Tersteegen's biography

Life Gerhard Tersteegen
From the Book: They Knew Their God, Book TwoHarvey/HeyGerhard Tersteegen 'Recluse in Demand'

No little stir was occasioned in Mulheim when the young merchant Gerhard Tersteegen, retired from his business and took up lodgings in an isolated cottage, in order to search after God. For some years his relatives and friends left the youthful twenty-two year old to his odd quest.

Another young man, many hundreds of years before him, had retired from his active life in the city of Jerusalem to the Arabian desert, where he too was to be initiated into the deep things of God. And Gerhard Tersteegen, like St. Paul, was to share the secrets that he learned in his "Arabia", with the sin-burdened and the sorrowing, the hungry and dissatisfied souls. These yearned for soul-food instead of the intellectual rationalizing of formal ministry.

Gerhard would have given as his reason for this escape from social and business contacts, the conviction that his barque was too frail to successfully outride the currents of the world about him. His seven brothers and sisters, save one who had entered the ministry, were intent upon making money. When this youngest member of their family turned his back upon good business opportunities, to live simply and frugally they were chagrined that his name was not mentioned among them. When his mother died, he was not invited to the gathering where the family divided the assets.

The young man's father, Heinrich Tersteegen, died when the child was very small. He was a pious merchant and a member of the Reformed Church. Letters found after his death, revealed that he had been in touch with the spiritual movement, gathering momentum at that time. Gerhard was born in Mohr in the valley of the Rhine in 1697, just six years prior to the advent of John Wesley into Epworth Rectory in England. Germany at the time of Tersteegen's birth, was still suffering from the devastation which resulted from the thirty years struggle between the Protestants and Catholics. Twelve million of her population had perished during this period of bloodshed. Whole villages had been pillaged and burned; fields and orchards lay waste. In Leipsig, in 1686, not a single Bible or New Testament could be found in any bookseller's shop.

The Reformed Church had come to be designated the "Deformed Church" and the Lutheran Church had succumbed to dead rites and ceremonies until those who sought to revive the spiritual life were accounted heretics.God had His witnesses, however, -- torches alight with divine fire, who were to illumine this darkness. Labardie, Spener, Hockmann and others sought to rouse the apathetic populace to a sense of need. They strove to transfer religion from the icy region of the head to the warmer clime of the heart, and went everywhere seeking to form a Church within the Church by instituting prayer meetings and Bible studies.

The messengers proclaimed four distinguishing doctrines:1. Self-renunciation - the complete giving up of self-will to the will of God.2. The continuous activity of the Spirit of God in all believers, and the intimate union possible between God and man.3. The worthlessness of all religion based upon fear or hope of reward.4. The essential equality of laity and clergy, though for the sake of order and discipline the organization of the church was necessary.

Mulheim (home of the mill) had been one of the centers from which this spiritual blessing had radiated. Labardie had taken up his residence here, and had laboured for its welfare. William Hoffman, a deeply spiritual young theological student, who was to influence Gerhard, also resided there. He favoured the cause of the Pietists and so was suspected by the churchmen who feared he would draw away members from the church.In the providence of God, Mulheim was to be the home of Gerhard for most of his life. But we must go back to the young man's early career in order to trace his footsteps thither.

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Gerhard Tersteegen's Sermons: Crumbs from the Master's table

For the complete Google books 'CRUMBS FROM THE MASTER'S TABLE' and 'THE QUIET WAY' cut and paste the website addresses below.

CRUMBS FROM THE MASTER'S TABLE

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1EoEAAAAQAAJ&dq=crumbs+from+the+masters+table&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=jzdoiEek1L&sig=1uOo7O2YbVpihczFje9psPSVt6M&hl=en&ei=e7IOSrO7NciZjAeoxISeBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPP6,M1