History
THE OLD FASHIONED BAPTIST HOUR
“The Old Fashioned Baptist Hour” was a radio ministry of Fundamental Baptist Church in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Pastor Samuel Dempster had been sent to Kingston, Ontario by Jarvis Street Baptist Church, as a missionary, church planter, founding Fundamental Baptist Church. Several years earlier he had founded Bethsada Baptist Church in Delhi, Ontario. Prior to that Samuel and his wife Mary moved from Belfast Northern Ireland to Canada as missionaries, sent out by Belfast City Missions, to minister in Melita and Emerson Manitoba. Pastor Dempster engaged in numerous ministries, such as, door to door evangelism, home bible studies, church services, a church magazine and this radio ministry, which was live from CKWS 1380, in Kingston. The limited resources of those days resulted in limited radio time. The Internet has allowed the family to give the preaching and teaching ministry of the late Pastor Dempster to the entire world.
Pastor Dempster would often tell me that he had been called by the Lord at an early age to preach the Unsearchable Riches of Christ. Never interested in financial reward, he would have preached for nothing, and often did. He was a gifted preacher, teacher and pastor often saying, “My task is to exalt and lift up Christ,” may I never preach a man oriented gospel.” The statement of faith at the church he founded was “The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.”
These sermons and services are being placed on the internet as an answer to a prayer request from Mary Dempster, 1917 - , who is suffering in a nursing home with severe dementia. In December 2008, she asked that the Lord would give her someone to witness to. I can say with firm conviction that next to the Lord Jesus Christ, mom was a driving force behind dad’s ministry. Although the quality of the tapes which, were taken out of the church attic have deteriorated over the years, they have been changed to this new MP 3 format. The quality of some tapes is obviously better than others. These sermons are also available on CD, which also is in an MP 3 format. Each CD contains 20 complete services. As additional tapes are converted to MP 3 format, they will be added to this web site. Over the years, it is my intention to upgrade these services by having all of the white noise removed. It has been a great pleasure and of much spiritual benefit for me to have listened to all of the sermons that have been placed on this site. The photographs are of Samuel and Mary when they began as Missionary’s to Canada and the year that Pastor Dempster retired due to poor health.
The purpose of this Internet Ministry is to glorify God, build up and edify his saints and witness to the lost. May Christ be lifted up!
Send any request for CD’s of these sermons to JohnandPennyDempster@hotmail.com, attention John Dempster.
Any broadcast or reproduction of the (sermons unaltered) having as its object the spread of the Gospel is encouraged. Commercial use or printed reproduction without permission is EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN.
Yours in Christ
John Dempster
OLD TIME BAPTIST HOUR - FOREWORD
The ministry of Sam Dempster Jr. (1923-1994), who founded Bethesda Baptist Church in Delhi, Ontario, Canada and Bath Road Baptist Church in Kingston, Ontario, can be traced back to the 1800s with the birth of Samuel Dempster Senior in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1890. Samuel Sr. became a believer in 1923, under the ministry of W.P. Nicholson, the great Irish Evangelist , in the Great Belfast Revival. He had married Annie Lonsdale in 1919, after the war and they settled in Belfast, on 44 Excise Street. Samuel served in World War I and was distinguished with a Meritorious Service Medal for bravery, when he prevented a rope bridge from falling into enemy hands and saved a soldier, who had fallen on the bridge having been wounded by enemy fire. Samuel and Annie had two children shortly after the war, Margaret and Samuel Jr., who was born on Sept 28, 1923.
Sam Jr. grew up in the Anglican Church, but had no real experience with the Lord until he was 14 years old when he gave his heart to the Lord at a Boy’s Brigade meeting at the Great Victoria Street Baptist Church. It was a day he would never forget. At the time Sam was something of an athletic prodigy, having won five international caps for Northern Irish soccer teams at the position of centre-half. There used to be a saying on teams he played with: “bacon, eggs and ham, slip it to Sam.” His sports prowess became known throughout Belfast and Northern Ireland, and it grew as he got older. He distinguished himself on the famed Distillery and Bally-Clare teams, and played with the likes of the legendary Jimmy MacAlinden of Distillery.
When WW II broke out, Sam was too young to join the army so he enlisted in the Belfast Fire Brigade. There he distinguished himself in fighting the fires that resulted from the bombing of Belfast. Belfast was a strategic target for the Germans because of the shipyard, from which merchant and military ships were launched. The night Coventry was flattened by the Germans, Sam was there, but he almost lost his life in a burning paint factory. One of his fellow fire-fighters carried him after he became unconscious from the toxic fumes.
While he was working at one of the Belfast fire stations, he met Mary Graham, who worked on the telephone lines as a dispatcher, sending out calls to various teams throughout Belfast, directing them to the various locations in the city where fires were raging. From day one, Sam knew she was a Christian. They began dating and after about a year, Sam proposed to Mary and they began to plan their life together.
It was very obvious that the Lord came first not only in their individual lives but also in their marriage. After the war, they studied at Belfast Bible College which was on the Lisburn Road, close to Dunmurry Cross Roads in the capital city of Northern Ireland. From there they planned to do mission work in Syria after graduating. When they graduated, they became members of the Belfast City Mission Society and were soon ready to go overseas.
At the same time as they were studying, Sam was distinguishing himself as a superb centre- half for the Distillery Football Club. He would often be away on weekends playing throughout the North and the South of Ireland. After graduating from Bible School and preparing to head overseas, an incredibly lucrative contract to play with Sunderland, a Division II team in England was offered to Sam. He was offered 10,000 pounds, an amazing amount of money at the time. Sam would later tell one of his friends , “It was like the old devil offering all the kingdoms of the world to keep me from doing the Lord’s work.” Needless to say Sam and Mary decided against this option.
Around this time, Sam and Mary had their first child, Sam Dempster III, and the young family stayed in Ireland for another 2 years before they headed overseas, this time to Canada instead of Syria. The latter country had become closed because of political problems in the Middle East after World War II. The Dempsters’ first church was a Presbyterian Church in Melita Manitoba ,in 1948. It was during this year that their second child was born, Marie Elizabeth. Mrs. Dempster experienced quite a lot of difficulty with childbirth and was sick for months afterwards, but testified to a divine messenger, who appeared to her and told her that all would be well. The next day after the appearance of this heavenly figure, Mary Dempster began to get well. Within days she was restored completely.
The Dempsters moved to Emerson in 1950 where they served the Baptist church there. Samuel had left the Presbyterian Church over the issue of infant baptism, being convinced from the Scriptures that it was unbiblical. They endeared themselves to the community there and saw real fruit for their labours. Sam also had a tremendous influence on other pastors some of whom came to know Jesus under his ministry. Two notable ones were Les Tarr, who later became a distinguished author and journalist, and Reg Brown, who would become a passionate preacher.
While in Emerson Sam injured his back severely and needed a spinal fusion. This was in the days before Medicare, so without money and without insurance, the young family was in dire need. While in hospital in Winnipeg, Mary and the children moved backed to Melita to avoid the Red River Flood of that year. While in hospital in Winnipeg, Sam received the Gospel Witness and heard many good reports about a fiery Toronto Baptist preacher, Dr. T.T. Shields, who was dead set against liberalism, which was creeping into the churches. Around this time Sam and Mary decided to go to Toronto to study under this preacher at an educational institution he had founded, Toronto Baptist Seminary. It was there that Sam received more education and a lot of compassion, for the Jarvis Street Baptist Church, which paid his medical bills for a spinal fusion!
While at TBS, Sam had a chance to launch a fledgling work in Delhi, Ontario. There began the work of Bethesda Baptist Church, and the Dempsters’ third child, Stephen Graham, was born. The Dempsters resided in Delhi for a few years but under the direction of Dr. T.T. Shields and Dr. H.C. Slade they felt the call to serve the Regular Baptist Denomination, by founding another church in Kingston, Ontario. There they met with a number of families who were sympathetic to the establishing of a church in this city. They soon developed the motto, “The church in the heart of Kingston with Kingston on its heart.” During this formative period, the Dempsters were blessed with two more children, Jonathan Christian in 1954 and David Forbes in 1956.
While at Kingston, the church had begun to grow. The congregation met first in the Liberal Hall and then the Orange Hall on Princess Street. It was soon averaging an attendance of 200. A campaign was launched to build and a new church building on the Bath Road on what was then the outskirts of Kingston was completed and officially opened in 1962. The new church was named Fundamental Baptist Church. The name was chosen as a means to stress the importance of the Fundamentals of the Faith. It was to be a bastion of historic orthodoxy, by emphasizing the same elements that theologians at the beginning of the twentieth century had stressed in order to highlight the difference between historic, orthodox Christianity and its liberal counterparts.
The church grew in fits and starts in its new building, but a strong teaching and preaching ministry was established. Over the years the church began to be known for its adherence to the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace. But this was matched with a genuine interest in evangelism, pastoral care and social outreach. Much of this was accomplished while Sam was a tentmaker, working as a photographer, to help make ends meet while he preached the gospel with his life during the week and with his lips on the weekends. It was not accidental that Sam loved both of these occupations: photography and theology. He was constantly trying to achieve the proper focus through the lens of the camera and through the lens of life.
Sam would say about his preaching, that he was an Ambassador for Christ and as such he was called to preach a Christ-Centered Gospel, not a man-oriented gospel. Many of the sermons that are published on this website bear witness to a mind deeply rooted in the Bible itself, widely informed in the secondary literature surrounding the Bible, and a concern above all to glorify and exalt Jesus Christ. One of his favourite hymns was Charles Wesley’s “Christ whose glory fills the skies”:
Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only Light,
Sun of Righteousness, arise,
Triumph o’er the shades of night;
Dayspring from on high, be near;
Day-star, in my heart appear.
Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by Thee;
Joyless is the day’s return
Till Thy mercy’s beams I see;
Till thy inward light impart,
Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.
Visit then this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;
Fill me, Radiancy divine,
Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more Thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
Sam went to be with his beloved Master, February 7, 1994, while his dearly cherished Mary was reading a passage from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Readings that was so appropriate. If you read Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening for that date you will be amazed. In Revelation 4, John the Apostle heard the call to “Come up hither” and he was immediately transported to heaven. Sam went to heaven, where his legacy continues to be written below in the ministry of Bath Road Baptist Church, and in the hearts and lives of many who believed in the Master under his ministry. His wife Mary, continues to be faithful to the Lord to this day, and is often sustained in her faith by listening to the voice of her husband preaching the Unsearchable Riches of Christ, on a tape recorder. Most recently Mary asked her son, Jonathan, to share at the church prayer meeting, as a prayer request, that the Lord would send her someone to whom she could be a witness. This website is an answer to that prayer request. May these recordings bless those who hear them, may they be used of God to save the lost, build up the faithful and Exalt and Magnify the Lord Jesus Christ. In the words of the Exalted Christ, “He who is dead yet speaketh.” May the benediction with which Pastor Dempster closed every church service be true in all those who listen to his words: “And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Ghost, rest remain and abide on all those that love Him and until we see thee face to face, and tell the story, saved by Sovereign Grace. Amen.”
Dr. Stephen G Dempster PHD
A CHURCH IS BORN! WRITTEN BY PASTOR SAMUEL DEMPSTER
http://www.divshare.com/download/7193218-6fe View Here
THE KING’S BUSINESS - AN EARLY CHURCH MAGAZINE - ONE
http://www.divshare.com/direct/7193276-349.PDF
THE KING’S BUSINES - AN EARLY CHURCH MAGAZINE - TWO
http://www.divshare.com/download/7193542-5bd
THE KING’S BUSINESS - AN EARLY CHURCH MAGAZINE - THREE
http://www.divshare.com/download/7193699-afa
THE KING’ S BUSINESS - AN EARLY CHURCH MAGAZINE - FOUR
http://www.divshare.com/download/7193716-0d0 VIEW HERE