Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

The Whole Bible Classic Sermon Collection on CD-ROM
Ages Software

For Biblical, expository sermons, few pulpiteers can touch the fringe on the garments of Alexander Maclaren. One of Great Britain’s most notable and famous preachers (1826-1910), he was pastor of the Union Chapel, Manchester (1858-1903). His contemporaries called him “the prince of expository preachers.” As this collection demonstrates, it was a reputation earned by consistent and diligent labor in the Word of God.

Rarely active in denominational or civic affairs, he invested his time studying the Word in the original, a discipline the distillate of which can be savored in these wonderfully crafted messages, still regard by many as models of effective expository preaching. Like the prolific Spurgeon, Maclaren preached with foresight and kept copies of his sermons with a view to publishing. He published a number of books of sermons and climaxed his a sixty-five years preaching ministry by publishing this monumental thirty-two volume An Exposition of the Scriptures, every delectable word of which is reproduced here in electronic format for the first time.

These sermonic expositions attracted huge crowds to his services. Preachers in his own day and in ours often try to imitate his masterful techniques of subdividing and drawing analogies from nature. Maclaren was not just an effective preacher, but a scholar of no little academic accomplishment. In the pulpit Maclaren expounded evangelical certainties, yet in his writings and private conversations he shows a commanding knowledge of the higher criticism of the day. C.H. Spurgeon, his contemporary, excepted him from the so-called “Downgraders,” despite his ambiguous attitudes. Maclaren was twice president of the Baptist Union, chairman of its Twentieth Century Fund, and the first president of the Baptist World Alliance (1905). Preaching, however, not politics, was his strong suit.

For half-a-penny a sermon, you can also read Calvin’s Lectures on Jeremiah-Malachi, Augustine’s Homilies on Psalms, John and I John, Chrysostom’s Homilies on Matthew, Galatians-Thessalonians; two volumes of sermons by Jonathan Edwards, a Charles Finney Collection, John Flavel’s Fountain of Life, a dozen of messages by Dwight L. Moody, two volumes of John Owens, Arthur Pink’s Gleanings from Elijah, Elisha, Joshua, David and Paul, ten volumes of Charles H. Spurgeon, three volumes of John Wesley and nearly five dozen sermons by John Whitefield. You would spend at least $300 for this collection in hard copy, and have to dust them, lug them back and forth to the shelves and thumb them. Here they are arranged in Biblical order, on a saucer-sized disc you can access with a finger. Computer technology makes books as outdated as the codex did the scroll.

Reviewed by Dr. Wayne Wall

Ages Software

Rio, WI

$29.95