Well Done, Good And Faithful Servant

I was going to post some more on Christians and the Republican Party. I still plan to do so later. However, the Christian world was shaken today with the news of the death of Jerry Falwell.

Jerry Falwell was someone who allowed the power of God to change his life to the maximum degree. He was the son of an atheist alcoholic bootlegger, and was barred from delivering the valedictory speech at his high school for using counterfeit lunch tickets. He accepted Christ as his Savior at the age of 19, and soon felt called to vocational ministry. He attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and returned to Lynchburg, Virginia upon graduation. He then started what became Thomas Road Baptist Church, now a 24,000-member megachurch. He also was the founder of Liberty University, which has evolved in 35 years from a small Bible college into a world-class Christian university.

Falwell was best known, however, for his leadership of the Religious Right. He founded the Moral Majority in 1980, and used it as a vehicle to register evangelical voters and to assist in the election of Ronald Reagan as President. From that point, conservative Christians were a bloc of voters that Republican candidates would ignore at their own peril. Falwell was known as a fiery preacher that was unafraid to speak against social ills such as abortion and homosexuality.

I agreed with him on all the important theological issues, and on most of the minor ones. His church was probably a little too old-fashioned for me, but there's nothing wrong with that at all. I think of him as a prophet. He took unpopular stands on divisive social issues of the day, and was hated by the left and by some on the right. He was a spokesman for traditional morality in a world that was hostile to his convictions, and really didn't want to hear that they might be wrong. Most of all, he was a faithful preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He believed and preached that God loves people, that people were sinners, and that God sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of man. Contrary to the opinion of many, he believed and preached that salvation was obtained by the grace of God by faith alone, and not by works or morality. Though he believed that traditional morality was in the best interest of the United States, he also believed that morality alone could not save the individual, but that only the grace of God alone provided salvation for mankind.

The world and the United States are better because Jerry Falwell was on this earth. I believe he met his Lord today, and heard the words of Jesus: "Well done, good and faithful servant".