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1 Timothy 6:13-16: “I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession; That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.”
Revelation 19:16: “And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.”
This message is important to me because I came to faith in Jesus Christ through the efforts of a white, independent Baptist church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, that for many years did not accept black members, but in the late ‘70s was led to start a black church while I was in the Air Force and stationed at Kessler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, at the age of nineteen. As I interacted with the leaders and members of that church, and even the pastor of the black church plant, I heard some negative things about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that I had never heard before. Some people tried to discredit him by suggesting that he was not a true minister of the Gospel, and even that he did not have a genuine relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. They viewed him as just a mere social worker, with some even claiming that he was a Communist. Even some of the blacks in that young church did not think too highly of Dr. King.
I must admit that I did have concerns and questions about this matter because I was raised in the black Baptist church and the black Pentecostal Holiness church, with my dad being a Baptist preacher and my mother being a Pentecostal preacher, and yet I had never heard a clear presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ on how to be saved until I was nineteen-years-old, and a young man named Michael Lewis, who had gotten saved through this church plant that an all-white independent Baptist church had started, came to my dorm room and showed me what was commonly called the Romans Road to salvation from the book of Romans in the Bible. Up until that point, no one had asked me the question, if I were to die today, where would I go, heaven or hell?
Thankfully, the Lord allowed me to keep an independent mind about the matter through all of that, and I came to see Dr. King as God’s man for that particular time in this nation’s history to help deliver both blacks and whites in this country from the ignorance of racism and prejudice. I even learned later that Dr. King tried to get into a white conservative Christian seminary, but he was rejected because of his race. However, based on his words and his life, it seems as though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did know the King of Kings — the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but the faith, courage, and fortitude that he showed (and that he inspired others to have) as he led the very dangerous Civil Rights movement speaks of a man who knew Jesus Christ as his Savior and had an abiding faith in God.
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