LIFE CHANGING SERMONS BIOGRAPHIES
We are excited about the publication of this new series of sermons on audio. The term
“preach” and “preaching” are used at least 129 times in the New Testament. “For after
that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
The messages we have selected are indeed “Life Changing.” These are messages that
have had a great influence in our own Christian lives. This is true for all of the sermons
that we are publishing, but it is especially true for the messages by Bruce Lackey, J.B.
Buffington, M.H. Reynolds, James Crumpton, Donald Waite, and Ron Comfort.
These men are as different from one another as can be. Doctrinally they are very close,
but in spiritual gifting, personality, demeanor, and emphasis they are individuals. God
uses different kinds of men to accomplish His purposes, and we should refuse to be
caught up in personality cults and rather appreciate and glean from a variety of men, as
long as they are faithful to Jesus Christ and His Word.
We also do not idolize these men, and we are thankful that they do not desire nor seek
idolization. The Bible teaches us “not to think of men above that which is written, that no
one of you be puffed up for one against another” (1 Cor. 4:6), and we take that seriously.
These are humble men who know their limitations and who seek to glorify Jesus Christ
and not their own selves. These preachers are like John the Baptist, who said of Christ,
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
I do not think these men are anything like perfect. They are sinners saved by grace; they
are probably wrong in some of their positions. But they also are men gifted by the Lord;
men who have labored to develop those gifts and to be faithful and fruitful for their
Master in a needy world and in an exceedingly destitute and apostate hour in history.
The following are biographical sketches of these men and some of the other preachers
included on Way of Life’s “Life Changing Sermons” series.
CDS IN THIS SERIES
CD-MP3-001 Lackey, Bruce - Miscellaneous (27 sermons)
CD-MP3-002 Lackey, Bruce - Colossians (36 sermons)
CD-MP3-003 Lackey, Bruce - Galatians (39 sermons)
CD-MP3-004 Lackey, Bruce - Ruth Philippians James Jude (41 sermons)
CD-MP3-005 Buffington, J.B. - Encouragement (16 sermons)
CD-MP3-006 Buffington, J.B. - Christian Living (26 sermons)
CD-MP3-007 Crumpton, James (17 sermons)
CD-MP3-008 Comfort, Ron (19 sermons)
CD-MP3-009 Sermons From the Past (60 sermons)
CD-MP3-010 The Bible Version Issue
CD-MP3-011 Warnings Against Ecumenism
FRED BROWN (1909-1992) was a Baptist evangelist for 60 years. He was saved at age
seven in an old-fashioned Presbyterian camp meeting after hearing a
sermon on hell. At age 19 he surrendered to the call of God to preach the
Gospel. Looking back later in life he described this experience: “Hell
was so real I could smell the fumes from the pit and hear the screams of
the dying; and I could see myself and the worm, and the fire there is not
quenched.” He was a staff evangelist at Highland Park Baptist Church in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. His wife, Donella, chaired the music
department at Tennessee Temple for 15 years until her death in 1983.
J.B. BUFFINGTON, a Baptist pastor and Bible conference preacher, was born in 1923
and was born again in the spring of 1942. He was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corp and
flew B-17 bombers in World War II. He was called to preach in 1947
and attended Tennessee Temple College and Seminary, receiving a
Master of Divinity degree in 1956. He pastored churches in Tennessee
and Georgia before accepting the pastorate of Calvary Baptist Church
in Lakeland, Florida, in 1963, where he enjoyed a long and fruitful
ministry until his retirement in 1993. He and his wife Betty have five
children and eight grandchildren. I was born and raised in Lakeland;
and we were members of Calvary Baptist Church when we went to the
mission field in February 1979, and Brother Buffington was our pastor.
They gave us the last $500 we needed for our tickets to Nepal, and we were one of the
181 missionary projects that Calvary Baptist supported from 1979 to 1993. Each month
we received Pastor Buffington’s sermons from the church on audiocassette. When we
returned to Nepal in 2001, we were surprised to learn that these cassettes were still in
storage and that most of them were still usable. Brother Buffington has traveled with an
itinerant preaching ministry since his retirement in 1993; and we were delighted when he
gave us permission to use the sermons that had been stored for all of those years in Nepal.
On November 18, 2003, he wrote, “Feel free to publish the ten sermons and any other
that you have. I praise the Lord for your faithfulness in writing and in your ministry here
and Nepal. It is wonderful about the number of churches increasing! Give my regards to
your wife and children. Praise the Lord for your children being missionaries!!!! May the
Lord continue to use you and your family!” Brother Buffington’s messages are especially
effective for spiritual encouragement and strength during trials, for building godly homes,
for motivating the saint to fruitful Christian service. The messages are filled with
Scripture, with practical teaching, and with bold exhortation. Those who listen to these
sermons humbly will be better husbands, better wives, better servants, better soul
winners, more zealous for holiness and spiritual fruit.
MARK CAMBRON (1912-2000) was Dean of the Bible School at Tennessee Temple
until 1961, when he founded The Seaside Mission in Kissimmee, Florida, to reach Jewish
people. He was also Vice President of the Florida Bible College in Hollywood, Florida.
RICHARD CLEARWATERS (1900-1996) was a Baptist pastor and educator and a
fundamentalist leader. When he was one year old, his parents moved from Kansas to
homestead in the newly opened territory of Oklahoma. In exchange for establishing a
residence for five years and developing the land the Clearwaters family obtained 160
acres and for many years lived in a dugout with boarded sides. Richard attended a oneroom schoolhouse that housed eight grades together. In 1907 the family moved to
Washington and purchased an 80-acre farm. At age 16, Richard ran away from his
Christian parents to Canada and lived there for five years as a “prodigal son.” When his
mother providentially learned of his whereabouts, she wrote a letter asking him to return
home; she included the words from Proverbs 13:15, “The way of the transgressors is
hard.” Richard promised to return “for a short time,” but by God’s grace he was
converted to Christ during a revival meeting at the Moran Prairie Methodist Church in
Spokane, Washington. After the meeting had gone two weeks no one had been saved and
a snowstorm threatened to close the services, but the leaders felt God wanted them to
extend the meeting for one more week. As a result Richard Clearwaters and a teenaged
girl named Wilma Goodrich were saved. Soon thereafter God called Richard to preach
when he heard his mother singing “The Ninety and Nine” and he submitted his life to
God’s program of evangelism. He attended Moody Bible Institute, then Northern Baptist
Theological Seminary, Kalamazoo College in Michigan, and Chicago University. In
January 1940 he took the pastorate of the Fourth Baptist Church of Minneapolis,
Minnesota, where he stayed until his retirement in 1982. Clearwaters was opposed to
theological liberalism and became the first president of the Conservative Baptist
Association in 1943. The group was formed as a fundamentalist alternative to the liberal
Northern Baptist Convention. Clearwaters organized the Central Baptist Theological
Seminary in 1956.
RON COMFORT is a Baptist evangelist who has traveled widely across North America
and other parts of the world and is also the founder of Ambassador Baptist College in
Lattimore, North Carolina. Dr. Comfort grew up in a Roman Catholic family and was
saved at age 15 during a citywide evangelistic meeting in
Asheville, North Carolina. He has been in evangelism
since 1961 and has preached in well over 1,000 crusades.
He founded Ambassador Baptist College in 1989 with the
express purpose of training men and women in full-time
Christian service. It is described as “an old-fashioned,
preacher training college.” I first heard Dr. Comfort when I
was a brand new Christian in 1973 and then many other
times as a student at Tennessee Temple from 1974-1977.
He preached at Highland Park Baptist Church in
Chattanooga frequently, and I loved his energetic, Biblefilled preaching from the first time I heard him. On
occasions he would visit the dorm students and give words
of wisdom to the preacher boys. In those days he was going blind with some sort of
degenerative eye disease and he was memorizing large portions of Scripture so that he
could continue to preach regardless of what happened with his physical sight. One of his
challenges to the Bible school students was to memorize Scripture. I am one who took
that challenge and memorized hundreds of verses beyond that which we were given as
class assignments. The last time I saw him was 25 years later, in Singapore in 2002, and
when I asked him if he is still memorizing Scripture, he replied, “Yes, definitely.” That is
consistency! Another of his challenges to Bible school students in the 1970s was to be
scripturally balanced, in doctrine and in practice. That is one of the things that has always
attracted me to Brother Comfort. He preaches the Word of God straight and without
apology but also with love and graciousness. He preaches boldly against error, but he also
strives for the unity of the brethren insomuch as it lieth in him. I do not agree with him on
every point in that realm, believing, for example, that he could be more outspoken against
this or that man or for this or that issue; but I have a great respect for his desire to be
scripturally balanced. This is a characteristic of the Bible College that he established in
North Carolina. It holds many good and important scriptural positions but it is also
characterized by a gracious Christian attitude. Too, it is not a man-centered institution, as,
sad to say, some of the independent Baptist schools are. Brother Comfort is highly
respected there but he is not idolized and he would not accept idolization. That is why I
encouraged my youngest son to attend Ambassador when he graduated from high school
in 2000, and I have not been disappointed.
JAMES CRUMPTON, a Baptist pastor and missionary statesman, was born in 1918 and
born again in 1935 at age 17. He was an excellent baseball player in his teen years and
could have pursued a career in the professional leagues, but God called him to preach
instead. He attended New Orleans Baptist Theological
Seminary from 1939 to 1944 and began pastoring Westside
Baptist Church in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1941, while still a
student. He pastored the same church for more than 50
years. He left the Southern Baptist Convention in about 1960
because of liberal theology in the schools and the
unscriptural missions program whereby the churches did not
have direct contact with the missionaries. He started
Maranatha Baptist Mission in 1961 to support independent
Baptist missionaries. The first missionary that went out
through Westside Baptist Church and Maranatha Baptist
Mission was Mel Rutter, who later became the vice
president of the mission. Through the years under Dr.
Crumpton’s ministry, Westside Baptist Church saw 84 preachers and missionaries go out
into the Lord’s harvest. By the early 1990s, Maranatha Baptist Mission had 200
missionaries in 40 countries. Dr. Crumpton was forced to retire in 1999 due to poor
health. Dr. Crumpton was a great blessing to me as a young preacher. We were
missionaries with Maranatha until 1983, when the Lord led us to conduct our ministry
directly out of Tri County Baptist Church in Katy, Texas. When we first visited Natchez
in 1978 to consider Maranatha, we were treated royally and with great Christian kindness
even though we were “nobodies” and were “as poor as church mice.” We arrived in
Natchez in our old automobile that a hillbilly friend in Tennessee had given us when we
were married two years earlier, and we barely had a penny to our name. In those days we
lived from hand to mouth and were totally dependant upon the love offerings of churches
or the generosity of believers to get us from one place to another. We were invited to stay
in the home of the late Mel Rutter, and we were delighted to be given a tour of Natchez
by this old Southern gentleman. As we were leaving, Dr. Rutter said, “Don’t forget, son,
to be as firm as the rock in your position and as sweet as the honey from the rock in your
disposition.” That was wonderful advice. We had to look in several places to find some
of Dr. Crumpton’s sermons. On Nov. 24, 2003, my secretary Lisa Cross wrote: “I’ve
been working on this. Maranatha referred me to Dotty Lindsay (Dr. Crumpton’s
daughter) in Texas. I spoke with her and her mother, Mrs. Crumpton, on the phone today.
Dotty has power of attorney and granted permission for you to use Dr. Crumpton’s
sermons. She will send permission in writing with the sermon ‘Jesus.’ The other titles I
am still trying to track down. Mrs. said that Sammy Allen would have a lot of her
husband’s sermons, so I will be getting in touch with him. Dr. Crumpton has
Alzheimer’s, and Mrs. is being treated for cancer. She said she knows exactly who you
are and you can do what you like with the sermons!” Dr. Crumpton’s sermon on “Jesus”
is truly a classic.
M. R. DEHAAN (1891-1965) was a medical doctor when he was called to preach. He
gave up his medical practice, attended Western Theological Seminary in Holland,
Michigan, and pastored two churches in Grand Rapids. In 1938 he founded the Radio
Bible Class, which grew rapidly and was eventually broadcast on 600 stations around the
world. He authored 25 books and numerous booklets and published the Our Daily Bread
monthly devotional guide.
DAVID OTIS FULLER (1903-1988). D.O. Fuller was saved at age 13 or 14 during a
Chapman-Alexander (Wilbur Chapman and Charles Alexander) evangelistic meeting in
Asheville, North Carolina. He graduated from Wheaton College
and then from Princeton Theological Seminary with a Master of
Divinity degree. He was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree by
Dallas Theological Seminary. One of his teachers at Princeton
was Robert Dick Wilson, who was fluent in 45 languages and
who dedicated his linguistic talent to the defense of the Bible
against theological modernism. While at Princeton Dr. Fuller
became convinced of the Baptist position as opposed to
Presbyterian and was baptized in the First Baptist Church of New
York City by Dr. I.M. Haldeman. At the time First Baptist was a
stronghold of biblical fundamentalism. Fuller’s first pastorate was Chelsea Baptist church
in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and he led the church out of the Northern Baptist
Convention because of modernism and compromise. In 1934 Fuller became the pastor of
Wealthy Street Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he pastored for the
next 40 years. Shortly before Fuller arrived in Grand Rapids, Wealthy Street had helped
establish the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, which was founded as a
fundamentalist and a separatist organization. Dr. Fuller was on the GARBC’s Council of
14 for many years, and The Baptist Bulletin, which is the official voice of the GARBC,
was founded at Wealthy Street. Fuller was on the board of the Association of Baptists for
World Evangelism for 52 years and was a trustee of Wheaton College for 40 years.
(When I asked Dr. Fuller in a letter in about 1983 how he could be on the board of a New
Evangelical institution like Wheaton while at the same being associated with
fundamentalist institutions, he took offense and threatened to cut off our correspondence!
He never answered me on that one.) Fuller founded the Grand Rapids Baptist Institute at
Wealthy Street. It was a ministry of the church for about 15 years, when it came under
the auspices of the GARBC and became the Grand Rapids Baptist College. Today it has
moved far from its staunch fundamentalist heritage and is called Cornerstone College. In
1942 Dr. Fuller co-founded the Children’s Bible Hour with “Uncle” Charlie Vandermeer
and for 33 years was its chairman. In the 1950s Dr. Fuller began to study the Bible
version issue. He had been taught at Princeton that the Westcott-Hort theories of modern
textual criticism were true, but now he began to question this. He read James Jasper
Ray’s God Wrote Only One Bible (1955). Fuller had met the famous fundamentalist
preacher Philip Mauro when he lectured at Princeton, and Mauro was a defender of the
King James Bible and the author of Which Version? (1924). Fuller began collecting
materials going back to the early 1800s that debunk modern textual criticism and he
eventually re-published many of these in three books, Which Bible (1970), True or False
(1973), and Counterfeit or Genuine (1975). In describing these books in 1983, Dr. Fuller
said, “There are nearly nine hundred pages of documented evidence that the King James
Version is the nearest to the original manuscripts and is the most accurate, most
authoritative of the versions” (“Dr. Fuller’s Fight for the Faith,” an interview with D.O.
Fuller by Donald Waite, July 28, 1983, publication # 1151, Bible for Today,
Collingswood, New Jersey). Contrary to the wild-eyed caricature that many have drawn
of him, Dr. Fuller did not claim that the King James Bible was given by inspiration or
that it could not be improved or changed. He claimed, rather, that it is the only reliable
English translation of the preserved Greek and Hebrew text of Scripture. He
differentiated plainly between improvements and errors. “We do not say that the KJV
does not permit of changes. There are a number that could be and should be made, but
there is a vast difference between a change and an error” (Fuller, Is the King James
Version Nearest to the Original Autographs? nd., p. 1).
BOB GRAY was the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, until the
early 1990s when he went resigned from Trinity and went to Germany as a missionary.
He led Trinity Baptist out of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1960s and supported
hundreds of independent Baptist missionaries. He also founded the Trinity Baptist
College, which has trained hundreds of fundamentalist preachers. The sermon “Boxes,
Bottles and Books at the Judgment Seat of Christ” was preached at Camp Zion Meeting
in 1956 when he was a young man.
OLIVER B. GREENE (1915-1976) was converted at age 20 from a
life of wanton sin. He attended a church service solely in an attempt
to meet a girl, but by God’s grace he got more than he bargained for.
He was saved under the preaching of a sermon entitled “The Wages
of Sin is Death.” He was called to preach soon thereafter and when
he attended a denominational college in Greenville, South Carolina,
he and they both recognized that he was an independent Baptist! In
1939 he started a Gospel tent ministry and conducted revivals all
over America. That same year he founded the Gospel Hour radio
broadcast, beginning on one small station and expanding from coast to coast. He wrote
some 100 books, booklets, and tracts.
MORDECAI HAM (1878-1959) was a Baptist pastor and evangelist. The following
biography is from Higherpraise.org: “Mordecai Ham came from eight generations of
Baptist preachers. He traced his ancestry to Roger Williams. Mordecai was converted
under Billy Sunday’s preaching ministry. In 1901, Ham entered into the Baptist ministry.
From the very beginning there was no middle ground in his preaching. He preached
against vice and corruption; he rebuked ‘Modernist preachers.’ He exposed sin, warned
of the judgment to come, implanted conviction, and called a wayward people back to the
Bible they had forsaken. He hunted the lowest sinners in a community and would pray
and witness to them until they trusted Christ as their personal Saviour. The author of the
amendment for Prohibition stated that Mordecai Ham and Billy Sunday had nearly put
saloons out of business due to their hard preaching against the liquor crowd. Ham
considered himself a prophet/revivalist evangelist. He was a full-time evangelist from
1902 to 1927. He took two years off from evangelism to pastor the First Baptist Church,
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. But, because his heart was still in full-time evangelism, he
entered the field again in 1929 and stayed in it until shortly before his death. Over
1,000,000 people were converted under his ministry and over 300,000 joined Baptist
churches in the south. Billy Graham is his most famous convert. His nephew, Edward
Ham, summed up Mordecai Ham's ministry: ‘God raised up Evangelist Ham to do more
than hold meetings in the great cities of the South. He ordained him a prophet to do more
than lead great campaigns against liquor during the pre-Prohibition days. God raised him
up to remind Christian America of the main spiritual issue that has been in existence
since man's beginning on this earth; Christ versus the anti-Christ.’”
HARRY A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951) was saved as a boy and began his ministry as a
captain in the Salvation Army. After earnestly seeking the experience of “complete
sanctification,” Ironside realized that this was an unscriptural promise and he left the
Army. He was an itinerant preacher with the Plymouth
Brethren, pastored Moody Memorial Church in Chicago for 18
years, and conducted Bible conferences throughout the world.
Ironside often filled the 4,000-seat Moody auditorium to
capacity. During his years at Moody he also averaged 40
weeks per year traveling to conferences, returning to Chicago
for Sunday services. He published some 80 books and
booklets. His dispensational commentaries on the entire New
Testament and much of the Old Testament are still valued by
Bible students today. Dr. Ironside was a fundamentalist who
warned about modernism, Roman Catholicism, and other
theological dangers. In his book on Ephesians he commented on Eph. 5:11 as follows:
“This is one of the Scriptures together with many others that have exercised my own
conscience through the years and kept me from a great many associations into which I
would otherwise naturally have gone. ... The strength of the Christian is in his separation
from the world and his devotion to Christ.” Ironside’s book “Holiness: The False and the
True” documented his experience in the Salvation Army and gave a warning about the
errors of perfectionism. In 1919 Ironside sounded the following early warning against
ecumenical activities between Protestants and Catholics: “In our day, we have a lot of
foolish Protestants who believe that the old Rome is now a harmless old pussy cat sitting
on the banks of the Tiber; she purrs so contentedly. They say, ‘We never understood
Rome. What a pity we ever had that Reformation at all!’ And I see that three of our
bishops the other day went over to see that old gentleman, the Pope, to have a talk with
him and see if he would not take us back on moderately easy terms. What foolish people
these Protestants are!--Protestants who have long ceased to protest against evil doctrine,
forgetting the millions of lives that were sacrificed for the precious truth. Depend upon it,
if the day ever comes that the Pope gets into the saddle again, and gets control of the
proposed union, it will only be at the expense of life if people will worship scripturally at
all. But Protestant leaders are dazzled with the thought of a great united church, and are
hurrying us on to a union with Rome, which Scripture shows clearly enough will yet take
place. (H.A. Ironside, quoted in the F.B.F. News Bulletin, September-October, 1988, p.
5).
BOB JONES, SR. (1883-1968) was an evangelist and the founder of Bob Jones
University. The following is a brief biography of him from The Sword of the Lord web
site: Robert Reynolds Jones, best known as Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., was
born October 30, 1883, the eleventh of twelve children, in
Shipperville, Alabama. Converted at age 11, he was a Sunday
school superintendent at 12 and ordained to the ministry by a
Methodist church at 15. ‘Dr. Bob’ was a Christ-exalting, sincondemning preacher who first began preaching in the cotton
fields, in country churches and in brush arbors. Later he held huge
campaigns in American cities large and small and preached around
the world. Billy Sunday called him the greatest evangelist of all
time, saying, ‘He has the wit of Sam Jones, the homely philosophy
of George Stuart, the eloquence of Sam Small, and the spiritual fervency of Dwight L.
Moody.’ He saw crowds up to 10,000 in his meetings, with many thousands finding
Christ in one single campaign. But Dr. Jones was more than an evangelist. As a pioneer
in the field of Christian education, he founded Bob Jones University in 1927. Behind
every man’s ministry is a philosophy. Dr. Jones’s was spelled out in the sentence sermons
to his ‘preacher boys’ in chapels at the college. Who in Christian circles has not heard or
read some of these: ‘Duties never conflict!’; ‘It is a sin to do less than your best’; ‘The
greatest ability is dependability’; ‘It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to
do right.’ ‘DO RIGHT!’ It was the philosophy that motivated his ministry, saturated his
sermons and spearheaded his school. His voice was silenced by death January 16, 1968.
His influence lives on today, and Christians will for generations to come be challenged,
as he said, to ‘DO RIGHT IF THE STARS FALL!’” Dr. Jones took a bold stand against
ecumenical evangelism in the 1950s when Billy Graham began to yoke together with
unbelieving modernists and the Roman Catholic Church. He also took an important stand
against the New Evangelical compromise that was beginning to lift its ugly head in the
late 1940s.
BRUCE LACKEY (1930-1988) was a Baptist pastor, educator, and Bible conference
preacher. He taught at Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for nineteen years
and was the dean of the Bible school department from 1965 until he left there in the early
1980s. He trained many classes of “preacher boys” who revere his name to this day and
who thank the Lord for the godly influence that this “man of the Book” had in their lives
and ministries. I was one of those young men. My wife, Linda, also enjoyed Dr. Lackey’s
teaching during her years at Temple from 1968 to 1972. She was
single then. I did not arrive at Temple until 1974, because I did not get
saved until the year prior to that when I was 23 years old. If I
remember correctly, I had five courses under Dr. Lackey, New
Testament Survey, Prophecy, Romans, Hebrews, and Revelation.
Attending his Bible lectures was like sitting down to a top grade steak
dinner every day! Sadly, the courses (to my knowledge) were not taperecorded and have not been preserved for posterity. The messages that
we are publishing by Brother Lackey were preached, for the most part,
at Lakewood Baptist Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he pastored for eight
years. (Dr. Lackey conducted our wedding at Lakewood on August 13, 1976.) Dr. Lackey
had an exceptional gift of teaching and preaching the Bible. Though he was a profound
Bible teacher and commentator, and though he studied his Greek Received Text New
Testament every day, he always “put the cookies on the lower shelf” for the saints. His
doctrine was always practical. His theology was not the theorizing, “arm chair” variety.
He had the heart of a pastor and an evangelist and his goal was never to entertain or tickle
the ears or to impress his hearers with his knowledge, but “warning every man, and
teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus” (Col. 1:28). Dr. Lackey’s preaching is exceedingly challenging and edifying and
has the effect of building Christians who are spiritually healthy and zealous for the
service of God. His invitations were always searching, and he never assumed that his
listeners were truly born again, even when he was preaching to the “faithful crowd” on
Wednesday evening.
B.R. (BASCOM RAY) LAKIN (1901-1984) was a Baptist pastor and evangelist. He
grew up on a farm in West Virginia and his parents were devout
Christians. At age 16 he was converted to Jesus Christ. Soon thereafter he
became a circuit preacher, riding a mule to country churches. He
graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and pastored the Cadle
Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana, for 14 years. In the early 1950s, he
began a 30-year itinerant preaching ministry, averaging 50,000 miles
annually and preaching to 4,000 people weekly.
R.G. (ROBERT GREENE) LEE (1886-1978) was a Baptist pastor and itinerant
preacher. When he was born in a three-room cabin in South Carolina, the Negro midwife
exclaimed, “Glory be! The good Lord has done sent a preacher to this here house.” Lee
was born again at age 12 at the First Baptist Church of Fort Mill, SC. The following
biographical sketch is from Wilderness-cry.net: “Robert G. Lee began his career on a
farm near Fort Mill, South Carolina, where he was born of poor but deeply religious
parents. Early in life, he felt the call to be a preacher, and in spite of many obstacles he
heeded that call. He won many scholastic and oratory honors at the Furman Preparatory
School and Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, where he graduated with an
A.B. degree in 1913. He took postgraduate work at the Chicago Law School, receiving a
Ph.D. in international law in 1919. He was ordained at his boyhood church at Fort Mill,
South Carolina, in 1910. His first full-time pastorate was at Edgefield, South Carolina.
This was followed by pastorates at First Baptist Church, Chester, South Carolina; First
Baptist Church, New Orleans, Louisiana [where over 1000 new
members came into the church, most by baptism]; and Citadel
Square Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina. He was pastor of
the Bellevue Baptist Church, Memphis, Tennessee, from December
1927, to April 10, 1960. During his pastorate at Bellevue, over
24,000 people joined the church, over 7,600 of these for baptism. Dr.
Lee preached his famous sermon, Payday...Some Day, over 1,200
times in the United States and other countries. He died July 20,
1978, in his home in Memphis, Tennessee.” Lee served three terms
as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. When Lee resigned
from the pastorate at Bellevue Baptist in 1960 he wrote: “You can count on me until my
tongue is silent in the grave and until my hand can no longer wield a pen to keep my
unalterable stand for the Bible as the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God -- giving
rebuke to and standing in opposition to all enemies of the Bible, even as I have done for
50 years.” Lee preached another 18 years after his retirement, traveling 100,000 miles a
year.
CARL MCINTIRE (1906-2002) was a Presbyterian pastor and fundamentalist leader.
McIntire’s father was a Presbyterian pastor and graduate of Princeton and his mother and
grandmother had been missionaries to the native Indians in
Oklahoma. McIntire attended Princeton from 1928 to 1929, but he
left because of theological liberalism. He followed J. Gresham
Machen who founded Westminster Theological Seminary.
McIntire became the pastor of Collingswood Presbyterian Church
in Collingswood, New Jersey, in 1933 and remained there for more
than 60 years. In 1935 the Northern Presbyterian Church suspended
Machen and McIntire from the ministry. The next year Machen,
McIntire, and other fundamentalist Presbyterians formed the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church. At the end of 1937, McIntire and
some other pastors established the Bible Presbyterian Church. McIntire’s 1200-member
church in Collingswood was the largest congregation in the new group. McIntire
published the Christian Beacon and founded Faith Theological Seminary. He started the
20th Century Reformation Hour radio program, which was broadcast daily on more than
600 stations at the height of its influence in the mid-1960s. McIntire was involved in the
leadership of the American Council of Christian Churches and other organizations, but he
split with fellow fundamentalist Presbyterians several times in the ensuing years. He
accepted the Bible as the infallible Word of God and was staunchly opposed to
Romanism, liberalism, communism, and worldliness. He died on March 19, 2002.
JACK MOORMAN, a Baptist pastor and missionary, has been a blessing to me
particularly because of his writings on the Bible version issue. His faith-based position on
the text is a blessing and encouragement, as is his kind Christian spirit. While he is
inflexible in his stand for the truth he is always a Christian gentleman. He was born in
1941 and born again in February 1964 shortly after his marriage to his wife Dot. He
attended Tennessee Temple Bible School from 1964 to 1967 and completed the four-year
program by taking classes each summer. In 1968 the Moormans went to South Africa as
missionaries with Baptist International Missions International (BIMI). During their 18
years there, they started five churches, a Bible institute, and a
printing and tract ministry. It was also during his tenure in South
Africa that Brother Moorman began researching and writing on the
Bible text issue. He has written some very helpful books on that
subject. In 1988, the Moormans relocated to England and involved
themselves in an extensive tract distribution and church planting
ministry. Brother Moorman attempts to go out onto the streets of
London five afternoons a week distributing gospel tracts. Since
1994 the Moormans have established the Bethel Baptist Church in
Wimbledon, south of London. These days they are seeking to get
Scripture portions into France and possibly Spain, Portugal, and Italy. I didn’t get to meet
Brother Moorman personally until 2001, when our paths crossed briefly at Heritage
Baptist University in Greenwood, Indiana. I had the privilege of meeting him again and
spending more time in fellowship on a visit to England in April 2003. It was thrilling to
see how the Lord had blessed Bethel Baptist Church in the midst of that great, gospelhardened, sin-cursed city.
J. FRANK NORRIS (1877-1952) was a Baptist pastor and fundamentalist leader. The
following sketch is Swordofthelord.com: “J. Frank Norris, one of the most controversial
and flamboyant figures in the history of fundamentalism, was born in Alabama, but his
family moved to Texas when he was a boy. His childhood
experiences included being shot trying to help his father defend
their farm from horse thieves. Norris was saved at the age of 13 in a
brush arbor revival. Feeling that God had called him to preach, he
enrolled at Baylor University. While Norris was a student, he was
pastor of a church on weekends in nearby Mount Calm. By the time
of his graduation, the church regularly had 800 in attendance-in a
town of 400 people! After graduating from seminary, Norris was a
pastor in Dallas for three years before accepting the call to the First
Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas for the beginning of a 43-year
ministry. By the late 1920s the church had an average attendance of 5,200 people. Norris'
running feud with the Southern Baptist Convention over the issues of evolution,
modernism and liberalism and local church independence covered many years. He was
excluded from the Tarrant County Baptist Association in 1922 and from the Texas
Baptist Convention in 1924. Trials for perjury and arson in 1912 (related to a fire which
destroyed the church auditorium) and murder in 1927 (Norris had killed a man in his
office who threatened his life) ended with his acquittal on all charges. Norris successfully
forced at least five newspapers to retract statements they made about him during the
second trial. In 1935 Norris accepted the pastorate of a second church--Temple Baptist
Church in Detroit, Michigan. This church too experienced phenomenal growth. By 1946
the combined membership of the two congregations was more than 26,000. Norris
commuted by train and later plane between the two churches for some 16 years. Norris
founded the Premillennium Baptist Missionary Fellowship among like-minded
independents. A struggle for control of the group by men who resented his authoritarian
methodology led to the formation of the Baptist Bible Fellowship and the World Baptist
Fellowship (Norris’ group). Norris died in Keystone Heights, Florida in 1952, having
influenced a generation for the fundamentals of the Faith. Although a rift developed
between Dr. Norris and Dr. John R. Rice in 1936, Dr. Rice advised his friends to love and
pray for Dr. Norris: ‘He is a great man, has won many thousands of souls, and has stood
for the fundamentals of the Faith in a way that has greatly honored God.’”
MONROE PARKER (1909-1994) was a Baptist evangelist and
educator and for the last several years of his life was Director of the
Baptist World Mission. The following sketch is from the Sword of the
Lord web site: “When you met Monroe ‘Monk’ Parker, you met both
an educator and an evangelist, Ph.D. and personal soul winner--a great
mind and hot heart! Parker was a pre-med student at Birmingham
Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, because so many of his
family were in medicine. By the same token--in Parker's background
was a long history of preachers. But saving grace does not run in family bloodlines.
Parker attended church and Sunday school regularly but was not converted until he was
nineteen. The same week, in his church, he heard Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., tell about a oneyear-old school he had organized to teach and train preacher boys. Parker knew this was
where God wanted him. He went to Bob Jones College, where he was called to preach.
After graduating, Parker entered evangelism. After five years in the field he returned to
BJU to assume directorship of religious activities, a position that eventually led him to
become assistant to Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. Even then he conducted ten revivals a year. In
1949 he re-entered full-time evangelism, a ministry that was interspersed with a pastorate
in Decatur, Alabama, and presidency of Pillsbury Conservative Baptist Bible College for
eight years. Under his leadership, the student body grew 20% annually. Besides
conducting hundreds of campaigns and preaching in scores of high schools, colleges,
Bible institutes and seminaries and over many radio stations, Parker taught in Bible
colleges and in seminaries, organized an association of Independent Baptist churches in
Alabama, served as president of the Minnesota Baptist Convention, developed and built
the Christian Dells Bible Camp and Conference Grounds near Decatur, Alabama, and
served as General Director of Baptist World Mission. He also served on a host of boards.
Dr. Parker was a preacher of unusual ability, keen insight into the Word of God, and
loyalty to every fundamental.”
MARION H. REYNOLDS, JR., was a pastor, radio preacher, and fundamentalist
leader. He was the director of the Fundamental Evangelistic Association (F.E.A.) in Los
Osos, California. The F.E.A. publishes Foundation magazine. Brother Reynolds also
founded and pastored the Fundamental Bible Church of Los Osos. As a young preacher I
obtained a copy of Foundation somewhere and subscribed to it. I probably saw my first
copy in 1978 when we were traveling to churches on deputation in preparation to going
to the mission field. Dr. Reynolds was an old-fashioned fundamentalist and took biblical
separation very seriously. His father, M.H. Reynolds, Sr., came out of the old Northern
Baptist Convention when it became infected with theological liberalism. It was Reynolds,
Sr., who started the Fundamental Evangelistic Association in April 1928. Following in
his father’s footsteps, M.H. Reynolds, Jr., continued the work of the F.E.A. until his
death in 1997, when his capable son-in-law, Dennis Costella, took the helm. Dennis is
assisted today by his son, Matt, who is a fourth generation
fundamentalist that is standing exactly where his godly great
grandfather stood! I don’t know of any other fundamentalist
organization that has maintained the same principles for 75
years. The F.E.A. still uses the same Bible, loves the same Lord,
preaches the same doctrine, and still stands for strict separation
from compromise, error, and worldliness. Foundation magazine
provided a large part of my early education into staunch
fundamentalism. It helped me to understand the principles and
dangers of movements such as New Evangelicalism,
Ecumenism, the Charismatic movement, and Christian psychology. It informed me of the
compromise of influential personalities such as Billy Graham, John Wimber, Bill Bright,
and Robert Schuller. And it provided well-researched information about organizations
such as the World Council of Churches, Trinity Broadcasting Network, InterVarsity
Christian Fellowship, and the North American Congress on the Holy Spirit & World
Evangelism. It also helped me to understand the issue of Bible preservation. I am
thankful that I had the privilege of knowing Dr. Reynolds. I preached at two of the
Fundamental Evangelistic Association annual conferences in the 1980s and have had
many pleasant times of fellowship with these brethren. In 1987 Dennis Costella and I
attended the North American Congress on the Holy Spirit & World Evangelization in
New Orleans. It was the first opportunity I had to attend a large ecumenical conference
with press credentials and to give an eyewitness report of such an event, and we had a
great time. (The Cajun blackened chicken at the Mississippi River Walk was
outstanding!) I am thankful for Brother Costella and his godly family and for their
continuation of the important Fundamental Evangelistic Association ministry. Dr.
Reynolds had much God-given wisdom and he helped a lot of God’s people stay on the
right path. He said: “... it is important to remember that the failure of fallible men to
properly represent any Biblical position in no way negates the believer’s responsibility to
hold to that position. Likewise, we should never lose sight of the fact that those who
really do ‘speak the truth in love’ are most often the very ones who are accused of being
‘unloving.’ The apostle Paul referred to just such a situation when he wrote, ‘Am I
become your enemy because I tell you the truth?’”
JOHN R. RICE (1895-1980) was a Baptist pastor and evangelist and the founder of The
Sword of the Lord paper. He graduated from Baylor University and did graduate work at
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago. He was a
fundamentalist and a separatist and came out of the Southern Baptist
Convention in 1928. Dr. Rice understood the power of the printed page.
He authored more than 200 books and booklets, some of which were
translated into at least 35 languages. In 1934 Dr. Rice launched the
weekly Sword of the Lord, one of the most influential voices for the
independent Baptist and fundamentalist movements during his lifetime.
The masthead read, “An Independent Christian Publication, Standing
for the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, His Blood
Atonement, Salvation by Faith, New Testament Soul Winning and the Premillennial
Return of Christ; Opposing Modernism, Worldliness and Formalism.” Dr. Rice founded
the Voice of Revival radio broadcast in 1959.
W.B. (WILLIAM BELL) RILEY (1861-1947) was a Baptist pastor and influential
fundamentalist leader. The following biographical sketch is from Higherpraise.org:
“William Bell Riley was born to Branson Radish and Ruth Anna Jackson Riley in Indiana
just before the start of the Civil War. He was the sixth of eight children. He grew up on
his parents’ farms, first in Indiana and then in Kentucky. His family was devout Baptists
and he made his own profession of faith in Christian doctrine in August of 1878. At
eighteen, he earned a teacher’s certificate after a year’s attendance
at a normal school. He continued his education through attendance
at Hanover (IN) College, from which he received a B.A. degree in
1885 and an M.A. in 1888. After becoming convinced of his call to
the ministry, he began preaching as a supply minister in 1881. He
had his own churches by 1883 in Carrolton and Warsaw, KY, and
he was ordained a Baptist minister the same year. He attended
Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY, to increase his
theological knowledge and while there was a personnel worker for
an 1887 campaign held in that city by Dwight L. Moody. He
graduated from the seminary in 1888. On December 31, 1890, he
married Lillian Howard and they had six children. After graduating from the seminary,
Riley pastored churches of the Northern Baptist Convention in Lafayette, IN (18881890); Bloomington, IN (1890-1893); and Chicago, IL (1893-1897). While in Chicago,
he entered into frequent debates with liberal Christian theologians on orthodoxy, attacked
the city’s growing crime rate and relaxed liquor laws, and became a friend of a YMCA
worker known as Billy Sunday. In 1897, Riley accepted a call to the First Baptist Church
in Minneapolis, MN, where he remained until his retirement in 1942. He became
influential in the city, advocating various civic reforms and building up his church from
585 members when he started to approximately 3500. He also developed a national
reputation through his debates around the country with religious liberals on the orthodoxy
of the Bible and, in the 1920’s, evolution. He also held many revival campaigns including
ones in Duluth, MN (1912); Peoria, IL; Seattle, WA; Dayton, OH; and Worcester, MA.
He was increasingly concerned about what seemed to him the falseness and prevalence of
liberal Christianity. Numerous disputes within his own Northern Baptist denomination
caused him to break ties with Convention leaders, although he remained in the
Convention until shortly before his death. He, A.C. Dixon, and R.A. Torrey met with a
few others in 1918 to discuss what should be done about liberalism. Out of this meeting
eventually grew the World’s Christian Fundamentalist Association, of which he was
president until 1929. He assisted in the preparation of The Fundamentals, a basic
statement of fundamentalist belief. He was already editor of The Christian
Fundamentalist, a position in which he served from 1891 to 1933. Among Baptists, he
helped organize the Baptist Bible Union in 1923. All of these activities, plus his support
of William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial, caused Riley to be recorded
as a major, if not the leader of American fundamentalists. He was also known as an
educator. In 1902 he began the Northwestern Bible Training School to which eventually
he added a seminary (1935) and a college. Billy Graham served briefly as president of the
Northwestern Schools after Riley’s death. Central Baptist Seminary and Northwestern
College are descended from the schools. Besides all of his other activities, Riley wrote
dozens of books and pamphlets, including the forty-volume The Bible of the Expositor
and the Evangelist. He died in Golden Valley, MN, in 1947.”
LESTER ROLOFF (1914-1982) was a Baptist pastor, evangelist, broadcaster, and the
founder of the Roloff Homes. The following is an excerpt from a biography from
believersweb.org: “A Modern-Day Prophet, and remembered well by many still living,
Lester Roloff in the last years of his life had become a symbol and example to all who
believe man ought to obey God rather than men. Until his death
in an airplane crash in 1982, he was engaged in a battle against
some of the forces of the State of Texas, primarily the Welfare
Department--that would silence or greatly curtail his ministry if
they could. The irony of it all is that he had done nothing but
help change lives of countless youngsters who had nobody else
to help them. Roloff was born on a farm ten miles south of
Dawson, Texas, to Christian parents. He was saved in a little
country church called Shiloh Baptist when about twelve, in a
revival in July 1926, under the ministry of John T. Taylor.
Reared on a farm he took his milk cow and went off to Baylor
University in 1933 and milked his way through college. He graduated in 1937 with an
A.B. degree. While at Baylor he was far from idle. He started pastoring among the
Southern Baptists in a succession of pastorates. Roloff went on to Southwestern
Seminary in Fort Worth for three years, 1937 to 1940, while he maintained his ministry at
First Baptist Church of Purden, Texas, going then to the First Baptist Church of Trinidad,
Texas, his last year in seminary. He married Marie Brady on August 10, 1936. They had
two daughters, Elizabeth, born June 20, 1937, and Pamela Kay, an adopted daughter.
From 1941 to 1944 he pastored the Magnolia Park Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. In
1944 he went to Corpus Christi where he spent the rest of his life. The Park Avenue
Baptist Church extended a call to him, where he went in March 1944. Roloff began a
radio ministry on May 8, 1944, with his Family Altar Program, first broadcast over a
250-watt station locally. By the early 1980s, it was broadcasting on more than 150
stations nationally. Roloff was kicked off the radio ten months after he started--his fight
against liquor being a prime reason. This was the first of many times that Roloff was
kicked off of radio stations because of theological controversies. In April 1951 he
resigned as pastor at Second Baptist Church to enter full-time evangelism. He founded
the Roloff Evangelistic Enterprises. In May 1955 he printed his first issue of Faith
Enterprise, a quarterly publication dedicated to the salvation of lost souls and
strengthening believers. In August of 1954, with convictions about being independent of
the Southern Baptist Convention or any other denominational influence, he founded a
church in Corpus Christi which was to be called the Alameda Baptist Church. He
pastored here until about 1961. On March 13, 1956, Roloff stood in Waco Hall, in Waco,
Texas, and spoke to more than 2,000, giving his swan song to Baylor University. He
stated all the issues in no uncertain terms.” Through the years Roloff established many
homes for alcoholics and troubled youth, including the City of Refuge, the Lighthouse,
Bethesda Home for Girls, Rebekah Home for Girls, and Anchor Home for Boys. His
theme through the years was “Christ Is the Answer” and “Now the Just Shall Live by
Faith.” He ran his homes strictly by the Bible, and this got him in trouble with the state of
Texas, beginning in 1973, when he refused to come under state licensing and the
humanistic rules the state required. From then until now the Roloff homes have been
fighting for their survival against the encroaching state.
HAROLD B. SIGHTLER (1914-1995) was a Baptist pastor and an evangelist. The
following biography is from sermonstore.org: “Harold B. Sightler was born May 15,
1914, in the lower part of his beloved South Carolina--the state where he lived his whole
81 years and ministered faithfully for 55 of those years. He often preached on the
importance of Christian training in a child's life and praised God for
his own Bible-believing heritage: ‘Among my earliest recollections is
an old grandmother with God’s Word in her lap reading the story of
Jesus and His love.’ After brief pastorates in Mauldin and Pelham,
South Carolina, he founded the Tabernacle Baptist Church on White
Horse Road in Greenville in 1952 and was the pastor for 42 years and
2 months until his death in September of 1995. During his years at
Tabernacle, Dr. Sightler founded a children’s home, the Tabernacle
Baptist Bible College, a Christian school, the Helen Grace Sightler
Widow’s Apartments, a day-care center, and two radio stations. The church gives
$10,000 per week to foreign missions. In addition to preaching at Tabernacle, Dr.
Sightler held revival meetings nationally and international. From 1948 to 1984 he
preached an average of 40 revivals per year. In 1943 he founded his daily radio ministry,
the Bright Spot Hour, which is still heard on 45 radio stations across America. He was an
author from whose pen had come more than 70 books and booklets, including 11 Bible
commentaries. A pioneer of independent Baptists in the Carolinas, he was highly
respected with independent Baptists nationwide. Dr. Sightler was a prince of preachers,
with a resonant voice in a deep southern accent pronouncing unflinching,
uncompromising truths and at the same time presenting God's grace with eloquent pathos.
He was a courageous, devoted servant of Christ, an unrelenting advocate for the King
James Bible and independent Baptist fundamentalism.” Dr. Sightler left the Southern
Baptist Convention in 1952 when he started Tabernacle. It was the 4th independent
Baptist church in that county. In 1979 Dr. Sightler estimated that there were 10,000
independent Baptist churches and that there were 5,000 independent Baptist missionaries.
He said that when he was in the SBC he never met one missionary, but in 1979 there
were 36 missionaries working directly out of his church. In “The Voice of the
Independent Baptist Movement,” which Dr. Sightler preached at a missions conference at
Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1979, he suggested six
reasons why God raised up independent Baptist churches: 1. God raised us up as a voice
against modernism. 2. God raised us up as a voice for New Testament evangelism. 3.
God raised us up as a voice in support of Israel. 4. God raised us up as a voice for
separation of church and state in a crucial hour for religious liberty. 5. God raised us up
as a voice for the home in an hour when it is under fierce attack. 6. God raised us up as a
voice for the autonomy of the local church; we should not be united beyond the assembly.
Under point #6, Dr. Sightler said: “Maybe God raised us up as a voice for the autonomy
of the local church, and I do believe in the autonomy and the freedom of the local church.
When I was a younger preacher, I wondered why all of the independent fellowships could
not get together into one great fellowship in America. I could envision the day when
Bible Baptist and World Baptist and Southwide Baptist would unite together in a big
fellowship, but I have given that up. I’ve come to the conviction that it is not God’s will.
The truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t join it if it were to be born. No, sir. I wouldn’t
join any kind of a convention. I think the independent Baptist movement is demonstrating
that it is the will of God that every local church stand on its own autonomy, on its own
freedom, on its own authority. ‘Oh, but we can do more if we are united together,’ they
say. Well, that sounds good but if you will examine that you will find that sometimes it’s
not the case. God gave you two legs, but if you start using a crutch the first thing you
know you will be depending on that crutch. The best thing you can do is to throw that
crutch away and use the two legs that God gave you. I don’t think the local church needs
to lean on anybody. A local church can handle of its own affairs, build its own mission
program, build its own buildings, call its own pastors. I believe in the autonomy, the
freedom of the local church. Maybe God raised us up as a voice for the autonomy of the
local church.”
J. HAROLD SMITH (1910-2001), Baptist pastor and radio preacher, was
born in Woodruff, South Carolina, and was born again September 17, 1932,
at Northside Baptist Church in Woodruff. His first pastorate was at the
Baptist Church of Conestee, SC, where he received $5 a month. He married
Myrtice Rhodes in October 1933. Smith founded the Radio Bible Hour. His
sermon “God’s Three Deadlines” resulted in thousands of professions of faith. During his
ministry Smith preached more than 70,000 sermons. He was awarded an honorary
doctorate from Emmanuel Baptist Seminary.
NOEL SMITH (1900-1974) was an influential member of the Baptist Bible Fellowship.
He was the founding editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune in 1950 and remained editor for
24 years. A biographical sketch at swordofthelord.com observes: “He
despised that which was cheap in the religious life of America, whether
it was in music, or in preaching, or in writing. He had no patience with
liberalism and modernism. And Noel Smith never denied his Lord, never
betrayed a friend, never compromised a principle. He was a man of
unquestioned integrity, and he was a man who had unmovable
convictions. What he believed, he believed. What he believed, he said. If
he didn't say it with his mouth, he wrote it with his pen. And he didn't
apologize for it--ever! Surely the Lord will have up there [in Heaven] some special
comfort for those who fought down here the good fight of faith. Another thing about this
good man: he lived by the principle that there is no substitute for hard work. So he died in
1974 at work. Now, praise God, he's enjoying the respite from the battle!”
GEORGE W. TRUETT (1867-1944) was a Baptist pastor and Southern Baptist
denominational leader. Truett was born on May 6, 1867, and was converted to Christ at
age 19 in the Hayesville Baptist Church, Hayesville, North Carolina. He was ordained to
preach in 1890 at the Whiteright Baptist Church, Grayson County, Texas, and that same
year he was called to the pastorate of First Baptist Church of Dallas, where he remained
for 47 years. Truett served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1927 to
1929, and as president of the Baptist World Alliance from 1934 to
1939. He died on July 7, 1944. The following biographical sketch
is from Baptistfire.com: “Dr. George W. Truett was pastor of First
Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas from 1897 until his death in 1944.
Under his leadership the church grew to become what was
probably at that time the largest church in the world. His love for
the souls of men was legendary and his influence upon the
Southern Baptist Convention and Texas Baptists continues to this
day. Of the many stories about Dr. Truett one is particularly
compelling. During a hunting trip, Dr. Truett accidentally shot and
killed one of his dear friends. All of Dallas was shocked, and
Pastor Truett was plunged into grief. He shut himself off from the world, crying and
praying unto God in the shadows. Some weeks passed, and on a Saturday night he fell
into a restful sleep for the first time since the tragedy. During the night he had a dream in
which Jesus stood by him. Dr. Truett heard Him say: ‘Be not afraid, you are my man
from now on.’ He woke and told his wife of the dream. He went back to sleep and had
the same dream. And again, it happened for a third time. Truett announced he would
return to his pulpit. The word spread through Dallas like Texas wildfire, and the
Methodist and Presbyterian and other churches dismissed their services that they might
go and hear him. Everyone was saying, ‘Truett will be preaching today. Dr. Truett will be
preaching Christ again today!’ Many, many souls were saved that Sunday and the power
of God rested upon Dr. Truett as never before.”
G. BEAUCHAMP VICK (1901-1975) was a Baptist pastor and
one of the founders of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. He grew up in
a pastor’s home and was converted at age 9. In 1928 he joined the
First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, and served on J. Frank
Norris’ staff for eight years. In 1936 Vick became the Sunday
School superintendent and song leader at Temple Baptist Church
in Detroit, Michigan. Norris jointed pastored Temple Baptist and
First Baptist for many years. Sunday School attendance increased
from 1,600 to 5,000 (among other things, Vick required teachers to
be faithful to their classes and to participate in visitation). Vick
became the pastor of Temple Baptist in 1947 and the membership increased to 15,000.
Some 350 people entered full-time Christian service under his ministry. In 1950 Vick
joined 119 other pastors in founding the Baptist Bible Fellowship and he was selected as
the first president of the Baptist Bible College in Springfield. He was very zealous for
foreign missions and encouraged the world mission outreach of the BBF.
DONALD WAITE, born in 1927, is a Baptist scholar and pastor and a fundamentalist
leader who has written in the defense of the Received Text and the King James Bible
since 1971. Dr. Waite has 118 semester hours (1,888 class hours) of training in the
biblical and other foreign languages, plus countless hours of teaching and personal
research in the use of these languages. He has two earned doctorates, including a Th.D.
with honors in Bible Exposition from Dallas Seminary in 1955. Dr. Waite founded the
Bible For Today (BFT) ministry in 1971 and has produced over 700 studies, booklets,
cassettes, and VCR’s that he distributes through BFT, along
with hundreds of titles by other men on a wide variety of
subjects. [Bible for Today, 900 Park Ave., Collingswood, NJ
08108. 800-564-6109 (orders), 856-854-4452 (voice), 856854-2464 (fax), BFT@BibleForToday.org (e-mail).] Some
defenders of the modern versions pretend that today’s King
James defenders are intellectual pygmies who merely parrot
things they have received from someone else. Such a view is
far from the truth. Dr. Waite, for example, has produced a
number of exacting studies in the field of Bible versions. I can understand how someone
might disagree with the King James defender’s conclusions, but to gloss over or ignore
entirely the diligent research behind the positions of men such as this and to pretend that
they could not possibly be true scholars is a farce. In 1992, Dr. Waite published
Defending the King James Bible: A Four-fold Superiority. It is now available in a lovely
hardcover edition. We believe this 307-page book is one of the very best books on the
subject. Dr. Waite presents a four-fold superiority of the King James Bible over the
modern versions: It is based upon superior texts; it had superior translators; it
incorporated a superior translation technique; and it has a superior theology. When I
began researching the Bible version issue for myself as a missionary in the early 1980s,
Dr. Waite’s ministry was a great help to me. Not only is this true of his own writings on
the subject but also the out-of-print books that he has republished from the 19th century.
CHARLES WEIGLE (1871-1966) was a Baptist evangelist and a gospel songwriter. He
grew up in a Christian home and was converted at age 12. He was trained at the
Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. After God called him to preach, Weigle’s wife gave
him an ultimatum that she would leave him unless he gave up the
ministry. In great agony of soul, he explained to her that he could not
turn away from God’s call, and he begged her not to leave. Turning a
deaf ear to his pleas, she left him and took their only daughter to a faraway city. After living in debauchery for some time, she died, and
Weigle re-married to a godly Christian woman. Weigle preached
gospel meetings far and wide and saw much fruit to the glory of
Christ. He also wrote some 1,000 gospel songs; the most famous is the
lovely “No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus.” He spent the last 15
years of his life at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, where he was greatly
loved by the faculty and students. His memory was still fragrant when I arrived there
seven years after his death. The school dedicated its music building to his memory.
RON WILLIAMS is the founder and director of Hephzibah House, a Christian boarding
school for troubled girls. It was established in 1971 and is located in Winona Lake,
Indiana. Brother Williams also established the Believers Baptist Church. He was born
December 9, 1942, and was born again in the spring of 1970. He earned the Master of
Divinity (cum laude) from Grace Theological Seminary in 1979. Today Brother Williams
is Pastor Emeritus of the church and travels a large portion of the time on preaching
engagements and representing the Hephzibah House. He has preached in more than 1,000
churches, colleges, universities, Bible schools, Christian high schools, missions
conferences, educators’ conferences, and pastors’ conferences. Brother Williams has
written many tracts and booklets and has distributed his sermons on audiocassette to a
wide audience. It was in the early 1980s that I first saw one of the
Hephzibah House tracts. Written by Mrs. Williams, it was entitled
“The Schizophrenic Woman” (the title has since been changed to
“Double Minded Women”) and was about the error of women
wearing men’s attire. Later I came across some of Brother Williams’
excellent messages on the family. I have been encouraged and
challenged by his bold and uncompromising stand for the Word of
God. He has been willing to follow the truth wherever it has led and
as a result, his ministry has lost support through the years from those
who have been offended by his preaching. I figure you must be doing
something right when you preach yourself out of some support (as
long as what you are preaching is the truth)! Working with troubled
girls for so many years, Brother Williams has seen the terrible fruit of
carnal and broken homes; thus his preaching is often focused on issues relevant to
strengthening Christian families.
DON WILLIAMS is the oldest of Ron Williams’ nine children. Don assumed the
pastorate of the Believers Baptist Church in 1998. I met Don in the early 1990s and was
blessed by his fellowship from the very first. Don has
followed in his father’s footsteps in many ways. He is an
uncompromising preacher of the Word of God, and he
also has nine children (and counting!). If you would see
his tiny wife, Wenda, you would wonder how she could
possibly have borne all of those children, but she
certainly did, and you had better believe that this dynamo
of a little lady keeps all of them in line, too! They are
wonderful children who love the Lord (and you should
see those cute nine-year-old twin girls!). I count it a great
privilege to know the Williams and I am pleased that they have given me permission to
use some of their sermons in our new series.
CONCLUSION
Except for a few of the “Sermons from the Past” segment of our CDs, the preachers in the
Life Changing Sermons series are all fundamentalists and independent Baptists and are
closely likeminded with us doctrinally.
At the same time, I am sure that you will understand that we do not agree with every jot
and tittle that is preached in these messages, nor do we agree with everything that the
various preachers in this series teach or practice in their ministries. The only man that I
agree with 100% is myself; and, in fact, I don’t always agree with myself! Many times
after I preach I think to myself, “Why in the world did I say that?” At our very best, we
are only men, and we cannot expect that men will agree with one another in all matters.
As mentioned earlier, I obtained a large portion of the sermons in this series on audio
cassette when we were living in Kathmandu, Nepal, in the 1980s, and they have been
stored there all of this time. The tapes were at least 20 years old when I re-discovered
them in Kathmandu in 2003 and began digitizing them into mp3s. They were stored for
all of those years in a damp, hot, dusty environment. It is not surprising, therefore, that
the quality of the messages is not always perfect nor consistent. Most of the messages are
very clear, though, and while a few are a little weak, they are still worth hearing. We
were able to restore the quality of most of the weaker messages with digital sound editing
software.
It is my great joy to publish these messages in electronic format for a new generation.
Now that they are in digital configuration, they can last until Jesus comes or as long as
God is pleased to bless them. I am confident that each listener will find them edifying,
challenging, and very practical.
Feel free to use the sermons as you please. Make copies of the CDs and give them away
(but not for sale). I have personally put hundreds of hours into the preparation of these
messages for electronic publication, and my earnest desire is that these Life Changing
Messages will find the largest possible audience to the glory of Jesus Christ.
David Cloud
August 2004
Way of Life Literature
P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143 (toll free)  fbns@wayoflife.org (e-mail)
http://www.wayoflife.org (web site)
Canada:
Bethel Baptist Church, 4212 Campbell St. N., London, Ont. N6P 1A6  519-652-2619 (voice)  519-6520056 (fax)