Open Up Your Grandmother's Bible
By Tom Benjamin
Bishop & Senior Pastor
Light of the World Christian Church
I was 22 years old and a college graduate with a job, new ride, and a fist full of dollars - and yet was lost in sin. A fellow caseworker who was also a pastor at the Division of Child Welfare in Cleveland, Ohio saw my condition and told me about a man who could raise the dead. He said the man's name was JESUS. I asked him where could I hear more about this man called JESUS. He told me of his church and invited me to come. I waited several months before I took him up on the offer.
In the meantime I sought the Lord on my own and one day at my wit's end the Lord Jesus found me and I found him. That day in the living room of my grandmother's home, I sought the Lord with a desperate passion. I was directed by the Holy Spirit to open my grandmother’s Bible and to read wherever the Bible opens to. The pages opened to the book of Jeremiah and my finger fell on the first chapter, which talked about Jeremiah calling "then the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet unto nations." What was strange was that as I read, I never saw Jeremiah's name, only my own name as the passage begins speaking of the place of the prophet’s birth as the land of Benjamin.
I cried out to the Lord and I asked him to save me from my sins. He honored my request and I became a born again follower of the Savior. He saved me by my finally believing in his precious blood as the solution for my sin. I was transformed. He literally picked me up and turned me around and then placed my feet on solid ground. I went to Bill Hannah's church the next Sunday, which was meeting in a house. Jesus met me again. I joined the church one Sunday; I got water baptized the next, and preached my first sermon on the next Sunday. I have never looked back from that day and I have never been the same.
God answered the prayers of my sainted grandmother while she was still alive to see it. Now from the balcony of heaven along with millions of others she is rooting me on like when I first came to live with her from the broken home of my parents. Yes I rode that midnight train to Cleveland and I was only 5 years old. When I jumped off the train into her arms, I really jumped into the arms of Jesus. She cried out, "How's Mama's boy?" Well, Mrs. Marilla Roberts Jackson, I am happy to report I am saved from the penalty of sin and the fires of hell, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost and in spite of dangers, toils, and snares I am still preaching the blood of Jesus and Him crucified. Yes, and I am on my way to heaven and I wouldn't take nothing for the journey?
Won't you join me and Jesus?
