Kyle Hoffsmith

One of the reasons I try not to make fun of Pentecostals and Dispensationalists is that the Lord used a man who was both to save my mother. In 1969, she was a 23-year-old sixth-grade public school teacher in California. Some of her students were using drugs, and she wanted to help them but didn't know how. A fellow teacher told her about a speaker who was working with teenagers to help them turn their lives around. She brought several students to hear him speak. It was David Wilkerson (1931–2011). In 1962, at the age of 31, he had written a bestseller, The Cross and the Switchblade, a memoir of his ministry to gang members in New York City. In 1970 it would be turned into a movie starring Pat Boone as Wilkerson and Erik Estrada as Nicky Cruz. My mother—who grew up in an Italian-American home on Long Island, occasionally attending an Episcopal church—had never heard the story of salvation before: that God saves sinners who repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. She thought about Wilkerson's message for several weeks. At a ski party a month later, on February 14, she went out in the cold and snow by herself and looked up and prayed: “I don’t know you, God. I don’t know who Jesus is and the Holy Spirit that that guy talked about. BUT . . . if what that man said is true, somehow show me.” She didn’t see any fireworks. She didn't feel all that different. She just went inside where everyone was partying. But God began a work in her that night. She soon sensed abiding peace and an unquenchable thirst for God's Word. The Christian principal of her public school began discipling her. There's not a single day of my life when she has not prayed for me. There's not a single day when she is not in the Word. I am a blessed man, beyond all measure. Happy Valentine's Day, Mom, and happy spiritual birthday. #HeSavesUs