The Promise of Prayer

The Promise of Prayer (Geoff Thomas) Luke 11:9-10

Rev. Geoffrey Thomas has been the minister of Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, Wales, since 1965. Born in 1938 in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, he became a Christian as a teenager in his home church, the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Hengoed, in 1954. After grammar school, he read Biblical Studies, Greek and Philosophy at Cardiff University (BA, 1959). He found fellowship in the Inter-varsity Fellowship group, and was influenced by the ministry of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and reading books such as J. I. Packer’s Fundamentalism and the Word of God, Whitefield’s Journals, Lloyd-Jones’ Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, and J. C. Ryle’s Holiness. At this time he also began to take The Banner of Truth magazine, which he has since served as Associate Editor. He preached for the first time in 1959 and ‘thenceforward Sunday after Sunday’. In 1961 he travelled to the United States to study for three years at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, under men such as Edward J. Young, Ned Stonehouse, John Murray, Cornelius Van Til, Meredith Kline, Norman Shepherd, Jay Adams and Edmund Clowney. Returning to Wales after graduation (M.Div, 1964), he married Iola, ‘the girl back home’. Assured during the last months of his course at seminary of the call to preach, he began his first and only pastorate at Alfred Place the following year. Geoff has systematically preached the Bible to his congregation ever since, and has published the compete text of almost a thousand sermons on the church’s website. He has served as the chairman of the Grace Churches of England and Wales, and of the Association of Evangelical Churches of Wales, and is currently Editor of the Trust’s website articles. He is the author of scores of articles and several books, including The Holy Spirit, Daniel: Servant of God Under Four Kings, Philip and the Revival in Samaria and Ernest Reisinger: A Biography, as well as the booklet Reading the Bible, some of which have been published by the Trust. He is a frequent speaker at conferences throughout the world, and is a Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2011 Westminster Seminary awarded him a Doctor of Divinity degree. Geoff’s wife Iola passed away in October 2016, passing, as Geoff wrote, ‘from the state of grace to the state of glory’. Geoff has two daughters who are married to deacons and a third who is a pastor’s wife. He has eight grandsons and one granddaughter.

Please let us know in the comments where in the world you are tuned in from and make sure to give this video a like and subscribe to our channel to help promote sound Bible content on YouTube.