A Baptist Page Portrait
A.T. Robertson

As one thinks of all the great Baptists one could include in these biographies, he might overlook a man like A.T. Robertson. In fact, as great a work as Timothy George's Baptist Theologians is, it excludes Robertson. Of course George could not include every Baptist and we are thankful for his great contribution; but A.T. Robertson stands near the top of influential Baptists for many reasons. A.T. Robertson was born in the worst possible of times in the South.1 It was 1863 and the Civil War was already taking a bad turn for the Southern cause. A.T.'s father was a country doctor and plantation owner who lost the majority of his fortune during and after the war. After suffering the devastating effects of Reconstruction, the family moved to Statesville, North Carolina to work a small farm. There on the farm, A.T. learned to make things grow. He would spend most of his life making the Word of God grow in the hearts of people around the world.

Because there was no Baptist church in Statesville, the family attended a Presbyterian church three weeks out of the month and a small Baptist mission one Sunday of each month. Soon a Baptist church was formed by Rev. J.B. Boone and Rev. A.C. Dixon of Asheville. Dixon would later become the pastor of Spurgeon's Tabernacle in London. Not long after the formation of the new Baptist church, Robertson was baptized in March of 1876 and soon announced God's call on him to preach.

In 1879, A.T. headed off to Wake Forest to attend College. At the age of sixteen he had little formal education and even less money. Due to the generosity of a friend, A.T. had enough money for his train ticket with $2.50 left over when he arrived on campus. Seminary students face many financial challenges to this day but they were even greater then. Few families in the South had any funds to support children as they headed off to college and seminary and most students could barely scrape by.

Once at Wake Forest, it appeared that Robertson was made for school. He quickly established himself as a brilliant student. In spite of having no high school education at all, A.T. graduated from Wake Forest in six years as Valedictorian. From Wake Forest, the young scholar headed for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He was already so advanced that he took Senior Greek his first year and within two years was a Greek instructor under the great Dr. John A. Broadus. On November 22, 1894, A.T. married Broadus' daughter and sadly helped his wife bury her father just four months later.

Robertson exemplified the Baptist tradition of preaching scholars. He was no bookworm academic. During seminary days he worked in an inner-city mission, supplied in various pulpits, and learned to be a soul-winner during a D.L. Moody crusade. No matter how great his fame grew as a world-renowned Greek scholar, Robertson never lost his love for preaching. To him, preaching was a far higher calling than holding a chair in a seminary. He once said; "Get into close grip with Christ, if He is tugging at your heart to put you into the ministry. If Christ puts you in, you will stay in and not be sorry, but count it your chief glory to have been counted worthy of that high dignity." 2 This aspect of Robertson explains why there have been so few Baptists considered to be great theologians in the wider Christian community. Most Baptist theologians of the past were first and foremost, preachers, pastors, and teachers. Because of this emphasis on close contact with laity, many men who were great thinkers and theologians made their writing and ecumenical ministry secondary to their first calling. One needs only to hear Robertson himself to feel his passion for preaching:

"The demand for ministers of the Gospel today is just the same as it was in the first century. Nor has preaching lost its power over the hearts of men ... no printed page can permanently supply the place of the man who has looked into the face of sinful men and presses home with burning words the sense of sin and the redemption in Jesus Christ." 3

None of this is to say that Robertson did not have a broader ministry because he did. A.T. made major impacts on the world through two very different avenues. The first avenue was his contact with Baptists and evangelicals worldwide. In the early 1900's, AT. was a founding member of the Baptist World Congress now known as The Baptist World Alliance. In 1914 his ministry was also broadened through a series of summer Bible conferences with D.L. Moody and F.B. Meyer, introducing Robertson to thousands of pastors and layman alike.

A second avenue of broader ministry came in the books which he wrote. In all Robertson wrote 41 books ranging from great grammars to simple character studies. Two of those works stand out as hallmarks of A.T.'s love for God's Word. His "Big Grammar" was the result of nearly twenty-six years of preparation. In 1912 the first issue of his 1400 page grammar of the Greek New Testament was published and remains to this day, the consummate work on the Koine Greek language which the New Testament was written in. Consider the accolades given to the "Big Grammar" by Robertson's contemporaries. B.B. Warfield called it "monumental". G. Campbell Morgan said it was "the final on the New Testament". And Mr Baptist, George W. Truett exclaimed, "I would exchange a billion dollars for it." Robertson's six volume work, Word Pictures in the New Testament, has been used by preachers, scholars, and layman to this day.

If ever a man exhibited Christlikeness, Robertson did. He knew when to be tough and when to be tender. He was a kind man but a bear of a teacher. One student wrote, "He felt called of God to take the strut and conceit out of young preachers." 4 W.A. Criswell studied under Robertson as a seminarian and said that he was "the greatest scholar under whom it was my privilege to study. His way of teaching did not inspire me so much as it frightened me into hours and hours of studying." 5

A.T. Robertson's intensity came from his intense love for the Word of God. He revealed what being a Baptist is all about when he exclaimed, "How can they expect to preach the Book unless they know it?" One student wrote: "lectures were never dull, but sparkling with wit ... He made the New Testament live. One could feel his depth of loved for the Lord and for students..." 6

That insight and wit was legendary among the students at Southern Seminary during Robertson's teaching days. Here are just a few of insightful sayings:

• "The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has stood so much bad preaching."

• "There are so many young Spurgeons, but so few of them grow up."
  "It is easier to preach than it is to talk, because when you talk you have to say something."

• "Give a man an open Bible, an open mind, a conscience in good working order, and he will have a hard time to keep from being a Baptist."

It is appropriate that A.T. Robertson had just finished teaching when he went home to be with His Lord. He had taught that day on Matthew 14:21 on the feeding of the five thousand. He himself had brought little to God when he entered college not having even attended high school. God multiplied A.T.'s abilities a thousand fold enabling millions to feed more richly on God's Word because of him. After his death, Moody Monthly wrote of Robertson; "What a treasure he has left behind him for the coming generations of Christian teachers and preachers. What a debt the church will ever owe to him through the grace of God."

1 A.T. Robertson by Evertt Gill, New York: The MacMillan Co., 1943. (The majority of our background information is drawn from this source).

2 Review and Expositor, Winter 1985, (p.80).

3 The Glory of the Ministry by A.T. Robertson, Fleming H. Revell Co., 1911, pp. 68-69.

4 A.T. Robertson, p. 111.

5 Review and Expositor, pp. 21-29

6 Fundamentalist Journal, Dec. 86, pp. 31-32.

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