That’s My King

His parents named him Shadrach Meshach Lockridge — two-thirds of the furnace three — and he grew into the name. For forty years he pastored Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego, one of the West Coast’s great Black congregations, and preachers came from across the country just to study his cadence. The moment history kept comes from a sermon preached in Detroit in 1976: near the end, Lockridge begins answering a question no one asked out loud — *who is this Jesus?* — and for roughly three minutes the answer builds, clause on clause, like a wave that refuses to break. Someone had a tape recorder running. That reel would outlive the preacher, the church, and the century.

There is no argument in “That’s My King.” No three points, no application, no illustration. There is only accumulation: He’s the King of the Jews. He’s the King of Israel. He’s the King of righteousness, the King of the ages, the King of heaven, the King of glory — and then the floodgates: enduringly strong, entirely sincere, eternally steadfast, immortally graceful. He supplies strength for the weak. He sympathizes and He saves. No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessing. Every clause is scripture compressed; the whole is the Bible’s witness to Christ read at the speed of joy.

The form is the message. Lockridge is preaching in the grand tradition of the Black church — call and response, rhythm building toward celebration — where truth is not merely stated but *sounded* until the body believes it too. And the crescendo is engineered toward a deliberate failure: language runs out. “You can’t get Him out of your mind… You can’t outlive Him, and you can’t live without Him.” Herod couldn’t kill Him, and the grave couldn’t hold Him. Description dies; worship is what’s left standing.

Then the landing, soft as a benediction after all that thunder: *That’s my King. Do you know Him?* Not — do you know *about* Him. The three minutes exist for the possessive pronoun and the question.

“He’s enduringly strong. He’s entirely sincere. He’s eternally steadfast. He’s immortally graceful… He’s the miracle of the age. That’s my King.”

— A few seconds of the crescendo — on the page it reads as a list; aloud it becomes worship.

“KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

— Revelation 19:16 — the title the whole three minutes is climbing toward.

Nobody present could have guessed they were hearing one of the most-heard sermons in history. The excerpt traveled the way revival always had before the internet — hand to hand, tape to tape, played in youth rooms and Easter services. Then the internet found it, and the numbers stopped being countable: hundreds of millions of plays across every platform, set to film scores, subtitled in dozens of languages, recited by children at church programs on every continent.

“That’s My King” gave the global church two gifts. The first is a portable confession: three minutes that carry a complete doctrine of Christ in language a child can shout. The second is a style: it introduced audiences worldwide to the genius of the Black American pulpit — preaching as music, doctrine as doxology — and its DNA is audible in worship songs, spoken-word pieces, and sermon climaxes everywhere. Lockridge died in 2000, before the viral age crowned him; he had already said the only thing he wanted said. That’s my King.