Subtitled “The Life and Times of Anthony Norris Groves”, this book is a powerful missionary biography of Groves, a man, who arguably influenced attitudes concerning missionary work more than any other in the last two centuries. The book is exhaustively researched, with copious notes and an extensive bibliography. It is formidable in size (it has over five hundred pages), and many will put off from attempting to read it, but those who do read will be rewarded with a journey into history in the life of a man who himself determined to follow the Bible and was willing, because of what he found there, to rethink Christian devotedness, church unity and polity, the call to world evangelism and personal faith in God. Groves doubted his own effectiveness as a missionary following his many years in Baghdad and in India, however, his character and ideas shaped the people who followed him and his walk of faith in God. Men like George Muller and James Hudson Taylor were profoundly influenced by Groves. His famous pamphlet called ‘Christian Devotedness” was carried by the Lord into the hands of many key people who, being challenged by its call to simplicity of life and trust in God followed that path and so ‘faith missions’ were born in the nineteenth century. This book traces his influence in the development of the ‘Brethren Movement’ providing thoughtful analysis of how that church movement flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is a historical picture built up here which is deeply inspirational. His ministry in Baghdad was apparently unsuccessful, other ventures appeared to have similar results, he suffered a sense of personal failure, but history shows that his ‘grand experiment’ of going forth in simplicity of trust in God who had called him was no failure. Groves was an inspirer and motivator, one who had a biblical vision both for mission and the true nature of church life. He regarded the church as the true mission agency, his desire being to re model the whole plan of missionary operations so as to bring them to the simple standard of God’s word. His encouragement to his readers was ‘we wish you to read the New Testament that you may learn to judge of God’s truth, not by what you see in the churches around you, but by the word of God itself.” Those who know anything about the Brethren Movement today may say that it is moribund and ready to vanish away, but this book will cause its serious reader to ponder whether the truths discovered afresh by Groves and his friends in those days are the vital key for the growth of a virile church in day.
