In these remote mountains, a young man dedicated his life to God and chose to follow him wherever he was called, whatever the cost he would obey.
In response, God led him on a remarkable journey, a journey that included both joy and pain, a journey that would take him all over the world to share God’s message of hope and love with millions dry fork, a quaint farming community in Virginia.
But for Charles Stanley life here was far from serene.
Charles was born in 1932 in the midst of the great Depression.
A time when poverty and hardship was a way of life.
When Charles was just nine months old, his father died, devastated.
His mother was left facing dire consequences. Rebecca didn’t have family to turn to.
She didn’t have a job or savings yet through God’s grace she endured.
She never said you can’t, she never said it won’t work.
She just reminded me, we’re just gonna trust the Lord.
We’re gonna trust God that he’s always been faithful and uh he’s, he’s gonna help us through no matter what.
And so I think it riveted into my mind.
You don’t doubt God, you just trust him no matter how tough things get or how bad it gets or what you need.
He’s always there. Rebecca and Charles moved to nearby Danville where Rebecca got a job at the local textile mill.
During World war II, Dan River mills fulfilled orders for the military.
For Rebecca work was now steady.
Even when life wasn’t the 1st 17 years of our life, we moved 16 times but I never saw my mom discouraged.
Rebecca was an unassuming hard working woman with little education.
The only book she owned was a Bible with it.
She showed Charles how to love and obey God’s word.
She showed him how to live the greatest gift she gave me.
I guess if I could put it into one single thing, she taught me how to pray.
I would listen to her pray and then watch God answer her prayer.
She taught me how to pray. She taught me how to listen to God and, and to trust him.
I would just see how God would just come through every time.
And then she’d always give God the credit for it early in life.
My mom would come in every night and kneel down with the bed and sometimes I’d already be in the bed and she said, well, let’s get out and let’s get down on your knees and pray.
She don’t let me lie in the bed and pray. She was there.
She was never too busy to come in, then she worked on the first shift sometimes and then sometimes she’d work on the second shift.
When she came home, we prayed no matter what time it was.
I can still hear her voice talking to God about me kneeling by my bedside and, and she said, now, Lord, I want you to bless Charles and that you help him in school.
I mean, she prayed about everything and when I was in college, I’d come home, we still did the same thing.
In fact, my mother and I spent a lot of time down with the bedside talking about what was going on in our lives and difficult and the hardship and the household we lived in.
She did everything for me. She could do.
And uh I remember how often she would say to me, she would say, I just wish I could have done more for you.
And she would say I just, I feel bad. I haven’t done much for you.
I always said to her mom, money couldn’t buy what you’ve done for me.
When Charles was nine, Rebecca remarried, but her new husband was far from the loving father figure.
She had hoped for aggressive and sometimes violent.
Charles’ stepfather brought hostility into their peaceful home, struggling with difficulties.
Beyond his years, Charles sought refuge in his growing relationship with God.
And so very early on, I think he just developed a very simple um childlike and not when I say simple, I don’t mean immature but a simple childlike faith in the fact that God was his heavenly father and he had to depend on his heavenly father and his heavenly father was dependable.
And that was it, it was that simple. It was that clear.
And I think that is the filter through which he views the entire scripture and the entire Bible, that God is a trustworthy heavenly father.
And everything connects to that. In 1944 at the Pentecostal Holiness Church of Danville, Charles had an experience that changed his life forever.
This lady came, her name is Mrs Wilson and she came and preached a revival.
I was 12 years of age.
I knew God was trying to say something to me and, and so on this particular Sunday morning, she was preaching, they gave the invitation.
I didn’t have far to step. I stepped out and knelt down.
And next thing I knew people around me praying.
I did ask the Lord to forgive me of my sins and to, to come into my life.
And I want to be uh a child of God and I want to be a Christian.
And so there’s no doubt in my mind of what happened.
And, and then somehow everybody left the altar and it was just me.
And so the pastor called me up there and said, Charles, I want you to tell uh these people what Jesus has done for you.
And so I remember looking out this big church crying and saying, I don’t know everything he’s done, but I know this morning he saved me and I just was crying and so forth.
And it wasn’t very long after that.
I thought about preaching the gospel by the time I was 14 than I knew without a shadow of a doubt.
That’s what I needed to do while still in high school.
Charles was asked to preach a sermon at Moffat Memorial Baptist.
His home church, I preached on the title, where are Thou In Genesis chapter three.
When God came to Adam and asked him, uh where are you Adam? And that King James, where are thou?
And I mean, I studied all week and prayed and I prayed and prayed and prayed, Lord to speak to because it was in my own home church.
That’s where you have the greatest judges in your own church.
And I remember I walked up to the pulpit and it just began to flow.
And I mean, I was, I was just sort of standing there and surprised myself in order to pursue his calling to become a pastor.
Charles would need to go to seminary. However, he had a seemingly impossible hurdle to overcome.
One of the things that she and I prayed about often in quite some time was how I was gonna be able to go to college because she and I had talked about going to college and, and to go to seminary to be a pastor.
I made about $18 a week somewhere there about delivering newspapers.
And then I had a little side job on Saturdays.
I would work at a service station, washing cars, but all the money I had wouldn’t even have paid anything about going to college.
And she’d say, you know, I know the Lord’s gonna provide and, you know, we don’t know how, but, but if he’s called you, he’s gonna provide for you.
God did provide the miracle. Charles and Rebecca prayed for, came through the pastor at Moffett Memorial.
Reverend Hammock offered Charles the means to attend the University of Richmond on a four year scholarship before classes began, Charles decided to visit his grandfather, George Washington Stanley, a fiery spirit filled Pentecostal preacher in North Carolina.
Though Charles had only seen his grandfather a handful of times.
God used this particular visit to impact Charles’s life and future ministry in a tremendous way.
I was absolutely fascinated that he had heard God speak to him specifically about things and I wanted him to tell me about it.
And so we sat on his screen and back porch there in North Carolina for a week.
And really all I did was listen and ask him questions and we just talked every day.
He would tell us these stories that his grandfather told him about his ministry and God’s faithfulness to him.
And there were some wild stories.
There were there were, uh, stories that I look back now and I think, could that have actually happened?
But then he actually wrote a little book that we didn’t know existed until a few years ago.
And sure enough, some of those stories that, um, he told my father are in that book.
So apparently they, they actually happened the way that he recounted them.
And as I listened to all the things God had done in his life.
And I thought, well, if you speak to my granddad like that, how would you, would you speak to my heart?
I think I had this, this deep sense of hunger that I wanted a real God.
I wa I wanted God to be real in my life.
I didn’t want just to be uh believing that there is a God and reading the scripture.
How is this real? Can God be real in my life?
He said, Charles, if God tells you to run your head through a brick wall, you head for the wall.
When you get there, God will make a hole for it.
And what I realized later he was saying was you obey God and leave all the consequences to him.
That one statement, God just etched in my mind and heart, that my goal was to be obedient to God.
And I think that probably has been the overriding theme in my heart, to obey Him and to trust Him and to see what God will do in my life.
So whereas that statement from his grandfather was kind of the anchor statement.
I think there were so many things that um that connected to that through the circumstances of his life and he was forced to be dependent on God.
So I think all of those things came together to create this very, very dynamic and again, simple but not simplistic, this very simple confidence in God as his heavenly father in college, Charles met Anna Johnson, a fellow student who shared his desire to serve the Lord.
After graduation, Charles and Anna headed to Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas as their relationship with God deepened.
So did their love for each other.
In 1955 Charles and Anna were married and began their life together before Charles’s final year in seminary.
The newlyweds spent the summer at Anna’s family cottage in the North Carolina Mountains. There.
An unexpected encounter on the lake revealed God’s purpose for their trip.
Reverend Mountain had been here for over 50 years when he announced he was going to resign.
There was kind of that sense of where do we go from here?
Someone made the connection with, with Doctor Stanley to come and preach a trial sermon.
We were out fishing and this man came down and he said, uh are you Charles Stanley?
I said, yes, he said, are you a seminary student?
I said, yes, he said, well, pastor is going to be going on vacation.
And one, if you come preach for us next Sunday. So I told him I would.
So I went and preached that Sunday and they said, would you come back next Sunday?
Because he’s gonna be gone? Two weeks. I said, ok, so I went the second Sunday.
They said, we’re having a little party tonight. Would you come join us at that party? I said, we will.
So they said, well, we had a little meeting and we decided we wanna call you as our pastor.
First of all, first of all, uh I had another year of seminar.
I said, no, no, no, I couldn’t do that because I have another year seminary and you don’t want to call me to be the pastor and I have another.
No, we know you have another year seminary and uh Doctor Melton and his name was Noah Abraham Melton.
He’d been there for 47 years.
He said, I’m happy to wait because I believe you’re what we need, even though it was his first church, you would never have known it from the way he preached and the way he, he led this church those first few months as he was here and, and people began to see this is a seasoned minister.
You could tell he was called into the ministry by the Lord.
Didn’t just make up his own mind do that, that he was called to be a preacher and you could come by some of the people’s houses and there would be Doctor Stanley sitting talking to the different people.
I can remember he had a little map kind of the community and the people’s name on it and he would uh go visit everybody and talk to him.
There was that kind of sense that, you know, God has really blessed us here.
When he came here, they asked him to teach at the Fruitland Baptist College which is across the street from the church and he taught over there and they loved him over there too.
Here was a young man who had just graduated from seminary that was asked to come and teach at a school for new pastors.
There were some people from the church who were having a get together with the Stanleys in the parsonage.
And when they came in, they noticed that there was a small stocking hanging from the mantle and that was the Stanleys way of announcing that they were expecting a child.
And of course, that was Andy Fruitland was the first of many firsts for Charles, his first appointment, first new home and the birth of their first child, Charles Andy Stanley.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but I remember one of our, of our deacons making a comment one Sunday after church, this man won’t be with us long.
There was a sense of knowing that his ministry was gonna grow and move on from here.
Well, to be a pastor and know that God is calling you somewhere or moving you somewhere is pretty traumatic if God brought him here for two years and that’s just long enough to kind of begin to settle in and get comfortable.
And then you get called to Ohio had to be something where you would say no, God, I don’t want to go.
But if God’s calling, you have no choice.
If you really have surrendered your life to Christ and you’re his, then you have no alternative.
But to go. In the fall of 1959 Charles answered God’s call to be the pastor at Fairborn Baptist Church in Fairborn, Ohio were a military church.
The main employer, of course was right.
Patterson Air Force Base because of the base and transferring people in there were people who were coming from all over the country.
Dr Stanley was a very tall and commanding kind of personality, you know, and stern.
That was ok because our military were used to that and that’s what they expected out of a leader.
He had a very dynamic way of doing his preaching. He didn’t yell at us.
It was a conversational kind of delivery and it was just like he was speaking the words of God.
It was easy to listen to. You couldn’t go to sleep in his sermons.
Occasionally, he would want to make a real point.
I think it was he saying now, listen, listen, this is our church body was growing.
We were bursting at the seams. We had it packed out most every Sunday.
We outgrew our first sanctuary very quickly.
When Dr Stanley was here, classes were having to meet in the kitchen classes met in the stairwells downstairs in the children’s area where the nursery was.
They actually divided off one room with cinder blocks because we were really growing.
Getting a lot of young folks in, we grew by 300 in membership and 350.
And I think 200 of those were by baptism. A lot of them were military families.
And I can remember Dr Stanley saying that we were really a mission launching point.
I think the reason that so many people can relate to him is because they need to have that hope that he can bring to them through obedience as the church continued to grow.
So did the Stanley family. Charles and Anna welcomed their second child, a daughter, Rebecca Louise the following year.
While traveling to Haiti for a mission trip, Charles was invited to preach at first Baptist Church of Miami.
The church needed a new pastor and asked Charles to consider the position.
The more Charles prayed about it, the more certain he was that God was calling his family to Miami the Sunday that uh he read his resignation.
He and Annie sang a song his way mine as his way of announcing to us that God has a place for him, that he is going to follow a prayer for us to say that that God’s will become our will.
And that we follow that also. He was such a loved man and uh and endeared himself to the people.
They were very sorry to him going, but they understood that he was called and he had to follow God’s will.
I mean, that’s what he was always teaching us that whatever God tells you to do, that’s what you’re gonna do for the next six years.
Charles served as pastor of First Baptist Church of Miami and loved it. The church flourished.
His ministry grew with the creation of the George Mueller Christian school. He also began his graduate education studies.
Miami was a great place to raise a family.
The other thing about Miami was, it wasn’t too far from Naples and Naples back in the sixties is very, it was very different than the way Naples is now.
So we would actually, we had a travel trailer.
So a very small trailer, there were the four of us and we would drive to Naples, Florida, drive out onto the beach, drive down the tree line on the sand for miles, pick a spot and stop and camp and stay 345 nights and never see a soul back then.
We would just literally can build a fire and play on the beach for, you know, again, four or five nights.
And those were, you know, those were fabulous times.
In 1968 Charles felt the Lord calling him to move again. Sure enough.
One Sunday, a pulpit committee from Bartow Florida arrived at the church though.
They weren’t sure if their congregation could handle such an energetic pasture.
They were confident that Charles was God’s answer to their prayers that Spring Charles was appointed pastor of First Baptist Church bar.
There were some of the more senior members of the church that were not too thrilled with the pastor that paced back and forth across the pulpit between that him pacing and him stopping and telling us to pay attention or looking right at some of the young people and pointing them out, put your comb away.
I need you to hear this. Are you listening?
You know that those were some of the things that I remember him saying directly to the youth.
We eventually moved from the front row of the balcony down to the front row of the sanctuary.
It was wonderful. But, you know, you, you felt the Holy Spirit there.
You know, the Lord knew what first Baptist needed and that was something that Doctor Stanley could provide.
His sermons were on living the Christian life.
How God could make a difference in your life, a personal relationship which I’m not sure we had heard a lot about personal relationships.
Uh in those days, he was a pastor, not just a preacher, he pastored us.
There is a distinction, you know, he scheduled his time for his prayer time is very, very important to him.
One of the things that really touched me deeply as, as a young person was the numbers of people that inadvertently interrupted him on his knees, either in his study at home or in his study at the church.
And when he talked to God publicly, you knew there was a connection.
I mean, anybody that, that’s that close to God or seeking God’s heart that much, surely he’s God’s got his hands on that person.
He had a one on one speaking relationship with God. And that was something very desirable to me.
I wanted to know the person God, Jesus. I wanted, I wanted that to be personal.
And Charles Stanley exhibited that he was a picture of that to me as a, as a young person and he was proof that that can happen and that, that it was happening.
They’re right there in front of us.
Every member had a place in the church, whether they were 80 or 20 or 12.
Every single person is valuable in the eyes of God. Every single person has some gift.
Every single person, God has a purpose and a plan for your life.
There’s no such thing as an unimportant person on the face of this earth.
Nobody listen, nobody should be looked down upon because every single person Jesus Christ died for that makes them extremely worthy in the eyes of God he built a very, very strong bond quickly, which speaks volumes to the kind of pastor he was.
So he helped create an atmosphere at our church where people wanted to come to church and wanna be a part of it.
The whole family endeared themselves to our congregation, to our people, not only our church people, but the people of the town, it was a small community.
It was a small church and it was a really a great place to raise a family and I loved it and it was a nice little town and, and then I could shoot out rifles and fish.
And so from where I, we lived, I could walk to two or three different really pond lakes and fish, you know, something my dad and I would do together, Doctor Stanley and his family.
They were young. They were, um, sort of the picture postcard of a young and growing family every now and again, Andy would come bursting in.
He wasn’t very old. And of course, all the people in the church voted on Becky because she was such a beautiful child, you know, with curly locks.
And it was a pleasure to, uh, watch them grow a little bit that they did in the time they were here.
I do remember when he came, he said his desire was to stay in Barto and raise his family here because this was the kind of place that he wanted to raise his family.
I went up to um Alexandra, Virginia and I was in revival up there with a friend of mine and the Lord was really blessing us, but somehow I was just disturbed and I couldn’t figure out why.
And so I’d come back each night and I’d get out of the bed and I just asked her to speak to my heart.
One night, I pulled out a legal pad and I drew a circle in the middle of it and I drew five lines from it and I said, well, it must be one of these five things.
And so the on the fifth line, I put a question mark.
I said, it’s probably something that I never thought about before.
And I was just asking her to speak to my heart.
And it’s like the Lord said, I’m going to move you.
It was very definitely a surprise to most people. None of us wanted to leave.
We loved Bartow Florida, we love the city, we love the community. Uh We love the church.
When Dr Stanley first came here, he didn’t think that he would be moving his family again in 15 months.
And I’m sure he, he had some challenges doing that and he felt like God wanted us to pick up and move and come to Atlanta where he was going to be the associate pastor.
My parents had never owned a home, they had always lived in the home that a church provided and when we moved to Atlanta, we were gonna have to buy a house.
They didn’t have any money for a down payment. I mean, literally none of this, none of this made sense.
And I kept saying no, no, no.
And I wasn’t interested and, and uh, all the time I knew I was gonna have to go.
It was very obvious it was God that took him away from us.
You know, he really grieved and agonized over that.
And I remember him talking about the, the process of praying through this and this is what, you know, he felt like God wanted us to do.
And um as a kid, um just because of how I was raised, you know, if God said to do something, you just did it, you there, there was just no question.
And so in my simplistic childlike faith, I said to him, well, dad, if that’s what God wants us to do, then that’s what we need to do.
I remember what he said, I was so grateful I didn’t know what to do.
He said, well, every time God has told us to do something and we did it, he always blessed us.
So I guess it’ll be ok. So God knew I needed to hear that.
He just felt like that was kind of the final um affirmation that this is what we needed to do.
That’s part of what it means to be faithful to the call that God’s given you.
So consequently, the church, even though we hated to lose him, we knew it was the right thing.
We felt like he could have stayed here for another 10 years instead of going to Atlanta, I’m sure the people in Atlanta would disagree with us and you could just sense that, uh God was gonna do special things in his life and he was gonna be open to it, whatever it was in October 1969 God called Charles to Atlanta.
However, this appointment was far more challenging than the ones before.
So when we moved to Atlanta, um we started over the gentleman that invited my dad to come to First Baptist, Atlanta.
We actually moved in with their family, changed schools again, started all over with friends.
And so because of that, um I very quickly connected to my friends at church and my church friends are my friends to this very day one being Louis Giglio.
Somehow, God, I believe just orchestrated putting our lives together and we became the best of friends as associate pastor Charles Stanley preached on Sunday and Wednesday nights.
His evangelical style quickly made an impact.
Well, I heard Dr Stanley preach, the very first sermon he preached at first Baptist church.
And we were all excited about having a young associate pastor come on staff, every single believer who’s walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, who believes that book and who is willing to take what God’s word says by simple faith and begin to exercise the truth and the power of prayer.
God’s people are Liberator. He was a fiery little evangelist.
I guess I would say almost every service was like a revival and a lot of people were coming to know Jesus Christ as their savior.
And it, it, it was wonderful. The way that he unfolds scripture is captivating.
When he said, for example, through Paul, don’t be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God.
Instead of preaching the Bible to people, my dad taught people the Bible and there’s a big, big difference.
He lets the word of God do its work in people’s lives and it’s going to get right to the point.
Your worries and anxieties may be banished and through prayer, peace will take the place of those anxieties.
I remember so many Fridays.
Dr Stanley would come home from work at church and I’d be spending the night at Andy’s house or we’d be on our way somewhere.
This was all through college as well.
And doctor Stanley would come through the door, he would put his coat on the kitchen table, he would disappear for a few minutes.
He would come back with casual clothes on and out the door.
He would go with a Bible, a yellow legal pad and a gallon of water.
And he’d say I’ll see you guys tomorrow.
And then on a lot of Saturdays, we’d be getting ready to go somewhere for Saturday night.
We’re heading out to a concert or going to hang out with friends or whatever.
And about seven o’clock car would pull in the driveway, the day would come Dr Stanley, empty gallon of water Bible.
But the legal pad, all the pages were ruffled and there was just ink everywhere.
Page after page after page of what was coming down from heaven.
This man wasn’t reading sermon books up in the study.
He wasn’t online saying what’s a good message from this text?
He was with God bringing something for the people from God.
And so when he stepped into that pulpit, that’s what was going on.
I could spend the rest of the message telling you how to pray for.
When the senior pastor left Charles stepped in and preached on Sunday mornings.
And although the church began to grow, there was a core group of people who did not want him to become the next senior pastor.
The people who were against him were leaders Sunday school teachers and they were still deacons in charge of committees face before God and tell God, you’re gonna lift that man’s name before him until God changes him.
And I’m here to tell you some of the people that ran the church thought we should have a big name.
Some doctor big name, the spirit of man always wants to be in the story who’s in control, who’s in charge, who calls the shots.
And every church has got those people and our church had them.
There are about seven men in the church who ran the church, they control everything.
And on one occasion, we were discussing some issue and I said, why don’t we just ask God about this?
And one of the men spoke up and said, this is business. Leave God out of this.
My response was how can you leave God out of something that is his business.
And so that started the conflict, how to talk with God.
And the title of this message, prayer is where the action is.
There’s a large number of people that love Doc Stanley and really wanted him to be senior pastor of the church.
But then there was another group and in that group happened to be the seven men who were really running the church at the time.
And they thought Stanley was too young, too evangelistic and just did not want him to be the senior pastor of the church.
People that I really loved and thought a lot of and people that I thought love me and have given testimonies about how much they learned.
They’d hug me one week and refused to speak to me the next week.
It was a very painful time for me. Um It would have been easy to leave.
In fact, it would have been easier to leave.
Um because there was, you know, promises made if you’ll go quietly. Um There were threats.
If you, if you force us to fire you, you’ll never work in a Southern Baptist church. Again.
There were a lot of times that I felt like doctor should defend himself. I wanted him to defend himself.
He didn’t, he never did and never has defended himself. It bothered him and had to bother him, son.
But as far as the emotion, uh he was as calm as anything because he left it with the Lord and said, God, whatever you want, I’m here to do your will.
And so I remember he would bring this stuff home and we would talk about it and pray about it.
And again, I was just reminded you, you make the big decisions on your knees and then when you’re confident that you know what to do, you do it and you literally leave the consequences to God.
Charles continued to preach even as pressure mounted for him to leave.
In September 1971 the church executives deacons and a 40 member pulpit committee called a meeting to vote against him as senior pastor.
Probably about a month for the business meeting.
This little lady who’d been trying to get me to come see her.
She want me to come to her retirement center and have lunch with her.
So I went to see her and she said, I don’t want you to sit down.
I just want to show you something. It shows a picture of Daniel and the lions down.
And she said, no, honey. She said, I want you to tell me what you see.
And I told her everything I could think of.
And then she preached me the greatest sermon.
She said, son, what I want you to see is Daniel does not have his eyes on the lions.
It’s like the Lord said to me, this is the way you’re gonna win this battle.
I want you to see everything that happens to you is coming from me no matter who says it and what they do.
I want you to see this coming from me, not from them.
And so whatever happens, you look to me because I’m in control.
Well, that set me so free. God will keep on reminding me.
Are you gonna believe what you see? Are you gonna believe what you heard me say?
I know how he lived by face.
I learned that from him every time we can know ultimately what the will of the Lord is as to how we ought to pray about a given situation.
The time came, we had the big business meeting and biggest meeting I’ve ever had in the church.
And uh the whole idea was to vote me out, the man who was in charge.
Uh He got up, he said, well, we’re gonna all vote by secret ballot.
This man stood up in the back and he said, no, we’re not tonight.
This church is gonna find out where everybody stands.
My dad did not want me in the sanctuary during this meeting because it was so contentious.
So he asked my sister and me to stay in his office.
So Louie literally would go into the sanctuary through a side door and go up the baptistry and listen and then come out the side door and back to my dad’s office to report what was going on in this business meeting was in and out during that conference keeping Andy up to date about what was going on.
Not one soul said one negative thing about me and they finally voted and won only about 65%.
And now I have to pray for consideration and being fully persuaded that this is the will of God for my life and the life of this church.
I hereby accept the call extended to me on Wednesday evening, September 22nd, 1971 by action of the church in conference to become pastor of the first Baptist church of Atlanta, Georgia.
The church outvoted the power structure that was in place right then at the time, they said we want Charles Stanley as pastor, we like his preaching.
And so they voted to call him his pastor, divided husbands and wives, friends, uh right down right down the road.
Well, as soon as he became senior pastor, people began leaving the church.
So the church cracked apart and a lot of my friends and their families and my family’s friends all left the church.
You look at his will you look at your, will you begin a real searching process?
Even though Charles was voted in a senior pastor, tensions continue to escalate from the dissenting members of the church who wouldn’t accept his leadership role, giving you his viewpoint.
And you begin to see things from his perspective all the time. God’s out here, you hear about church fights.
This was a real fight. This fight was so intense that on a business meeting night, there would be high attendance.
You did not miss a business meeting in these days because you had no idea what was gonna happen during the discussion period.
This one Sunday school director comes up and he really was started bad mouthing.
Doctor Stanley, he got kind of worked up and he used some profanity.
And so doctor Stanley put his hand on the shoulder said, you, you’re gonna need to sit down and said, we’re not gonna have that kind of language.
And this gentleman said you better sit back down or you might get punched.
And my dad just stood there and this guy, you know, left handed reached around and hit my dad in the jaw.
And as imagine being a high school kid, you’re just like this isn’t really happening.
Well, the whole church erupted and I, I can remember suddenly I was down front And I remember John Glover standing there with me while I was in tears.
Um Chaos kind of broke out right away.
People came down and got him off of the platform I think was showing all of us that this is a spiritual battle.
After all Charles had endured.
There was still one more battle to come that threatened the very existence and survival of First Baptist Atlanta.
I was on my way to church and I had this feeling that I should tell the cameraman to be alert.
So I sent the word up to them.
I said, now anywhere in this service, I tell you to cut off the cameras, you cut them out.
We were just on one station in black and white.
At that time, we were having a Sunday morning service and uh right after the, the singing, a man walks up on the platform and shall we continue to praise the Lord together this morning as we turn to, I said, let’s stand and sing onward.
Christian soldiers. And right, as I said, that this fella comes up to the pulpit and just kind of shoves me out of the way and grabs hold of that pulpit with all he was worth and says, you people think you’ve come here to hear a sermon.
You’ve come to see a funeral. Well, that’ll get your live TV. Kind of shut down in a hurry.
There were three college students sitting out in the audience.
And they just stood up and start singing the song, which was only with Christian soldiers where that whole crowd just stood up and, and began to sing.
It communicated a couple of things to me.
Number one, the church, the local church is worth suffering for the local church is a big deal.
And secondly, um, it in a very, um, graphic kind of way underscored the fact that you just do the right thing and you just deal with whatever the consequences are and ultimately the consequences are in God’s hand.
Church of 3000 people overnight became a church of 300 people. 38 of the 60 deacons resigned.
All the resign and uh half the Sunday school workers resigned. I saw the choir go down.
We just had 13 people in choir.
Some of the people who left First Baptist church went to the station and with their influence, talked them into taking us off of television.
Completely the atmosphere of the church at that then began to take on a whole new meaning and we all had to depend on God because it was, it was not an easy situation.
You could sense something is happening here.
Now, looking back all these decades, it was a spiritual war. It was darkness versus light.
It was everything we’ve seen now play out trying to be snuffed out in the earliest moment.
That was just one more attempt of the enemy if you will to try to stop.
What we all now can see was a really powerful and God ordained move of God that has changed the entire world.
We get to be a part of, of advancing the kingdom and joining the Lord Jesus says, when you’re faithful over a few things, I’ll make you a ruler over many.
And so let’s be faithful in the little things and let’s watch God open the doors in his perfect timing.
I think the Lord had let up our heart. You just preach the gospel.
Don’t try to having a big program.
I want you to preach the gospel and watch what I do.
And as my dad continued to preach, the church filled up and got bigger and bigger and went to two services and then ultimately, the three services I watched every single week, how faithfulness to God’s word and how faith move mountains.
The spirit of God is in this place.
First Baptist Atlanta was going to be a part of the fulfilling of Jesus promise to build a beautiful church in this city.
I mean, there were Sundays where you couldn’t get in First Baptist church in Atlanta downtown and you couldn’t get in the door.
In fact, we grew from the 13 people in the choir to our top enrollment was 358.
And I think Doctor Stanley somehow was always looking through all of that, not past it.
And he was always looking over the horizon saying church.
This is where we’re going and this is what we’re going to do.
And that’s why first Baptist church became such a game changing force, not in the city of Atlanta, but in the world, one of the things that my dad wrestled with in those early years was, hey, you know, we filled up a service now we have two services for a while.
They had three services and there was, um, an appropriate frustration with the fact that this message isn’t getting outside the walls of the church.
Live TV. You’re thinking that’s a pinnacle, right? Live TV. In Atlanta, Georgia. It wasn’t the pinnacle at all.
The pinnacle was God wanted to do something new.
When first Baptist Atlanta’s live broadcast was shut down.
The future of the television ministry was uncertain, but God was about to move in a powerful way.
I just began to pray. Lord, this is your man. It’s just not mine.
The chapel hour one year to that day we were on, on another station and so they’re taking us off is the best thing that happened because then we got on two stations and we had a chapel hour 8 30 to 9.
And then we had the worship service from 11 to 12 when God says, here’s what I want you to do.
Here’s the way I want you to do it. God is very precise.
There were a lot of people that wanted Dr Stanley to be on television, I’m not sure that he really wanted to be.
And the only reason he wanted to be was he wanted to get the gospel out to as many people as possible.
When God gets your attention, you begin to look at him, when you begin to look at him, what happens, you begin to pray.
And so through the medium of television, um that was a possibility.
And so he was, you know, he was a pioneer back in those early days of television ministry as it was often called from the Get Go.
Charles Stanley wants to reach everybody and wants to do whatever is necessary in order to get that done.
So he started in the chapel and he would sit down, I don’t know how he did this with his Bible.
Look right into a camera and speak for 35 minutes. Good morning and welcome to the chapel hour.
Nobody taught him to do that. That wasn’t something he was trained to do.
This was just a way of getting the message outside the walls of the church.
So he just started, they just took whatever opportunity they had.
At that point, the television program became very popular and other ministries wanted it and it began to grow in that way.
Welcome to the chapel hour. A presentation of Atlanta’s first Baptist church.
Dr Stanley’s radio ministry began on the audio recordings of the chapel hour were picked up by a small Christian radio station.
In Texas to, somebody gave us some of your tapes and we began to play them.
The people really love it when you send us some tapes. He’s in mcallen Texas. We said, I sure.
So we sent him some tapes and finally he call us back.
He said, well, why don’t you all get in the radio business? He said radio.
Well, I hadn’t thought about it.
I remember cleaning my parents ironwork on their front porch and listening to Doctor Stanley on the radio.
And I still remember the message that he was talking about asking, seeking and knocking that as we’re asking the Lord.
Uh and we’re praying, we’re also going out and we’re seeking his will and we’re seeking a sense of open doors.
In 1977 Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network called Dr Stanley and asked to use some of the sermon tapes.
Suddenly the program went from reaching viewers in Atlanta to touching a nationwide audience.
We began to ship them tapes, they began to play them, people began to write.
We know how they can support the program. I said, you know, support the program.
You know, I just wasn’t even thinking that one day I was sitting in my study and I was thinking, well, we need to give this thing a name besides just the first Baptist church.
I looked over to my left and there was a living Bible translation.
They had titled this Bible in Touch I said, I thought that’s the name.
When in touch originally started, it was a part of the church.
It was not an organization unto itself.
Actually let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify God who is in heaven.
I thought, well, God, that’s what I’m up to.
I wanna, I wanna get as many people as possible in touch with Jesus Christ and his way of life.
He, he starts off. Yes, I want to reach the world, but not only do I want to reach the world, but hey, now I wanna reach more of the world.
I want to reach this part of the world.
And I, I, I, I wanna go as far as God wants me to go, I had taken uh the leadership team up to the mountains and we’ve been praying and asking the Lord to give us direction.
And I’m reading the 28th chapter of Matthew, which I’ve read many, many times and somehow it’s like it just came off the page and grabbed me.
I thought now, Lord, did you really and truly mean the whole world, just like I said, yes, I believe it’s what God wants us to do.
And that is he wants in touch in every country in the world and let’s trust them to do it within two years.
And to that week, we went every single country in the world in some fashion, Rome.
When they built the first paved roads.
Their motive was not so that Christians could help evangelize the world using those roads.
But Christians did use those roads.
And when I think about ministries today to reach the world, we need to embrace technology.
Here’s the mission of in touch.
My goal has always been to get the simple truth of the gospel to as many people as possible as quickly as possible, as simple as possible in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Because I know that’s no way it’s gonna work to the glory of God in touch.
Continued to spread the gospel message through the In Touch magazine and its Spanish language counterpart in as well as through the radio programs and the emerging internet, you can reach people with television, you can reach people with radio, you can reach people with the magazine that read.
But how do you reach people that are in those far flung places?
And the only way to do that is you actually have to go to read them if you can’t go or if I can’t go, you can send a messenger to go in your place.
Dr Stanley’s respect for our military inspired him to find a way to encourage troops overseas with the life, giving hope of the gospel.
In 2007, the creation of the messenger made that pursuit of reality.
And the original messengers were just for the military.
There were 35 sermons from Dr Stanley kind of a khaki color.
We’ve always had a solar power in the messenger because people in the field might not have electricity.
Today, the messenger’s purpose has expanded beyond the military and technology has made it possible to share the gospel with people in the most remote parts of the world.
That’s something that in touch has done all these decades.
It’s an example to the rest of us, to use whatever means possible as the Lord opens the door to, to send his truth, his principles and his word to the nations around the world, they have access to God’s word in their own language, in their heart language, a language that they understand word by word by word.
It was one more way to reach people to find that very last person to be able to present to them.
The gospel message scripture says that every good thing comes from the Lord.
And so even technology and the brilliance of it uh in every generation is coming from him, the opportunities are limitless and God’s provided them.
He keeps opening doors and in touch just keeps walking through those doors as he opens them.
So whether it’s television and radio or whether it’s internet delivery or uh the messenger device that God will always find a way to get his message into the hands of people who need it.
I am grateful that ministries like and touch say we’ll take radio, we’ll take television, we’ll take the printed word.
We’ll take the internet, social media, whatever it takes to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ and do it with excellence.
And so you gotta start with two little orange cameras in the chapel hour and it has grown and more and more people have watched more and more people have seen it.
It has gone overseas. It has gone in, in, in a lot of different ways with, with the messenger.
So those baby steps of of preaching right to a camera when nothing is, is more difficult than that, taking advantage of openings for local networks.
And then again, just taking advantage of opportunities as they came along and God honored it.
And of course, now it’s all over the world.
I mean, this was a move of God, but I think he could see the millions of people who needed to know this truth and to be set free by the very power of God’s word.
And so he was always looking for a way to see that message a leapfrog from Atlanta and from America to wherever God could take it to the ends of the world.
When you think about his legacy and his story and the thing that connects all the dots of the different chapters of his life.
Um It’s just that it really is as he said, so many times, you trust God, which means you obey God and you don’t try to manipulate outcomes.
You genuinely sincerely leave the consequences to him.
I’m not surprised at how God’s used Him because I’ve seen him be so faithful to God, so obedient to God in everything he’s ever done.
There’s no magic and waking up every day and saying I’m gonna obey God today.
It is a daily hourly moment by moment, decision to say I’m going by the power and the grace of God to choose today to be faithful to the very calling that God has put on my life.
And it’s so obvious when you look at his life, how he’s trusted God and he’s made very difficult decisions that maybe didn’t make sense to people at the time.
But looking back on it now, it was very clearly. He was following God’s will.
He understood the most essential part of Christianity.
It is not just knowing Bible verses, it’s not just proclaiming wonderful messages.
It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
He did his best to make it practical.
He never left it in a theological realm and hoped people could figure out what to do with it.
Um He really put, you know, the hands and feet of Jesus on the scripture in terms of what we’ve been called to do as believers.
He will have a legacy that will live, I believe forever and his messages and recordings and his voice will be listened to far after he’s gone.
And after we’re gone, so much content, so many books, so many videos, so many television programs, so many short films, such so much web content that’s out there.
He’s gonna saturate the culture for a long time to come.
I think that Doctor Stanley’s legacy has been written in the lives of individuals all over the world.
Individuals that have heard him preach and that have accepted that as their own personal faith and have become Christians and are living the Christian life wherever they are now, thousands all over the world have done that from lessons that you know, he’s taught to people and how they will go on into the world and, and preach those lessons and teach those lessons to other people as well.
I would say uh that Doctor Stanley’s legacy would be a man who loved God, a man who lived by the word whose sole mission in life was to get the message of Christ out to the world and see them come to him.
The number of lives that he started on on a deeper spiritual journey will be his legacy.
I was a college student in the early 19 nineties and uh for my freshman and sophomore year, I was a member at first Baptist Church of Atlanta under Dr Stanley’s uh teaching and um was disciple during those two years and it was a huge step up in my own faith.
Oh mercy. I has blessed everybody taught everybody preach sermons that reached you.
And that made you think his legacy will remain for those who come after who will also preach the gospel, who will also teach the Bible, who will also pastor people.
And so that legacy will live on in others who have been influenced by his teaching.
Well, I’m definitely one of the pastors who has been greatly influenced, may be primarily influenced by Dr Stanley’s life and his faith.
I think it’s pretty obvious that for me, that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now.
Had I not been in that window of time watching God use his life, watching him do ministry, watching him serve the Lord love the Lord model that for us and for our kids has been extraordinary.
It is a blessing to be in this family and to be a part of this legacy that grants has started and my dad has carried on and hopefully all of us as grandchildren will continue on with that legacy.
And ultimately his legacy is me and his daughter and his grandkids.
And um you know, it’s, it’s kind of an overwhelming thought to think that I’m part of his legacy and I’m as proud as I could possibly be, but feel I think appropriately the mantle and the responsibility that comes with being his son and being in ministry.
So, um you know, I think his voice will be heard for a long, long, long time and thanks to in touch and thanks to media and thanks to broadcast Um I think his voice will be heard for perhaps generations.
I’d want them to say.
He believed that the most important truth in his life was obey God and leave all the consequences to him.
And it appears from what we see and heard. That’s where he lived.
I’d like for it to be in, I am home in heaven.
Dear ones. All so happy. All is so bright. There’s perfect joy and beauty in this everlasting life.
All the pain and grief are over it.
Every restless toss in the past I am now at peace forever.
Safely home in heaven at last.