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Stephen Olford

Stephen Frederick Olford (1918–2004). Born on March 29, 1918, in Zambia to American missionary parents Frederick and Bessie Olford, Stephen Olford grew up in Angola, witnessing the transformative power of faith. Raised amidst missionary work, he committed to Christ early and moved to England for college, initially studying engineering at St. Luke’s College, London. A near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1937 led to a pneumonia diagnosis with weeks to live, prompting his full surrender to ministry after a miraculous recovery. During World War II, he served as an Army Scripture Reader, launching a youth fellowship in Newport, Wales. Ordained as a Baptist minister, he pastored Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Surrey, England (1953–1959), and Calvary Baptist Church in New York City (1959–1973), pioneering the TV program Encounter and global radio broadcasts of his sermons. A master of expository preaching, he founded the Institute for Biblical Preaching in 1980 and the Stephen Olford Center for Biblical Preaching in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988, training thousands of pastors. He authored books like Heart-Cry for Revival (1969), Anointed Expository Preaching (1998, with son David), and The Secret of Soul Winning (1963), emphasizing Scripture’s authority. Married to Heather Brown for 56 years, he had two sons, Jonathan and David, and died of a stroke on August 29, 2004, in Memphis. Olford said, “Preaching is not just about a good sermon; it’s about a life of holiness that lets God’s power flow through you.”
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Stephen Olford preaches on the necessity of desperation and intercession for revival in the church. He emphasizes that true revival will only come when the church reaches a point of complete reliance on God, abandoning trust in human efforts and material wealth. Olford stresses the importance of intercessory prayer, highlighting that the lack of fervent prayer is the root cause of a spiritually stagnant church. He calls for united prayer groups and intercessors to plead for God's intervention and the removal of obstacles hindering revival.
The Hour of Desperation!
It is my conviction that we are never going to have revival until God has brought the church of Jesus Christ to the point of desperation. As long as Christians people can trust religious organization, material wealth, popular preaching, shallow evangelistic crusades and promotion drives, there will never be revival. But when confidence in the flesh is smashed, and the church comes to the realization of her desperate wretchedness, blindness and nakedness before God, then and only then will God bread in. Yes, there must be the point of desperation but there must also be the point of intercession. Oh, that God would bring us to this place of intercession! We cannot think or talk, let alone taste of revival, without intercessory prayer. Indeed, the reason for an unrevived church in the last analysis is the sin of prayerlessness. Certainly there are individuals who are praying for revival, and God is graciously meeting them at the point of their need, but where are the prayer groups, where are the companies of intercessors, where are the churches united in an agonizing that God would rend the heavens and come down and cause the mountains of hindrance and sin and unbelief to flow before His presence? Yes, there is only one thing that will save us in this hour of desperation and that is prayer.
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Stephen Frederick Olford (1918–2004). Born on March 29, 1918, in Zambia to American missionary parents Frederick and Bessie Olford, Stephen Olford grew up in Angola, witnessing the transformative power of faith. Raised amidst missionary work, he committed to Christ early and moved to England for college, initially studying engineering at St. Luke’s College, London. A near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1937 led to a pneumonia diagnosis with weeks to live, prompting his full surrender to ministry after a miraculous recovery. During World War II, he served as an Army Scripture Reader, launching a youth fellowship in Newport, Wales. Ordained as a Baptist minister, he pastored Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Surrey, England (1953–1959), and Calvary Baptist Church in New York City (1959–1973), pioneering the TV program Encounter and global radio broadcasts of his sermons. A master of expository preaching, he founded the Institute for Biblical Preaching in 1980 and the Stephen Olford Center for Biblical Preaching in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988, training thousands of pastors. He authored books like Heart-Cry for Revival (1969), Anointed Expository Preaching (1998, with son David), and The Secret of Soul Winning (1963), emphasizing Scripture’s authority. Married to Heather Brown for 56 years, he had two sons, Jonathan and David, and died of a stroke on August 29, 2004, in Memphis. Olford said, “Preaching is not just about a good sermon; it’s about a life of holiness that lets God’s power flow through you.”