I got saved in March 1971. Before this I had gotten involved with the hippie scene and was hitchhiking around the country to try to find a purpose in my life. I had dropped out of college, left everything behind, and tried everything I could to try to find some answers or a reason for being here, but nothing was working.

I believed there was a God. I heard that Jesus was coming back to earth again when I was very young. I attended church with my family and we even gathered together at home for Bible study, but that ended and the church was boring and lifeless, so I chose to quit trying to be good and went fully into the things of the world, to see what it had to offer. I got into a lot of sin. Everything I tried brought no fulfillment, no lasting happiness. I was still empty and void of any realization of the purpose for my life. Was it just to work for a house, a car, raise a family, get old then die? There had to be something more.

As I was hitchhiking from Florida, I decided to go out West. I ended up in Hollywood, CA, on Hollywood Blvd. It was crowded with hippies, drug dealers, tourists, and all kinds of people, then in the midst of all this, someone handed me a Gospel tract, then started telling me about Jesus and that they had church services every night and invited me to come. He was from the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation. After listening to him, I walked away thinking that’s got to be the truth. I decided that I was going to go to the services, but not long afterward a thought came to me that I didn’t have to go to that church, that I needed only to get a Bible, go into the mountains and read it. But I didn’t have enough money for a Bible, so I went to bookstores on the Boulevard asking if they had a free Bible, which they didn’t, which was good for me at the time, because as I was looking, I ran across some more witnesses from the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation that compelled me to come to services, so I ended up going. I thank God that I did, because when I got there, it was way different than the churches I’d gone to before. This one had life and wasn’t boring at all.

No wonder the devil gave me that thought to go to the mountains instead, because I got up out of my seat at the altar call, knelt down and asked Jesus to wash all my filthy sins away with His precious blood and He did. I stood up a very happy man, a new creature. I was saved.

I found out that God had a purpose for me all along, which He does for everybody, and that’s to fear God and keep His commandment for this is the whole duty of men (Ecclesiastes 12:13), to study the Bible (KJV) and do what it says, to lay down my life, pick up my cross and follow Jesus. I had just turned 21, and I don’t regret my decision to do just that. I really praise and thank the Lord for my salvation.

Jerry McInnis

 

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