Preaching Thunder and Lightning

Speaking of the "God-given liveliness and authority" that used to be called unction, J. I. Packer gives this tribute to Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

There was in the Doctor's preaching thunder and lightning that no tape or transcription ever did or could capture—power, I mean, to mediate a realization of God's presence. . . . Nearly forty years on, it still seems to me that all I have ever known about preaching was given me in the winter of 1948-49, when I worshipped at Westminster Chapel with some regularity. Through the thunder and lightning, I felt and saw as never before the glory of Christ and of his gospel as modern man's only lifeline and learned by experience why historic Protestantism looks on preaching as the supreme means of grace and of communion with God. Preaching, thus viewed and valued, was the centre of the Doctor's life: into it he poured himself unstintingly; for it he pleaded untiringly. Rightly, he believed that preachers are born rather than made, and that preaching is caught more than it is taught, and that the best way to vindicate preaching is to preach. . . . 

I have never known anyone whose speech communicated such a sense of the reality of God as did the Doctor in those occasional moments of emphasis and doxology. Most of the time, however, it was clear, steady analysis, reflection, correction and instruction, based on simple thoughts culled from the text, set out in good order with the minimum of extraneous illustration or decoration. 

—J. I. Packer, Honoring the People of God: Collected Shorter Writings on Christian Leaders and Theologians (Vancoover: Regent College Publishing, 1999), 84-85.