Paul Rader: From Faith to Doubt to FERVENT Faith
[ABOVE: Paul Rader, an evangelist from Chicago, taken outside at Death Valley Ranch. April 21, 1928. Courtesy National Park Service, Death Valley National Park, Photographer Mat Roy Thompson, Museum Catalog Number DEVA 40552. Public domain / Wikimedia.]
NINE-YEAR-OLD PAUL RADER was under conviction of sin. On this night he knelt at the altar wanting to get saved. An elder said “Why, Paul, you love the Savior, don’t you?” When Rader answered “yes,” he was assured he was all right. But Rader knew he wasn’t. He went home and knelt by his bed sobbing.
Three days earlier he had disobeyed his mother; his father (a pastor) had brought out a whip and taken off his coat. “Someone has to be punished for this business,” he said. Paul dearly loved his father, and could scarce bring himself to do as his father commanded, to lay the whip to his father’s back in Paul’s place.
Now as Rader wept at the bedside, his father entered. He knelt beside Paul and explained that Jesus had taken the whipping for Paul’s sin, just as he (the father) had taken his son’s whipping three days earlier. Rader understood and was flooded by faith and joy. He crawled onto his father’s lap and they sang a hymn together.
Shortly afterward, Rader’s father was appointed missionary to Wyoming. Bishop Joyce took Rader aside and asked the boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A preacher,” said Rader. Joyce knelt with him and committed him to Christ for his chosen work.
Rader did become a preacher. God used him as a teenager to bring revival on the prairies. He had one sermon in him and preached it at his first stop to a mean old woman—the only person who showed up apart from a deaf person. Before Rader knew what was happening the old woman was on her knees confessing a vile life. She went through the county that afternoon confessing and apologizing to victims of her former sins. The church was packed that night. As Rader tells it,
The devil said, “What are you going to preach?” I said, “I only have one sermon. I preached that this morning, but I only had an audience of two, so maybe I can repeat it.” I went out into the little side place and talked to God, and He said, “It will be all right. Whatever comes up, I am running this meeting.” I said, “All right, run it Lord.”...
When it came time to preach the Lord said, “Let her [the old woman] do the preaching.” “Sure, that’s it,” I said. And I said, “She will tell you how she got saved.” She jumped up and went at it, and she didn’t have to go ten minutes before a big old blacksmith jumped up and said, “I want that kind,” and he got it, and a lot more folks there that night believed God.
Rader sent a telegram. “Father come. I am in a peck of trouble and don’t know what to do.” His father hurried down, assuming persecution had broken out. Seventy converts met him at the station. Rader explained he had no idea what to do with them. Relieved, his father organized them into a church.
At the next town, something similar happened and for weeks Rader never had to preach but once. Someone was always eager to stand up and tell the crowd how God had saved him or her.
Why am I telling you this? Because it was no glory to me. I didn’t understand it, but I knew I spent my nights in prayer and the day-times talking to God, and I knew He led meetings, and could do things people could not do; and so I just kept trusting Him.
Recognizing his need for training, Rader entered a state university in 1897. However his teachers were without faith and filled him with doubts. Although he became a pastor in 1907, he left the ministry sensing his lack of spiritual power. A stellar athlete, he turned to boxing and other business ventures, which thrived. One day around 1912, he saw the emptiness of his ambition and wanted back into the Lord’s service. He went home, spent three days on his knees, and experienced renewal. When he got up, he relinquished his entire share of business to his partners and began preaching again.
On this day, 3 February 1915, Moody Church in Chicago called him to be its pastor. Soon he also became head of the Christian and Missionary Alliance organization.
God used Rader to win many souls before his untimely death. He was one of America’s first radio evangelists and he had a hand in the formation of several mission organizations, including the Slavic Gospel Association (see our Deyneka story, 11 March). He died 19 July 1938 in Los Angeles, after a two-year fight with cancer, just 58-years old.
—Dan Graves