Paul in India

Tim Tennent writes about a modern-day apostle he met recently in India.

One of them (whose name cannot be shared for security reasons) is a former road-worker who was one of the earliest to respond to the gospel in the region. He shared with us his love for Christ and the amazing ministry God has given to him. He is constantly traveling, bringing the gospel to new villages all over this mountainous region. When many people of his age are thinking about retirement, he is thinking about which villages have not yet had the opportunity to hear the gospel. He has personally led over 500 Hindus to Jesus Christ. When we left the meeting, one of our Trustees turned to me and said, “I feel like I have just met the Apostle Paul.”

The Apostle EF preaches

Finally saw Robert Duvall’s excellent movie The Apostle last night.

Here he the Apostle EF preaching right before getting hauled off by the police.

And here’s a good “interview” with Duvall about the movie.

What does Duvall think of southern Christianity and revivalist preachers in general? He has a fascination for them which began more than thirty years ago when he visited a Holiness church in the small town of Hughes, Arkansas. He says that he was intrigued by the cadence, rhythms and honest faith he witnessed in the songs and tent-meetings there. For Duvall, these revivalist tent-meetings are “an important part of American culture.” The preaching is “a distinct American art-form.”

“The best preacher I ever met,” says Duvall, “was a 96 year-old black man from a little church in Hamilton, Virginia. He seemed to me more spiritual than the Dalai Lama or Mahatma Gandhi. This guy was great. He had a great cadence of preaching, a great honesty.” Duvall invited a Jewish film-director friend and his Catholic wife to hear him preach. “It was terrific,” Duvall recounts. “The director told me a year and a half later that he could never get the preacher entirely out of his mind. He was that impressive.”