The Greatest Fight in the World

There was a mouse who gathered around a number of mice and said to them, "Let me commend to you an elephant. What seems a tree trunk on our right is actually one of his legs and he has three others just like this. His nose from top to bottom is as long as thirty mice end to end. His skin is so tough that we'd break our teeth trying to gnaw it. When he makes a noise it shatters your ear drums. He is so tall I cannot see the top of his head. So be aware of this extraordinary being; be respectful and get out of his way when he walks by because we are so tiny he won't notice us. But he will never knowingly hurt us. He feeds on grass and leaves. He is benign and good. This is the elephant, the king of the jungle." So it is when any preacher today is asked to commend a book of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's. A mouse is going to commend an elephant. We will add nothing at all to his reputation. He is simply utterly immense in his preaching, his energy, the size of his heart, his generosity and humour, his love for God, his discernment and wisdom. Read anything of his, and these addresses towards the end of his life are as good a place to begin to learn about one of God's true giants as any of his writing, and never stop reading him.

-- Geoff Thomas (Conference Speaker and author, Aberystwyth, Wales)

Always a wordsmith, Mr. Spurgeon leverages the power of language in this volume for spiritual motivation like nowhere else.

-- Rick Holland (Senior Pastor, Mission Road Bible Church, Kansas City, Kansas)

It is a jeremiad overladen with a sense of having been defeated for the moment, bloodied, but finally unbowed, and confident that truth will rebound to take a firmer grasp on the people of God than ever.

-- Tom Nettles (Senior Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky)

The Greatest Fight in the World by Charles Spurgeon, like William Gurnall's The Christian in Complete Armor is not so much an example of expository preaching but a vivid and Biblical body of divinity describing the Gospel saturated life of the church in general and the Christian in particular who desires to serve Christ faithfully 'in the world' but not be 'of the world'. Christian Focus has, once again, provided for us another asset to fulfill our Savior's Great Commission - '...to make disciples...'

-- Harry L. Reeder III ((1948 – 2023) Senior Pastor, Briarwood Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama)

This sparkling and startling address... is perhaps the most rousing call to gospel arms you will ever encounter. If you can read it without being profoundly stirred, I strongly suggest you seek urgent spiritual help.

-- Jonathan Stephen (Principal, Wales Evangelical School of Theology, Bridgend, Wales)

The clarity and power of the themes... were timely then, and they seem just as timely today.

-- Mark Dever (Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church and President, 9Marks.org, Washington,