Fred M. Weatherford

FRED M. WEATHERFORD

I was converted, marvelously born again, in a little Methodist community, country church,

during a revival conducted by a Methodist evangelist, when I was 17 years old (now 66 years
ago). During that campaign I heard nothing from the pulpit respecting a second work of grace…

As a sequence to the foregoing, I submit my testimonial experience when sanctified.

I was converted a Methodist and baptized by a Methodist minister, electing the process of

immersion. I was later received into membership by the Baptist church, though not without some
protesting controversy, from the fact I had not been baptized by a Baptist minister; leading to the
inquiry if I would submit to a second water coverage, to which I demurred. Some 11 years later I
heard my first sermon on sanctification by Rev. Frank Blackman, a Nazarene evangelist, later
missionary to India. Though as much convicted of my need to be sanctified as I was convicted as a
guilty sinner prior to my public confession and prayer for forgiveness, I did not respond to the
evangelist’s altar call, as a seeker. The next morning, however, the Lord Jesus became my Altar
Bearer to a place out behind the old grain barn, where in great humiliation and desperation and in
tears of full submissive consecration, I yielded my all to Christ as my Lord and Master. I was
overwhelmed with the drenching, gushing joy with which God answered my sobbed-out
supplication — this is sanctification arrayed in glory. Needless to say at this juncture, I was
sanctified a Nazarene and all out for Jesus. This threesome church affiliation made me something
of an ecclesiastical cosmopolitan.

In my experience of the new birth there was delivered a profuse, effulgent, transformed,

new life — I was so enraptured with this new experience, engendered by the love of God, in
forgiving mercy, that I felt an immediate and prolonged urge to tell others. This relentless upsurge
eventuated in a call to preach.

My mother related to me afterward that she had urgently prayed that one of her sons would

become a minister. Her father, Rev. William Sperry, was a Baptist minister, who built the first

 

Baptist church in Eugene, Ore., of log construction, where he pastored. I am told that my
Grandmother Weatherford was a shouting Methodist.

Having settled God’s call for me to preach, there came a desire to qualify myself for the

ministry. While my father never openly opposed me in my calling to preach, he notwithstanding
arranged for me to matriculate in a normal school and from there to what is now Oregon State
University, where I became president of the YMCA. After three years there, my father persuaded
me to rent and take over the operation of his rather extensive wheat farming and stock ranch. This I
did, and prospered in the adventure. At the end of seven years I had purchased and paid for another
1,100acre wheat farm, while at the same time maintaining a substantial bank account. Now after 11
years since my conversion, and past 29 years of age, with a wife and two children, Frank
Blackman’s sermon and my sanctification brought with them a boldness and a divine authorization
that spelled out a must for me to preach. Accordingly and forthwith I freed myself from farming
obligations to make an imperishable investment in souls for the kingdom of God. Then after two
and a half years of specialized training for the ministry, I launched a career of gospel ministry,
from which came a host of redeemed souls, including six missionaries, four pastors, five pastors
wives, three college professors, two physicians, four nurses, two public school principals, and a
number of teachers. Over one 11-year pastorate, 315 members were received into the church.

Source: “Sanctification, The Price of Heaven,”
by Fred M. Weatherford

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HOW THEY ENTERED CANAAN
(A Collection of Holiness Experience Accounts)
Compiled by Duane V. Maxey

Vol. I — Named Accounts