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R. A. Torrey (1856-1928) was the first academic dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, serving at the school from 1912-1924.

Biography

Torrey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, on 28 January, 1856. He graduated from Yale University in 1875 and Yale Divinity School in 1878. Both of Torrey’s parents died when he was 21 years old. Following graduation, Torrey became a Congregational minister in Garrettsville, Ohio in 1878, marrying Clara Smith there in October, 1879. From 1881 to 1893, the Torreys had five children.

After further studies of theology at Leipzig University and Erlangen University in 1882–1883, Torrey joined Dwight L. Moody in his evangelistic work in Chicago in 1889, and became superintendent of the Bible Institute of the Chicago Evangelization Society (now Moody Bible Institute). Five years later, he became pastor of the Chicago Avenue Church (now The Moody Church) in 1894.

In 1898, Torrey served as a chaplain with the YMCA at Camp Chicamauga during the Spanish-American War. Later, during World War I, he performed similar service at Camp Bowie (a POW camp in Texas) and Camp Kearny.

During 1902 and 1903, he preached in nearly every part of the English-speaking world, and with song leader Charles Alexander conducted revival services in Great Britain in 1903–1905. During this period, he also visited China, Japan, Australia, and India. Torrey conducted a similar campaign in American and Canadian cities in 1906–1907. Throughout these campaigns, Torrey utilized a meeting style that he borrowed from Moody's campaigns of the 1870s.

On June 20, 1907, he was honored with a Doctorate degree from Wheaton College. In 1912, he served as Dean of Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University) and in 1915, pastor of the Church of the Open Door, Los Angeles.

His last evangelistic meeting was in Florida in 1927. Future planned meetings were canceled due to his failing health. He died at home in Asheville, North Carolina on October 26, 1928, having preached the world over and having left a legacy of over forty books. Torrey Auditorium, for decades the main auditorium at Moody Bible Institute, was named in his honor.

Education & Formation

Torrey was from a wealthy family, and graduated from a private high school in New York at age 14. He had to wait another year to be eligible for college, and then he enrolled at Yale. His family was Christian, and Torrey’s mother wanted him to be a minister, but Torrey planned to become a lawyer. In high school, Torrey contemplated what it would mean to become a professing Christian and a member of the church. As he read the church membership requirements closely, he recognized that to be Christian meant to surrender both will and future plans to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Unwilling to surrender his sovereignty and self-possession, Torrey set aside the question of becoming a member of the Christian church.

Rejecting the claims of Christ apparently took a toll on him. In his junior year at Yale, Torrey, wracked with guilt over his rejection of Christ’s rightful claims, he actually attempted suicide. Unable to find the razor with which he planned to kill himself, he instead fell to his knees and surrendered to Christ; “I dropped on my knees beside the open drawer and promised God that if He would take the awful burden off my heart I would preach the Gospel.”_Citation needed_Torrey autobio suicide His doctrinal views continued to be liberal on many fronts: he doubted the full deity of Christ, and rejected eternal punishment and the inerrancy of Scripture for several more years, but what marked his life from that point on was the absolute surrender to Jesus.

Torrey went on to Yale Divinity School in 1878, and was licensed for ministry in the Congregational church. In one of his early pastorates, Torrey met and married Clara Belle Smith. With his wife and their infant daughter Edith, Torrey resigned his pastorate in order to spend a year doing graduate studies in Germany. Torrey chose very conservative German theological schools, Leipzig and Erlangen, at which to study, and worked though subjects such as Old Testament, apologetics and doctrine. When he returned from Germany, he was decided about investing his life in the work of a pastor.

Early Ministry

In America, Torrey threw himself into his ministry in the new Open Door Church in Minneapolis, and later at The People’s Church. For the next several years, Torrey and his family embraced a life of total dependence on God for financial support, following the model of George Muller’s Life of Faith, not making his needs known to anyone but God. During this time, he solidified his views on baptism (believing immersion to be biblical), experienced divine physical healing, and prayed for a number of people who were also healed by God.

He became increasingly committed to preaching social reform, especially temperance. Torrey held unusual views regarding what the state of the Church should be:

• That revival was the normal state of church life.
• That every church member should be engaged in personal work for the salvation of those around them.
• That denominational differences should be strictly subordinated to a unified effort of all Christian churches in any given city to glorify God and help the community thrive.

In his pastorates after his return from Germany, Torrey pursued all these goals.

Work with D.L. Moody

Torrey first encountered Dwight L. Moody during his time at Yale Divinity School, and had recognized this uneducated former shoe salesman as a man who knew what mattered. When Moody asked Torrey to join him, Torrey subordinated his own ministry to the needs of Dwight Moody for as long as Moody needed him. Torrey drafted a curriculum for the Bible Institute and oversaw the massive evangelistic work connected with the World’s Fair, while pastoring and chairing a number of non-denominational organizations. In his work, Torrey devised new ways of training large numbers of laypeople in Bible knowledge and personal evangelism.

Torrey’s approach to street evangelism is certainly direct, even confrontational. Torrey had pondered the deep mysteries of Christianity, grappled with the whole Bible, led many people to Christ, and seen the work of God in the lives of numerous church members. Torrey believed that a Christian should engage directly with people he meets, quickly discern their spiritual needs, and bring the ideas and words of Scripture to their attention in a definite way. In his training books on evangelism, Torrey emphasized the need for guidance from the Holy Spirit in discerning the needs of people encountered.

When Dwight Moody died in 1899, many Christian leaders felt that a great age of the church had passed away with him. R. A. Torrey, who had as good a claim to being Moody’s second-in-command as anybody, had a different view of the matter. Torrey began preaching that the death of Moody was not a sign that great things were past, but that greater things were coming. Just as the death of Moses was a call for the generation of Joshua to move on to the land of promise, Torrey viewed the death of Moody as a call for the next generation to seek even greater things from God. Along with preaching this message, Torrey began organizing prayer groups to ask God to awaken the church and save the lost.

World-Wide Revivalist

Soon after Moody's death, Torrey received a call to go preach in Australia. Taking with him song-leader Charles Alexander, Torrey began, at age 45, an evangelistic journey that would take him around the world in the next few years. The Torrey-Alexander revival started in Hawaii and Japan, but when Torrey hit Australia, his preaching began to attract enormous crowds. Australia, New Zealand, India, London, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and other European locations experienced revival. Amazingly, "this Torrey-Alexander juggernaut" was in motion during the years immediately before the Welsh Revival of 1904, the Azusa revival of 1906, and the Pyongyang revival of 1907.

One of the keys to Torrey's success was the way he presented himself as intellectually credible and serious, with a message that spoke directly to the mind of his listeners as well as their hearts. He was well educated and respectably dressed; one friend noted that he often wore a tall had, but always spoke as if he were wearing a tall hat.Citation needed The typical R. A. Torrey sermon was a list of reasons or arguments, briskly stated and vigorously argued, driving toward one conclusion. One of the best examples is his sermon, “How God has Blockaded the Road to Hell,” reprinted in his Revival Addresses. He begins thus:

"If any man or woman in this audience is lost, it won’t be God’s fault. God does not wish you to be lost. God longs to have you saved. …God has filled the path of sin –the road that leads to hell—with obstacles. He has made it hard and bitter. … God has filled it full of obstacles, and you cannot go on in it without surmounting one obstacle after another. I am to talk to you tonight about some of the obstacles that God has put in the path of sin and ruin."Citation needed

The rest of the sermon is a list of ways in which God has blockaded the road to sin and hell:

"Number 1. Godly Parents. They are a good influence on you, but you ignore them and seek your own way.

Number 2. Christian influence in your country. It surrounds you on all sides, but you persist in sin.

Number 3. This sermon. It is being spoken in your presence and applied to your conscience. Do not seek to climb over this barricade.

Number 4. The Bible. You know what it says. etc."

After Torrey's sermon, Alexander would lead congregational singing. The typical Alexander hymn was a sentimental Victorian song about heaven, Mother and the old time religion. A song that even Alexander was hesitant to use was “Tell Mother I’ll Be There.” But once he did sing it, the audience responded so powerfully that he made it a normal part of the repertoire. Here are some key lyrics:

When I was but a little child, how well I recollect

How I would grieve my mother with my folly and neglect;

And now that she has gone to Heav’n I miss her tender care:

O Savior, tell my mother I’ll be there!

Tell mother I’ll be there, in answer to her prayer;

This message, blessed Savior, to her bear!

Tell mother I’ll be there, Heav’n’s joys with her to share;

Yes, tell my darling mother I’ll be there.

In the context of an R. A. Torrey sermon, an Alexander song facilitated a great many people responding wholeheartedly to the call of the gospel. The sermon-song combination must have been effective, for it called more than hundred thousand souls to Christ. In many cities, Torrey and Alexander displayed a huge banner that said simply GET RIGHT WITH GOD.

The revival lasted for ten years. After returning to the United States, Torrey founded a retreat center, conducted a number of American revivals, and took a few more trips abroad to preach. After a few years, Torrey settled down to preach, teach, and write. One thing he had learned from the great revival was that preaching the simple gospel message was enough and resisted the temptation to recapture the large numbers of his golden days by any means necessary. Instead, he drew this lesson:

"The Real Gospel, when preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, produces the same effects in individual lives to-day, and in the transformation of families and communities, that it has produced throughout all the centuries since our Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross of Calvary and rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father and poured out His Holy Spirit upon His people. Practical results prove that that Gospel does not even need to be restated, though of course it is desirable to adapt the illustrations and method of argument to the thinking of our own day."Citation needed

"In London, for two continuous months, six afternoons and evenings each week, I saw the great Royal Albert Hall filled and even jammed, and sometimes as many turned away as got in, though it would seat 10,000 people by actual count and stand 2,000 more in the dome. On the opening night of these meetings a leading reporter of the city of London came to me before the service began and said, 'You have taken this building for two consecutive months?' 'Yes.' 'And you expect to fill it every day?' 'Yes.' 'Why,' he said, 'no one has ever attempted to hold two weeks’ consecutive meetings here of any kind. Gladstone himself could not fill it for two weeks. And you really expect to fill it for two months?' I replied, 'Come and see.' He came and he saw."Citation needed

Torrey and Fundamentalism

George Marsden has rightly called Torrey “one of the principal architects of fundamentalist thought.”Citation needed The term “fundamentalism” has taken on a new meaning over the course of the twentieth century; the nineteenth century origins of those institutions were originally brought forth by the conservative evangelical movement for reaffirming fundamentals of the Christian Faith. Taking a view from the nineteenth century, Torrey was a fundamentalist; in fact he and his associates invented fundamentalism as a response to the creeping liberalism of the mainline denominations in the early twentieth century. They formed the interdenominational anti-modernist coalition that contributed to The Fundamentals, a series of twelve small books widely distributed in the second decade of the twentieth century. R. A. Torrey was the final editor of that series, which was financed by oil magnate Lyman Stewart and his brother Milton.

Torrey and Pentecostalism

Torrey's belief that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second act of grace often has him associated with Pentecostalism and its ideas. Torrey denounced certain practices of Pentecostal movements, however, being skeptical of the theatricality of their services, and he was critical of what some called "McPhersonism". However, during most of Torrey's tenure as dean of Biola, the Institute maintained a neutral position towards faith-healing meetings.

The Bible Institute of Los Angeles

Collaborating with his friend T. C. Horton, Lyman Stewart planned to replicate what Moody Bible Institute was accomplishing in Chicago with a similar school in Los Angeles. Stewart and Horton invited R. A. Torrey to come to BIOLA in 1912, and he answered the call, spending twelve years as the figurehead and a dominant intellectual force on campus. One of the conditions of his hire was that BIOLA would enable him to start a non-denominational congregation on the Institute’s premises, and this came into being as the Church of the Open Door, with Torrey as pastor.

Torrey After Biola

In 1924, Torrey left Biola to devote time to other ministry opportunities in the last four years of his life. He died in 1928 and was buried on the grounds of the Montrose Retreat Center which he founded in Pennsylvania.

Torrey's Publications

''Main Article: Torrey's Publications

Torrey was a prolific author, penning books on theology, practical evangelism, and ways to study the Bible.

Related Pages

"The Education of R. A. Torrey" by Kermit Staggers

The Legacy of R. A. Torrey, a 2003 conference held at Biola.

References