Today, I am going to combine our history vignette with our testimony of the day.
Jesse Babcock Worden was born on July 18, 1787, into a Christian home. He was the youngest of nine children. Because of his large family, and because there were no schools there in Richmond, Rhode Island, by the time he was twelve-years-old he didn’t even know the alphabet. But at that point he was given the opportunity to attend school for two months. That brief period created in him an insatiable desire for knowledge, and by the time he was eighteen he had progressed so far as to become a qualified teacher. When for employment’s sake he moved away, a new acquaintance moved into his life. It is hard to call the man a “friend,” because he began to poison Jesse’s mind with atheism. After serving in the War of 1812, Jesse moved to Oneida County, New York to start a mercantile business. He married a Presbyterian woman who bore him five children. By her demeanor, she caused him to remember his Christian parents, but he remained a stubborn skeptic, often treating her with cruelty for her desire to worship Christ.
In the early 1840s the Holy Spirit gave revival to the little Baptist church in the Worden’s community. The congregation grew so prodigiously that a new building became necessary. One day as Jesse went to town he saw a number of men putting up the walls for the new auditorium. He wondered why intelligent men would volunteer their time and sweat to construct a building for a god who didn’t exist. But then as he stood watching, inexplicably, the Holy Spirit crushed him with the thought that they were not doing this for a non-existent deity, but for the living God. Nothing short of truth could cause men to so give themselves to such a project without any remuneration in this life. Under conviction he staggered home where he spent days in spiritual agony, recognizing his sinful, wretched condition. He saw that his atheism had been little more than rebellion against God. After three days, and without any logical explanation or human intervention, the Holy Spirit finally gave Jesse an inexplicable peace. Remembering what that his parents had taught him, he put his trust in the sacrifice which the Son of God accomplished on the cross. He begged the Lord to forgive him for his sin and atheistic foolishness. And of course the Lord did.
Jesse Worden and his wife were baptized by Elder John Peck, after which they united with the Baptist church in Sangerfield, New York. Jesse went on to become a faithful pastor and servant of God, serving the Lord first in New York and then in Pennsylvania. Years later, two weeks before his death on August 6, 1885, he preached his final message, urging his listeners to “See that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently” – I Peter 1:22.
It is doubtful that Jesse’s parents ever knew, in this life, of their son’s conversion, but they carried out their responsibility in faithfully sharing Christ with their children, and God eventually blessed.