Things I Have Not Learned by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman

Author:Dr. Peter S. Ruckman [Ruckman, Dr. Peter S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: BB Bookstore
Published: 2012-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Christian Veteran

When I got saved (March 14, 1949), I found myself facing a new life which would require new friends, new habits, new thought patterns, new conduct, new books, new foes, new speech, new music, and new attitudes. I was just a babe in Christ (1 Cor. 3:1). Where could I learn what I needed to learn? Well, the Scriptures said, “Ask for the old paths” (Jer. 6:16). I had better get to a man in his forties or fifties if I was going to get the “hang” of this new life (2 Cor. 5:17). Maybe the younger preachers knew “a thing or two,” but what I needed was a veteran. I found one. He was sixty-seven years old. I sat under his tutelage until he was seventy-one years old (1949-1953). He had been raised as a peanut farmer in southeast Alabama. His mother and father had never read any Bible but a King James Bible a day in their lives. He had been saved before he was five years old and was preaching at the age of ten.

In his late sixties he had over a half a million dollars in the bank, low blood pressure, and a school worth about $170,000,000. In addition to this, he had led probably over two hundred thousand souls to Christ during his evangelistic ministry. (You should do as well!) I had several talks with him in private, and I remember five of his “sayings.” The first one was this: “The greatest words in the English language are ‘Do right’.” The second one was: “The best preparation for tomorrow is to do what you ought to do today.” The third one was: “Never sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate.” The fourth one was: “Finish the job.” And the fifth one was: “It is a sin to do less than your best.”

And there, couched in common language on a fourth-grade level, sit five of the most profound truths any human being could learn while on this planet.

If everyone “did right,” what problems would be left for mankind to deal with? Why, in the first place, everyone of the globe’s six billion human beings would be saved. Look at 1 John 3:23 and Acts 17:30. In the second place, no one would be stealing or lying or committing adultery. There would be no sex perverts, murderers, rapists, embezzlers, extortionists, atheists; nor loafing on the job or complaining about being “discriminated” against.

I got rather upset one time with a character who was belly-aching about Baptist, Bible-believing preachers running off with their secretaries, stealing church bonds, falsifying Sunday School reports, etc. (which some of them do). He was giving me the impression that my own conduct, as a minister, could never be recommended to mankind in general. Typical line of bull used by all apostate Fundamentalists. I told that jerk, “Listen, fella, if every man on this earth lived like I and my friends live (Don Mangus, Hugh Pyle, Harley Keck, Bob Mitchell, Kevin

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