Richard Jackson Shares His Heart

Editors Note: Reprinted from October 1994 TBC Newsletter.  Richard Jackson returned to his native Texas and brought the Jackson Center for Evangelism with him, located at Howard Payne University in Brownwood.  His closet friends 20 years ago now are the leaders of the SBC.  Why is Jackson not a SBC leader with them?  Read his words and find out.  This article contains excerpts of his remarks at one of the TBC dinners in 1993.  

When I started getting invited to Southern Baptist platforms (in the 1970s), I immediately started speaking up about the necessity of upholding the Word of God; staying hot after the trail of the lost; holding on to biblical prospective and evangelical zeal. That is who I was and everybody knew it.

The interesting thing about my speaking out was that whenever I thought there was drifting a little too far one way or the other, I would say so. I said it on seminary platforms and convention platforms. No one ever censored me. I was never criticized for saying what I believed was important at that time.

In the mid '70s, I was invited to Nashville to a meeting to talk about Bold Mission Thrust. My job was to offer ideas about how we could finance Bold Mission Thrust. Our plan was to see that by the year 2000 every soul on the face of the earth would be presented with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Boy, I tell you I was so pumped. I was excited and I said when it was my turn to speak, 'Listen, you are on the right page. You are finally not only playing the right game, but you are in the right ball park. This is where Baptist people have been wanting to be all the time.'

I really believe Baptist people believed in winning people to Christ and I was all for this thing. So, you know it started getting pumped up and then in 1978, I started getting phone calls from people who were saying to me, 'You know we really have got to stop the liberal drift in Southern Baptist life. We have got to do it right now. We have got to take over.'

Everything in me started backing up. I got a phone call one day from a man in Houston who wanted to know if he could come spend two days with me to talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. I said no. After hanging up the phone, I felt as though God had written on my office wall, 'have nothing to do with this.'

It was that plain. The writing was not on the wall, but it was that plain. I got to Houston, Texas, to preach at the 1979 Pastors' Conference. I was in that crowd of people who wanted to be used to accomplish the takeover objective.

I can remember having an eerie feeling that something was not right. I had no idea about it, but my spirit was not right. On Wednesday night, we joined hands, 50,000 strong, and committed ourselves to tell everybody alive about Jesus.

Now folks, do not give the devil too much credit. He is not omnipresent. He can be in only one place at one time. But if you were Satan, and you knew that the strongest evangelical body in the world had representatives meeting in the Houston Astrodome, to commit to presenting the gospel to everybody alive, where would you have been that night? I would have shown up in Houston. That is what I would have done. I think the devil was in Houston at that 1979 convention. I do not have any doubt about it. Bold Mission Thrust has long since been put aside. We lost our whole perspective and objective.

Later I heard a man say, 'There are not but two professors at Southwestern Seminary that believe the Bible and one at New Orleans Seminary and none in the other four seminaries.' Another man looked at me and said, 'Well, what do you think of that Richard?' I said to him, 'I think it is a lie. I do not think that is true.'

They started calling men that had invested their lives in me - men that prayed for me - shared the Scriptures with me - calling those men liberals, saying they did not believe the Bible.

So you wonder how Richard Jackson was weaned away from that movement? Biblical belief was not the reason. You are listening to a biblical conservative. I am a simple Bible believer. I am not a scholar. I study the scholars. I am just a mechanic.

But I can tell you one thing, I have bet my life on the Book. I have preached it, loved it, tried to live it, and repented when I did not live it. I am an evangelical zealot. Now why am I not in this movement, if this is who I am? I can tell you why. Because the movement is political and has been from the beginning.

Everything we hold dear as Baptists is under attack. I am telling you if you want the freedom and the autonomy of the local church and the individual believer priest to be protected, you better keep Texas Baptists committed to Texas Baptists and biblical Baptistic positions.

May 2000