John Brittsan

When I was just a little boy, I liked peanuts. When the folks went to town they would bring me some. One day when I went to bring in the cows, I put a few peanuts in my pocket, but they soon ran out. I had heard the story about the multiplying of the loaves and fishes, so I felt I could prove God on that. I asked God to give me another peanut, and sure enough when I put my hand in my pocket, there was a peanut! I asked for another peanut and another, about five or six times. I finally told God if He would give me one more peanut I would not ask for any more.

When I was about sixteen years old I left home and went into the Oklahoma Territory for a time. I tried to be tough and hard, and the devil would try to tell me there was no God, but God would point me back to the old rail fence, the dusty road, and the little boy asking for peanuts. I knew God was real.

When I was just a small child my parents had taken me to an old-fashioned Methodist church in a little mining town in Missouri. There I sat and listened to the old Gospel songs. I heard the people pray and the preacher preach, and I realized there was something to it! There was prayer in our home day after day. I remember my dear old mother would carry a little kerosene lamp around on winter nights and she would be singing those old hymns around the stove as she was frying meat and the like. We would gather in the long evenings and sing those hymns, and it melted my heart.

I knew God was real.

I did my very best to find the thing I was looking for in this world, but after a night of sin I would come home and pillow my head, and God would talk to me. More than once I found myself, in my imagination, standing at the White Throne Judgment of God, a lost soul, condemned. I knew Jesus died for my soul but I was not willing to forsake my sins. I was bound with everything the enemy of my soul could hang upon my life. I wanted a way out of that old life. Many times I threw the tobacco down—plowed it under or threw it into the brush—but before night I would be crawling on my hands and knees to get the stuff. I was just a weakling.

Sometimes my mother would stand at the door when we would go out for a night of sin and she would tell us boys what that kind of life would do to us. I had a dad who spent much of his time on his knees praying for us boys. I was ashamed of him because the toes of his shoes turned up and the knees of his trousers were shiny from the hours he spent on his knees in prayer. I would fly into a rage at that old man and tell him everything a sinner could think of.

But now there are places within twenty miles of Medford, Oregon, where I would like to erect a monument to that old dad’s prayers. One place is a strip of cottonwoods down on the Rogue River. Many a time I would be hauling hay up the river bottom to the barn, and I would hear my dad out there praying to his God. On a rainy day he would be in the dairy barn, down on his knees, crying out to God. I presume it was for us boys, because I know there was something hindering me from having a good time when I was out in the world. It was hard to have a good time in sin when Dad was praying for me.

I knew Jesus died for my soul but I was not willing to forsake my sins.

I could take you in five minutes to a little building on the back of a lot on the west side of Medford where he prayed day after day. He called it his secret place of prayer, but the neighbors knew all about it. I thank God that old building still stands today, a monument to the prayers of an old dad. God has never allowed the wreckers to tear it down. Men on their way to work would stop and listen and brush the tears from their eyes. Oh, I thank God for that kind of bringing up, even though it didn’t make a Christian out of me.

Finally, the time came when that old dad was quite ill, and he told me, “I am all packed up, and ready to go.” I thought maybe he was getting a little childish in his old age, but before the end of the week we got a telephone call saying, “Come, because Dad is very sick.” As I stood by his bedside that night, I knew Dad had heard the call. I would have given my right arm if I could have asked him to forgive me for the way I treated him, but I was stubborn and rebellious and had served the enemy of my soul too long. My lips were sealed; I couldn’t say a word. I could feel the mighty presence of God as he was going “Home.” I saw him pass into eternity. I well remember as we stood there and heard the clock pounding away on the wall, it sounded like a trip-hammer in my ears, but when Dad breathed his last, the old clock stopped. I knew there would be no more prayers out in the cottonwoods, in the barn, or in the little house in the back.        

Dad never left me a dollar of this world’s goods, but I thank God for the hundreds of prayers that he left bottled up in Heaven. It was nine years later that those prayers were answered. One night, the Lord laid His convicting hand heavily upon me. I was trying to make plans for the future but God seemed to tear them up as fast as I could make them.

The Bible was lying on the table. I opened it and found it was the 59th chapter of Isaiah, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.”

He wrung out the old sins and the desire for sin, and gave me peace down in my soul.

I realized that God was talking to me, but I threw the Bible back on the table. I picked it up again. It opened at exactly the same place. I did that four or five times. Finally, after it opened to the same place every time, I thought, “I will beat that game yet.” I turned the Bible over two or three times, end for end, with my eyes shut, and worked my thumb in just about as far from that Scripture as could be, I thought, but sure enough it opened right at the same place again.

I just slipped down there on my knees and said, “God, you have my number,” and as He talked to me, I realized that was my last chance. I prayed as only a lost sinner could pray, but I didn’t get the victory. A few nights later I went to the Apostolic Faith church. I meant business—I was going to have salvation if God would give it to me.

I looked at those Christians I had lied about, and they looked like angels to me. I am so glad I turned to their God, and I did something I had never done before: I got honest with God. I piled everything on the altar and said, “God, I want that old-time religion, something that will keep me out of sin, something that will take me to Heaven.” It just seemed the Lord wrung every bit of bitterness out of my heart; He wrung out the old sins and the desire for sin, and gave me peace down in my soul. I thank God that I found Dad’s kind of religion.

I gave my first testimony at 11 o’clock that night as I stood by the altar and told the Christians there of the peace of Heaven that the Lord had dropped into my soul. When I went down the stairs I felt as light as a feather, and the next night I got down on my knees and thanked God for a day of victory. That’s something I had always wanted and never could get; but, thank God, that night I had it. I had that deep-settled peace in my soul. I had Dad’s kind of religion, and it has kept me with victory in my soul through the years.