Minister's tale was best story I almost missed out on

JACK AGNEW Contributing Writer

When I was really young in Christ, I was led to witness to a really short gentleman. I had never seen him before, and I told God, “I’m wasting my time, Sir. He’s a Baptist deacon. I can tell there’s just peace all around this guy.” And he was—he was a Baptist deacon.

He said, “Yes, I do love Jesus, but let me tell you my story. I grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia, up in the mountains. I went underground when I was 12 years old. I’m obviously short, so I fit great in those 30 inch coal seams. I was hard as a rock and mean as a snake. I had made up my mind that nobody was ever going to call me ‘Shorty’. When I met a new person, I would smack them in the face. I was bent on proving that I was a man, and I had the worst case of little man’s disease I’ve ever seen in my life. My wife and I lived up in the holler, and I told her, ‘Don’t you tell my children any of that religious mess. Keep them out of church, and don’t give my money to any preacher.’ She loved me, she wouldn’t do it.

“I had a 6-year-old son who contracted spinal meningitis (this was back before treatments were available). Saturday night I was going out to get drunk, fight, cheat on my wife, and whatever else came up, but the doctor grabbed me by the elbow and said, ‘Your son’s not going to make it until Monday. You need to stay here this weekend.’ So I did. We were all gathered around his bed, waiting for the end. He’d been in a coma for three days, and I know for a fact he’d never heard the name of Jesus, except from me as a swear word. He’d never been to church or school, he’d just grown up there in the cabin with me and my wife. For three days he hadn’t moved or opened his eyes, but about 11 that night, he sat bolt upright in bed, with the most beautiful smile on his face you can imagine. Staring straight ahead at Someone, he said, ‘Praise the name of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.’ Then he laid down and died.

“You would have thought that after that I would have been in church the next morning, it was Sunday. I didn’t. I got drunk that night. I stayed drunk for three years. I tried to keep that memory away, because in my mind, I had to fight my way into respectability to make people honor and respect me. I couldn’t become a

Christian and be a choir boy, because I was short, they wouldn’t respect me. It took me three years to wear myself down, and finally one Sunday morning, after three more years of fighting and drinking and cheating on my wife—”

Then he paused and told me, “Brother, now, you’ve got to forgive me, cuz you remember now, I’m still a pagan.”

I said, “Man, I haven’t breathed in five minutes, just keep talking!”

He continued, “I broke open the doors to a little Baptist church, and I strode down the aisle like a cock rooster, and said, ‘Pastor, stop the services right now! I’ve got to get saved, I can’t stand it anymore!’”

I met his whole family later on. All the grandchildren were Christians, they looked like the Sunday School

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walking to church. All of them were carrying Bibles, and had slicked-back hair, and clean as they could be. The coal miner’s wife and daughters had gotten saved, and his son-in-law was a Baptist preacher. The whole family was saved from the witness of that little six-year-old boy. I believe in death-bed conversions, to the bottom of my heart. I know Jesus went into that cabin, and saved that little boy. One side-note to this story, I never would have heard it if I hadn’t been obedient and witnessed to that gentleman. I could beg the church to get properly militant, and start witnessing and telling people about Jesus, because we’ve got the greatest gift the world has ever seen. There’s not a king’s ransom or a throne or a palace that can match the gift of eternal life with Christ.

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