Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

Book Reviews
Editorial unless noted

LEE ROBERSON, Always About His Father’s Business, An Authorized Biography by James H. Wigton; Xulon Press; 18 Chapters, 359 Pages; $20.99, Paper

Only eternity will adequately measure the impact Lee Roberson had on Chattanooga (TN), America, and the world! He was one of our heroes – a personal friend – and one of the 20^th century’s very finest Christian leaders. We wondered when a biography of him would be written – and here it is.

While Wigton has certainly worked hard – a noble job, in fact – in contacting Roberson’s associates for interesting data, it has made the book mostly a collection of quotes (and some of their memories apparently were not too good – or mine isn’t). He admitted this weakness, saying it is hard for friends to be critically honest; it does leave a sugary taste to a volume. His favorite sources seem to have been Clyde Box (whom he thought was Dr. Roberson’s best friend), the late Bob Kelley, Clarence Sexton, Roberson’s associates Faulkner and Wendelken, Ron Comfort, Tom Wallace, Elgin and Jean  Smith, Garland Cofield, Ed Carter,  E. C. Haskill, Jr., Deacon Arnold Chambers, Dr. E. C. Haskill, Sr. (Highland Park board chairman for 30 years), and several others. The author himself gives a longer list in his Preface.

Laverne Edward “Lee” Roberson was born in late 1909 in poverty, even by standards of his own time. He had one sibling, his sister Darlene, 13 years his junior but to whom he was always devoted. His conversion at age 14 through the faithful witness of Sunday school teacher Daisy Hawes at the Cedar Creek Baptist Church has been told often and does not need to be repeated here. His parents professed Christ on the same day he did and the three were baptized together. After Lee left home his parents were divorced and the father, who later remarried, remained faithful to the church all his life, often coming to hear him preach. His mother, on the other hand, only came to hear him preach one time in all his years at Highland Park.

Some will be surprised at the top three preachers Wigton says inspired him in his early years: Robert G. Lee, George W. Truett and J. Frank Norris. Lee was a neighbor pastor in his first work and he consulted him often seeking advice. Truett and Norris were leaders in their denominations – one in the convention and one independent – but bitter enemies. His admiration was probably because both so strongly emphasized evangelism and soul winning.

If Lee Roberson had a right arm, it was J. R. Faulkner, who served him for more than four decades. Wigton is not exactly right when he says, “Faulkner joined Roberson straight out of Bob Jones College.” J. R. had been an assistant pastor of a church just south of Chattanooga, the Eastlake Baptist Church of Rossville (GA), since 1944, accepting an almost unanimous call to the number one position in 1945 when the pastor resigned – all this time commuting from the Bob Jones campus (then in Cleveland, TN) to the church. While they weren’t called that then, he eventually became an adjunct professor at Roberson’s school. It wasn’t until 1949 that he joined Roberson and Highland Park full time, leaving a successful, growing church.

Early in his ministry Roberson developed his slogan, picked up from an early pastor whom he admired, “Three to Thrive,” meaning that to be a growing Christian one should be in the church’s three main services: Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.

By 1971 Highland Park was declared by Christian Life to be “the largest church in the world.” Its prayer meeting averaged more than 3,000 and the “threesome” slogan evidently helped its other services as well because the Training Union was averaging 5,342 (some 3,051 at the main church and 2,291 in the area chapels).

Yet Roberson showed his humility in explaining, when the work went right on during his year out of the pulpit due to voice problems, “Everything was moving! That just showed the little preacher something. It didn’t depend so much on what I was doing. It depended on the working of the power of God through our lives” (emphasis added). Remember that, preacher!

Roberson wisely had no secrets from his people; the church’s plans were an open book. Wigton emphasized, “It was Roberson’s goal to make known to all the people what the church was going to do – and to keep nothing hidden from the church.” That is certainly different from some of today’s pastors who seem concerned that their members will find out what is going on and what future plans are in the hopper.

Wigton says Roberson experienced a mini-nervous breakdown during his troubles with the Southern Baptist Convention and compared it to Spurgeon’s breakdown following the Surrey Garden disaster, mentioned below.

I did not recall the details of Roberson’s exit from the SBC exactly like Wigton gives it, but he may be correct. I don’t have the time to check all my records.

About that SBC problem, the author (who is in the convention now himself; in fact, holds several leadership positions on the state level) says Roberson publicly told Tom Messer that “in retrospect he thought it had been a mistake to leave the SBC,” that it would have been better to “reorganize it.” But that, of course, was after Judge Paul Pressler, Adrian Rogers, O. S. Hawkins, Paige Patterson, Bailey Smith, Bill Powell (who really started the ball rolling) and other inerrantists “reorganized it.” And Trinity in Jacksonville, then led by Bob Gray, did not “leave the SBC,” they were booted by the local association just as Roberson and Highland Park were – and for the same reason, noncooperation (his support for independent missions was a major problem with his convention peers). The pastor of Trinity at the time of its expulsion, Dr. Bob Gray, told me how grateful he was for the action, which freed him from the ugly task of leading the church out – which he wanted all along.

Wigton is wrong also about the Surrey Garden Music Hall tragedy. He says it was caused by the collapse of some seating stands. According to Spurgeon’s biographies it was when someone yelled “Fire!” and panic ensued with thousands present. Spurgeon authority Bob Ross confirmed this latter understanding.

Wigton notes that Mrs. Roberson loved to shop. Indeed, she did. She and my wife always went shopping together when her husband and I were preaching at the Mount Abarim annual conferences in Mexico. My wife loved it, too!

R. O. Stone was a deacon at Highland Park and he owned the Rancho Motel out on East Ridge and Wigton’s mention of it brought back memories. Not only did our family stay there, but R. O. Stone, Jr., was the first soloist/song leader to travel with me. He – and his beautiful wife, Angie, who could play the piano like it was going out of style – went on to be one of the leading musicians in the Southern Baptist Convention, becoming the minister of music at some of its largest churches and even being selected to lead the music at the annual conventions.

Speaking of musicians, Dr. Roberson wanted them to know they were not to take much time introducing their song or giving testimony when they got up to sing. “He wanted them to leave the speaking to the preacher.” (I agree and have often told musicians in my meetings, “If you promise not to preach when you sing, I’ll promise not to sing when I preach.” That usually did it! Who would have wanted me to sing?)

It was in reading this book that I first learned how highly honored I had been by Dr. Roberson. During a Bible Conference, when it came to the closing Sunday, Dr. Roberson asked me to speak at one of the Sunday services even though it had not been on the agenda. The conference director, Dr. Fred Garland, a converted Broadway producer, had already told me what a special privilege that was because he rarely gave up his pulpit on the Lord’s Day in those days to a conference speaker. That was an honor. I understood it to be such.

But the “highly honored” came when Wigton was talking about how private Dr. Roberson was, fearful that he would appear to be playing favorites, either by his church members or his ministerial peers. As I recall, he said Dr. Faulkner had only been invited for a meal in the Roberson home twice (possibly three times). And he said it was a rare thing for the Robersons to even invite a guest speaker into their home to eat – usually some one like Clyde Box, his best preacher friend, and those rare times were only for refreshments after a church service.

That moved me! He invited Mrs. Sumner and me to their home after a Sunday night service during the same conference mentioned above. I assumed it was a regular custom with the Robersons – and how surprised I was to find it was a special honor. (One I hadn’t even realized I was receiving!)

Some things might have been better left unsaid by Wigton. In talking about TTU alum Max Helton – a greatly used brother who had a great ministry – he mentioned some of the great race drivers he had seen come to Christ, listing apostate Jeff Gordon among them. Poor Jeff divorced his lovely Christian wife, married a racing fan groupie, and totally repudiated his Christian experience – actually making fun of it. He referenced Gordon again later in the book, “Helton led drivers like Jeff Gordon and Ken Schrader to the Lord …” All of us have had ‘converts’ like Gordon, but we don’t brag about them.

We also believe it would have been better, in talking about Roberson’s children, if he had just listed them and said what they were doing today rather than saying all were in Christian service. While his son has a business venture that includes a couple of Christian radio stations, he is a former pastor who suddenly resigned on a Sunday morning. The details would be considered gossip so we will bypass them.

We smiled at Bob Kelley’s account of a restaurant experience. He said, “Someone once put a glass of beer at his table. He knocked it off – maybe at an airport – for what it would look like.” Bob was dead right about it being at an airport restaurant and about his reason (he was concerned about his testimony if someone who knew him saw it), but he was dead wrong about what he did.

In the first place, it would be uncharacteristic for him to make a mess others would have to clean up. In the second place, he personally told me the story and, while I don’t recall the exact words he used these many years later, the incident was something like this: he shouted loudly, so that everyone could hear, “Miss, get this ‘slop’ off my table. I didn’t order it. I never touch the stuff. It’s poison.” And he told me a couple came to his table later and thanked him for his outburst, saying, “We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw that beer on your table.” He was, indeed, careful about his testimony.

I was interested, too, in the comment Wigton said he made about my exposé of Jack Hyles. Wigton, talking about how Roberson never gossiped – a theme repeatedly stated – Wigton says, “Roberson said privately, ‘I don’t believe a bit of it.’” While Wigton documents who said most of the quotes he gives, there is absolutely none for this one.

And frankly, about what Wigton says here, “I don’t believe a bit of it.” (And you may quote me!) Why? For one thing, it would be criticism of me. But for a second thing – and this is far more important – a major portion of my exposé was about Hyles’ horrible doctrine, things so bad Dr. Roberson would have died before he would have acknowledged as truth.

But perhaps Wigton was playing a little “self-defense” here. When my articles came out he went gung-ho in defense of Hyles. Both Hyles and Curtis Hutson of The Sword of the Lord featured what he said, calling it the testimony of a veteran newspaper editor (he was editor for one semester of his college paper and for some months of a small town weekly as a youth, prior to college). I think he also served as a reporter while he was in some of his pastorates. I said in my article that his “student journalism credentials were impressive.” They were.

Wigton later apologized to me and said he had been wrong.  He asked me several times to take the portion about him from the Hyles record, but I told him I couldn’t change history.

Wigton references Dr. Roberson’s total cooperation with a Billy Graham crusade in Chattanooga, including both church and school, showing his ecumenical spirit. He prefaced his remarks by saying, “In the late 1950s and 1960s many fundamental churches quit participating in Billy Graham’s crusades because of the ecumenical involvement of theologically liberal pastors and churches.”

But the Chattanooga crusade receiving such enthusiastic cooperation from Roberson was in 1951, long before Graham’s compromises started and long before Graham made that historic statement at the NAE convention in Buffalo on April 3 in 1957 that caused the break: “First, as to sponsorship, I would like to make myself quite clear. I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ.”

Wigton also told what Roberson said was the last thing he did before going out to face a huge crowd. He probably didn’t know it but that tale had been used years before about Robert G. Lee. And I could more easily see Lee joking about it than Roberson.

Wigton talks about the demise of the Southern Baptist Premillennial Fellowship and the birth of the Southwide Baptist Fellowship. While many Southern Baptists were in the former, it was not exclusively for them, and independents – who might have even been the majority in the group even then – wanted to have their own conferences. The first one was held at Highland Park in November of 1956. Dr. Roberson called me on the phone and explained that since it was being held in his church, he was inviting the speakers and he wanted me to be one.

Since I was scheduled on that same date for a revival meeting at a church too distant to try to fly in and out, I declined. (I have never canceled a little church to speak at a big one. Dr. Jerry Falwell asked me to speak at Thomas Road – before the church moved to its present campus – on the Sunday night after his mother-in-law died. I declined, although I was scheduled to speak at his school during the following week, because I was closing a meeting at a small church in Richmond that night and wouldn’t cancel.)

Wigton says the speakers for that conference included Drs. Robert G. Lee, Warren Weirsbe and J. Harold Smith. I would have loved to have been there. (Wigton repeats the same story about the founding of Southwide again later in the book.)

As noted, Wigton emphasized repeatedly that Dr. Roberson did not gossip. That fact was limited to the pulpit, however. I remember one night when we were both at a Houston airport after preaching at a Southern Baptist Premillennial conference, he waiting for a flight home and me for a flight to Chicago. He told me in great detail about an evangelist we both knew who got caught in a motel room with a girl friend (he had brought her in for his meeting). I appreciated the information because I had used that evangelist in more than one meeting, promoted him, and recommended his books. All that stopped immediately after Dr. Roberson gave me that information.

At the same time he also told me about another evangelist, whom we both highly respected, who hardly missed a night preaching all year long, very seldom going home. When I commended him for his sacrificial service of self-denial, Dr. Roberson explained to me why he seldom went home.

But he admittedly never dealt with other preachers in the pulpit. And therein, in my judgment, was a weakness in his ministry. (I would like to only have one weakness, wouldn’t you?) In short, he was disobedient to the Scripture that talks about preachers, “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear” (I Timothy 5:20). He did not do that with moral issues involving preachers.

Nor did he speak out to expose men who denied the faith, like the Apostle Paul and other apostles did (I Timothy 1:18-20; II Timothy 2:16-19; 4:14-17; Jude 3-4).

He did, however, crack down hard on social sins like alcohol, tobacco and the movies. When my book Hollywood Cesspool came out and the publisher sent him a review copy, he preached the very next Sunday on the movies. Miss Viola Walden, Dr. John R. Rice’s longtime secretary and assistant, excitedly called me into her office to show me the copy of Highland Park’s The Evangelist, announcing his sermon titles for the next Sunday.

The book does have some technical problems too, as do many first editions. In one place a sentence is broken off in mid-paragraph and the remainder moved to a new line and a new paragraph.

Some errors seem inexcusable, perhaps because a major publisher was not used. For example, every time Wigton used the name of Mordecai Ham – a famous evangelist in his own right and especially because Billy Graham was converted under his ministry – he spelled it Hamm (four times on one page and a total of seven times that I noted throughout the book). It was obviously no typo and in one case he even mentioned “Hamm” was the instrument in Graham’s conversion (as he was in Faulkner’s). He also erred in the name of William Ward Ayre, long a prominent pastor in New York City (it is Ayer, of course), but since that is only found once it no doubt was a typo.

Wigton gives a fine account of the funeral of Dr. Roberson at the end of the book. Dr. Paul Dixon preached the funeral message.

He has a “Timeline of the Life of Dr. Lee Roberson” in the back of the book that is helpful.

We suggest you get this timely book on one of the greatest preachers of our time. While it does have some warts, it is still worth the price (a little high for a paperback this size, in my judgment).

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GREAT COMMISSION OBEDIENCE by Jerry Rankin; B&H Publishing Group, Nashville, TN; 36 Chapters, 239 Pages; $14.99, Paper

Dr. Rankin spent 17 years as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board (although it was not always called by that title) and prior to that he and his wife labored for 23 years as missionaries in Asia. One could say if you cut one of his veins it might flow missions.

This volume is subtitled The Road to Resurgence and it features 36 of the messages he delivered at commissioning services – covering a span from August 1993 through May 2010 – for missionaries leaving for their respective fields. I believe a previous volume of early messages was published, but I did not see it.

While not typical sermons – they are geared to the task at hand of challenging missionaries leaving for the field and follow that kind of format – they speak to the heart and challenge the soul. We enjoyed them.

Some of the themes are “Chosen to Follow,” “Go With a Broken Heart,” “Equipping for the Task,” “Characteristics of the Call,” “Essence of the Missionary Task,” “An Open Door That Cannot be Shut,” “Earthen Vessels,” “Are We Blind Also?” “Retaining the Song,” “Maintaining Focus,” “Praying for God’s Provision,” and “The Reluctant Missionary.”

The messages are well outlined and sprayed with missionary anecdotes.

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THE MANDIE COLLECTION: Volume Five, Three Beloved Novels in One; Bethany House Publishers, A Division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI; 36 Chapters, 368 Pages; $9.99, Paper

THE MANDIE COLLECTION: Volume Six, Three Beloved Novels in One; Bethany House Publishers, A Division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, MI; 36 Chapters, 368 Pages; $9.99, Paper

Good news for parents everywhere! (And also to a whole lot of kids!) Here are two more volumes in the Mandie collection – actually, six more books since there are three complete books in each volume.

So what is the Mandie collection? It is a set of books written by a Christian lady featuring a juvenile named Mandie Shaw (along with her cat Snowball) and her adventures. Kids of several generations have loved the stories. While Leppard is no longer writing the books, they are being reissued in volumes of three books per volume. The stories, obviously, are timeless.

This is the two latest three-set volumes to be released in this format. Volume Five contains the books, Mandie and the Fiery Rescue, Mandie and the Angel’s Secret and Mandie and the Dangerous Imposters. Volume Six contains Mandie and the Invisible Troublemaker, Mandie and Her Missing Kin and Mandie and the Schoolhouse’s Secret.

Mandie (her real name is Amanda), it is fair to say, is quite a sleuth and solves a whole lot of problems. While the stories are not exactly Christian, they have high ideals based on Christian principles and are without the problems of most secular literature today.

As we said, kids love these stories! (And, as far as we know, this completes the reprint collection.)

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HEALING PRAYER ON HOLY GROUND by Mark W. Sheehan, M.D., with Chris Sheehan; Creation House, Lake Mary, FL; 8 Chapters, 165 Pages; $12.99, Paper

Does this eminent cardiologist think the room of a dying patient is ‘holy ground’? Evidently he does since he says he feels like he should take off his shoes when inside one. He says, “The conversations, the anguish, the confessions, the tears, the acceptance, the peace, and the prayers are uniquely memorable and healing. My belief in the power of prayer in particular has been consistently strengthened by what I’ve seen …”

The volume gets off to anything but a spiritually roaring start. Most of his kin were Roman Catholics and his grandmother, whom he considered “a major prayer warrior,” was in the Christian Science cult. Eventually, after they moved to Colorado, he found Christ at the Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora and his wife through a Navigator’s Bible Study ladies group, although her conversion seemed based more on feeling than faith. Eventually they joined a Sunday night “Koinonia” group, which seems to be their “church.”

His book is divided into four parts: Personal Transformation (1 chapter), Prayer (1 chapter), Patient Stories (4 chapters) and The Caring Profession (2 chapters). The first part tells what we’ve noted above and the prayer part starts by quoting a professor of philosophy at Boston College (a Roman Catholic Jesuit school) and Mother Teresa (I think you know about her and the sad fact she never had personal assurance of salvation).

He described prayer as intercessory, thanksgiving, petitionary, confessional, penitential, corporate, praise, meditative and prayer in the spirit, among others. He described the first eight in a sentence or two and then launched into his understanding of “prayer in the spirit.” By that he means what we know today as talking in tongues. He admits “its form strikes many as bizarre.” That is not the word we would use; we would call it “unscriptural, a total misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches.”

His quotes in this section range from Mother Teresa to E. M. Bounds to C. S. Lewis – and that is quite a wide range!

Since I am so busy with such a heavy schedule, that’s when I gave up on the book. I am neither ecumenical nor charismatic. I believe I have biblical proof that both are errors.

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