|
 Robert
Green Lee was born in a three room log cabin
in South Carolina on November 11th, 1886. He was the fifth
child of David and Sarah Lee and a distant relative of General
Robert E. Lee. While having such a famous forefather these
Lees were a poor family, barely making it as sharecroppers.
When Robert was born the black midwife (a former slave) who
attended Lee's birth cried out, "Praise God! Glory be! The
good Lord has done sent a preacher to this here house."1
Indeed
a preacher had been born. Lee was born into a world of great
preachers P.H. Mell was president of the Southern Baptist
Convention. He would die two years later. J.P. Boyce, another
of the great Southern Baptist founders was also only two years
from going home to be with His Lord. Across the Atlantic Ocean,
Charles Spurgeon was nearing the end of his monumental ministry
in London.
Much
changed during the nearly 100 years of Lee's life. "In the
year of R.G. Lee's birth, most of the 488 messengers who attended
the Southern Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama, that
year arrived by train or horse and buggy."2
During R.G. Lee's life he went from traveling by horse and
buggy, to traveling by car to traveling by jet airplane. By
the time of his death Southern Baptist Conventions had many
thousands of messengers and Lee had preached to many of them.
Lee's
parents were strict Christians and raised their children in
the fear and admonition of the Lord. Because of that influence
young "Bob" came to Christ in 1898 at a church meeting at
First Baptist Church of Fort Mill, South Carolina. He always
remembered the choir singing, "Out of my bondage, sorrow and
night, Jesus I come, Jesus I come. Twelve years later he was
ordained to preach at that same church.
When
Lee was 21 he went to work on the new Panama Canal and upon
returning enrolled at Furman University. Robert excelled in
his studies and graduated magnum cum laude in 1913. Soon after
that he married, Bula Gentry. Lee excelled so as a scholar
that he was offered the chair of Latin at Furman. Many of
his friends encouraged him to take the position but he decided
to follow God's call to pastor and preach. When he told his
wife of his decision she replied, "That's good! God never
meant for you to dig around Latin roots. He meant for you
to be a preacher."3
After
a couple of brief pastorates, Lee went to pastor at First
Baptist Church of New Orleans. During his four years there,
over 1000 new members came into the church, the majority of
them by baptism. In 1927, two years before the Great Depression,
Lee was called to pastor Bellevue Baptist Church of Memphis,
TN. Because his tenures had been relatively short at his other
pastorates, many did not expect Lee to stay long in Memphis.
Lee would stay 33 years at Bellevue, not retiring until 1960.
During those years Lee was offered many other positions. George
Truett encouraged him to join him in Texas while others pressed
Lee to accept the prestigious Calvary Baptist Church in New
York City. He was also offered the presidencies of New Orleans
Baptist Theological Seminary and Union University in Tennessee.
During his pastorate at Bellevue, its membership grew from
1,430 members to 10,000 members.
His
ministry was one of love for his people and determined defense
of the Word of God. In his resignation address, Lee voiced
his profound dedication to the Bible: "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." 4
Dr. Lee laid the foundation for young preachers who followed
him who would fight the great battle for the Bible within
the Southern Baptist Convention.
One
of those young preachers, so influenced by Dr. Lee was Adrian
Rogers who would take up Lee's mantle both at Bellevue Baptist
and in the Convention. Lee was thoroughly evangelical. In
his sermon, Bed of Pearls, he said: "So long as Southern Baptists
have a passion for the salvation of sinners everywhere, there
is little danger of our drifting into materialism ... But
if give up our position as an evangelistic storm center and
court riches and court fashion and court friendships of self-elected
scholars with bloodless gospels. we shall not be found following
in Christ's train. In these days of molluscous liberalism,
of self-satisfied complacency, if we emphasize little the
old familiar notes of Calvary, of hell, of sin, and take up
the merely tender note of humanitarian philosophy, we sound
our death knell, dig our grave, write our epitaph."
R.G.
Lee was always and preeminently a preacher of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. His sermons were eloquent and often long. Lee
had no problem poking fun at himself about his hour to hour
and half sermons. He often told this story on himself: "Once
at Bellevue a man came in late for the service. I was in the
midst of my sermon. In a whisper he asked the usher, 'How
long has he been preaching?' 'About forty years,' was the
answer. 'The he must be about through.'"5
Few remembered the length of Dr. Lee's sermons as nearly as
much as they did their depth.
"Pay
Day Someday" remains his most famous sermon. First
preached as a Wednesday night devotional it still stands as
what could only be called a classic. In all, Lee preached
it 1,275 times in every venue from small churches to state
legislatures to foreign countries. The closing words of that
great sermon demonstrate the power of Lee's preaching:
"Payday
- Someday!" God said it - and it was done! Yes, and from
this we learn the power and certainty of God in carrying
out His retributive providence, the men know that His justice
slumbereth not. Even though the mill of God grinds slowly,
it grinds to powder. Yes, the judgments of God often have
heels and travel slowly. But they always have iron hands
and crush completely ... And the only way I know for any
man or woman on earth to escape the sinner's payday on earth
and the sinner's hell beyond - making sure of the Christian's
payday - is through Christ Jesus, who took the sinner's
place on the cross. becoming for all sinners all that God
must judge, that sinners through faith in Christ Jesus might
become all that God cannot judge."
Like
many Baptists, Lee was known more as a preacher than a theologian
but his doctrine was sound to the core. Lee believed in and
preached a doctrine often overlooked in our day, that of the
necessity of regeneration.
"My
own definition of the grace of God is this: the unlimited
and unmerited favor given to the utterly undeserving. Let
us think of the strength of grace. Sin is very powerful
in this world. Sin is powerful as an opiate in the will.
Sin is powerful as a frenzy in the imagination. Sin is powerful
as a poison in the heart. Sin is powerful as a madness in
the brain. Sin is powerful as a desert breath that drinks
up all spiritual dews. Sin is powerful as the sum of all
terrors. Sin is powerful as the quintessence of all horrors.
Sin is powerful to devastate, to doom, to damn. Here is
the sinner's only hope, although, until quickened by the
Spirit of grace, he does not know it. No man can rescue
himself from the tyranny of sin. Men may reform, but they
cannot regenerate themselves. Men may give up their crimes
and their vices, but they cannot, by their own strength,
give up their sins. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? No.
Can the leopard eliminate his spots? Regeneration is the
great change which God works in the soul when He brings
it into life, when He raises it from the death of sin to
the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought when
the love of the world is changed into the love of God; when
pride is dethroned and humility enthroned; when passion
is changed into meekness; when hatred, envy, and malice
are changed into a sincere and tender love for all mankind.
It is the change whereby the earthly, sensual, devilish
mind is turned into the mind that was in Christ. The new
birth is not the old nature altered, reformed, or reinvigorated,
but a being born from above. ...
6
Lee's
influence on the Southern Baptist Convention was immeasurable.
He served an unprecedented four terms as president of the
Tennessee Baptist Convention and then an unprecedented three
terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Lee
established strong stands on race relations throughout his
ministry. At a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention,
the president of the black National Baptist Convention, Dr.
E.W. Perry said to Dr. Lee: "Mr. President, I've been more
than 60 years coming from a log cabin where I was born to
his high and exalted position ... " Dr. Lee replied to Dr.
Perry: "Dr. Perry, I want you to come here and stand by me
and take my hand. I want this Convention to witness a parable
in black and white, written in red. You said that over 60
years ago you were born in a log cabin in Mississippi. I,
too, was born in a log cabin in South Carolina. The same Christ
who saved you is the same Christ who saved me, and both of
us have been washed clean in the precious Blood of the Lamb.
This is the parable in black and white, written in red." 7
When
Lee resigned his pastorate in 1960 a reporter for the Memphis,
Commercial Appeal wrote: "For half a century he has thrown
punches at the devil, punches containing the same power and
vengeance as those of Billy Sunday, George Truett, or C.H.
Spurgeon. In all these years he has never quit slugging. He
says the devil never sleeps. So he has worked night and day
to bring the gospel to as many people as possible."
Lee
preached another 18 years after his retirement. He traveled
100,000 miles a year preaching in small and large churches
and places like the Moody Bible Institute. Every generation
of Elisha's need their own Elijah to look to for guidance
and example. Lee was that Elijah to many including this author.
He will ever be remembered as the man who warned the world
that there will indeed be a "Pay Day Someday!"
Read
Pay Day Someday
Hear
Pay Day Someday and Other Sermons on Real Audio
Return
to Portraits Page
1
Timothy George, Payday Someday, Broadman and Holman, 1995,
p.2
2
George, p.1
3
George, p.4
4
George, p.12
5
R.G. Lee, Grapes From the Gospel Vines, Broadman Press, 1976,
p.61
6
R.G. Lee, The Grace of God: Heart to Heart, Nashville: Broadman,
1977, p. 141-47 7 George, p.9
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