OBITUARY – BROTHER DAVID PAWSON “THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS”

I once told my friend David Pawson a number of years back that he was the proverbial “LAST OF THE MOHICANS”, an American colloquialism with which he was familiar.

I did like David Pawson personally, I usually agreed with him doctrinally, but to me he was more than that. He was truly the last of a dynasty of great British expository preachers dating back through Campbell Morgan, Dr. Martin Lloyds Jones, and all the way back to the era of Charles Spurgeon & JC Ryle.

His teaching ministry was a surviving vestige of an age gone by when Britain was still a Christian Country with an Evangelical heritage that evolved under God’s Hand from the Great Revivals of John & Charles Wesley and George Whitfield with hymn composers like Issac Watts and Augustus Toplady and heroic missionaries such as Hudson Taylor and William Carey.

The last British born figure in scriptural exposition of that calibre of gifting has gone to be with The Lord. David was gracious and less confrontational concerning things he knew to be wrong than I would have been. Yet he would speak out when he saw a need to. In this he reminded me of my friend Chuck Smith who is now also awaiting us in Glory with Jesus.

David lived in the emotional pain of having been bereft off his dear daughter and in the closing years of his temporal life was greatly restricted in his mobility. When I last spoke with him by telephone he was bed bound due to his infirmity and advanced age.

Now however, David is living his eternal life with and in the Jesus whom he loved and served, and is now very happily reunited with his beloved daughter and no longer bound by anything. Despite my sense of loss, In these things I of course rejoice. Miss him we shall, in a separation however that will only be temporary.

From John Bunyan and William Gurnall to CS Lewis, British Christianity produced its authors.

From Richard Baxter to John Newton Britain has produced its pastors. From Stephen Gardner to Clifford Hill Britain has had its voices of warning that some have described as prophetic. From Wycliffe to Tyndale to Coverdale it has produced its textual translators, and it has produced more martyrs than we can readily count. I do not think I am being unduly flattering in

lauding the legacy of David Pawson among the category of the greats whom The Lord raised up in Britain in times past. My only uncertainty is if or not God will send Britain such figures again.

To me, David Pawson will always be fondly remembered as ‘The Last of The Mohicans’.

In Jesus,

J. Jacob Prasch

(Moriel Ministries)