Charles Rodman

My name was put on the church roll when I was a very young boy. I considered myself a Christian, but I did not know what it meant to live a Christian life. Nobody ever told me that I needed a change of heart.

In my parents’ home, the Bible was an open book, and I was brought up under the atmosphere of the church and Sunday school. The district school I attended was a two-mile trek from my home. It was a plain wooden building without any paint. We sat on plank benches at plain desks, many of which had several years’ worth of initials carved into them. At these desks we learned our lessons, and during the morning sessions, a chapter from the Bible was read to us. My mother was the school teacher. With all this background, God’s Word was planted in my heart early, and I never got away from it.

As a young man, I began to study for the ministry because I believed the Bible was true; I found no reason to doubt it. I spent sixteen years in preparation for the ministry. For eight years I was in theological training under the very best of instructors at Princeton University. I majored in the Greek language, went through the whole routine, then returned home with three diplomas, but my life was still full of discouragement.

My church assigned me to pastor a congregation in the State of Washington. I used to face my parishioners on Sunday mornings knowing my life was not what it ought to be, knowing I had fallen short of the commandments and precepts of God’s Word. I was preaching a standard for the Christian, but I myself failed to measure up to it.

I used to read in God’s Word about the victory that a follower of Jesus has. In Romans 8:37, I read where Paul said, “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us,” yet I was a defeated man. In John 14:27, I read where Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you,” but I had no peace; there was nothing but discontent and unrest within my soul. Many times I wondered why, if I were a Christian, I did not have what the Word promised. Why could I not live up to the standard of the Bible? My peers confessed the same defeat, but said that we could not expect anything different this side of the grave. They said no man could live twenty-four hours without sin, so instead of my getting better and becoming more like Jesus, I began to stray further away from Him. I loved the things of the world, and there was no desire in my heart to praise God or to be thankful to Him. I had just about reached the point where I believed there was nothing to religion after all. Then I came to Portland, Oregon.

I used to face my parishioners on Sunday mornings knowing my life was not what it ought to be.

During the summer of 1913, a nondenominational convention was being held in Portland for individuals from all parts of the world. About 12,000 people attended this gathering, which was called the Good Citizenship Conference—the only one of its kind ever held. The governor of the State of Oregon talked on prison reform; a religious leader from Ireland was one of the chief speakers; another speaker, the editor of the Toronto Globe, had been a member of The Hague conference for preserving peace; and another was a prominent minister and social worker from Seattle, Washington. Great issues of the day, such as legislation, reforms, and social conditions were discussed at length. With all the talk that went on among these learned minds about the disease of sin, one would expect to go away with some answers, but I never once heard them offer an adequate remedy.

At the close of one of the sessions, I happened to go down in another part of the city just in time to hear some born-again Christians tell the story of victory. They were at a street corner in what was called a “Gospel auto,” and several of them were telling how God had wonderfully come into their hearts and changed the entire course of their lives. They were men who had been out in the world and received their education amid the “hard knocks” of life. When their resolutions and will power had failed, when their homes were broken up, and when every hope was crushed because sin had the mastery of them, they called upon God and He heard and answered. In evidence of that fact, they became sober men, went to work and earned an honest day’s wage, and provided for their families.

Those men knew God in a way I had never known Him. To me it seemed a wonderful thing for an unseen, mighty power to sweep into a man’s life, change the whole scene, and give victory over sin. As I heard those men tell that through one simple prayer to God their whole lives were changed, I knew I had found the answer to the questions the learned men up at the convention were trying to solve.

It wasn’t a question of great learning, legislation, or prison reform; it was getting right with God through repenting of sin. It wasn’t a matter of having to struggle against sinful desires, but it was the supernatural power of God coming down into a human heart and life. These people had found something between the lids of the Bible that all my education and church influence had never given me. My eyes were opened to what it really meant to be a Christian. I knew I needed to be born again.

My eyes were opened to what it really meant to be a Christian.

Then and there, I determined to become a real Christian. I went up to my room at the Y.M.C.A. and sent a wire to my church in Washington, telling them that I would not be there to preach on Sunday. I also wired a minister and asked him to fill my place.

While meditating on some restitutions I needed to make, I decided to go and check out the campground those “street-meeting” men had told about. It was in the Fulton district of the city. I did not plan to attend a service, but when it started, I found myself sitting in the rear of the canvas tabernacle, trembling under the mighty convicting power of God. Someone invited me to pray at the altar, and I knelt there trembling like a leaf. I prayed until there were only a few people left in the tabernacle, but I did not get saved, so I took the streetcar and returned to town. While I was aboard the streetcar, everything cleared up for me—God came into my heart and life that night and became real to me. No one can ever tell me that a man can become a Christian and not know it! That night God opened the heavens to me, brought the joy and peace of another world, and best of all, He gave me power and victory to live as a Christian ought to live.

When I got up the next morning, the peace was still in my heart. I went out to the campground again, and there I met the man who had been in charge of the street meeting I had listened to. I told him that God had saved me the night before—my first testimony.

On the following Sunday, God sanctified me. Then on the next Tuesday, I was baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire, and spoke in another tongue as the Spirit gave utterance. A German minister, praying at the altar, understood what I was saying, and interpreted it.

I purposed to follow the Lord all the way. I resigned my position in the church in Washington. The head of the presbytery at that time was one who had been a chief speaker at the convention. He sent a man down to the Apostolic Faith Church to talk to me. I told him all about my experiences, and explained to him that I had never been saved before, had never known what a Christian really was, though I had been preaching the Gospel to others. He said, “If at any time you want to come back, it is open to you.” But I never went back there.

This Gospel is the greatest thing in the world. That is why souls are being saved and testimonies are given of God’s saving grace. I can say with Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Romans 1:16).  How thankful I am that I found Jesus—the answer to all man’s problems.

On July 8, 1913, Reverend Rodman affiliated himself with the Apostolic Faith Church. From that time until his death on September 14, 1949, he dedicated his life to the Lord’s work. He was a minister and an office worker at the headquarters office in Portland, where his duties included answering the foreign mail. He was Sunday School Superintendent for a number of years, and also wrote much of the Sunday school literature. Notable among his teachings was a special course of study given on the Book of Hebrews.