On April 18, 2023, Charles Stanley passed from life here to life in heaven at the age of 90. Dr. Stanley was the greatest Christian teacher of his time. His teaching is clear and concise in presentation, loving in its nature, authoritative in its origins, and bold in its delivery. He preaches the Holy Bible – the Word of God. I’ll miss learning from him.
Billy Graham was the greatest preacher of his time. He preached how to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ and become a Christian. Charles Stanley was the greatest teacher of his time. He taught how now to live as a Christian. Both men are gone and our world is less for their loss and so much more for what they gave throughout their lives.
I’ve watched Charles Stanley every week for years as I finished up preparing the next Sunday School lesson I’d teach. Often, I took notes as he spoke and used them in the lesson. His teaching points came for the Bible. Every sermon from him was a class for me. I have several of his practical books on day to day living. I refer to them regularly.
I never tire of Charles Stanley’s preaching teaching. Ever.
Dr. Charles Stanley was born September 25, 1932 in Dry Fork, Virginia, which is in Pittsylvania County. It’s a beautiful, rural part of God’s Country – the Commonwealth of Virginia. His father died 9 months later. He grew up in humble circumstances with his widowed mother during the Depression.
When she re-married, he didn’t like the way his step-father treated his mother. He didn’t have an easy life. After he spent a week with his grandfather, George Washington Stanley, he committed his life to Lord Jesus Christ and became a born-again Christian. He was 12 years old. He started preaching the Word to others at age 14. He never turned from that path of serving the Lord God as a minister.
Dr. Stanley was elected the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, for two terms 1984-86. It was a crucial time for Baptists to determine if their seminaries would teach Biblical truth and inerrancy or go the way of Liberal Protestant churches to accept moral relativism. Stanley and the defenders of Biblical faith won. It was a bitter struggle among the people who dedicated their professional lives to their Baptist ministries. Keeping the Baptists true to the Bible saved the church from apostasy, schism, and loss that stains and splits Liberal Protestants as their pews empty. For this alone, Charles Stanley’s life meant much.
Dr. Stanley’s “In Touch” ministry reaches across the world. It touches me personally as a Bible study teacher.
He’s the master of making the complex understandable. He said he works hard to make every sermon as simple and clear as possible. He succeeded with his essential message: Trust and obey God in all things and leave the consequences to Him.
Furthermore, his style of preaching was to speak fluidly without hesitation. He had the conviction of faith feed by his conscious, study, experience, prayer, and revelation. He was head and shoulders above every other televangelist in Biblical scholarship.
And, as his Southern accent is so familiar to me, his voice was music to my ears.
Moreover, Charles Stanley taught with the boldness that comes Biblical wisdom. He had no doubts because he preached revealed truth not gray ambiguity. Non-believers can’t believe this. Too bad, because anyone who studies the Bible all the way through over and over comes to the same conclusions at Dr. Stanley.
I’m grateful for every sermon I watched and every book I read from this lifelong humble, erudite Christian servant, Dr. Charles Frazier Stanley.
I wish he could preach one more time on how real Heaven compares to what he believed on earth. I wish I could thank him for all he’s given me and my students. Maybe one fine day, when I fly away, I can and will.
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