Ten days ago when I was speaking at a conference for Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, I was called to come up front to unveil an amazingly beautiful bust of William Perkins, often called “the father of Puritanism,” that a member of their church, Jodie Barnes, had sculptured as a gift for our William Perkins Library at Puritan Reformed Seminary. Pastor Jeff Johnson of Grand Rapids graciously brought the bust home with him from Greenville yesterday, and then over to us a few minutes ago at the end of our prayer time, where it was unveiled a second time and enjoyed by some of our faculty and staff (photo 1). Having worked for nearly ten years on editing and printing “The Works of William Perkins” (10 vols., Reformation Heritage Books), and having lectured on him often, I was delighted to receive Mr. Perkins together with my Queen (photo 2). We decided to place him in our Puritan Research Center (PRC), which houses one of the world’s largest collections of Puritan writings, just beside an early 17th-century collection of his complete works that Charles Spurgeon owned (his personal seal is in each volume) and later A. W. Pink possessed (who sprinkled his pencil marks of approval throughout). In photo 3, I am pointing to this old, rare, nostalgic set of his writings under glass in the PRC. Many thanks to Jodie Barnes for her fine work!
Above all, may God bless the rich heritage of Perkins and the Puritans that, happily, is increasingly being treasured around the world today, and that He would turn many theological students into God-blessed ministers of the gospel who would carry on the biblical, Reformed, experiential, and practical tradition in our contemporary and needy day that Perkins so faithfully proclaimed by his life, voice, and pen until God took him home at the tender age of 44. SDG!
