Warren's Testimony at Grace College 1981

I used to sit in the backyard of our house when the wind blew over from Whiting, we'd watch the paint peel right off the side of the house. I was not supposed to live beyond the age of two. The doctor told my mother I had some complication and, but I did. The doctors are dead, I think, but I'm still here. It’s rather interesting, during the depression years—I was born in 1929—this would have been '31 or '32. A doctor came through town and held a clinic, and my mother took me to the clinic and explained my situation, and the doctor said, "Oh, that's no problem." You love doctors like that. She said—it was a woman doctor—she said, "Be sure he gets plenty of cod liver oil with malt extract in it and hemoglobin, and lots of liver." And so I just ate liver and I still like it. Whenever somebody would say, "Oh, I went to Sunday school so much when I was a kid I hate it," I say, "Hey, I ate liver till, you know, and they gave me so much cod liver oil they had to dip me out of the bathtub with a net because I was so slippery." But the Lord used it and I survived.

My family would have been called religious, but not what you'd call fundamentalist evangelical Christians. My father was German Lutheran background, confirmed in the German Lutheran church. My mother, Swedish Mission Covenant Church. And my mother was the stronger of the two when it came to matters spiritual, and so we were raised in the Swedish Covenant Church, which is—as many of you are acquainted with it—it's a congregational type church, rather broad spectrum of theology. I think we had one man, one old Swede in our church who believed in a second chance after death. But I was raised in that church, went to Sunday school almost every Sunday, was confirmed in the church but wasn't converted. That's the story of a lot of people.

And then on May the 12th, 1945, a year after I'd been confirmed, I went to this Youth for Christ rally where Billy Graham was substituting for Torrey Johnson, and back in those days Torrey was always taking more meetings than he could show up at, which was a very wise thing because it gave him a chance to send the other fellows out and they had a chance for exposure. So I went to the meeting and God saved me that night. It was a traumatic experience. I remember the first thing I wanted to do was study the Bible. That's really unusual. I had read the Word of God and always done my Sunday school and confirmation lessons, but it was, yeah, you know, it was just a textbook affair. Now I remember it was a Tuesday, I think, a few weeks later, I walked up to the public library, which was about nine blocks from where I lived. I love books, always have loved books. Not being an athlete, when my brothers were out playing football, baseball, ice hockey and so forth, I was reading, so books became my life.

But I walked up to the library, went to the religion section—nobody told me you wouldn't find good evangelical literature in a public library—but I found a Scofield Bible. I had never seen a Scofield Bible. And so I opened it up and I said, "Hey, this is exactly what..." I checked it out. I was the only person who ever checked out that Bible. So I was walking down the street—I can still see that—I was walking down Parish Avenue in East Chicago, Indiana, Indiana Harbor, Indiana. I walked past my cousin's house, my cousin Louise, and she looked at me and she says, "What are you doing carrying a Bible on Tuesday?" I said, "I'm going to study it." And she just shook her head, couldn't believe it. Well, that Scofield Bible introduced me to serious Bible study.

And then a couple in the church I was attending thought that we needed some help, and we did, so they set up a Bible class in their living room. I can tell you who it is because some of you know Kelly Bihl. Kelly Bihl was president of Youth for Christ for oh, three or four years. I think now he's associated with John Brown University radio out in California. Kelly happens to be my second cousin, which is meaningless as far as this testimony is concerned, but his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Bihl, were a great influence in my life. Mr. Bihl was a fine lay Bible teacher. So he said, "Let's bring these young people in who got saved in Youth for Christ and teach them the Word." Yeah, we didn't have follow-up stuff back in those days. We had clay tablets, you know. And our follow-up course was the book of Hebrews. I sat in that living room, I didn't know half of what he was talking about, but the half I did understand did me a world of good. And I've often thought if they had not developed in me a taste for serious study of the Word of God, I wonder what would have happened. Now I had to chew and swallow an awful lot, but it didn't seem to hurt me.

I was offered two scholarships when I graduated from high school. One was a full four-year scholarship to Wabash College, and the principal was very unhappy because I turned it down. I said, "Well, I think I want to go into the ministry." Now you may not believe this—I sound like Howard Sugden when I say this, you won't believe this, but—I felt a call to ministry before I was converted. I don't know if that happens. Does that happen? That makes two of us now. In the mouth of two and a half witnesses, yes. But I felt a call to ministry before I was converted. I had an uncle, my Uncle Simon Carlson—we never knew my father's side of the family too much, but my mother's side we knew well—fine Christian people. And my Uncle Simon was a Mission Covenant minister. Used to come to our house for coffee and for dinner and he was a real influence on me. And Uncle Simon has always sort of been in the back of my mind as kind of an ideal of what a loving pastor ought to be. Now he was not a great preacher, but he was a loving pastor who did teach the Word of God.

So I really felt a call to preach before I got saved. Then when I got saved, I figured well, the Lord was telling me I'm saved now, I better go get preparation for preaching. I was also given one year scholarship at Indiana University, so I took that and went through one year at Indiana, went to that birthday party where I got the invitation to become my friend's roommate at seminary, went to seminary, Northern Baptist, spent five years there, six years actually when you add Indiana to that. And during that time met Betty, and when I graduated in '53 we were married.

I had to leave the Mission Covenant church. Now there were reasons, it was a heartbreaking affair because my relatives were there. Now and then I meet people who say, "You know, I've been converted and I've been raised in this church, but they just don't teach the Word of God. What am I going to do?" So I know exactly how they feel. But I went across town to a Baptist church, a little neighborhood Baptist church, Central Baptist Church. And it was an independent ministry, most of the people were southern. Dear people, that's where I learned how to like cornbread and grits, things like that. Well, I was baptized by Dewey McFadden at First Baptist Church Whiting, Indiana, because Central didn't have any pastor. Never will forget that night. Friend of mine loaned me a pair of white Navy pants. He said, "If you're going to get baptized you got to wear white." I don't know why. So Dewey didn't say that, my friend said that. And the pants didn't fit me too well and they were kind of tight. And I was very thin in those days, you won't believe it, I looked like a reject from a TB sanatorium.

But I became a member of Central Baptist Church in East Chicago. Then they lost their pastor, then I was going to seminary, and the deacons came and said, "Look, you're going to seminary, we don't always have a pulpit supply, will you preach the Sundays that we don't have a pulpit supply?" I said, "Sure," you know. Now if I had known then what I know now, I would have said no. But I accepted the challenge. And this taught me a good lesson, what I quoted from Phillips Brooks: you don't pray for tasks equal to your abilities, you pray for abilities equal to your tasks. So I began to preach at Central, God blessed little by little. They couldn't call a pastor, so in 1951 they said, "Well you're already here, why don't you become pastor?" And they called me. I became pastor of my own home church.

And of course, they all knew me by my first name, it was a buddy-buddy system there. We had to build a new building—as I mentioned, I've never even built... I can't even read a blueprint. I've been through four building programs and I don't even know how to read a blueprint, which is good. It kept me doing the thing I was supposed to do instead of sitting around telling them how to do it. Well, we built a new building, stayed until 1957. 1957 I accepted a call to Youth for Christ International, the Wheaton office, to become director of their literature ministry. This meant editing books, writing books, the magazine. In '59 I became editor of Youth for Christ magazine, which is now Campus Life.

As I look back at my Youth for Christ years, I thank God for them. Now we did some crazy things. Often as I look back on YFC, I think of the text in Psalm 2, "He that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh." I'm sure the Lord looked down at Winona Lake, doctor, back in those days and said, "Those screwy people." But wherever I've gone in this country, Canada, and the mission field, I have met men and women who were converted through YFC's ministry or called. And some of the greatest mission agencies today are offshoots of Youth for Christ. God used it in spite of some of the foolish things we did. Do you remember Ranger the talking horse? Really, I can remember seeing posters that said "See Ranger the Talking Horse" and in great big letters, then in real small letters, "and Torrey Johnson." Russ, you remember... do you remember any of those years?

Richard DeHaan denies this story. He says it's not true, it's apocryphal, but I wonder. The great M.R. DeHaan was booked with Ranger the talking horse. And had he known it, he probably would never have come. And while Ranger... you know, Ranger used to answer questions: "How many are in the Trinity?" (stomp, stomp, stomp) You know, three. And "How many apostles are there?" Well, one evening when Ranger was giving his testimony, he decided to act like a horse right there on the stage. And Dr. DeHaan got up and said, "This horse may be... this horse may be a Christian, he's not much of a gentleman." Now Richard denies that story, but it sounds just like him, it really does.

During Youth for Christ years, several things happened to me. Number one, my own vision was broadened. I'd been very provincial. I had not been out of the state of Indiana or Wisconsin or Michigan—those were the only three states I'd ever been in besides the state of confusion during my early years. My folks just didn't go anyplace. Oh, we'd go see my aunt in Michigan or go fishing in Wisconsin, that was it. So Youth for Christ broadened my vision. Boy, within four years: Denmark, Europe, Mexico, here, there. Secondly, it introduced me to a group of people who in later years had a real impact in my lives, in my life, in my writing, gave me an opportunity for writing, for learning. Those four years in Youth for Christ were to me like a postgraduate course in a seminary someplace. I just learned so much. And working with Ted Engstrom, you learn how to live on 24 hours a day—of course, he has a 25-hour watch, I think. It was a great experience for me.

In 1960, an experience happened... came to me that redirected my life. I was converted the second time. Now, first time I was converted to Christ in 1945; my second conversion was to the local church. In my first pastorate, I'd had some real hard experiences. When I left the church to go to Youth for Christ, I said, "No more church." Now many young men do this. You know, their first church, you're young, you're inexperienced, sometimes you don't understand things. And I was a little bit bitter. And when I got to Youth for Christ, boy, no more of these board meetings—well, I just exchanged one set of problems for another, really.

But in 1960, I was in a conference out in California listening to a man speak about our ministry, and all of a sudden it dawned upon me: what are you doing here? I felt like Elijah: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" Now I wasn't running away. He was... God said to me, "I want you back in the pastorate." I said, "Hey, if I leave Youth for Christ for the pastorate, man, you know, I'll be persona non grata for centuries to come." I left that meeting, went up to my room and prayed. Jay Kesler came in, he was my roommate—no one knew he'd be president of Youth for Christ years later. Bill Aiken came in, I told them, I said, "Man, I really feel God is moving me out of YFC." "Oh, you don't want to do that," you know, "but we'll pray with you about it." Well, they did, they were a great encouragement.

'61 I left and went to Calvary Baptist Church in Covington at the invitation of Dr. D.B. Eastep, the pastor who'd been there 35 years. One of the greatest unsung heroes of church history, a man of God. I went there in September of '61, Covington, Kentucky, the armpit of the nation. And in 1962, March 1962, Dr. Eastep died. 6:30 in the morning my phone rang, it was his sister-in-law saying, "We think Mr. Eastep is dead, would you come right over?" He'd had a heart attack. Well, I was called to succeed him. Wasn't easy. But we had wonderful people, lovely people, and I was there for ten years.

Those ten years of ministry gave me the groundwork for all of my Bible study, because he had set up a program of teaching the whole Bible in the Sunday school over a period of seven years. Everybody from the junior high level on up followed the same schedule, the pastor wrote the material. And so I have had the privilege of writing Bible study outlines and material on the entire Bible. And I spent those ten years with intensive Bible study. If there's one thing I would say to a young pastor when you go into your first church: apart from your sermon preparation and your Sunday school preparation, spend time every week working your way through the Bible. Start in Matthew and work your way through Matthew, then Mark. It'll build your library, it'll give you resource material, and you'll learn so much. All of the writing, Bob, I've done for Scripture Press in the last ten years is a spin-off from that work I did in Covington, Kentucky.

So it was ten years of intensive Bible study. But we were too comfortable down there, it was too easy. My, it was just a marvelous time. I thank God my children grew up in that kind of a church where there was discipline, Bible teaching. Then I was given the call to Moody Church. My friend said, "Oh, no, not Moody Church. I mean, they got a Sanhedrin there, you know, 60-member board and oh, boy." But I needed Moody Church more than they needed me. And I talked with my friend George Sweeting, my predecessor there, and we felt the call. They called us, we went.

And the years at Moody Church were years of sharpening up your ministry. You know, it's an interesting thing to get up in that pulpit and here sits Al Martin with his Greek New Testament, there sits William Culbertson. You know, here are men who know their Bibles, and you just can't get up there and shoot from the hip. And it did me a world of good, plus the radio ministry. Now I've been on radio one way or another since about 1959. But we broadcast our morning service and it really sharpens you up, and you don't waste time. It was a great experience working with our staff. God gave us the most wonderful staff. When I hear pastors say, "Boy, that staff I've got," I can't believe that. Of course, some of them are that way. I asked a friend of mine one day, I said, "How many work on your staff?" He said, "Oh, about half of them," you know.

During my latter years at Moody Church, from '71 to '78, but from about '76, '77, '78, I began to get that restless feeling that God had a wider ministry for me. I was constantly turning down invitations. There's... the Lord was good to have people invite me to come, and I wanted to do more writing. And so in '78 I resigned, and by the time I resigned I had three years of meetings already booked up. So I was booked up from '78 to '81, not realizing what the Lord was doing because one day I got a letter from Theodore Epp, whom I'd never met, saying, "I want to meet you at O'Hare Field, I want to talk to you about something." So we sat down—this would have been in '79—and he said, "I have been praying my way and working my way through a long list of names and the Lord seems to be saying you're the one who should come to work with me and succeed me." But he said, "We can't really do much until about 1981." So here the Lord had scheduled these three years of ministry and the timing was perfect, and so our anticipation now is sometime the end of this year moving to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Meanwhile, I have three minutes. Meanwhile, Trinity Seminary got very desperate and they said, "Would you come up and do some teaching?" And I've never taught in a seminary, I taught for a semester at Moody, gave everybody A's and resigned. Endeared myself to Dr. Martin. I enjoy the teaching of the Word of God in a church situation. The academic situation with all of the... yeah, I don't envy you one bit, all of the, you know, the folderol, the red tape, the catalogs, all this stuff. They said, "Just come and teach, would you?" So I've been doing some teaching in pastoral subjects: preaching and pastoral work. Because I'm coming in from the field. You know, I've been there and I am there and it makes kind of a difference. I've enjoyed it, I've sure learned a lot. It’s amazing what the Lord shows you through the students.

So now our anticipation is to continue part-time this year on Back to the Bible. I'll have half of the broadcast, Lord willing, Mr. Epp will have the other half. Then beginning in January of '82, I'll take all the broadcast Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. He'll move to Friday. Ord Morrow will be moving into a whole new ministry of pastoral outreach. We're developing a department of pastoral ministries to have one purpose and one purpose only: just to encourage pastors. Not seminars on how to change the wheel on a bus or how to duplicate the Sistine Chapel in your basement or anything like that, but just encouragement. I've learned that men out there really hurt. So we're going to have one-day conferences across the country in which we'll just share the Word of God and bless people, and Ord Morrow will be helping us in that.

My life verse—some people say you shouldn't have those, but I do. When I first went to seminary, I was a very lonely person. This would have been September 1948. I'd never really been away from home very much. If I was, my mother was with me or my father. I was kind of a sheltered child because I had been kind of a weakling. I was the before before the after for those Charles Atlas ads. And I sat down at my little desk there in Wilkinson Hall at Northern Seminary and I said, "Now Lord, you're going to have to help me, this is a whole new experience for me." And he gave me Psalm 16:11, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." He said, "Now if you'll walk on my path, and if you'll live in my presence, and if you'll just enjoy my pleasures, I'll take care of everything else." And he has. We've never lacked for anything, never lacked for opportunities for ministry, never lacked for food or money or anything to do whatever he wanted us to do. And he's been faithful and I appreciate it. And I give him all the glory. For whatever blessing has come, he gets the glory.

Oh, my family! All right. We have a cat. That's not easy, are you? We have four children. David is married, expecting their... they're expecting their first child, and he's pastoring an Evangelical Free Church near O'Hare Field, Schiller Park. A rather difficult place to minister, but I go to hear him preach. When I have a schedule of free Sunday, I go to hear him preach. And I really have to say he's much farther along at that age than I was. When I hear what the Lord is saying through him, it just blesses my heart. Carolyn is married to Dave Jacobsen—and we have more Davids in our family, our oldest boy's named David. Dave Jacobsen works for Long Chevrolet, which is the largest Chevrolet dealership in Chicago. And she's a nurse and they're active in our son's church. Bob is still living at home and is an electronics engineer. He designs the little chips that run computers. Keeps waiting for his chip to come in. He built a computer in his bedroom. I refuse to go in his bedroom, it's a hard hat area. But he built a computer in his bedroom, and now he told me the other day he's going to get one of these printers to start doing print. So if you need any help on your computers, call up Bob. Judy just this week finished her secretarial training. She had two years of college at Northeastern University in Chicago, now she's finished her secretarial training of one year. And her goal really is to marry a preacher. And I wish I had brought her down, I see some very fine candidates running around. But she's today... she's being interviewed at Sperry Rand for a job, and we're praying that if it's God's will she'll get it. Our children have been a blessing. Our children have not embarrassed us.

Let me just share this and then we'll quit because I know you have to get going to other places. Lots of times pastors say, "How do you keep the church and the home from competing with each other?" You know, if you put the church first and the home second, you have problems at home. If you put the home first and the church second, you have problems at church. We learned a long time ago they're both the same. I've got to be the same person at home as I am at the church. If I'm a different person in the pulpit from what I am at the breakfast table, we're going to have trouble. Now how do you run a home? A home is run by love, truth, and discipline. How do you run a church? Love, truth, and discipline. So if we manage the church the same way we do the home, there's no conflict. I have never felt that ministering at home was taking away from the church. The finest thing I can do for any church I pastor is to care for my home. I used to visit my wife, she was a member of Moody Church, she deserved a visit every once in a while.

So don't be intimidated. Your home and the church are one. And you just be the same person in the church and in the home. If you are naturally humorous, don't become very solemn when you get into the pulpit because the kids will say, "Dad's putting on a show, he's acting," you know. So you must be yourself, your good self, your best self. And there's no conflict. Our children have been a great joy. We've never had to say you have to go to church, you have to... they've just done it. And it's been a great delight and we thank God for it. Now others have had different experiences, I don't judge them. But I give thanks to God for the way he's enabled us with our family. They've been a great blessing.

We going to pray and go? No announcements? The millennium has come. Let's pray.

We would join with the Apostle Paul, our Father, in giving testimony and praise and thanks that you've counted us faithful, putting us into the ministry. And thank you, Lord, that you not only put us into the ministry, but you put the ministry into us so that we aren't just doing a job, we're fulfilling a God-given privilege. May we never lose sight of the wonder of it all, that out of all those you could have chosen, you have chosen us. And may we walk and work in the light of that wonder for Jesus' sake. Amen.