Last week, I wrote an essay entitled “Seeking God as a 12-year-old boy in 1954.” This is a sequel to that story. When I had NOT joined most of the youth in my church by “going forward to accept Christ” during a church-held religious retreat, our pastor Bob Rowe asked me “Why?” When I explained that I needed to know more about other religions of the world first, he encouraged me to do just that. He told me that our Christian faith was about God reaching out in love to mankind, as opposed to mankind having to fear a vengeful God. My subsequent studies verified that to me.
I started my Bible study by re-reading the first chapter of Genesis where it starts off by saying: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …” It took me a few days to get almost through the second book, Exodus, where in Chapter 20 God used Moses to give us the 10 Commandments. I started scanning through the rest of the Old Testament, ending with the last book of Malachi, in one particular series of verses where God is speaking really got my attention: Malachi 3: “Will a man rob God? Yet, you rob me.” But you ask, “How do we rob you?” “In tithes and offerings … Test me in this,” says the Lord God Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the flood gates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”
I really liked that scripture, still do, and I am a living testimony that it is true.
During the next few months, I read all of the New Testament and got excited about how the birth and life of Jesus fulfilled many prophesies made in the Old Testament hundreds of years prior.
About that time, in the summer of 1954, we had an evening revival at our church led by a young minister named Bill Taylor. The first night I went into church with my best friend at the time, James Stills. He was one of my classmates who had “gone forward to accept Christ” a few months prior. We went down the right aisle of the church about midway and he went in to get seated on the right side first. He stopped shortly after stepping into the seat section, leaving me to his left right next to the aisle. After appropriate singing, the Reverend Bill Taylor started preaching. He was a lot younger than Reverend Rowe and seemed to be preaching directly to me. After the sermon, we were standing up singing when he invited all those who would like “to accept Christ” to come forward, Suddenly, my whole body got stiff. I couldn’t move. James, without even bothering to say anything to me, just shuffled to his left, poking me softly with his left arm pushing me out into the aisle. I stumbled sideways into the aisle for a moment, steadied myself and looked up as the Reverend Bill Taylor, 30 feet away, had his outstretched arms reaching out for me. Suddenly, I felt myself, in an almost out-of-body experience, “floating” forward toward the Reverend Taylor. When I reached him, he hugged me and said something like “Praise the Lord! “I found out later that nearly everyone in church was praying for me to go forward to “accept Christ.” It worked and is still working. I was baptized by immersion the next Sunday.
