Watch: Dr. King and the King of Kings Evangelistic Campaign with Daniel Whyte III, President of Gospel Light Society International

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The Potentate and the Prophet: Why Dr. King’s Mission Was Rooted in Christ
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Beyond the Dream: Recognizing the King of Kings in the Life of Dr. King
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From Jim Crow to the Crown of Life: A Personal Testimony of Faith and Race
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The Theology of a Movement: Why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Needed a Saviour
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A Good Confession: Following the King of Kings in the Footsteps of Dr. King
I Timothy 6:13-16: “I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession; That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.”
Revelation 19:16: “And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, And LORD OF LORDS.”
This message is important to me because I came to faith in Jesus Christ through the efforts of a white, independent Baptist church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, that for many years did not accept black members, but in the late ‘70s was led to start a black church while I was in the Air Force and stationed at Kessler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, at the age of nineteen. As I interacted with the leaders and members of that church, and even the pastor of the black church plant, I heard some negative things about Dr Martin Luther King Jr. that I had never heard before. Some people tried to discredit him by suggesting that he was not a true minister of the Gospel. Some people even said he did not have a genuine relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. They viewed him as just a mere social worker, with some even claiming that he was a Communist. Even some black people in that young church plant did not think well of Dr King.
I must admit that I did have concerns and questions about this matter because I was raised in the black Baptist church and the black Pentecostal Holiness church, with my dad being a Baptist preacher and my mother being a Pentecostal Holiness preacher, and yet I had never heard a clear presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ on how to be saved from hell until I was nineteen-years-old when a man named Michael Lewis, who had gotten saved through this church plant that an all-white independent Baptist church had started, came to my dorm room and showed me what was commonly called the “Romans Road” to salvation from the book of Romans in the Holy Bible. Up until that point, no one had asked me the question, if I were to die today, where would I go, heaven or hell?
Thankfully, the Lord allowed me to keep an independent mind about the matter through all of that, and I came to see Dr King as God’s prophet for that particular time in this nation’s history to help deliver both blacks and whites in this country from the ignorance of racism and prejudice. I even learned later that Dr King tried to get into a white, theologically conservative Christian seminary, but he was rejected because of his race. However, based on his words and his life, it seems as though Dr Martin Luther King Jr. did know the King of Kings — the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but the faith, courage, and fortitude that he showed (and that he inspired others to have) as he led the very dangerous Civil Rights movement speak of a man who knew Jesus Christ as his Saviour and had an abiding faith in God.
According to the book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, by historian Taylor Branch, in 1934, when a guest minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta made a strong pitch for the salvation of young souls, Martin Luther King Jr. watched his sister rise to make the first profession of faith in Christ. Impulsively, as he later confessed, “I decided that I would not let her get ahead of me, so I was the next.”
Also in his book, Strength to Love, Dr King wrote: “Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Saviour (Jesus Christ). Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God.” We see here that, contrary to what some thought of King, he did not believe that man could get to Heaven by doing good works. He believed that he and everyone needed a Saviour — Jesus Christ.
He also said, “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight victoriously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.” That sounds like what Jesus Christ called being “born again” when He told Nicodemus in John 3: 3 & 7, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
As a teenager, King wrote these words in a paper called “The Negro and the Constitution”: “We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.”
In a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1967, King said, “I’ve learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my Bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear.”
And, in his famous sermon, “A Knock at Midnight”, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The church today is challenged to proclaim God’s Son, Jesus Christ, to be the hope of men in all of their complex personal and social problems.”
Dr King certainly spoke as a man who knew Jesus Christ. His core philosophy of love and nonviolence was rooted in the teachings of the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. Dr King is dead now, and based on his own words and testimony, we can only say that he is in Heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ, having served his generation as a Moses in modern times. It is not enough to honour Dr King alone because evidently it was the power of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, in his life that caused Dr King to lead and help both blacks and whites in this nation overcome the ignorance of racism and prejudice. If you truly want to honour Dr King during this time of remembrance regarding his life, you need to make the decision to trust Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour so that you can do great things in your generation as King did in his, for the Bible says, we ‘can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth us.’
If you want to know Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, please listen closely, and take the following steps before it is eternally too late:
First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:20: “For there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.” Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”
Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Also, the Bible states in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
Fourth, accept the fact that you cannot do anything to save yourself! The Bible states in Ephesians 2: 8-9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Fifth, accept the fact that God loves you more than you love yourself, and that He wants to save you from hell. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (Jesus Christ, John 3:16).
Sixth, with these facts in mind, please believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, pray and ask Him to come into your heart and save you this very moment, and repent of your sins. The Bible states in the book of Romans 10: 9, 13: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Seventh, and finally, if you are willing to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, please pray with me the Sinner’s Prayer: Holy Father God, I admit that I am a sinner and that I have done evil in Your sight by breaking Your commandments. For Jesus Christ’s sake, please forgive me of my sins. I now believe with all of my heart that You, Lord Jesus, died for my sins, was buried, and rose on the third day. Lord Jesus, I believe in You. Please come into my heart and spirit, and save my soul today from the burning hell and the power of sin. In Jesus Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.
If you just believed in Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and you prayed that prayer and meant it from your heart, I declare to you that based upon the Word of God, you are now saved and you are on your way to Heaven. Welcome to the family of God! I want to congratulate you on doing the most important thing in life: believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, and praying, asking Him to save you from sin and the burning hell.
Believe by faith. Share the faith. And keep the faith! God Bless You!
TITLE: DR. KING AND THE KING OF KINGS By Daniel Whyte III
The Scriptures tell us in I Timothy 6:13-16 to keep the commandment without spot until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ—the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords. This same title is echoed in Revelation 19:16, written upon His vesture and His thigh.
This message is deeply personal to me. My journey to faith began in the late 1970s through the outreach of a white, independent Baptist church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. At the time, I was a nineteen-year-old airman stationed at Keesler Air Force Base. This church, which had a history of excluding Black members, had recently been led to plant a Black mission church.
During my time there, I often heard harsh criticisms of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some claimed he wasn’t a “true” minister, that he was merely a social worker, or even a Communist. Having been raised in the Black Baptist and Pentecostal Holiness traditions by preaching parents, I found these claims confusing. However, it wasn’t until a man named Michael Lewis sat in my dorm room and walked me down the “Romans Road” that I truly understood the Gospel myself. No one had ever asked me point-blank: “If you died today, where would you go?”
Through God’s grace, I maintained an independent mind. I came to see Dr. King not as the villain his critics described, but as God’s prophet for a specific hour in American history—sent to deliver both Black and white citizens from the darkness of racism. While critics questioned his salvation, Dr. King’s own words and life tell a different story.
In his book Strength to Love, King wrote: “Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Saviour.” This is not the language of a man who believes in “good works” to get to Heaven; it is the language of a man who knows he is a sinner in need of Jesus Christ. He spoke of “inner spiritual transformation”—the very “new birth” Jesus described to Nicodemus in John chapter 3.
Dr. King understood that to follow Jesus meant taking up a cross. His philosophy of nonviolence wasn’t just a political strategy; it was rooted in the teachings of the King of Kings. Today, Dr. King has passed on, and based on his testimony, we believe he is with the Lord. But we must not honor the man and ignore the Master. It was the power of Jesus Christ that enabled Dr. King to lead.
If you want to truly honor his legacy, you must do as he did: trust Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. The same “Romans Road” that was shown to me in a dorm room in 1979 is open to you today. Acknowledge your sin, recognize that you cannot save yourself, and call upon the name of the Lord.
As Dr. King once said, “The church today is challenged to proclaim God’s Son, Jesus Christ, to be the hope of men.” Let Him be your hope today.
