Comments on Baptists Today Blogs: Preaching on fast-forward

I grew up when to be Baptist meant to be not Penta...

2008-02-07T09:52:00.000-05:00

I grew up when to be Baptist meant to be not Pentacostal and not Catholic. I have never attended a charismatic worship service in my life. However, while I hung on to my chair and sometimes sprang to my feet and understood every word Dr. Adams said (except for all the thank you's in foreign languages), I knew without a doubt I was hearing a man who had been filled with the Holy Spirit. He started off slow and dry--and then... Even his physical collapse at the end seemed Spirit-related. God was in the Georgia Congress Center Friday night in a powerful way. The music was powerful beyond human ability. We learned of modern martyrdom from the gentle Gaza Baptist pastor who testified before us.

Then Clinton, who was bound to be an anticlimax, was moved to discard his notes and speak from his heart. Then Carter discarded HIS notes and, with a sense of embarrassment, described a dark night of the soul when he went door-to-door witnessing, praying on his knees in the streets for those who dwelt within. In a final unscripted moment, the man presiding Friday night called Celebration leadership to the stage and asked them to join hands. Then he asked us--black and white, Asian and Hispanic--to join hands as we sang the old invitation hymn, "Have Thine Own Way."

This was God's work, not man's. You can hear all four talks at the Covenant site, but you won't be able to feel the wind of the Spirit that blew over all of us who listened, worshiped, prayed and sang.

As an afterthought, a New Testament scholar I know, a man who had a distinguished career at one of the SBC seminaries, called a pastor/scholar friend to say that Adams' sermon was the finest exposition of Galatians 4 and 5, freedom in Christ, that he had ever heard.

Best sermon of all the ones I heard in Atlanta thi...

2008-02-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

Best sermon of all the ones I heard in Atlanta this week!!

Having been present for this sermon, I can only sa...

2008-02-02T11:18:00.000-05:00

Having been present for this sermon, I can only say that the Spirit of the Lord in the room was a real as I have ever experienced. If what that man preached was not gospel, then I don't know what is.

Tony,If your description of Mr. Adam's sermon is h...

2008-02-02T01:03:00.000-05:00

Tony,

If your description of Mr. Adam's sermon is half way accurate, all I can think of is the words of Jude:

"For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.

And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

Mark Osgatharp
Wynne, Arkansas