Wa criswell biography of mahatma gandhi

American pastor and writer (–)

W. A. Criswell
Born	()December 19, Eldorado, Jackson County, Oklahoma, U.S.
Died	January 10, () (aged&#;92) Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Alma&#;mater	Baylor University Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Occupation(s)	Southern Baptist pastor; President of Southern Baptist Convention, Founder, Criswell College Editor Criswell Study Bible Author of 54 books
Years&#;active	–c.&#;
Spouse(s)	Bessie Marie Harris Criswell, "Betty" (d. )
Children	Mabel Ann Criswell (d. )
Parent(s)	Wallie Amos and Anna Currie Criswell

Wallie Amos Criswell Jr. (December 19, – January 10, ), was an American Baptist pastor, creator, and a two-term elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention from to ^[1] As senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas for five decades, he became widely famous for expository biblical preaching at a popular level,^[2] and is regarded as a key figure in the late s "Conservative Resurgence" within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Early life

"Little Criswell" was born in Eldorado in Jackson County in southwestern Oklahoma^[3] to Wallie Amos (Sr.) and Anna Currie Criswell, the daughter of a notable Confederate Army surgeon Dr.

D.B. Currie. It was not uncommon at the occasion for boys to be named with initials, and he was simply called "W. A.". In later years when a occupied name was required for his passport Criswell supplied his father's first and middle names. Criswell grew up in Texline in Dallam County, the most northwesterly community in the Texas Panhandle, where his cowboy-barber father moved the family in ^[4]

At age ten, Criswell professed faith in Christ at a revival encounter led by the evangelist Reverend John Hicks.

Two years later, Criswell publicly committed his existence to the gospel ministry. Criswell was licensed to preach at the age of seventeen and soon thereafter held part-time pastorates at Devil's Bend and Pulltight, Texas.^[3]

While attending Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from to , Criswell ministered in Marlow, Light Mound, and Pecan Grove, Texas.

During his graduate and post-graduate years, (while attaining his Ph.D. at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky) Criswell was the pastor of Baptist churches in Mount Washington in Bullitt County near Louisville and Oakland in Warren County proximate Bowling Green, Kentucky.

After completing his degrees, Criswell in recognized the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Chickasha in Grady County in central Oklahoma. In , he moved to First Baptist Church of Muskogee in eastern Oklahoma.

In , Criswell married the former Bessie Marie "Betty" Harris (–), the pianist of the Mount Washington church and an education graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.^[5] Their daughter Mabel Ann was born in Chickasha in Mabel Ann possessed an exceptional operatic voice and recorded three albums of sacred harmony in the late s and early s, two with the Ralph Carmichael orchestra.

She died in , some six months after her father's passing.^[5]

First Baptist Church of Dallas

In Criswell was called to replace George Washington Truett as the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas.

He would spend the remainder of his pastoral ministry at First Baptist, preaching more than four thousand sermons from its pulpit. During his pastorship, the church grew exponentially with membership starting at 7, to 26,, with weekly Sunday University attendance in excess of 5, The church expanded to multiple buildings covering five blocks in downtown Dallas, eventually becoming the largest Southern Baptist church in the world.

The popular evangelist Billy Graham joined the church in , became a adjacent friend of the Criswell family, and remained a member of the Dallas congregation for 55 years.

Criswell was born December 19, in Eldorado, Oklahoma. He received his B. He served for fifty years as senior pastor of First Baptist Church, for many years the largest church in the Southern Baptist Conventionpreaching more than five thousand sermons from its pulpit. Criswell published fifty-four books and was awarded eight honorary doctorates.

Criswell was a driving force behind the pioneering movement in the modern megachurch phenomenon. He was also a visionary, who introduced a number of innovations at First Baptist Dallas that became a model for growing churches all over the country.

By the early s he had hired professionally trained educational directors for each age group of the church, organized a complex multi-level Sunday School program, added a full-time business manager to the staff, and broadened the church into a youth and family life center featuring a bowling alley, skating rink, and gymnasium with a track and basketball court.

He greatly expanded the church's long-standing Silent Friends ministry, creating for the deaf their own Sunday School, Development Union, Vacation Bible School, and summer camp ministries. His vigorous outreach efforts to the group included sponsoring thirty-seven inner municipality missions, a crisis pregnancy center, the Good Shepherd and Dallas Life Foundation ministries for the homeless and disadvantaged, Spanish-language chapels, and extensive television and radio ministries.

Church services were locally televised as early as January and eventually were carried on stations nationwide.^[6]

Criswell's accomplishments include helping to engineer the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist convention, a transition which began in the late s.

He was awarded eight honorary doctorates in addition to his earned postgraduate degree. He published fifty-four books, including an annotated Criswell Analyze Bible (in later editions the Believers Study Bible and Holy Bible, Baptist Study Edition, Thomas Nelson Publishers), and founded both Criswell College with its radio station KCBI, and First Baptist Academy.

At Criswell's request in a search committee was formed to identify and call a new pastor. On Thanksgiving Sunday evening First Baptist called Joel C. Gregory as pastor, tracking the unanimous recommendation of the pastor search committee and the deacons.

Gregory became pastor while Criswell took the title "Senior Pastor." At the Wednesday evening service on September 30, , Gregory announced his resignation, indicating that the intended succession of Criswell had not taken place.

Gregory subsequently wrote Too Fantastic a Temptation (Summit Group, ) describing his experiences during this period.

In First Baptist called O. S. Hawkins as pastor and Criswell entered semi-retirement as pastor emeritus. He continued to preach at conferences, First Baptist's annual pre-Easter series, Sunday academy and college lectures, and occasional Sunday morning messages for the remainder of the decade.

Death

Criswell died quietly at the house of longtime friend Jack Pogue on January 10, , at the age of ^[1]

His death made national headlines, and as a farewell honor the town of Dallas closed off the U.S North Central Expressway for the celebrated pastor's funeral cortege.

Influence

Well-known pastor and author Rick Warren recounts his call to full-time ministry as a year-old student at California Baptist College, when in November he and a friend skipped classes and drove miles to hear Criswell preach at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco.^[7] Warren stood in line to vibrate hands with Criswell afterwards.^[7]

When my turn finally arrived, something unexpected happened.

Criswell looked at me with kind, loving eyes and said, quite emphatically, "Young dude, I feel led to lay hands on you and pray for you!" He placed his hands on my head and prayed: "Father, I ask that you give this young preacher a double portion of your Spirit.

May the church he pastors grow to twice the size of the Dallas church. Bless him greatly, O Lord."^[7]

Warren went on to found the Saddleback Church in California, one of the most recognized ecumenical churches in the country, with weekly attendance in excess of 20, In his book, The Purpose Driven Church, Warren referred to Criswell as the "greatest American pastor of the twentieth century."

Audio recordings of Criswell's preaching began in December , and over of his expository sermons are available free of charge in audio, video, and searchable transcript form at the W.

A. Criswell Sermon Library website, one of the largest online collections by a unpartnered pastor in the world. It is sponsored and maintained by the non-profit W. A. Criswell Foundation which also supports Criswell College.

From to Dr. Criswell served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest non-Roman Catholic denomination in the United States, with some 16 million members.^{[citation needed]} During the twenty years that followed he was perhaps the most trendy preacher at evangelism and pastors' conferences in America, and also preached extensively in mission fields worldwide.

Theology

Criswell's theology is foremost described as conservative and evangelical. He believed in Biblical inerrancy, the eternal security of the believer, and Jesus Christ as the authority of spiritual fact and the sole path to salvation of sinful mankind.

Unlike his predecessor George W. Truett, Criswell preached dispensationalpremillennialism and the pretribulation rapture of the church.^[8][9]

Politics

Segregation

Criswell was a former segregationist, and was critical of the U.S.

Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education delivering "a widely circulated sermon labeling activists for racial integration “a bunch of infidels, dying from the neck up,” [and] preaching that “the idea of the universal brotherhood and the fatherhood of God is a denial of everything in the Bible.”^[10] Criswell also railed at federal intervention against de jure southern segregation.^[11]

In he made an deal with denouncing forced integration to a South Carolina evangelism conference, and a day later to the South Carolina legislature.^[11] In it, he was particularly critical of the National Council of Churches and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, calling on his co-religionists to resist these "two-by scantling, good-for-nothing fellows who are trying to upset all of the things that we love as wonderful old Southern people and as good old Southern Baptists"^[11] and referring to the intimidation of "those East Texans [such] that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer.

It has to be cheegro."^[11]

Taken aback by negative reactions to his remarks in the press, Criswell did not publicly address the issue again for over a decade, claiming he was "a pastor, not a politician." However, upon his election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the SBC's endorsement of racial equality and desegregation, Criswell announced to the press, "Every Southern Baptist in the country should support the spirit of that statement.

We Southern Baptists have definitely turned away from racism, from segregation, from anything and everything that speaks of a separation of people in the body of Christ." Criswell's first sermon after his election as SBC president in was titled "The Church of the Open Door," emphasizing that his church already had many non-white members and was open to all regardless of race.

He asserted publicly, "I don't reflect that segregation could have been or was at any hour intelligently, seriously supported by the Bible.^[12]

"Never in my life did I believe in separating people on the basis of skin pigmentation.

Racism was, is, and always will be an abomination in the eyes of God, and should be in the eyes of God's people. And where we who call the name of Christ have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to racism in any form, we include sinned and need to ask God's forgiveness."^[13]

In Criswell published an article attacking the appropriateness of Roman Catholics to serve as president, titled "Religious Freedom, the Church, the State, and Senator Kennedy." The address, the sms of which is available from the Kennedy Library archives,^[14] stoked the concern of some Protestants at the prospect of a Catholic President, to which the Senator in question (John F.

Kennedy) responded in a speech in which he cast himself as the candidate of the Democratic party rather than of the Catholic church, and involved himself to the separation of church and state.^[15] In , Criswell supported the election of the RepublicanU.S.

PresidentGerald R. Ford Jr., an Episcopalian, rather than the Southern Baptist Democratic nominee, former GeorgiaGovernorJimmy Carter.

Abortion

Questioned in about the Supreme Court's judgment in Roe v.

Wade Criswell replied, "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is finest for the mother and for the future should be allowed."^[16] Criswell later became a staunch opponent of the procedure.^[16][17]

Selected works

• Acts, an Exposition.

  Zondervan

• Acts: In One Volume. Zondervan
• Baptism, Filling and Gifts of the Blessed Spirit. Zondervan
• Basic Bible Sermons on the Cross. Thomas Nelson
• The Christ of the Cross.
  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [ c ] 2 October — 30 January was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British command. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal GujaratGandhi trained in the statute at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a prosperous law practice, Gandhi moved to South Africa in to stand for an Indian merchant in a lawsuit.

  Crescendo

• The Compassionate Christ. Crescendo
• Confessions of a Glad Christian. Pelican
• Criswell's Guidebook For Pastors. Broadman & Holman
• The Criswell Study Bible. Thomas Nelson
• Did Man Just Happen.

  Moody

• Expository Sermons on Revelations. Zondervan
• Expository Sermons on the Manual of Daniel. Zondervan X
• Great Doctrines of the Bible. Vol. 1: Bibliology. Zondervan
• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol.

  2: Christology.

• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol. 3: Ecclesiology. Zondervan
• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol. 4: Pneumatology. Zondervan
• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol, 5: Soteriology. Zondervan
• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol.

  6: Christian Life and Stewardship. Zondervan

• Great Doctrines of the Bible: vol. 7: Prayer/Angelology. Zondervan
• Great Doctrines of the Bible: Vol. 8: Eschatology. Zondervan
• Holy Bible: Baptist Study Edition.

  Thomas Nelson

• Isaiah: An Exposition.

  W.A. Criswell served as pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX from He was named pastor emeritus in , a title he held until his death on Jan. 10, Index: Your experience with liberal theology and your search for the truth was the encounter of many in the s and 70s.

  Zondervan

• The Social Conscience of W. A. Criswell. Crescendo
• Standing on the Promises: The Autobiography of W. A. Criswell. W Pub Group
• Welcome Back, Jesus!. Broadman X
• Why I Preach That the Bible Is Literally True.

  Broadman & Holman

• With a Bible in My Hand. Broadman & Holman

See also

References

External links