"With A Bible In My Hand": The Preaching Legacy Of W.A. Criswell
By David L. Allen
Criswell’s preaching combined with his incredible 56 published books had a significant
theological impact in two ways. First, through his expository preaching ministry
and his study of the Scripture, he became a committed Premillennialist. Postmillennialism
had begun to be shaken after WWI and with the aftermath of WWII the Amillennial
perspective came to ascendancy in Southern Baptist life. From 1944 on Criswell’s
espousal of Premillennialism became increasingly influential in the Southern
Baptist Convention and beyond.
Second, the most powerful influence he exerted within his own denomination and
beyond, and for which he will be remembered, is his unswerving commitment to
the inerrancy and infallibility of the Scriptures. In his preaching and writing,
he inveighed against the liberalism, which had infected Protestantism as well
as his own beloved Southern Baptist “Zion” (as he loved to call it). He was
a key player in the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention
in the last quarter of the 20th century.
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Criswell has often been compared to his favorite preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
the famed London Baptist pastor of the nineteenth century. There are indeed
a number of similarities between the two. Both were Bible expositors, both
built great churches, both founded schools to train preachers, and both were
embroiled in doctrinal controversy in their denominations surrounding the issue
of liberalism in the later years of their ministry.
As
the author of Hebrews noted about Abel, “he being dead yet speaks,” so the influence
of W. A. Criswell’s preaching ministry continues. It continues in his fifty-six
books; it continues in the school he founded known as The Criswell College which
exists to train expository preachers; it continues in the recently released
Criswell Legacy Project on the internet website www.wacriswell.com
where more than 2000 of his sermons can be downloaded; and it continues in the
countless men filling pulpits around the world whose expositional approach to
preaching was somehow encouraged by W. A. Criswell.
He
was the living example of Phillips Brooks’ definition of preaching as truth
through human personality. The pulpit could do with a little more “Criswellian”
preaching.
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David
L. Allen is Criswell Professor of Expository Preaching at Criswell College,
Dallas, and is newly-elected Dean of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Seminary.
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1. Criswell’s
Guidebook for Pastors (Nashville: Broadman, 1980), 41. See especially
27-57, the chapter entitled “The Pastor in the Pulpit.” This is a must read
for all preachers.
2.
Why I Preach that the Bible is Literally True (Nashville: Broadman Press,
1969), 86-87.