As one of the most fascinating and sensational personalities, J. Frank Norris, has become a forgotten figure of the twentieth century, as many people today have never heard of him. This fascinating true story takes you from his poverty as a child to the pastor of the largest church in America where he later became friend of presidents and giants of industry. I would love to have known him personally. He (J. Frank Norris) was a great, positive influence and wonderful example for pastors. Dr. Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, and founder of In Touch Ministries J. Frank Norris, without a doubt, in my own thinking, was the greatest preacher of the twentieth century and I knew a good many of the great oneshe stood head and shoulders above all of them. Dr. John Rawlings, The Rawlings Foundation Administrator The life of J. Frank Norris was filled with stories of adventure, courage, faith and dangerthe stuff from which legends are made. He met opposition head on and did not fear any man. Dr. Homer Ritchie, author and evangelist During the first half of the Twentieth Century J. Frank Norris was the most dynamic, controversial, and successful pastor of that era. There will never be another like him. Dr. James O. Combs, Provost, Louisiana Baptist University

In the Name of God tells the story of two iconic figures of national lore. George W. Truett and J. Frank Norris dominated the ecclesiology and church culture of much of the first half of the twentieth century, not only in Texas, but in the whole of America. Norris, of First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, and Truett, of First Baptist Church in Dallas, lived lives of conflict and controversy. Each led one of the largest churches in the world in the 1920s and & '30s. Each shot and killed a man, one by accident and the other in self-defense. Together, their lives were a panoply of intrigue, espionage, confrontation, manipulation, plotting, scheming, and even blackmail—in the name of God. Yet together . . . they changed the world.

This “man among men” did as much for Baptists as any man in his generation, and paved the way for thousands of Bible-believing Baptists to identify themselves as a spiritual entity to be reckoned with, known as independent, fundamental Baptists. His personal contacts included interviews with such notables as priests, prime ministers, popes, and presidents. He spoke the language of the commoner and the king, feeling equally at ease with both. In the archives are autographed pictures of Norris and Churchill together with letters from Truman and Speaker Rayburn. Whether he was in the office of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Pope in Rome, or the Prime Minister in London, he was capable of leading the conversation in political and religious topics of international interest. Whether he was preaching in an open air meeting in Detroit or the spacious Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in London, he spoke with the same clarion voice, and preached the same glorious gospel. Whether he stood in a courtroom or a state legislation hall, he was listened to as a man who knew his subject and sensed the needs of his audience.

Colorful and outrageous, influential yet despicable, J. Frank Norris was a preacher, newspaper publisher, political activist, and all-around subject of controversy. One of the most despised men in traditional Southern Baptist circles, he was also the man most responsible for bringing hard-edged fundamentalism to the South. Barry Hankins traces Norris, the "Texas Cyclone," from his boyhood in small-town Texas to his death in 1952. Despite scandals, Norris was a man of considerable public influence who traveled the owrkd, corresponded with congressmen, and attended president's Hoover's inaguration at Hoover's invitation. Through his preaching career he battled anyone and everyone he saw as part of the leftist conspiracy to foist liberalism and immorality on America. This account reveals a remarkable man who helped shape the current American religious landscape.

This is the climax of God’s revelation of His will to a lost world, and given through the greatest mind of all times. What a blessing it has been to my soul, these studies, made on our tour clear around the world. I studied it night and day. It was my meditation on land and sea. Whether in the snow-capped majestic Alps or in the desert sands of Arabia, whether in the storms of the Atlantic, or in the quiet calm of the “Pacific, my soul fairly rejoiced in this the greatest, the highest mountain peak of divine revelation. Often I would bow my head in humiliation, confess my sins, that I would ever complain or hesitate one second’s time to proclaim the gospel of the Son of God. I could wish I could roll back the hands of time and begin once more the simple ministry of an earnest country preacher.

APPARENT DANGER chronicles what may be the most famous story you have never heard. In the 1920's, the Reverend J. Frank Norris railed against vice and conspiracies he saw everywhere to a congregation of more than 10,000 at First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the largest congregation in America, the first "megachurch". Norris controlled a radio station, a tabloid newspaper and a valuable tract of land in downtown Fort Worth. Constantly at odds with the oil boomtown's civic leaders, he aggressively defended his activism, observing, "John the Baptist was into politics."Following the death of William Jennings Bryan, Norris was a national figure poised to become the leading fundamentalist in America. This changed, however, in a moment of violence one sweltering Saturday in July when he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. Norris was indicted for murder and, if convicted, would be executed in the state of Texas' electric chair.At a time when newspaper wire services and national retailers were unifying American popular culture as never before, Norris' murder trial was front page news from coast to coast. Set during the Jazz Age, when Prohibition was the law of the land, APPARENT DANGER leads to a courtroom drama pitting some of the most powerful lawyers of the era against each other with the life of a wildly popular, and equally loathed, religious leader hanging in the balance.