Biography
Henry Allan Ironside was born on October 14, 1876, in Toronto, Canada. His father died when he was two years old, and his mother, Sophia, was left to raise him in poverty. They moved to California, where she worked to keep the household together and taught her son the Scriptures. She was a woman of deep faith and made sure that her boy knew the Bible. By the time he was a young teenager, he had read it through many times.
He did not have the benefit of formal schooling past the early grades. He left school young to work and help with the family's needs. Yet he kept reading, studying and memorizing. He had a mind of unusual strength and an appetite for knowledge. He taught himself through the books he could find, and he soon built a wide understanding of Scripture and of church history. He said that what he had was not learning from men but a gift from God.
In his early teenage years he came to faith in Christ, and he spent a period struggling to find assurance. At the age of about fourteen he began to preach. He joined the Salvation Army in Oakland and became an officer, a young man in uniform who preached on street corners and in halls. He spent several years in that work. He sincerely tried to live a holy life and set a high standard. Yet he grew troubled by the teaching of sinless perfection that he met in some quarters, and the struggle brought him deep distress. He found himself unable to meet the standard he was taught. He came through that crisis with a clearer view of grace.
Around 1896 he left the Salvation Army and joined the Plymouth Brethren, an assembly of believers who met simply around the Scriptures without ordained clergy. He became a traveling Bible teacher. For more than thirty years he went through the western United States and Canada, preaching and teaching in halls, tents, churches and on the street. He preached to the poor and the rich and gave his time to anyone who would listen. He was known for his fairness and his patient treatment of difficult passages. He also wrote constantly.
He produced dozens of books and commentaries. His book Holiness: The False and the True, which appeared in 1912, came out of his own struggle. It was a response to the teaching that believers can reach a state free of sin in this life, and it set out what he found in Scripture. He wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, and they were widely used. His writing was simple and direct, and he wrote for the ordinary Christian. He also wrote on prophecy, on church history and on the Christian life.
In 1930 he was invited to become pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. It was a large church in a great city, and he was a man with no formal training and no ordination. Yet he took the pulpit and served there for eighteen years. His Sunday messages drew crowds. He preached the Bible book by book and spoke with clarity. He used humor and personal stories, and he spoke warmly. He was also a frequent radio speaker and traveled widely to teach.
He had his faults. His strong views on certain matters made some of his fellow believers uneasy. He sometimes engaged in controversy and held firm to positions that others thought too rigid. He was also a man who gave himself so completely to the work that his health was often strained. He carried a heavy load of preaching and writing. His wife, Helen, was a steady support through the years.
He died on January 15, 1951, in Cambridge, New Zealand, while on a preaching tour. He was seventy-four years old. His body was brought home and buried in California. His life stands as a witness of what God can do with a poor boy who has a love for the Word. He had no degree and no inherited advantages. He had a Bible, a hunger and a willingness to be used.