Samson Podcasts Start This Week

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This week we are starting a five-part podcast series called “Samson: A Man for the 21st-Century.” In January and February of 1990 I preached these messages at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois.

Probably no sermon series from my early years in Oak Park made such an impact. For years afterward people would say, “I remember those Samson sermons.” I think it was the first time most people had heard a series on Samson’s life. As for me, I had a blast. Samson is a preacher’s dream. This story has all the elements of a modern TV miniseries . . . Sex, Violence, Romance and Revenge. Here is a man who appeared to have it all, who threw it all away, and then in the end, out of his utter humiliation, dies a glorious death. Despite his many flaws, Hebrews 11 lists him as a man of faith. 

About three years ago I preached the series again at Cannon Beach Conference Center in Oregon. Because the series was recorded on CDs, the sound quality was better than the 1990 series recorded on cassette. But I couldn’t use the 2007 version because my basset hounds chewed up the CDs (no kidding). Plus there is an immediacy about the 1990 sermons that appeals to me. 

The cassette tapes omitted the last part of two of those sermons so I recorded new endings. Other than that, these are the messages I preached exactly twenty years ago. 

I’m very glad that our wonderful daughter-in-law Vanessa does the introduction and the closing for each podcast. 

Today we’re releasing the first message called Most Likely to Succeed. 

 

Addendum (April 7, 2010): here is the page with all of the Samson messages.

Here is the first one:

 

 

 

 

 

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Visitor Comments:

February 23, 2010, 10:27 PM barbduncan says:
	I remember this series well. You began the series the first Sunday we visited Calvary. Our preteen kids just LOVED it. You began by saying, “Rob Lowe, you are a man like Samson.” Rob Lowe was in the news that week. I am sure you use a different more current example. We knew, all six of us, that this was the church for us.
February 24, 2010, 8:02 AM Ray Pritchard says:
	Barb, I loved your note because it reminded me of so many comments I got back in the 90s about those messages. The Samson series was one of my first at the church and it ended up being remembered more than many others. Let’s put it this way. I don’t have a lot of series that people remember 20 years later. So your note made me smile. BTW, these messages are the ones you heard, even including the Rob Lowe illustration. Ray