Because I wasn't exhorted to read and study the bible, before long as a teenager I quit going to church and was backslid until I was about 30 years old. During that time, the Lord whipped me through motorcycle falls 5 times and other things that happened to me and my family, Hebrews 12:6,7. I saw that I had to get back in church or the Lord was going to kill me, so I made myself go to church for three weeks straight. It was a struggle every Sunday Morning, but on the third Sunday, during the invitation, I went forward all torn up and rededicated my life to the Lord. After that I started listening to Oliver B. Green and some other independent Baptist preachers on the radio and they got me interested in reading and studying the bible.
However, soon I was fooled into believing that you had
to know Greek or Hebrew in order to understand the bible. I bought Oliver
Green's books, then got a Sword of the Lord and bought John R. Rice's books
and thought I was going to learn something, I didn't. It was about that
time that I changed jobs and ran into a man that believed the King James
Bible was the perfect word of God. We argued for three months. Every time
I would meet up with him, we would go at it until one day he gave Psalms
12:6,7 and I couldn't seem to get around that verse. The Holy Spirit took
that verse and stabbed me in the heart. I decided that if God had ever
given us any words, they had to be in a perfect form somewhere. During
that time, I knew the Lord wanted me to go to school somewhere, so I made
a trip to Greenville, SC to Tabernacle Baptist School and church where
brother Harold Sightler was the Pastor. That was a blank! I then went to
Tennessee Temple Schools and that was a blank. The man that I argued with
for three months about the bible let me listen to a set of tapes by Dr.
Peter S. Ruckman and I liked them, so I took a trip down to Pensacola,
Florida to check him out. I went to church that night and the Lord tore
me up so bad that I was balling like a baby and completely turned myself
over to the Lord for Him to do whatever He wanted with me.