After former president Jimmy Carter recently announced that cancer had spread to his brain and he will be undergoing treatments, people flocked to his church in Georgia to hear him teach Bible classes.
Carter has served as a deacon of Maranatha Baptist Church in the rural town of Plains, Georgia, for decades and has also been teaching Sunday School and Bible classes for years, Christian Today reports.
Maranatha Baptist Church and the small town of Plains is used to being flooded with people who want to sit under the former president’s teaching, but after Carter’s recent cancer announcement, the church received a particularly large influx of people wanting to sit in on Carter’s Bible classes.
So many people were present at Maranatha last Sunday that Carter not only taught his usual Sunday School class, but also taught another Bible class at a local school in order to accommodate all those who wished to be present.
Carter, who is 90, then returned to the church sanctuary after teaching both classes to take pictures with those who came to see him, some of whom drove hours to the church.
The lesson Carter taught to those who were gathered on Sunday was on the topic of love.
“We are studying the most important aspect of Christianity," Carter told the crowd. He then read from the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew: "I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Carter's grandson, former Georgia State Senator Jason Carter, said on Twitter that it was the 689th time that his grandfather had taught Sunday school at Maranatha.
Carter began cancer treatment on Thursday.
Photo courtesy: en.wikipedia.org
Publication date: August 24, 2015
