The annual Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference offers Sammy Gilbreath an opportunity to showcase a variety of preachers and speakers each year, but he is also careful to bring back those “old faithfuls” — those tried-and-true crowd pleasers.
“While these guys are popular, it’s not their popularity that makes people want them back. It’s the trust people have in them to bring a fresh word,” said Gilbreath, director of the office of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
“Every year when I send out the survey about the next year’s speakers … over and over and over [people] say, ‘Could you have Bob Pitman back with us?’”
And “Ted Traylor is no stranger to Alabama,” Gilbreath said, noting the pastor of Olive Baptist Church, Pensacola, Fla., is a Pisgah native. “Every time I hear him, he has a fresh word from God.”
Pitman and Traylor didn’t disappoint those attending the Monday afternoon and evening sessions with their transparency as they delivered simple, straightforward messages calling Alabama Baptists to truly experience God’s supernaturalness and anointing. The truth of their messages blended with their own down-home style of humor kept the audience engaged and “amening” throughout their sermons.
Pitman, an Alabama native and a retired pastor, is now an evangelist and a member of Parkview Baptist Church, Tuscumbia, in Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association.
Preaching from Luke 2, Pitman closed out the Monday afternoon session.
“If you will come to Jesus just like you are in your natural state, Jesus will come to you and will blend His supernaturalness with your naturalness and you will become a child of God,” he said.
“Over and over, God blends the natural with the supernatural,” Pitman said, pointing to John, Exodus 4, 1 Kings and Mark 14.
“That’s the message that evangelism proclaims. It’s not about politics. It’s not about economics. It’s all about Jesus. He left heaven. He has come. You don’t have to be afraid … sad … lost … full of questions,” he said. “If you will come to Jesus, He’ll blend His life with yours and you will become a born-again, blood-washed, Holy Spirit-indwelled child of God forever and forever and forever and forever.”
If Jesus had not come, then “we would be afraid to live, afraid to die and afraid to face eternal life,” Pitman said.
“Jesus Christ is the Savior,” he explained. “He came to seek and to save that which was lost. There is no other Savior.
“If you proclaim another way to heaven than Jesus, then you must deny Him. … Through His death, we have life,” Pitman said. But “Jesus Christ is in charge here. One day, He’ll claim this planet as His own.”
Pointing to Revelation 5, Pitman said the Scripture proves Jesus Christ is in charge. “Millions of years from now as we walk the streets of gold, we will still never get far away from the cross,” he said. “Jesus Christ has come. There’s no reason to be afraid, sad, lost or wonder who’s in charge.”
Traylor, who opened the Monday evening session, challenged Alabama Baptists to understand and truly seek the anointing of God.
Walking with the person Jesus Christ means “the anointing of our Lord is in us and through us,” he said. “It is the same as to smear or rub … an oil or salve on you.”
Preaching from Luke 4:18–19, Traylor said obtaining that anointing requires “full release of your ministry, your life and your church to the control of the holy God.”
Pointing to Genesis 22 where God tests Abraham on the top of Mount Moriah by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Traylor said, “Abraham was the father of faith. … What is it you need to take from the foot of Mount Moriah to the hilltop and give to the Father? What stands between you and full faith? What are you clinging to?”
Traylor also noted that while God gave Isaac back to Abraham, not everyone will have that kind of outcome. “When you lay it on Moriah, sometimes God raises it up, sometimes He gives it back to you tenfold and sometimes He says to leave it there for the rest of your life.
“Come to Moriah, give it to Him and get ready for the anointing to come.”
God’s anointing also demands a clear conscience, Traylor said.
“If you have unconfessed sin, if you harbor something in your life the Bible calls sin, then forget the anointing of the Lord.”
And God’s anointing demands active faith.
“Not faith plus works but faith/works. … [I]f you’ve got faith, you are working,” he said. “Faith always works. If you are going to preach the anointing of the good news, you’ve got to have some good works coupled with that. Faith goes to work.
“In 2009, if Alabama Baptists are going to touch Alabama with the gospel, you need the anointing not only for good news but you are going to have to cover it with good works,” Traylor said. “Jesus earned the right for us to share the gospel, but it paves the way and makes it easier when you are showing good works.”
Traylor explained that a true touch of God through His anointing comes when both the good news of the gospel and the good works of the gospel exist together.
“The gospel takes us from dead living and raises us to where God wants us to be — gospel preachers, gospel tellers,” he noted.
“If you are going to be a gospel preacher, the first thing you need to do is preach the gospel,” Traylor said, adding this means preaching the gospel to the poor, which starts with good works.
“You’ve got to have some kind of social side to your evangelism,” he said. “Jesus is going to ask you, ‘Did you feed the hungry? Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit those in jail? When they got out, did you have somewhere for them to live?’
“A faith without works is dead. You can’t have the good news without good works. We must bring those things together.”
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