Ed Pallett

In the winter of 1913, a homeless derelict stumbled down the streets of skid row in Portland, Oregon. He had left his home and family in the Midwest and had nothing left but a few old clothes, and a ten-cent bed. Then one night he wandered up to an Apostolic Faith street meeting held on NW Third and Burnside, and what he heard there caused him to call on the Lord for help. God forgave his sins and changed his life completely. Sometime later, his home was reunited. That man was my stepfather, and because he met God that day, I was brought up in a real Christian environment. I remember the day that my mother was converted. What a change it made in her heart, and what a change in our home!

I can remember how the Lord worked in our home. My brother was very ill, suffering, hemorrhaging and dying right before us. In those days my folks didn’t have a telephone or an automobile to go to the doctor or anything like that, and they wouldn’t have done it anyway. But they just took the Bible and walked into that room where my brother was lying on the bed and began to read out of the Book of Daniel. In about fifteen or twenty minutes, I can remember my brother was out by the kitchen stove getting warm. I couldn’t forget those things. God talked to me and showed me I was on the wrong track. It wasn’t my folks that were wrong, but I was.

Although I saw the hand of God work in my parents’ lives, as I grew up I chose another way. I thought a young man could certainly find a good time out in the world, and I was always in search of it. You would find me in the dance halls, theaters, or taverns, always seeking but never finding the happiness I craved. The evenings would start out so good but end up so bad.

When I reached twenty-one years of age, I began to realize that my parents were happy, and I was miserable. One evening I went to church for one purpose—to prove God for myself. If He would do for me what I knew He had done for others, I would willingly give Him my heart.

I took just enough cigarettes to last until I went into church and the meeting started. Tobacco had been a curse to me, and if I was going to meet God on His terms—and there is no other way—I didn’t want a pack of cigarettes in my pocket.

I felt like I had been given a new start in life, and that is exactly what had happened.

At the close of the service, the minister asked if anyone wanted prayer to raise his hand. I did that, but I didn’t seem to be able to make my way to the altar of prayer until one of the Christian brothers came to help me. The altars were already full, but someone handed me a chair from the platform, and there on my knees I wept my way through to victory. Jesus came into my heart and made a marvelous change!

To my amazement, I discovered that I had no more love for the worldly amusements. The sinful habits were gone. I found the true happiness that only Jesus can give. That night my pipe, my cigarettes, and my tobacco all went into the furnace. I never wanted them again. The desire for liquor was completely taken from me. I felt like I had been given a new start in life, and that is exactly what had happened. I thank God with all my heart for saving my soul and giving me power to live a pure, clean life above sin.

During World War II, it was my privilege to serve my God and my country in the United States Army. I was a front-line infantryman with the 88th Division in Italy. God took care of me there. I had shrapnel come so close to me that it burned the side of my head parallel to the stem of my eyeglasses, but it never even drew blood. I crawled through muddy drainage ditches until my knees were raw, with machine gun slugs whizzing over my head, but God brought me through it all.

After the war, I walked the streets of Milan, Trento, Florence, and other cities of Italy with the joy of God’s salvation in my heart. There was no desire in my heart to have any part in the sinful activities so many soldiers indulged in. God had taken those things out of my heart, and He kept them out, even when I was far away from home and church. I came home with the same old-time religion that I had in my heart when I entered the Army.

One time the doctors said I was in danger of losing my eyesight. I remember I began to look around at the saints and I wanted to remember what they looked like. I also began to memorize the songs. I knew God was on His Throne, so one day I went up on the platform and they anointed me with oil in the Name of Jesus and prayed for me. The next time the surgeon examined my eyes, he said, “You have no glaucoma.” A month before two doctors told me I had glaucoma, so I feel I owe God thanks for giving me victory over that thing, and keeping me above sin. I have the greatest thing in all this world.

I thank God for His wonderful power that has kept me with the victory through all the years since. It is good to serve the Lord.