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[no audio] [no audio] We've got three minutes to do a job. Take two minutes getting ready.

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[no audio] [trumpets playing] [ Music ] ♪ Our Lord has seen the glory of the coming of the Lord ♪

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♪ He is trampling out the vintage treads of grapes of leather store ♪ ♪ He has loosed the fateful lightning of His caravans with sword ♪ ♪ Jesus is marching on ♪ ♪ Gloria ♪

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♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Gloria ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Gloria, gloria ♪

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(singing) ♪ Oh, we have a new area ♪ ♪ It's rooted, Martin, ah ♪ ♪ I've seen it in the watchtowers ♪

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♪ Of the hundred thousand years ♪ ♪ They have built it here ♪ ♪ And all the things He is doing ♪ ♪ I believe I just did the things ♪

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♪ That Him have said and ♪ ♪ He said it for me ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪

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[singing] [Music] In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea. With the glory in his good arms, that transfigures you and me.

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♪ As he died to make men holy ♪ ♪ Let us live to make men free ♪ ♪ While God's still watching over ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ His truth is marching on ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪

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♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪ ♪ His truth is marching on ♪ ♪ Glory ♪

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♪ Hallelujah ♪ [music] [applause] [MUSIC]

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I know I've been changed. Lord, I know I've been changed. The angels in heaven done signed my name. The angels in heaven done signed my name.

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Lord, I know I've been changed. Lord, I know I've been changed. Lord, I know I've been changed. The angels in heaven done signed my name.

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♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ I believe, I believe, I do believe ♪ ♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ My son King Jesus will receive ♪

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♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ If you don't believe I'll bury thee ♪ ♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ Well just follow me now to the jawless grave ♪

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[singing] ♪ Oh Lord, Lord, I know I've been changed ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, Lord, I know I've been changed ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, Lord, I know I've been changed ♪

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♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ They done signed my name ♪ ♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ I went to the valley one day of the rain ♪

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♪ The angels in heaven done signed my name ♪ ♪ My soul got happy and I stayed all day ♪ ♪ My head got stuck to the God of love ♪ ♪ Thank God I won't change nothing for my journey now ♪

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♪ Lord, I know I can ♪ ♪ Lord, I know I can ♪ ♪ To give you sin and heaven and sign my name ♪ ♪ Lord, I know I can ♪

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♪ Lord, I know I can ♪ [singing] [MUSIC] (chanting)

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[chanting] [applause] Let's say amen. Nothing beat that with a frame.

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God bless Fort Webb, Mount Ollie Choir, and Miss Miller, who brings the spirit of Bishop College every week to Fort Worth. Here's an announcement of White Priceland, New York, Maryland. And he was a son of a gun.

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He is a preacher, a pastor, a statement, a prophet, a leader, a builder. As a leader, he had a vision. And someone said, "Well, there's no vision that people perish." And they perish for two reasons.

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For the lack of understanding and for the lack of leadership. Bishop College had a leader in M.K. Curry. A man with a vision. He saw a bishop in Marshall.

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And almost on his own shoulders, as a leader, he moved that institution to Dallas. And left for us a rural heritage. I could say more about it, but all of you knew it.

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And everybody that know him and love him say amen. - Amen. - Dr. Milton gave that. - Amen.

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(audience applauding) - Thank you very much, Dr. George, for those generous words of introduction. President Leston, our platform guest, to all of the ladies and gentlemen of the congregation,

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ladies and gentlemen, this hour has been designated as a Bishop College hour. This evening's service has been named for some time the Timothy Moses Chambers Night, first in honor and then in

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memory of Dr. Timothy Moses Chambers senior The one to be with his father God in the fall of

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1977 It was so named for him Some years ago Because of the tremendous work which he had done in the Institute

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Both as a pastor here in Texas and in Dallas and as president of one of the state conventions And later as a leader Baptist some groups in California and for 25 years from

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1952 through 1976 to 77 He preached every Wednesday night at the Institute

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Institute, known as America's big crowd preacher, he attracted the largest crowd to the Institute on the night that he preached. When he became unable, on one occasion he had his son to preach, and then the next year he went home to be with God.

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And since he has been gone, this night has continued, I think, to be the biggest night in the Institute. And I'm confident that each year he looks down over the Valley of the Winds of Glory and rejoices.

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This year, when more people have come than ever before, he must be happier than he's ever been before. or to see you here. I'm sure he's happy to know who the speaker for this evening

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is. I think it is significant that his widow, Mrs. Chambers, picked up the mantle upon his death and continued to attempt to raise funds for Bishop

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College as he had done. You see, it was Dr. Chambers who lighted the fires among the churches in California to raise money for Bishop when we were in Marshall, and brought more from California

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than the churches in Texas were giving to Bishop College. Finally, through embarrassment, through enlightenment, We woke up, the responsibility that was ours and began to try to match what the California brethren

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in the West were doing. And now all the conventions, black conventions in Texas, those in Louisiana and Oklahoma, and from across the world, across the nation,

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attempt to carry out this mission which he began in a small way. I've taken this time to say what some might think might be irrelevant, because I think we need to know the history.

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In 1952, my first year as bishop, we raised about $1,600. Our expenses were about $1,750. I raised a bit of sand with the people at the college for operating at a deficit. They told me, "Well, that was the first time they'd ever been that close."

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[laughter] But we move from that point to where you are tonight. I think it would appear to be providential, perhaps an action of the Holy Spirit, that on this night, a few days after Mrs. Chambers left to be with God, that our speaker should

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be the one, a man whose life was so intertwined with Dr. and Mrs. Chambers in the work of the master, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, the eminent pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ of Brooklyn, New York, and a preacher of the gospel renowned throughout five continents and the isles of the sea, should be here to be our Timothy Moses Chambers preacher for

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this evening. He succeeded him, as I remember, as president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. He delivered the eulogy, or not to change his translation. [ Music ]

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How to preach the message in all their griefers. Glory now to Jesus, King of kings. And I, if I speak to Jack Fox, from behind, what I'll drop, for him and to me. How to reach the masses,

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King of every birth, For an answer, Jesus can not be. ♪ I know I will not be lifted up from the earth ♪

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♪ But God will come to me ♪ ♪ Lift Him up, lift Him up, lift Him up, lift Him up ♪ ♪ To be saved from eternity ♪ ♪ And I feel I'll be lifted up from the earth ♪

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♪ Far off, homeward bound to thee ♪ [Chanting] Dr. Curry, Dr. George, President Lassiter, Dr. Hill, Dr. Manuel Scott, President Rowe, Dr. Shaw, Dr. Higgins, Dr. Wright, Dr. Johnny Bryant, and others. [laughter]

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I think you would want me, again, which has already been done, to thank this choir for this marvelously rich music tonight. [applause] In fact, they have created such a warm atmosphere here that the water is a little too hot for me to jump in right off. [Laughter]

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When I was a lad, my mother used to pour the bucket of water in the round tub, and she'd say to me, "Boy, don't get in that tub now. The water is too hot, and she'd paddle it around a while until it got cooler. So I'm going to paddle the water a little while until it gets variable.

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Dr. Manuel Scott, Mr. President, who is one of a kind, sui generis, commanded me to come here on your behalf, and I am delighted to come again to Bishop College. President Currie has proven not only in the case of Bishop, but perhaps even with less to work with tonight, that he can make much out of little. I really appreciate that, sir.

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I talked with President Lassiter this morning, and to my amazement, I called for him, and I fully expected to say to the Secretary. I just wanted him to know that I was in the city. And to my amazement, he answered the telephone himself.

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I was so taken aback that I am not sure still that I said to him what I had planned to say. But I do want you to know, Mr. President, I arrived in the city safely. You know, I am always overwhelmed when I come to Texas. I was reared in Louisiana, and we heard that beyond the Sabine River there was a race of

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people, gunslinging. But I found later that Texans were a wonderful people. And I think the word I heard as a boy about that wild race of people who lived beyond Mr. Bean, came out of a certain Louisiana defensiveness.

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(audience laughs) Maturity has taught me that. You have all perhaps heard of the two men who met, and one said, "I'm from Texas, you can call me Tex."

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The other said, "I'm from Louisiana, don't call me Louise." (audience laughs) [laughter] There used to be a time when that kind of thing was more important than it is now.

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[laughter] But I am a true believer in Texas, and I'll tell you the extent of my belief. I believe that in January 1985 the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl. [laughter]

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You can't get any stronger belief than that. [laughter] I was deeply touched tonight at seeing President Curran stand here because he is living proof, as Dr. George said, that one man can make the difference.

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And I'm delighted at the way President Lassiter has taken hold of this great and noble institution. I'm also delighted to be with my old and dear friend, Dr. Cesar Clark. His ministry and my ministry grew together in Louisiana. His grew up and mine grew.

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[laughter] For thirty-odd years, and I said this to some of you when I was last here, He propounded the principle that Pepper would split the preacher's voice. He is a preacher of such notable gifts that I accepted what he said, but I never did adopt it.

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Thirty-odd years later, when he found out that there wasn't a thing to that, he said, "Old Clifton Walker at Trinity Church told me that." All up until that time, it was his own theory. And when it collapsed, it became Dr. Walker's theory.

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And he's gone on to heaven and cannot defend himself. But I know, I suppose better than almost any living man, the secret of Caesar Clark's preaching. And if I feel led to do it the next time I appear, I want to preach, I guess, talk about what you might call a post-Easter sermon. And there are several reasons why I want to talk about this.

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In February of 1856, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, on a Sunday morning in the new Park Street Church, whose congregation would later worship in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and where he he would have a preaching ministry as far as hearers were concerned, unrivaled by any pastor in the English-speaking world.

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And on that Sunday morning in 1856, Spurgeon began that sermon by saying that he had been examining why so many churches were so staid and so chilled. And he said he tracked the apostolic preaching back to its source to find out what the difference was.

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It was not just in the fact that there was a different type of oratory inherited from the Greek orators which later Christian preachers adopted? Nor was it to be found in the fact that the New Testament preachers did not preach in stated edifices.

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He went on to say that nor was it that they did not take texts, though I'm not sure about spurging on that because at Pentecost Peter did take a text. He said, "From the book of Joel I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh." But Spurgeon said that day that the reason why the apostolic preaching set the world

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on fire was that the New Testament preachers always preached the resurrection. Pentecost, it was Peter's assertion that you crucified him and God raised him from the dead. And when they went up to the temple, Peter and John, in the aftermath of their healing,

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They said, "This is no world-beating marvel, but this is a derivative miracle, for God raised him from the dead." And it was the preaching of the resurrection, said Spurgeon, that first aroused the ire of the council and brought the apostles, hailed the apostles before them for a hearing.

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And as soon as they got out, it was the preaching of the resurrection that they uttered. And if you follow the apostolic preaching, the people brought their gifts—where is that in the fourth chapter because they preached the resurrection. I'm convinced that it is one of the chief achievements of Satan that we preach the resurrection only on Easter

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Sunday. For here is the central truth of the Christian faith. Here is what supremely sets it apart. R. W. Dale was at Cars Lane Church in Birmingham, successor to John Angel James, on a Saturday before Easter, he was reading an account of the resurrection, and it came upon him with a fresh force, "Christ is actually alive!"

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He said, "I must tell my people Christ lives." And after that, never a Sunday came in Cars Lane Church, but that an Easter anthem was sung in that congregation. And so I want to talk this morning, this evening, about three days that changed the world.

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You know, let me read this passage. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.

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There are days, though they may be the flashpoints of a long, smoldering circumstance. That passage is at the start of the fifteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. I hardly thought any preacher would not recognize anything from the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians. There are days that alter the world.

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If you are ever a tourist, if you have been a tourist in Quebec, first in upstate New York, they will point out Fort Ticonderoga where the French General Louis Montcalm successfully defended the fort and when you go to Quebec they will carry you to the plains of Abraham, site of the battlefield, between the English general Thomas Wolfe and the French general Louis

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Montcalm. And it is generally felt among historians that if the British general Wolfe had not prevailed on the battlefield on the plains of Abraham on that day in September 1759, the French influence on this continent would have very likely continued and this sermon might well be in French. But that day in September 1759 altered the course of the language

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of the North American Congress. Oh, well, closer to home. If in April, what was it, 1836, Santa Ana's armies at San Jacinto

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had prevailed on that day, this sermon might well be in Spanish. [laughter] But there are days that alter the course of things.

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One day divides the student from the graduate, the pupil from the alumnus or the alumna. And how many I have seen countless bridegrooms perspiring, no sweating, because they knew the momentous hour drew near that, for better or worse, would alter their lives forever. We Christian people have three days that altered the world, shook the world from center to

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and will affect events until time falls exhausted at the feet of eternity. Three days that altered the direction of history, arrested the drift of time, and turned around the sequence of occurrence. Three days.

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The first one, Friday. A hill shaped like a skull. An execution. A corpse.

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A tomb. What did it all mean? Some of the noblest minds of these two millennia have wrestled with the meaning of that first day. Irenaeus and Origen, Augustine and Anselm, and Aquinas, and Barth, and Tilly, and Luton.

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What did it mean? And there have been many theories as to what that first day meant. The legal theory that a law had been violated, a sentence was imposed, and on that cross, Christ accepted in himself the penalty.

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And then 500 years ago, Hugo Grotius, the Dutch theologian, propounded the theory that Calvary meant the wiping away of an embarrassment in God's governance of the universe,

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in removing an awful shame that a violation had occurred and had not been right. And then of course, there is the moral doctrine of what happened on that first day. That Christ showed in that, in his exemplary way, how far God would go to save his people.

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And as the revelatory doctrine, yes, that God revealed the heartbeat of his love at Calvary and at the same time unmasked the powers of evil, took away from them their pretense of respectability, pulled off from them their cloak of honor,

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and showed them a wicked government in alliance with a blasphemous religion turned against the fairest that the world had ever seen. For the cross ever reveals the wickedness of men, and we see over and over again conniving political operators joined hands with prostituted religionists to crucify the best the world

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has ever seen. When that day had wrought its way, it was shown that Joseph Caifas, with all of his gold plates on, embroidered linen stood on the side of hell. It ought to be a message to many of us with our gaudy capes. And poor women dressed as nurses hovering over us and

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fluttering with aspirin tablets and orange juice. [Cheers] Well, all of these theories may well be have truth in them, but neither one of them tells me everything about that first day.

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[No, not the boy's day.] No, all of them together tell me what happened. As a boy, I could not read the account of our Lord's death without tears coming to my eyes, and I still cannot.

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For I know in some way that I've never been able to explain that he took a lick that was meant for me. [audience laughter] I know that where the slate was all blotched

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and marred, he wiped it clean. And I know that he got under a load that I was meant to carry. And where the charges stood against me, he cleared them. If in Eden I see a tree forbidden, at Calvary I see a tree forgiving.

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And if in Eden I see a tree prohibited, at Calvary I see a tree provided. That in some way, deeper than I could ever say, that he made it all right with my soul. He manumitted the slaves' indebtedness, brought the exiled back to his native land, put the orphan at the father's table and called him or her a child.

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I know that at Calvary, that first day, my condition was forever altered and changed, and I am now a child of the royal house. Was it for crimes that I had done? He groaned upon the tree.

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Amazing pity. Amazing pity. Grace unknown and love beyond degree. Well might the Son in darkness hide and shut His glories in

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when Christ, the mighty maker, died, the man, the creature, sinned. The first day. of the second day. [crowd murmurs]

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The scriptures do not speak much, but they are instructive. They speak Peter in the third chapter of the first letter of the 19th verse,

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said that he was freed in the spirit and went and preached to spirits in prison. Now, I am not under any warranty to preach any second probation, which doctrine gave

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rise to the whole Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Those of us who have lost kin, who did not accept Christ, feel sometimes a strange sadness. I am among those. And I do not know the meaning, the cryptic, the meaning of this cryptic passage that he

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went and preached to the spirits in prison. Now, do I have warrant to preach a second probation? But I do read again that word that our Lord spoke about a shepherd, was he talking about himself, who left the nighting and night, and went searching for one Lord Sheehan, who

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that strayed, beguiled by some tempting tuft of grass, or led on by some inviting waterfall. Until, I do not know how long until is.

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And I have no warrant to speak, I will preach a second probation and I shall know the truth. But until, not until darkness falls, but until. Not until the chill of evening comes, but until.

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Not until briars cut the shepherds' hands, but until. Not until stones cut and lacerate the feet, but until. [BLANK_AUDIO]