Dr. David Jeremiah, New York Times best-selling author and founder of Turning Point—one of the largest syndicated Bible teaching ministries in the world—drew more than 7,000 Christians to an Atlanta-area rally last night, calling them to “Stand Up For Their Faith.”
The exuberant evening was accented by the music of multiple Grammy award-winning artist CeCe Winans and one of America’s most prolific worship artists, Charles Billingsley.
Jeremiah drew his sermon from the resurrection story of Jesus Christ noting that, 2,000 years later, “we are still seeking the living among the dead. We try to find peace, hope, forgiveness and power in the wrong world. It’s not there because He’s [Jesus] not there.”
Jeremiah spoke of the 2016 presidential election, “All the time people are saying to me, ‘I’m just so discouraged and so depressed with all that’s going, I’ve just lost hope.’ I want to say to them, ‘you’ve had your hope in the wrong place.’ … If this year’s election doesn’t prove to you that our hope is not in politics, I don’t know what else could.”
Simultaneously, Dr. Jeremiah called the thousands in attendance to be more engaged in the political process: “We need to be concerned about what’s going on in our community. In part, I brought you here tonight to help you understand that this is important for you to do. It’s important for you to vote and to be involved in the process. Don’t sit at home … make your decision and then go vote. If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”
Yet Jeremiah reminded the audience, as he has for more than 30 years through Turning Point and at Shadow Mountain Community Church, that their ultimate and sure hope is in Jesus Christ. “Because Jesus has risen from the dead, my failures are not fatal, my life is not futile, and my death is not final,” said Dr. Jeremiah.
He said, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our hope is not in Washington.”
“I am here to tell you that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, the Lord of lords and the King of kings,” Jeremiah continued, “The tomb of Jesus is famous not for what it contains but for what it does not contain. It was empty on the first Easter, and it has been empty ever since.”
“Belief in the resurrection is not an appendage of the Christian faith, it is the Christian faith,” said Jeremiah.
The Atlanta rally will be followed in just a few weeks by a similar event in Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 21. The vision for the Stand Up tour came to Dr. Jeremiah as he specifically studied the life of Daniel, who learned to thrive in three “godless” cultures. Daniel rose to a place of respect and responsibility in his culture and in his time, even as he chose not to forsake God or compromise his beliefs.
