops accidentally. They can't escape it. What is the?

Sleepy Jay (49:55.544)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (50:18.031)
John Simon, answer me this. What is a multi-site senior pastor church operating as? A bishop. Thank you. Point made. Baptists just keep coming back to bishop. And it's fine, guys. I think there's this argument to be made that bishops were biblical. It's OK. This is not a hill worth dying on for anybody. But I would say Spurgeon probably operated closer to a bishop. He's a good bishop. He's a good bishop. Yeah. I have this lovely quote from Susanna Spurgeon.

Sleepy Jay (50:20.098)
Sleepy Jay (50:24.171)
a bishop.

Sleepy Jay (50:40.158)
Mm, okay, that's reasonable. Reasonable, yeah, yeah, hopefully.

Kim Jung Un (50:47.781)
relating to Charles with all the criticism levied at him. No defense, this is after he died, no defense of my beloved is needed now. God has taken him to himself and there the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary will be at rest. dude.

Sleepy Jay (51:03.438)
Geez, there's a lot, there's a lot of subtext in that line. I get it, I get it. No, that's good, that's really good.

Kim Jung Un (51:08.849)
You see why I wanted to do a whole episode on her. She's a great, she's a great lady. So now to get into the downgrade controversy. In case we don't get to it, I'm just going to go ahead and jump ahead and tell you guys. Where's my notes on this? So Spurgeon dies in 1892. Okay. He does have health issues. We've talked about before.

Sleepy Jay (51:20.278)
Okay, okay.

Sleepy Jay (51:36.662)
Not, not an old man.

Kim Jung Un (51:38.48)
Not super old. And that's the downgrade controversy is probably what killed him alongside his gout and all these other issues that he had plaguing him. He died at 57 in France. Yeah, dude. Gout of my mind featuring Taylor Treadway and Charles Spurgeon. The gout house. my gosh. Yes.

Sleepy Jay (51:40.171)
Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (51:52.842)
dude, he was a gout man? look at that, alright. Filling up the gout house. You're in good company my brother.

Kim Jung Un (52:06.641)
So suffered Spurgeon, so will I. So Spurgeon dies at 57, pretty young. And then Susanna outlives him by 10 years. It's in that decade that Spurgeon, between Spurgeon's death and Susanna's death that she gets out the autobiographies. Which is like, dang, man, for a woman that had serious health problems, that's pretty cool.

Sleepy Jay (52:14.371)
Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (52:34.124)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (52:36.239)
But let's get into the downgrade controversy. Charles Spurgeon coins the term downgrade in his Sword and Trowel magazine. So not only is Spurgeon writing devotionals all the time, he put out many devotionals, he's writing tons of books, all his sermons are being published, he's writing a monthly magazine called The Sword and the Trowel. Such a catchy title, isn't it?

Sleepy Jay (53:01.55)
Okay, great title.

Kim Jung Un (53:06.103)
He says that everyone else in the Baptist Union, if you think about the SBC in America, the Baptist Union is the equivalent to that in England. Partnered together for missions, but every church is autonomous. Well, a lot of churches in the Baptist Union, Spurgeon says that modern. They start following the modernist movement, which is kind of the theological like

Sleepy Jay (53:37.038)
You're going woke a little bit, huh? Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (53:38.051)
Yeah, it's the great grandchildren of the Germans. And now the modern hyper progressive church is the great grandchildren of that.

Sleepy Jay (53:42.83)
Oh, I see.

Sleepy Jay (53:50.862)
So they're starting to play a little fast and loose with the scriptures,

Kim Jung Un (53:54.096)
Yeah, essentially they were, know, scripture wasn't authoritative, maybe universalism. Just kind of adapt. Just think about like kind of general doctrines of progressive Christianity. And that's what they're going with. And Spurgeon would write against it. And basically weak leadership and I guess you could say sin kind of led the Baptist Union to fall apart. And that

alongside so you know he had the fire he had the criticism i guess you could say his physical sufferings was also up there physical suffering between him and suzy and then you top that off with like this denomination that he's loved and poured his whole life into just collapsing before his eyes it was a lot it was a lot so he said this this is a good spurging quote

Sleepy Jay (54:31.244)
I mean definitely, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (54:52.929)
Let them be liberal with what is their own, but for a steward to boast of being liberal with his master's good is quite another.

Sleepy Jay (55:01.636)
that's good. That's really good. Yeah, that's a, a, that's see, this is what kills me about Spurgeon, dude. He, his, his wisdom is so timely. Like that trans, that transpires so well to what we're in today. yeah, I love that.

Kim Jung Un (55:03.449)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (55:18.115)
Yeah, and it does. And that's what I was kind of envisioning us landing, talking about. So I'll hit you guys with another quote. This was from his devotional book. This is Faith's checkbook. Isn't everything he names just gold? So this is Faith's checkbook. And this was the reading for April 1st in Faith's checkbook. And this was a quote from it. Let the reader.

Sleepy Jay (55:24.814)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (55:36.622)
That's That's really good.

Kim Jung Un (55:47.51)
Never for a moment attempt to help himself out of a difficulty by a falsehood or a questionable act, but let him keep in the middle of the high road of truth and integrity and he will be following the best course possible. So Spurgeon Spurgeon responded with integrity very consistently. I'm not.

Sleepy Jay (56:02.734)
Hmm, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (56:14.765)
aware. I'm not an expert in Spurgeon. I have not found anything and I've been reading him for a couple months now. I've been on anything that indicates that he had any sort of moral failing or anything. You know how like sometimes we're like, Mark Driscoll is probably a Christian, but you know, there's some, you know what saying? Like he says, right things.

Sleepy Jay (56:36.674)
Yeah. There's a few, few red flags. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Kim Jung Un (56:40.497)
Yeah, yeah, a few red flags. That's such a good way. Yeah, like Mark Driscoll will be in heaven sanctified, right? Like Spurgeon doesn't have any of that. And he had plenty of opportunity to, plenty of opportunity to. Now I will say this, he definitely...

Sleepy Jay (56:47.083)
Right, right.

Sleepy Jay (56:51.15)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (57:03.505)
He would be a little pokey at the elite during sermons sometimes. And I don't know how healthy that was. It definitely came across as like a us versus them sometimes. But I don't know how necessary it is. like, can you blame him? Because the elite are the ones that are like all going liberal with their enlightened intelligence and you know.

Sleepy Jay (57:29.56)
Well, you gotta think, if it's the media like newspapers that are constantly criticizing him, well that's the elites too, because they're the ones who own all the media. yeah, it would make sense that he considers the elites as the ones who are kind of standing against him and against the purpose of the kingdom.

Kim Jung Un (57:35.983)
yeah, they ripped him apart, Yes. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (57:52.114)
Yes, exactly. So he kind of went hard on them. But he went hard on sin in general. I found a random sermon from him. It was a vile weed and a fair flower, just randomly from the Metropolitan Tavern Aquapulpit, volume 24. Gosh, 24. And it goes, it keeps going. And in the sermon,

Sleepy Jay (58:10.286)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (58:17.009)
He's kind of preaching against, it's on Hebrews 13, five and six, and he's preaching on covetousness and contentment. And he goes pretty hard against covetousness and goes like pretty into, this is not becoming of a believer. This is a very serious sin. But then here's where I just love the man, dude. He says,

Sleepy Jay (58:42.862)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (58:48.721)
Where did I put that note? Never let me host again. Here's what it is. So many a man lies awake at night desiring to increase his income, not because he is ambitious to be rich, but because he is haunted with the fear of being poor. And he even will say that

Sleepy Jay (58:53.358)
It's okay.

Sleepy Jay (59:08.974)
Mmm.

Kim Jung Un (59:12.665)
this appearance of the vice is the most excusable. So even as he is like going hard against this, he still has this kindness knowing who's in his congregation. And he knows that it's the working man who is.

possibly lying awake at night stressed. And he's not being covetous because he wants to have more than he should. He's being covetous because he's scared that he doesn't have enough to pay for his family. And so Spurgeon, even in that, is kind. So I do love, I've really, the last few months of studying him more, I've really kind of sort of fallen in love with his character. I think he's a great example.

Sleepy Jay (59:44.248)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (59:59.652)
I will poke fun at him this one time. This is a quote from him, and I want you to know, I want you to tell me if this makes any sense at all to you. The sugar of words is sickening if it not be attended with the honey of deeds.

Sleepy Jay (01:00:11.01)
Okay.

Sleepy Jay (01:00:19.822)
Uhhhh

If it was like the sugar of like, like sugar and cream, it was talking about coffee or something like that. But yeah, sugar and it's a little, I'm going to say a translator messed that one up for him. I'm going to say that. Yeah. I think the editors really just, did them a disservice there. Something, something's off. Exactly.

Kim Jung Un (01:00:27.525)
Yeah, or salt, or...

Kim Jung Un (01:00:35.031)
I highly he preached in English my guy

Kim Jung Un (01:00:41.211)
Yeah, maybe it went to Taiwanese and then back to English. Dude, I think it's so funny though, but you get the point. That's what's even funnier. Like even when Spurgeon just says something nonsensical, it still makes a lot of sense. So that's kind of Spurgeon, my friends, at a very, very quick glance. I do think though, John, it's worth talking about for a little bit.

we have some time that the modern parallel. So John MacArthur actually has.

If you go on YouTube and you type in the downgrade controversy, there's hardly nothing except there's a random clip from like some old documentary that John MacArthur's on and it's like 10 minutes and he gives you about two minutes of history of the downgrade controversy and then proceeds to rant for eight minutes about how churches today just are all emotional and need to get back to preaching the word. Like, thanks, John. Back to you.

Sleepy Jay (01:01:42.958)
He's he's definitely like I This is what I don't know like Charles Spurgeon I mean, I really think the most impactful thing you said Taylor was that he really is this prototype because he is a Bastion of truth. He's an everyman he Opposes the establishment. He opposes the liberal is the liberalization of

Kim Jung Un (01:02:04.987)
Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (01:02:11.662)
where mainstream Christianity is going. He's a Westerner, but he also like, I mean, he fought the right battles for a dude from the 19th century. Like he did not like the ritzy pompous elites.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:22.921)
he couldn't come to America because of the anti-slavery stuff.

Sleepy Jay (01:02:29.334)
Yeah, like he's written quite a bit about how much he I think that that line is like I would much rather dine I would just as soon dine with a murderer than I would with a man stealer.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:40.569)
Yeah, yeah. So so the South especially he he was afraid of coming to America and being lynched probably rightfully so they hated him. Funny enough, though, when he started preaching hard against the liberals, more American Baptists were like, well, I think he's all.

Sleepy Jay (01:02:47.39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (01:02:55.694)
That's awesome. That's amazing. He's also got this like flair of style where he, again, he has this very C.S. Lewis kind of wit to him. He smoked cigars. He drank whiskey. He was probably generally not a very healthy person, but I think that, yeah, what is it? Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:03:16.719)
You know, there's a story about D- Save where you're at. Save where you're at in your thoughts. So there's a story. DL Moody came to visit him and he opened the door and he had a cigar. And DL Moody says, my goodness, I didn't think such an esteemed preacher would smoke cigars. And Spurgeon says, well, my goodness, I didn't think an esteemed preacher would be so fat.

Sleepy Jay (01:03:29.677)
Mm-hmm.

Sleepy Jay (01:03:45.902)
Amazing. Dude, my favorite Spurgeon quote that has to do with cigars is when someone criticized him for smoking and he said, you know, just so you know, and I'm paraphrasing because I'm going to butcher it. He's like, just so you know, I would only, I only believe in smoking what is absolutely efficacious for the glory of God. For example, I would never smoke two cigars at once. Like.

Kim Jung Un (01:04:12.369)
you

Sleepy Jay (01:04:12.63)
And he has a line about like the smoke of a cigar ascending and being pleasing to the nostrils of the Lord and stuff like that. Of course, stuff that's like irreparably shaped the cringiness of some of the reformed circles that you and I were a part of for a good while too. I will say when I was, I'm so glad I was able to find this, when I was probably like 21, so still in college, maybe 20 even, I downloaded

Kim Jung Un (01:04:25.969)
It's fine, man.

Sleepy Jay (01:04:42.38)
Like it was a dollar on Amazon and it was a selected works of Charles Spurgeon ebook, probably like 20 of his books. And I'm just like scrolling through the quotes that I've highlighted. And it's just like, like, I'm just going to show Taylor, not that it's going to matter for the, for the listener, but it's just, it's so many. It's so many, but like, again, just his, his way with words is so incredible. he he's

Kim Jung Un (01:05:00.255)
that's a lot. Yeah. Wow.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:09.649)
didn't know that you read him when you were younger. That's great. That's probably probably very formative for you. I I'm going to level with you guys and I'm sure all of you are shocked seeing as I'm like Baptist boy 9000. I really didn't have much engagement with him until just a few months ago.

Sleepy Jay (01:05:12.064)
I did. I read them a lot. I read them a lot.

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (01:05:29.396)
Mm-hmm. Well, it's like his influence can be felt like passively too. Like even if you weren't affected by him, your pastors and your professors and, you know, the dean of your seminary, all of them received that influence.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:44.978)
So here's what I find very, very interesting. And I think it could be a good academic project for somebody, not for me. I want to know if Spurgeon really was truly the prototype for what was to come in.

Sleepy Jay (01:05:53.463)
You

Sleepy Jay (01:06:03.695)
sure, sure sure.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:05.073)
in the way that preaching and ministry would evolve. Because if you look at how he preached, if you look at his theology, the way he did things, mean, dude, you could plop Spurgeon into 2025 and he would excel. He would thrive. He would be John Piper, maybe even more influential than John Piper.

And I don't know if that can be said about very many people from the past.

Sleepy Jay (01:06:40.098)
Yeah, yeah, I think there was like a level of both. mean, like, cause the great awakenings happened in the States, but I don't know. There was almost like, I would love to hear from someone who's really deep, not just in dispersion, but into the religious climate in England around that time.

Because I feel like Spurgeon really did kind of kickstart something. And I'd love to see how his popularity eventually came to the States considering he himself never came to the States. So yeah, I don't know.

Kim Jung Un (01:07:17.455)
Yeah, no, this is, these are all very interesting things. And honestly, all of these little questions are things that we could have explored in a whole Spurgeon series, John. We're not gonna, we talked about this.

Sleepy Jay (01:07:26.606)
Well, we're not gonna do that and we talked about it. I'm gonna read a quote though. I'm gonna read a quote because I could read quotes. gosh, I could literally. Also lectures to my students. I had to read for my ordination exam and I tore up that freaking book, dude. I couldn't find it because I just moved and all of my books are scattered throughout the ether. But I adore that book. I would recommend it to anybody. Honestly.

I think if you've never gotten into Spurgeon, I would highly recommend it. One, because it's written for Christians who are also, of course, in the ministry. So it's meant to be pretty accessible for people who may not have a ton of that background knowledge, but it's also just really rich. And you can read just a few page sermon from him. Also, he's got a billion sermons online. Anyways, I'm going to read this because I love it.

I am not affected by the death of Jesus as I ought to be. Neither am I moved by the ruin of my fellow men, the wickedness of the times, the chastisement of my Heavenly Father, and my own failures as I should be. that my heart would melt at the recital of my Savior's sufferings and death. Would to God I were rid of this nether millstone within me, this hateful body of death. Blessed be the name of the Lord, the disease is not incurable.

The Savior's precious blood is the universal solvent and me, even me, it will eventually soften till my heart melts as wax before the fire. So good. So good. This guy's a freaking poet, man.

Kim Jung Un (01:09:03.889)
It is so good, man. He... That's what I'm saying, man. You could plop him into 2025 right now, and I think he would blow up again.

Sleepy Jay (01:09:15.285)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:09:16.707)
I have a quote from lectures to my students where he's teaching them about preaching. And he says, Preach to one point, concentrating all your energies upon the target aimed at. There must be no writing of hobbies, no introductions of elegancies of speech, no suspicion of personal display or yawn will fail. Sinners are quick-witted people and soon detect even the smallest effort to glorify self. Forgo every

for the sake of those you long to save.

Sleepy Jay (01:09:49.742)
Mm, I love that. what he also had such a passionate missionary, like evangelistic heart, which I think, again, like, I think he checks so many of the boxes for what really affected the people who molded us. Like he was theological, he was Bible first, he was passionate about the church, and he was passionate about evangelism.

Kim Jung Un (01:10:16.857)
Right. think here's the thing. I just came to this conclusion as we've been talking.

I don't know if Charles Spurgeon did anything revolutionary. I think he just did every, he didn't, was not the first person to use gospel tracks. He's not the first person to preach, you know, in a gospel centered way. He's not the first person to do any, the writings, the, the magazine publications. I just think he did everything very faithfully and he did it very well.

Sleepy Jay (01:10:46.37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:10:49.251)
And I think that combination of things sort of like blew him up into what he was. But as we sit around and talk about him, like borderline in awe, right? We got to remember at his time, he was trashed brutally by the papers. I mean, they thought he was an idiot.

Because he wasn't concerned with writing like theological treatises or anything like that. He was just like a gospel centered preacher. Who cared about equipping his people to go to just get up and go to work tomorrow equipped.

Sleepy Jay (01:11:22.296)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sleepy Jay (01:11:32.994)
Yeah, I would also recommend Morning and Evening if you guys haven't picked that up before. That's a great, probably one of the Mount Rushmore devotionals out there, but that's a wonderful devotional. Also, I haven't read this, but I've been encouraged to read it and I have good friends who love it. And it's called Spurgeon Sorrows. And I think it is a book that is semi-biographical, but it's

Kim Jung Un (01:11:39.163)
Hmm.

Sleepy Jay (01:12:02.582)
talks through Charles Spurgeon's journey through depression and just the discouragement and difficulty of his life and the gout and and apparently it's it's really phenomenal. I've had I've had a copy for forever. I have not read it but I've had really good friends tell me that it's wonderful. Okay I'll freaking read it. I'll read it. I will. But no I have not read it.

Kim Jung Un (01:12:10.042)
and the gout.

Kim Jung Un (01:12:21.199)
read it. I own. No, I said read it. I own it.

Yeah, that's fine, dude. There's so much out there in the world to read and not enough time. What if we just pulled a Greg, Greg and Basil and moved to the middle of nowhere and just read for years? I know what did Gregory one of the Greggs did?

Sleepy Jay (01:12:31.347)
Aw man, alright.

Sleepy Jay (01:12:36.814)
too much.

Sleepy Jay (01:12:47.288)
We have wives, man.

Sleepy Jay (01:12:53.038)
Oh, that's a good, I don't know if they were, was one of them married? It might be possible, yeah. Well.

Kim Jung Un (01:12:56.161)
I think one of them was married. But that also might not have been a good move. All right.

Sleepy Jay (01:13:02.53)
You talk to Brandy, I'll talk to Annie. Actually no, I'll talk to Brandy, you talk to Annie. Deal, alright. Thank you guys so much for listening, we appreciate you. Taylor, good stuff. Little Charles version, love it. Yeah. Yeah, thanks a bunch you guys, talk to you later.

Kim Jung Un (01:13:06.459)
deal.

Kim Jung Un (01:13:14.597)
Lil Charlie Spurge, see you guys next week.