Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Finding Your Purpose in Life [Featuring George Jackson]

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

If you’ve ever wondered whether your life could have an eternal impact, this conversation will open your eyes to what ministry is truly about and how you can discover your God-given purpose. In this episode, Pastor Allen continues his conversation with his father, George Jackson, who shares powerful and personal stories from years of ministry alongside his wife, Betty. What began as quiet obedience to God’s call led them to 15 nations, where they witnessed firsthand the miraculous ways God’s truth breaks through language barriers and unexpected challenges. Their story shows that ministry can happen anywhere—through relationships, prayer, and simply showing up when God says, “Go.”More Information:The Eternal Breath of Life: https://store.allenjackson.com/category/offers?source=25WEBH000An Extraordinary Life: https://store.allenjackson.com/purchase/bk130228—It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective.Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you.Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6dListen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome to culture and Christianity. It's a highlight for me getting to talk to you about what God is doing in the earth. He's moving in the most remarkable ways. This session is pretty exceptional for me. I get to talk to my dad again. We've done a couple of podcasts already. And we're just kind of walking chronologically through his God story. And we'd reached the point where the church was founded and the church had really taken root.

It was going to survive. And he's ready to retire from veterinary medicine. And he's going to spend 20 years, he and my mom traveling the globe. I mean, quite literally, from Africa to Asia to South America, Central America. They spent 20 years in Israel. We're going to tell a story of what God is doing in the earth through ordinary people, but achieving really some extraordinary outcomes. I think you'll enjoy it.

It'll give you hope that if you know how to make sweet tea and a pecan pie, God can use your life to an impact a nation. So enjoy the podcast. It was a blessing to me. I have the privilege today of talking to my father again. This is the third part. Yeah. We didn't know this was going to be a whole series when we started.

Definitely not. I don't know if it's signed up. You're not just making this stuff up, right? You're telling the truth. For the most part, you can bank on it. All right. Well, this is the third segment. And really, it's a testimony.

You're telling your God's story. That's just the life we lived. This part's the fun part. We're going to go around the world. Yeah. So you got outside of Middle Tennessee, you retired from veterinary medicine. 1999. And sold your practice.

So you were unhooked from cleaning cages and cleaning stalls and vaccinating dogs for rabies and all the stuff. And you... And all three boys were out of the house. Everybody was grown. And the church that you had founded was established enough. Yeah, 1999, definitely, almost 20 years. That you had some freedom to point your attention someplace else. Yeah, we'd hired a pastor an exorbitant price.

Yeah, yeah. I have a different memory, but I was here. But literally, you covered the world. You went to Philippines? Yeah, we went to 15 nations during our life doing that before we ever went to Israel. Well, let's unpack them. You went to the Philippines. you worked with intervarsity.

You know, you really introduced us to that when you were in college and you went for that summertime. And we met some of the students came and lived with us for a short time so that it gave us a comfort zone to go back and visit them. And if you've never, what you've done, it, flown to the Philippines, it's more than the other side of the world. It's a long ways off. But the way I remember, we went two times.

And there's two things I was thinking today. I wanted to encourage people to get their heads working right when they're thinking about doing mission work. It sounds good when you're over here eating ice cream from Baskin-Robbins. But when you go to do it, one of the first things that really kind of woke me up was when we were there on our first trip, we were staying in a little apartment with our beds.

We were a little narrow board with a cotton pad on it on each side. And we were primarily, I was working with three or four, 18 to 21-year-old fellows that were working with I InterVarsity. And so I thought, you know, I saw the condition where they were living. I thought, I'll take them on a shopping trip. So me and the boys went down to the shopping area, and I let them free get what they wanted. I remember one of them bought a big boom box, and we bought the things that they were interested in. They were excited.

We went back to the apartment, and we sat down, and we were just talking, and one of them said, you know we don't like Americans. And I said, yeah, why is that? Because, I mean, we'd been there two or three days, and I thought, if I'd made friends, I had some good friends. So he said, well, you help the Japanese and you didn't help the Filipinos. So we're talking about generations.

This was in the late 80s, and the war was over in 46. So things trickle down through the generations that they don't always understand. It's why you're doing your job. They do. You went to India? Yeah. That was an I.

You worked with an orphanage there and some ministries that had been there a while. Right. It was, they had like 1,200 orphans at this place. And we were there for a week or a little better because they had a pastor's conference. And we taught the conference on blessing or curse. And every country you go to, you get a whole new vision of understanding what it means to be a Christian. I mean, there was one young woman there at the conference. And when I say young, she was in her early 20s.

And she was there because her father had been killed the year before by the Hindus. He was a pastor of a congregation. and these little students, which I couldn't imagine how you would handle that many, but they had like just a little bed roll laying along the wall, and they had like a shoebox at the head of their pillow, and that was their worldly possessions. And twice a day they cooked a huge pot of something, and the kids went out there and ate twice.

I mean, we don't understand how some of these places the sacrifice they make to help adults and children. Or how affluent we really are. Right, yeah. We complain or we're concerned that our children didn't get to vacation in the right resort, and the vast majority of the kids in the world have no imagination of any of that.

I'm going to tell, I'm no interrupting, but I want to tell a funny story about the Philippines for or forget it. The second trip, Mom and I went there. It was part of the building of the I Interversity Fellowship, and they took us upstairs to a room, and there were two mats rolled out on the floor. This was the room that you had to stay in.

This is where we were going to spend the night, and Betty looked over along the baseboard, and there was a nice big round hole there, or something could go in and out. And she said, what is that? I said, well, we'll just have to guess and wait till in the night and we'll see. So we slept on the floor that night, but you could hear friends running in and out and around through the floor. So the next night there was kind of like a wide shelf, and we moved our pad up on that shelf.

so we slept on a rather narrow bed. But she was much more comfortable when we didn't have those holes in the wall. But being a missionary has a lot of different aspects that people don't think about when they're here. Well, I think that's part of this narrative. You traveled the world, but the majority of the time it was just you and mom. Right. There's a couple of exceptions where you recruited some folks to go with you. But generally, the two of you were the...

We were the team. You were the scouts on assignment. And you did not stay in five-star locations. We went to the east half of the Congo one time. We're going to Africa in a minute. Don't get ahead of me. Okay. Okay.

Well, that was the bottom of the wrong. Go ahead. Well, you did the Philippines, India, but at one point you took Africa and you spent the better part of a year traveling through Africa. Yeah. Primarily in that time, we were in Kenya, which, Kenya's in Africa to me. It's the closest being at home you can be. However, there are exceptions. We were sitting downtown one day with our friends, our African friends.

In Nairobi. In Nairobi, downtown Nairobi. We weren't but three blocks away from the hotel, which was very, very nice that we stayed in. And Mom was sitting there with her arm upon the wind of car and her friends in the back said, Betty, put your arm back in the car. You might lose it for that watch that's on your arm. So she came back in the car. But, I mean, there are things we don't think about here. The hotel, it was lovely. We enjoyed it, the food, everything. But we could not go further than just the edge of the grass in front of the hotel. It wasn't safe for us to walk around town like when you go to Israel, turn them loose. You can go wherever.

Right. But Africa is a bit different. So in Kenya, you did pastors conferences. Right. You went and met in, and you went into some of the smaller church towns. Right. I mean, you went out to, to Bungoma. Yeah, Bungoma is just two or three miles from the Uganda border.

And they had to put guards at your windows. Right. You were staying in people's homes. Very nice. Yeah. And again, when you left the house, you couldn't go. by yourself. It wasn't safe. No, no. We walked two to three blocks down to the bank. I was going to give them a check

for money to put in their bank. We walked to the bank with our friends from there in Bungoma. But once we were done in the bank, he said, I have a car waiting out front to take us back to the house, three blocks. It wasn't safe to walk out of a bank. And there were no windows in the bank, but outside walking around the bank or soldiers with weapons, just right outside the wall of the bank. It's just a different culture. But there's a family there that has a ministry, the Bouchabees. Right. I've got an email from them today. I was going to say we're still involved with them. Right. And sharing a bit of ministry with them. Yeah, they've started many churches and done so many good things. It wasn't wasted time. And you helped a ministry from Nairobi that planted

dozens and dozens of churches. Oh, yeah. Not just in Kenya, but throughout East Africa. Right. Yeah. We took a trip one time with Steve Kibbacia to go down to Tanzania, if you're in Africa. Here they call it Tanzania. Tanzania. But we rode down about halfway and came to the border crossing. Well, it took us an hour to get across the border because Steve had to go in and bargain, use all of his abilities as an African to get the price for us to go in

was $50 a piece just to cross the border. And in Africa, they send what they call a runner ahead of you, an African to go down and secure your hotel so everything's ready when you got. there. So when we got down to the town we were going to, the man had secured our hotel, and we went up to the third floor, I think it was. And we found out he paid $4 a night for the hotel. But after we were there, we figured out why. He overpaid. I had to go around the hall with a bucket to get hot water out of a tank so Betty could have a bath that night.

And there was a social club, I'll call it, down the hall quite a ways. And you've never heard such noise and screaming on during the night. Our door to the room was a slatted screen door. Well, Betty had the brain, I guess, was a. engineers because she set a chair by the door with a hairspray can, so if anybody moved in the door, the hairspray can hit the concrete and we'd wake up. But that wasn't enough. They had to park our car that we rode in inside the building, which was in a square shape. If you left it on the street, they would have stripped it. So they left it inside the building, but right around

our window that went around. There was a nice ledge where anyone could walk. And mom happened to notice all those things. But you get some real new experiences when you travel. Yeah. But, you know, I was in Tennessee listening to the stories or the reports. And the behavior was, in many respects, your behavior was really similar to what you'd done here. We've talked about it in here.

Going to the communities around Middle Tennessee or wherever the Lord opened the door, having a Bible study, sharing your God's stories, encouraging people to choose the Lord. Then you started doing it in Africa. Yeah. It wasn't like you came up with a new behavior. Oh, no. You just came up with a, instead of taking your three boys along, making us do all the grunt work, you got new friends to go. Yeah. We took some from here in Murphersboro with us different times.

Well, you went into Congo. Yeah. Which at the time, I mean, the Congo still struggles. There's a, I think Congo has a darkness over it that's similar. It reminds me of Haiti. Yeah. Just generationally difficult. But even to get to the Congo, we had to go to Ronda, which Rwanda is what we call it here, but there they call it Ronda.

We had to go there, make friends first, teach there, become friends with pastors and different ones to have enough connections. to be able to go across the border into the Congo. We were, you've got to use what you've got. And we were sitting in the hotel one night, having dinner and met this nice couple who he was the lawyer, had been the attorney general for one of the countries there. And as we sat and we're talking,

he said, that man that's helping you, he was getting his all set up to go into the Congo. He said, he's not a lawyer. He's not what he's telling you he is. And just so you'll know it. Well, I was already hooked up and he was making the arrangements to go. So you have to work with the people that God puts in your path.

And so you have some real, experiences that you don't know if you're going back home or not. Well, in Congo especially, because I think you got to meet with one of the government officials who was very good to you, gracious to you. It had actually Congo, eastern half, had no official government. It was just run by what we'd call the mob. And to go into the country, we crossed a little tiny creek about like in front of my house. and it looked like

an oversized outhouse was their official building, and that's where Steve, once again, it took a long time to negotiate how much we were going to pay. We sat in the van and you can imagine the temperature there on the equator

and anyway, when we went on in, they told us to go to this house, had a wall around it, and they ushered Betty and I up to the second floor. Well, when we got up to the second floor, sitting there on the steps was a guy in just a t-shirt and khakis had a weapon land across his lap. And they showed us right on in the door. And we met the man who I thought was some kind of a governor or something, but I later found

out after we were there for a week, he was in charge of security over a big area of the Congo. Well, we sat and talked with him. We had translators because they spoke French and talked with him and their translator, and I led him to the Lord. And with my great wisdom, I had brought a book of Derek Prince's that had five little books in it, all in French,

and I left it with him. So that's the kind of ministry you do. It's not always a Belly Graham crusade. And that same man, about a year later by going through Rwanda sending me an email to Murfreesboro

asked me for a picture that I took of him and Betty and I one night we went to what they called the country club and I bought the meal every one of us what we called back in Missouri

was a bottle of soda pop you got orange or whatever flavor. That was the whole all we had. That's all they had in the Congo. And so I managed to send him a photo back that we'd taken that night of him with us because he was going to have a Christian wedding

and he wanted to know from those pictures for whatever reason. So you do it little by little when you go to these countries. Well, if my memory is correct, When you were in the Congo, you took a flight. I don't know how you got scheduled on that. In all fairness, when you get off, when we let you off the leash, you do some crazy things. So you scheduled a flight on an old surplus Russian plane, cargo plane?

That's right, yeah. And there was some significant concern whether it had the capacity to take off or land. Yeah. It was, it was, we sat right behind the pilot. We had some people from Rwanda with us. We had a couple three from Murphysboro. We had about seven people. And they were Russian pilots, and they weren't discreet,

because while we stood 50 yards from the airplane, one of them didn't know where there was a bathroom, so he just took care of everything out there under the airplane. And so you knew you were in a well-trained group. But we got on the plane sitting right behind the two pilots. There was no cushion. It was a metal bench that went around a room, three-quarters the way around a room.

And you could look down and look out of a little window. And when we were flying over the jungles, you could look down all you could seize the jungle because there were absolutely no road you couldn't get from there. We went to Kisangani, which is the center of the Congo there on the Congo River. And, I mean, it was a smooth flight, no problem. But we came back on a little plane, and when we were in the airport making the financial transactions, our ticket, if they tore a corner off of that paper you've got over there,

they handed it to me with some scribble on it, and that was my ticket to get on the plane. I mean, you get used to things that are along ways from Murfreesboro. The hotel we stayed in, all the windows along the top of the hallway, had bullet holes through them. But you do ministry. We had a meeting one afternoon. with, we'd call them junior high students.

And mom gave them the gospel, talked to them. We had 12 little kids except Jesus. And so it's just in such a different format that you had it. The pastor lived just right down the street from where we stayed in the hotel. And we went there for a nice dinner one night. And then we prayed with him and his family, his wife. So it's just a total. different look at how you minister to where the people needed that day at that time.

Well, you spent about a year bumping around. You were in Rwanda multiple times. And that was still in pretty close proximity to the genocide there. There were a million Rwandans murdered in a tribal war between two tribes in a 90-day window. That's hard to imagine a million people. and most of them were murdered with machetes. Yeah, it was terrible. And you stepped into the midst.

There was still a tremendous turmoil in Rwanda from that. Between the Hutus and the Tutsis. And we had a conference there. We held a conference, and we had men in the conference from both tribes. In fact, there was one man, always remembered him that was Walt crippled on his left side because they'd taken one of those big hos like they work in the field with, hit him in the head and damaged his brain. But he came to the conference.

There was a young man in his 20s that when he came and heard the truth and the scripture, he went that afternoon out under a tree for over an hour by himself because he'd been involved in that murder and war between the tribes. And we would see some significant things take place. I mean, it was just be different in the different towns. One town when we just crossed the border and we're in that town, it reminded me of a cow shed when farmers in Missouri back in the 40s

milked in a little wooden shed with a tin roof. We had it full with people, and we taught them for several days. on blessing her curse there. So it was, we were in several different towns. Our friends. Mom wanted to go down when we were in Kisangani, I think it's where it was. She wanted to go down and see the river, because it's a huge river that comes up and around.

The Congo River. Uh-huh, Congo. And the man she was talking to said, well, we can go down there, but we won't come back. So she decided to stay where we were. But our friends in Rwanda, I remember that they referred to the United Nations as the United Nothing. Yeah. They said that when the butchering was taking place that the UN representatives did absolutely nothing. It was a horrible story.

Yeah. Well, we're still friends with Robert who was just, when we were there, he was under the pastor. There was over their church. he was just starting his ministry and just had gotten married. And he now is in the northern part of Rwanda and has a hundred churches under him. He's become a bishop. Episcopal. Yeah, Episcopal, Anglican.

But they stand for different values. No, no. When Mom and I were in Israel, probably 10 years ago, he came there on a national conference, but he was so busy, we couldn't actually go and see him in the same city. but we talked to him, and they were there because the African pastors were standing against the things that the United States and Britain were allowing in the church. Yeah, there's a segment of Christianity in Africa that is more orthodox than in America. Very much so. We're still in touch with him.

He checks in with some regularity. You spent that year or a little more bumping around Africa, and then you got a phone call. from Jerusalem. And Brother Prince was asking you if you would be willing to come to Israel for a season. You stopped in Israel a few times back and forth between Africa. Yeah, we would stop there and through the years we'd been there. And Derek knew pretty much what we'd been doing with our life since 1965. but he actually talked to mom that day that he called.

And when she told me what he said, I said, send him an email and tell him I want him to write it down. I want to know what's on his mind. Because I knew Derek well enough that he had something thoughts. So he did. He sent me an email. We looked at it. And then we flew over there in 202,

spent some time with him. to hear better what he had in mind. Actually, we took him to Vermont Raquel, which is not far from where his partner was, to spend a weekend with just the objective that weekend. Derek, I want to know what you want us to do. And once you've been with Derek, he doesn't write down a sentence unless he digests ever word.

And we had fun there that weekend, but he was delineating. I've still got a card with those things on it with five or six specific objectives he wanted us to do. And Ramat Raquel has, you've been there, a nice buffet every day, so we stayed, had a good time we're eating, and we're in the dining hall eating one day, and this lady came over to me,

and she said, is that Derek Prince? and I said, yes, ma'am, it sure is. And she said, we're from Germany. And when he was there, he prayed for my husband and I that we'd have children. And I just wanted to show him the children. So they came over to our table. And so you had a lot of variations going on when you were doing your objectives. But we held seminars, as you know.

The main thing we did is we established personal relationships. across Israel when we were there for 20 years. I said that with my father recently did a podcast. He told the story how he came to faith, how God transformed our family. They started a home Bible study all the way up to the beginning of this church that I've served now for decades.

As I listened, the heart of it was the work of the Holy Spirit in his life and through his life. I ask him to do a book around the topic, and we have it so that you can invite the Spirit of God to be the dynamic presence of the power of God to bring change in life and hope, no matter what the circumstances. You'll enjoy the book. Experience the Holy Spirit in a deeper way with this new book by Pastor Allen's dad,

The Eternal Breath of Life. Request your copy when you donate any amount today. And when you give $50 or more, you can also request unleashing the power of the Holy Spirit. It's a collection of Pastor Allen's sermons that will help you understand the Holy Spirit in new ways. Request yours today at Alan Jackson.com. From my vantage point, there was a bit of an order of March. When you retired and sold your practice, your peer group made a different set of choices for the most part. There were some exceptions, but you could have bought a vacation home someplace closer to a beach or a mountain.

You could have done a lot of things with your time. And you chose to go to places in the world that are not on most people's vacation list. No. You know, you might have stayed in the nicest hotel that was available in Kisangani, but most of us wouldn't consider it acceptable accommodations. I mean, I got in on some of that. I came to Kenya for a pastor's conference. Right.

Kind of at the end of that tour you had had. And there were about 500 pastors that had come from East Africa, from Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda. Was that in Steve's tent? No, no. Where was it? We rented a school. Okay.

So we could feed everybody that came. Okay. We fed them their meals and they slept and the classes hadn't started. And so we used the assembly hall for the meeting. And that's when we were supposed to stay in the guest house, remember? And we got there and they'd canceled our rooms. So Steve said he was going to take us to a hotel. Made my wife a little anxious.

But we ended up in a beautiful hotel. Okay. But I have a memory of that. I think it was a four-day seminar. Okay. And we would start in the morning and teach all day long. And after about two days, you said, I was working too hard that you'd talk to Steve, and the next day I'd get a lighter day.

And about 6 o'clock the next evening, I said I would pray for any of the pastors that wanted prayer. And all 500 of them got in line. And it was midnight when we got done. Over your light day? I told you to leave my schedule alone. I remember that part. But I could walk through that room of pastors, and I could just,

the ones that had been in one of your conferences and had gotten some deliverance and spiritual freedom, you could physically see a difference in them in a room. It was truly remarkable to see the fruit from what you had done. But I think your faithfulness in those places where nobody wanted to go, showing kindness to people that were, for the most, part overlooked, in my opinion, was what nominated you in God's site for that next assignment.

Right, yeah. And then Derek calls and asks you to come to Israel, and the heart of that really was about translating literature. Right. You were supposed to put together a team of people. Your Hebrew is a little thin. Yeah. I had some really nice people that did it and edited it properly.

We didn't start out that way. Oh, no. We started out with some problem children, because I got included in some of that. No, it didn't happen overnight. But you ended up with a team of Israelis that could translate and edit content. Because what you discovered was there was a lot of things being translated but for Americans that was subpar. But the Americans were distant and removed and didn't know. But you and Mom lived there at least half the year.

You got a little apartment in Jerusalem. Right, right. And I say little. It was about 1,200 square feet. Yeah. My two bedrooms because I thought Derek would come and spend time with us, but he never did.

What happened? He just... He got mad at you? He drove by with me one day. I said, Derek, I want to show you our apartment. He said, where is it? We drove over by where it was. I said, it's right up there on the third floor.

Good. I know you've got it. That's fine. We can go back now. He never did. I rented a place with an elevator, an extra bedroom. I thought he was.

would come. But as it worked out, we rented that in June. He went to heaven in September. So God has our lives planned better than we do. So you started translating his books into Hebrew, which took a bit to get the system in place and to get them edited in a way that was helpful for the people there. And then you went to work to build distribution networks. So you get the books into the hands of people. It took a lot of persistence and consistent effort. We had one couple that we met in our first years there when they were newly married, didn't have any children yet, and we kept them as an employee for those 20 years,

even though he developed a profession. Because I told him after about a year when we got to know him personally, I said, you've got to go back to college and get an education where you can take care of your family. And probably three or four years ago, before the war and all started, he was in charge of like 18 schools that were under contract for spatial needs children. He got his master's degree, but he continued to help us through the years. We had websites and things. Lives in a cabootz right down by the Dead Sea. Right, yeah.

If you visit him, don't go in the summertime. But they've got children now that we've seen grow up that have been in the Army and those getting ready to go in the Army. You knew him before he was married. Right. And then they got married, and then they started having kids, and now their kids have been through the Army. Right.

So you had a long, almost 20 years. We did have from, we rented the apartment, June of 03, and we still had it rented in 23. How many books? I forget 21. 25 to 30. I'd have to count them up. But over 25 books we had translated. But some of them then, as the years went through, I saw they'd be more helpful, and it took some persistence.

We took like his foundation, series and broke it up into smaller books like he originally had it in English. And to keep the titles to where they were meaningful with Hebrew took a lot of efforts sometimes. I would have to call in independent people to say, read this to me and tell me what it means in English, because those translations aren't always as easy as you think. Well, Hebrew's an old language. language, and it's more difficult than some of the more modern languages to translate

back and forth. But the thing that I observed when you were there that was, I didn't understand until I watched it, you had a team of Israel, or a group of Israelis that you got to know. You just followed relationship threads. And then there's a group of international people you got to know, primarily English speaking, or at least they all spoke English, but some were Americans, but a lot of them were from other places in the world. Oh, yeah. But that group were tended to be Christians, the common thread with them. And the same things you had done in Middle Tennessee was the pattern you used.

You really gathered a congregation. You didn't meet for a worship service. No. But you had a group of dozens and dozens of people that you were shepherding. And it all started in the way with your hospitality. I've got pictures in our apartment of 10 and 12 people around a table. Mom was feeding them spaghetti and the things that go with it, a salad and sweet tea.

Pecan pies. Right. You opened your home and were kind to people, told your story about how God had changed your life, and then it would invite them towards change. Right. I can't remember how many times I would talk to you and you'd tell me somebody that you'd spent the day with, I remember a young man from Tel Aviv that had come over.

He had a job. He used to climb radio antenna towers. I'm still in touch with him. And recently he's gone to be a missionary in Thailand. I mean... We better pray for Thailand. Yeah. He became, though, with an encouragement,

he became not just a welder. He learned how to do spatial welding. and he stayed a Christian through the years. He's not very... I won't go back to it, but it was the same things you learned in Tennessee that I saw you practice in Africa, that I saw you take to Jerusalem, and you landed in Jerusalem,

and you didn't know the Hebrew alphabet. No. Forget the vocabulary words. And yet you're responsible for a library of Christian, probably the largest library of Christian literature from a single author that's ever been translated. Yeah. I watched you make friends with the neighbors.

And some of them were Orthodox Jews, which meant they couldn't sit in your kitchen. They couldn't drink a cup of tea with you. No. But you made friends. Mrs. Simone lived downstairs. Yeah. How old was Ms. Simone? She's older than you.

Yeah, well. And you were on the ark. But she was, I can truly say we loved her. She had a shoulder hurt. She couldn't bathe herself. And she'd already lost Morris, her husband, and was there alone right below us, and mom would go down and give her a bath.

And those were things we did. We came back, just coming back from America one time, you get into the airport at 4 in the evening, you get back to your apartment at 7 o'clock, and we were just getting our suitcases in the door, and the man from upstairs comes down, and he said, could you all come up and have the dinner with us?

It was a, they were having some spatial dinner and we went up and only two of their children could speak English. But those, that's what made it meaningful is we made relationships that mom never learned Hebrew and Vicky upstairs never learned English. But over the back railing on our patio, they communicated for 20 years. When we went to America, she poured water down on our flower pots so the things didn't die. I mean, we had relationships. Well, and there was a lady on the first floor. Oh, yeah. Whose husband had dementia and then passed away.

They'd had an exclusive men store in Jerusalem for many years. On Jaffa Road. But she was orthodox. Oh, yeah. Oh, my. But she became a good friend. With mom. and talked because she had came up with cancer.

Because, I remember one time I came to visit, she wouldn't have tea with me. So I went down with Orly. They invited us to Shabbat dinner one time and brought us all into their home, which, again, is not typical behavior. The Jewish community, particularly the Orthodox, you know, the Jewish community is as diverse

as our communities here, from completely secular to very religious and everything in between. And Orly's family were Orthodox. I mean, they were ruleskeepers. Right. But they opened their lives to non-Jews, which is not typical. Yeah, Mom and I went over to their house one night,

so over to her daughter's house to have dinner, there was a group, a dozen people, so that their rabbi could meet us. He was there that night. Checking out, see how kosher you were. So we got into some good places. But I can't overstate that you didn't learn something new, or it wasn't for huge crowds of people. No.

Or it wasn't something that most people were even willing to invest the time and effort in. But it bore remarkable fruit. We basically worked with individuals, and it spread. the lady that taught the physicians out at Hadassah Hospital to speak Hebrew because they came from other nations. She met this doctor from Azerbaijan and she brought her over to our apartment one day and mom in talking with her because she knew English

the lady from Azerbaijan, but she was having to learn Hebrew. She was going to be an ophthalmologist, what her dad was, and her brother was. And she came to know Jesus in a very real way. I mean, I've got pictures of her, and she gets your outlines every time you preach a sermon. We're still in touch with her. I get notes from her. I mean, those things didn't end. and when we left them.

No, there are dozens and dozens of relationships we still have. I mean, we met a German lady. I came over during the Intifada. We were the only people staying in the hotel I was staying in. You couldn't get food, but I remember we had an, so you scheduled an appointment. I was agitated. I was there for like three days and you scheduled an appointment with somebody, which would be normal.

and Inge came, and she had grown up in horrific circumstances in Germany. Oh, terrible. Her father owned a bar, and about the worst things you could imagine for a little girl. And she really came to Israel to get away. But by God's direction, ended up caring for Holocaust survivors and spent 30 years caring for what she calls the old people. Yeah. To the point that she's a German, not Jewish.

but they made a citizen out of her where she can vote because of what they observed her doing over 30 years. And people that will watch this have no idea what that means for you to become a citizen when you're a Gentile, German? A German. Oh, man. But the reason they did it was the old people,

the Holocaust survivors in Israel are the most celebrated citizens in the nation, the most respected. And the old people came to Inge, and they said, we want you to be one of us. And also the police. The police carried the flag, too. We helped her with the process.

But the ones that made the difference was the Holocaust survivors. But Inge got so much freedom on that visit, so much deliverance. It changed. I think there's, we tell the good things. It wasn't all fun. You were landing at the airport one time,

coming in from America, standing in the line for passport control, and you collapsed. Mom said I fell over like a tree. And the man behind you was a doctor, coincidentally, but he couldn't resuscitate you. But because you were in the airport, they had a crash cart. And so the medics, you don't remember this part. No, it was black. went black. The medics managed to shock you and get your

heart started. If that had happened 10 minutes earlier on the plane, you wouldn't have survived. No. If it had happened 10 minutes later and you were in a cab on the way to Jerusalem, you wouldn't have survived. So it was probably the only point in the place between New York and

that that was a survivable event, coincidentally. So I'm in Jerusalem. I'm getting ready to go preach at a Russian Jewish church and my phone rings and it's mom and she said, I can hear an ambulance. And she said, Alan, it's Shabbat, it's Friday evening. She said, I'm in an ambulance.

I don't know where I'm at and I don't know where I'm going, but your dad's had a heart problem and they're taking it somewhere. And I said, well, I'll meet you there. And we hung up and I called Ronnie a friend. Now, he's having Shabbat dinner, and I said that my dad's in an ambulance,

and he said, I'll pick you up in 10 minutes, we'll find him. And by the time he got to the hotel, he knew where you were going. I have no idea. I've accused him for years of being in the Mossad. That night I thought. And when I could see you the next day at the hospital, I walked in and said, well, you just about did it. And you said, well, I wasn't that far gone.

I don't know how far gone you wanted to get, but you were knocking on a door. And the amazing thing, with my heart totally stopped, my restoration stopped, and Mom just stood over me saying, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I didn't wake up until I was in the ambulance bouncing on the way to that little hospital they took me to, which was a military hospital. And I could watch my monitor. My enzymes were normal. I had no muscle damage.

Everything remained normal. But it was Friday night, Shabbat. They couldn't do anything for me until Sunday because we had to wait until the Shabbat was over. But you got a stint. I got a stint, yeah. Made the difference. It did.

But, I mean, the timing in that was... Oh, yeah. It was the only way you would have survived. Ms. Simone went to heaven while you were there. I know you loved her. Oh, well, she always liked to meet Mom and I when we came back at Aroma. I don't know how much time you've got, but...

We're good. The sun's going down. They quit listening when they're tired. And Mrs. Simone, we called her and said, and we're back and we'd like to meet you. And she said, I will be there and meet you. I said, well, I can come get you. I've got a car.

No, I will ride number whatever bus. She told me it'll bring me right to the corner. Well, we went down to Roma and we waited, and she never, ever showed up that day. And we didn't know what had happened. Which was very unusual. Oh, she was always there. and she was cute when it came to Feast or what do they call it?

Perim, they dress up like we do at Halloween, and she'd always wear something funny, a hat and some dresses and stuff to look different at Perim with us. But the next day a woman came to our door of her apartment and knocked and asked who we were, and that we were friends of Mrs. Simone. And she said that that day, when she was coming to see us, there was a dead-end street back of her house,

and she cut down and was walking up that street towards the bus stop and that there was a big truck at the end of it, and it was backing up. But he couldn't see her out of his mirrors where she was walking in the middle of the street, and he ran over. And Mom and I went to the hospital to see her. got to see her whispered in your ear but there were dozens and dozens

and dozens of people from Israel and around the world because Jerusalem is an international city people come there from all over the globe yeah we had doctors from all-income visitors people from Germany different places because

Derek was well known around the world and they put the information out that we were there and so with sweet tea and pecan pie and a little southern hospitality and a God story. Right. You impacted people from all over the world that had an interest in knowing the Lord better. Yeah.

The Jewish people, a lot of them, hadn't had much teaching. They had chosen to accept the Messiah as a reality, but they needed personal encouragement and teaching. I mean, I've made fun of you for 40 years, because when you named the church, there were fewer than 30 people, and you named it World Outreach Church. We were in a rented room sitting on rented chairs. I thought it was maybe a tad presumptuous,

but you have really lived that out. Well, there is a God, and that we've come to see. I think one of the things that we've all learned in the last years that it took us a lot of years to see is the significance, the practical aspect of prayer. that it's beyond what we learn as new Christians. We're so excited about getting into the scripture

and learning the things to go and be in Israel, but to understand the power of God to work through us has been a thing I've really learned in the last few years. We've had a group that prays here at the church for 25 years. minimum of five days a week, and for 20 years, they did it seven days a week. So I've seen prayer makes a difference. Well, you started when there was a group of us going to the Amazon on a medical mission.

That was one whole place we didn't even go to Central America. We went down there three times. Central America and South America. Yeah, South America, Peru. You covered the globe. Yeah. I think I'd like to come back another time. I'd like to walk through some of the miracles

that you've been a part of or you've seen God do because it's an extraordinary list. Right. But if I gave you 60 seconds and you could talk to the people, talk to a person, having made a decision to choose the Lord,

what would you tell them? Well, I think... Don't overcook it. What would you tell them? There's a path. and when you read our ordinary life book, there's a pathway we followed. And if you will walk down that pathway, your life will get to where God will meet you. The Holy Spirit will become very personal and powerful in your life. And you will find your purpose in life is not you, but it's following what the Lord's leading you to.

and that's the most important thing you can do with your life. After all, I've got some experience. You do. And that book you've got there that just came out on the Holy Spirit, I've already sent it to Israel to get it translated. I have no doubt. Well, you're not done yet. No.

You're still doing what you do. Right. Wherever you go. Right. I mean, you stopped me over the weekend and said you'd gone to Dunkin' Don't donuts, and there was a lady standing out in front smoking. I won't tell which one, so I won't embarrass anybody. But you said you walked up to her and asked her how long she'd been smoking, and she said since high school, and you asked her if she'd like to stop, and you prayed for her so she could be

free. Right. So you don't have to have a big arena. No. Or a band, or even, you know, a title. If you can see what God has done for you. if you can just stop and reflect on it, just the things he's done for you, then you will give you love and compassion for people. But in the earlier sessions, and I'm going to wrap it up,

but in your earlier sessions, we were pretty honest. You had a lot of things you had to overcome. Your mom died when you were two weeks old. You had some tension in your family of origin between grandparents and parents. Well, my dad had, I've come to see, I have no criticism. He had no background to be a father. I mean, his father died and he was seven.

He was a foster child. I didn't understand those things until I'd been a Christian 30 years. And it makes a difference. You have career changes. I mean, there were a lot of things, but the Lord, there's a thread through it all of the faithfulness of God. And if you will choose the Lord and give him your best today, do the best that you know, he will keep walking it forward. Is that fair?

Yeah. Be with people who are walking the way you're walking, and it'll make the difference. Be willing to be a little different, because you've been a little different. Really? Yeah. Your son's noticed. So I've got some resources that are worthwhile. If you want to hear the part that we didn't get into the podcast, my mom and dad told their story

the book. You keep calling it an ordinary life, but it says right there and they cover an extraordinary life. I know. It bothers me. Well, the extra part is the God part. Right. That's true. But he takes ordinary lives. I was a part of the titling of that. Right. He takes really ordinary lives and makes something extra out of them. But it tells the story from when you became Christians through mom's healing, really up to the point when the church started. Right. So if you want the backstory that we didn't tell. That's a great resource. And then this is, you've just done this. Yeah, it's really not out in our bookstore yet. You're 88, right? I was the last time. I'm headed towards 89. Still cracking out books. And for the record, you were not known as an English major. Is that fair?

Had it not been for spelling, I wouldn't have got out of high school. But this was his newest book, the eternal breath of life. And it's really a presentation on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Yeah, and it's from spending 50 years answering people's questions. It's not some kind of a wonderful dissertation. It's, with all the help the others gave me, I've tried to answer in a little thin book, less than 100 pages, the most significant questions people have that they've not understood regarding this aspect of a Christian life.

And it's a significant. it totally changed mom and I's life when we understood it. And we were 31, 2 years old. Been a day or two. Well, I think we can say God is faithful. Very much so. For a kid from Sir Coxie. They don't know how to spell it.

You can't find it on a map. You'll need Google to help you find it. But God is faithful. Thank you for being willing to share a bit of your story. Well, hopefully people will see the most important thing they can do with their life is to believe God, follow Jesus, and let the Holy Spirit be the director. And if I can get some time and the Lord will help me remember, we'll come back and talk about some miracles. That's going to take some time there to pull those up.

There's a long list. We'll come back and do that. Thank you. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.