Charles Orwig

I was a man who surely needed this marvelous Gospel. I had a Christian mother who taught me the right way to go, but it seemed that about the time I learned to walk, I waded into sin. I was just a boy when I started down that line. There didn’t seem to be anything that could stop me. In just a few short years, I wound up a derelict.  

I was a lumberjack working in and out of town for years. I used to go out to the lumber camps and make a big stake of money and then come back into the city and spend it in the dumps and dives until it was gone.

I wasn’t a bit of good to myself or anybody else. I had two little children who didn’t have a mother, and I would put them off on relatives. I got to the place where sometimes I would see my children once in a week, sometimes only once in a month, and when I did see them, they would just run away crying. I was the type of man who wouldn’t even go across the river to see my dear old Christian mother who was praying for me. A man has to be pretty low not to visit his mother or children. It was an awful condition to be in.

I thank God that almost every time I came out of the logging camps I heard the testimonies coming from the Apostolic Faith people who were holding street meetings. I used to hear the people tell how they had victory over sin every day, and peace and joy in their hearts. God used those testimonies to talk to me. They would point me back to my mother and the Christian training she gave me. I was not ignorant. I knew the way of salvation. Sometimes those testimonies took the grin off my face. They made me wish I could be a man. There was very little left in me that could be called a man. I used to walk away with tears in my eyes saying, “I wish I had just a little bit of that peace.”

I thank God for the way He dealt with my soul, and I thank Him for that memorable night when I stood across the street from the Apostolic Faith Mission. God spoke right to my heart saying, “You better get saved tonight.” I was headed out to a logging camp. I had the “job” in my pocket, but I listened to the Voice of God. I thought it might be the last time He would call me.

I got a little courage together and cut loose from those hard-boiled loggers and went to the meeting. At the close of the service, I was invited to the altar. I fell down on these stubborn knees of mine and prayed an honest prayer. I called on God with all my heart crying out to Him for mercy. I said I was through with sin, and I would serve Him if He would save me. He came down and saved my unworthy soul. He rolled that burden of sin away and set me on my feet.

I am a witness to the power of God. I had attached to my life almost every sin that could be attached to one man, but when I got up from that altar I had real victory in my soul. Those old sins were gone. I did not have to strive to quit the cigarettes, the whiskey, and the gambling. I did not have to strive to keep from spending my money in the dumps and dives. I could go home and give my money to my children where it belonged. Sin had taken the love out of my heart for my children and my mother. God put that love back in my heart. My children knew Jesus did something for me. One of them said, “I’m so glad Father got saved, because he comes home every night.”  

I don’t go to the moonshine joints anymore. I don’t get drunk and get into people’s pockets and rob them anymore. In fact, God sent me back to the people I had wronged and robbed. I went and told them about the Gospel and paid back the money. I was willing to do it, glad to do it. God put something in my heart that made me want to get straight with people.

I still work around this city. I thank God He has kept me every day on the job. I have real joy and peace in my heart. The people I work with know that I have the old-time Gospel. God made me a Christian, and I thank Him for it.