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Major W. Ian Thomas
Major W. Ian Thomas (1914–2007) was a British preacher, evangelist, and Bible teacher whose ministry emphasized the indwelling life of Christ as the key to victorious Christian living. Born on September 13, 1914, in London, England, to Albert and Jennie Thomas, he was raised in a middle-class family. Converted at age 12 during a Crusaders Union camp, he committed his life to Christ’s service at 15, preaching on Hampstead Heath and engaging in evangelistic efforts. Educated at Merchant Taylor’s School, he studied medicine at London University for two years with aspirations of becoming a missionary doctor in Africa but left to pursue full-time ministry after experiencing spiritual burnout at 19, a turning point marked by a midnight prayer in 1933 that revealed Christ as his life source. Thomas’s preaching career spanned decades and continents, beginning with open-air evangelism in the UK and expanding globally after serving in World War II with the Royal Fusiliers, including the Dunkirk evacuation, earning him the Distinguished Service Order for gallantry. In 1946, he and his wife Joan founded the Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers at Capernwray Hall in England, a ministry that grew into Torchbearers International, with 25 Bible schools worldwide by his death. He pastored no single church but preached itinerantly, authored influential books like The Saving Life of Christ and The Mystery of Godliness, and moved to Estes Park, Colorado, in the late 1980s. Married to Joan, with whom he had four sons—Chris, Mark, Peter, and Andy—he died on August 1, 2007, leaving a legacy as a preacher who transformed lives through his focus on Christ’s sufficiency.
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Major W. Ian Thomas preaches about the transformative power of Christ's atoning death on the cross, emphasizing that through redemption, believers receive the Holy Spirit within them, transitioning from death to life and becoming united with Christ. The Christian life is living out the life of Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit, allowing Him to govern every aspect of one's being as part of His corporate body, the church. This new law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus restores the faith-love relationship between the soul and God, enabling believers to declare the Son and live a Deo-centric life under the guidance of the Spirit, leading to a radical change of government within oneself.
At His Disposal
The moment you are redeemed through the atoning death of Christ upon the cross, you receive the Holy Spirit within your human spirit. You have "passed from death to life" - raised from the dead - and the Life which has been imparted to you by the Holy Spirit is the very Life of Christ Himself; " He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ. He gave us the very life of Christ Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him" (Ephesians 2:5, Amplified New Testament). The life that the Lord Jesus Christ lived for you nineteen hundred years ago condemns you; but the life that He now lives in you saves you! The Christian life is the Life which He lived then, lived now, by Him in you. As He behaved in the sinless Humanity which the Father had prepared for Him then, so He wants to behave in your humanity presented to Him now. Your mind placed at His disposal through the indwelling Holy Spirit; your emotions, your will, all that you are and have, made available to the Lord Jesus Christ as a living member of His new corporate body on earth, which is called the church. This is the new law in action, the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, re-establishing the "faith-love" relationship between your soul and God, making it possible for you to "declare" the Son, as once the Son "declared" the Father. Your "behavior mechanism" once more wholly "Deo-centric" instead of "Ego-centric." " so that the commandment of the law may find fulfillment" in you, whose conduct, no longer under the control of your lower nature, "is directed by the Spirit." A radical change of government!
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Major W. Ian Thomas (1914–2007) was a British preacher, evangelist, and Bible teacher whose ministry emphasized the indwelling life of Christ as the key to victorious Christian living. Born on September 13, 1914, in London, England, to Albert and Jennie Thomas, he was raised in a middle-class family. Converted at age 12 during a Crusaders Union camp, he committed his life to Christ’s service at 15, preaching on Hampstead Heath and engaging in evangelistic efforts. Educated at Merchant Taylor’s School, he studied medicine at London University for two years with aspirations of becoming a missionary doctor in Africa but left to pursue full-time ministry after experiencing spiritual burnout at 19, a turning point marked by a midnight prayer in 1933 that revealed Christ as his life source. Thomas’s preaching career spanned decades and continents, beginning with open-air evangelism in the UK and expanding globally after serving in World War II with the Royal Fusiliers, including the Dunkirk evacuation, earning him the Distinguished Service Order for gallantry. In 1946, he and his wife Joan founded the Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers at Capernwray Hall in England, a ministry that grew into Torchbearers International, with 25 Bible schools worldwide by his death. He pastored no single church but preached itinerantly, authored influential books like The Saving Life of Christ and The Mystery of Godliness, and moved to Estes Park, Colorado, in the late 1980s. Married to Joan, with whom he had four sons—Chris, Mark, Peter, and Andy—he died on August 1, 2007, leaving a legacy as a preacher who transformed lives through his focus on Christ’s sufficiency.