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This morning I was thinking about a
very special moment in my life, the day that I received Jesus Christ as my Lord
and Savior.
It was early June of 1967, and I had
graduated from high school just two weeks earlier. One of my friends invited me
to attend a summer revival on the campus of Southeastern Bible College in
central Florida.
And although I attended the
local Methodist church regularly, was a member of the youth group, and had been
involved in three youth camps over the years, I had never had a profoundly
religious experience during the course of my first 18 years.
At the time, this Assemblies of God
college looked more like a World War II military installation, than a center of
academic learning. It was definitely a "bare bones" environment with
what looked like barracks for dormitories.
That first night of the revival Gene
and I sat through a few songs, and a sermon, and as John Wesley described it, I
"felt my heart strangely warmed." As the Assemblies of God National
Sunday School Superintendent, Rev. William Kirschke, gave the altar call, I
found myself getting up out of my seat, and walking towards the front of this
hanger style chapel.
As I kneeled to pray, an elderly man
knelt beside me, and led me in what I later learned was "the Sinner's
Prayer." When I arose from my kneeling position, the slightly built
seventy something minister introduced himself. He was a Dutch missionary named
Jerry Triemstra. He had, at one time, been assigned to a South American
country.
As you might well imagine, I refer to
these two men in the previous two paragraphs as my spiritual fathers. And while
I never saw either of them again, I will always be grateful to them, and look
forward to seeing them again in heaven.
It was the best of times.
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