George Washington Sheafor
A Teacher of God's Promises
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It was the writer's privilege to attend the funeral service on 18 November 2006 for Chrystine J. Pittman. She was a faithful, devoted Christian who joined First Baptist Church and the Sheafor Bible Class in 1959. She was able to listen, study, and learn from Dr. Sheafor for nine years until his death in 1968. After her funeral service, her three grown children related how they also had visited Dr. Sheafor's class with their mother on many occasions. They expressed their feeling that Dr. Sheafor was a wonderful teacher of prophecy. This feeling is shared by all who ever heard him teach. But what is prophecy? Prophecy is a study of the promises of future things recorded in the Scriptures. Every prophecy is a promise of what God plans to do at some time in the future. Dr. Sheafor was a strong believer in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and he believed that every promise of God will be fulfilled. His reputation as a teacher of prophecy was representative of his preaching and pastoral ministry as well. It is for this reason that the writer has chosen the subtitle of this biography to show him to be “A Teacher of God's Promises.” Some of God's promises were fulfilled in Old Testament days, some were fulfilled in the days of the Apostles (especially the Messianic prophecies), and some prophecies are being fulfilled in our lifetime. However, many of God's promises will be fulfilled in the future, including the Last Day Events on this earth. Some people seem to limit prophecy only to those promises that will be fulfilled in the Last Days. Dr. Sheafor's teachings, however, included all of God's promises. Someone once asked Dr. Sheafor which of the millennial doctrines he believed: Post, Pre, or A-millennial. His reply was that he believed the “Bible-millennial” teaching. If the Bible said it, he believed it. From the beginning of his ministry, while attending Moody Bible Institute in 1894, he began to major on the wonderful promises that God has made to every born-again believer. He presented the joy and the glory to be experienced by every believer in the Rapture, the Second Coming of Jesus, and the New Heaven and New Earth. In the closing years of his ministry, his close relationship with the professors at Dallas Theological Seminary revealed that he had not changed any of his pre-millennial beliefs. Dr. Sheafor was so knowledgeable about prophetic promises that his lessons were always clear, pointed, and understandable. He became quite a popular teacher. The Sunday School Class that he began teaching in 1945 increased in membership from eighteen to more than three hundred before he passed away.
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About the Book
Dr. George Washington Sheafor was a Baptist evangelist and pastor who lived during the years that the United States was growing, the population was moving westward, and new territories and states were being added. His teaching and preaching ministry spanned seventy-six years, beginning in 1892 through his death at age 96 in 1968. His pioneer ministry began in Arizona while it was still a territory. As a young man he worked on a ranch taming wild horses off the range and preached to some of the ranch hands with whom he worked. He attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and was mentored by Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of his day. He also studied the life and teachings of Andrew Murray and patterned his life after this great English teacher and preacher. He began preaching revival meetings in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. During his pastoral ministry, he served in Comanche and Brownwood, Texas; Lawton, Oklahoma; and in Lancaster, Texas. Dr. Sheafor's pastoral ministry changed in 1941 when he became a Bible teacher at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. His name is synonymous with the teaching of Bible prophecy. In all of his teaching and preaching, Dr. Sheafor majored on the wonderful promises that God has given to every born-again believer. He presented the joy and the glory to be experienced by every believer in the Rapture, the Second Coming of Jesus, and the New Heaven and New Earth. His wealth of knowledge concerning prophecy was inimitable and he was loved and admired by all who heard him speak, including many of the professors at Dallas Theological Seminary and Dr. W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas for all of the twenty-three years that Dr. Sheafor taught the class that now bears his name.
About the Author
Reverend Oscar Hollis Davis grew up in Dallas and attended First Baptist Church as a child. He graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible and Speech and earned a Master's degree in Theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. For more than twenty years, he served as pastor for churches in Waco, Lufkin, Fort Worth, Kingsville, and Ingleside, Texas. After returning to the Dallas area in 1965, he again joined First Baptist Church, Dallas, where he has become a renowned teacher in his own right. He began teaching the Evangel Bible Study Group in 1997, a neighborhood home study group where he teaches Bible lessons verse by verse rather than in a big block at a time. In this way, ample time can be spent to explain the full background and meaning of each verse in relation to the chapter and topic under review. Rev. Davis is presently the teacher of the class originally started by George W. Sheafor.