“For fifty-four years, [Charles] Simeon preached at Holy Trinity Church, ministering to multitudes of students over the years, about one thousand becoming ministers.” [S. Donald Fortson III, Charles Hodge, (Faverdale North Darlington, England, EP Books, 2013), p. 29]

“Dr. William Edgar did not grow up in an evangelical home. But while studying at Harvard, he met a professor who set him on his path toward Christian faith. This professor connected Edgar with Francis Schaeffer, who had studied at Westminster under Cornelius Van Til. Edgar soon traveled to Switzerland where he had the opportunity to meet Schaeffer.

“From the moment Edgar entered the Schaeffers’ home, he was impressed with their warmth and graciousness. For the first time, in Schaeffer’s presence, Edgar began to think that Christianity might be true. He decided to stay with the Schaeffers for a month, during which time Schaeffer walked him through the basics of the faith and led him to Christ.

“In the following months and years, Schaeffer became a trusted friend and mentor to Edgar. Edgar himself would go on to study under Van Til at Westminster. Today he is one of our cherished faculty members, training students for ministry in every context.”

[Peter A. Lillback, President,

Westminster Theological Seminary]

“Twenty-three years ago we took a born-again sailor and spent some time with him, showing him how to reproduce spiritually after his kind. It took time, lots of time. It was not a hurried, 30-minute challenge in a church service and a hasty good-bye with an invitation to come back next week. We spent time together. We took care of his problems and taught him not only to hear God’s Word and to read it, but also how to study it. We taught him how to fill the quiver of his heart with the arrows of God’s Word, so that the Spirit of God could lift an arrow from his heart and place it to the bow of his lips and pierce a heart for Christ.

“He found a number of boys on his ship, but none of them would go all out for the Lord. They would go to church, but when it came right down to doing something, they were ‘also rans.’ He came to me after a month of this and said, ‘Dawson, I can’t got any of these guys on the ship to get down to business.’

“I said to him, ‘Listen, you ask God to give you one. You can’t have two until you have one. Ask God to give you a man after your own heart.’

“He began to pray. One day he came to me and said, ‘I think I’ve found him.’ Later he brought the young fellow over. Three months from the time that I started to work with him, he had found a man of like heart. This first sailor was not the kind of man you had to push and give prizes to before he would do something. He loved the Lord and was willing to pay a price to produce. He worked with this new babe in Christ, and those two fellows began to grow and spiritually reproduce. On that ship 125 men found the Savior before it was sunk at Pearl Harbor. Men off that first battleship are in four continents of the world as missionaries today.” [Dawson Trotman, Born To Reproduce, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, n.d.), p. 20-21]