Robert Green Lee, Baptist Preacher
Born: November 11th, 1886 in South Carolina
Died: July 20, 1978, in Memphis, Tennessee
Born in a little log cabin in South Carolina, Robert was the fifth child of David and Sarah Lee. His parents were loving Christians, who raised their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Robert was saved in 1898 at church, and although still a young boy he always remembered the choir singing: "Out of my bondage, sorrow and night, Jesus I come, Jesus I come."
At the age of 21 he went to work on the Panama Canal and upon returning enrolled at Furman University. He was very scholarly, and so excelled that he was offered the chair of Latin at Furman. While many of his peers pressured him to accept the position, Roberts stayed true to God's call on his life as a preacher. His wife commented, "That's good! God never meant for you to dig around Latin roots. He meant for you to be a preacher."
So, preach he did. His first pastorate was at Edgefield, South Carolina. This was followed by pastorates at First Baptist Church of Chester, South Carolina; First Baptist Church of New Orleans, Louisiana; Citadel Square Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina and finally Bellevue Baptist Church of Memphis, Tennessee.
He served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention an unprecedented three terms. In his resignation address, Robert Lee stated his firm stand on the Word of God: "You can count on me until my tongue is silent in the grave and until my hand can no longer wield a pen to keep my unalterable stand for the Bible as the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God - giving rebuke to and standing in opposition to all enemies of the Bible, even as I have done for 50 years."
"Pay Day Someday" remains his most famous sermon and was first preached as a devotion on a Wednesday night. Here is an excerpt:
Did God mean what He said, Or was He playing a prank on royalty? Did pay-day come? "Pay-day—Someday" is written in the constitution of God's universe. The retributive providence of God is a reality as certainly as the laws of gravitation are a reality. And to Ahab and Jezebel, pay-day came as certainly as night follows day, because sin carries in itself the seed of its own fatal penalty.
...The fathers sow the wind and the children reap the whirlwind. One generation labors to scatter tares, and the next generation reaps tares and retribution immeasurable. To the individual who goes not the direction God points, a terrible pay-day comes. To the nation which forgets God, pay-day will
