It will take a few paragraphs to get to our destination but read on.
There was a Sunday school teacher in Boston named Edward Kimball. Mr. Kimball told a 17-year-old boy how much God loved him. Through the life and teaching of Edward Kimball, D.L. Moody came to faith in Jesus Christ.
Dwight L. Moody was a preacher in the 19th century. He was noted in both Great Britain and the United States. Moody, who spent most of his ministry in Chicago, founded the institution that would become the Moody Bible Institute. That academy has trained thousands of men and women who serve in the church.
On one trip to England, there was a fellow in the audience named F.B. Meyer. Though Meyer was already a Christian, his soul was set on fire as he listened to Moody preach. Meyer would go on to become a great preacher himself and a noted Greek New Testament scholar. His calling to ministry was a direct result of the preaching of D.L. Moody.
On one of his trips to Chicago, F.B. Meyer met a young man named J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman was greatly influenced in his calling and understanding of the New Testament by that meeting with F.B. Meyer. J. Wilbur Chapman, in preparing a community for one of his revivals, sent out a front man. The man who would precede Chapman into a city was a former baseball player named Billy Sunday. Billy Sunday‘s life and calling were influenced greatly by J. Wilbur Chapman. Billy Sunday, became a famous evangelist in his own right was preaching a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina.
At Billy Sunday’s revival service, a young man named Mordecai Ham met the Lord. His conversion was so powerful that soon, he too became a preacher. More specifically he became a traveling evangelist, which is what all these preachers have in common.
In 1934, Mordecai Ham was preaching a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina where a young man named Billy Graham met the Lord. That is where this spiritual genealogy was taking us. Billy Graham was the sixth generation in Edward Kimball’s spiritual family tree.
One man, back in the 19th century had his life transformed by Jesus Christ. His transformed life had influence on another life and so on down to the life of Billy Graham. Imagine all the lives that have been transformed by Christ through the preaching of Billy Graham.
You folks teaching Sunday school tomorrow take heart, your service does matter. Lives are being transformed by Christ through your faithful service.
For the rest of us, I hope you have taken someone under your wing and are showing them the ropes. You never know, your influence on someone many change the world of your great great grandchildren’s child. What we do now does ripple through the pond of history.
Jesus talked about these seed we were planting; some would grow a thousand-fold. So may it be with you!
