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 Robert Green Lee was
born in a three room log cabin in South Carolina on November
11th, 1886. He was the fifth child of David and Sarah Lee
and a distant relative of General Robert E. Lee. While
having such a famous forefather these Lees were a poor
family, barely making it as sharecroppers. When Robert was
born the black midwife (a former slave) who attended Lee's
birth cried out, "Praise God! Glory be! The good Lord has
done sent a preacher to this here house."1
Indeed a preacher had been born. Lee was born into a
world of great preachers P.H. Mell was president of the
Southern Baptist Convention. He would die two years later.
J.P. Boyce, another of the great Southern Baptist founders
was also only two years from going home to be with His Lord.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, Charles Spurgeon was nearing the
end of his monumental ministry in London.
Much changed during the nearly 100 years of Lee's life.
"In the year of R.G. Lee's birth, most of the 488 messengers
who attended the Southern Baptist Convention in Montgomery,
Alabama, that year arrived by train or horse and buggy."2
During R.G. Lee's life he went from traveling by horse and
buggy, to traveling by car to traveling by jet airplane. By
the time of his death Southern Baptist Conventions had many
thousands of messengers and Lee had preached to many of
them.
Lee's parents were strict Christians and raised their
children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Because of
that influence young "Bob" came to Christ in 1898 at a
church meeting at First Baptist Church of Fort Mill, South
Carolina. He always remembered the choir singing, "Out of my
bondage, sorrow and night, Jesus I come, Jesus I come.
Twelve years later he was ordained to preach at that same
church.
When Lee was 21 he went to work on the new Panama Canal
and upon returning enrolled at Furman University. Robert
excelled in his studies and graduated magnum cum laude in
1913. Soon after that he married, Bula Gentry. Lee excelled
so as a scholar that he was offered the chair of Latin at
Furman. Many of his friends encouraged him to take the
position but he decided to follow God's call to pastor and
preach. When he told his wife of his decision she replied,
"That's good! God never meant for you to dig around Latin
roots. He meant for you to be a preacher."3
After a couple of brief pastorates, Lee went to pastor
at First Baptist Church of New Orleans. During his four
years there, over 1000 new members came into the church, the
majority of them by baptism. In 1927, two years before the
Great Depression, Lee was called to pastor Bellevue Baptist
Church of Memphis, TN. Because his tenures had been
relatively short at his other pastorates, many did not
expect Lee to stay long in Memphis. Lee would stay 33 years
at Bellevue, not retiring until 1960. During those years Lee
was offered many other positions. George Truett encouraged
him to join him in Texas while others pressed Lee to accept
the prestigious Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. He
was also offered the presidencies of New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary and Union University in Tennessee.
During his pastorate at Bellevue, its membership grew from
1,430 members to 10,000 members.
His ministry was one of love for his people and
determined defense of the Word of God. In his resignation
address, Lee voiced his profound dedication to the Bible:
"You can count on me until my tongue is silent in the grave
and until my hand can no longer wield a pen to keep my
unalterable stand for the Bible as the inspired, infallible,
inerrant Word of God - giving rebuke to and standing in
opposition to all enemies of the Bible, even as I have done
for 50 years."
4 Dr. Lee laid the
foundation for young preachers who followed him who would
fight the great battle for the Bible within the Southern
Baptist Convention.
One of those young preachers, so influenced by Dr. Lee
was Adrian Rogers who would take up Lee's mantle both at
Bellevue Baptist and in the Convention. Lee was thoroughly
evangelical. In his sermon, Bed of Pearls, he said: "So long
as Southern Baptists have a passion for the salvation of
sinners everywhere, there is little danger of our drifting
into materialism ... But if give up our position as an
evangelistic storm center and court riches and court fashion
and court friendships of self-elected scholars with
bloodless gospels. we shall not be found following in
Christ's train. In these days of molluscous liberalism, of
self-satisfied complacency, if we emphasize little the old
familiar notes of Calvary, of hell, of sin, and take up the
merely tender note of humanitarian philosophy, we sound our
death knell, dig our grave, write our epitaph."
R.G. Lee was always and preeminently a preacher of the
gospel of Jesus Christ. His sermons were eloquent and often
long. Lee had no problem poking fun at himself about his
hour to hour and half sermons. He often told this story on
himself: "Once at Bellevue a man came in late for the
service. I was in the midst of my sermon. In a whisper he
asked the usher, 'How long has he been preaching?' 'About
forty years,' was the answer. 'The he must be about
through.'"5 Few
remembered the length of Dr. Lee's sermons as nearly as much
as they did their depth.
"Pay Day Someday"
remains his most famous sermon. First preached as a
Wednesday night devotional it still stands as what could
only be called a classic. In all, Lee preached it 1,275
times in every venue from small churches to state
legislatures to foreign countries. The closing words of that
great sermon demonstrate the power of Lee's preaching:
"Payday - Someday!" God said it - and it was done!
Yes, and from this we learn the power and certainty of God
in carrying out His retributive providence, the men know
that His justice slumbereth not. Even though the mill of God
grinds slowly, it grinds to powder. Yes, the judgments of
God often have heels and travel slowly. But they always have
iron hands and crush completely ... And the only way I know
for any man or woman on earth to escape the sinner's payday
on earth and the sinner's hell beyond - making sure of the
Christian's payday - is through Christ Jesus, who took the
sinner's place on the cross. becoming for all sinners all
that God must judge, that sinners through faith in Christ
Jesus might become all that God cannot judge."
Like many Baptists, Lee was known more as a preacher
than a theologian but his doctrine was sound to the core.
Lee believed in and preached a doctrine often overlooked in
our day, that of the necessity of regeneration.
"My own definition of the grace of God is this: the
unlimited and unmerited favor given to the utterly
undeserving. Let us think of the strength of grace. Sin is
very powerful in this world. Sin is powerful as an opiate in
the will. Sin is powerful as a frenzy in the imagination.
Sin is powerful as a poison in the heart. Sin is powerful as
a madness in the brain. Sin is powerful as a desert breath
that drinks up all spiritual dews. Sin is powerful as the
sum of all terrors. Sin is powerful as the quintessence of
all horrors. Sin is powerful to devastate, to doom, to damn.
Here is the sinner's only hope, although, until quickened by
the Spirit of grace, he does not know it. No man can rescue
himself from the tyranny of sin. Men may reform, but they
cannot regenerate themselves. Men may give up their crimes
and their vices, but they cannot, by their own strength,
give up their sins. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? No.
Can the leopard eliminate his spots? Regeneration is the
great change which God works in the soul when He brings it
into life, when He raises it from the death of sin to the
life of righteousness. It is the change wrought when the
love of the world is changed into the love of God; when
pride is dethroned and humility enthroned; when passion is
changed into meekness; when hatred, envy, and malice are
changed into a sincere and tender love for all mankind. It
is the change whereby the earthly, sensual, devilish mind is
turned into the mind that was in Christ. The new birth is
not the old nature altered, reformed, or reinvigorated, but
a being born from above. ... 6
Lee's influence on the Southern Baptist Convention was
immeasurable. He served an unprecedented four terms as
president of the Tennessee Baptist Convention and then an
unprecedented three terms as president of the Southern
Baptist Convention. Lee established strong stands on race
relations throughout his ministry. At a meeting of the
Southern Baptist Convention, the president of the black
National Baptist Convention, Dr. E.W. Perry said to Dr. Lee:
"Mr. President, I've been more than 60 years coming from a
log cabin where I was born to his high and exalted position
... " Dr. Lee replied to Dr. Perry: "Dr. Perry, I want you
to come here and stand by me and take my hand. I want this
Convention to witness a parable in black and white, written
in red. You said that over 60 years ago you were born in a
log cabin in Mississippi. I, too, was born in a log cabin in
South Carolina. The same Christ who saved you is the same
Christ who saved me, and both of us have been washed clean
in the precious Blood of the Lamb. This is the parable in
black and white, written in red." 7
When Lee resigned his pastorate in 1960 a reporter for
the Memphis, Commercial Appeal wrote: "For half a century he
has thrown punches at the devil, punches containing the same
power and vengeance as those of Billy Sunday, George Truett,
or C.H. Spurgeon. In all these years he has never quit
slugging. He says the devil never sleeps. So he has worked
night and day to bring the gospel to as many people as
possible."
Lee preached another 18 years after his retirement. He
traveled 100,000 miles a year preaching in small and large
churches and places like the Moody Bible Institute. Every
generation of Elisha's need their own Elijah to look to for
guidance and example. Lee was that Elijah to many including
this author. He will ever be remembered as the man who
warned the world that there will indeed be a "Pay Day
Someday!"
Read Pay Day Someday
Hear Pay Day Someday in MP3 Format
1 Timothy George, Payday Someday, Broadman and Holman,
1995, p.2
2 George, p.1
3 George, p.4
4 George, p.12
5 R.G. Lee, Grapes From the Gospel Vines, Broadman
Press, 1976, p.61
6 R.G. Lee, The Grace of God: Heart to Heart,
Nashville: Broadman, 1977, p. 141-47 7 George, p.9
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