Jamie Dew said he never set out to be an academic, but a passion for evangelism changed the direction of his life.
Speaking Jan. 28 at First Baptist Church Pelham during the Sunday evening session of the 2024 Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference, Dew said he came to faith after making some poor decisions as a teenager, and what followed his salvation was a deep desire to share Jesus. He learned quickly what others also know: “not everybody is as excited about Jesus as you are. They have questions, criticisms and objections.”
Dew, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College, said his desire to answer his own questions and doubts and to respond well to the objections of others led him to apologetics and philosophy.
The Apostle Paul had to face questions and objections as well, in particular conflicting opinions on resurrection generally and the resurrection of Christ specifically, Dew said. And in 1 Corinthians 15, “the great resurrection chapter,” we have “the foundation laid for taking the gospel into the darkness.”
Because Jesus is raised from the dead, “every sermon you preach, every gospel tract you hand out matters,” Dew said.
3 questions
Three questions emerge from Paul’s defense of the resurrection, Dew said.
- Why is the resurrection important to our faith? It’s not something we affirm only for Easter. Paul reminds us that without Christ’s resurrection, “those who have fallen asleep in Christ (v. 18) are still in their sins, and they have perished. … If Christ is not risen, our faith is futile.”
- Is there any reason to think the resurrection actually happened? Paul catalogs in verses 3–8 the reasons we are confident the resurrection is a true historical event, Dew said. Paul speaks of eyewitness testimonies, including that of James (v. 7), the brother of Jesus, who Scripture suggests became a believer after seeing the risen Christ. “Something about seeing [Jesus] raised converts James,” Dew emphasized.
- What hope does the resurrection give us? As the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20), Christ is the “path blazer … the paradigm maker. … He himself is the one that takes what seems by every earthly calculation impossible and shows that it can be done. And not only can it be done, but we the second fruits shall also be raised.”
How does the truth of the resurrection affect evangelism? “You preach the gospel to dying people … [but] death is not final,” Dew said.
“Death is hard. You’re supposed to grieve but not like those with no hope. We give the grief its place and its moment, but we stand waiting as a people assured by an empty tomb that as Jesus Christ has come back from the grave, [He] will come back and bring me from the grave too.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Video from the 2024 Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference is available at the Facebook page of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. Click here to go to the page.
Click here to view a gallery of pictures from the conference.
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