The Doctor on the Doctor

My esteemed father-in-law Dr Geoffrey Thomas has recently written a foreword to a new edition of Dr Lloyd-Jones' Spiritual Depression. You can find  the foreword on the Banner website here.

The article makes 8 points including this one:

vi] He was a man who was prepared to help people in every way he could

He would stay at Westminster Chapel until the last person had been counselled. He would write letters to people all over the world. When he began his ministry in Aberavon people wrote to him requesting medical advice and he examined them as they travelled to his manse. My father’s twin brother, Bryn, was a theological student in the Congregational College in Brecon but in his first week there he was informed that he was not in a good enough shape physically to become and continue as a pastor. His heart wouldn’t be strong enough for this work. He was quite crestfallen about this and then a friend told him about a heart specialist named Lloyd-Jones who had come to pastor a church in Aberavon. Why shouldn’t he write to him and explain his dilemma to him? Perhaps he could have a medical examination from the Doctor. So it was that Uncle Bryn became one of hundreds who sought such help from Dr. Lloyd-Jones. The result was that the Doctor pronounced my uncle in fine shape, that there was no problem with his heart at all, and so he returned to college and entered the ministry. When I recounted this incident to Dr. Lloyd-Jones he had no recollection of it at all, and then he asked me how Uncle Bryn had got on. 'He lived until he was 82,' I told him. He beamed and laughed out loud smacking his hands, 'O very good!'

He also journeyed extensively all over the United Kingdom to support ministers and evangelical causes. What anticipation to have Dr. Lloyd-Jones preaching for you! No one else could draw a congregation except him and no one since his decease. How we miss him, the full church, earnest, moving singing of great hymns, happy crowds staying around for an hour after the service was over, quietly talking together and the central themes of the gospel preached by the Doctor with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. These occasions are remembered by some from 70 years ago, and people will tell you they remember the text on which Dr. Lloyd-Jones preached at that distant meeting. Men struggling in divided small congregations would get such an uplift when he visited them. 'This is the preaching, and these are the kinds of services we are aiming for,' they would tell their church officers.