Elijah Baker was born and raised, and born again, in Lunenburg County, Virginia. After his salvation, he fearlessly began preaching Christ where the government and state-sanctioned church forbade him. While many of his Christian friends were moving into Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia, Brother Baker remained faithful to God in Virginia, suffering in the process. He was often pelted with apples, vegetables, and even stones while he was sharing the gospel with the lost. Paying the price for “success,” the Lord blessed His servant, and Baker was able to start ten churches in his home state and also in Maryland.
After a relatively short life, Elijah Baker died at the age of fifty-six in the home of one of his closest friends, Richard Lemmon.
Lemmon later wrote: “In Mr. Baker I found … the humble Christian; the preacher of the Gospel in the simplicity of it; and the triumphant saint in his last moments. In his preaching he was very plain; and generally experimental; always very express on the doctrine of regeneration; never entering upon the doctrines by which he conceived he should give offense to one or another. In his last illness, I attended his bedside, day and night, for three weeks; and had many agreeable conversations with him, on the glorious things of the kingdom of Christ. He retained his senses to the last minute; and seemed rather translated, than to suffer pain in his dissolution. Death was to him as familiar in his conversation as if he talked of an absent friend from whom he expected a visit.”
Elijah Baker died on this day in 1798.