By John R. Rice I cannot introduce Dr. J. Frank Norris, but I gladly say a word about his sermons, “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” A mighty preacher of a mighty gospel, bold defender of the faith, campaigner for righteousness, seeker for sinners and my beloved friend and brother that he is, I am delighted that you can have his message in print. Here is great preaching! Whether it is Dr. Norris at his greatest, I cannot say, when I remember his sermons on “The Prodigal Son,” on “Going to the Well,” or “And When the Morning Was Come,” or those on the eighth of Romans, or “Elijah at Mt. Carmel,” or the Twenty-third Psalm. Those who have read his seven hundred printed sermons or heard him in his own pulpit and in great revivals this almost a quarter of a century can best say. But here is great preaching, preaching to the heart as well as the head. Though my mind marveled at the riches from which Dr. Norris drew when I heard these sermons and then read them, and then again, my poor hungry heart was fed.

Includes The Sermons The Battle Of Armageddon; Why The Believer Will Not Go Into The Tribulation Period; Twenty-Four Truths Set Forth In Baptism.

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.

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.

Higher than the highest heavens, deeper than the deepest hell, broader than the widest universe, longer than everlasting to everlasting, all there is of God, all there is of Satan, all there is of sin, all there is of salvation, all there is of holiness, all there is of justice, all there is of mercy, is in this chapter. God and man meet. It is the Mercy Seat of the tabernacle in the wilderness transferred to Calvary. The veil of the temple rent from top to bottom; no longer the High Priest of Israel, or the successor to Aaron, enter in; but every man enters as the propitiation for our sins.

The Shooting Salvationist 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, The Shooting Salvationist 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. www.theshootingsalvationist.com From the Hardcover edition.