Profiting from Pink

I am reading through A. W. Pink’s little book Profiting from the Word (Banner, 1970) with one of our young men from JPBC this summer. The interns will also read it a little later in the summer. You can read the book online here.

Here’s a sample of Pink’s convicting style as he describes how the reading of Scripture ought to bring us to a clearer recognition of God’s claims:

Salvation means being reconciled to God; and that involves and includes sin’s dominion over us being broken, enmity within us being slain, the heart being won to God. This is what true conversion is; it is a tearing away of every idol, a renouncing of the empty vanities of a cheating world, and taking God for our portion, our ruler, our all in all. (p. 23).

A few year’s back I read Iain Murray’s revised biography of Pink (1886-1952). He belonged to new-age type "theosophical society" as a young man and then was wondrously converted to Christ. His public ministry was spasmodic taking him to the US, Australia, and back to the UK. He lived the last years of his life as a virtual recluse in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. His enduring legacy comes from his writing. In 1921 he began a monthly magazine titled Studies in the Scriptures whose readership never rose above a thousand. Pink lived in a time when few shared his doctrinal convictions. He did not live to see the revival of Calvinism. It was only after his death that his writings from the magazine began to be collected in book form, published, and widely read.

Pink should be read with discernment. One of the nice features of Murray’s biography is an appendix that offers a bibliography and assessment of his major writings (pp. 337-42). Sadly, Pink did not share fellowship in a local church in the final years of his life. His life is a reminder, however, that sometimes the Lord’s most profitable servants labor in obscurity and, like Abraham, never live to see the fulfillment of God’s promises in this life.

JTR