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Arthur Richard Crocker was born in 1885 in London, [[England]], and in 1908, was standing on a street corner in Woodstock, [[Ontario]], Canada at the age of 23, and was converted to Christ thru the preaching of a Mr. Lester and a Mr. Brown who later served in Argentina. Crocker was received into fellowship at Brandon, [[Manitoba]] and commended to full-time laboring in the Lord's work among the open brethren (OB) from an assembly at Galt, Ontario. He labored for many years on Manitoulin Island, then in [[Florida]], then his remaining years in Los Angeles, [[California]] where he died in 1955. He married Dinah Higson Crocker (b. 1881 Bolton, England - d. 1969 Tustin, CA).
=Visiting Ministry=
* AA 1936-10: "[[John Monypenny]] had a week's meetings with us. Br. McCrory, Crocker, and Fletcher also called on us. Br. John Ferguson had some meetings. Ministry practical and profitable."
=Testimony=
The following is transcribed from Assembly Annals 1934-4, unrevised notes of address by A.R. Crocker, titled "Our Death With Christ", with main texts Rev. 2:1-6; 1 Kings 22:1-3. ''Italics'' his. Some spellings have been Americanized, editor's choice.
"We have been meditating a little in past nights upon the truths of the death, the burial, and the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I would like to follow that up tonight and apply it to the heart, for there is a tendency to let these old-fashioned, yet nevertheless vital truths slip. The tendency today, as no doubt you will agree with me, is to depart from the simplicity that is in Christ.
I don't know how it was with each of you who are saved. I know how it was with myself when God saved me twenty-five years ago last summer, standing on a street corner in the city of [[Woodstock Gospel Hall, ON|Woodstock]], in [[Ontario]], Canada. Two brethren now laboring in South America (I refer to Mr. Lester and Mr. Brown of the Argentine) were preaching, and as a young man of twenty-three years of age my heart was captivated. "Religious?" Yes, so religious that I was studying for the Episcopal ministry at [https://www.wycliffecollege.ca/ Wycliffe College], yet I knew nothing of the lovely, simple truths, now so well-known to us that we are prone to treat them as commonplace.
For the first time there and then entered into my heart the wonderful, the warm message of the death of Christ, and I well remember how the mingled tears of contrition and joy coursed down my cheeks. The date of the month I do not know. I know it was a Saturday night between the hours of nine and ten o'clock, that my heart was won, was captivated, when for the first time I took in the reason why the Lord Jesus died on that cruel rugged tree. I there and then apprehended that it was for a guilty sinner like me.
I was very simple then and I pray the Lord that whenever I refer to my conversion He will help me to throw my mind back to that occasion so that I may not add twenty-five years of Christian experience to it. Everyone here that is saved, even though you have been saved forty or fifty years, will heartily concur in this remark that you were very simple the night, or the day, that God saved you.
I just drank in the glorious message of the wonderful love of God to me. I know that men thought me mad. Some ridiculed me. Some insulted me, and said very unkind things, such as, "Give him enough rope", and gibes like that. But twenty-five years have rolled over my head since then and I am still here by the grace of God. If I know my own heart, I think the Lord Jesus is more sweet and precious to me than ever He was before.
But at the same time, I ''would'' like to get back to that beautiful simplicity that we found in Christ Jesus when we were saved, not being "simple", but the simplicity that is in Christ. The tendency today is to want new things, big things, prophecy, coming events. All well and good in their place, but God's work, if it is anything at all, is heart work. The Lord Jesus clearly teaches us that, by His words and His life and actions. Never do we see Him performing miracles to make the giddy-eyed populace stare and wonder. Never. Every one of His miracles, without exception, is a moral miracle, heart work.
Now I want to elucidate and emphasize the truth of our death with Christ by asking a question. Young Christian, what did you learn when you were saved? "I learned that Jesus made an end of all my sins." That is good. But I want you to remember this as well, that God then made an end of you. God's estimate of you was that you were no good. You were so bad in His eyes that you were past recovery. Only one thing could He do with you, and that was to put you to death judicially in the person of Jesus Christ.
We said something the other night about a young man I knew who had got saved. He had been saved about six months and it was lovely to hear him pray. I like to hear babes ''lisp''. It is something out of all proportion when hear ''discourses'' from babes. That man was happy, but he came to the prayer meeting one night and his head was hanging down and he looked the picture of misery. I tried to find out the trouble. He said, "While at work today, I hit the wrong nail with my hammer, and something shot out of my mouth. I never thought I would ever say a thing like that after I was saved, but it was out." Now he was wondering if he was saved at all.
"What did you learn when you got saved?" I asked him. "I learned that Jesus had made an end of all my sins by His precious blood. "Well, you are saved all right. Your trouble, young man, is that you are proud." He looked puzzled. "Yes, you are proud. You are giving yourself away. You are looking into your own heart for something good that you will never find there, and that is enough to make you miserable. You are looking in the wrong place."
Not only did Jesus make an end of your sins, but remember this other truth... for it will stabilize you, it will steady you in days to come; it will help you when there is opposition, when you get the sneer and frown from a wicked, cold, Christless world: it will help you to know this... that not only did God make an end of your sins, but He made an end of you. That will help wonderfully.
(To be continued D.V.)"
=Assembly Annals obit=