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Good Morning,

In the autumn of 1912, presidential hopeful Teddy Roosevelt was in Milwaukee to deliver an important campaign speech. Throngs of well-wishers lined the motorcade route, hoping for a glimpse of the American icon. Roosevelt was only too happy to accommodate them, waving his hat and flashing that famed “bully grin” from his open-air motorcar.

But from out of nowhere, a deranged man stepped to the edge of the car and aimed a pistol at Roosevelt. From point-blank range he fired a single bullet deep into Roosevelt’s chest. The blast knocked TR across the car and into a crumpled heap. Blood was everywhere. Chaos reigned. The police gang-tackled the gunman. All eyes focused on the fallen hero.

Immediately, TR’s handlers discussed contingency plans and the quickest routes to nearby hospitals. But the wounded Rough Rider would have none of that. “You get me to that speech. It may be the last one I ever deliver, and I’m not going to miss it.”

A man with a message is a powerful force.

Minutes after the shooting, Teddy Roosevelt stood before his appreciative, albeit unaware audience. And without a microphone, the usually robust TR, meekly said, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I have just been shot, and even now the bullet is in me. So I cannot speak for long, but I will do my best.”

As Roosevelt opened his coat to retrieve his handwritten notes, he exposed for the first time his blood-soaked shirt. The crowd gasped. Doctors rushed to the stage, only to be held off by Roosevelt. Medical attention would have to wait. The message was the priority.

That night TR’s speech was more candid than scripted, more urgent than routine. It was driven by passion, not politics. It contained no campaign rhetoric, no jockeying for votes, no idle promises. Instead, he spoke with deep resolve to cure the nation’s problems, even at the risk of his own. The truth had to be told. Political correctness took a beating. Winning an election was less important. Declaring his deepest beliefs was the issue.

Even the many detractors who had come to jeer and protest sat silently.

Ninety minutes later, an exhausted and colorless Roosevelt was finished. He had done what he came to do. Slowly he turned to the nearby doctors and said, “Now, we can go to the hospital.”

A thunderous applause erupted and continued until the motorcade was out of sight.

It’s interesting that audience reactions tend to change when they sense the urgency of a message; they evaluate it differently. Truth is more acceptable. Vision is caught. Passions are stirred. Even Roosevelt’s greatest critic, the New York Herald, saluted him in the next day’s headline: “WE’RE AGAINST HIS POLITICS, BUT WE LIKE HIS GRIT.”

A man with a message is a powerful force.

The same thing could be said of the prophets. Some were called upon for only one or two messages, while others were called for a lifetime. Either way, a prophet’s singular job was to pass on the words of God—whether they were received or not.

The same could be said of the apostles whose most obvious task was to preach repentance for “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And for it, all but one died a martyr’s death.

All these spokesmen willingly waved their white-knuckled fists in the face of hard-heartedness proclaiming a revolutionary message of repentance and hope. They were often attacked, but they were never ignored.

And, in every successive generation, God has raised up other faithful communicators who bucked the trends and defied the odds. They were gifted leaders whose message could not be silenced; faithful servants who chose obedience over compromise.

Today the torch has been passed to us. We’re next in a long line of faithful teachers of God’s word. Our message comes from “the Book without peer” which reveals the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the blessedness of believers.

That’s our message. And it’s a powerful force. 

Blessings,