Bibleline Radio Show – 2010-12-03 – The Jim Tingen Story (Pt. 2 of 2)
Transcription:
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
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We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family. Jim was not the individual that a girl would want to date. Jim had his marbles but his shooter was missing. It means that he didn’t have it all together. He was slower than the normal individual. But when he came to Ranch, he looked a little funny because he also had an eye that had been injured.
When he was a child, he played with scissors and he had cut his eye. And because of that, he had to take cortisone shots for the eye. He came to Ranch one night in Lo and Behold. He heard the gospel for the first time. And he sat there and he could not believe that God loved him because nobody ever loved him. Nobody wanted anything to do with him. Nobody in school wanted anything to do with him. No girls would date him because he was a lard.
But not because of any choosing he’d done, he can’t help it. But nobody wanted anything to do with him. He had two last feet. You would call him probably a nerd or something, but he came to ranch and he heard that God loved him and paid for his sins and he trusted Christ as his savior. Well, after that, Jim wanted to get other people to trust the Lord. And so he would do a thing he could. And when he come to ranch meeting the Bible study, He’d want to bring some people with him.
And sometimes people wouldn’t come. One night Ray was in his house. I used to be an exterminator, so I used to get the opportunity to go to his house, and I would kill bugs. And so I’d been all over his house, upstairs, downstairs, and all the closets and everything because I was an exterminator. I know where this took place. Well, I should say in the afternoon, Ray heard an 18-wheeler come down the road, down his one-way street, And he couldn’t believe it.
Our 18th wheel was coming down the street. So he went out there to look and lo and behold, here comes this guy that you always hear about this truck driver. You know, that has those great big old muscles built kind of like I am and has those tattoos all over his arm. You know, the big old black cigar in his mouth, you know? That big old mean, rough type guy. Well, there he is. And he drove up and Ray walked up to him and said, Sir, can I help you?
He says, I’m looking for a guy named Ray Stanford. He says, I’m Ray. He said, well, we never met, but I was driving down interstate and I picked up this kid with his dog. I don’t even know the kid’s name. Ray says his name was Jim Tented. He says that’s right. How’d you know? He says never mind. Go ahead. He’s well I had a sign here. He says no writers but for some reason I picked him up. And we were driving down the road and he was telling me how you can know you have eternal life and he says that you could explain it to me.
And he said I’ve often fallen asleep at the wheel and I’ll catch myself right before I go off the road. He says one day days I thought I’m not gonna wake up in time and I’m going to die. And I was wondering about that. When I saw this kid and I just picked him up and Ray says, yes, I can explain it to you. He said, look up here. This is you and me. Now Ray’s standing outside and he’s up there in the truck.
He says, this is you and me and this is sin. We all have sin on us, but God says he loves us, but he hates our sin. And the Lord says that if we pay for that sin, it’s eternal separation from God. So you have to be perfect to go to heaven, nobody’s perfect. We’re all sinners. We can’t save ourselves. This is Jesus Christ. He’s God in the flesh. He came into the world because he loved it. He took our sins, paid from the cross, came back from the dead.
God said, if you’ll believe he did it for you, that he paid for your sins, he’ll give eternal life and you’ll go to heaven on what he did for you. He says, that makes sense. He said, yes, it does. He said, if it makes sense right now, will you trust Christ as your Savior? That man said, yes, I will. He trusts the Christ as Savior and got ready to leave. You know, Ray says, well, I don’t guess I’ll see you again.
That guy says you’ll see me in heaven. And he’ll laugh. But Jim would always want to talk to people and witness to people. And one night, Ray was, he usually gets up about four o’clock. It still does. Because he only needs about four or five hours sleep at night. And when he wakes up, he wanted to get a book off the shelf. He has bookshelf. He had always ran his bed. When he wakes up, he just picked him off the shelf and he’d read it.
He said, but I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read. He said, I even got my Bible and I tried to read my Bible. I couldn’t read my Bible. Then, then seen anything I wanted to read. He said, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out and read the paper. I’ll get on there and get the newspaper. So he went downstairs and he was still in his underwear. But it’s four o’clock in the morning and he opens the door and he looks this way and looks that way.
Nobody’s out there. So he knows all he got doing the paper laying right there. So he thought, I’ll just get it real quick. So he run it real quick, grabbed the hold of the paper, and before he could get back in, he heard a voice from across the street saying, Ray, Ray, wait, wait! He jumped in the house, opened the door back up, and there’s that gym tangent across the street. He said, wait, I’ll get my pants on so anyway it came in.
And he had a boy with him. When he got inside, he says, Ray, I want you to witness to him. See, this is a little Catholic boy. He doesn’t know for sure. He has eternal life. He said, I talked to him, but I don’t make it clear like you do. And he began to scheme, how can I get this little boy to talk to Ray because his mother and they wouldn’t let him come to the meeting? And so he was concerned about this boy that had a paper route.
He says, what if I help you roll your papers and throw your papers for you? And if we get through early, we’ll go by and see my friend Ray. He says, okay, we’ll do that. So he had gotten up earlier that morning to help this kid roll his papers, throw the papers, and they came back to Ray’s house, and they’re setting out in front of Ray’s house about four o’clock in the morning, and they’re setting on this little thing that goes around the tree, and they’re sitting there.
And the kid says, how is he going to know we’re out here? He says, I’m going to ask God to send him out. And so he bowed his head and says, Lord, please send Ray out. And that’s when Ray popped out the door. You’re talking about a kid that nobody else. But see, he wants to be used by God. He believed that God will answer his prayer. And he would do things that would be strange to some people. And that little boy heard for the first time that God loved him and paid for his sin, paid all of his sins.
And all he had to do was trust him and God saved that little boy. And Jim was thrilled to death. But you see, Jim also, he wanted more than anything else in the world. He wanted his mom to trust the Lord. I know what it’s like because after I trust the Lord, you know who I wanted to trust the Lord? I wanted my mom to trust the Lord. But you become concerned, but his mom was an alcoholic. If you’ve ever lived with an alcoholic, you know what it’s like.
The Bible calls him drunkard, but we got a better name alcoholic, but it does the same damage. That’s what my dad was. My dad was a bootlegger. And I’m not my, he going a two week drunk. I mean, I’ve seen the hell raising. And I determined, years ago, I didn’t want that from my life. And I did that before I ever knew the Lord, but alcohol is destructive. But his mom was already showing signs of the deterioration in her body, and she had the cough, and she was just, you know, she would die in a cancer, but she didn’t know it, not at that time.
But he kept saying, boy, I want my mom to trust the Lord. But his mom wouldn’t listen to him. Mom didn’t want anything to do with him. He tried to witness to his brother, and his brother wouldn’t listen to him. And so he was a lonely individual. Nobody would talk to him or have anything to do with him, except Ray. And Ray did because a kid came to ranch and he had a burden for souls. And so Ray would talk to the individuals that he would bring.
And Jim came in the house and said, Ray, would you go talk to my mom? And Ray said, yeah, I’ll go talk to him. Just one of these days, we’ll go by and see him. He said, Ray, once you go by and see mom now, she’s very sick. And Ray, she’s not saved. Ray said, well, I’ll go by and see her son. And I got some things I got to do right now. Ray, why don’t you go by right now?
He said he pushed the porch off the side. He got on his motorcycle and they went over to see him. When they got there, he went around the house, said they lived in a shack. And he went to the front door and he could hear Jim inside. He said, Mom, I’m going to raise you. Raise you. Won’t you let him come in and talk to you? No, I don’t want him coming to the house. The house was a mess.
And Ray hollered at her and said, look, You think your house would measure you out of sea mine and he thought I’d give up these port jobs that I got to talk to her and So she said alright come on in so he went in and she’s laying there in bed He explained the gospel to her he explained how that she could simply Believe that Jesus Christ paid for her sins and if she trusts Christ or Savior She have eternal life and go to heaven whenever she dies She people make it too hard and complicated it ain’t hard and a complicated child can understand that Follow for you my wallet and you accept what would you have a wallet?
I’ve offered you my Bible and you accept what you have, you have a Bible, that’s the thing you need to understand. Salvation is that simple, but what it talks about is just look and live. Drink this water and you shall never thirst. Eat this bread and you shall never hunger. It’s simple. Salvation going to heaven is the easiest thing in the world. People make it hard, but it’s not hard. Because you don’t have to live a certain way. Salvation is free.
It’s Him saving you, giving you eternal life. And she trusts the Lord. Jim was excited. He says, now all I got to do is get my brother. Boy, if I could get my brother, I’d give my life if my brother would trust the Lord. Well, one night he brought somebody to Ray’s house, a guy named Jim Peacock. Jim Peacock was brown as a bear. He had short black hair. He had brown beady eyes. He had a white calypso pants.
He was barefooted. He was built like little Abner. Have you ever seen the old comic years ago? That’s what he looked like. And he walked over to Ray’s coat machine and he took out two coat bottles out of the crate and he put them down, two bottles, and he did the handstand. And while he’s standing up on the Nato, and his muscles are rippling, he just stands there. And Jim has talked to him right. The guy’s upside down. So Ray got his wallet out and got down there to the guy and he could see his eyes.
And he says, this is you and me, this is sin. And we’ve all done things wrong and so forth. And went to an explainer and says, now, if you trust Christ as your Savior, give you turn life and you go to heaven and you die. He said, you understand what I’m saying? He said, yeah. He said, well, will you right now? Will you trust Christ? do that. Ray said, I wouldn’t have given you a quarter for what he said.
He got down to that. Ray said, well, I’ll never see him again. A couple days later, Ray told Sue, locked the house. He saw a bucket of bolts driving down an old jalape and there was a peacock, an old jalape and about 10 people and it packed in. And he said one woman looked like she was, he didn’t know if she was inside getting out or outside getting in. What she had on was They all sat tight. They all sat on a big old ping pong table they had.
There was a double layer with plywood. He sat on a thing. They all sat down. Give him your religious speech. Sure, Jim. So Ray began to explain to the gospel. This is you and me. This is Sam. We all have sinned hearts. He explained it to him. And how that God loves you. They hate your sin. Took your sin, paid for him. I came back from the dead. And Ray got through it. He says, you trust the Lord. So whatever you say, this is Jim Peacott now.
This is the one where Brown was a bear had be the eyes on. He says, you trust the Lord. Everyone, he told everyone what to do and they all did it. You say, well, you can’t do that that way. You do it your way and let Jim Peacock do it his way. And when he got through, he said, okay, let’s go. He thought I’d never see him again. A couple of days later, Jim Peacock shows up again. He said, right?
These are a few things and he had some bridles and a few things to stir. He said, I want to give these to you. It says, what for? He says, just something to remember me by. You can put on your wall and ranch. Well, I appreciate that. He said, but where are you going? He said, I’m just going away. He said, well, where are you going? And he didn’t want to tell Ray. He said, well, since I trusted Christ as my Savior, I want to serve the Lord and I want to do right.
He says, I’m part of a gang. We’ve been stealing cars, selling parts, and then dumping the rest of it in Coral Gables Waterway. Piddly’s been looking for me for a long time. Someone turned myself in. He turned himself in and they sent him to a rafered prison down in Florida. Jim, he gets one here and one there. He says, I want to get my brother. Thought of a scheme. One day while Ray was eating, he looked out there and lo and behold, Jim comes running across the yard and there’s a taxi cabin.
Pulled up in the thing and Ray was concerned about what the world of the taxi cab doing there. And Jim comes in and just a huffing in the pub. He says, Ray, Ray, he’s here. He says, who’s here? The taxi cab man, he’s my brother’s best friend. Ray, if you lead him to the Lord, he’ll get my brother. That’s how the kid thinks. He had a hitch-tight on the other side of Miami, found out where his brother, his brother’s friend, had a taxi cab route and he called for cab and he came and got him and took him all the way to Ray’s house.
And Ray looked and the meter was running and he knew that Jim ain’t got a dime. He says, Jim, does he know why he’s here? No. If I told him he wouldn’t have come. But Ray’s not saved. All right. Ray goes out there and starts talking to the tactic, man. When he got out there and started talking to him, the guy was not interested at all. He was cold, hard, wouldn’t look at him, could care less. And Ray, you know, he’s trying his best.
But you know, sometimes you can’t make people listen. You can’t make them concerned about themselves. And so he said, oh, so he just reached in and pulled out his wallet. He said, well, let me explain this to you. The guy wasn’t interested, wouldn’t pay any attention. He pulled out his wallet and says, look, look, this hand represents you and me and this separate represents sin. And all of a sudden the taxi cab man, his eyes got big. He smiled and looked at Ray.
He says, I’ve seen that before. He says, where? He said, well, I don’t want to say. I just got out of Rayford. There was a guy that came down there. And he was explaining this to me. And he was telling me about this, and he showed me this same illustration. A guy who just came to Rayford, a prison in Florida. And all of a sudden he’s alert and he wants to hear more. And Ray explains it to him and the guy says, yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior.
Now, all the coincidences, he’s just coincidences. No, there’s a God in heaven who’s looking for somebody he can use. See, God will use anybody that wants to be used. Jim says, maybe he’ll get my brother now, but he didn’t witness to his brother. A few days past and that cab come pulling back up in the raised yard there. And this time the meter wasn’t running. And Jim got out of the car and he ran up to Ray and he was just a sobbing.
Just heartbroken. He says, Ray, mama’s gone. grandma’s gone and he sobbed, just wept. And he found out that his mother was crossing 22nd Avenue in it. I think it was a grocery truck that hit her, killed her instantly. And Ray told him, said, well, son, you know, she was down at cancer and maybe the Lord’s been merciful to her. He said, mom was gone. And Ray said, I felt so sorry for the kid because he don’t have anybody. His brother doesn’t care about him.
There is nobody else that cares about this kid. Now his mother is dead and then all of a sudden, while he’s standing there sobbing. He says, Ray, he says, if you speak at my mother’s funeral, my brother will be there. And I’d give my life if my brother would trust the Lord. Ray did the funeral. And he told about how the gym had got him to go see his mother, and how that she laid in the bed and she was so sick, that he explained the gospel to her because Jim was so concerned about her and that she trusted Christ as her savior.
He gave an invitation and a lot of the kids from the college were set to funeral. But there was one guy that was sitting there with his arms folded and they had a mean stern look and when Ray asked everybody to bow their head, he didn’t bow his head. He just gave Ray a co-stare. He didn’t raise his hand. At about three days or so, came by the house and Ray says, Jim, where have you been? I haven’t seen you for a while.
I thought you’d be over because you just come over every day. He says nothing. He said, I’m just doing some other things. And he would kind of sniff him a little bit. He says, what’s wrong, son? Nothing. And Ray got him a cold in his chin and lifted his face up in his face with black and blue. He says, Jim, did your brother do that to you? And he started sobbing. He says, you made my mother a funeral, a evangelistic service, and he beat me.
And he didn’t like what you said. He said, Ray, I’d give anything my brother would trust the Lord. Well, he, and beating him, he also injured his eye. So he had to go get some shots and sometimes he’d go up North Carolina and get some shots of Corazon and come back. But one night he came back to ranch. When he came to ranch, There was a little girl there. I went to school with Tommy Davis. His wife was a little Jewish woman.
And they had little kids just like we had at that time. Training and David were small. And so he was one of my friends in college. And later he became a teacher there at the Bible College. But Jim didn’t came in one night and he got a hold of a little robin. And he picked her up. And he didn’t know that she had the chicken pox. He had just gotten those other shots, and the chicken pox and the shots, the cortisone shots, kind of reacted together and caused a problem.
But one night when a little robin had grown up and I was down there as a camp, and my daughter trained us, she had grown up also. There were probably 1500 people in this auditorium, mostly teenagers. And Trina Robin was sitting together. And Ray was telling the story. She’ll, she jumps up and she runs out of me and she just saw it. Just to cry. Because she’s the one that had the chicken box that caused some tension to get sick.
Ray got a phone call from Jim and says, Ray, would you do me a favor? He says, what’s that? He says, I’m, I’m not here at the hospital and everything’s okay though, but would you just ask my brother to come and see me? And Ray said, well, what’s, what’s wrong with you? He says, I’m nothin’ serious. I just wouldn’t know if you’d ask my brother to come and see me. He says, okay, I’ll do that for ya. He went by to see Jim’s brother and his brother wouldn’t come.
I wouldn’t go to the hospital to see him. So he went to the hospital to see Jim. When he got there, he walked into the room. He said, I couldn’t believe it. He had purple pot marks all over his body. He says, there wasn’t one place on his body that you could touch without touching a purple pot mark. He said his whole body was covered with it. And he pulled the sheet of old and cut it and it won’t ready to see him.
He says, how did you get to the hospital? And then he started sobbing. He said, well, I told my brother I was sick. And if he would take me to the hospital and they wouldn’t. And he says, well, would you just call the doctor for me? Call the ambulance. His brother wouldn’t do that for him. He says, I managed to crawl down the stairs and I got to the phone and I called the ambulance myself and they took him.
So now he says, I wish that you would just have my brother come and see me, brother won’t even go see me in the hospital. Jim don’t have anybody else. All he had was Ray. He didn’t have all of his smarts, but he loved the Lord. and whatever he had, he wanted God to use them. And he was concerned about where people spent eternity. He didn’t know how to tell them clearly. He could get it started, but he couldn’t always get a cross.
And he always knew if I could get Ray to explain it, Ray will rent him. Ray can get it across to him. He had prayer with him and he left. It wasn’t long before Ray got a call from the hospital and the doctor says, are you Ray Stanford, yeah? He says, if you want to see Jim alive again, he says, you need to get down here right away. So he jumped on the motorcycle and went down there. He said, when he walked into the room, he said, there was this black nurse at the foot of the bed, and the nurse looked over at Ray, and she just shook her head and says, no hope.
He walked over to the bed, he took Jim by the hand and he says, Jim, this is Ray. And he started breathing just as normal. That nurse eyes got base, She went out of the room and they came in. We’re about the doctrine, about three or four more nurses. They came in. Well, Ray knew that they didn’t have much time. So he says to Jim, he says, son, you’re stealing the march on me. He says, you’re gonna get to see Jesus before me.
He says, and Jim, you know you have eternal life and you’re going to have one you die because you know that all you had to do is trust Christ. And so he’s talking to Jim, but he knows they’re listening. And he explained the gospel, wow, Jim is dying. When he got through, he looked at him and he pulled out his wallet. He says, let this represent you and me, this represents sin. And all four of them trusted Christ with their Savior.
And Ray left. Jim died. Well, Ray did the funeral. But when he did the funeral, he kept remembering. He said, I’ll give my life if my brother would trust the Lord. And Ray was going to do the funeral, so he did the funeral. And the place was full. Jim’s brother was there. But Ray lowered the boom. He told the people that were sitting there. He said, I did, Jim’s mom. I did her funeral. And when he went home, his brother’s sitting right here, beat him, beat him.
And because of that, he had to get corded on shots. And then he got chicken pox. And he died fromundown. And his brother wouldn’t even take him to the hospital. He wouldn’t even come to the hospital to see him. He said, but this time his brother is sitting right there and he saw him the whole time. Ray explained the gospel how you can have eternal life. And this time he was the first one to raise his hand. The trust Christ is his Savior.
He said he came by the house afterwards to seePitt. And he says, I’ve got Jim Tengen’s Bible. Some tangent had a Bible just like Raisin. He wouldn’t take and spend hours copying from Raisin Bible into his Bible. He didn’t know why Ra underlined it, but if he underlined it, it had to be for a reason. And Raisin says, here’s a Bible exactly like mine with all the notes in it, and he’s given it to wha. He says, you take this book and you read this to your childrenOSP.
He says years later, his two sons came to see him. He says, you don’t know me. He says, yes, I know who you are. He says, Jim Tenion was your uncle. And he led them to the Lord. In 1975, I was down there to see Ray. We went to a hospital and we did about two or three visits. He took me to Jim Tenion’s grave. And when we got to Jim Tengen’s grave, he knelt down and he cried. This young kid gave all that he had.
He did all that he could with what he knew. You see, it’s kind of like this. This might be a five-dollar pen. And the purpose of this pen is to write. And I may have a three-cent pencil, but if this five-dollar pen won’t write, and I I need a message to get done. And this 3 cent pencil will write, which one do you think I’m going to use? 3 cent pencil. See the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole or searching for an individual that God can make great on his behalf.
He’s not looking for the high and the mighty, not the most intellectual, the guy who got the most brains and talent and abilities. He’s looking for a dedicated nobody. A person that says, Lord, I’m not much, but whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. If you know Christ is your Savior, you’re going to heaven when you die. But when your life is over and spent, your race is run end of the day. What have you done for the God?
Has anybody reached anybody you talked to? One day will stand to the judgments of the Christ, and his shows his plan for me. The plan of my life had he had his way, and I see how I checked him here, and I checked him there, and I would not yield my will. Will there be grief in my Savior’s eyes, griefs, though he loves me still? He would have me rich, and I stand there poor, stripped of all but his grace, while memory runs like a haunted dream down the paths I cannot retrace.
Lord of the years that all left for me, I give them into my hand to take me and break me, to mold me, make me into the pattern that thou hast planned. One day we’re going to face God. What have you done? What have you done with your life? Do you really care? It’ll be worth every benefit. There has to be a reason, a motive, an underlying thing that says, I’ve got a burden for souls. Do you have it?
Do you care for people’s spend eternity? Let’s pray, shall we? We’re heads by a nice close and no one looking around. If you have not accepted Christ as your Savior, would you do it right now? I’m not going to have you forward. I’m not going to embarrass you. I just want you to be sure that if you were to die, you’d go to heaven. There’s no tricks to it. There’s no gimmicks to it. I don’t want anything from you.
I simply want you to admit to God. Say, Lord, I’m a sinner. And I believe you died on that cross and paid for my sins. And tonight I will trust you as my Savior. And friend God said, if you trust Him, hit Savior, give your eternal life. Would you do that? If you will, I’d like to have prayer for you. I do it, it hits God’s nice clothes so that nobody will be embarrassed. I want to trick you, not going to pin you against the wall.
But it means so much to me. If you have trust in Christ as your Savior if you have your God’s child as a child of God to let God use you. However, He wants whatever way to whatever degree that God use you. If you’ve never done that, but you’ll do it tonight. So yes, I’m God’s child. I want to dedicate my life to Him. I want to serve Him. I want God to use me. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr.
Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bible line and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download For more information on our website, visit our website at www.bibleline.com. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us.
The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live, and now we’re closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, Believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up
