Barneyisfat

Fred was born the son of a railroad worker. His mother died of throat cancer at 28. His great aunt raised him and his sister until his father could get back on his feet. She died in a tragic car crash some years later.

Fred graduated from high school as a bright 16 year old. He was accepted to West Point. One night he went to a Methodist revival meeting - and after that night he decided that he couldn't in good conscience attend West Point and he decided to become a minister instead. He worked with a Billy Graham crusade out west while he was in school

His education was rocky - but he eventually completed the necessary schooling to become a pastor and a lawyer. He was a great civil rights attorney - one third of the civil rights cases on the docket in Kansas were brought by him and his law firm. His children tell stories of their car windows being shot out while their father dismantled Jim Crowe laws.

Fred Phelps was ordained as the pastor of an independent baptist church. Over the years, he grew tired of watching other churches be weak on the issues of sin. There was a park near his home where many gay men went to find random partners. One day he intercepted as one man tried to lure his five year old son into the bushes. He began to place notices around the park, and asked other churches to join his crusade. As he grew angrier and more violent, the other churches slowly backed off their support. As the other churches showed their love of sin more, he became angrier and more violent.

Today Fred Phelps and his congregation are internationally infamous for their protests and picketing. The young man who pledged his life to God at 16 has followed a path that strays far from religious convention. He has taught his children and his grandchildren to hate in the name of Jesus.

We risk so much in preaching the gospel. We have no control over how people hear the words we say, or what they will do with it. The person in the pew could be the next Billy Graham or the next Fred Phelps. They could take your words out of context and come to any conclusion they want.

And that's a risk we must be willing to take. We must humbly offer our words up to God - in the full knowledge that they are either his or they aren't worth speaking.