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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 emphasizes that redemption and sanctification cannot be achieved by human efforts but are gifts from God through faith in Christ. He highlights that everything needed for life and godliness is provided by God through Christ, who offers wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The sermon stresses the importance of reckoning oneself dead to the old self and alive in Christ to fully experience God's redemptive purpose, which determines one's true worth beyond worldly standards.
How Much Are You Worth?
You cannot accomplish your own redemption, and you cannot accomplish your own sanctification! It is "according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue" (11 Peter 1:3): faith takes what God gives, and God gives what man needs! All that he needs! All that God gives, which is all that you need, He gives to you in Christ, "That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (I Corinthians 1:29 and 30). The degree to which by a deliberate, voluntary attitude of faith you are reckoning yourself to be dead "with Christ" to all that you are "in Adam" and alive to God in all that you are "in Christ" is the degree to which the redemptive purpose of God has been wrought out in your life and this is the only valid estimate of your worth! Everything else is a dead loss! "Consequently, from now on we estimate and regard no one from a (purely) human point of view in terms of natural standards of value" (11 Corinthians 5:16, Amplified New Testament). Pointing to an affluent looking gentleman coming into the church, I might say to you (if I were mischievous enough), "How much is he worth?" and maybe you would reply, "If he's worth a dollar, he's worth a million!" and I would say to you, "I did not ask how much money he had in the bank! I simply asked you how much he was worth!" A man could have all the money in all the banks in all the world, and be worth nothing so far as God is concerned, if he were still living "to and for himself"! The measure of a man's worth is the measure in which he no longer lives "to and for himself," but "to and for Jesus Christ." No more and no less! How much are you worth?
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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.