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- BIO:T.T. Martin 1862-1939
-
- American evangelist. T.T. Martin was born in Smith County,
- Mississippi, on April 28, 1862. Following a childhood and youth amid
- the extreme poverty of the post-war South, he was graduated from
- Mississippi College, where his father both preached and taught
- mathematics. While preparing for a career of law, he felt a growing
- impression that he must preach. And, after a period of intense and
- prayerful self-examina- tion, he gave up his legal ambitions and
- devoted himself to preparing for the ministry, graduating from the
- Southern Bap- tist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in
- 1891.
-
- While awaiting assignment for the foreign mission work, he was
- stricken with an almost fatal attack of food poisoning, and was advised
- by physicians to move to Colorado as his only chance of recovery. From
- 1897 to 1900, he was pastor in Cripple Creek. Preaching there and in
- nearby camps, often in the open air, he recovered his health and
- developed the unusual strength of voice that was to carry him through
- almost 40 years of exceptionally strenuous preaching.
-
- Martin entered full-time evangelistic work in 1900, and his ministry
- soon became noted for its effectiveness in bringing conviction and
- acceptance of Christ as personal Sa- viour. In the early 1900s, he
- began to use large tents for his meetings, as most of the churches
- could not accommodate the crowds. Soon invitations began to come from
- all sections of the country. In order to fill the many requests that
- came, he gathered around him a group of evangelists and musicians,
- whose presentation of the way of salvation he knew to be clear and
- sound. He personally scheduled these men, organized in teams,
- throughout the country.
-
- Active until the last few months of his life, he died May 23, 1939,
- and was buried at Glouster, Mississippi. On his gravestone are the
- dates of his birth and three Scripture texts, which were the core of
- his ministry: John 3:16, Acts 16:31, and John 5:24.
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