A Garden Enclosed: A historical study and evaluation of the form of church government practised by the Particular Baptists in the 17th and 18th centur - Paperback

by B. S. Poh (Author)

To the Particular Baptists, Independency was the divinely ordained form of church government used by God as the vehicle to carry out the Great Commission. The Great Commission was carried out with the view of establishing biblically ordered churches, which upheld the 1689 Confession of Faith. These three components of church life - mission-mindedness, biblical church order, and the 1689 Confession of Faith - arose from the thorough biblicism of the Particular Baptists. The orderliness of the church does not exist for its own sake but for service to God. The well-ordered church is not static but dynamic, it is not merely beautiful but also full of vitality. This picture of the church was commonly expressed as "a garden enclosed, and a fountain sealed" in the 17th and 18th centuries. Baptist Independency is different from modern Congregationalism.

Author Biography

B S Poh was born in 1954 in Malaysia. He studied in the United Kingdom and was saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ in 1976. He was a lecturer in a university in Malaysia for six years and founded the first Reformed Baptist church in Malaysia in 1983. He was imprisoned for his faith from 1987 to 1988, for a period of 325 days. He is the pastor of the Damansara Reformed Baptist Church (DRBC) in Kuala Lumpur, engaged in preaching, writing, church-planting, and the training of pastors. He has a PhD degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Liverpool, UK, a Diploma in Religious Studies from Cambridge University, UK, and a PhD degree in Theology from North-West University, SA. Pastor Poh is married and has four sons.