How I Was Blessed by the Life and Ministry of Elder Lasserre Bradley, Jr.

Elder Lasserre Bradley, Jr., went to be with the Lord on the evening of May 9, 2026, just a few days after his 91st birthday.  He has had a wide-ranging ministry filled with thousands of sermons (his son says that a conservative estimate is around 14,000) preached in thousands of places, all over the US to the Bahamas to Poland.  His radio ministry, The Baptist Bible Hour, has reached homes all over the world.  He has impacted the lives of countless people for the gospel of Christ.  One man found a tape of a sermon of Elder Bradley in his mother's closet in Ghana, Africa, listened to it, and was converted to Christ.  He now preaches the gospel he first heard from Elder Bradley in Takoradi, Ghana.

Elder Bradley's ministry has spanned decades.  It helps that he was preaching by the age of 13 or 14 and a pastor by the age of 17 (something that was reported on by Life Magazine).  My father is going to turn 80 soon, and he remembers as a young man in West Texas hearing Elder Bradley on the radio (his radio ministry began, I believe, in 1952).  In a sermon he delivered not too long ago, Elder Bradley recalled going to the railway station in Lexington, KY, to hear President Harry S. Truman speak on his reelection campaign. That was the year 1948!  As I heard him say that, I thought to myself, "Elder Bradley is the only preacher in the world who could tell that kind of story." 

He had many remarkable experiences. He talks about his first pastorate in the mountains of Kentucky, where he had to borrow a member's mule to visit his people during the wintertime. He used to enjoy recalling the time when, years ago, an elderly sister invited him to her home for lunch after church and told him to kill the chicken they were going to eat.  

I'm sure he could give account after account of God's supernatural provision.  One story I remember him telling was needing to get back to Cincinnati to speak at a school to which he had been invited, and yet he was late to the gate at the airport and his flight was already heading for the runway.  He asked the Lord right there to get him on that plane.  Although the airport staff told him there was no hope, the plane ended up having to return for some unexpected repairs!  He did get on the flight to Cincinnati and he was able to speak at the school.

There are so many things that I appreciate about Elder Bradley and respect him for.  One thing that stands out to me was his simple (not simplistic!) trust in the authority and power of the Word of God.  When as a young man he discovered the doctrines of grace, and was told by his mentors in the Southern Baptist Churches he was a part of then that he should not preach them, that they were just divisive, he tried to do it for a while.  But eventually, he just could not be quiet about something that he saw so clearly in the Bible and which he rejoiced in so greatly.  So he preached the sovereignty of God's grace in salvation.  There were consequences, but he was willing to suffer the consequences rather than fail in his duty to preach the whole counsel of God.

It was because of his commitment to the authority of Scripture that his ministry changed at points over the years in order to better fit to the contours of the Biblical teaching as he saw them more clearly.  He adopted an expository preaching method.  He began to do Biblical counseling at a time when it was virtually unknown.  He came to reject the hyper-calvinistic emphases that he had been taught by some of his early mentors among the Primitive Baptists.  And even though some of his commitments have come at a cost, he counted the cost and followed his Lord gladly and without complaint. 

I also admire him for his believing determination to serve the Lord in whatever ways he could.  He was a persevering man.  When doors were closed to him after his embrace of the doctrines of God's sovereignty in salvation, he bought a tent and held tent-meetings all over the country.  God blessed them abundantly.  Elder Bradley would tell how they would sometimes stay several weeks in a place and pack out the place every evening.  What Thomas Crosby said about the life and labor of Benjamin Keach could equally be said about the life and labor of Elder Bradley: "Preaching the gospel was the very pleasure of his soul, and his heart was so engaged in the work of the ministry, that from the time of his first appearing in public, to the end of his day, his life was one continued scene of labour and toil."

But above all, I love and respect him because he was a man of blameless integrity.  He spent over 70 years in very public ministry and yet when he died yesterday evening, no one could doubt that what the apostle Paul said of himself could equally be said of Elder Bradley: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:7).  He was utterly untouched by scandal of any kind.  He was not only a good preacher with a very successful radio ministry, he was a very good husband to his wife Emily, and a very good father to his children, and a wonderful grandfather to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  I had the holy privilege of watching his wife come into the room with him as he lay dying and embrace him and tell him how much she loved him and thanked God for him.  I couldn't help but think that I want to be the kind of man whose wife will want to say those things about me when I die.

And he was a kind man.  He was so kind.  He was a gentleman par excellence, not one of these bearded blustery types that you meet with in so many pulpits today.  It was not because he was weak - no, he was certainly one of the strongest characters I have ever met with.  His kindness was not a cover for weakness; it was the result of being so much like his Savior, gentle and lowly.  

It was my privilege to serve with him in the pastorate in the last five years of his life.  I asked the Lord before I moved up here to Cincinnati from Texas to give me five years with Elder Bradley.  God gave me five years with him.  I thank God for it.  My only regret is that I didn't ask for more.  

Elder Bradley is now in the presence of his Savior.  He has gone on to his reward.  I will miss him.  I love him.  I am thankful for the opportunity to have been able to learn from him, and my hope is that I can in some small way continue his godly legacy in the years remaining to my life and ministry.  

Good bye, dear brother.  See you soon!