Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God's timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love. Well,
I'm grateful that we get to sit down and have this conversation. And, you know, I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've talked to you about how we're putting this workbook and hopefully a video series together on the basic Bible concepts that you wrote many years ago. And so to sit down with you and kind of share with everyone how this came to be in conjunction with your testimony really is just a great privilege. So, thank you.
Well, I appreciate that, Kim.
I met you when I was probably I was a little girl when I first met you and you were the pastor of a very new church, Mission Boulevard Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Didn't Of course I was pretty ignorant of where I would be today. And, you know, but you were born in 1936 in Hugo, Oklahoma. Yep. And you were born again at the age of 14. Is that right? And
then But then you told me you rededicated your life to Christ in 1967 at Rogers Baptist Church in Garland, Texas. So, I'd like to start, you know, kind of at the beginning. Tell us about when you were born again.
Well, it was when I was 14 years old. I was born '36, so you can figure some things out from that.
I wasn't trying to get to your age or anything, but I think you're doing remarkably well for an octogenarian.
Well, I was gonna make a point of that. You can expect me to rattle around a little bit, but
Sharp as ever. I mean, we just finished having a discussion about the book of Ezekiel and Revelations and some of the wars that are to come. I couldn't, even with AI, I couldn't keep up with you.
Well, I'd anoint you to keep up with me because I'm not real sure of myself.
So, just because one of the things that we always emphasize on this podcast is we love to hear people's testimony of salvation. I would love for you to share that. Well,
my dad was fought in the second world war and we were having a revival at the church. And there's that fellow that was preaching and he says, and he made this statement. He said, Everybody here in this place ought to go to hell. And that took everybody's attention. Then he'd stated for just a few minutes, because if that happened to them, then they would really be dedicated soul winners after that.
And then he preached a great message on how to be saved. My dad jumped at the end of it. He just started walking up to the front and just fell down and wept. And that had a big impact on me. And I came under conviction as a result of that particular service and the events of it.
And at home, we milked cows and I was carrying milk buckets from the barn up to where we, processed it. And, I looked off to the western sky and the sun was going down and I thought, oh my goodness. You know? I better get this taken care of. And I was in I went into the house, and I and I told mom, said, mom, I'm afraid. And she said, well, son, that's The Bible says the beginning of wisdom is
Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Fear of the Lord, yeah. So she took me in, took my bed and I sat down on my knees in her lap, kind of with my head. And at that point, just asked the Lord to be my savior and I had such peace. If you claim to be saved and you do not remember a time when you asked the Lord to be your savior or in some criterion that you have engaged yourself in and did not immediately obtain great peace, then it didn't happen. So that's one of the important ideas in the biblical world is a great weight was taken off of you.
The wrath of God is, the Bible says the wrath of God is against all ungodliness and ungodliness for the people that are not righteous
Well, we surrender to Jesus, we're surrendering to the Prince of Peace. And so we should receive peace.
Well, we were carrying a load here, a load of anxiety because when you have anxiety and we have anxiety, and that's part of God's work to bring people to Him. You've got an anxieties and you need to go to the bathroom while instead of sitting there, you'll go to the bathroom. It drives us to action.
And that's actually one of the principles in your concept study is the anxiety mechanism, which again, I don't want to This podcast is, I'm sure the concepts will be woven into it, but I think your explanation is part of one of the critical parts of the concept study.
Well, I love the Lord very much at that time and I was a very dedicated young man. My best friend was the pastor's son. We spent a lot of time together over there.
Where was this?
This was in Crabbat, Arkansas. I was, let's see, 36, I've already said, I was around 14.
So
I was faithful to the Lord, I love the Lord, I studied it. Mom had already dealt with me for many years when I was a little bitty fella. We were moved from Oklahoma into Arkansas because my dad, was so badly wounded, he was supposed to not do anything. He said he'd rather die than that. So we moved to way in the country with no electricity into a log house and a log barn and horses and everything.
We did hard work. Dad lasted till in his sixties. But that's the reason we were in that setting. But in that setting, my mother had quite a more of an education than the average individual in those days. As a result, she was always asked to do such things as do all the work with the neighborhoods to get electricity, which we finally did there after a couple of years.
What was your mom's education? Where was your education? Where was your mom from and where was she educated?
She went to a private school that her family paid for. They were well-to-do.
And where was this?
This was in the area of Fort Smith. I don't know, but she was very capable in her education and intelligence. So she read to us children every night, some portion of the Bible, and she did it by lamp. My little sisters would sit near her lap and I would sit beside her. And those lamps were very bright. They were Oil lamps? Pump gas lamps.
Oh, okay. Pump gas lamps. Interesting.
Anyway, she also educated us. We were going to a two room school and it was a good school by the way, but not nearly as effective as mom's knees.
Interesting.
Just before we would go to bed each night and she would read the, well, great.
She read the classics too, didn't she?
Yeah, classics, a lot of classics. A lot of history, especially about the hurt that the early Christians had.
Oh, the history of the Baptists or the history of the Was it the Fox's Book of Martyrs?
Yeah, that was one of them. She read to us, it was Fox's Book of Martyr. All those things were very helpful to my perspective in growing up as what all things are all about.
I remember an earlier conversation we had about that your mom not only read some of these great books on the history of Christianity, but also the Bible and the classics like Moby Dick and how you didn't Because of your The vocabulary that she built in you, you as a young kid, I think this was an example you gave me, you never said, Oh, there goes the choo choo train. You'd say, There goes the locomotive, because you
Yeah, when I was about three or four years old. People would look at me like, saying.
I think that's carried over to your adult life very
well. Right.
I mean, when you're reading the classics at a very young age, it would make sense that you would use a higher end vocabulary.
Right, but you know, I have to put a lot of appreciation on the little two room schools because we learned we learned a spell, we learned arithmetic. And everybody would do that starting from the first grade. And in a two room school, you go from first to the fourth. And then when any group got up, well, the rest of us were watching them. We were quite advanced in that sort of thing and in the spelling and in the history.
And we had a lot of information on history. All the states, had to get the memory of all of them, with the capitals. And not just in The United States, but a lot of countries in the world. It was really great. Comprehensive.
But another thing that was great about it is those kids went back to the 1800s or earlier in the way of our lifestyle and values. And I think our kids are being hurt really bad because they're not given responsibilities and meaningful responsibilities. I mean, we sawed trees down and we did it all by hand, split the wood. I had to keep wood set up for the stoves.
For cooking and for Uh-huh.
If mama wanted a chicken, she'd say, Honey, go get me a chicken. And I'd take an ax and get us a chicken. And I had to water the horses, and we had a spring to do that.
So after you were born again and you just continued to the rest of your childhood, you had this best friend that was the pastor's son. What happened after you graduated from high school?
Well, we had moved to Nebraska and I went to high school in Nebraska. We had a huge farm and all the up to date And we were raising wheat and corn and other products and milking cows. And so all through high school, I had do my chores before I did my sports and other things. Or if I did those things, had to go home and still do my responsibilities. It was a great growing up really, actually.
A lot of people would think, Oh man, that was bad. But I think it's, Oh man, it's bad what the kids are having to put up with.
Right, The lack of responsibility.
The lack of development of discipline. And it makes you stronger as an individual physically and every other way around.
So did you leave high school and go into the Navy or
That's what happened.
Okay.
I got out of high school and I was working on building these grain towers. They're all concrete, seven hours, twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
Wow. Is it the grain silos? Is that what you're talking about? Around? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And we did it in the wintertime and everything else. And it was up, you get 16 degrees below zero on top of those things. And I thought, I was deadly tired. And I made my mind, this is no good for So my
join the Navy.
Well, the Navy was making an offer to the kids that if they could pass a certain test that they would take us to school for electronics. Chose electronics. So I did that, went in the Navy.
What year was that?
1954. 1954. That was the year I graduated from high school. Anyhow, I passed that test and later on in life in the Navy, had to get a new pair of glasses and the doctor said, Well, how in the world did you get in this? Because I've got a pretty strong lenses on my glasses. And I didn't tell him of course, but I'll tell you, I just got into the line and listened to the guys ahead of me. And then when I got up there, I made arrangements in my memory to go to
Pass the test.
Pass the test.
So were you legally blind?
No. Oh. But I didn't come up to the requirement of the military.
Okay. Okay. That's hilarious. You passed the visual test by listening to everybody else.
Yeah. Way back in the back.
That's pretty sneaky, brother Ryan. I know.
Anyway.
So when you were in the Navy
Well, actually, while I was in high school, I started walking away from the Lord. I didn't have a good environment. We moved away from much environment spiritually. And we moved away from that and came under just poor influences, helping the farmers around and they would bring alcoholic things out there to help us out, help us boys out after. And it was something that is awful, but it was very effective in helping you get some rest, but I got involved in that and carried it all the way through the military, all the way up through till I got right with the Lord.
How many years were you in the Navy?
Four years.
Four years?
And I got out in four years after in 1954. It was 1959 about.
I understand from one of our earlier conversations that while you were in the Navy, you were credited with discovering a method to electromagnetically detect and track underwater aircraft. Mean, craft, sorry.
Yeah, that's right. Of course that was handed to me too. I happened to be in a situation where I had the right equipment to evaluate what was going on and what was happening. And came up with a method of submarine warfare with electromagnetic equipment.
And then after that, you went to University Arkansas in Fayetteville and actually got a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering. Yeah. What did you do with What was the drive to get an engineering degree?
What was what?
Why did you want to go into engineering?
Well, I went into electrical engineering because I had studied in the military in a very effective system, really, because it went from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, it And then we had to do our homework and it was complex. About one person, I think there were eight out of a 100 people that got through that class.
So you kind of discovered your niche a little bit. You kind of discovered your niche in the military with the engineering or was that just something you just loved, the electrical engineering?
Oh, I really, it was exciting, you know, what I was learning And it was very effective because you were working with it all day long and then studying up into the night. And so you would learn more practical things than you would a whole year in college, in the practical aspects. That gave me a lot of advantage in college. That's why I had all of this, of the, well
Did the master's degree and the bachelor's degree.
Yeah. And we got given the, well, had to buy it, but the special acknowledgement of-
The National Engineering Honor Society and the National Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society, the National Mathematics Honor Society. You were in all three of those, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so let's talk about Martha. Beautiful wife, Martha. Where did you meet Martha?
In my folks home in Arkansas when they moved away from Nebraska. They moved away from Nebraska because they had no rain to speak of for four years and it just wiped them out. Wow. So they came back to Arkansas, very poor.
And
they had moved into Springdale, Arkansas, which is right close to the university here. And I was really, I think it would have been logical for me to go to MIT because we Well, that's where the ship went in. And I went off the ship and we worked on trying to understand how the discovery was working. Why did it work? And so I spent some time at MIT, but it all changed whenever I came home just before I left the Navy and met Martha.
She turned out to be a good friend of my sister. And when I came in the house, I had thumbed my way all the way from Newport, Rhode Island to home. And when I went in the house, I was exhausted and there was no place for me to sit. And I just kind of tossed down my bags and without looking down, there was a chair there and it had a big wide portion part of it that you put your arm on you to hold yourself up. And I sat down on that and I didn't even notice, but there was a girl sitting there and that was a friend of my sister.
So you plopped down on the armrest of the chair that Martha was sitting on and you didn't even know she was there.
I didn't even notice that she was there, but she noticed I was there she made up her mind. She said that day that that was her husband.
Now, I don't think I've heard this about Ms. Martha.
Yeah. She was a pretty enough girl, I'm telling you. But my mind was going to college, not messing around with any ladies. And so I wasn't very attentive to her until I Well, until she made herself available every time that I had
Every time you were home for a visit, she happened to be there. Is that what you're saying?
That's right. And so instead of going to MIT, I went to Fayetteville, University of Boston.
And Martha was the reason.
And she's really the reason. Yeah.
Well, look at that. Talk about a game changer.
Right. And I had this girl that I had been dating for three years in Boston.
Oh my.
Yeah. And I just dropped her.
Dropped the Yankee like she was hot. So when did you all get married?
We got married, well, I can't remember. Well, I was a junior in college.
Okay. And You married 1961. Does it sound about right?
Yeah.
That's what I have Yeah, written
that's right. Okay. That's right.
All right.
Yeah. I was
Yep. And then out of college, so at this point Martha Was she a born again believer at this point or was she
Oh man, she was a fantastic Christian girl. She was saved in her church and ran all the way home. She was a very athletic girl. She ran all the way home and ran into the house. And she said, I'm saved, I'm saved, I'm saved. And she was a very positively Christian girl. She had great morals.
Well, she was athletic. That's how she caught you, right? If she was athletic, that's how she caught
Well, definitely Whenever I'd take her home, if she wasn't ready for me to go, I would turn around and start to run and she would grab. She was faster than I was.
Gosh. Well, so then after you graduated from college, you went to work for the DuPont company as a research engineer.
That's right. And really, it was crazy because we didn't have much money whenever we would I worked my way through college.
So you didn't have the GI bill or anything like that? No. Okay.
And I made,
well,
I had to work. And so when I got to the age or along in the college ready to be making a decision where I was going to go to work, I had a lot of people after me because of the discovery, the military discovery
and
electronics.
So you were being recruited by people to
support Oh yeah, because I knew that and they were offering me a whole lot more money than the average young fellow. But I went to visit DuPont Chemical Company because they were offering me a lot of money just to come visit with them. So I thought, well, okay. That's no brainer. So when I went to in there for that guy, to the guy that was a manager in the research lab, he started asking me questions and he said, well, this and that and the other.
And what would you do? And so and so and so and so. And after he did that, said, Well, you're creative. I'm going to hire you. And I looked at him and I confessed. I said, Well, I didn't come here get hired. I came for the money. He slapped his leg and laughed, laughed. He looked at it and he said, Well, we're going to hire you. He did because he gave me a fantastic big old
Signing bonus.
Money. Yeah. Money. But what attracted me was a laboratory, a huge laboratory, around 4,000 square feet for my own.
Wow.
And a promise that whatever I wanted as equipment, he would get it for me.
Wow.
And so I did go up there and it was a great thing. It was a great thing because it gave me the opportunity to discover a lot of new technology. And it wasn't because I was great and genius or anything like that. It was just because I had to write equipment given to me. And I think it all had something to do with the Lord bringing me to Texas Instruments in Dallas, because they hired me away from DuPont Company.
Well, I just want to pause here, because I didn't know this about you until I was writing the introduction for the concepts workbook, I didn't know while you were at that while you were at DuPont, you had made several kind of ground, really groundbreaking scientific contributions, including the spark gap method for producing high intensity regions of positive ions, which I have no idea what that means, but it sounds really
Well, it means a generator of positive ions without sparkling.
Okay, without sparks. Yeah. And then you also developed a method for explaining electrostatic behavior and dielectrics. Is that my saying that right? Using the solid state theory, the invention of the first cat, let's see, catiotropic, how do say that? I don't even know to say it. Infrared microscope? Am I saying that right?
Well, kind of.
How do you say it?
Well, I better not try. You did it well. It means that you use more than one kind of elements in getting the target and the energy from your target.
Okay. Yeah, sorry.
You use more than one method.
Unlike you, I didn't go to one room schoolhouse and learn phonics. I didn't go to school till was in third grade. So phonics has just always been a problem for me. I probably should have had the AI tell me how to say that or something. But my point is you did made a lot of contributions to science in your research with DuPont, which is, I didn't know any of that, which is great for me to learn about you.
But then you started Dimension in 'sixty five, I guess, you were hired away by Texas Instruments. And go ahead.
Well, the Lord did that to get me to Dallas.
Interesting.
Where God was going to break my heart and get me back where I was supposed to be spiritually.
Where was DuPont? Where was that job? Where was the DuPont job? What state?
Well, I went back and forth between Wilmington.
Carolina?
No, no. Oh. It's where John Hopkins is. Maryland, no. Anyway, it's back to east.
Way back in the East near the ocean. And anyway, It was a miracle that I went to Dallas. And the way I think it happened was I went to a meeting where there were other company people there and they found out, I guess, what I was doing with the company. And so they made me an offer that I couldn't turn down. And I went down there and really it was a blessing because I became their corporate director of standards and I wasn't even 30 years old.
Wow. Isn't that where you served on the Mars Mariner team as well? Tell us about that.
Mars Mariner? Well, I had a lot of interaction really. The first was to solve a problem that the TI had. And that problem was that they couldn't produce some products that they had sold to the government for that project. And it was a million dollar. And this was back in
1965.
Yeah. Well earlier, yeah, close to that. Things have changed economically, that would be close to a $100,000,000 now.
And
so it was really a tough situation for them. They asked me to take that project and the Lord helped me out and we got it resolved. And that's when they came up with these little cards. Hannah says, Here, this is yours. And it had on there my name and the corporate director of standards.
So with the Mars Mariner program, that was like a robotic space missions program between '62 and
'60 Well, that was another event.
And
that had to do with, we were building equipment for the project and making not just equipment, but certain materials and other small items.
And they were taking pictures of Mars, the flyby, right?
Yeah, they went around behind Mars because they'd never seen that far side.
So TI was a big part of that. Their equipment was a big part of that. And is that what you're talking about? Helped Well,
for the electronics.
Yeah.
For the electronics.
Right. So that's pretty exciting. Mean, of course we're past that now, but back in the sixties, that was a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so how did you then What happened after you'd been at TI for a while that brought you back to the Lord?
Well, I began to be convicted. I didn't know what it was.
Now, before you talk about At this point in nineteen sixty five ish, you had a wife, Martha. And then how many children did you have at that point?
Three.
Three? Three girls. And y'all were living in Dallas.
Right.
Okay. And so Garland, actually. Okay. You mentioned earlier that back when you started building silos, that's when you're introduced to alcohol. Had alcohol become a continuous part of your life?
Yeah, because my job put me in front of that all the time. I went to other companies. When the company had a customer that didn't agree with our specifics that we sold those products on, then I would have to go to those companies. And when we did that, we would go through the factory and then at evenings they would-
Wine and dine?
Wine and dine.
Gotcha. So what brought you? You said you started to tell me that you were under conviction. Yeah. So what happened?
Well, I didn't know what was going on. I felt like everything was really, really going great.
Financially.
Financially and everything else. I was enjoying my work, but I felt deeply, well, I don't know how to put it really, anxious. And I had no reason to be anxious. I thought I had everything in hand. And I just took off from work that first day that happened and went by the place to get me some help where they were selling booze and went to the gym.
And I did that for a few days and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And I was having to pull my legs up against my chest at night because it was so painful. So I thought I'd better check with the doctor. And so I did and he called my wife, Martha, and he said, Are you a Christian? And she said, Yes. He said, Well, your husband is under conviction.
Wow. Your medical doctor said that? Yeah. You were going
to He got to talking to him about my background.
You were going to basically get drunk and then going to the gym to work out. Is that what I'm understanding you?
Well, not necessarily to get drunk, but to get some removal of that anxiety.
Gotcha. Just some relief escape. And then you end up at the doctor's office and the doctor calls your wife and says, your husband's under condition.
Well, that was after a few weeks.
Oh, gotcha.
I had not been going into work.
First couple of weeks.
Yeah, a And few I would have all men bring I had to sign every contract of the company. And so they would bring all the papers and I wouldn't even see them. I wouldn't even have my family with me. I wanted to put them on one end of the house and I wanted to be isolated at another And I didn't want anybody to bother me. So I would have like a We had a room like this and a door like that. And I would have them come in and drop the papers off and I would sign them off and they'd come pick them
up. Wow.
But I was not being seeing them.
So you were pretty isolated.
I was pretty isolated. Yeah.
So your doctor calls your wife. I've never heard the story.
Yeah, he told Martha, he's under conviction.
Wow.
And he said, Don't put pressure on him. But if he decides to go out because he could commit suicide under this stress, and if he starts to go out, just don't put a lot of pressure on him, but do what you can do to discourage him to do that. And I did.
You went out.
I went out and she said, Honey, I hope you wouldn't go. And I told her, I've got to. I've got to. So I went out and got in my car, started driving toward Fort Worth toward the West, got right to a big old airfield where they It was a company that I knew about. And so they used it to test their equipment in an aircraft. So it was a big open spot. And all of a sudden I saw over on my right side of my windshield, a picture of a sailor. I've got it right in there. You've seen it. Yeah.
And it was a wind driver and there was two persons, the sailor, and he was guiding the ship. And there was a person behind him with a hand finger pointing over my left shoulder and his hand is on my right shoulder. And it said, Jesus, savior, pilot me. Wow. And I thought, it shocked me.
So I pulled over right off the road there and that picture changed in the windshield. And it was me sitting in my eye, looking down at myself. Interesting. And behind, I was seeing behind me, this person, Jesus Christ.
Wow.
And he had his finger down, both his fingers down, his head down and tears were coming out of his eyes.
Oh. Wow.
And I said, Oh, Lord, I'm so sorry. Wow. I turned my back on you. And you have you haven't left me.
God's so good. He's so good.
And I told him, I said, Well, I'm your man. Whatever you want, that's what I'll do. And after I of course, I had wept and was in such a terrible sense of I mean, was relieved, but I was having a hard time recovering from my sense of guilt. And I started driving and I was just guided by the Lord, there's no doubt, because I wasn't going anywhere particularly. And it was turn here, went down to about a quarter of a mile or so.
And there was a church out there in the middle of a cotton patch. And turn in here. And I went in and I hadn't shaved. I looked like a hobo. I did. It was awful how I appeared. How I smelled probably everything else. But I went into the vestibule, nobody was out there.
Where was the church? What's the church name?
Rogers Baptist. Okay. Yeah, it was Rogers Baptist. And they had a sounder up here on the wall and he was preaching. And he was preaching on the prodigal son. Gosh. And I listened to it a while and I opened the door, the back door, and I went it was behind, the pulpit was well into front, and sit down in the back pulpit.
The back row of the church?
Back row of
the church.
And you could get out of the main service by several doors on the side, plus this end. So you could get in and out many ways. He gave an invitation and I got up, I went down, I got about halfway and Johnny Tittle was there and Charles and his boys and his wife and a whole bunch of people. And I got halfway up and I fell down. And I began to I lost my cool again.
And I was weeping and Charles came down, the deacons started going outside doors and standing out there because they thought maybe I was a crazy guy. And Charles said, What is it? And I said, I'm that one you were preaching about today.
And
I finally got calmed, but I went home to Martha and I told her about it. And I apologized to her for about what had happened. She called mom. Mom said, Oh, we've been praying for Brian. Me and this lady.
Alta Mae, Alta Mae Disney.
And her, Violet, her good friend, a lady that worked for Sam. Martha started Sam when he started here in the area.
Are you talking about Sam Walton? Yeah. Martha worked for Sam Walton?
Oh yeah.
I didn't know that.
I knew him personally. I've been invited to go to the corporate down here and give a lecture.
Oh my gosh, I did not know that.
About his background and why he was successful and so forth.
Yes, that's so interesting.
Yeah. He was there when our first baby was born and I went in to tell Martha and he made me stop. Fill me up with all stuff. And I went out to the car and turned it and Martha went, What? Hurry up. My water's wrong.
This is a big surprise to me. So how did you and Martha know Sam Walton?
Well, mom worked for her and we came into, in fact, paid, the doctor, the hospital, when the hospital, I went there to pay for it or I was going pay it out. And they said, You don't owe anything.
Was this when Merida was born? Oldest?
When Merida was born. And I finally figured it out, Sam paid for it.
Oh my God.
And then I went to the doctor to ask, you know, and the doctor himself, he didn't charge me anything. Wow. When Martha was born. Edmondson was his name. And when we came back, he became one of our best friends.
When Marita was born?
Yeah. But when Michael was born, he said, Well, I took your first baby for you. He said, I'm going take your last one for you.
Oh my gosh, that's such a great story. Martha worked for Sam or Alta worked for Sam?
Mom did. She was his first buyer. Kinds of stores didn't go out and buy stuff. They had people coming in, filling up-
The shelves.
Shelves, and then finding out how many was sold and going up and giving a bill to the-
Vendor. Yeah. So was this in the original store? Was it Bentonville? Was that where the original store was?
Well, here. I think he might've had one elsewhere first, but then he did the development of many stores right at the time I was going to college. As a matter of fact, my sister married one of the guys that became the whole Southeast Manager for
What's Walmart now? Walmart. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting
That's Green. His name is Green.
Okay. That's so interesting. I had no idea that was part of your story. So when Martha called your mom to tell her you'd come back to the Lord, your mom had been praying.
Yeah. And what happened was she said, told me when I got home, after I told her about the person, and Jesus saved your pilot knee. Thing The billboard. That's the very one right in there that was And she said, I know what it is. And she went in, got a quilt. That lady had made a quilt for us and got that and gave it to us for our wedding present.
Interesting.
And I had forgotten all about it. In fact, I don't think I ever paid attention to it. Don't know.
But this was a sign on the side of the road? Or this was something you saw? This was a sign on the side of the road?
Was an image in the window.
Okay. So you just, that was an image you were seeing that really from your mind, God had put that image in your That's so interesting. Wow. I didn't pick up on that with the I knew you had that picture in there, but So your mother had been praying for you with her friend.
Violet.
Violet. And who was Violet?
She was just a close friend of mom's. They were buddies.
Your story, and I don't wanna talk about myself, but my mom for years prayed for me the same way. And, you know, when I came back to the Lord thirteen years ago, her there's this strong parallel with the way she had prayed for me every day. You know, I was a quote plastic Christian, but I was doing more harm than good to the gospel. You know? And I mean
I know you, Sissy. Know.
I know you do. But it's that, you know, the people who are faithful to pray for us, I don't think we really understand the power that that has wrought on our lives.
Of course, I know. Yeah.
Yeah. So you came back to the Lord in 1967 and did you start attending that church that you'd gone into, the garland?
Right. And of course, being a manager had a lot to do with it because what does a manager what is it responsibility? It's to evaluate what you're supposed to do. What are we supposed to be doing here? And then evaluate, are we getting it done?
And if not, what adjustments have we got to make? So that had been my basic thrust in responsibility as a manager. And so it would be natural for me when I I really knew this from the time I was with DuPont clear over here that this country was going away from the biblical principles Right.
Well, you I mean, you obviously quit your job with TI at some point. When was that? When did you quit your job with TI to basically just go into full time ministry?
The Lord called me very plainly. Martha didn't want to do it and I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to come here. I wanted to stay in Dallas.
Come here meaning Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Yeah. I did University of Arkansas. But that's where the Lord was calling me to. Was very specific. And I would reason with him that, Well, hey, look, you've got all these universities around here.
Don't how to
use it. Why he wanted me to go to the university. I started the concept studies at that church with a senior and juniors of high school and the college kids.
Right. So let's talk about that.
And I did that because of my awareness that there was a big problem. The first thing I noticed in the church and in the culture was that we were not effectively developing our people to have a motivation and to be effective. And it was obvious. There's no discipleship in terms of anything that you could come to a conclusion that motivates you.
Well, let me just pause on that for a minute, because one of the best things about the concepts in my mind is it teaches you how to think and how to take the Bible and answer the hard questions in life. Like, why am I here? Who is God? Why do I need a savior? Why is there a substitute necessary? What is
the That's the concept, the idea of a concept.
Right, right. And that's what you developed. Kind of
See, that's engineers.
That's engineering. Exactly.
I say, I'm not a theologian. I'm an engineer. And that gives me an advantage for the burden that was set before this country. They needed a bunch of
Re engineering?
Re engineering. Yeah, because now we're not people that are farmers, We're not that anymore. And we have to utilize
A system where we are.
A system where we are.
So when you wrote the basic Bible concept study, you had not gone to theology school. You'd gone to engineering school and you'd mentioned earlier, your mother had read the Bible to you. I mean, because really you're talking about a gap in your Christian pursuit of God from the time you were in high school until
Well, he took me to church consistently, us kids consistently. And dad went with her.
So there was a church and your mother.
That's right. Yeah. That was the environment we were in.
It's so interesting to me that, you mentioned you're not a theologian, you're an engineer. And you know, that to me gives such hope to everyone listening to this because the Lord has taken you, an engineer, who was taught by your church and by your mother, and use the education and the drive that you had as an engineer to create a study that was engineered for the twenty first and the thinkers of the twenty first century to understand how to use the, the biblical platform of influence to answer the hard questions and especially the question of how to solve our anxiety, which is what you've described. And to me, that means that me as a lawyer, I can do the same thing. And then we have the person who is maybe works as a nursing home caregiver can do the same thing. We may have a person like mother who stays at home with their children, they can do the same thing.
And because we're so multidimensional and God has given us all a unique gift, we don't have to limit ourselves to thinking that the preacher's supposed to do that. We can take these concepts that have been developed and everybody It's funny because my dad Well,
we hope we're helping the preacher, all of them.
Well, right. You know? Right. I wasn't saying anything bad about preachers. I'm just saying, I think the ordinary individual doesn't A lot of times in Christianity, my experience with discipling people is that they don't understand it's their responsibility to bring people to Christ, to carry out the great commission.
But I think part of that is because they haven't been taught. They haven't been discipled. That's what's so great about the basic Bible concepts. It's so versatile that it it you can any person can use it, what you've created, what God gave you really to adapt it to whatever audience they are, you know, their influence, their platform of influence, whether that is a mother, a teacher, you know, whatever their, person who works in fast food. And it's brilliant actually.
And everybody that teaches it, Brother Kenny teaches it different than my dad does. And I teach it different than Brother Kenny does. And Pat teaches it different, you teach it different. Other people have adapted it, but the principles are still the same.
Right. And that was the objective really, not to have a specific format necessarily, but to have a procedure, but not going away from the individual's characteristics.
Right. Well, it's like math. You can use math to figure your grocery bill, but you can also use math to, invent something electromagnetic. You know, I mean, I just, I think it's like, it's like that. The principles don't change, but the versatility is there because God is so multidimensional.
And I don't know. To me, one of the most brilliant things about the Bible concepts is the beginning of it, which is the poles of influence. You call it the poles of influence. I call it your source of truth just because it's I understand it better that way. And poles of influence tends to be more electromagnetic term.
But it's so interesting how you can take that and I can be talking to somebody who, you know, has this general belief of spiritualism, but hasn't connected with the Bible, the God of the Bible. Tying in the anxiety mechanism, I can just say, well, what is your source of truth? And then very easily go back to, well, if they say it is God's word, then bam, you've got this common denominator you can start with, which reveals that their source of truth really isn't the Bible, but it's their own version of, you know, what they think the Bible says. And then you bring them into, well, how is that source of truth serving your anxiety? How is that satisfying you and giving you a life that's satisfied?
And most of the time it's not. And because they're praying to a God that's not the God of the Bible, they're praying to a God they've made up in their own mind.
Right. That's one of the things that I'm dealing with right now is the See, whenever the Lord told the woman at the well and He said, If you know who I am and about the gift. Well, what he's talking about when he says, know who I am, is far more than what it's saying in the Bible. It's not saying. But whenever you express or imprint into your brain the information on who He is, you are limited to uncertainty.
You have no means, no brain, no capacity to come to a conclusion that says, I am absolutely certain who He is and that He is, I am certain absolutely that He is able to do what He has promised. That comes only as a supernatural event. Giving it to us as it is, we can only know it by to the degree of what I would call superstition.
Interesting.
Or guessing.
Yeah. Very foggy view of God.
Yeah. Yeah. Like the theory, it's a theory.
Like because the natural man receives not the things of God.
Well, that's correct. And that's correct. I mean, that's the verses that should go in there to give it
To substantiate what you're saying, right.
Yeah. Validity, if you know what I'm saying. But God takes that knowledge and makes it valid to our mind. But it's not because we have the capacity to do that. He does that supernaturally for us so that our knowledge isn't just a theory or a guess.
But it becomes personal.
It becomes actually real as a matter of truth. Yeah. A conclusion. I know whom I have believed.
Right.
Now when you go to Matthew 16 and the Lord asked Peter, Who do you say that I, the Son of Man am? Peter said, You're the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Now,
that's a statement of knowing who He is and knowing about the gifts. But the Lord gave a strange, challenging answer. He says, Blessed art thou, Peter. He says, For what? Flesh and blood.
Flesh and blood. In other words, the capability of the natural human being, flesh and blood, hath not revealed this unto you, but my Father, which is in heaven. In other words, it went from being a fact that we do not have a sense of capability to realize it to the degree. See, because if you It's a defense to God to ask Him for something and doubt that he won't get it if he really is who he
is. Right.
See? So what did God do? He gave him the true knowledge of who he was. He didn't know who he was here. He had a theory. Understand?
Oh yeah, yeah, no, I mean
And it transfers through the supernatural in the event that occurs when God
reveals The
sense in our brain of, yeah, it's real.
Well, that's why repentance and faith are both gifts of God. Because those things are not something we can manufacture intellectually.
That's right. Faith, I mean faith you can't. Repentance.
That's right.
All of those things are human beings. We're only allowed to have the capability of hurting his feelings, degrading him. Because it's with an attitude and motivations that are offensive.
Right. We're sinners and we have no capacity to please God on our own. And we can only have faith in
our In that kind of knowledge.
That's right.
See, that's a knowledge of absolute certainty.
That's right.
To a degree of absolute certainty.
Yeah. That's what God gives. And it's such
But did you catch on?
Yeah. No, that's What a
Jesus was saying in Matthew to Peter, he had it at the lower level. God took that and
Gave it to his soul and spirit to be able to acknowledge that he is in fact, Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Right. He gave that sense of the reality of it.
Right. Well, I mean, we're given the mind of Christ when we were born again and it's
Well, but you're not born again yet. You're only born again afterwards. This is something pre born again. It's just the ability to be able to ask Him effectively.
Right. No, I understand you're distinguishing between before you're born again and after, But it's I I think that what's what's a miracle what's a just a miracle that defies explanation to me is after that transaction of salvation takes place, how we can have the mind of Christ. But as Christians, we I mean, I'm well, your story is exhibit eight as well. You you ditched that mind of Christ for a period of time, but he was still in you. And as you became more successful and recognized that there was a wall at how much your success could quell that anxiety that you had based on your need for Christ as a Christian and the continual feeding, God didn't let you just get away with that.
That's right.
He brought you back.
He disciplined every.
Yeah. He scourges every child whom he loves.
But see, what you're doing, you've got choices. Are you going to mature? See? Well, if you go to Hebrews, chapters five and six, you really get a whiff of this.
At
this time you ought to be, at this point, you're not.
Yeah. You should have been teachers and you're still drinking milk. I mean, that's
That's right. But what did he say? That they would even come to a point where God would not give them repentance. And repentance means an urge to please Him.
Dad and I So just
now the project is to mature. If you don't mature, you're going go down in your zeal.
Right. You're either for Christ
or And your capacity to evaluate.
Right. Mean, it's like when I was doing the plastic Christian thing, my ability to perceive the presence of God. And there were times I even wonder if I was born again because I was so far from God. The darkness I'd let control my life. So, back to the concept.
So, you started teaching these to high school and college kids in Texas. Then when you then you mentioned earlier, you were called to Fayetteville to basically be a missionary to the University of Arkansas. Then you started teaching those there as well.
I'm sorry?
You started teaching these concepts that you developed, the basic Bible concepts in Texas to high school and college students. And then when you were called to missionary, to be a missionary in Fayetteville, you also started teaching them there.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I did. I went to the college completely at that time. Because I thought that that's a seed of Satan. And that's the front of the battle. Well, it's All those institutions of influence, Satan was after all Right. Of
because in the sixties, wasn't in the sixties and the seventies where, secular humanism had kind of infiltrated, fully infiltrated to a large degree, all of the secular colleges and was now in
Lot of them.
Lot of them. And so, these basic Bible concepts introduced a way to teach Christians and even non Christians how to think with the biblical worldview and interject that back into this this this realm of the future of our country, really, because we have, you know, people that are develop being developed as thinkers and inventors and lawyers and all these leaders these leadership positions. And so, that was your mission. That was your calling to go to the battle. And the basic concepts were something, a great tool still Yeah, being yeah.
Used
I don't know if I'd ever told you about when I resigned from Texas Instruments.
No, you haven't. I'd like to hear that.
Martha and I had rebelled and was trying to convince the Lord to stay in Dallas. Because I use the excuse, Martha wouldn't join the church. Those are all interesting stories. But when I finally surrendered, Martha and I both said, okay, we're going to go. We sold our house the first day and houses were not being sold that easy in Dallas at that time.
That day, that very day that we made that decision, a buyer came by the house and they said, I think about 90% like to have this house. And the very next day he came back and made the deal.
Wow.
So we were up and coming to Fayetteville without a clue for a plan how to go about it. And that wasn't my way of thinking generally. But I had to let the president and the primary administer, administer. And I went with them in some of the airplanes. I went with them often because I had to go to see other companies.
And they would always arrange to have me to go in the jet. We had two of them in company for the administration. And one of them was the owner of the company. And by the way, he loved Martha to death. He was a down country guy, but he invented the transistors. And he was really down, and his wife was too. She was down. But the other fellow, he was kind of a uppity guy. He was a Baptist. The owner was Catholic.
Interesting. And I was on the train with them and I told them that I was going to resign. And I I told them why. I told them that we this this country. What had happened was we had a five year plan and we had to go to one of the country places, what they call them, country clubs, there in North Texas, North Dallas. Martha went with me. They invited her. They invited me. Martha sat next to the owner on one side and his wife over here.
What was his name?
I can't remember it. I can't remember it. But I may have it down somewhere. But anyway, here's Martha and here's me over here next to him. But he had gotten up and made a presentation And he came back down, he sat down beside Martha and he turned to her and he says, How'd I do Martha?
And she said, I don't know. I didn't understand a word. He laughed and laughed. And it was just a few days after that that I was on the plane and I had told him that I was going to resign. And I told him the reason I was going to resign was that the culture was falling down.
All of the things under the bridges are falling in our culture. And that five year plan is not going to apply because of that. I said, we're in a serious situation in our nation and the seed of the problem is academia. And so I'm going to go back to academia. I was going to go to Fayetteville, Arkansas University. And he said, the owner, he says, I understand.
Was that Patrick Hagerty maybe?
Hagerty.
Hagerty or Jack Kilby?
Hagerty.
Was it Hagerty? Because he was one of the co founders.
If he was the guy that owned it and invented the silicon or the
Well, Jack Kilby was the engineer that co invented integrated circuit. I was just looking it up.
Well, that's it. It wasn't him. But the name you just The other name you gave
is Patrick Cagrity. Patrick Cagrity, sorry.
Anyway, the other man who was the principal, he had been the mayor of Dallas. His response was, Well, when you get back to your senses, come back. That's what he said. My gosh. Earl Wand says, I understand, Brian.
Well, so you left and you guys just just really came did this by faith. I mean, really, you just came to Fayetteville and and, fifty years later, you well, you started you didn't set out to start a church, but you were it became evident at some point that that was what the Lord was leading you to do.
Well, when they ordained me, I had pastors ask me, you all build churches, missionary, I was going be a missionary. It was my pastors, Charles, that said, We need to give you a position as a missionary. Wasn't thinking of it as a missionary. But that was what the Lord wanted. So they ordained me and they were asking me, Well, what's your field?
Campus, University of Arkansas specifically. And I was asked, Well, are you planning on planting churches? And I told them, No, I don't have that in mind. And they kind of look at one another, but they went on ahead nor did.
That's funny. Well, it's just remarkable to me. Well, first of all, let me just say thank you for you know, agreeing to to do this podcast with me because it I think about, you know, and I know we focused it more around the creation of the concept study and everything, but I I think your testimony, that the testimony you've given, it's it's so critical because the Lord took really a farm boy who, you know, gave his life to Christ at age 14 and then, you know, took some wrong turns like we all do, like a lot of us do anyway, and then surrendered like a 100%, you know, as an adult, as a successful adult. And I think about the thousands of people throughout the that's gonna that's gonna be on the recording, that tapping. You need stop tapping.
And used your surrender and this amazing study that was inspired by God to carry out the great commission all over the world. Because and and I I mean, we could tell we could talk about your the story of your life and what you've done for the last fifty years. I mean, for hours of podcasting, and maybe we'll do this again. But I think it's just important to understand that every decision that we make I mean, the lady who the person who made that that picture of the sailor and and I mean, think about the pivotal role she played in your life. And the pastor at the Garland Baptist Church who didn't kick you out for being crazy, but instead, you know, it was used to the Lord and because of the discernment of the Holy Spirit.
And then your decision to, you know, see that the culture of our university had changed and how the Lord used your engineering background, your background, the biblical background you'd receive, the training from your mother. You know, every university professor, every even the Navy, the naval training you got, your mother's decision to read the Bible with you every night. All those were pivotal in in the work that you've been doing. And every person listening to this podcast has the same pivotal role they can play when led by the spirit and trained in God's word. And that was that was the I mean, the that's the reason we do this podcast is because it's called truth and love because you gotta have both, you know, and and your story is is just brimming with people who loved you, how you've loved others and how you let the truth of the gospel and the truth of God's word guide your path.
And I personally, you know, I don't think that I would have been born again had it not be for your ministry. And I bet there's a lot of people listening to this podcast who would say the same thing. And I'm not trying to give you, you know, swell your pride or anything, but it's a gratefulness. It's a thankfulness. I want to be an encouragement.
I want this to be an encouragement to you that you're on that track, I think of, you know, well done good and faithful servant, because I, I, I know there's lots of people that are gonna gonna be in heaven and they're gonna say thank you for giving to the Lord because I'm a soul that was changed. So I just wanna say, you know, thank you brother Brian for being willing to be on this podcast and for telling us your story. It's been such a pleasure.
Well, you, young lady. You must be in very short of things to go after.
No, no. I've been wanting to do this for a while and I appreciate you joining me today. So thank you.
Okay. Amen. Thank you.
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