Mr. Torrey’s Conversion

Sometimes God’s messenger is home influence. Did you ever hear Mr. Torrey, the far-famed evangelist, tell what an awful unbeliever he was when he was a young man, how he went to the deepest depths of infidelity and scouted everything—the Bible, Christ, God, heaven, hell, immortality—everything like that? But his dear mother yearned after him, and loved him, and pleaded with him, and prayed for him, and after awhile he said to his mother: “I am tired of it all, and I am going to leave and not bother you anymore.” She followed him to the door, and followed him to the gate, pleading and praying and loving and weeping, and then at last she said, as her final word: “Son, when you come to the darkest hour of all, and everything seems lost and gone, if you will honestly call on your mother’s God, you will get help.” Years later, as he contemplated committing suicide in a hotel far from home, the last words that his mother had said came back to him. And Torrey said he fell beside his bed and said: “Oh, God of my mother, if there is such a Being, I want light, and if Thou wilt give it, no matter how, I will follow it.” He was converted right then and there, and hurried back home. Oh, the power of a mother’s prayer!
—George W. Truett