The Eagle Magazine
"Tolbert Moore: Gospel Preacher"
I wasn’t planning on doing a blog today, Thursday is my preference, but I have to put a few lines down because it was a year ago yesterday I lost my Dad to heaven.
Dr. Tolbert Samuel Moore was truly bigger than life. He loved life; he loved his family, though sometimes he didn’t know how to show it, he loved the Lord, he loved the scriptures and he loved the gospel. More than anything he wanted to be remembered as a gospel preacher, and that is just how thousands remember him.
Dad was a soul winner before being a soul winner was a thing. In the 1940’s he was preaching to the lost more than to the church. Back in the late 1990’s, I was preaching a week’s meeting in middle Georgia. After one service an older woman came up to me and said, “I remember your dad, he would come down here to preach a revival and visit the bars and Honky Tonks and get the drunks and prostitutes coming to the meeting, and you know what, a lot of them got saved.”
That’s just the way he was. He always seemed to be more comfortable preaching to the worst people in town. He built Shiloh Hills Baptist Church reaching the unchurched, lost people felt welcome coming to hear him preach. It had a powerful impact on me. To this day, on Sunday morning, I am compelled to preach a simple gospel message, and I yearn to see some lost soul walk the aisle. There were times people would say to Dad, “we need more than a gospel sermon every week.” To that Dad would reply, if you came on Sunday night and Wednesday night you would get more; Sunday morning is for the gospel.
Today I miss him, but soon I’ll see him again. He will be waiting for me when I get there and he will say, “Did you keep preaching the gospel?” My desire is to say, "As long as I lived, I preached the gospel."
My father was a gospel preacher, and I always wanted to grow up and be just like him.
