3. Follow Me

In about three days after my sickness and experience with God, I was completely well. The farming partnership with Carolyn’s father was not working out, so we moved to Phoenix. We leased what we considered a nice home in the growing northern part of Phoenix just north of Bell Road and east of what is now I-17. I was selling Frantz oil filters. Carolyn was a stay-at-home mom with our two boys: Bruce, then about three, and Mike, about one. I had not learned well the lesson of not going into debt—a lesson God has repeatedly tried to teach me, and I have often failed.

At the time, we had a nearly new Oldsmobile and a Ford Falcon Ranchero, which I had purchased new before leaving the trucking business. My Falcon was a red four-speed—hot for those days. I was making payments on both cars. Even though I was the fifth in the nation for sales of Frantz oil filters, I was not making enough money to make ends meet. I started looking around for something else to do. I answered an ad for insurance sales, took extensive tests, and Prudential Insurance Company gave me what I considered a very good offer. I was just about to accept that offer when I remembered the covenant I had made with God—to do His will. I went home and looked up insurance in the Index to the writings of Ellen White and read the passages. It was clear she was not in favor of life insurance. Knowing this, how could I go into that business? Suddenly, I knew I was at the crossroads of my life again.

I recalled the promise I made to God that I would be willing to go back to school and study to become a pastor. I knew God was calling me to do this. How did I know? I just knew. How, then, could I go back to college? I had saved no money. I was barely making the payments on our two cars. With two small children, how could I afford to go back to a private college? Despite all the apparent problems, I knew I should, so I began to muse with the Lord. If I sold my ’62 Oldsmobile and ’64 Ranchero and could get an old ’55 Chevy, then I would have no payments. In those days, a ’55 Chevy was not considered a classic; rather, it was inexpensive transportation one notch above a pile of junk. I prayed and recommitted myself to God.

The next day, without placing a “For Sale” sign in the car, without running an ad in the paper, a person whom I did not know drove up to our house in a blue ’55 Chevy, knocked on  our  front  door  and  said  he  wanted  to  buy  my  ’64 Ranchero. He would take over my payments and give me his car for my equity. Then I knew for sure that God was calling me to the ministry!

We had a female German Shepherd that had just given birth to eight pure-bread puppies. In the Phoenix newspaper there were many AKC registered German Shepherd puppies for sale for $25.00. We needed the money, and feeling God was guiding and providing, we placed an advertisement in the paper which read, “AKC German Shepherd puppies, $100.00.” The first day it ran, we sold our first puppy for $100.00. “PUC, here we come!” There was never a question as to where I would go back to school. Even though I did not want to face that “D” on my transcript, I knew I should go there. I have never been good at English, and now I would have to face Greek. It seemed overwhelming to my natural self. However, now I believed God would help me because He was calling me to His work.

Whenever God calls, Satan is there to try to talk us out of doing God’s work. He did it then and has done it many times since. He can find more ways than we can imagine. When we told our landlord that we were not going to renew the lease on our house, he came over and said that he wanted to sell us the house. He would accept the lease money already paid as the down payment. All we had to do was make the payments that were even less than the monthly lease we had been paying. Prudential called, and when I told them what I was planning on doing, they wanted me to come in and talk to them first. I did, and they made me an even better offer. From the human perspective—looking at finances alone—I would be a lot better off today if I had stayed in Phoenix and worked for Prudential. But the Christian life cannot be lived from the human perspective. Either God is in control and is truly working all things together for good, or He is not. Therefore, there is no other choice for a committed Christian than to do God’s will. It is the only path of peace.

I made an application to PUC and was soon accepted. We were not able to sell four of the puppies or the Oldsmobile in Phoenix. So I drove the old blue ’55 Chevy with Bruce, Cindy, the mother dog, and her four puppies. Carolyn drove the Olds with Mike. When registering for classes, they asked me if I wanted to retake Western Arts to raise my grade.13 I said, “No.” It probably was not the right answer, but it seemed right at the time.

Reasoning that if I had not done too well in high school English, I would have a hard time with Greek, I determined that I would study hard and get an “A.” It was hard, but I did my best, and I took three years of Greek and received mostly “As.”

Because I had dropped out of college for a number of years in the trucking detour of my life, I was older than many of the other college students. I also had more responsibilities. I had a wife and two boys to support. I found employment at a building supply owned by an Adventist in Napa and worked there on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I took classes at PUC on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

One house we lived in was on the hill behind the boy’s dorm. It was so small that all we could get in the bedroom was a bunk bed for the boys. Carolyn and I slept in the tiny living room on an old $15.00 hide-a-bed that Carolyn reupholstered. I had a large desk that I had kept from my trucking days, and the only place I could find for it was in the unfinished and unheated attic. I had to take it all apart and carry it piece by piece up the ladder and then put it back together again. I rigged up an extension cord with a naked light bulb and hung it from the rafters. This served as my often cold and sometimes windy, study.

As I continued my theological studies, I began to wrestle with questions. What was wrong?

Endnotes
13. I had good grades in all my other classes.

NEXT WEEK: “Questions”

Truth Led Me Out. Copyright © 2008 by Dale Ratzlaff. Second printing 2015, E-mail version 2020. All Scripture quotations—except where otherwise noted—are from The New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1994 by the Lockman Foundation, used by permission. Texts credited to Clear Word are from The Clear Word, copyright © 1994, 2000, 2003, 2004 by Review and Herald Publishing Association. All rights reserved. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.

Dale Ratzlaff
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