Judge Kermit C. Bradford is the civil court judge of Fulton County in Georgia.
I was the younger of two sons. When I was twelve my father said, "Son, due to my illness you must quit school and go to work to help support your mother." Knowing education was a must if one is to survive in this world, I decided to continue my schooling and get a job, going to school all day and working at night until graduation. Later I would go to school at night and work all day. Determined to get my education I struggled through high school, business college, and finally the university and a law degree. Along the way I read the biographies of great successful Americans and tried to emulate them. I took inventory of my personal assets and tried to utilize them.
In the early 1920's I decided to become a pilot. I learned to fly in an old World War I Jenny, and became one of the breed of barnstormers people called daredevil stunt pilots. When World War II came along I joined the United States Army, my assignment being in the Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the first group that went to England, I worked with Scotland Yard, then went across with the invasion of Europe and worked with the underground in the liberation of Paris. Following that, I went into Germany with General Eisenhower as head of the security group whose duty was to protect him.
After six months in the army of occupation I came home and set up my law office. My life to that point read like a true American Horatio Alger story-from a little poverty stricken boy to a successful lawyer. The truth was, I was a successful failure! There seemed no meaning whatsoever in life. I felt as restless, miserable, and defeated as when I was a little boy in knickers out on his first paper route.
About that time the Lord reached down and took the most precious person in my life. When He called my mother home, He took my prayer warrior, my comforter, and the only human being in my world that possessed genuine agape love. Mamma had callouses on her knees from kneeling at a Methodist Church altar almost every day for over forty long years, fasting and praying for me.
I remember that in the days of my flight training I used to fly every Saturday afternoon; during which time I would fly over Mamma's house where she and I lived. Hearing the roar of the plane flying low, she would know it was her boy up there and would come out on the lawn and wave up to me. I would circle the house, hang out of the cockpit and wave, and then put on a little stunt show for her.
There came a special Saturday in my life when I went through the same routine. Then I pulled the stick back and began to climb for altitude. Suddenly, however, my plane began to lose flying speed. A check of my instruments showed the oil pressure dropping, until finally the needle hit bottom. The plane began to vibrate, the wings trembled, and the prop began to wobble. Immediately I dropped the nose and put the plane into a glide, looking frantically to see where I would crash. I was very close to the ground. Directly ahead were the white tombstones of Westview Cemetery; over to the right were some giant oak trees. Not wanting to dig my own grave, I turned and headed for the trees, knowing as they came rushing toward me that nothing short of a miracle could save me from certain death.
The realization suddenly flooded my consciousness that I was without God. From infancy my mother had taught me to believe in Jesus Christ. I accepted Him intellectually and historically, was promoted through all the grades of the Sunday school, and finally was placed on the Board of Stewards. But one little ingredient had been left out: I had not been born again! (See John 3:5-7.) I was accepted and called a Christian, but let me tell you, when the chips are down and you face death, you know the truth and nobody can fool you. I knew I still had the same nature with which I was born– a nature completely self -centered.
I knew that Mamma had a God who answered when she prayed, and with whom she had a personal relationship. Now as I headed for those immovable trees and certain death, there was only time enough left to cry quickly: "Mamma, if you ever prayed for me, you had better pray for me now!" Then the plane crashed into the trees. The wings were torn away, the motor jerked loose, the tail broke off and a big limb shot through the cockpit and ripped the seat off my trousers as we settled into the top of a big tree and I didn't get a scratch!
Upon arriving home, I finally blurted out the story, standing close to Mamma to catch her when she fainted from shock. When I had finished, her beautiful face lit up and she began to smile as she said very gently and calmly, "Son. I knew all about that last night." Then I was ready to pass out from shock! How could she have known about it last night– it had only happened an hour before! Mamma explained that Jesus had awakened her in the night and told her of my impending crash and death. She had prayed hours until God gave her the assurance that He would give her boy another chance.
After my mother was taken from me, I began to search for reality and for truth– truth in the spiritual realm. Forty years in the church, I had seen many an elder commit his sins the same way I did mine. The only difference between us was that I called myself a sinner and he called himself a Christian. I was sin sick and wanted the truth, if there was truth to be had. In my desperation I went down into the woods where Mamma would often go to pray for me, because I remembered that as a child she had said, "Son, someday, somewhere, you must find your altar and there allow Jesus to put to death the old sinful man.
Do not be afraid, for He will instantly resurrect you and you will be a new creature in Christ. Old things will pass away and all things will become new." I recalled, also, that Mamma said a man had better mean it when he prays, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." Well, I was ready to mean it. I had despaired of the human race, of the world, and of myself; and if I could not find God, I wanted out!
I went to that place where we used to have an old-fashioned Methodist holiness campground, walked down that old rugged trail, and knelt at that crude altar. In my law practice I have walked the "last mile" with men to the execution chamber, and God impressed upon me that day I was leaving my church, society, old friends as well as enemies, and that I would never come this way again. And I didn't. Kneeling at that altar, the person I had been for forty years died but was immediately resurrected a new creature in Jesus Christ. All things indeed became new. The thirst for alcohol was gone, the desire for other women was gone. It was true– I was a new creature, with a tremendous hunger and thirst for the Word of God.
Not long after I found myself at a Full Gospel Businessmen meeting. The first thing I noticed was that the very air seemed alive with the electricity of love– something warm and wonderful. I was introduced to a big, tall Texan who passed up my extended hand and threw his arm around my shoulders and hugged me. I had never been hugged by a man before, and didn't know exactly what to do.
The law has taught me to withhold judgment until all the evidence is in. The convention was to last three days, and I decided to let them prove their case. It is well my judgment was reserved, for God awakened me from sleep that first night in Chicago and I heard myself speaking in a most beautiful heavenly language. I had been forgiven of sin at the altar out there in the old Methodist campgrounds, and now God filled me with His Holy Spirit. He had taken me through that door into His power plant– where all of His heavenly dynamite is stored.
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