Bob Wilson

How wonderful it is to know that I am saved once more! There is not a doubt in my mind about it. I am a different kind of man than I used to be, and I thank God for it.

As a young man, I was defeated and miserable and full of the devil. I knew the sins that were in my heart. It took God to take them out! Nobody else could have taken the sins out of my life. I lied, stole, cursed—I was just a reprobate, no good for myself and no good for anybody else.

I lived in southwestern Oklahoma and Texas, among the Indians and the wild cowboys, and I became as wild as the wildest. I would not give up to anybody. When I was just a little barefooted boy, my parents could not do anything with me. My schoolmasters could not do anything with me, either. When I grew older, I became a horse thief and a rogue. When I first started out to steal horses, I put a big .45 Colt six-shooter on my side and said they might take me dead, but they would never take me alive. I never gave up to an officer in my life. There was something in me that could not give up, could not yield.

One year I stole eleven head of horses and broke into about a hundred houses. I rode for miles and miles with a six-shooter in my hand. I rode on one side of my horse to keep from getting shot off on the other side. Nobody but God could tame me. The man that I stole horses with was shot down like a dog in the streets. That could have been me, and I would have gone to a devil’s Hell.

One day, God got a hold of my life. He showed me my sins—and when I saw them, they scared me. I trembled. I got down before God and repented. And God saved me! I did not do the things I used to do. I did not steal anymore. I did not want to do those things anymore. That is what God did for me!

I went back over that old life of sin and paid for the horses I had stolen and the things I had taken from the houses I had robbed. God made me go back over that life and straighten it up. Nobody in this world could have made me do that, but God did.

I regret to say that, after serving God for a time, I went away from Him. For many years, I went my own way. Though I had brushed God aside, He was faithful to me. He sent Verne Edmonds my way. Verne invited me to church—and I knew in my heart that God had sent him. Thank God, I yielded and went to a service with him with one purpose in mind: to make my peace with God. I went down to the altar of prayer, and God held me to the line until I said, “Yes.” I have nothing else in my heart today but a “yes” to the whole will of God.

After I was saved, I got up in church and asked everybody to pray for my wife—God saved her! God is working in our home. I have a happy home! I have had a home for forty-five years, but it was never happy until God came into our hearts. God united our home. God put love in our home. No power on earth could have done that, but God did it.

Today, I live like a man ought to live. How I thank God for what He has done for me. He has saved, sanctified, and baptized me with the Holy Ghost and fire. I love this Gospel and the Apostolic Faith people with all my heart.

Bob Wilson never tired of telling what God had done for him. He faithfully attended the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon, for the remainder of his life, often giving his testimony in the church services.

In the following account, Letha Edmonds tells how God directed her husband Verne to head out to a produce stand near the Columbia River and make contact with Bob Wilson:

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Verne had been to a Gospel meeting held at the Multnomah County Farm, and during the course of the visit, someone mentioned Bob Wilson—an old ex-horse thief who had been in the Gospel many years earlier, but had since left it.

As was Verne’s custom when he came home, he knelt by his big footstool and started to pray. The Lord spoke to him and said, “Go and call Bob Wilson home.” Verne protested, “But I don’t know Bob Wilson.” The Lord asked him, “Does that make any difference?” “No,” Verne responded, and then asked, “When shall I go?” The Lord told him, “Now!”

Verne immediately got the phonebook and started looking for Bob’s name, which he found. I asked him what he was going to do and he said he was going to see Bob Wilson. Then he went.

When Verne got to Bob’s place of business—a produce stand out near the Columbia River—he asked for him. A gruff, stern-looking fellow said, “I am Bob Wilson.” Verne told him, “I need to talk to you.” Bob said, “Well, sit down over there until I get through with this customer.” When he was finished he came over and said, “Now, young feller, what can I do for you?” Verne did not waste any time getting to the point. He said, “I have come to call you home to God. Many of the old-timers are gone and you are needed to help fill the gap and make up the hedge.”

Bob brushed Verne’s words aside and said, “Oh, I haven’t thought of that for thirty years!” Verne said, “Well maybe you haven’t, but it is going to be a different story from now on. It would be one thing if I had come on my own, but the Lord sent me here to call you home! So if you decide you want to come to church, get in touch with me.” Bob kept saying, “No, no.” Then the Lord said to Verne, “Now, get out of here,” which he did.

Two or three weeks went by. Then a couple from the church went out to Bob Wilson’s market and he said to them, “There was a feller here a while back who wanted me to come back to church.” By his description, the couple realized it must have been Verne Edmonds. Sometime later, another lady from the church went there for some vegetables and Bob told her that he wanted her to get word to Verne that he was ready to go to church. She told Verne and he went after him to bring him to the service.

When they came into the church, Verne asked Bob where he wanted to sit. “Well, not too far down toward the front,” he said. So Verne said, “Will this do?” indicating a row near the back. Bob responded, “Well, not too far back either.” So they seated themselves somewhere in the middle. The service went forth, and when the altar call was given, Verne asked Bob if he would like to go and pray. He said, “That is what I came for,” and down to the altar he went. Verne got Brothers Ray Crawford and Clarence Frost, two ministers, and told them who Bob was. They prayed with him.

As he was praying, Bob kept saying, “Hold me to it God, hold me to it!” He did not want anything but the real thing. He later told us that the day Verne came out to see him, Verne had hardly driven away when a great big tear broke loose in his heart. He said that he would have given fifty million worlds if he could have called Verne back right then.

Praise God, we had many years of fellowship with Brother and Sister Wilson (yes, she was saved too, some months later), and had the privilege of bringing them back and forth to church from their home next to the fruit stand.