Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show Classics edition. For decades, we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

John Ankerberg: I'm sitting here talking with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. I want him to share with you how God has worked in his life. The reason I want you to hear this is many of you young people say, "How in the world does a guy ever get to be pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago? How does it come about?"

It is very interesting how God has brought these things around and how God has led Erwin and has been instrumental in his life. God can be instrumental in your life, too. I want him to share this with you. I think it's just a hoot listening to what he's going to say. Besides that, many of you don't know this information. So, Erwin, I'm just fascinated. Talk about how your parents, where they came from, and how they got together.

Erwin Lutzer: John, I'm going to make this brief, but I think this is fascinating. They were born in the Ukraine. They were German-speaking people but in the Ukraine. When World War I broke out in 1914, the Russian government feared that the Germans within its borders might mutiny and side with Germany. So, they made them refugees.

My mother's family went to Siberia. There was a lot of suffering and children dying. My father's family went to Afghanistan. His mother, my grandmother, died in Kabul, the city that is on the news regarding all of the things that have happened in Afghanistan. She was just put in a mass grave with other women because so many people died.

My father was fourteen. He threw himself across the bed and wept. Thankfully, his father, my grandfather whom I never met, continued to live. Nonetheless, he and his brothers came back to where they were. After World War I was over in 1918, my father comes to Canada because he has a relative there. He comes alone. He cries the whole way. He is so lonely.

My mother and her sister come. One is 21 and the other is 22 years old. My mother wants to know how to be born again. So, she attends this little church a half-mile from where she worked, hears the gospel, and is gloriously converted. My father is in that church too, through God's providence. She hears him pray. In those days, the men prayed on one side of the church and the women on the other.

My father said to a friend, "If you were me, which of these sisters would you marry?" The man said to my dad, "Ich möchte dir die Wanden nehmen." I would take Wanda. So, he walks my mother, Wanda, home a half-mile—this is their first date—and asks whether or not she would marry him. She said she had to think about it, but within two and a half weeks, they were married.

They had no courses on how to raise children—no James Dobson, no Bill Gothard, nothing. They just believed that you prayed, you worked hard, and you taught your children to fear God and to hate sin. That was the context. They had five children. I happen to be the last. In our home, we read the Bible all the time. They would read it to us in German.

We got on our knees every morning right after breakfast and prayed. We had to go to school with a horse and buggy and with a sleigh in the winter. I was born in a little farmhouse. My mother never even went to the hospital. It was about five miles from a town of 75 people.

Now, here's the remarkable thing. At the age of six or seven, I would come home from church and impersonate the pastor because even though there were no preachers on either side in my family, there was something within me that would stir. It was as if for this cause I came into the world—this desire to preach. That's why I became so enamored with Billy Graham.

John Ankerberg: So, at six years of age, you're practicing being the preacher.

Erwin Lutzer: I don't want to exaggerate. Maybe I was seven or eight, but I remember I was mighty young. I would come home, go into my room, and open the hymnal because I was preacher and song leader, and I would preach. When Billy was rising to fame in the early fifties, I latched onto him. As a teenager, my generation of teenagers was into Elvis Presley, and I was into Billy Graham.

John Ankerberg: People might laugh at the fact that you were into Billy Graham, but take a moment and do a little Billy Graham for us so that they get the idea.

Erwin Lutzer: Now, you have to say that as a child I listened to the *Hour of Decision* two or three times. I found it on the radio on my own because I wanted to hear Billy preach. In order to do it for you, John, I'm only going to give an invitation something like Billy Graham:

"And I'm at a time going to ask you to come. Hundreds of you, you simply get up out of your seats and I want you to come." Then what I should do is lift up a book I've written and say, "And for those of you who have joined us by television, we'd like to send you some literature. Just write to me, Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota. That's all the address you need: just Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now, until this same time next week, goodbye and may the Lord bless you real good."

John Ankerberg: We have to tell the people that you did that for Billy one day in the study when you had him at Moody Church and he just died laughing.

Erwin Lutzer: That's a little bit apocryphal, John. I was with him in the study, but I didn't do the impersonation, though he knew of it. But what the interesting thing was, I'm telling him, "Billy, all my life I've wanted to tell you something." He said, "What could that be?" I said, "I just want you to know, Billy, that I was into you as a teenager. I read your biographies and you'll never know how much you've meant to me."

Billy Graham pursed his lips and he said, "Oh, that's too bad." After all that, he said, "Nobody should ever follow me. I'm such an unworthy servant of Christ, nobody should follow me." That is typical humility of Billy Graham. Nonetheless, as a teenager, for some strange reason, I wanted to preach. I went to a Christian high school and most of the students went to the Bible school that's on the same campus.

I went to fill out my application to go to that Bible school and God said no. I never wrote my name on the application even though I was promised a scholarship because a friend of mine was going to Winnipeg Bible College and he said, "Go with me." I wanted to stay with my friends, but I went to Winnipeg Bible College. The first week, I cried my eyes out and wanted to go back.

Winnipeg Bible College—nobody had heard of it in those days—had sixty students in total. Why did God lead me there? In my third year, a man by the name of Elmer Towns came. Elmer Towns was a very strong leader and an enthusiastic teacher. He said, "Erwin, you should go to Dallas Seminary." I had never heard of Dallas Seminary. I was brought up on a farm milking cows.

Because of his influence and because of a letter he wrote to the seminary, they let me in. At Dallas Seminary, I met my wife. We met in a church. I asked her to the senior banquet and she was dating someone else, and at that time, I was dating someone else. It didn't work out for me to take the one I was dating and the man she was dating was somewhere else.

We joked about having our honeymoon in Colorado. Isn't that a hoot? We got married and we had our honeymoon in Colorado because that relationship she was in didn't work out, mine didn't work out, and God brought us together.

John Ankerberg: She's a terrific gal, Rebecca.

Erwin Lutzer: She really is. Then we went to Canada. I was going to come to the United States to go to school at Drew University way on the East Coast. I never got out of Chicago. I came into Chicago because of a summer school I was attending and I stayed here. God would not let me go to Drew. I had no reason to know why, but it was just as if God said, "This is the place you are to be."

I went to Loyola University where I studied philosophy and became the pastor of Edgewater Baptist Church, which was wonderful. I was still trying to figure out exactly why God had me here in Chicago. Now we come to Moody Church. I resigned Edgewater Baptist Church the last Sunday of April 1977.

I was going to teach at Moody Bible Institute in the fall, which I did, and in the between time, work on a dissertation for Loyola University where I was working on a PhD in philosophy. Incidentally, I never did write the dissertation because of Moody Church. That's a story I'm coming to. Anyway, we wake up Sunday morning in April—the first Sunday of April—and we have no church to go to.

Rebecca wants to go to Moody Church. I wanted to go to Circle Church, which was in Chicago at that time. John, please don't tell anyone this, this is just between us. God often leads me through my wife, whether it's supposed to be that way or not. She said, "No, let's go to Moody Church." I said, "Okay, let's go down to Moody."

We're going down and she says to me along the way, "It'll be so nice to be able to sit with you because as long as you're pastor, I can never sit with you because you're on the platform." We had only two children at that time. I drop her off. Parking was difficult at that time. It's much better now, but in those days, parking was as tight as a drum at Moody Church.

I said, "I will make sure to meet you in the lobby, but I'll go park the car." Lo and behold, I see somebody walking across LaSalle Street. He's fidgeting in his pockets, getting his keys. I said, "That guy's pulling out." Sure enough, he pulled out and I backed in. I walk into the lobby of the church, I find Rebecca, and she again says, "Great, we can sit together."

Warren Wiersbe, who was the pastor at that time and whom I had come to know, is walking past me in the lobby. He's got his topcoat on. He does not see me, but I see him. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Warren, what are you doing here? It's ten minutes before the morning service." He said, "Erwin Lutzer, I'm sick. I'm on my way home. Will you preach for me this morning?"

Rebecca died. I turned to her and I said, "Honey, is it okay if I preach at Moody Church this morning?" She of course said sure. I went to the back, I took an envelope, and I wrote down an outline of a message that I had preached previously on the renewing of the mind based on Psalm 1. When I stood on the platform beside the pulpit, something within me said, "If they ever call you, say yes."

John Ankerberg: Just something that God showed you.

Erwin Lutzer: It was scary. I said, "I will become the pastor of Moody Church." I remember telling Rebecca one time that it is just as certain as the end result of a geometric theorem. What I meant was, in geometry, if you have this angle and this angle, the third one follows necessarily. I just saw the handwriting on the wall. I saw this coming.

After a year and a half of looking for a pastor, even people in the congregation began to speak to the committee and said, "Don't you realize God has brought us a pastor?" Then the committee said, "Okay, now we're serious. Are you willing to talk?" I said, "Yes, now we're willing to talk." So, I became the pastor on January 1, 1980.

My whole life has been a life of providences. Let me give you one other illustration and then we can talk about some of the lessons of God's leadership. I didn't know I could write. What happened was, when I was here in 1969 in Chicago attending a summer school, I wrote a dissertation on situation ethics. Do you remember Joseph Fletcher, who taught situation ethics?

John Ankerberg: I remember when you went up against one of our professors on that topic and got into that conversation.

Erwin Lutzer: All right. Now, what happened was, I took this dissertation that I wrote—it was about sixty pages—and what do you do with things like that? You put it in a file folder, put it in your desk drawer, and you forget about it. Then I was attending Trinity Seminary, taking only one class. It was by John Warwick Montgomery, someone that you and I know.

Montgomery loved to debate people. He told us, "I'm going to be debating Joseph Fletcher in California." I went up to him later. I was scared. Here is this Dr. Montgomery, and I am just a farm boy from Saskatchewan, Canada. I said to him, "I wrote a dissertation on Joseph Fletcher." He said, "Well, bring it to me."

I brought it to him and he read it on the plane on the way to California. He used it in the debate. I remember when the debate was typed up and printed out, there was a footnote to me on page 83 or something. I thought, "Wow." Montgomery came back, looked over the classroom, and said, "Erwin Lutzer, who are you? Where are you sitting? What you wrote is so good that it should be published."

John Ankerberg: You could die and go right to heaven.

Erwin Lutzer: I thought angels would carry me out of the room, John. This was coming from someone I respected and he was saying I wrote something worthy of being published. I gave it to Moody Press. They said, "You have to rewrite it, you have to add to it, and you have to tweak it." In those days, I didn't know how to type. It was all done by hand.

The first ten or twelve of my books were all written by hand—this many pages, every other line on foolscap. I rewrote it and it became my first book, *The Morality Gap*. I was hooked. Ever since that time, I've been writing. I have more than twenty books. I think I still have a few more in me if God grants me the ability to live.

If it wasn't for John Montgomery giving me that word of encouragement, I think that dissertation would still be in my desk drawer. It was another providence in God's leadership. I remember when I was at Winnipeg Bible College, there was a young woman there that I was interested in. I remember getting on my knees and saying, "God, is this the right one or isn't it?"

It was just as if God said no. I said, "All right, that settles it for me." In Dallas, I dated someone and that turned out to be a difficult experience. So, all of my stories aren't sweetness and light. Before I dated Rebecca and before we were married, the relationship that I had was a very painful one because I thought that God was in it and yet clearly he wasn't.

But at the end of the day, what is it? Why is it that God has blessed me? Let me underline: it has nothing to do with me. This past summer—and this interview is taking place in the year 2003, so we're talking about 2002—my father turned 100 years old.

John Ankerberg: 100 years old.

Erwin Lutzer: Yes. They were married for seventy-one years. My mother is 94. They are still at this point in good health. They go for a walk every day. They take their canes and walk every day. They are a very cute and godly couple. At their 70th anniversary, I said to my mother, "Mother, do you actually know the names of all of your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren?"

She said, "Oh yes, Erwin. I have a prayer list. I mention their names to our Heavenly Father every single day." Is it any wonder that I have two sisters and both of them were missionaries? One was in Africa more than thirty years. The other and her husband were in Mexico with Wycliffe Bible Translators.

My parents often prayed. When they came from the Ukraine, they never spoke English too well. They taught themselves English and they taught themselves how to read. They read both in German and English. They said they often prayed that since they didn't know the language well enough to share the gospel, their children might be able to share the gospel.

They've had two missionaries and their youngest child also has had the opportunity of sharing the gospel on your program, in many different pulpits, and at Moody Church these many years. It's a God thing, John. One further word, because you said let's encourage the teenagers out there. They may say, "Oh yes, well that's Pastor Lutzer. Look at the books he's written and the sermons he's preached."

I believe with all of my heart that I am very ordinary. Sometimes I'm sitting at my computer writing or preparing a message and I don't know what the next paragraph should be. I just call on God and say, "God, I don't know what to say. Help me." God helps me. I believe that I have done things beyond my ability and even beyond my intelligence because of the prayers of God's people.

God in his grace has granted me certain gifts, and these are the kinds of gifts that he has been pleased to use. Why God would take a boy born five miles from a town of 75 people out on the Canadian prairie and give him the opportunity to be led here to the city of Chicago and be the pastor of Moody Church staggers my imagination. Do we have time for a footnote?

John Ankerberg: Yes.

Erwin Lutzer: My mother's father was in the city of Chicago before World War I. We're talking 1913. His intention was to bring his entire family here. World War I breaks out, or at least he's hearing about war. He takes a ship back to be with his family. What an awesome providence that was because it was the last ship he could have taken. All other ships afterwards were used only for war.

He was able to be with my mother when they went to Siberia, which was very important because he was able to keep the family together and make bread. When he was in Chicago that year, he wrote back and said, "The buildings in Chicago are so big that God must have built them." I've often thought I'll bet it never once crossed his mind that someday he would have a grandson who would be a pastor in the city of Chicago.

If you begin to put all the pieces together, John, it is not about me. It is not about what I've been able to accomplish. It is wholly and totally a God thing. I've never got over the wonder. There are times when I say, "God, why did you choose the most unlikely person to teach the word and to have positions of responsibility?" Totally, the glory goes to him.

I'd say to the teenager and the young person watching: don't ever think that somehow I was born with all these wonderful abilities. This has been the result of years of training, hard work, and agony at times—sweat, tears, and tons of mistakes. It is about occasionally doing something right and learning from my mistakes and going on. Carry on. You never know what God has just around the bend. We can't see around corners, but God can.

John Ankerberg: Erwin, thank you for sharing all of that with us. Folks, I just wanted you to hear it. I think that there's so many things in Erwin's own testimony of what God has done in his life that speak to all of us.

Guest (Male): Now, stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit jashow.org. That's jashow.org. Or subscribe to us on YouTube.