Myrtlefield House is a Christian publisher whose aim is to deepen love for God’s Word by helping people discover the thought flow and design of the books of the Bible. We are the publishing and resourcing arm of Myrtlefield Trust, a non-profit company that was established in 1986.
You might think the name was chosen because of the myrtle trees in Scripture (Neh. 8:15; Isa. 41:19; 55:13; Zech. 1:8, 10-11), but it was also the name of the street where Professor David Gooding lived. Myrtlefield Park is a leafy, venerable old neighborhood in South Belfast, Northern Ireland. That sounds lovely, but Belfast in the 1980s was not a peaceful place and there was a bomb explosion even on that street. More often though, and in the years since, his home was a quiet refuge out of which flowed a passion for the Word of God and a legacy of biblical exposition that has spread around the world.
To understand what Myrtlefield House is and what we do, you must know something about David Gooding. The way he approached his study and teaching of Scripture and the questions he asked God about His Word, form the core of what we are trying to pass on to future generations.
Who was David Gooding?
David Gooding was a university professor who specialized in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint); a man who served the Lord’s people, in his local assembly at Apsley Hall, Belfast, and around the world; and cared deeply for those who didn’t yet believe the gospel. He was fascinated by God’s creation and especially loved God’s Word. He remained a bachelor but became a spiritual father and mentor to many.
Born in Ipswich in Suffolk, England in 1925, he was the youngest of six siblings and lost his mother to illness when he was nine years old. He was a brilliant student who won several academic awards and a university scholarship; but the onset of the Second World War meant that his studies had to be postponed while he worked for several years as a farm laborer as part of the war effort.
David learned the Scriptures from a young age and accepted Christ as a child of ten, in his bed one night as his father prayed with him. In his late teens he was already being invited to preach in different local assemblies. Eventually he grew tired of studying the Bible simply for the sake of preparing messages for other people. So, one evening, after a day’s work on the farm, he prayed, “Lord, I am not going to preach to anyone else until I know from you that this is your Word; that this really is what you are saying.”
As he persevered in his studies of Luke’s Gospel, he noticed an intentional design to its structure: that the stories recorded by Luke were carefully chosen and arranged to be an integral part of the overall message of the book. He saw that God had carefully designed His Word, and that discovery transformed his understanding of the Bible and became a distinctive feature of his teaching.
When the war ended, he taught Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, while still speaking in local churches and preaching the gospel outdoors and at other outreach events with other Christian students. After completing his PhD, he worked in Durham University for several years before moving to Belfast in 1958. He spent the rest of his career at Queen’s University where he became a rigorous but much-loved Classics professor and a world leading expert on the Septuagint. A variety of Christian publishers printed his expositional books on Luke, Acts, Hebrews, John 13–17, as well as topical books, which Myrtlefield House now publishes.
Throughout those years, he taught the Bible in the UK and Ireland, as well as further afield, and particularly in Spain. After he retired in 1985 Myrtlefield Trust was established to support him in his writing ministry and in his continuing travel across the world, teaching in local churches and encouraging many on the front lines of mission work.
Along with the original Myrtlefield Trustees he travelled to the Soviet Union before and after its fall in 1991. With Dr John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, they taught the Bible and lectured together on the truth of Christianity. They published articles in Russian newspapers explaining the Bible, which later became the books that we publish as “Key Bible Concepts,” “The Definition of Christianity,” and “Christianity: Opium or Truth.” The articles for a teachers’ newspaper became “The Bible and Ethics.” They were then invited by the Russian Ministry of Education to write books on forming a worldview: comparing different religions and philosophies with the Christian faith. These were published as official textbooks in the Russian (and later Ukrainian) school system. They are now published in English, German and Arabic in a series called “The Quest for Reality and Significance,” showing how the Bible asks and answers the hardest questions.
Over the next few decades, David continued to write and to teach the Bible publicly to groups large and small at home and abroad, in Africa, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. He particularly wanted to travel to South America, but that desire was never fulfilled. He also provided private counsel, in person and by letter and phone, until his health declined in the last few years of his life. When the Lord called him home on August 30, 2019, he was just a few weeks short of his ninety-fourth birthday.
Despite his teaching of Scripture having a huge spiritual impact and turning many hearts toward God, David Gooding’s name is not one that most Christians would know. He did not look for that kind of recognition. Even with his great gifts and abilities, he could speak to an intensely practical laborer as well as to a highly intellectual academic. He took a sincere interest in people from all backgrounds and spent his life pointing people beyond himself to the Savior he loved. His desire was to establish others in their faith, and to develop Bible teachers in their study of Scripture. In many ways, he saw his role as like that of John the Baptist: directing attention to the Lord Jesus Christ and not to himself (John 3:27-30).
Myrtlefield’s Purpose
Someone once wrote to Dr Gooding to ask if we should use Bible commentaries, and his answer helps to summarize what we aim to do:
“The importance of serious study of Scripture is, in the first place, a direct waiting upon God, rather than a study of other people’s commentaries. Commentaries are helpful in the second place, and I personally use them constantly. But it seems to me that, since Scripture is the inspired words of the living God, we should approach Scripture with a view to hearing the living God speak to us. The Bible is not just a collection of facts, which we may select at our pleasure and work them up into a sermon. The Bible is the Holy Spirit’s own sermon, and therefore our first duty is to follow the Holy Spirit’s thought flow throughout any one passage, and to ponder the significance of the way He has structured His great sermon, the Bible. Of course, to understand fully the depth, height, length and breadth of God’s revealed Word, we need the help of all the saints; not only to enter fully into all its riches, but also in order to be saved from our own misunderstandings and misconceptions.”
So Myrtlefield exists as one publisher among the many who are seeking to produce resources that are faithful to the Bible while helping people to understand God’s inspired Word for themselves. Our contribution is to use the legacy that Dr Gooding has left us to deepen an appreciation of how the Scriptures were carefully written in an orderly way, with a logical flow of thought that helps to make clear what God intended to say. We want to help people around the world to become convinced in their own hearts and minds that the God of the Bible still speaks today.
Myrtlefield’s Current Work
We publish Dr Gooding’s books and other resources, including his sermons as audio, video, transcript, and podcasts (Biblical Insights with David Gooding); full length books and Bible book overview charts; his academic publications, as well as the books he and John Lennox wrote together. All these resources are available digitally for free. We charge for printed books but give grants wherever necessary whenever we can.
Our aim is to see translations in every language where we discover a need. Some or all of these books are currently available in over twenty different languages, which can be downloaded for free on myrtlefieldhouse.com, mh316.com (low bandwidth), and myrtlefieldespanol.com. Currently, we have thirty ongoing foreign language projects at various stages of completion, with translators in different parts of the world.
All of this is done by a small team: two full-time and four part time staff, three volunteers and four trustees, as well as a director of the US non-profit organization—and we’re grateful for every one of them.
What Next?
Lord willing, we will keep on producing different kinds of resources on various books of the Bible. We have begun to create study and teaching aids for local churches and for individuals at different stages of spiritual maturity and with varying levels of aptitude. David Gooding’s material will remain the central hub, and we are continuing to edit more of his sermons and unpublished manuscripts.
We would like to see these resources reach as widely as the Lord wants them to, both in English and in translation, to help those who appreciate them to reach the next generation of Bible students and teachers. Our aim is to provide this current generation with books and other media resources and then gather their insights and feedback on what has been most helpful. Our next steps will be in four areas of activity: editing the archive to produce books on the books of the Bible; creating a study suite with teaching aids in English and in translation, using all media options to teach and to reach widely; communicating with a network of existing users to fine tune the resources we create in English and in translation. And finally, translating these books and other resources.
Whatever else the Lord chooses to do with David Gooding’s legacy of teaching in years to come, the true measure of its value should be judged by the questions that he would have asked: “Have I helped you to see Christ Himself? Do you see Him for yourself more clearly now?” The desire to see Jesus Christ rejoicing over us, His bride, and to witness people becoming His and discovering for themselves the wonders of His love, is what should bring all servants of Christ their greatest joy.
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