John Moulton

I am thankful for the goodness of God, that He led me into this Gospel. There is a deep gratitude in my heart for the old-time religion. I was raised in the state of Montana on a cattle ranch of about eight hundred acres. I grew up with a rough class of people. In the summer I worked on the cattle ranges, and in the winter I worked in the logging camps. I was a long way from town, so I couldn’t get to church, but I always managed to get to the dance halls and places to drink. That was during the prohibition days, and there was a whisky still in almost every canyon. In the logging camps we did not have anything to do during the long winter evenings, so we drank whisky and gambled. It was an awful way to live.

I wanted to get away and go somewhere else, so when I was still a boy, I left home and crawled onto an old freight train. I thought I would surely have a good time traveling around out in the life of sin, but I met defeat at every turn of the road. I hoboed all over the United States, and got discouraged living that way, but could not settle down. Finally I came out West to Oregon in the early 1930s and married a good wife in the Rogue River Valley. I thought I would be able to settle down and everything would be all right, but it wasn’t that way. I was still a discouraged man.

I got a construction job working at an old rock plant down on Bear Creek. One day the company changed foremen. The new man was a Bible-believing Christian. There was such a vast difference between him and the previous foreman that I couldn’t help but take notice. The first foreman and I used to curse and fight that old machinery, but it seemed as if we couldn’t get any gravel through it. The new man came on the job and production doubled; everything just smoothed out. When he sat down to eat his lunch, he bowed his head and prayed over his food. All the rest of the men made fun of him, but I didn’t see anything funny about it at all. It was a serious matter to me.

The new foreman asked if I would like to go to church with him. If you had seen me you would have thought I was a poor candidate for Christianity. It seemed I swore with almost every breath, and I wore my pockets out putting tobacco cans in them. I was not in the habit of going to church. I thought that was the last place a man should go to find a good time or anything interesting. However, I could not find a reasonable excuse. I decided I would go just one time to please him and that would settle the matter.

I took my wife and two small children and went to an Apostolic Faith meeting in Phoenix, Oregon. I heard the old-time religion in its fullness, and I couldn’t just pass it over my shoulder and say there was nothing to it. I heard a few of those old-timers get up and testify, and I knew those testimonies were true. I believed there was a God in Heaven and that they knew Him. After the meeting, those people told me I could pray, and if I met God’s conditions, He would make a change in my life. They said He would make me happy. I didn’t go to the altar that night. Instead, I thought I would pray at home, and I asked them to pray for me. When I got back home, I didn’t pray at all; I forgot all about them. They didn’t forget me, though; they prayed.

One night I was sitting in my home on West Main Street with my family, trying to find something to listen to on the radio. I came across some organ music—it sounded like church music to me. Right then, God’s Spirit came down and reminded me that some of those saints were praying for me. I felt them praying for me. Old-time conviction settled on me; real conviction gripped my heart and soul. I turned my face toward the wall so no one would see and I just cried like a child. It seemed that nothing went right after that. I was miserable and defeated. I knew I was going to have to do something about this.

I went back to church a few nights later, but it seemed I had no courage to go to the altar. I got up and thought I would just walk out, but God spoke to me and said, “This is your last chance.” That scared me, and I couldn’t move. A brother came back and laid his hand on my shoulder and said, “Wouldn’t you like to pray?” I didn’t know if I wanted to pray or not, but I knew I wanted to get rid of this load of sin and the fear that was in my heart, so I said, “Yes.” I went down to the little pine bench and got on my knees. I didn’t know the first thing about praying. I didn’t know one line from the Bible, but I got honest and laid it all out before God. I said, “If You will answer tonight, I will give You everything.” I thought if He did not answer, I would never try again. That night, in 1937, God answered, and what a wonderful change came into my soul! Jesus gave me peace, happiness, and joy that I never even knew existed.

The next day when I got back on the job, I felt like I was in paradise. When I loaded up the old truck it seemed like it was a Cadillac. As I started across the adobe flat, the road that I used to curse because it was so rough seemed so smooth. The dew was on the foxtail and it seemed that each big dew drop was bouncing up and down with joy. There was such glory in my soul I could hardly sit in the truck. It was that way all day long. As I drove out to get my load of rock, everything went smoothly. It was normally my habit to lose a big pile of rock and string the rest of it out on the road about a quarter of a mile, but that morning I was able to dump the whole load right at the stake. The dump man looked up at me oddly and said, “Perfect.”

Salvation straightened out the tangles in my life. I can never express how wonderful salvation is, but I can tell you it has kept me—those tangles have been straightened out for thirty-one years. I praise God for it.