Used of God

The purpose of this part of our website is to focus on people that God is using or has used. Some of the people in this category are still living, and some have gone on to be with the Lord. Some are Baptist, and some are not. We want our people to be aware of those people who have experienced the hand of God upon their lives.

Used of God:Tom Gilliam

Evangelist Tom Gilliam is a 1974 graduate of the Bob Jones Institute in Greenville, South Carolina. He was a full-time pastor for 18 years in Athens, Georgia.

In April of 1991 the Lord called him into full-time Evangelism. Since that time he has traveled full-time. The Lord has richly blessed his ministry and opened many doors from Alaska, and Canada, to the southeast.

He and his wife of 36 years, Beth, have three sons: John, Chuck and Joseph. John, 34, is married to Ali. They have one daughter, Zoe, and one son Levi. John is a businessman and builder. Chuck, 32, is married to Julie and they have four children, Abby, Megan and Charlie and Claire. Chuck is the Middle School Principal at Eagles Landing Christian School in McDonough, Georgia. Joseph, 30, is married to Sabrina, and has one son, Noah and one daughter, Georgia. They live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he is the pastor of Reformed Baptist Church.

Used of God:Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards - (1703-1758), American puritan theologian and philosopher

Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, to Timothy Edwards, pastor of East Windsor, and Esther Edwards. The only son in a family of eleven children, he entered Yale in September, 1716 when he was not yet thirteen and graduated four years later (1720) as valedictorian. He received his Masters three years later.

As a youth, Edwards was unable to accept the Calvinist sovereignty of God. He once wrote, "From my childhood up my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty… It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me." However, in 1721 he came to the conviction, one he called a "delightful conviction." He was meditating on 1 Timothy 1:17, and later remarked, "As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before… I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven; and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever!" From that point on, Edwards delighted in the sovereignty of God. Edwards later recognized this as his conversion to Christ.