autobiography_sh1

I am Ray Shelton and I am writing this to give you, my reader, my biography and historical background. This autobiography is also my testimony to how God has worked in my life.

My Birth and Early Years

I was born on Dec. 11, 1929 at Springfield, Illinois and was named Edgar Ray Shelton, after my father and my uncle. My only brother, Richard Lee Shelton, better known as Dick Shelton, was born on April 25, 1931. Our father, Edgar Allan Morrow Shelton, better known as Jack Shelton, was in the U.S. Navy when we were born. After my brother’s birth, our mother, Aldona, was confined in the Illinois State Mental Hospital at Jacksonville, Illinois, with post-partem depression, which the doctors did not know then how to treat. I and my brother lived with our grandparents, since dad was still in the Navy. My grandfather, Jasper Newton Shelton, better known as Blackjack Shelton, who worked on the Chicago Illinois & Midland Railroad as a locomotive engineer, where he got his nickname, died in 1934. My dad soon after retired from the Navy and he and us kids lived with his mother, our grandmother, Jenny Morrow Shelton, in a big two story house next to the railroad yards where my grandfather worked. Dad was the youngest four brothers, Ray, Walter, and Hal, and one sister, Jenny. I and later my brother started school in first grade at a Lutheran elementary school, two blocks from our grandmother’s house. The school was nearer to us than the public school. The thing I remember most from those two years at the Lutheran school was the Bible teaching and Bible Story book with pictures of Bible events, particular the creation story and the flood. My grandmother and dad were nominally Christians but never went to church. I now believe that the attendance at the Lutheran school for two years was God’s hand on my life.

My New Birth and Early Years

In the summer of 1938 my grandmother sold the house to the railroad and we moved into a one-story brick bungalow on the north side of Springfield on north 2nd street, near the cemetery where Lincoln’s Tomb was located, and two blocks from my grandmother’s daughter, my Aunt Jenny. Aunt Jenny attended the Third Presbyterian Church and she took me and my brother to Sunday school there. There I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was 10 years old in 1940. The children’s worker at the church, Miss Jeannette Smith, lead me to the Lord during a pastor’s class which prepared us for church membership. I memorized my first Scripture verse, Acts 16:31, which I recited before the church on the Sunday that the class was accepted into church membership. We attended church and Sunday school with our Aunt Jenny and her husband, Floyd Sprouse. In the summer we attended the vacation summer Bible school, where I met the teacher of the older boy’s class, Mr. Gene Lind. He and his wife, Carol, were graduates of Wheaton College. He was an athlete, playing football in college, and was now a junior high teacher and coached swimming at the Y.M.C.A., where he taught me to swim. My future wife, Edith Ellen Bilyeu, her brothers, Charles, Don, Tom, Jimmy, and her sister, Blanche, also attended the Third Pres Church, as we called it. Edith’s younger sister, Blanche, was in the same class, the 4th grade, as I was at the Converse Grade School. Edith was an outstanding student and was praised by all her teachers, which I overheard at a practice for a Christmas play at the school. Edith was born on Dec. 27, 1926 and was two years older than her sister, three years older than I was. I was always half a year younger than my classmates, since I skipped kindergarten and started in the first grade when I was 5; I always seem to be running to catch up, both physically and intellectually. In the fifth grade at Enos Grade School, where I transferred to when the Converse Grade school was closed, our class was so big that it would not fit in one class room, so seven of us were place in the same room as the class half a grade ahead of us. The teacher was the music teacher, Miss Kimber; she persuaded me to play the clarinet, which I did all through high school and into college.

 

Science

My interest turned to science, and particularly chemistry. My dad and my Uncle Ray (for whom I was named; He was Big Ray and I was Little Ray) each gave me chemistry sets for Christmas (one of them may have been a belated birthday present, since my birthday was just two weeks before Christmas). I enjoyed playing with them and learning chemistry. I remember in the seventh grade reading an article in a school encyclopedia on atomic theory and an article in a 1939 issue of the magazine Popular Mechanics, on nuclear fission and Uranium 235. When I graduated from elementary school, I remember saying that I wanted to be a scientist, by which I meant a chemist. In high school later I breezed through the science courses, because of the wide reading I had done in the sciences at the public library. I seemed to have the ability for figuring out how things worked, which my kids seem to inherited. When I was about four years old I looked at some books that my grandfather had on the operation of steam locomotives. I couldn’t read them yet but the books were full of pictures and diagrams of the steam engines, and I was able to figure out how they worked. After my dad came home from the Navy, he painted one wall in my grandmother’s kitchen with black board paint and I drew pictures on that black board of the locomotives that I could see through our kitchen windows. Dad showed me the maps of his last expedition in the Navy, when he sailed from San Diego to Alaska to survey the Aleutian Islands. I found out later that in the Second World War the maps that were made during those surveys were crucial in repelling the Japanese from those islands that the Japs occupied during the first year of the war in 1942. Dad also gave me his old drafting tools and board, and I drew plans for airplanes and ships. In the second grade I also started building airplane and ship models out of wood; my brother built automobile models. I also became interest in what was later called Space Science, from reading the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic scripts, and drew plans for a space ship on my drafting board. While at Enos Grade School, I joined the cub scouts, and spent three years in cub scouts until I became a boy scout. When I graduated from Enos elementary school, my dad gave me a graduation present of two weeks at the Boy Scout summer camp on Lake Springfield, south of the city. I learned to paddle a canoe and went on a long canoe trip on the weekend in the middle of the two weeks. I enjoyed it immensely. I advanced to the level of first class scout, and while I was working on the merit badges for life scout, I joined the air scouts that was just starting. Dad, who had been a signalman in the Navy, also taught me the Morse code that was used in telegraphy. I got the merit badge for it in the Boy Scouts.

 

The Second World War Years

In 1940 my dad was recalled into the Navy; his retirement from the Navy in 1934 had put him into the Naval Reserves who were subject to recall to active duty in case of war. My brother and I continued to live with our grandmother. Dad was stationed as an instructor at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, about 200 miles from Springfield, north of Chicago, Illinois. He was home almost every week-end. I was proud of my dad and once he came to my grade school to speak to my class about the Navy. He was dressed in his uniform (He was a chief petty officer and a signalman) and looked so dignified. Dad would bring home from the naval base, Navy clothing that had been discarded, and I and my brother dressed in Navy clothing (underwear, shirts, dungarees, stocking caps and pea jackets) during the war.

Our country entered the Second World War on Dec. 7th, 1941. Several months later dad stopped coming home on the week-ends. We found out later that my dad had volunteered for sea duty and was sent to the South Pacific, where on the night of August 7, 1942, after the marines landed on Guadalcanal Island in Solomon Islands, his ship, the cruiser Astoria, was sunk by the Japanese, and dad spent many hours in the water before being rescued. He returned to the States and was stationed at the new naval training station at Brainbridge, Maryland. He spent his weekends in Washington D.C., where he met my future step-mother, Mamie Baker, and he later married her near the end of the war in 1945, only after he promised her to stop drinking. After the war ended he and his new wife returned to Springfield. He bought a new house on north 20th street in a new housing track. My grandmother, who did not get along with dad’s new wife, sold the house on north 2nd street and moved to Chicago to live with her other son, Hal Shelton, where she died several years later. My dad’s new wife, Mamie, was a born-again Christian and member of the Nazarene Church, whose theology was Ariminian. Mamie and I discussed the Bible and disagreed about the doctrine of the eternal security of believer; she argued that one could loose their salvation if that one sinned and denied Christ. I, being a Presbyterian took the Calvinist position, that a believer could never loose their salvation. Eventually she persuade dad to go to church and I later heard that he had accepted Christ as his Savior. Dad who was born on November 10, 1903, died on March 16, 1965 of a heart attack and my mother Aldona, who was born on January 4, 1903, died on November 12, 1963. They are both buried in Oakridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, where my grandparents are buried. My step-mother, Mamie, died in Florida on December 8, 1973.

 

The Saturday Night Gang

Our church had annual Bible teaching conferences and evangelistic campaigns. In my freshman year in high school, 1943-1944, an evangelist, Joe Maronie, came to our church during September and was invited to return the next fall. Many people accepted Christ during these meetings, many of them were young people. The captain of my high school football team, Pete Juarez, a Hispanic, accepted Christ as well as many members of the team. Joe saw the need for a Christian fellowship for these new converts, and ask Gene Lind and his wife to start a Young People Christian Fellowship on Saturday evenings, which they did and we called it the “Saturday Night Gang.” Pete became the song leader of the group and had a real gift as an evangelist.

During Joe’s second evangelistic meeting Edith went forward and dedicated her life to the Lord. She came to the Saturday night meetings and became a close friend of the Linds. Edith had graduated from Lanphier High School at the top of her class in January 1944, (I was a freshman then at the same high school) and started college at the local Catholic Junior College. The Linds persuaded her (it was not hard to do) to transfer to Wheaton College which she did. She attended Wheaton College for next two years until her money ran out; she decided to take a couple years off from college to work and save her money to finish college. In her first year at Wheaton she took a two semester Bible Survey Course from Doctor William Ludwigson, whose Bible survey charts we still have in 2003. Edith always said that it was the most valuable course that she ever took in college, and became convinced that every Christian should take the course. Edith also said that after taking the Bible Survey Course she finally understood our pastor’s sermons which were filled with many biblical historical references. Dr. Herman Hildebrandt had a doctor’s degree in Greek and theology from a Swiss University. In the two years that Edith took off from college she taught the Bible Survey Course at our church. In her first year at Wheaton Edith started to major in Christian Education, but after taking Dr. Ludwigson’s Bible Survey course, she decided to switch her major to Bible, to get a broader basis in the Scriptures. For her general education requirement in the physical science, she took a course in geology, to avoid taking chemistry. She became so interested in geology, especially in relationship to the Bible, she decided to minor in geology. But the minor in geology required her to take chemistry, which she did. She said later that it was the most difficult course she had in college.

 

Youth for Christ

In 1943 the new secretary of the YMCA, Charles Tremeir, who was a born again Christian, persuaded Gene Lind to start holding Youth for Christ rallies once a month in Springfield. Mr. Tremeir lived a couple houses down the street from me on north 2nd street, we became friends and he got me my first job as night desk clerk at the YMCA. I saved enough money from the job so that I could go to the two week First International Youth for Christ Conference at Winona Lake, Indiana, in the summer of 1944, between my freshman and sophomore years at Lanphier High School. I met there Billy Graham, who was then an evangelist for Youth for Christ, and other leaders of Youth for Christ. Youth for Christ was started by Torrey Johnson, the pastor of Midwest Bible Church in Chicago, and a graduate of Wheaton College. I used to listen to the radio broadcast of the Midwest Bible Church on Sunday afternoons. At the close of the Youth for Christ conference on the way home on the train I stopped in Chicago on Sunday at the Midwest Bible Church and was invited to give my testimony on the radio broadcast.

When Pete Juarez graduated from high school in 1945, he went to Bob Jones University to study for the ministry; Pete’s grades were not good enough for him to get into Wheaton College. The Linds ask me to be the song leader of the Saturday night gang. I was singing in the choir of the church and played the clarinet in the high school band. After the high school football games on Friday nights at which I played in the marching band, I would go out to the Linds’ house in the southwest end of town in my band uniform and visit them, catching the last bus home at 12:30 A.M. I was also teaching in the Sunday School at our church and actively participated in young people’s Christian Endeavor meeting on Sunday Evenings. I sang duets with a girl I was going with, Rosemary Martin.

Romans 6

While I was a junior in high school, I used to listen to Charles Fuller’s Old Fashion Revival Hour on the radio Sunday afternoon and to the Moody Bible Institute radio station WMBI out of Chicago during the week. I remember particularly a series that Dr. Fuller taught on the Gospel of John. On the WMBI radio station I remember a Bible study series of radio programs on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. At this time I was looking for an answer to a spiritual problem I was having. I had been taught that if one wanted to be pleasing to the Lord and to be used by Him in ministry, one had to die to self. And the harder I tried to do this, the more I was filled with self. This struggle occurred about the time my dad came home from the war in 1945. He said to me later that he had never seen someone so close to a nervous break down as he saw in me at that time. Something was wrong and I started looking for the answer in the Bible. From the WMBI radio program studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans, I concluded that the answer to my problem had to be in the 6th chapter of Romans. I talked to Mrs. Lind about my problem and where I thought that the biblical answer could be found. She could not help me but she suggested a book by a Bible teacher who had taught at our church several years before, William R. Newell. She did not have a copy of his book, Romans Verse by Verse, and suggested that maybe the pastor, Dr. Hildebrandt, may have a copy of it that he could loan me. I went to the pastor and ask him. Yes, he had the book but when he looked for it, he could not find it. So he took me over to the church and went down into the basement of church to a closet and dug around and came up with a copy of the book, which he gave me and I still have it. I took it home and opened the book to commentary on the sixth chapter and read the following passage. Commenting on verse 2, Newell wrote,

“He [Paul] characterizes all Christians as those who died. The translation, ‘are dead’ is wrong, for the tense of the Greek verb is the aorist, which denotes not a state but a past act or fact. It never refers to an action as going on or prolonged…. Note how strikingly and repeatedly this tense is used in this chapter as referring to the death of which the apostle speaks. Mark most particularly that the apostle in verse 2 does not call upon the Christians to die to sin, but asserts that they shared Christ’s death, they died to sin!” (pages 201-202)

This was a new revelation to me. I had never heard this teaching either from any teacher at our church nor on the WMBI radio station teaching on Romans. I read on.

“This perplexes many, this announcement that we died to sin, — inasmuch as the struggle with sin, and that within, is one of most constant conscious experience of the believer. But, as we see elsewhere, we must not confound our relationship to sin with its presence! Distinguish this revealed fact that we died, from our experience of deliverance. For we do not die to sin by our experiences: we did die to sin in Christ’s death. For the fact that we died to sin is a Divinely revealed word concerning us, and we cannot deny it! The presence of sin “in our members” will make this fact that we died to it hard to grasp and hold: but God says it. And He will duly explain all to our faith.” (p. 203).

By faith I believed it. I immediately stopped trying to die to self and by faith reckoned it be so. I had died to sin with Christ. God had done this for me in Christ’s death and I did not have to do it because in Christ it had already been done. Later I realized why this teaching of dying to self was false; not only was it unscriptural (It is nowhere taught in the Scriptures; the command that Jesus gave to his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” [Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 8:23], does not mean to die to self, but to choose to follow Christ’s will and purpose for him [“his cross”], rather than his own will and purpose; in fact, the summary of the law which commands: “Love your neighbor as yourself” [Matt. 22:39; Mark 12:31], makes the self the criterion for loving one’s neighbor.), but it was asking me to do the impossible; the self was suppose to crucify the self. And it focused all our attention on the self and not on Christ. I shared this truth with a friend, Larry Cantrell, who was going through the same struggle. And he was delivered. I read all of Newell’s book and began to study the Scriptures eagerly.

My Call to the Ministry

Also when I was a junior in high school, while I was studying the Scriptures, I believed that the Lord called me to a teaching ministry. One night as I was studying II Corinthians 5, I believed that God called me to teach His Word. In verses 18 through 20 of that chapter Paul says,

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” (KJV)

As I was reading this, I believed that God spoke to me and said, “I have given you the word of reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation.” Now instead of being a chemist or scientist, as I wanted to be when I graduated from the eighth grade, I now believed that God had called me to teach His Word. The Linds agreed that I was called to teach.

My Three Friends

Let me tell you about three of my friends, all who were born-again Christians. My oldest friend was Bob Davis, who I first met in the fourth grade at Converse Grade School. Bob was fat and very funny; he was always telling jokes. I remember a little rhyme that he often repeated, “Spring is sprung, the grass is risen, I wonder where the birdies is; the birdies are on the wing – I thought the wings were on the birdies.” When the school board closed Converse Grade School and sold the building to the Roman Catholic diocese for a boy’s high school, Bob went to Bunn Grade School and I went to Enos Grade School. But Bob also went to Third Presbyterian Church and we were there together in Sunday School and later in the Saturday Nite Gang. We were together in school again in same class at Lanphier High School. But Bob’s main interest in high school was art. When I went off to college, Bob became the song leader of the Saturday Nite Gang. He later went to Bob Jones University and after graduating he entered the Christian ministry and was the pastor of a church in Grand Haven, Michigan.

My other friend was Frank Fernandes, who I first met in the fifth grade at Enos Grade School. He was half grade ahead of me and he became my friend when he choose me for his side in the recess baseball games. I was a terrible baseball player and couldn’t hit the softball. I was always chosen last and by Frank. Frank also went to the Third Presbyterian Church and he and I went together the first time to Saturday Nite Gang about a month after it started. Frank went to Springfield High School, the oldest and biggest high school in Springfield, Illinois. He was an outstanding football player and after he graduated from high school, he went to Wheaton College and played football there. He became a psychiatrist and practice in North Chicago, Illinois.

My third friend was a black fellow, Bob Herndon. He was a Christian but did not go my church. We met in high school and were in the same class together. We ate lunch together and shared our opinions. Bob was very intelligent and we were in the National Scholastic Honor Society together. We both were on the track team; he ran the quarter mile and I ran the half-mile; we trained together. Bob was very quick and almost always won his races, which I didn’t. Track was the only sport that I could participate in, because I was in the band, that performed at the football and basketball games. But I lettered three years in track. I remember that once Bob invited me to speak at his church at a youth night service of which he was in charge. I enjoyed it immensely. After we graduated, I lost contact with him. But I often thought of him, especially when I went to a school in the south, with its segregation. The race and color of one’s skin did not enter into my relationship to other persons. The segregation of the races in the south always bother me.

Bob Jones University

I graduated from Lanphier High School in June of 1947 and my dad, who never graduated from high school, gave me a graduation present: he paid for my first year at college, so I would not have to work. The previous summer I worked as a golf caddie at the Springfield Country Club, where Mr. Lind was the life guard and he got me the job. The next Monday after I graduated from high school, I went to work at Sangamo Electric Company across the street from Lanphier High School, where my dad, my uncle Floyd, and uncle Ray also worked. The president of Sangamo Electric Company, R. C. Lanphier, had given the money to build a new high school across the street from his company in Reservoir Park in the 1930’s. The high school was named for Mr. Lanphier and opened in 1940. When Edith graduated from Converse grade school, she went to the new Lanphier High School and she graduated in January, 1943, and I graduated in June, 1947. With the money that my dad gave as graduation present and the money I earned the four months of that summer, I did not have to work during the first year at college. Bob Jones University did not open that year until October, because the school moved that summer from Cleveland, Tennessee, to a new campus outside Greenville, South Carolina. In September just before I went off to college, the evangelist Joe Maronie held another evangelistic campaign at our church. I persuaded my dad to have Joe stay at our home during the meetings. I was hoping and praying that Joe would lead my dad to the Lord. It didn’t happen then but I believe that the fruits of that visit later led to my dad accepting Christ as his Savior.

Though my grades were good enough to get into Wheaton (I was in the upper 10 percent of my graduation class and member of the National Scholastic Honor Society), I decided to go to Bob Jones University, because my girl friend, Rosemary Martin, could not get into Wheaton but could get into BJU. At BJU I began preparing for a Bible teaching ministry by majoring in Bible and studying New Testament Greek. The first year I did not enroll in the Preacher Boys Class, because I thought that I was called not to be a preacher but a Bible teacher. But I found out that if you were not enrolled in the Preacher Boys Class, you could not do any form of ministry. So the second year I enrolled in the Preacher Boys Class. A teacher of God’s Word was a preacher. Twice a month on the weekends I traveled with group of fellow preacher boys from Greenville, South Carolina, to Knoxville, Tennessee, to preach and teach, not only in the churches there, but also on the streets and in the jails with Salvation Army and other Christian groups. That second year I took a class in Christian Evidences from Dr. Bronkema, a conservative Presbyterian and a Calvinist who got booted out of Princeton Seminary for being a Fundamentalist. I learned Calvinism from him and about my Calvinistic Presbyterian background. Also that year Dr. Edward J. Carnell, a Baptist and a Calvinist, published his book An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. This gave me my introduction to philosophy as well as to other Calvinists, such as J. Greshan Machen and Conelius Van Til. I would argue for Calvinism with my fellow preacher boys on our long drive to and from Knoxville. That year I also discovered C. S. Lewis and read eagerly his books, The Case for Christianity, etc.

My Engagement and Marriage to Edith Bilyeu

As I and Rosemary arrived home from BJU at the end of our second school year at BJU, at the bus station we were met by Edith Bilyeu and a friend of hers from our youth group. The previous Christmas vacation Edith and I had a long enjoyable conversation on the telephone one evening when she called me to ask me to lead singing at Saturday Nite Gang. Edith had stayed out of Wheaton for about two years to work and to save money to finish college. The Linds had left Springfield and returned to Seattle, Washington, Gene’s old home town. And Edith became the adult advisor and leader of the Saturday night group. During that second year many of the group had decided to go to college and had applied to BJU. The BJU students always spoke so highly and glowingly of BJU, that Edith decided it would be a wonderful place to finish her college education. Things were not going too well between Rosemary and me, and it came to a head in early August of 1949. When I told my dad about Rosemary’s complaining about me and her mother, he ask me, “And you are planing to marry her?” He then gave me a little lecture on women. That got me to thinking and I broke off the engagement. At the time I was working during the summer as janitor and handyman at the city hospital, filling in for those on vacation. One day as I was mowing the lawn of hospital, I thought I heard the Lord say to me, “She is the one.” I knew who the Lord was referring to. I just had been thinking about Edith and the wonderful conversation we had had the previous Christmas. I had been listening on the radio to a youth evangelist, Percy Crawford, from Philadelphia on how to choose a mate. He said to make a list of the qualities that you would like your future mate to have and then look at her mother or his father to find out whether they would have those qualities in 20 or 30 years. I look at Edith’s mother and decided that she had them. Edith later accused me of falling in love with her mother. When I approached Edith about going together, she saw immediately that I was not talking just about going together but about being engaged to be married. She said to me, “Slow down, Ray.” I tried to but I was convinced that the Lord had given her to me. We both went to BJU that fall of 1949. And on October 30, 1949 Edith said “Yes” and we became formally engaged, planning to get married after we finished school.

Edith was not happy with BJU; it was not as wonderful as Pete and others had said. Edith and I planned to leave BJU at the end of the year and we planned to apply to Wheaton for the next year. But before we could make application to Wheaton, Edith had a conversation with one of the BJ high school students. Edith told the girl what she thought of BJU and the girl thought that it was her obligation to report what Edith had said to her. You see, one of the rules at BJU was: “No gripping allowed.” This is why the students always spoke so highly and glowingly of BJU, for if they said anything negative about the school, and it got back to the administration, they would not be allow to stay at or return to the school. Edith had said to the high school student that compared with the freedom she had at Wheaton, BJU was like a concentration camp. At BJU the student’s lives were closely regulated and in particularly the boy-girl relationships. They could only see each other at certain times and in certain places. Boys and girls could not touch each other; the famous Six Inch Rule said that they could get closer than six inches of each other. There was no holding of hands or kissing, even if they were engaged. The high school student considered Edith’s remarks as gripping and felt obligated to report her to the administration. This was another rule that was rigorously preached and enforced; if any student heard anyone gripping, it was their responsibility to report them. The administration called Edith in on Sunday after church and Edith said that it was true that she had said what had been reported. Knowing of our engagement, they asked Edith if Ray shared the same views. She answered “Yes.” I was off campus preaching at a prison camp in Georgia and when I returned to the campus late that Sunday afternoon, I met Edith at the dating pallor, and she told me what had happened. We decided that we would leave BJU the next day. When I returned to my room, there was message for me to come to the administration building. So I went to the administration building and the Dean of Students talked with me, and I told them that I did share Edith’s views. They were shocked that one of their good and long standing students (This was my third year there, with nearly no demerits on my record) thought that way about “God’s school.” And I told them that Edith and I were going to leave the next day. But they would not let me do that because I was not yet 21; they would have to have my parent’s permission for them to release me from the school. So I called my dad and he gave his permission, though he was puzzled about the whole affair. We left the next morning at the end of March, 1950. We were not dismissed or “shipped” from BJU, but we left voluntarily.

When we got home, Edith and I got jobs, and we planned to get married in June before going to Wheaton. We made our applications to Wheaton so late in that year that we could not be accepted for the fall of 1950, but we would have to wait until January 1951 to enroll. So we got married on June 17, 1950. The wedding was held on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. at the Third Presbyterian Church. My dad and step-mother arrived late to wedding, thinking that the wedding was at 4 p.m. Our pastor, Dr. Herman M. Hildebrandt, performed the service. Frank Fernandes was my best man and Bob Davis, Charles Bilyeu, Edith’s brother, and Bob Isringhausen were the ushers. Edith’s sister, Blanche, now Mrs. Wayne McCall, was matron of honor. Blanche had gotten married the previous year. We did not have a honeymoon and we went to work the next Monday. I was working at the Sangamo Electric Co. running a punch press and Edith was working as a secretary at Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. We had a second floor apartment in a house across the street from the Sangamo Electric Company’s plant.

 

The Korean War

The next weekend North Korea invaded South Korea and President Truman sent American troops into South Korea. In the fall I got a notice from my draft board to report for pre-induction physical at the end of January, 1951. I appealed to the draft board that I was not eligible to be drafted. My classification was 4D, since I was studying for the ministry, and that I was planning continue that training in January. They turned down my appeal on the grounds that I was not in school that fall and for that reason they changed my classification to 1A, available for immediate induction into the army. When I informed them that I was married before the Korean incident started, they said that exemption did not apply to me since I had failed to notify the draft board of change of marital status. My pastor, Dr. Hildebrandt, accompanied me to the meetings with the draft board. He hinted to me that the draft board wanted me drafted because I was studying for the Protestant ministry, Springfield being a predominately Roman Catholic town. Whether that was true or not I have no way of knowing. In January Edith and I moved to Wheaton and on the day I was supposed to register for classes I had to report in St. Louis for my pre-induction physical. I took the physical in St. Louis and went right up on the train to Wheaton College just outside of Chicago and registered for classes. A lawyer that I consulted said there was nothing that could be done until I was back in school. As soon as I registered and started classes at Wheaton College, I notified the draft board and they restored my 4D classification. My pastor had place me under the care of the Presbytery as studying for the ministry. That placed me under the care of Presbyterian Church and I think that the draft board did not want to fight with them. The reason I am telling you all this past history is so that you can see how God takes care of His own and that we must trust Him no matter how difficult are the times and circumstances.

Wheaton College

I entered Wheaton College in the middle of my junior year as a Bible major in January 1951. Edith and I took most of our classes together, except my second semester of the third year of Greek, a course in Hellenistic Greek in which we read the Shepherd of Hermas and the book of Hebrews. Some years before I had heard that Dr. Fuller was starting a new school in Pasadena, California, to train Christian ministers. As I was praying about what seminary to attend after I graduated, I thought that the Lord wanted me to go Dr. Fuller’s school. When I informed the Presbytery of my desire to go to Fuller Seminary, they wrote back and insisted that I get my seminary training at a Presbyterian seminary. I talked with Dr. Kantzer, the head of the Bible and Philosophy Department at Wheaton, and he urged me to change to his denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America; they would have no objection to me attending Fuller. So Edith and I joined the Evangelical Free Church, withdrawing from the Presbyterian Church. We became charter members of the Wheaton Evangelical Free Church that was just starting in Wheaton. After I applied to Fuller Seminary, the Seminary suggested that I change my major from Bible, since I was going to be studying the Bible during my three years at Fuller and that I needed to broaden my background. One of the professors at Fuller, Dr. Carl Henry, who was a graduate of Wheaton, held a two week intersession course, between the end of spring semester and summer session, on the Drift of Western Thought, based on Dr. Henry’s new book by the same name. He showed the influence of philosophy on Christian theology. So that summer before my senior year at Wheaton College I switched to a philosophy major to broaden my background. And I took in the summer session the Introduction to Philosophy course. Edith and I also took together that summer a course on the book of Romans, that Edith needed for her major in Bible. Although I had switch my major from Bible, I still took a fourth year of Greek, Synoptic Gospels, during my senior year. I just barely met the requirements for the philosophy major. Most of the philosophy courses I took to meet the requirements were history of philosophy, ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary. Only two of the required philosophy courses were not history of philosophy, Introduction to Philosophy and Theism. At the end of the summer session in August of 1952, I graduated from Wheaton College with a B.A. in philosophy with highest honors. I had almost straight A in all the courses I took at Wheaton, and the college did not count the courses that I had at BJU in figuring my final grade point average. But I was not first in my class that summer; Leighton Ford, who later married Billy Graham’s younger sister, Jean Graham, was first and I was second. Edith and I had met Jean at BJU and she also had transferred to Wheaton from BJU. Leighton was also a philosophy major and later became an associate evangelist to his brother-in-law, Billy Graham. During my senior year at Wheaton our first son, Stephen Ray, was born on October 14, 1951. Because of the birth of Stephen, Edith was unable to complete her Bible major and graduate; she needed still to take just two courses and the final comprehensive examination.

Fuller Theological Seminary

After I graduated from Wheaton College in August of 1952, we came to California so I could study at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. God provided the money so that we could fly by airplane to California instead of traveling by train. During my last year at Wheaton I worked in railroad gate towers, putting up and down the crossing gates at the streets crossing the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin Electric Railway tracks. I thought I would be able to get a railroad pass to travel to California, but that did not happen. We did not have the money for the train tickets. Somebody heard of our need and gave us the money so that we could fly by airplane. We flew by airplane because Edith was pregnant with our second child. We flew on a two engine DC-3 from Springfield, Illinois, to Springfield, Missouri, and from there to Dallas, Texas. Edith did not enjoy that part of the trip. From Dallas to Los Angeles we flew non-stop in a four motor DC-6; Edith enjoyed this part of the trip a little better. When we landed in Los Angeles we met by some cousins of Edith’s and we went with them to stay with Edith’s Uncle Henry and Aunt Dode in Altadena, north of Pasadena. We stayed with them for about a month until we found an apartment close to the Seminary. I got a job at the Seminary as a janitor and handyman. When classes began, I studied theology under Drs. Carnell and Henry and also took a fifth year of N.T. Greek. In early October we moved into an apartment in some old World War II barrack buildings on the campus of a Free Methodist school, Los Angeles Pacific College, in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, between the downtown of Los Angeles and Pasadena. There were other Fuller students living there and I rode with them to and from school; we did not have a car yet. On October 16, 1952, Edith gave us another child, a daughter whom we named Barbara Jean.

Romans 5:12

Two days before Barbara’s birth and on Stephen’s first birthday, October 14, 1952, there occurred an event that changed the whole direction of my study for the ministry. On that day, while I setting in Dr. Carnell’s class in Systematic Theology, while he was lecturing on the doctrine of original sin, he focused our attention on the Rom. 5:12 as the Scriptural basis of that doctrine.

“Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned –” (Rom. 5:12 RSV)

I opened my Greek New Testament and began to read what the Apostle Paul wrote. As I got to the last clause of the verse, I notice something I had not noticed before (I had had three courses in college that studied the book of Romans; at BJU, a course in the Pauline Epistles and the first semester of the third year Greek course, in which we read Romans in Greek, and at Wheaton a course in Romans). I saw there a relative pronoun that was not translated in our English translations. If it were translated into English, then the last clause should read, “because of which all sinned”, not “because all sinned”. The English translation “because all sinned” in RSV and other modern translations is incomplete, if not wrong and misleading. These translations makes Paul appear to contradict what he says in this verse and the next two verse; that is, it made Paul appear to say death spread unto all men because of their sins instead of Adam’s sin. Between Adam and Moses there was no law that made death the consequence of their personal transgressions.

“¹³ sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. ¹⁴ Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Rom. 5:13-14 RSV)

Paul clearly says in Rom. 5:12 that death spread unto all men because of Adam’s sin, not because of their sins. And the next two verses clearly says that all men had not sinned after likeness of Adam’s transgression and that between Adam and Moses there was no law that made death the consequence of their personal transgressions. But if the relative pronoun is translated the inconsistency is removed. In the Greek the relative pronoun clearly refers back to the word “death” in the previous clause; that is, “because of death all sinned.” The death that spread unto all men as the result of Adam’s sin was the condition or the reason why all men sinned. That is, all men sinned because of death.

“Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, because of which [death] all sinned:–” (Rom. 5:12 ERS)

But how is that possible? How can all men sin because of death? Then I remembered what I had been taught that death is separation and that there are three kinds of death;

Physical death which is the separation men’s spirit from their body when they physically dies,
Spiritual death which is the separation of men’s spirit from God, and
Eternal death is the eternal separation of men from God.

The death that spread unto all men from Adam’s sin is physical and spiritual death. All men are born spiritually dead and are going to die physically. It is this spiritual death that is the condition or ground for all men sinning. But how can men sin because of spiritual death? What is sin? I had ask this very question to the Lord several weeks before. And as I was reading an article in the theological journal, Theology Today, titled “Biblical Metaphysic and Christian Philosophy” (October 1952, pp. 360-375), by E. LaB. Cherbonnier, I got the answer. In his analysis of human freedom in this article (p. 367), Cherbonnier concluded that every man must have a god. By the very constitution of his freedom man must have an ultimate criterion of decision. That is, behind every decision as to which thing a man should do or think, there is a reason, a criterion of decision. And the ultimate reason for any decision, practical or theoretical, must be given in terms of some particular criterion, an ultimate reference or orientation point in or beyond the self or person making the decision. This ultimate criterion is that person’s god.

I saw that every man must then choose something as his god. If he doesn’t choose the true God as his ultimate criterion of decision, he will choose a false god. He will choose some part or aspect of reality as his god, deifying it. “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” (Rom. 1:25) The choice of a false god and the consequent personal allegiance and devotion to it is what the Bible calls idolatry. An idol does not have to be an image of wood, stone, or metal. It may be money, wealth, power, pleasure, education, the family, mankind, the state, democracy, experience, reason, science, the moral law, etc. An idol is a false god, and a false god may be anything, which may be good in its proper place, that takes the place of the true God, anything a person chooses as his or her ultimate criterion of decision, exalting it as God. It is any substitute or replacement for the true God in a person’s life.

Since a false god usurps the place of the true God in a person’s life, idolatry is the basic sin. This sin is directly against the true God; it is a direct insult to Him and an affront to His divine majesty. No more serious sin could be imagined than this one. Since it is the most serious sin, it is therefore the most basic. This is the main reason that idolatry is the first sin prohibited by the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt have no other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20:3) Thus idolatry is the basic sin, not pride; pride is not even mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Idolatry is also the basic sin because this sin leads to other sins. It leads to other sins since a person’s god, being his ultimate criterion of decision, will determine the choices he or she will make. The choice of a wrong god will lead to other wrong choices. That is, the idol that a person sets up in his heart (Ezek. 14:35) will affect the character and quality of his whole life. Idolatry is therefore the basic sin.

Now I could understand how death leads to sin. If a man is spiritually dead, separated from the true God, and since he must choose a god, he will usually choose a false god. Thus all men sin because of death. As I was sitting there in the class thinking about this, another passage of Scripture occurred to me —

Gal. 4:8, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods.” Not to “know God” personally as a living reality is to be spiritually dead; spiritual death is the opposite of spiritual or eternal life which is to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent.

(Compare John 17:3; “And this is eternal life, that they know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”).

And a person is “in bondage to beings that are no gods” when he chooses them as his gods. He chooses them because he does not know personally the true God, that is, because he does not have life, because he is spiritually dead. The true God is not a living reality to him. And lacking this personal knowledge of the true God as a living reality, a person does not have the reason for choosing the true God as his ultimate criterion of decision. God Himself is the only adequate reason for choosing Him. He cannot be chosen for any other reason than Himself. For then He would not be God but rather that reason for which He is chosen would be god to that person. Only a living encounter with the true and living God can produce the situation in which God Himself may be chosen. God Himself is the only condition for the choice of Himself by a person. Thus apart from a personal revelation of God Himself, a person will usually choose as his god that which seems like God to him from among the creation around him or from the creations of his own hands or mind. Man does not necessarily have to sin, but he usually will. Spiritual death is not the necessary cause of sin but the basis or condition of the choice of a false god. (The Greek word translated “because” in the last clause of Rom. 5:12 means “on the basis of” or “on the condition of.”)

Man is not responsible for becoming spiritually dead because he did not choose this state. He inherited spiritual death from Adam just as he inherited physical death, but not eternal death. But he is responsible for the god he has chosen. The true God has not left man without a knowledge about Himself. As Paul says in Rom. 1:19-20 [ERS],

“¹⁹ Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it to them. ²⁰ For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”  (Rom. 1:19-20 ERS)

In verse 19, Paul refers to a knowledge of God which all men have and in verse 20, he says two things about this knowledge:

(a) This knowledge is a knowledge of the “invisible things of him,” of God, namely, “his eternal power and Godhead” or divine nature.

(b) These two “invisible things of him…are clearly seen (verse 20), that is, manifested, laid open to public view (verse 19).

This paradoxical way of stating the source of this knowledge raises the question: how are these unseen things clearly seen? The answer is given in the phrase “being understood by the things that are made (verse 20). They are seen by a rational act, the act of the mind, “by the things that are made”. For the things that are made are analogous in their being to the unseen things of Him. That which God created reflects the invisible things of Him, the Creator, like a work of art reflects the artist. (Of course, this analogy of the artist and his work cannot be applied to the Creator and His creation without reservations.) All examples of power in the physical world, the earthquakes, storms, even nuclear energy, are like God’s eternal power. The creation reflects the Creator in His power. If this be so, then what in all creation is like His Godhead or divine nature? Only man himself is analoguous to God’s divine nature because man alone has been created in the image of God (compare verse 19: “that which is known of God is manifest in them;…”). Man’s person is similar to God’s person. Paul uses this same analogy between God’s being and man’s being in his address on Mars Hill, the Areopagus, in Athens recorded in Acts 17:22-31, to argue against idolatry. After he had quoted one of the Greek’s own poets as saying “For we are also his offspring,” Paul argues,

“Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.” (Acts 17:29 NAS;

Compare to theion translated “divine nature” in this verse with theiotes translated “divine nature” in Rom. 1:20.)

Being created by God in His image, the nature of God must be at least as personal as our nature. Therefore, the true God cannot be a non-person, a thing made of gold or silver or stone, an image made by man. God’s being must be as personal as our being, if we are the offspring of God, that is, created in His image.

But not only is it true that in man alone is there found that which is like God’s being, but it is also true that in man alone is there found that which is the best analogy of God’s eternal power. The human will in its limited power and freedom is the best analogy in all creation of the divine will with its unlimited power and freedom. (Note that power, dunamis, means “to be able”, dunamai.) What greater created power is there than the power to bless or destroy? In this sense the human power to choose to use the nuclear bomb is greater than the power of the bomb itself. The power of human freedom of decision is greater than the power of physical energy. In man therefore we find that which is the analogy in creation of God’s eternal power and His divine personal nature. The mind of man employing these analogies of being perceives the invisible things of Him through the things that are made or created by God. Thus “God manifest it [the truth] unto them” (Rom. 1:19). The unseen things of God are clearly seen because that which is known of God is manifested in them. So man is without excuse for his idolatry, exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). Man has no excuse for choosing a false god. He knows that it is not the true God because a false god is impersonal and/or powerless; it is less of a person than he is and has as little or less power or freedom than he has.

This knowledge about God leaves man without an excuse for his idolatry, but it does not save him because it is a knowledge about the true God and not a personal knowledge of the true God, a personal relationship to God. Even though a person is not responsible for becoming spiritually dead, he is responsible for remaining in the state of spiritual death when deliverance from it is offered to him in the person of Jesus Christ. If he refuses the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, he will receive the results of his decision, eternal death.

"For the wages of sin death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 6:23) 

If a man refuses the gift of spiritual and eternal life in Christ Jesus and continues to put his trust in a false god, remaining in spiritual death, then after he dies physically, at the last judgment he will receive the result of his decision, eternal death, eternal separation from God.

This relationship between death and sin opened for me a whole new understanding of salvation. Spiritual death is not the result of a man’s own personal sins. On the contrary, man sins because he is spiritually dead. That is why he needs to be saved. He is dead spiritually and dying physically. He needs life; he needs to be made alive — he needs to be raised from the dead. And if he receives spiritual life, if he is made alive to God, then death which leads to sin will be removed and man can be saved from sin. Thus salvation must be understood to be primarily from death and secondarily from sin. Salvation is primarily deliverance from death to life, reconciliation to God, and secondarily from sin to righteousness, redemption from the slavery of sin, the serving of a false god.

Now God has accomplished this salvation from death to life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. God in His love for us sent His Son to enter into our death so that He might deliver us from death. On the cross Jesus died not only physically but spiritually. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)

He was forsaken for us; He died for us. He tasted death for every man (Heb. 2:9). But God raised Him from the dead. Jesus entered into our death in order that as He was raised from the dead, we might be made alive in and with Him (Eph. 2:5). Hence Christ’s death is our death, and His resurrection is our resurrection. We who have accepted Him are made alive with Him and in Him.

Now what God showed me years before in Romans 6, now made sense. Christ by dying my death means that I had died with Christ, ending my spiritual death, and that when Christ was raised from the dead, I was raised from the dead with Him. I had been saved from death to life in and with Christ’s death and resurrection. And since Christ’s death is the end of the reign of death for those who died with Christ, it is also the end of the reign of sin over them. They are no longer slaves of sin, serving false gods. Sin is a slave master (Rom. 6:16-18) and this slave master is the false god in which the sinner trusts. We were all slaves of sin once, serving our false gods when we were spiritually dead, alienated and separated from the true God, not knowing Him personally. But we were set free from this slavery to sin through the death of Christ. For when Christ died for us, He died to sin (Rom. 6:10a) as a slave master. Sin no longer has dominion or lordship over Him. For he who has died is freed from sin (Rom. 6:7). That is, when a slaves dies, he is no longer in slavery, death frees him from slavery. Since Christ died for all, then all have died (II Cor. 5:14). His death is our death. Since we have died with Him and He has died to sin, then we have died to sin. We are freed from the slavery of sin and are no longer enslaved to it (Rom. 6:6-7). But now Christ is alive, having been raised from the dead, and we are alive to God in Him. His resurrection is our resurrection. “But the life He lives He lives to God” (Rom. 6:10b). This is the life of righteousness. Since righteousness is basically trust or faith in God (Rom. 4:3-5), so we who are now alive to God in Him are to live to righteousness, that is, by faith in God. For just as death leads to sin, so life leads to righteousness.

And here is the crucial point in this way of understanding salvation. It is by saving us from spiritual death that Christ saves us from sin. It is by taking away the spiritual death which produces our sin that God took away our sin. Jesus died for our sins — literally, to take them away (John 1:29). What the Old Testament sacrifices could not do (Heb. 10:14), the death of Christ has done. We are saved, not just from the consequences of our sins; we are saved from sin itself. We were saved from our trust in false gods when we put our trust in Jesus Christ and the true God who sent him. Did we not “turn from idols to serve the living and true God” (I Thess. 1:9)? When we were spiritually dead, we trusted in and served those things that are not God — money, power, sex, education, success, pleasure, etc. But when we turned to the risen Christ, we entered into life, leaving behind those false gods. Now we trust in the true God. The risen Jesus Christ is our Lord and our God (John 20:28).

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was the means by which God could remove death — the barrier to knowing the true God and His love. Now God could reveal Himself to us in the preaching of the Gospel, the Good News, making us spiritually alive to Himself (Rom. 1:16-17). To be spiritually alive is to know God (John 17:3), and to know God is to trust Him. For God is love (I John 4:8, 16), and love begets trust. The trust in God that God’s love invokes in us is righteousness (Rom. 4:5, 9); it relates us rightly to God. Thus by taking away death, God takes away our sin. We died to sin with Christ. By making us alive to Himself, God sets us right with Himself through faith. Life produces righteousness just as death produces sin.

Now I could see why man cannot be saved by keeping the law. As I sat there then, I remembered what Paul said in Gal. 3:21, ” …for if there had been a law given which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been by the law.” And since the law cannot make alive, the law cannot produce righteousness. The righteousness of the law, that is, the merits earned by keeping the law, is a false righteousness, dirty filthy rags (Isa. 64:6; Phil. 3:7-9; Rom. 10:3-4). Just as trust in a false god is sin, so trust in the true God is righteousness (Rom. 4:35). And just as sin flows from death, so righteousness flows from life. And because the law cannot remove death, it also cannot remove sin. And since th law cannot make alive, it cannot produce real righteousness. Therefore, since the law cannot make alive, salvation cannot be by the law. God never gave the law for salvation, but for the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20).

This revelation shattered my Calvinism. The doctrine of original sin and the sinful nature was all wrong. The reason one could not earn salvation was not because he was not able not to sin, but because the law and the works of the law could not make alive. Man’s sins not because he has a sinful nature but because he is spiritually dead. Death is not the sinful nature, not what we are (our nature), but the absence of a personal relationship to God. Man’s freedom of the will was not lost, he still had the freedom of choice. But because he did not know personally the true God, being spiritually dead, he choose something other than the true God as his god. Thus all men sinned. When I tried to explain this some of my teachers, they rejected it. All the teachers at Fuller were Calvinists, or modified Calvinists, as were those at Wheaton College. They thought that what I was presenting was Arminianism. But it was not Arminianism, it was Biblical theology. I later found out that the Arminians thought I was a Calvinist. I did not share this revelation with Edith for a long time; I had a lot of thinking and studying of the Scriptures yet to do. Finally in 1955, when I was teaching a young adult class at the North Hollywood Free Church, I shared it with Edith. It became the basis of our understanding of salvation.

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