Testiphonies
A Popular Trend
By Carl McRoy
NUMEROUS POPULAR Christian speakers today receive the acclaim they do because they have what many call “powerful testimonies.” By powerful testimonies, people mean that the speakers share lively accounts of how sinful they used to be and how God is using them mightily now, following their conversion. God has brought them from the “guttermost” to the “uttermost,” they say. The speakers chronicle their colorful pasts in order to prove they are legitimate born-again Christians. The sentiment seems to be that you can’t truly appreciate how amazing God’s grace really is unless you’ve been scraped up from the bottom of the barrel.
