Mississippi Pastor Preaches for 96 Hours Straight, Breaks World Record

A Southern Baptist pastor in Mississippi broke an unofficial world record by preaching through the entire Bible continuously over four days , during which time he never stopped speaking.

Matthew Olson, 39, is pastor of First Baptist Church of Sharon in Jones County, Mississippi. On May 30 he opened his Bible to Genesis 1 and began preaching, concluding his sermon in the Book of Revelation on June 3- 96 hours later.

In order to pull off the feat, Guinness allows participants a five-minute break every hour, a format Olson adopted. He also permitted himself to “bank” the five minutes if he preached straight through the hour, allowing him to take longer breaks to eat, drink, receive medical check-ins, and even catch a few minutes of sleep. (The official Guinness World Record is 90 hours, held by Nepal’s Ananta Ram KC.)

The entire event was posted to their church’s live stream, where folks could watch his voice grown fainter and fainter.

A lot of people think this is impossible. We’ve been told a lot of people think this is nothing more than a gimmick,” congregant Rich Gray said. “I want to encourage you to look at it like this: God’s word will not return unto Him void.”

Olson concluded his sermon in Revelation, which you can see his final minutes here:

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