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H. A. Ironside Books: A Guide to All 7 and Where to Start

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H. A. Ironside (1876–1951) was a self-taught Bible teacher who preached for some sixty years and served as pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago from 1929 to 1948. He wrote more than a hundred books and booklets, most of them plain expositions of books of the Bible. TheWay Library has seven of them, all free to read: two on the Christian life and the Holy Spirit, four on Old Testament books, and one history of the years between the Testaments. For his life story, see who was H. A. Ironside.

Where to start

Start with Holiness: The False and the True. It tells his own story and gives his clearest teaching. Next, read The Mission of the Holy Spirit, five short addresses.

After that, choose by what you're studying:

Ironside reads prophecy from a dispensational, premillennial point of view, and that shapes his books on Daniel and the prophets. Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of H. A. Ironside quotes.

The Christian life and the Holy Spirit

Holiness: The False and the True

The first part is personal. Ironside tells of his conversion at thirteen, his eager search for "the second blessing" as a young Salvation Army officer, the ups and downs of claiming and losing it, and the day he learned that holiness and perfect love are found in Christ, not in himself. The second part teaches sanctification from Scripture: by the Spirit, by the blood of Christ and by the Word. He then looks at phrases used by second-blessing teachers, such as "dead to sin," "perfect love" and "the baptism of fire," and ends with the believer's two natures.

Let a full Christ be preached, a finished work be proclaimed, the truth of the indwelling Spirit be scripturally taught, and all these excrescences disappear.

Holiness: The False and the True, Observations on the Holiness Movement

It's a help to anyone who has struggled to find victory by looking inward. Read Holiness: The False and the True. See also the best Christian books on holiness.

The Mission of the Holy Spirit: Five Addresses (1930)

Five talks on the Spirit's work. The first, on John 16, explains how the Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. The second shows the Spirit's witness to us in Scripture, in us and with our spirit, so that assurance rests first on God's Word. The third covers the believer established, anointed and sealed. The fourth gives three words from Romans 6 for daily victory: reckon, yield, obey. The last surveys the gifts of the Spirit.

It is impossible to be filled with the Spirit if consciously grieving Him.

The Mission of the Holy Spirit, Three Words That Transform Human Lives

Read The Mission of the Holy Spirit. For more on the subject, see the best books on the Holy Spirit.

Old Testament studies

Notes on the Book of Nehemiah

A chapter-by-chapter study of Nehemiah's rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls. Ironside starts with Nehemiah as "an exercised man" who prays before he acts. He gives a long, rich chapter to the gates in Nehemiah 3, finding a spiritual lesson in each. Then come the builders with sword and trowel, the plots of Sanballat and Tobiah, the great Bible-reading under Ezra, confession, the covenant and the dedication of the wall, and a closing warning about how quickly a people slides back. He insists that every true revival rests on the Word.

The believer should be a man holding the even balance of learning from the Word and cultivating the spirit of prayer.

Notes on the Book of Nehemiah, The Word and Prayer

A few chapters are missing their first letter from the scan, but the text reads well. Read Notes on the Book of Nehemiah.

Notes on the Prophecy and Lamentations of Jeremiah (1906)

Short devotional studies through Jeremiah and Lamentations, "jotted down at intervals in a busy life," as he says, and meant to feed the soul more than to settle every question. He follows "the tenderest of all the prophets" from his call through his warnings, the potter's house, his sufferings in prison, King Jehoiakim cutting up the scroll (he calls him "the first destructive critic on record"), the fall of Jerusalem and the flight to Egypt. Five chapters treat Lamentations, ending with "Thou, O Lord, remainest forever."

All God's ways are in righteousness, whether in mercy or in judgment.

Notes on the Prophecy and Lamentations of Jeremiah, Bonds and Yokes

Read Notes on Jeremiah and Lamentations.

Lectures on Daniel the Prophet

Thirteen lectures, first given with a large prophetic chart. Ironside draws from Daniel's refusal of the king's food the heart needed to understand God's mind. He reads the great image of chapter 2 as "the times of the Gentiles," treats the stories of the furnace, Nebuchadnezzar's madness, Belshazzar's feast and the lions' den as pictures of things to come, then works through the four beasts, the seventy weeks, the kings of the north and south, the Antichrist and the time of the end. An appendix answers objections.

Mark you, the only way to go on with God is by being faithful in little things.

Lectures on Daniel the Prophet, The Needed Moral Condition to Know and Understand God's Mind

Read Lectures on Daniel the Prophet. For more on prophecy, see the best Christian books on the Second Coming.

Notes on the Minor Prophets (1909)

Notes on all twelve, from Hosea to Malachi, first written as magazine articles. Chapter by chapter, he explains each prophet's message to Israel, its fulfillment in Christ, and what he sees as still to come in Israel's restoration, with lessons for believers along the way. Hosea's love for his unfaithful wife becomes a picture of grace; Jonah's prayer from the depths, a lesson in God's school.

What more wonderful picture could we have of grace, not only to the undeserving, but to those who had deserved the very opposite?

Notes on the Minor Prophets, Hosea 1: The Blood of Jezreel

This copy came from a damaged scan: about forty-five of its chapters lose their first few words. It's still useful for study, but it's not the place to begin. Read Notes on the Minor Prophets.

Bible history

The Four Hundred Silent Years: From Malachi to Matthew (1914)

A short history of the Jews between the Testaments: the last Persian years, Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies and Seleucids, the Maccabean revolt, the Asmonean kings, and the rise of Herod. A last chapter surveys the Apocrypha and other Jewish writings. Ironside points out how Daniel's prophecies came true in these years, and he draws lessons about human tradition crowding out Scripture.

For there is the constant danger of either setting aside God-given teachers, or else actually allowing their ministry to supersede the Bible.

The Four Hundred Silent Years, The Jews Under Priestly Rule

It's a helpful background book for reading the Gospels. The scan has some misread words. Read The Four Hundred Silent Years.

Why read Ironside today

Ironside writes for the person in the pew. He's clear, he stays close to the text, and he never leaves a passage without pointing to Christ and His finished work. Begin with Holiness: The False and the True, then take one of his Bible studies into your own reading. All seven books are on the H. A. Ironside author page.

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