Participants: Yvonne Lewis (Host), Dr. E. E. Rogers
Series Code: UBR
Program Code: UBR000194A
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00:01 Have you ever met a living legend?
00:02 Well, stay tuned because 00:04 we have one sitting right here in the Studio. 00:07 My name is Yvonne Lewis 00:08 and you're watching Urban Report. 00:34 Hello and welcome to Urban Report. 00:36 My guest today is Dr. Ernest Eugene Rogers 00:39 also known as Dr. E.E. Rogers, 00:43 Dr. Rogers is a scholar of Biblical languages, 00:46 a former Professor at Oakwood University 00:48 and a wonderful example of Christian leadership and service 00:52 welcome to Urban Report Dr. Rogers. 00:55 It's good to be here. 00:56 Dr. Rogers, I grew up in part at Oakwood 01:00 so, I went to school with your sons... 01:04 I lived at Oakwood when I was... from 10 to 13... 01:08 and you were a Professor there 01:11 when I was there. 01:12 My dad was... I'm sure... one of your students 01:14 because he was a Theology Major so your tenure at Oakwood 01:19 was just like, from what to what how many years? 01:24 From 1945 to 1979... 01:28 My! my! well tell us... 01:31 before we get into your Oakwood tenure, 01:35 let's talk about your life because you just celebrated 01:39 a very special birthday, how old are you? 01:41 I am 100 years old now. 01:44 Dr. Rogers, you look amazing, 01:48 no one would ever know you were 100 years old. 01:52 That is phenomenal... what's your secret? 01:55 Well, proper attitude... 01:59 Okay, unpack that a little bit, what do you mean? 02:01 When I say "Proper Attitude... " I... we want things... 02:07 if you can keep your mind clear and stayed on God, 02:15 nothing will come out of it 02:20 but something that is good for God, 02:23 if you have a problem and you can solve it in your mind, 02:28 then it will never go into action so where anybody can see. 02:34 Okay, so then, your attitude and keeping your mind fixed on God, 02:41 that's how... that's what you feel is like... the secret. 02:45 Oh, to me it is. 02:48 Hmmm... hmmm... hmmm... hmmm. 02:49 Over the past 100 years, 02:53 you must have seen so many changes 02:58 in this Country... in the status of African Americans, 03:04 tell us about how you grew up, 03:06 where did you grow up? 03:07 I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, 03:10 the conditions... at that time, were not the very best, 03:19 but as I said, I tried to keep a good attitude 03:25 for what is in you... 03:27 if you can stop it before it goes out of you... 03:31 if it is bad... then it will become good anyway. 03:36 Yes, yes, yes, yes... so, when you were growing up, 03:40 then you grew up in a... 03:43 you grew up in Segregationist Memphis, Tennessee 03:49 because it was segregated at that time. 03:51 Oh, very much so. 03:53 What was life like... as a young black boy 03:56 in Memphis during that time? 03:58 It was horrible, 04:01 I've seen incidents that 04:04 I don't even like to even think about 04:07 but I've... I tried to stay away 04:13 from where I thought trouble might be 04:17 and I usually stayed with elderly people 04:21 because I felt that they could be a shield and a guide to me 04:27 because my father was killed in an automobile accident 04:32 when I was around nine or ten years old, 04:37 and for fatherly care... 04:40 so that I would be able to have some type of a key on life, 04:46 I worked through a gentleman by the name of Eli Hayes, 04:52 he was a staunch Christian and he used to have me 04:57 to read the Bible to him and by reading the Bible to him 05:04 and having a very active mind at that age, 05:08 I was able to retain a number of the passages of the Scripture 05:15 and when things came, 05:18 I would... I could be able to adjust them 05:22 by what I had read in the Bible... 05:25 Ah... 05:27 And then too... his office was just outside of the black... 05:37 what you might call, "black neighborhood" 05:38 and we didn't have too many policemen coming in at that time 05:45 and I was somewhat secluded from any... 05:50 the brutality that we have right now 05:55 and... which was worse back in those days 05:59 but thank the Lord... I came through it very well. 06:06 Yes, yes, so what you're saying is 06:09 God provided someone to mentor you 06:12 after your dad was killed, He had someone else there 06:17 and He had you reading the Bible and by doing that for him, 06:23 your life was changed. 06:24 My life was completely changed. 06:26 My! did you have brothers and sisters? 06:30 I had five brothers and one sister 06:34 after my mother's second marriage 06:37 she had six boys 06:39 and she didn't get a girl until after she married again. 06:44 Ah... okay... all right... all right... 06:48 so, when you had this... this mentor... 06:53 he was a Godly Christian man 06:56 and he spent time giving you like, putting values into you. 07:02 Very much so... 07:04 Did you go to church with him? 07:05 No, I never went to church with him, 07:07 I was doing just during the week days... I would go in... 07:11 I didn't play around much with the fellows, 07:15 I always went to him because what he was saying interested me 07:21 and I felt that if I could stay around him, 07:25 I could obtain values that would be helpful to me 07:30 in my later life which it did. 07:33 So, now, did you ever get into trouble as a teenager, 07:37 did you ever kind of hang out with the wrong crowd, 07:41 what did you do as a teenager? 07:43 I never got into any trouble and when I saw myself 07:48 mingling with those that I thought 07:52 might be troublesome to me, I moved away from them, 07:58 I stayed clear of what I thought might be troublesome. 08:05 Hmmm... so at Oakwood, 08:08 you taught Greek and Hebrew, correct? 08:12 I taught Greek largely, I started a Hebrew class 08:19 but the students were afraid of it 08:21 having taken Greek 08:23 I only had three persons in the... in the class. 08:28 I taught it for that quarter and then after that I decided 08:35 that I'd better just stick with Greek. 08:36 Now, what gave you your love for Biblical languages? 08:41 When I went to college, 08:46 our teacher brought out points in the Bible 08:52 that stimulated my thinking, 08:55 I saw Grammar... in a different light, 08:58 the sentences in Greek did not have to be in order as 09:04 subject, verb and... 09:06 Hmmm... 09:08 If you could put... any way you wanted 09:11 and you didn't follow the regular order, 09:13 whatever came first is the thing that you wished to emphasize 09:19 and when I read Saint John 1:1 to 3... 09:24 Yes... ah ha... 09:26 "In the beginning was the Word, 09:29 and the Word was with God... " 09:32 the subject came with the last word in the sentence 09:36 but you have an adverbial clause there... 09:39 Yvonne: Ah ha... 09:40 Dr. Rogers: to introduce it and then it started to the thinking, 09:45 "Why was this done?" 09:49 And since I knew that the emphasis was placed there 09:56 because... I marveled... I said, 10:00 "Well, what are they saying?" 10:03 Why did they say, "In the beginning was the Word?" 10:07 I just said, "Well, hmmm... 10:13 He had been speaking about He was God 10:15 because He said that He was God" 10:19 it says... they are talking about 10:22 maybe... the eternity of God 10:28 and they used in that a verb... the verb "to be... " 10:36 the imperfect tense of the verb "to be... " 10:39 and the imperfect tense... 10:42 usually starts with the time of his speaking, 10:46 or hearing or doing and then goes back... 10:50 and as far as you go back it will continue to go back 10:54 and there is no end to it whatsoever, 10:58 and so, as I read the text, it says, 11:03 "In the beginning was the Word... " 11:07 the Word was in the beginning... 11:11 the Word was before the beginning... 11:14 and when the beginning began, He already was. 11:18 Wow! and all that's in the Greek... 11:20 Dr. Rogers: Yes... Yvonne: Oh! 11:22 Dr. Rogers: And I said, "My! I'm going to stick with this" 11:28 because I saw new insights that I had never seen before 11:33 and I could see the eternity of God... 11:37 I could see God in all of His way. 11:41 Doc! that's rich... because... because there are some who say, 11:45 "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God 11:48 and the Word was 'a' God... " they add that article there 11:51 but in the Greek that article isn't there is it? 11:54 No, that article isn't there but when the article isn't there, 11:59 there is no need for a definite article... 12:02 Hmmm... 12:03 when the subject is definite itself... 12:06 Come on... come on Doc... 12:08 oh, I wish I had taken your class myself, 12:10 oh! that is so rich... 12:12 Yeah... it's... you... 12:14 that which is definite is just like saying, "Where is John?" 12:18 "He's at... he's at home... " 12:20 you don't need a definite article there 12:22 because it is definite already, he only has one... 12:26 Your right, that's right... that's right... 12:29 they're talking about, "Where is John?" 12:32 right? not "Where is 'a' John?" 12:34 "Where is John?" 12:36 And they know there is only one John 12:38 it's the guy with whom you're... 12:41 Yes, yes, so from that verse, you got the eternal existence 12:47 of Christ... the incarnate... 12:48 That's right... 12:49 ooh! that's rich... that's rich. 12:52 So, you have two verbs in Greek 12:56 one is the imperfect... 13:00 what we say, "the imperfect tense" 13:03 one is called the "Aorist Tense" in Greek, it's past tense... 13:08 to give you an example of the difference between the two, 13:14 when Jesus was talking to the Jews about His existence, 13:20 He says, "Before Abraham was... " 13:24 He didn't use "a" which is a form of the verb "to be" 13:28 which shows there is no beginning and no end... you see. 13:32 Yvonne: Ahh... Dr. Rogers: He's always present. 13:33 Yvonne: Right. 13:35 Dr. Rogers: He used the "Aorist Tense" which means, 13:38 "it happens then and it stopped" 13:40 But He says... and He didn't go back to the imperfect tense then 13:46 He started with the present tense, 13:48 He says, "I am... " 13:49 He says, "Abraham had a beginning" 13:55 but "I am" has no beginning and no end 14:00 it exists in the eternal present. 14:04 Oooooh! 14:06 And so, when I became acquainted with these particular aspects 14:13 of how it makes the Bible come alive 14:17 and how you can see things that you've never seen, 14:21 everything then became... oh, so dear to me 14:26 and I just loved it. 14:29 Oh! where did you learn it, 14:30 where did you go to school to learn it? 14:32 Oakwood, at that time, 14:35 did not have a Department of Biblical Languages, 14:39 it was just a Junior College at that time... when I graduated 14:42 back in 1941... and I've learned... 14:50 I started... I learned portions of what I now know 14:56 at Union College from Dr. Rolland 15:01 who was my Greek Instructor at the time, 15:04 but how to put it together and how to make Grammar stand out 15:10 and become edifying to those that hear 15:14 and meaningful to those that hear... 15:17 I got it at the Seminary. 15:19 Ahhh... that is so... to me, it's so exciting 15:23 because it's not just... like, when I read 15:27 the King James Version 15:29 I can read, "Before Abraham was... I am... " 15:33 but when you're reading it in the Greek or in Aramaic... 15:38 In the Greek... 15:41 In the Greek... it just... 15:42 it makes the whole thing come to life 15:45 because you're looking at not just what is said there 15:49 but those tenses and all of that, 15:51 you're conjugating all of that... 15:54 to me it's amazing! 15:56 You can say, in other words you could put it another way, 16:01 "Before Abraham came into being... I am... " 16:06 Hmmm... hmmm... 16:08 and "I am" is such a powerful statement isn't it? 16:11 In other words, 16:13 it is the equivalent to the word, "Jehovah. " 16:17 Whoa... and that's why they wanted to stone Him isn't it? 16:22 That's why they wanted to 16:23 because He was making Himself a God. 16:26 Yes, yes, yes, yes. 16:29 And there is no beginning and there is no end with the present 16:35 with "I am... " because "I am" has always been "I am" 16:42 "and I will always be I am, 16:44 there never was a time when I wasn't, 16:47 and there never is a time when I will not be... " 16:50 Yes. 16:52 So, He could say, to make that distinction 16:55 so He could let the Jews hear it, 16:56 they wanted to pick up a stone and stone Him 16:59 because they interpreted... they got His meaning, 17:04 "You are saying that you are God. " 17:07 Yes, yes... oh that is so rich, how did the students... 17:11 how did your students grasp the Greek, 17:15 were they eager to grasp it... 17:17 were they... how... how did they deal with it? 17:20 They were very, very eager, what we did, 17:24 I always gave something 17:28 that I thought that they would be able to use 17:31 in their sermonic preparation 17:34 because anytime you can bring out a new concept... 17:41 a new idea... maybe one that one could not otherwise know 17:47 unless he had some idea of what it was in the original 17:54 to give you an example, the word "peculiar" now 17:58 when you think of peculiar, what does it come... 18:02 what comes to your mind? 18:04 Strange... 18:05 Strange... queer... but back in 1611 18:08 when the King James Version was written 18:12 or when John wrote it, the word there meant... 18:17 back then "peculiar" meant there "a precious possession. " 18:21 Hmmm... 18:23 And when you look at the word itself, 18:27 it comes from a word, "perioúsios" 18:32 "peri" means...it's like a perimeter, it's a circle... 18:38 and "ousima... " the verb "to be" 18:41 "here I'm a being outside of the circle of God's grace, 18:46 but when I, by faith, accept Him as my Savior, 18:51 the circle which did not encircle me... now encircles me 18:58 and I am existing now in the circle of God's grace. " 19:04 Oh! Doc... oh, that is so good. 19:08 These are the things that made Greek so precious to me. 19:13 Yes... 19:14 And I enjoyed it immensely. 19:17 Yes, I can tell because I'm enjoying it right now, 19:20 and I'm sure our Viewers will enjoy it too, 19:23 just... it's like... digging deeply into the treasures 19:28 that are in the Bible that we don't even... 19:30 we don't even really know 19:32 because we don't know the Biblical languages. 19:34 That's right. 19:35 The deep, deep treasures, what's your favorite Bible text? 19:38 Oh, my favorite Bible text is 19:42 Saint John 15:7, 19:45 "If ye believe in me, 19:48 and my word... " 19:51 no, it really doesn't say "believe" 19:54 "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, 20:00 you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. " 20:05 My wife, at that time, was dying from cancer, 20:13 they had given her only days to live 20:19 and I was by her bedside 20:23 and I was reading my Bible 20:28 and that text came across, I was you at that time 20:35 and I read it... I said, 20:40 "It says here, if you believe in me, 20:43 and my Word... " I keep saying "believe... " 20:47 that word there is "abide" 20:49 "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, 20:56 you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. " 21:02 I looked at the word "done" 21:05 and the word "done" actually came from the word that means 21:13 "a beginning... " 21:15 I said, "Oh, what it is saying here 21:20 'if you believe in me and my words abide in you, 21:26 you shall ask what you will and if what you ask for 21:32 does not exist, I will bring it into existence 21:37 in order that your prayer might be answered. '" 21:41 Hmmm... 21:43 And I asked her, "Do you believe that?" 21:45 She said, "Yes... " 21:47 I said, "Can you think of anything 21:50 that might be between you and the Lord 21:54 so that He will not answer this prayer?" 21:57 She says, "No... " 21:59 because people were praying for her all around the world... 22:03 I said then, "Let's just pray... " 22:06 I said, "Lord, please bring into existence 22:11 a cure that never existed before 22:14 in order that she might be able to see as she desires 22:21 her children grow up... " 22:23 52 years later... 22:29 Ohhhh... are you kidding? 22:33 She was able to see all of her grandchildren 22:38 and her great-grandchildren and hold them on her lap, 22:44 I said, "That text from now on 22:47 will always be my favorite text. " 22:51 "If what you ask for does not exist, 22:55 I will bring it into existence 22:59 in order that your prayer might be answered. " 23:04 Oh... 23:05 This is why I love Biblical languages. 23:07 Yes, that is so beautiful 23:10 so she only had days to live according to the doctor? 23:14 Yeah... according to the doctors 23:16 and this was 50... 51 or 52 years later 23:22 she was still fondling her great-grandson. 23:26 Praise the Lord... what a blessing. 23:29 This is... you can see why Biblical... 23:32 and I try to make it practical, I knew that my students would... 23:39 some of my students... 23:40 we have some that were very scholarly... very scholarly... 23:45 very good theologians 23:49 and... but I knew that 23:52 the majority of them were there... taking it 23:56 because they had to take it in order to get a grade. 24:00 It was a requirement... 24:01 Exactly... I didn't want them to be spending their money 24:05 for something that would not benefit them in the end 24:08 and so, I used practical illustrations, 24:13 I used words too... that I knew that they would be using 24:18 in their sermons and gave them illustrations 24:23 from the Word itself and how the Greek shed light 24:28 upon the text and they appreciated it, 24:35 they never missed class hardly 24:37 because they felt that they would miss something 24:41 if they were not there to get it. 24:43 Yes... yes... and the Lord has blessed you so much, 24:49 He blessed you in your home life, 24:52 He blessed you in your ministry, He blessed you as a Professor 24:57 and a few years ago, you had lost your first wife, 25:01 He blessed you with another wife, 25:03 you got married at... how old were you Doc? 25:07 My wife was 91 years old and I was 93... 25:12 Yvonne: Oh... look at that... 25:14 Dr. Rogers: And I told her, 25:16 I said, "Most people say 'life begins at 40... '" 25:20 I said, "but today... we have changed that... 25:24 life now begins at 90... " 25:28 Come on... Doc... you are rapping... 25:34 oh that's so sweet, how sweet is that! 25:38 And so, we have been happy ever since 25:42 and I wish she could have been here beside me 25:46 because she's my inspiration. 25:48 Oh, that is so sweet, well, you know, thankfully 25:52 we are going to be doing a "Today Program" 25:55 with you and with your wife so that's going to be 25:58 on our parent network so our Viewers can watch you 26:01 on Dare to Dream and they can also watch you on 26:05 3abn Parent Network with your lovely wife. 26:08 Good... that's a blessing... 26:10 That's incredible... 26:12 what closing thought would you like to leave 26:16 in like 30 seconds or so with our Viewers about anything, 26:20 anything that the Lord lays on your heart. 26:22 Do you have a closing thought? 26:25 My closing thought would be this, 26:30 "Always keep a good attitude 26:34 because if you can think right you will do right, 26:42 if you have a good idea 26:45 and actions spring from your thoughts that you think, 26:51 if you can kill the thing that is wrong in your mind, 26:57 by taking that attitude 26:59 by making God first and best and last 27:02 in your experience, 27:04 then it would never come into full play where it can be 27:09 seen in public, 27:13 what you kill on the inside, 27:17 will never be played out on the outside. " 27:21 Doc... on that note... thank you so much, 27:25 may God continue to richly bless you, 27:28 and thank you for your service and all that you've done 27:31 just to leave this wonderful legacy 27:34 we thank you so much. 27:36 Thank you... 27:37 Yes, and Dr. Rogers has lived these 100 years 27:40 as a Servant Leader, 27:42 what an example he is for us to follow, 27:45 we appreciate and honor his legacy. 27:48 Those of you who know other seniors... honor them... 27:53 let them know how much you appreciate them 27:55 well, we've reached the end of another Program, 27:58 join us next time because you know what? 28:00 it just wouldn't be the same... without you. |
Revised 2016-10-12