Testimony, Jerry Jennings

Now, I'll read with you in Psalm 40. Psalm 40, verse 1. Now, this isn't a competition between John and I, but John told you how the Lord saved him, I'll tell you how the Lord saved me. I was, I learned, or I read this little verse years and years ago, and I thought to myself, you know, I could lift some of the language from that psalm, and he did.

He brought me up also out of a horrible pit. I lived a horrible, horrible life. For 34 years of my life, I wasn't raised in a Christian home.

My mother wasn't a Christian, and neither was my father, and neither was my stepfather. And my mom died at 99 years of age, and she died in her sins. Now, let that happen to you.

And my stepdad lived to be 100, and he died in his sins. So you see, that can happen. You don't want that to happen to you.

Anyways, I waited patiently for the Lord. I really didn't know I was waiting patiently for the Lord. The Lord was very, very patient and very kind to me.

But I was born out in a little wood frame house out in a little place called Davis, South Dakota. There wasn't much of that town because a tornado had gone through there and pretty well stripped the whole town. But there were a few houses and a couple of little business places.

Anyways, I was born in this little old white frame house. My dad was downtown, and he was drunk. And there was a neighbor man.

I remember his name. His name is Crack, and the only reason I remember it, my mom told me. And he brought over a lump of coal and put this lump of coal in the stove and warmed the house up a little bit so that my mother could have my sister.

And after she had my sister, the doctor said to her, he said, Wanoma, you aren't done yet. And she said, there's another one in there. That was me.

And I don't know how many minutes after she was born, I was born. I don't think she was really looking for me real close, but I don't blame her. But anyhow, so that's where I was born, out in this little place called Davis, South Dakota.

And then we moved to a little town in Iowa called Sutherland, Iowa. And my dad managed a slave slave lumber yard. They're not around anymore, but they were back in the day, right, brother? And but now they're not around now anymore.

And I should tell you what year I was born. I was born in 1939. And I was born in October.

And I was born October 7, by the way, that's coming up. It's coming up pretty close. And so my folks moved to this little place in Sutherland, Iowa, and he managed a slave lumber company.

And he was a drinker. And he did all the crazy things that drunk men do. And all I remember about my dad, my real dad was when he came home, he'd always be mad at my mom and he'd beat her up.

And my I had a older brother, Gary. And he's he was maybe two years older. But my brother Gary and my sister Judy, and I would crawl under the kitchen table and try and hide from him.

And we really weren't hiding from him. But we thought we were we just little kids, you know, like eight years old, seven years old, whatever. And he would beat on my mom until he was tired.

And then he'd leave her alone. And the next night, it would happen again and again and again. And that's all I ever really remember about my dad, except he went fishing in Spirit Lake.

Some of you folks here in Iowa know where that's at. And he went with his cronies. And it was back in them days when they didn't have motors on their on their fishing boats, they had oars.

They were out there in this lake. And for some odd reason, my dad took a header out of that boat. And he drowned.

And I remember my mom and I and my sister and brother, we'd all walked down to the lumber yard, my mom was kind of picking the place up his office a little bit, you know, tweaking it, they call it nowadays. And on the way home this year, Catholic priest pulled up alongside of us and offered my mom a ride home. And so we got in the car, kids got in the back, she got in the front.

And I remember him saying to my mother, Wynonna, I have something I must tell you. And she said, it's Laverne, that was my dad's name. And he said, yes, he said Laverne drowned in Spirit Lake today.

And so time just kind of went on and went on and went on. And in about 1949, maybe 1950, I think about 1950, my mom remarried. She married a farmer guy in Iowa.

And he was good to her. He was a controller. I don't know that that's always so good.

But he was a controller. But he didn't mistreat her physically or, or probably even verbally as far as I know. And so that's where we lived in that little bitty old town of Sutherland.

Didn't know anything, never heard the gospel. There was never a Bible in our house. Didn't know anything about being saved or born again.

Those are words that I had never heard until I was 34 years of age. So anyways, and my older brother, he, my oldest brother, only had one brother, he's two years older than me. And he graduated out of high school.

And when he did, he went into the Army. And they sent him to Italy. And about a year later, I went in the Army.

I was 16 years old when I went in the Army. Now the recruiter said to my mother, are you sure this boy is 17? And my mama said, yeah, he's 17. I kind of thought now that maybe she's trying to get rid of me.

So way into the Army I went. And I ended up in a place called Korea. And when I went off of an L, an LCT or an LTC or whatever, landing craft onto the shores of Korea, I was 16 years of age.

Now, is there anybody in this room 16 years of age? Sometimes I see boys that are 16 years of age, and I think to myself, I can't believe it. 16 years of age, and I stepped off the shores of that ship onto the, it was right at, the war was just over. It had just finished up.

And so I was over there about, I spent 18 months over there. I spent about a year. And one day, my brother-in-law was over there too.

My sister, my twin sister's husband, he was over there at the same time I was. And he run me down in the motor pool one day. And he says, pack your sea bag.

He says, you've got to go home. I said, what have I got to go home for? He says, your brother drowned in a lake over in Italy. So I went home and I went to that funeral.

And after the funeral was over, I went back to Korea. But you know, the death of my dad and the death of my brother made me think about dying and how real it really is. And that it really does happen to people.

That they actually, they really die. Their earthly history comes to an end. And you know, the interesting thing of it, every one of us in this room, speaker included, our earthly history is going to come to an end.

Now, old people seem to die. And middle-aged people too. And young folks seem to think they're never going to die.

But the problem is they get older and older and older. And then one day, all of a sudden, their earthly history comes to an end and they go out into eternities. And then the great question is, eternity where? Is it going to be heaven? Or is it going to be hell? Because there's only two eternal destinies for the soul and one is heaven.

So there's a heaven to gain tonight and there's a hell to shun tonight. So anyways, time went on and on again. After I got out of the army, I met my wife, Judy.

And we had a little boy. He brought a lot of joy into our lives more than what we ever had as a young child. And life went on and on.

And then the war broke out in Vietnam. And I said to my wife, I'll see you in a couple of years. And I left and went to Vietnam.

And I came back home. And I can remember how very, very troubled I was about dying. And I really thought that I would never get back home, that I'd die over there.

But I did get back home. And I was happy to get back home. And then I went on a police department in Yankton, South Dakota.

And I remember one time a Baptist preacher came to the house. And he sat in the house and he talked to us. And he never said one word about salvation.

Not a word. And after God saved me, I went back to that little town. And I hunted that man up and I told him how God had saved me.

And I asked him, I says, how come you never, ever mentioned that to me? That you needed to be saved, that you needed to be born again the Bible way and washed in the precious blood of Christ. I can't remember what he told me. I'm getting kind of long at the tooth, you know.

I'm older than John. And if you can do the arithmetic, now you know how old I am because I told you what year I was born. That's all I'm going to tell you.

You've got to figure it out when you're old. Okay. Anyways, we went to a little place called Dresbach, Minnesota.

It was just a little ways north up the river from La Crosse. And I started framing houses. And we moved in a home in Holman, Wisconsin.

And I had taken up where my dad left off. Only thing is, I never mistreated my wife. But I thought I could probably drink up at least a 160 acre farm, maybe a 200 acre farm.

I tried to do that. I probably got the job done. And then one day, my wife said to me that some company was coming, probably her relatives.

I didn't get on real good with them, shame on me. And I never said too much to them, but I didn't really make an effort to be a good son-in-law. And she said, I have this roast.

And she said, when you get here, she said I'm going to feed him this roast. And she laid the roast on the table and walked out. And I picked the roast up and I threw it out in the weeds.

And the neighbor saw me do it. And he picked the roast up and brought it back home and gave it to my wife. I didn't know that until years later she told me about that.

So I got in my pickup truck and I was driving down the road. And I remember this like it happened yesterday. There was a little girl on a tricycle and she was coming down a lawn that was sloped down to the road.

And I should have run over her. And I knew that. But I didn't.

I mean, she'd come right out in front of that pickup. And I looked in my rearview mirror and she was going off across the road. I've never been able to explain that in my mind.

Outside of the fact that the Lord spared her, spared me too, because I'd ended up in a penitentiary over that. And I got down to the end of the road and I stopped. And I thought to myself, you know, if you don't do something, if you don't find some way to straighten your life out, you're either going to end up in the penitentiary or you're going to end up in hell.

And, you know, the thought that came to me is I don't want to go either place. Well, I don't know how to get stopped. I didn't have a clue.

I didn't know how to get stopped. And it wasn't long after that, a Baptist preacher came to the house. You see, I've got a little spot in my heart for the old tiny Baptist preachers like old Billy Kelly and some of them.

He preached in a pair of bibble overhauls and a white shirt and a necktie. Well, I'll tell you, he could drag your heels over the fires of hell, Billy Kelly could. And anyways, I heard old time Baptist preachers preaching.

And this lady came to the house and she left a track off. I might have missed a spot there, but that's all right. I'll get her.

I'll carry it away some place. And she left the track off and it was God's way of salvation. I never seen a track in my life.

I never heard of a track. I never saw the inside of a Bible. Never even glanced inside of a Bible because it didn't have one.

Never was one in our house. I think my wife finally got one. Her sister might have given it to her.

And anyways, my wife said, I said to my wife, she handed me that track and I said, where'd you get that? And she said, some lady came by here and dropped it off and she said they're having a crusade over in Galesville, Wisconsin. Well, I didn't know what a crusade was. And then she said, I think they call it a revival.

Well, you know, it's really a misnomer because you can't revive someone that's dead. You can only revive those that are living. And I was as dead as dead could be.

Spiritually dead. Blind as I could be. Didn't know nothing about the Bible.

Never saw anything or heard anything all those years. Not that I recall. I probably did, but I don't, you know, when you're lost and in your sins and in spiritual darkness, there are probably things that you hear that you don't really hear.

And I probably heard people talk about the gospel and never, never really realized what I was listening to or what I was hearing. The only time I ever recall, I'm going to try and get back to that thought. But anyway, the only time I ever recall was when I was in the Navy and we were on underway training.

We were on our way to Vietnam, but we had, in order to do that, you had to go through underway training before. And we docked every night in a place called San Diego. And when we went ashore, we went right up to a place where there was a great big park.

Nice green grass. And a couple of different times when we went up in there, I noticed that there were some men and they were all suited up with suits on and white shirts, white shirts. Imagine that.

And neckties. And you know what they were doing? They were preaching the gospel and it didn't make a lick of sense to me. And yet I sat right there on a bench, me and my buddy, and listened to them men preach the gospel.

And I remember one night we decided to go to a movie. We had a few bucks on us. So I said, let's go to that movie over there.

And it was a four horse, the name of it was the Four Horses of Apocalypse. And when that movie started, these horses start coming on the screen one right after another. And the caption, there was a caption, there was a scriptural caption under it.

I didn't know that in those days. I can tell you when those horses came on one right after another, how that struck me. How that actually reached my heart, my soul.

And I thought it was just amazing to me. Anyway, we shipped out and shipped back and so on and so forth. Here comes this lady, right, with this lovely track.

And so I said to my wife, I said, why don't we go to those meetings and see if there's anything there for me. I said, if it's religion, I said, you know, I could use a little bit of religion. Know what she said? No.

She said, you could use a lot of religion. But you know what I didn't need was religion, was it? I needed a relationship. Nobody needs religion.

But everybody needs a relationship with the living, loving Lord Jesus. And so we went to these meetings. And these were old-timey Baptist preachers, and they weren't afraid to preach hell in the lake of fire and drag your heels right over the fires of hell.

And when you got to the door, there'd be one of them standing there, reach out to get your hand and say to you, which way you going, son? Well, I hated that question. I never, I will not buttonhole you at the door. Don't worry about me, John.

I'm not asking any questions. If you can't get it in the time that we're preaching the gospel, you're not going to get it at the door. All right.

But them old Baptist preachers did buttonhole you right there at the door, right there. They'd get ahold of your hand and would let you go. You know, John R. Rice was the worst of all of them.

And he never let anybody go out that door for what he didn't ask them whether they were going to heaven or they were going to hell. I mean, he was really blunt about it. So this went on night after night and after four nights.

On the way home, my wife said to me, she said, I got saved in the meeting tonight. Huh. I says to her, I says, I didn't see you go forward.

No, she said, that's because I didn't. So then I said to her, I says, well, how did that happen? So this preacher that night was preaching on the Passover lamb and the Lamb of Egypt. I remember that.

And he linked it up with the Lamb of God, which take away the sin of the world. And that made sense to her. And she saw, she saw that when the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died for her.

And she told me that. And I says, that sounds pretty simple to me. And she said, well, it is simple.

I said, well, I think there's more to it than that. And she was a judgment preacher right from the very get go. And she said to me, if you think you need any more than that, you're just going to die and go to hell.

That's the way she put it to me. I thought, man, she's tougher than them old Baptist preachers are. So anyway, that's how it went.

And we went to all those meetings. And at the end of the series, I wouldn't say, but we went every Wednesday night, we went every Sunday morning, we went every Sunday night. And there was a man by the name of Rodel Bledsoe.

And he was kind of one of them preachers that kind of looked like he was walking backwards, looking at his tracks. You know what I mean? Kind of like me sometimes. But you know, every time he opened the Word of God, no matter where he read, you know what he preached? Christ and him crucified.

And that's exactly what he was supposed to be preaching. His Gospel message was absolutely a three-point, simple, simple message like the old brother used to say to his ears back, keep it simple, simple. And we were the second simple.

Well, anyways, this fellow, this Rodel Bledsoe, I don't know whatever happened to him. I know he was from Indiana. And where he ever went from Galesville, Wisconsin, I don't know, but one night while he was preaching, he quoted Romans chapter 5 and verse 6. While we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

I never heard the first part of that. And while we were yet without strength in due time, that I didn't hear, but this is what I heard, Christ died for the ungodly. And a thought stole into my mind, that describes me.

I'm an ungodly sinner. If there's an ungodly sinner in this room, that night I thought in my mind, I know one that is an absolutely ungodly sinner, and that was me. And that's who Christ died for.

Because that's what the Word of God says. And then he said this, and the proof of it is that he's no longer on the cross, nor is he in the tomb, but he's risen, he's ascended, he's seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, and he put it this way, that's proof to you and proof to me, that Christ has died for your sins, and he has died for my sins, and satisfied the divine claims of God against me. That's how he put it.

And I thought to myself, if God, and that wasn't an if, a doubt, it was just a statement in my mind. If God is satisfied, I'm satisfied. And that night, they were doing what the good old Baptists do, they have a little fowl shit dinner, you know.

You ever get hungry on a Sunday, and you're driving through Oklahoma or Arkansas, where you can get a meal, you could get a dozen, you could probably get dozens and dozens of meals. You could stop at every Baptist church down the road, and there's one about every mile, and you can get yourself a Sunday meal. And that's what they were having.

So we're down in the basement, see, going through this line with everybody. And there was a Baptist preacher in front of me by the name of Kenny Owens, I'll never forget him. He was from Sparta, Wisconsin.

And Judy and I are walking along, and sometimes I call my wife Jan now, I start to call her Judy, and now I call her Judy Jan. I get all mixed up, got too many J's. J, J, J, and J. And there you go.

Anyways, Kenny Owens said to me, he turned to me, he says, have you ever gotten saved? I said, yeah. He says, when did you get saved? I said, about 20 minutes ago. And he says, I didn't see you go forward.

And I said, that's because I didn't. I said, I didn't have to. I got saved sitting right in the chair.

He said, how'd you get saved? I said, did you hear me? Were you listening? He said, Christ died for the ungodly. I said, well, who's more ungodly than me? And he says, me. But he was a nice brother.

Anyway, he told me this. He says, your Christianity will unfold to you from this day on like a beautiful, beautiful rose, petal by petal by petal. And you know what? He was right.

Every day, another petal pops open out of that wonderful, beautiful rose of salvation. We save tonight. If you're not, get this matter settled by tomorrow.

Get it settled right now. Because this is a moment that God has given you. And He's done everything that He's going to do for you to save you.

If I go do one thing more. It's all been done. Nothing you have to do.

Because it's all been done. And the gift of eternal life has been purchased by the Lord Jesus. And He's offering it to you to take or turn down in this room tonight.

And if you're not saved in the room tonight, think about it. When you walk out under that exit sign, you will have done something with the Lord Jesus. You will either have believed Him or disbelieved Him.

One of the two. So what's it going to be? Here's what the Word of God says, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, listen to the Word of God, should not perish, but have everlasting life. Far better to have everlasting life than to run the risk of perishing in your sins and separated from God forever and ever.

Our loving God, our Father, we bow our hearts before You, and we thank You for the grace of God that bringeth salvation. And we thank Thee, Father, that there are those of us in this room that have found ourselves in the loop of God's love. And we have come into the good of this great atoning work of the Lord Jesus upon the cross of Calvary.

And tonight we know our sin's forgiven, and we're going on our way rejoicing over that knowledge. And we pray for any that are strangers to the grace of God in the room, that they too might come to know whom to know is life eternal. And go on their way rejoicing as well tonight over the knowledge of sin's forgiven.

Now, Father, we leave it with Thee and drop into Thy good hand, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.