Fire is strangely intense and intrinsic. It goes into the very substance of things. It somehow blends with every particle of the thing it touches. There are the severe trials that come to minds more sensitive-to minds that have more points of contact with what hurts. The higher the nature, the higher the joy and the greater the avenues of pain that come. And then there are deeper trials that come as we pass into the hands of God, as we pass from the physical and intellectual into the spiritual. When they first come, we shrink back from their unnatural and fearful breath. We say, "Oh, this cannot be from the hand of a loving Father! This cannot be necessary to me." And then come the pains and sufferings from God's own hand, when He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, when He lets it burn until it seems that we must be burned to ashes. But we can only obtain the victory through faith. The moment we cease to fear the fire, that moment it ceases to harm us. He says, Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee (Isaiah 43:2).
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A.B. Simpson (1843 - 1919)
Simpson is the founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance Movement that began in Canada with a desire to promote missions and global evangelism. He was used powerfully of the Lord to unify many brothers and sisters in a common purpose of fulfilling the great commission.A.W. Tozer joined with the Missionary Alliance denomination because of the teachings of A.B. Simpson and specific his writings on holiness: "A Larger Christian Life." He wrote many hymns and added a great emphasis on the person of Jesus Christ in church-life.
FOUNDER OF THE Christian and Missionary Alliance, Albert Benjamin Simpson was born in Canada of Scottish parents. He became a Presbyterian minister and pastored several churches in Ontario. Later, he accepted the call to serve as pastor of the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. It was there that his life and ministry were completely changed in that, during a revival meeting, he experienced the fullness of the Spirit.He continued in the Presbyterian Church until 1881, when he founded an independent Gospel Tabernacle in New York. There he published the Alliance Weekly and wrote 70 books on Christian living. He organized two missionary societies which later merged to become the Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Albert Benjamin Simpson was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism.
In December 1873, at age 30, Simpson left Canada and assumed the pulpit of the largest Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church. It was in Louisville that he first conceived of preaching the gospel to the common man by building a simple tabernacle structure for that purpose. Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.
Simpson’s heart for evangelism was to become the driving force behind the creation of the C&MA. Initially, the Christian and Missionary Alliance was not founded as a denomination, but as an organized movement of world evangelism. Today, the C&MA denomination plays a leadership role in global evangelism.