From Abortion to Inspiration: Pastor Ray Lane's Unbelievable Story

Host: 00:00:58

My guest today is Pastor Ray Lane.

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He was born during the Great Depression, and in spite of a plan to have him aborted, he grew up on a farm in Idaho, and he served in the Air Force.

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He attended Boise Junior College, now Boise State University.

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He was a former breeder of registered Holsteins, graduated from Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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He was a pastor in five states and in New Zealand.

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In retirement, he has served as an assistant funeral director, volunteered as Colorado Springs Police.

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Chapman volunteered with San Diego Sheriff's Department.

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After Norman passed away in 76, he married Gene, a bookkeeper from Pasadena, California, school district.

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When he was single again, he met Muriel, who was a bell ringer for Salvation army in Miami, Florida.

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And finally, he met Joyce, a retired nurse that grew up in Nebraska.

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Gene and Muriel, or also deceased.

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Now he and Norma have two children, Leah and Jeff, who passed away at age 59.

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He and Joy is now living in a retirement community in Colorado.

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Welcome, Pastor Ray, to the podcast.

Host: 00:02:03

Well, Pastor Ray, how are you doing this fine day, my friend?

Pastor Ray: 00:02:07

Oh, it's a beautiful day in Colorado.

Host: 00:02:10

Oh, I bet.

Host: 00:02:10

My son just left Colorado.

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He's moving back to Texas.

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He was at Fort Collins for a while.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:15

Oh, Fort Collins.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:17

I have a grandson, or my wife has a grandson in Fort Collins.

Host: 00:02:20

Yeah, my son's in the Army.

Host: 00:02:22

So you know the, you know, know the routine.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:25

Oh, yeah, yeah, I do that.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:27

I was.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:28

I lived in Colorado Springs, where Fort Carson Is, and there's 50,000 army people coming and going there all the time.

Host: 00:02:37

Yeah, that's where he was at Fort Carson.

Host: 00:02:39

Well, it's good to have you on, my friend.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:42

Well, it's good to be here.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:44

I've been waiting and looking forward to this for ages and fearfully waiting.

Host: 00:02:52

Well, we're fearfully and wonderfully made, so it works out just perfectly.

Host: 00:02:55

Right.

Pastor Ray: 00:02:56

There we go.

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So I love to ask my guests this.

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What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Pastor Ray: 00:03:06

I want to limit it to just one piece of advice.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:11

The superintendent of the high school where I attended in a little town in Idaho told me that there's a fact of life that is very important.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:25

He said, do not make excuses, make good.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:32

And I've lived by that from the time I heard it.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:36

Early in life, especially when it became a habit, I think, of trying to finish up whatever I was supposed to do.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:44

If I didn't, I had a nickname, Halfway Lane.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:49

And that was.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:51

That was disappointing whenever I sounded like that.

Pastor Ray: 00:03:54

Anyway, that is the one thing I really like to key in on I love that.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:00

Don't make excuses, make good.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:02

And in our world today, there's so much excuse making, right?

Host: 00:04:08

Exactly.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:09

Yeah.

Host: 00:04:10

I'm curious, in your journey, are there some people who have come alongside you in your walk that have been an inspiration for you or even a mentor along your way?

Pastor Ray: 00:04:21

Well, I'm going to start with my first wife.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:27

We were married for 57 years, and when we got married, neither one of us knew anything about God.

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And there came a time when we had two children.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:40

I don't know, they were about 4 and 6 years old.

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A neighbor invited us to send them to vacation Bible school.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:49

So I knew the lady entrusted her, so they took her to a church.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:54

Neither one of us went to church.

Pastor Ray: 00:04:56

I knew more about God than she did because I had gone to Easter and Christmas services once in a while.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:02

She never even done that or did that.

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And our kids went to vacation Bible school.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:10

Now, this is all about my wife, if you remember.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:13

She said, let's let him go.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:17

So they went, they came home happy about this.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:21

And then the lady that took them wanted to take them to Sunday school.

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And I said, well, I don't know, maybe that's too much religion.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:31

But we finally decided to let her take the kids to Sunday school.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:37

And they went for several months and they came home from church every Sunday and they were happy and singing songs and it was a good time.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:51

And I told my wife, I said, you better go find out what they're teaching our kids at this place.

Pastor Ray: 00:05:57

I've heard they're kind of radical.

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They get a little noisy on Sunday and this is a small town.

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And we kind of had a little idea of what went on everywhere.

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But I said, you better go see what they're teaching our kids.

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So she was really hungry spiritually.

Pastor Ray: 00:06:15

I never was, but she was.

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And she.

Pastor Ray: 00:06:19

So she went and she came home a few weeks after she started going to church, Sunday school and church.

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And she came home one day and she was all happy.

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And she says, I got saved today.

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And I said, saved?

Pastor Ray: 00:06:37

Saved from what?

Pastor Ray: 00:06:40

She said, well, and she tried to explain it to me and I wasn't.

Pastor Ray: 00:06:46

She wasn't very well able to explain it because she was brand new baby Christian.

Pastor Ray: 00:06:55

Well, it turns out that she was a redhead, a beautiful redhead.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:03

And she figured that being a redhead, you had to have a temper to go with it.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:09

And so she did.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:12

When we left that farm home years later, there was still a door that was cracked down the middle from her slamming it so hard.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:20

And all of a sudden she didn't Seem to have that terrible temper that she'd had.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:28

And everything about her was nicer.

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Her activities, the way she acted was just good.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:37

So I recognized that something had happened, even though I didn't know.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:42

And she didn't know what it was exactly.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:45

But she went to church for two and a half years and before I got interested at all.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:52

But I watched her life, and she introduced me to some of these church people.

Pastor Ray: 00:07:57

I never went to church during that time, but she introduced me to them and them to me.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:04

And they were really nice people.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:07

I thought the church was only about getting your money.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:10

But through her changed life, I came to the point one day that she asked me during what she called a devotional time that she had every morning.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:23

When we finally left that farm home, There were two spots where the carpet beside the bed were worn thin.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:32

She had been praying for me.

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And there came a day when scripture told her that she was to ask me if I believed in Jesus as Lord.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:48

She asked me that one morning, and I said, well, yeah, I believe that.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:54

Didn't think anything about it.

Pastor Ray: 00:08:57

But then later in the day, she said, the Bible tells me from Isaiah that by saying that Jesus is Lord, you've become a Christian.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:09

I said, okay.

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She says, can I tell the church about it?

Pastor Ray: 00:09:14

They've been praying for you.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:16

Well, I kind of figured that, but I didn't know I was so bad.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:20

And I said, yeah, you can beat the drum or blow the trumpet, whatever it is you want to do.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:26

Go ahead.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:28

So I went to bed that night not thinking about spiritual things.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:36

That was on a Friday and Saturday morning.

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I got up and I threw my cigarettes away.

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And I had a new language unexpectedly.

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It was clean, pure clean.

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From that day to this, I haven't sworn.

Pastor Ray: 00:09:59

But one terrible time, it just.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:05

I was just cleaned up and even the dog.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:10

And we were on the farm at the time.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:12

I had a terrific herd of cattle.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:14

Even the dog and the cows got along with me better, and I never abused them.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:19

But there was a difference in the spiritual atmosphere around the place.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:24

Come Sunday morning, my wife was getting ready to go to Sunday school and church.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:29

And I had rushed around and finished the chores up and came in the house and I said, if you wait a few minutes till I get shower, I'll go with you.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:39

So I went to Sunday school or I went to church, didn't go to Sunday school.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:44

And when the church service came along, there was a deal where they passed a plate around collecting money.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:53

And I'd always been opposed to giving money to the church.

Pastor Ray: 00:10:57

But for some reason that day I got my checkbook out and I was sitting in the back row, of course.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:05

And when the offering plate came by, I dropped a check in the basket in the plate.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:17

And when I did that, I knew that something had changed.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:23

And from that day forward we went to church.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:28

And people hadn't had a new Christian for years.

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And the church was a fine church, good people as best you can get.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:39

And I learned and soon joined a church.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:45

And it was through my wife and seeing what God can do in a life.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:53

And she became quite a famous artist.

Pastor Ray: 00:11:56

Painted: 1700

Pastor Ray: 00:12:00

And you can't see it, but on the wall behind me is a picture of Madonna and child.

Pastor Ray: 00:12:07

It looks like a mother holding baby up.

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And we call it the baby Jesus.

Pastor Ray: 00:12:14

I've been offered a five figure price for that painting and I wouldn't take it anyway.

Pastor Ray: 00:12:22

Joyce was now my mentor, my fourth wife.

Pastor Ray: 00:12:29

I don't know if people got the information earlier about my early life of having been aborted I wasn't hearing, but maybe that was done.

Pastor Ray: 00:12:40

Everybody else might hear it, but I'm now married to my fourth wife and she is a jewel of helping me as a mentor as well because she came up out of a Catholic background and she's challenged me about all the stuff that I thought I knew as a Nazarene pastor.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:07

And I've had to learn to explain stuff better than ever.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:12

Even after 50 years of pastoral ministry.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:17

She's been an incentive for me as well.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:23

There's some others that have contributed to my life experiences and direction.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:33

One is Dr.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:34

Oswald Hoffman.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:35

I think you may know about him.

Host: 00:13:37

Yes, I do.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:37

The Iglutherin hour while I was milking cows at the point in time, I listened to him as much as I could.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:49

Hours a week.

Pastor Ray: 00:13:51

Listening to Oswald Hoffman, I really cut my theological knowledge of the Bible on Oswald Hoffman.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:01

He was a great incentive to me and there's several others.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:06

But one more I want to mention.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:08

There was a pastor in Albuquerque, New Mexico that was pastoring a church.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:15

And when we were also in New Mexico one Sunday, we went to visit his church.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:23

And he had a situation in his church where one of his young Hispanic ladies had had a baby.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:31

And the pastor was having a dedication service for this baby.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:39

There was no father there, there was none mentioned.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:47

But the man brought that congregation together to love and support that young mother and child.

Pastor Ray: 00:14:59

I was so impressed by that love in spite of unfortunate situations.

Pastor Ray: 00:15:09

Anyway, those are some of my mentors.

Host: 00:15:12

Well, that's very inspiring.

Host: 00:15:14

I want to dig A little deeper.

Host: 00:15:16

I did kind of read your bio at the beginning of a podcast that's going to be on the people can hear.

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But I'm curious.

Host: 00:15:22

Part of your life started out in a very unusual way.

Host: 00:15:25

Tell us about your birth, your miracle birth, and kind of what shaped your journey to become a pastor.

Pastor Ray: 00:15:37

Well, the start began because I was born.

Pastor Ray: 00:15:45

It's a crazy idea, but I have a position and something to offer everybody.

Pastor Ray: 00:15:53

Just because I was born.

Pastor Ray: 00:15:56

My mother had gone to the doctor, the family doctor, and had already had two abortions and went in to have a third one during the Great Depression.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:09

And the doctor says, why do you need another one?

Pastor Ray: 00:16:12

You're on a farm, you got plenty of food and everything.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:17

Why do you want another abortion?

Pastor Ray: 00:16:20

She said, well, dad wants it.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:23

Where is your husband?

Pastor Ray: 00:16:24

He's out in the old Model A, waiting for me to come out.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:30

He says, can you go out and bring him in?

Pastor Ray: 00:16:32

So mom went out and got dad and brought him in, and dad and the doctor went in the office and had a conversation.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:46

And whatever was said, I wish I had asked Dad.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:51

I think he would have told me, but I never knew what happened.

Pastor Ray: 00:16:55

But here I am 93 years ago last week.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:00

That's when I was conceived.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:03

And it's been a wonderful life.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:07

My parents did not treat me as unwanted.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:12

They gave me as good a life as they were capable of giving.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:18

They lived by the Golden Rule.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:22

They were not churchgoers, but they lived by the Golden Rule and they were well respected by friends and everyone.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:30

And so I grew up with the Golden Rule and that was a starting place for what could happen in my life.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:40

I was pretty much a straight arrow all of my life.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:44

I didn't get into all sorts of bad stuff, didn't do any bad stuff.

Pastor Ray: 00:17:53

I think I got one spanking in my life and I never needed another one, I guess because I just stayed on the straight and level.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:05

Though my parents had an older brother, he was seven years older than me, or I had an older brother, he was seven years older than me.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:16

And they did not treat him very well, I didn't think, but they treated me very well.

Host: 00:18:22

You wrote a book called Unlimited Potential of the Unborn.

Host: 00:18:26

What led you to write that book?

Pastor Ray: 00:18:30

The full title is conceivable, the Unlimited Potential of the Unborn.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:38

The reason I wrote that book was because of all of my experiences through life.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:45

I contributed a lot to wherever I was.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:52

I was president of four different organizations.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:55

I led all sorts of things on the farm.

Pastor Ray: 00:18:59

I had awards and achievement records and stuff that Made the whole community respected me, and I was a leader.

Pastor Ray: 00:19:09

And the reason that I actually ended up writing the book after the good years of farming and breeding cattle and then as a pastor for many years.

Pastor Ray: 00:19:26

A year ago, the senior retirement facility where I live, just in the edge of Denver, Colorado, had the state attorney general come to speak to our facility.

Pastor Ray: 00:19:42

And a couple of hundred people can be seated in the theater.

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And someone asked him a question what he thought about Roe versus Wade being changed the way it was.

Pastor Ray: 00:19:53

He said, oh, I hope people come to their senses and change that back.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:02

And I just felt like a bomb went off in my brain.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:09

He just essentially said, I wish you had never been born.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:15

That's what it's meant to me.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:18

And people have told me because of all of my experiences and things in life, that, hey, you ought to write a book.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:27

Well, after that explosion in my mind, it seemed like God said to me, now it's the time.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:38

So that was around the 1st of August a year ago.

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And a few months later, the book was published last day of January this year.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:48

And it's been a labor of love, but wow, is it tough.

Pastor Ray: 00:20:56

But it's telling about what a life is that could have been taken away.

Host: 00:21:05

So, Pastor Ray, give us the overview of the book.

Host: 00:21:09

What are the main themes and what are the messages you want people to find in reading this book?

Pastor Ray: 00:21:15

It's simply what I've just been saying.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:19

I want people to know that when a baby is aborted, a life is lost.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:29

And there are so many thousands of similar stories that can be told.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:37

Tim Tebow.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:38

Most people have any knowledge of sports know about Tim Tebow having.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:45

His mother was advised to have an abortion.

Pastor Ray: 00:21:50

I heard her speak one time in California, and there are just multitudes of stories of individuals.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:01

One of the singers for Billy Graham that I actually worked with Billy Graham for a week one time, one of the singers had been the result of a rape and was such a star in people's lives, since it's such a part of Christian reality of what a person can be.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:29

God said in the beginning, he's going to create man in his own image, man and woman.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:37

He created us.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:39

And we are special, every single one of us.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:46

I look at you and I think, wow, this guy really has it.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:52

And I heard you talk a little bit.

Pastor Ray: 00:22:55

And if there's envy, I can't be envious.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:01

But if I could, you're doing something that I think is awesome.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:08

And there's not a person alive that could not have been aborted.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:15

They could look in the Mirror when they get up in the morning and say, oh, could it be that I might not have even been here?

Pastor Ray: 00:23:24

Think of all the things that have happened in my life, what I have done, where I've been.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:31

It's just incredible.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:33

I had breakfast with Bill and Gloria Gaither one morning.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:42

How can you imagine that awesome experience to be with them.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:51

Jim Dobson.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:53

I went to church with him.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:55

Everybody knows.

Pastor Ray: 00:23:56

I think that he began focused on the family.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:00

Jim was a genius of a man.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:04

Went to church with him.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:05

I prayed with him numerous times.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:08

God has blessed him, blessed the world through him.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:12

And I met him.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:16

I knew him.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:18

I knew he and his wife, Shirley.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:20

Shirley came to our home before my wife died and visited her about a week before my first wife passed away.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:31

The experiences that you and I have, and every person has experiences.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:39

Think about the fact that when I was looking to get married at the age 21, I thought 21 was the age she had to get married.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:50

So I was busy chasing ladies, you know, everybody knows.

Pastor Ray: 00:24:59

Well, hopefully everybody has the experience of the search for a mate.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:09

Men and women.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:10

Everybody's got that search.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:14

I could have missed it.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:17

I had at least two siblings that were aborted.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:24

I have thought so many times.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:27

It's so sad that they missed this wonderful thing, the mate making business.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:37

I dated seven for some reason.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:40

I don't know why I did this, but I counted the number of ladies, young ladies that I dated during that year before I met Norma.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:54

There were 17 of them that I met.

Pastor Ray: 00:25:58

And I can tell you not one of those got married if they were not a virgin when they got married.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:09

It was not my fault.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:11

My mother had taught me to respect women and have some self discipline.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:19

My own life.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:23

Life is such an amazing thing.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:28

If we look at back where we've been, I see the three crosses on the shelf behind you.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:35

I think there's a lot of meaning there.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:41

It looks like there's a sword up there.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:44

I'd like to hear about that someday.

Pastor Ray: 00:26:46

I think that's probably a sword of the spirit.

Host: 00:26:52

Yeah, that's kind of how I like this.

Host: 00:26:54

The idea of the sword of the spirit and having those crosses there too.

Host: 00:26:59

Yeah, it's a very powerful picture.

Host: 00:27:02

When people, when I'm doing a podcast, they see those things behind me and they're drawn to the sword and the crosses.

Pastor Ray: 00:27:10

Well, it's the fact of life.

Pastor Ray: 00:27:14

We are human beings created to live in a life that it's a spiritual situation because God created it.

Pastor Ray: 00:27:28

And I am just overwhelmed frequently.

Host: 00:27:35

That's powerful.

Host: 00:27:37

You have had a remarkable 93 years.

Host: 00:27:40

As you think about your life, what are some key milestones in your life that stand out for you?

Pastor Ray: 00:27:53

I'm thinking about times when I came close to dying or being killed.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:02

It's amazing that in this period of time in the history of America, we know about a candidate for president who was shot at and a bullet took part of his ear.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:17

One time when I was hunting, I did a lot of hunting when I was young.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:21

I was just out there in the mountains.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:26

One time when I was hunting, I heard a banished.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:32

I heard a bullet go by my ear.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:35

I don't know how far it was out because I don't know how far you can get away from the speed of a bullet that's traveling about 3,000ft per second.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:46

But it leaves a little sound and it sounds like a bumblebee.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:52

And it just happened so quick.

Pastor Ray: 00:28:55

But I was in this brush and somebody across the way across the gully from me took a shot at someone in the brush.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:05

They saw a movement and took a shot.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:08

Well, I had a.270 rifle with a scope on it, and I'd been awarded ribbon in medal in service for marksmanship.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:19

And I took a look at the guy and I actually.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:24

And this was memory from back, I don't know, 50 years ago now.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:32

I took a look at him and the words or the thought that came to my mind, being an expert with the rifle, I thought, I'm going to notch that man's ear.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:47

And I actually considered it.

Pastor Ray: 00:29:51

But I realized that sometimes when I was shooting, I'd miss the target of the small bullseye by a half inch.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:00

And I didn't want to kill the guy, but that was one of the near experiences of death.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:08

I've been in three car accidents when the car was totaled.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:14

And the picture of one of those cars is in.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:16

In my book, why Didn't I Die?

Pastor Ray: 00:30:24

There weren't any seat belts.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:25

And that car that's pictured in the book rolled at least seven times.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:32

We were traveling at 80 miles an hour, and a construction site showed up.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:39

This was in the early morning and before light traveling at 80 miles an hour.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:46

And we see this little light off the sides of the road.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:50

And my friend who was driving always drove these lights on dim.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:55

Anyway, there wasn't time to make anything else.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:58

He just turned his wheel.

Pastor Ray: 00:30:59

And the road around the construction was just gravel and flat.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:09

And we hit that.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:10

And I.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:10

For many years, I could feel the glass on the other side of the glass, my head against the driver, the passenger side window.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:23

I walked away from that accident, unhurt.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:28

I found out later that I'd actually hurt my back.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:31

But I think that may have happened because the car ended up laying on its top and we crawled out where the back window had been.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:38

o seat belts in those days in: 1954

Pastor Ray: 00:31:44

And why didn't I die?

Pastor Ray: 00:31:49

And there was a time on the farm when I was leading one of my prized bulls around, showing him off.

Pastor Ray: 00:31:57

I was leading him by the nose ring, and he decided he didn't like that.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:04

So he took me down and I was eyeball to eyeball like this with the bull.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:13

He could have killed me.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:15

But there was a friend there that yelled at him and got him to back up.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:18

And I got over the fence.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:19

He got out.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:21

Why didn't I drown?

Pastor Ray: 00:32:23

The time that seven or eight years old went swimming in a canal with my aunt and my brother and I stepped into a deep hole, had no idea about how to swim, and I stepped into a deep hole and my brother and my aunt pulled me out.

Pastor Ray: 00:32:46

How come when I was in the service station, one of the station places was Victorville, California, and three of us had to go to the beach.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:01

We went to Santa Monica beach, got out in the ocean, and I could dog paddle at that time, just a little bit, and I was playing around in the water and they fell into a hole or got in, stepped into a low place in the beach area, and I couldn't get out.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:20

Every time I'd get close to the beach, a wave coming back out would put me back in the hole.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:27

There were two brothers that saved my life.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:30

One of them helped me till he couldn't move, and he crawled out.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:36

His other brother helped me.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:38

And we finally got me out of the beach and I had a lot of water to get rid of.

Pastor Ray: 00:33:46

Why didn't I die when that happen?

Pastor Ray: 00:33:52

There was numerous times when I had tractors turn over on the farm.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:03

I never was hurt.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:06

I could have died.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:08

I know others that died that way.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:12

All of this life of places and times when I could have died, they just didn't happen.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:21

I think God was watching over me.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:26

I think he does today as well.

Pastor Ray: 00:34:30

That's part of the story.

Host: 00:34:31

That's beautiful.

Host: 00:34:33

You know, part of the discourse we're having in our society today about the unborn is a lot of controversy.

Host: 00:34:41

And the argument I always hear one side make is the rights of the mother and the child is left out of the discussion.

Host: 00:34:51

As a pastor and someone who values life as much as you do, how do you argue for people about the life of the Unborn.

Pastor Ray: 00:35:02

I'm not sure argue is quite the right word.

Host: 00:35:07

Yeah, I try to think of a better word.

Host: 00:35:09

How do you.

Host: 00:35:10

Because when I talk about it, to me, I try to get back to the issue of rights is the wrong place for us to start the conversation.

Host: 00:35:19

Because rights, I always say rights.

Host: 00:35:21

If you go by the Constitution, rights were given to us by the Creator.

Host: 00:35:25

I view all life as a gift of God, like you've been talking about.

Host: 00:35:30

How do we.

Host: 00:35:31

I guess, how do we discuss this in a way that we lift up the fact that this is a precious gift of God, that we all have this life.

Host: 00:35:39

And you just described beautifully how God intervened so many times in your life because what he gave you is this very special, precious gift of life.

Host: 00:35:51

And how do we convince people who don't see the birth of a baby as a gift of God?

Pastor Ray: 00:36:01

As I think about this, one of the things that I think of is asking a person, what do you think the baby would say if you ask the baby, do you want to live or do you want to not live?

Pastor Ray: 00:36:24

It's a simple question in a sense, but it has a profound meaning.

Pastor Ray: 00:36:34

I think about.

Pastor Ray: 00:36:38

I've seen pictures of babies that were a foot long.

Pastor Ray: 00:36:47

They have, one way or another, gotten outside the mother's body.

Pastor Ray: 00:36:54

As a funeral director, as I worked in that in six years in retirement, I was involved with an awful lot of funeral services that involved, well, two years and younger babies.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:16

And I saw the pain that it caused.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:22

It caused me pain.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:24

It does today.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:26

To think about all the babies that I helped in the memorial service, quite a number of them.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:32

I was the pastor for it.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:35

And the idea of this young couple that comes in would come so often.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:43

It seemed like a young unmarried couple came in and their little baby had died.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:51

But we always wondered why and how.

Pastor Ray: 00:37:55

But the suffering that went on for grandparents especially, it's just overwhelming.

Pastor Ray: 00:38:04

I had a thing happen just recently, several months ago, watching the news, and there was a couple of women walking along with.

Pastor Ray: 00:38:18

They had white boxes in their hand and they were in dark clothing.

Pastor Ray: 00:38:26

And I thought, wow, well, how come they're showing this bit of a funeral procession kind of with these two ladies?

Pastor Ray: 00:38:38

The white boxes that they were carrying were filled with petitions to put on the Colorado ballot that's now out in the hands of the Colorado voters to make it legal to change the constitution of the state of Colorado to make abortion legal at any time.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:07

And I.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:08

When I.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:09

My first thought was pain with the people.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:13

And then I thought, they are advocating murdering babies by the thousands every day.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:25

Every year.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:27

It goes on all over the world.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:28

Of course, one of the things that I write in the book, I give you the scriptures and things about that, that God knew us before we were born from Isaiah and Jeremiah and those scriptures.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:45

But the idea that there's no value in that tiny thing.

Pastor Ray: 00:39:57

My grandson, who wouldn't exist if I had been aborted, he wouldn't have existed.

Pastor Ray: 00:40:06

He is the top graduate in: 2015

Pastor Ray: 00:40:21

And he is involved right now in research with artificial intelligence to find a cure for cancer.

Pastor Ray: 00:40:35

His father, my son, died at the age of 59 of pancreatic cancer.

Pastor Ray: 00:40:42

My son was such an important mentor to me, really, because I never felt like I was any hot shot of a father.

Pastor Ray: 00:40:55

But he wrote me a letter that I include in the book that's several pages long in the book, telling me one father's Day about 30 years ago, telling me how terrific I was as a father.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:14

I kept it safe because it was so valuable to me.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:21

And I was with him at MD Anderson the day that the doctor said to him, there's nothing more we can do.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:30

And I was with him and I had a conversation with him about life.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:40

Having a conversation with your son who might not have happened is.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:54

Well, I can only say it's dramatic.

Pastor Ray: 00:41:57

But thankfully, we were able to get a conversation in.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:02

And then I was able to.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:06

I wrote a letter to him that he got a day or two before he actually passed away, two weeks after my last conversation with him in person.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:18

Life is so precious.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:23

From day one of the conception DNA, the millions of things that every one of these cells that you can see and the cells you can't see, every one of them is programmed so that as this baby is being put together in the womb, each cell knows where to go.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:53

It's supposed to be on this side here, by the ear or in the ear.

Pastor Ray: 00:42:58

Inside is part of the brain.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:01

Every brain from its time of being put together has within it a situation where the brain knows right from wrong.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:18

During the time of gestation, it's happening.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:26

We learn right from wrong.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:28

It's a God thing.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:30

It's something that.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:35

Let's see.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:38

I'm trying to remember the name of the.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:41

Oh, Pascal.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:45

Pascal is the name I'm trying to get.

Pastor Ray: 00:43:47

17th century Pascal said there's a place in the heart, in the central being of man, that is not satisfied until it knows its creator.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:03

And it's a live individual from beginning.

Host: 00:44:15

That's beautiful.

Host: 00:44:16

So, Pastor, I love to ask my guests this question at 93, what do you want your legacy to be?

Pastor Ray: 00:44:24

Two things.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:29

My book.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:32

It's been described as an inspirational book.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:37

It has some very deep theological stuff in it.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:42

It's mostly about my life, but it's my life as connected and surrounding what life can be.

Pastor Ray: 00:44:53

That book is likely to be a resource book for seminary and Bible students all over the world for eternity, however long we last.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:11

And the other is my legacy is the grandson that I told you about just a little bit ago.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:19

Two things.

Host: 00:45:24

I love that.

Host: 00:45:25

So where can people find your book?

Host: 00:45:26

Conceivable Unlimited Potential of the Unborn.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:32

It is available everywhere that sells books practically.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:36

I know that Amazon has it on sale and even Walmart, you can order it at Walmart.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:48

You'll have to go pick it up.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:49

They don't carry it in the store, but you can order it any place.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:53

Barnes and Noble, you can order it there.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:56

They don't carry it, but you can get it from them.

Pastor Ray: 00:45:59

Self published books are.

Pastor Ray: 00:46:03

Well, there's a lot of lots and lots of books, but it's hard for people to know where to find the really good stuff.

Pastor Ray: 00:46:15

And I had a story published in Epic Times about my book and my life story and quite a lot of books were sold because of that.

Pastor Ray: 00:46:34

And when people find out about it, people that read it find it to be inspiring.

Pastor Ray: 00:46:40

And inspiration is an Inspiration is an important word.

Pastor Ray: 00:46:47

It kind of has to do with the sword of the spirit that's up behind you.

Host: 00:46:51

Right?

Pastor Ray: 00:46:52

Spire Inspire has to do with air, but Pneuma has to do with God, the spirit of the living God.

Host: 00:47:07

That's amazing.

Host: 00:47:08

So I encourage my audience to pick up the book also leave a review on Amazon because as we leave reviews on Amazon, the book is easier to find.

Host: 00:47:16

And we just want to thank you, Pastor Ray, for your inspirational story, your journey, for taking the time to share with us what the heart behind the book was because it gives us so much more depth to understand this is really your journey of how God intervened early on before you even born to say this life is precious, this life means something and to use you as a blessing now to bless others who are on this journey too.

Host: 00:47:43

And may they pick this up and be inspired, share it with their family and friends as we who are believers lift up life as valuable, precious and a gift from God.

Host: 00:47:53

So thank you Pastor Ray, for what you do.

Pastor Ray: 00:47:57

Well, thank you for giving me an opportunity to share these thoughts with you.

Pastor Ray: 00:48:02

It's been my privilege.