Don Wilton is the author of “When God Prayed,” a new release from the Broadman and Holman Publishing Group in Nashville, that delves into what the pastor of First Baptist Church, Spartanburg, called “one of the most incredible accounts in the Bible.”
The book, based on a seminar that Wilton, a former professor at New Orleans Seminary, gave at the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, is an in-depth look at John 17 as Jesus, knowing that his death was near, prayed for himself, his disciples and for all believers.
Saying that the prayer is “the ratification of God’s prior decision and judgment concerning the desperate plight of man,” Wilton wrote in the introduction that he hoped the reader would discover “just how far-reaching the mind of Christ really is” and be moved to “a fresh realization of the wonderful work of our Lord and Savior as he came in obedience to the Father even unto death.”
The prayer, Wilton said, “reveals so much about God’s heart for his people, the utter sacrifice and tension of the crucifixion, and the ways in which God continues his work in us today.”
Wilton, a native of South Africa, is pastor of the 6,900-member Spartanburg church and reaches many others through the congregation’s television ministry, The Encouraging Word. He preaches internationally and has served on the faculty of Billy Graham Schools of Evangelism across the United States and Canada.