Between Friends - 2023
Dear Friends,
Due to the Myrtlefield Trust's move last year, we have experienced a change in our physical environment. This has led us to reflect on the transient nature of our dwellings here on earth. As we packed up our belongings and moved them into storage until we find a new location, we were reminded that our earthly homes are not permanent.
As David Gooding says in Can We Be Sure of Heaven?:
Life is a journey, a journey that is daily carrying us towards its end. We may perhaps be enjoying the journey and finding it full of pleasure and happiness; or we may not be enjoying it but rather finding it full of pain and sorrow. But the most important thing of the journey is where the journey will end.
This brings to mind the story of the Israelites, who had to journey through the desert and live in tents before they reached the land promised to them by God. Even then, they had to continue building and rebuilding their homes over time.
It is an amazing fact to realize that God was willing to come and dwell among the Israelites as they travelled through the wilderness. In Drawing Near to God, David Gooding refers to this as the time, ‘God went camping’, an idea that would almost sound irreverent if it wasn’t for the fact it was God himself who condescended to live in a tent alongside his people.
Later in Drawing Near to God, David Gooding reminds us:
When the Lord Jesus left his disciples and went back to heaven he said, ‘In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also’ (John 14:2–3). God wants us to be with him forever. If we make Christ a home in our hearts now, when he comes again he will take us to his Father’s home in heaven.
As we continue to feel the transience of our earthly residences, we give thanks that we have a secure future home where we may lay up our treasures.
A Look Back
Last year was quieter on the publication front. This was due to the sale of 73 Myrtlefield Park, David Gooding's house and our offices for the last number of years. Despite this major project taking up a significant percentage of our time, we are thrilled to report that we have made significant progress on several other key projects. We continue to focus on expanding the reach of our resources and making more of our publications accessible to readers worldwide. We are grateful for every way you continue to support us, and for the opportunity to share our progress and plans for the future, God willing.
Project 2.2 Billion Progress
Arabic
Our book Key Bible Concepts is already available in Arabic from our international website (mh316.com), and we have made significant progress in this area over the last year. Brethren Publishing House in Egypt is currently working on a new edition of Key Bible Concepts and translations of The Bible and Ethics and The Definition of Christianity for publication, as well as Windows on Paradise. Remission Ministries in Jordan is also continuing to translate the six volume series The Quest for Reality and Significance, four of which have been completed. Several of the Myrtlefield team travelled to Jordan in December to explore the possibility of creating a video series to accompany the Quest books. It proved to be a productive trip, and we hope to see a pilot series in both Arabic and English in 2023.
Russian
We aim to edit and republish the majority of our books in Russian, and have successfully identified editors and proofreaders to help with this work. An updated version of Christianity: Opium or Truth? is nearing publication, and we have also contracted for the editing of According to Luke and An Unshakeable Kingdom. Work on According to Luke is progressing well, but the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to present complications in this area. One of our editors, who is based in Ukraine, had to leave her home city, but we are grateful that she continues to work with us. We are also exploring opportunities for distributing books in Ukraine, particularly among Russian speakers who have moved west, as well as with soldiers.
Chinese
At present we have two books available in both Mandarin and Cantonese: Key Bible Concepts and An Unshakable Kingdom. Mandarin translations have also been completed on True to the Faith, According to Luke, The Bible and Ethics, In the School of Christ and the Definition of Christianity. Work is ongoing to translate Windows on Paradise, and we have contracted to produce our newest book, Journeys with Jesus. We have also had some preliminary contact with potential editors who will help us to prepare these translations for publication. As has been true for some time now, the climate within China means that we are limited in distributing print books, but we are preparing translations for a time when this will be possible, and exploring the best way to make digital editions available.
Spanish
Editing work has been steadily progressing on our books in Spanish. We have already published updated versions of In the School of Christ, Key Bible Concepts and The Bible and Ethics under the Myrtlefield Español imprint, and five further books are nearing publication. Only one book from our existing catalogue is still to be edited, and beyond this we also aim to translate our new publications that have not previously existed in Spanish: Drawing Near to God and Journeys with Jesus.
Moving On
Sale of 73 Myrtlefield Park
As we informed you at the end of last year, the Trust sold David Gooding’s house, which also served as the offices for Myrtlefield. At present, we are all working from our homes and keeping an eye on the market for possible new premises, both for office space and possibly also for Dr Gooding’s library. The trustees would value your prayers for wisdom around these decisions: for the the Lord’s clear leading about what Myrtlefield needs now and will need in the future as the work continues.
Published in 2022
Windows on Paradise
First published in 1976, over 500,000 copies of Windows on Paradise have been distributed around the world. Recently we published a newly formatted edition of this title to bring it into line with the style of Journeys with Jesus.
David Gooding Answers
So far we have added over 250 entries to an online archive of David Gooding’s answers to Bible-related questions that he received over many years of correspondence and in Q&A sessions. They are available to read here, and you can download them as PDFs. This project is ongoing, so new resources will be added periodically.
Encounters in French
In 2022, Key Bible Concepts and The Definition of Christianity were published in French in partnership with Scripture Union France. Work is also nearing completion on the French translations of the two remaining books in our Encounters series.
Encouraging Statistics from 2022
Books & Other Resources
Number of books sold and distributed for free: 30,777
Number of free audio files downloaded: 21,004
We can now tell the total length of time people spent while using our resources online:
Books: 5,747 minutes
Sermons: 138,508 minutes
David Gooding Answers: 73,065 minutes
Videos: 560,166 minutes
Our Websites
Myrtlefieldhouse.com
Visitors: 21,724
Page Views: 154,043
MH316.com
Visitors: 4,260
Page Views: 11,133
A Look Forward
An update on the John Commentary Project
Editing work is going well on the longest of three books of David Gooding’s teaching on the Gospel of John. Our aim in publishing From Symbol to Reality: The Journeys of the Son of God in John’s Gospel is to provide as much of Dr Gooding’s teaching on this book of the Bible as is reasonable in a single volume. The aim is to have this book ready for publication in spring 2024.
The main challenge in this kind of editing work is the sheer volume of material to work with, both written (manuscripts) and spoken (sermons now transcribed). But we feel that’s a good problem to have — ‘It’s better to be looking at it than looking for it’, as they say!
Much of Dr Gooding’s teaching on John, though taught widely in public, was never published during his lifetime. Because of time constraints while preaching, he didn’t often teach all the way through John, with the result that many people have heard his teaching on various sections of the Gospel, or even an overview of it, but not on every part of the whole. The sermon transcripts that Myrtlefield has published over the past several years have helped with fuller coverage, but we think there is value in having this teaching in a single volume, even it ends up being fairly large.
As a little taster, we include here a sample from the Introduction.
The scope of the introduction (John 1:1–2:12)
We may think of the introduction as a mighty archway, grand and majestic in its scope, which spans the entrance to the Gospel of John.
On the one side it rises sheer out of God's beginningless eternity. This is the beginning—that is, at the point where space and time and the ‘all things’ of our universe sprang into existence out of nothingness at the creative summons of the pre-existent Word (John 1:1–4), and when the morning stars sang together and all the angels of God shouted for joy (Job 38:4–7).
Follow the sweep of the arch all the way round to its other extremity, and at that point there stands the story of a wedding feast, at which, when the wine ran out and the joy faltered, the Creator incarnate turned water into the best wine tasted so far (John 2:1–11).
The story is nothing less than what it at first sight appears: the record of an actual historical, miraculous event. But it is more: for the scene itself and the terms in which it is described are deliberately calculated to evoke the memory of ancient prophecies of what will happen in the messianic age, when ‘the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine . . . He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces’ (Isa 25:6-8). And with that our imagination races irresistibly forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, to the millennial reign of Christ, and to the new beginning, when the first heaven and the first earth shall pass away, and God shall declare, ‘Behold I am making all things new’ (Rev 21:5). ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more’ (Rev 21:4). The vast multitude cries out before the Almighty, ‘Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready’ (Rev 19:7). The beauty of the bride, the wife of the Lamb, shall never fade; and the wine shall never again run out (see Rev 19:6–20:6, 21:1–8).
The archway, therefore, not only forms the entrance to the Gospel: it sets the Gospel and all its contents, and, above all, its dominant figure, in a framework that extends from eternity to eternity and comprises the whole of time within its mighty span.
New Daily Reader
We are looking forward to publishing a second volume of daily readings drawn from David Gooding’s writings and sermons. Helen Crookes is compiling and arranging the extracts, just as she did for Bringing us to Glory. The new volume will aim to shape our minds to be more like the mind of Christ.
Spanish Website
We are excited to announce the upcoming launch of a Spanish version of our website this year. This new website will not only provide better access to the new Spanish books we are continuing to release, it will also allow people in Spanish-speaking countries all over the world to purchase books directly from our website. We hope that this new Spanish website will enable more people to enjoy our publications.