About the Book
"Like a Mighty Wind" is a gripping account of the revival that swept through Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s, transforming communities and bringing thousands of people to faith. The book details the miraculous events and powerful encounters experienced by author Mel Tari and his fellow believers, as they witnessed the supernatural power of God at work in their midst. Through testimonies of healing, deliverance, and divine intervention, "Like a Mighty Wind" shares a powerful message of God's love and the impact of living a life of faith and obedience.
Andrew Fuller
Fuller was born in Soham, Cambridgeshire, England, where in 1775 he was ordained pastor of the Baptist church. Originally schooled in the hyper-Calvinist theology then prevalent in parts of the Particular Baptist denomination, he became convinced in 1775 that the hyper-Calvinist position was not scriptural. In 1785 he published The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which did much to prepare his denomination for accepting this missionary obligation. As pastor in Kettering, Northamptonshire, from 1783, Fuller became firm friends with John Sutcliff of Olney, John Ryland of Northampton, and later the young William Carey. The strengthening missionary vision of this group bore fruit on October 2, 1792, when the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen (later known as the Baptist Missionary Society) was formed in the home of one of Fuller’s deacons in Kettering. Fuller was appointed secretary. Until his death he combined the demands of a busy pastorate with managing the affairs of the BMS. He traveled extensively to raise funds for the society, especially in Scotland, which he visited five times.
Brian Stanley, “Fuller, Andrew,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 230-231.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
Pastor, apologist, and promoter of missions
Though not university trained, Andrew Fuller was recognized by his contemporaries as the preeminent Baptist theologian of their day and was awarded honorary doctor of divinity degrees by both Princeton (1798) and Yale (1805). Fuller’s published works, preaching ministry and churchmanship was, perhaps, the primary mediating agency between the transatlantic evangelical revival and the English Particular (or “Calvinist”) Baptists who had distanced themselves from what was largely at the start an Anglican renewal movement. Fuller was also well known as a co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society (or, the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen [est. 1792]), on whose behalf he itinerated regularly in the British Isles, lobbied the East India Company, and wrote numerous letters and magazine articles during his twenty-two year tenure as its first general secretary. He was an opponent of the British slave trade and, though a dissenting non-Anglican, an acquaintance of William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham sect, who were key allies in Parliament. He was a pastors’ pastor who exerted no small influence for evangelical doctrine and a missionary vision through the many ordination sermons he preached. From 1782 until his death in 1815 he served as pastor of the Kettering Baptist Church and was frequent chairman of the Northamptonshire Association, a consortium which included the likes of William Carey, Samuel Pearce, John Sutcliffe, and John Ryland, Jr.
Fuller was born in 1754 at Wicken, Cambridgeshire, to non-conformist parents who worked a dairy farm. In 1775, six years after his own conversion experience, he was inducted as pastor of the forty-seven member church in Soham, where he had received his baptism and was a member. In 1776 he married his first wife, Sarah Gardiner, with whom he had eleven children, only three surviving beyond early childhood. Sarah would die in 1792, less than two months before the founding of the British Missionary Society (BMS). During this seven year pastorate, Fuller immersed himself in the literary culture of Anglo-American evangelical Calvinism. He cultivated his theological perspective and ministry philosophy by ardently studying the Scriptures alongside the works of the Reformers, seventeenth-century Puritans (especially John Owen), early English Baptists like John Bunyan and John Gill, as well as the writings of American Congregationalist philosopher-theologian and pastor, Jonathan Edwards. Fuller also acknowledged in his most popular book, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1781), the influence of the lives of John Eliot and David Brainerd, both late missionaries to the native Americans. The Gospel Worthy was Fuller’s remonstration against the hyper-Calvinism that negated the propriety of evangelistic appeals. By the 1790s, evangelical (or “strict”) Calvinism was known in England as “Fullerism” (vs. “High” or hyper-Calvinism). The Gospel its Own Witness (1800) was Fuller’s refutation of Deism. Fuller gained a reputation by these two books, especially, for publically, clearly and systematically opposing in print whatever widely held doctrines he believed were undermining the church and its mission.
In the Northamptonshire Assocation Fuller was a member of a thriving intellectual community most influenced by Edwards. In 1784 John Sutcliff initiated a “concerts of prayer” movement similar to the program suggested by Edwards in An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer (1748). Baptist congregations prayed monthly for the spread of the gospel and the kingdom of Christ to the ends of the earth through all denominations. In 1791, Sutcliff, Fuller and Samuel Pearce each preached at significant events (Sutcliff and Fuller at the association meeting of pastors, Pearce at William Carey’s ordination) on the duty of the church to evangelize the whole inhabitable globe. Fuller based his appeal on the eternal truth of the gospel, the eternal relevance of the gospel, the eternal power of the gospel, and the circumstances of the age that made missionary endeavors possible and obligatory.(1) Carey’s much touted association sermon from Isaiah 54:2-3 in May of 1792 did not arise in a vacuum. The influence was mutual between Carey and Fuller, both being influenced by Robert Hall, Sr. and Samuel Pearce (who had been inspired by the Methodist Thomas Coke in Birmingham).
On October 2, 1792, the BMS was formed with Fuller its first secretary and the assumption that its support would come largely from the churches of the Northamptonshire Association. When the society sent Carey and John Thomas to India the following year, Fuller preached their commissioning service from John 20:21 (“As the Father has sent me, even so I [Christ] am sending you.”). Fuller believed the mission’s raison d’être was the uniqueness of Christ and Christian responsibility to proclaim him. Bible translation and evangelism should take priority. Hindus were not desiring or seeking the Christian Scriptures. But to ignore and neglect anyone in an unconverted state is inconsistent with the love of God and man. In addition, God had promised the messiah the inheritance of the nations (An Apology for the Late Christian Missions to India, 1808). The church is obligated to employ means and make an effort as the means God uses to fulfill that promise to Christ. Obstacles are merely a test to sincerity of faith.
Fuller spent up to ten hours per day in correspondence and reporting for the BMS. He contributed articles to Evangelical Magazine, Missionary Magazine, Quarterly Magazine, Protestant Dissenters’ Magazine, Biblical Magazine, and Theological Miscellany. He sought financial support via letters and by an average of three months of vigorous itineration each year among various evangelical churches in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England. John Ryland, Jr. wrote of Fuller’s style, that he, “…always disliked violent pressing for contributions, and attempting to outvie other societies: he chose rather to tell a plain, unvarnished tale; and he generally told it with good effect.”(2) Through written correspondence he “pastored” the missionaries in the field while maintaining a decentralized approach to mission administration. He believed the missionaries were more capable of governing themselves and that the time required for correspondence made central control impractical anyway.
The security of the unlicensed Baptist missionary society’s place in the British Empire was frequently tenuous up to 1813. Fuller occasionally had to petition Parliament or the Board of Control for continued tolerance of the BMS. Muslim irritation at the Christian missionary presence and the conversion of some Indians from Islam had been blamed for the Vellore Mutiny of 1806. Thomas Twining had openly claimed efforts at conversion were contradictory to “the mild and tolerant spirit of Christianity.” Fuller responded to Twining and other English defenders of Hinduism with his three-part Apology for the Late Christian Missions to India (1808) in which he argued for a toleration of religion that allows all religious views as well as efforts to persuade through reasonable means. He attributed several social ills, like ritual infanticide and sati, to Hinduism, and commended the missionaries for trying to put an end to such practices. Fuller was also a critic of the “detestable traffic” of the African slave trade, asserting it made England deserving of ruin at the hands of the French (from whose invasion he urged prayer that God would mercifully protect England). The prosperity of the empire should not come at the expense of other human beings. Patriotism must “harmonize” with “good will toward [other] men.”(3) On the other hand, Fuller often counseled BMS missionaries not to become “entangled” in political concerns which were “only affairs of this life” and endangered colonial toleration of the mission.(4) Because Jesus accomplished “moral revolution” in the heart, loyalty to the British government, rather than republicanism, should be encouraged as far as it is compatible with Christian commitments.(5)
Fuller, the pastor of families in England and abroad, counseled missionary families to nurture a deep spirituality for the sake of attaining the character commensurate with the nature of the gospel and their mission. Fuller knew the vicissitudes of even the Christian heart, and the “spiritual advantage” of engaging in mission. Reflecting in his diary on July 18, 1794, he wrote:
Within the last year or two, we have formed a missionary society; and have been enabled to send out two of our brethren to the East Indies. My heart has been greatly interested in this work. Surely I never felt more genuine love to God and to his cause in my life. I bless God that his work has been a means of reviving my soul. If nothing comes of it, I and many others have obtained a spiritual advantage.(6)
Fuller died in 1815. The epitaph stone for Fuller in the Kettering meeting house says he devoted his life for the prosperity of the BMS.(7) One biographer has said Fuller “lived and died a martyr to the mission.”(8) After December, 1794, he was assisted in life by his second wife, Ann Coles. Fuller also spent himself itinerating for the British and Foreign Bible Society after it was founded in 1804. His many occasional writings and sermon manuscripts reveal a love for the gospel message itself and the life-orienting impact of Bible texts such as Matthew 28:16-20 and Mark 16:15-16; John 12:36 and 20:21; and Romans 10:9, 14-17. Fuller is noted today for making a significant contribution to the revitalization of Particular (Calvinist) Baptist life in late eighteenth century England as well as for being a key figure in the historic turn toward a proliferation of free Protestant missionary societies at the beginning of the Great Century.
‘This Word Must Be Preached’
Forty years ago, John Piper was not sleeping very well. It was October of 1979, and his brain hurt. For the past five months, he had been on a teaching sabbatical from Bethel College, just north of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. It was a scholar’s dream come true: except for a few weeks of family vacation, his job would be to spend six days a week reading and writing and researching until a new school year began in the fall of 1980. He was 33 years old. Back in January, on his birthday, he had written in his personal journal, “It was a decisive age for Jesus. Deep down I feel it will be for me too.” His first book was about to be published by Cambridge University Press — a revision of the doctoral dissertation he completed five years earlier at the University of Munich. His main focus now was writing an academic monograph on Romans 9, where Paul extols the glory and freedom of God in electing individuals to salvation. On days of heavy writing, he found it physically hard to sleep. “I get so wrenched in the brain,” he wrote in his journal, “that my head feels twisted and tight lying on the pillow.” Despite the mind-numbing work, however, he was emotionally and spiritually energized. It felt terrifically rewarding to produce written pages on the great things of God. He was trying to plan out the rest of the year. The annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society would be held on campus at Bethel that December, and his deadline to submit his paper was just weeks away. In preparation, he was working through a book by New Testament scholar Peter Stuhlmacher. A slow but disciplined reader, John was averaging about forty pages a day of working through this German text, a pace he found frustrating. “I am closer tonight to actually deciding to resign at Bethel and take a pastorate than I have ever been.” Ronald Reagan, who had been governor when John was at Fuller Seminary out in California, was gearing up to challenge Jimmy Carter for president of the United States. But politics and cultural happenings were not the sort of thing John would have noted in his journal. That was reserved for spiritual resolutions, theological and exegetical observations, prayers from his heart, updates on his family, wrestling with decisions. He had been journaling faithfully, often every day, since his sophomore year at Wheaton. But in the first two weeks of October in 1979, his journal suddenly went dark. He penned not a single entry. October 14, 1979 On Sunday evening, October 14, John went down to the basement of their house in New Brighton. The temperature in his study was cool, with the dehumidifier in the boys’ playroom going on and off to keep the basement from becoming too damp for him and his books. He usually wore a t-shirt, layered by a sweater shirt, and on top of that his “study sweater,” a thick brown and tan cardigan knit by Noël as a gift. Diagonally across his study was an eight-foot-long former library table. A fluorescent light hung above it from the ceiling. On either side were two piles of commentaries on Romans, each open to chapter 9. There were two bookstands, one holding the Greek New Testament open to where he was at in his morning devotions, the other holding an open Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Alongside the back edge of the desk was a row of books he was reading or regularly consulting: the works of Jonathan Edwards; Chaim Potok’s 1972 novel, My Name is Asher Lev; a French New Testament; a German work on Jesus by Adolf Schlatter; a Webster’s Dictionary; and a McGuffey’s Reader #4 (for when his seven-year-old son came in and sat on his lap to read). A card table in the study was covered with books on Judaism that he was consulting for his exegetical and historical research. He had recently built his own four-foot-tall standing desk, hanging the sanded plywood by hinges from the wall, then adding two folding legs to support the front when it swung out. He also built himself a prayer bench with a shelf for the Bible that could be read in front of him as he knelt for regular times of prayer over the word. Noël and the boys were long asleep, and the hour was growing late that Sunday night. As he sat at his desk, wrestling and praying, he eventually reached for his notebook and pen, ready to start journaling again. He often said he didn’t know what he thought until he wrote. That evening, he began with these words: “I am closer tonight to actually deciding to resign at Bethel and take a pastorate than I have ever been. The urge,” he added, “is almost overwhelming.” “Is the calling so managerial in our day that the Word burning to be spoken and lived and applied is no qualification?” The desire was taking this form in his heart and mind: “I am enthralled by the reality of God and the power of his word to create authentic people.” That afternoon after church he had over to the house a dreadlocked Bethel College student named Mark. They ended up talking for four hours. It left John aching at how comparably rare it was to find such authentic men and women of faith in the church. He wrote, “I believe, I really believe, that God has made me a vessel of his Word which when poured onto people changes them in this direction.” ‘Burning to Be Spoken’ It is remarkable how realistic he was that night. He knew himself well. “I know, really know, I would despair as a pastor. I would despair that my people are not where I want them to be, I would despair at ruptured study and writing goals, I would despair at barren administrative details.” But he asked himself, “Who shall shepherd the flock of God? People who love barrenness? People who feel no flame to study God and write it out? People who weep not over the tares and the choking wheat? Is the criterion for judging one’s fitness for the ministry that one feels no pain in the mechanics of ‘running a church’? Is the calling so managerial in our day that the Word burning to be spoken and lived and applied is no qualification?” He wondered if he had been kidding himself about scholarship. Had he been foolish to think he had been destined to be an influential writer and teacher of college or seminary students? “Has not there been all along the simmering frustration that this Word — this unbelievably powerful Word — must be preached and spoken with tears to the dying and tears to the rejoicing? Has not all my occupation with the word broken out in an irresistible longing to sing its praises?” For five years he had refused to “preach around” or “teach around” the Twin Cities. Instead, he had been devoted to one Sunday School class, week after week, year after year. This seemed to signify his burden to apply the Word to one flock over the long haul. “My heart is not in one time shots or one week shots. I am not a gifted evangelist. My heart leans hard to regularity of feeding. I believe little in the injection method to health. I believe in the long steady diet of rich food in surroundings of love.” What Would He Lose? He was close to a decision. “I can taste the challenge on the horizon.” He thought about all that he would leave behind, including “the joy of long uninterrupted hours of thought in pursuit of theological problems.” But, he thought, “I have discovered more of living value in the fewer and more pressed hours of meditation for sermons and devotions than often in preparation for class.” What would be different from the scholarly realm is that it “would all have to be real, living, life-changing insight. All my energies would be on finding reality in the text for only what is real — deeply, movingly real — can be fed to the really hungry and the really needy. No more fence sitting.” John knew that when the divorcee approaches him, he must have an answer, or at the very least some word of help. He wouldn’t be leaving burgeoning theological insight for some sterile managerial slot. “The demands of the pulpit on me . . . would be the demands of God on my mind and heart to penetrate like never before to the heart of the word and to abound in understanding.” What, realistically, would he lose? He was thinking, now, as he was writing, and his pen was flowing. I would lose the simplicity of task and routine in the college. My life and time would be much less my own. I would lose the serenity of undisturbed hours of study and self-imposed hours of study and self-imposed hours of leisure because the needs of the flock are unpredictable. I would lose the quiet of the study and trade it for hours in the car on the way to the hospital, and to homes. I would lose the uniformity of responsibility and be swamped by dozens of different tasks, many of which would no doubt be distasteful unless and until my palate changed. I would lose the collegial stimulation of fellow theologians in return for a draining ministry to the hungry. I would lose an almost total occupation with theological subject matter and inherit the press for programs and functions. I would lose the ease of having to reckon with no visible failure (if I fail with students they pass on quickly). But in a church I must reckon with the possibility of nothing happening, people becoming discontented, no one being won to Christ, old animosities remaining unhealed. Magnify, Exalt, Display Life would be so different. From kindergarten until today, he had known only the life of first being a student and then a teacher. But it seemed that almost every movement of his heart over the past five years had been toward the church. “Sometimes it comes surging up as a passion to be in seminary teaching. But we know what that means.” He was having a conversation with himself now. “It means you long to be as near the proclamation event as possible but have not been encouraged by anyone to be in it yourself. But of late — a year or so — that passion has passed right through seminary and into the pulpit. Why? What has been changing?” “Oh, to make something with the Word, words, and a way with words — something powerful, full of glory.” He did not know for sure. What he thought had happened, though, was a gradually emerging clarification of what his highest values were and the most fruitful way to achieve them. “Those values are to see the Word of God produce people of great faith and great love.” The apostle Paul desired to stay on earth and minister “for your advancement and joy of faith” (Philippians 1:25). This was how he magnified Christ in his body by life. And that was John’s greatest goal as well: “To magnify, exalt, display Christ in the world and in heaven by seeing people transformed into new creatures of love and faith through His word and spirit.” Yes, that happened some at Bethel. Yes, that would happen more if he were to teach seminarians. But he had a hunger to be the direct instrument of the Word. So much of what he saw needing to be done in the pulpit was getting lost along the way between the lecture hall and the sanctuary! John believed in the goals of a liberal-arts education and could defend it powerfully. But as he examined his heart, he believed it with nothing close to the same passion and intensity that he believed in the goals of preaching. Gifted to Proclaim As John continued to think and write that night, he was reminded of another thing in his life that had changed. For the first time in his life, he had been an active, responsible member of one church for an extended period of time (five years now). “I have taught its adults and served on its board and spoken to its worship service. I have not hit and run. It is my church. I have no romantic notion of it. It is full of sinners. But it is precisely in that church over this long haul that the vision and the burden for preaching as a pastor has grown.” When John went into a Sunday school class as a student, it was not long before he was thinking about teaching. He would watch and listen, and the longing would grow: “I must do this! No, no, not to replace this preacher or that preacher, but simply to do this work which attracts me with my zeal for the word and its power to change people.” Another factor, perhaps more subconscious than the others, was his awareness that while he could hold his own in scholarly writing and in most conversations, he did not have some of the crucial gifts for greatness in scholarship, like speed-reading with comprehension or a good memory for recall. “These two deficiencies make me very narrow in my awareness and comprehension of broad sweeps of things. I do not fear being useless in scholarship. My books will bear witness to my competence. But my weaknesses often return to me and sometimes ask me: do you not see that your gift of penetration, intensity, and poetry lend themselves to moments of proclamation rather than years of research for books and seminars? Perhaps not. But perhaps yes!” Word, Words, and a Way John concluded his journal entry in this way before he went to bed that night: “This moment of indecision is real and makes me feel on the brink of doing something that could be so revolutionary for me and for some group of people that I do not want to set it aside now and say, O it will pass. You have felt this way before and you get over it and realize it was a moment of dissatisfied fantasy. No. The recurrence is now too frequent and tonight (it is almost midnight now) too strong. I will seek counsel and pray. My last word is this. I cannot decide now. But I know which side I want to win — the pastorate.” He had written 1,826 words across nine notebook pages. He closed his journal and walked upstairs, taking off the study sweater and hanging it on the back of the gray and black metal chair, where it would wait for him in the morning. “This Word — this unbelievably powerful Word — must be preached and spoken with tears to the dying and tears to the rejoicing.” After crawling into bed with Noël, sleep proved elusive, as he considered and refuted several arguments in his head. Perhaps his brain hurt again. But this time his heart was full as he eventually drifted to sleep with a new dream. Years earlier, contemplating his gifting, limitations, and future, he had written, “All I have is Word, words, and a way with words and underneath a heart. Oh, to make something with the Word, words, and a way with words — something powerful, full of glory, something to shake the foundations. A book to kindle a flame in the scholarly world, a short piece to make a thousand housewives and husbands sing, a sermon to save all the lost in the place, a tale to delight the children and teach them.” John Piper had never been a pastor. He had never been to Bethlehem Baptist Church. Nine months later, he would be their senior pastor. The God of Romans 9 was about to help a thousand husbands and wives sing of their salvation in a whole new way. Article by Justin Taylor
