26
Sep
Tuesday is for Testimonies #4: Paige Patterson
Today we continue our series we call “Tuesday is for Testimonies”, in which we publish the testimony of SBC leaders and other conservative evangelical pastors and theologians. We desire to honor men who have honored God through faithful Biblical ministry to the church. After reading the words of testimony, please take a moment to pray for these men, their families, and their ministry.
Today’s special guest is Dr. Paige Patterson, the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. We are sure that 99% of readers of this blog already know something about Dr. Patterson. However, you really should read his bio off of the seminary website. It contains some fascinating elements from his life.
Did you know he shared Christ with Yasser Arafat? With prostitutes and homosexuals in the New Orleans French Quarter? Did you know that his lifelong interest in big-game hunting has led to speaking engagements with fathers and sons, and that these events have led to the salvation of 2,000 men in the last two years?
So, we welcome Dr. Patterson to our Tuesday testimony time, and thank him for taking of his time in writing this for us.
On Good Friday night of 1952 as the congregation sang the hymn of invitation, a freckled-faced, fire-engine red-headed, nine-year-old, stood beside his mother in the third pew on the southside of the auditorium of the First Baptist Church of Beaumont, Texas. For three years, I had known precisely how to be saved; and though people find it strange to hear, I can honestly say that the three most miserable years of my life were between the ages of six and nine. My mother required me to go to church, which I hated. My strong conviction was that every invitation hymn, especially “Just As I Am,” contained at least 120 verses, and that we sang them all during every invitation. The Spirit of the living God grappled with my heart, and I rebelled and usually held on to the pew as if extracting it from me would take away all of my hope.
Fred Brown, an evangelist from Chattanooga, Tennessee, had just delivered a message. I could not honestly tell you what he said. I only knew that I was a sinner and that if I died without the grace of God I would spend eternity in hell. At last, somewhere toward the end of the singing, the dam of my iniquity broke into a million pieces beneath the flood of the conviction of God’s Holy Spirit. And, before my weeping mother knew what had happened, I had slipped out into the aisle, had taken a few steps, and then had literally run into the arms of my father, the pastor, who waited at the front. I remember all of this more clearly than anything that happened to me yesterday. Dad simply hugged me for awhile as I wept with sorrow for my sin and relief and happiness about the forgiveness that now flooded my nine-year-old soul. Dad realized that I could not talk, so he simply picked me up and set me on the pew. And, I remember that he asked two questions, “Son, are you trusting Jesus to save your soul?” I nodded affirmatively, and I meant it. “Do you wish to follow Jesus in baptism as a public testimony of your faith in Christ?” Again, I nodded affirmatively. The people came by to greet me, but I really hated every second of that. I just wanted to be alone and think about what I had done. I rejoiced all evening, but my Saturday afternoon had become a little uncomfortable. On that Easter Sunday night I followed the Lord as my dad immersed me in believer’s baptism. But, by Wednesday night, I knew I had to do more. When Dad gave the invitation on Wednesday night, I came forward again. He said, “Son, why are you coming?” I said, “Because you did not ask me all of the questions.” Puzzled, he looked at me for a moment and said, “What did I fail to ask?” “You did not ask me if I were committing my life to preach.” “Are you?” he said somewhat incredulously. “Yes, that is exactly what I am doing.” When people came by that Wednesday evening to greet me again, I remember a somewhat humorous situation. The general consensus seemed to be that my action was sweet but that I would probably get over it. How little could they know that the same wooing voice of the Holy Spirit who brought me to salvation had spoken again, and I knew it. I would spend my life preaching with joy the unsearchable riches of Christ.
When I was fifteen years old, Charlie Miller, the proprietor of the rescue mission for homeless men in Beaumont, Texas, approached me after a service one Sunday night. He asked me if I had committed my life to the ministry. I replied that I had, and Charlie further asked if I intended to begin at age 65. I remember mumbling something about being only fifteen, which seemed to leave him totally unimpressed. He simply said, “You begin Thursday night. Be at the mission at seven o’clock.” At seven o’clock, I showed up at the mission and preached my first sermon. I’m sure that the sermon was not much, but there were a good many men who were saved that night; and that was confirmation to my own soul of the certainty of God’s call to the ministry. The following Sunday night a little over a week later, at my father’s request I preached at my home church at First Baptist of Beaumont; and from that day until this, by the grace of God, I have not missed a single Sunday in the pulpit except due to travel from one place to another or an occasional deliberate choice to be out of the pulpit. I cannot begin to tell you adequately in human language the inevitable joys of preaching the gospel and pleading for the souls of men.
My favorite verse of Scripture is Revelation 12:11, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.” My favorite figure from church history is Balthasar Hubmaier, the Anabaptist Reformer of Waldshut and Nickolsburg. He was the only Anabaptist to earn a doctorate, and he was famous both for his theological work, his preaching, and his evangelism.
My favorite books are Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand, the biography of Martin Luther; Leonard Verduin’s The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, a key book in distinguishing between the Magisterial Reformers and the Radical Reformers; and To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson by Courtney Anderson.
To give just one favorite preacher is not possible, but some men who inevitably bless me when I hear them are David Jeremiah, Ravi Zacharias, John MacArthur, Jerry Vines, and Johnny Hunt. Each blesses me in a different way , but God inevitably uses each to speak the sweetness of heaven to my soul.
Finally, if I had to give one piece of advice to pastors: Never neglect your personal time with God, and never fail to witness to at least one person every day. This is Patterson’s formula for avoiding ministerial burnout, moral failure, and all of the other plagues of the ministry. If a man will walk with one hand in the Lord’s hand and the other with a Bible or a tract to give to a wayfarer, he will find difficulty in experiencing either defeat or moral and spiritual bankruptcy.
Paige Patterson
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Fort Worth, Texas
