George Ella
George M. Ella, born February 1939 in Yorkshire, England, has lived most of his life on the European Continent. He is a retired Senior Civil Servant formerly employed in teaching, post-graduate teacher-training, chairing examination boards and curricula work. He holds degrees from London, Hull, Uppsala, Essen, Duisburg and Marburg universities with doctorates in English Literature and Theology. Dr. Ella has written regularly since the seventies for a number of magazines and newspapers and published numerous books on Church History, including biographies of William Cowper, William Huntington, James Hervey, John Gill, Augustus Montague Toplady, Isaac McCoy and Henry Bullinger besides works on doctrine and education. He is currently finishing the third volume of his series 'Mountain Movers'; a biography of John Durie; a work on Law and Gospel and further study material for the Martin Bucer Seminar. Dr. Ella is still internationally active as a lecturer and is a Vice-President of the Protestant Reformation Society. He is keenly interested in missionary work and has written on the spread of the Gospel amongst the Same people of Lapland, the people of India and the Native Americans. This present volume follows Dr. Ella's 'The Covenant of Grace and Christian Baptism', also published by the Martin Bucer Seminar. George Ella is married to Erika Ella, nee Fleischman, a former government administrator, and they have two sons Mark (41), Director of a Polytechnic College in Bremerhaven and Robin (39), Leading Senior Physician in a newly-built Geriatric and Psychiatric clinic in Dessau.
George Ella on Doctrinal Matters
George Ella's Biographical Sketches
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Counterfeit Gospels: Temporary Salvation
Of all the Baptist denominations, I always stood very near the Particular Baptists. It was only recently that it was pointed out to me by my friend Richard Schade of Grand Rapids that, at times, movements had arisen amongst their ranks who believed, like many non-Baptists, that salvation was as short-lived as the will of the ‘saved’ would have it. He called this ‘time salvation’, which was quite a new term to me. I had always believed since my own conversion that salvation must be ‘for keeps’ otherwise it is not salvation. I immediately began to look into this mystery, starting on a helpful book on the subject by an Elder Boaz which I found on the Internet Archive. Boaz wrote at the turn of…
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John Bale: A Rough And Ready Reformer Against Polished Papacy
We expect great things of those born with silver spoons in their mouths and encouraged from infancy to climb every social, political and cultural ladder. Those born in great poverty and brought up by public institutions rather than in a cosy family background often give cause for concern regarding their future. Yet, in the year 1495, one of the greatest Reformers ever was born into a very large family of poverty-stricken parents and ragged children in the tiny village of Cove in Suffolk. Indeed, John Bale’s parents, Henry and Margaret could not afford any kind of education for their son and he spent his childhood as a farmhand until his parents, despairing of giving John a livelihood, took him to the Carmelite convent at Norwich…
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Redemption Secured And Applied: As Seen By John Gill
Nowadays many Christians speak of a redemption which Christ accomplished theoretically for all but which worked out practically only for a few. This would seem like a great waste of divine energy – if it were true. Fancy preaching on a redemption accomplished but not applied. What a false gospel that would be! We rarely meet up with Absolute Universalism amongst Evangelicals; that is the idea that Christ has died for all and thus all will be ultimately saved. We do, however, meet up with the teaching that Christ has died for all men everywhere, should they wish to accept it. This belief, once found only amongst Pelagians and Arminians, is an even more questionable dogma than Universalism. The latter still looks to God to…
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The Life And Ministry Of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg
One often reads in popular works and even in doctoral theses that Englishman William Carey founded the first Protestant Mission in the non-English speaking world on behalf of the Particular Baptist Missionary Society. Actually, the Baptists were rather late in discovering the world-wide mission field as Lutherans, Church of England and Independent missionary enterprises beat the Baptists by over a century. Great as Carey’s work was, it was built on the pioneering work of Christians of other denominations, in particular that of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg who was called to India almost a century before Carey. The missionary work Carey undertook in Danish held territory reflected and built on Ziegenbalg’s endeavours and successes which were carried on by Ziegenbalg’s son in Serampore long after Ziegenbalg’s death. Indeed,…
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Responsibilities And Duties: Radical Views Expressed By Sam Waldron And Curt Daniel
Our duty-faith friends tell us that their idea of responsibility is synonymous with their idea of duty. For Curt Daniel for instance, recently interviewed by Sam Waldron, the synonyms of responsibility have remained constant since before the Fall. These are: accountability, obedience, duty, liability, obligation, morality and what he calls ‘oughtness’. These terms according to Daniel depict the natural obligations or responsibilities of man towards God which man has always had. In these matters man as a natural agent has always had the freedom to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God. This is because, Daniel says, no man is neutral in his response to God. If man were neutral in his relationship to God, he would have ceased to be man. Thus, even though he…
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Mottos On The Walls
My mother Gladys Ella, née Hume, started going to Sunday and elementary school a year before the outbreak of the First World War in England. When I left home to do my apprenticeship in Sweden in the mid 1950s, Mum sent me a chain of letters, mostly from Memory Lane. Here is a letter she sent me on her earliest childhood entitled ‘Mottos on the Wall.’ Mum was brought up in a poverty-stricken home bereft of a father but could write the account given below in joyous remembrance. How different it was then to the grumpy groaning of modern society who have no Scriptural ‘Mottos on the Walls’: How well I remember the Mottos once hanging on our bedroom walls. They were coloured and framed,…