Elder John Newton Hall

February 5, 1849 - December 4, 1905

 

Born in Pleasureville, Kentucky, John Newton Hall was the son of William E. and Elizabeth Hall.  At the age of fourteen, Hall made a profession of faith and was "baptized by the authority of Cane Run [Baptist] Church, Ballard county [sic], Kentucky."  He was licensed to preach (January, 1871) and ordained (January, 1872) by the Hopewell Baptist Church of Ballard County, Kentucky.  Most of his preaching was confined to the country and small towns. According to Bogard, Hall averaged preaching one sermon a day for over twenty years, thus "making not less than ten thousand sermons during his ministry of thirty [odd] years."

Hall's preaching resulted in "hundreds" of professions of faith.  Although he never attended college, Hall was a student at Milburn Academy, Milburn, Kentucky, ("a Campbellite school") for three years.

On July 6, 1871, Hell married Miss Mollie Earl.  Three children were born to this couple. Mrs. Mollie Hall died December 12, 1899.  Hall's second marriage was with Miss Lillian J. Smith of Trezevant, Tennessee, August 8, 1900.

The Rev J. N. Hall a well known Baptist preacher and editor of the American Baptist Flag was married at Fulton to Miss Lily Smith of Trezevant Tenn.  The wedding took place at a Baptist baptizing where the preacher had just baptized seven converts.  As he came up out of the water Miss Smith met him near the water's edge and Dr J. B. Moody solemnly pronounced the ceremony of marriage.

Debates
h	1894: Elder Lemuel Potter (Primitive Baptist) vs. Elder J. N. Hall (Missionary Baptist), at Rock Springs Church, Fulton Co., Kentucky.

John Newton Hall

Hall is also a pivotal figure because he represents graphically the Landmarkism of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  According to J. H. Grime in 1898, Hall was "the J. R. Graves of the South and [his paper] the FLAG was the landmark paper of the South."  Similarly, W. F. Lowe declared: "When J. R. Graves died the mantle fell on J. N. Hall."  He clearly felt that he was walking in the theological footsteps of the "Great Triumvirate," for he stated that "the sainted Graves, Dayton and Pendleton fought for and established the scriptural land-marks of the Baptist faith. . .  Hall was proud to be a Landmarker.  He advertised in one of his books that "The American Baptist Flag. . . is an aggressive Landmark Baptist paper, and is not ashamed nor afraid to speak its sentiments."  In answer to the question "What is Baptist Landmarkism?" Hall replied:

It is a simple, unflinching faithfulness to Baptist principles. . .  It announces that Baptists are capable of carrying out their Lord's commission in all of its details without calling in the help of others.  A Landmark Baptist does his own preaching, his own baptizing, manages his own church affairs, uses his own pulpit, and does not ask or need the aid of any other preacher, of any other denomination, to help him do the work. . . . In his [i.e., a Landmark preacher's] estimation there is but one true church, organized by the Lord, endowed with perpetual life, with the promise of ultimate triumph, commanded to glorify God in all ages, with full authority to preach the gospel, and administer the ordinances, and government the Lord ordained, and with unbroken continuity reaching back to the days of John's ministry.

He wondered why anyone would "have . . . a determined opposition to Landmark Baptists," for

Landmark Baptists are plainly and only such Baptists as stand invariably by what all Baptists preach as truth.  Is it right for Baptists to baptize?  Then it is always right.  It is right for them to ordain their own ministers, use their own pulpits, observe the Supper among themselves?  Then it is always, everywhere, and invariably right for them so to do.  That is all a Landmark Baptist does.  He is simply a Baptist all the time, and in every place.

Landmarkism