My birthday is tomorrow. Today I received a small parcel in the mail from my Dad and Mom. Within the parcel was a card and a gift and a little New Testament printed in 1917. It had been given to my grandfather, the original Kenneth Pierpont, in December of 1919 when he was only ten years old. It will soon be one hundred years old. It is stamped with a small American flag in gold foil and it is bound in soft tan cloth. Within is a quotation from the President of the United States written on July 23, 1917:
The Bible is the word of life. I beg that you will read it and find this out for yourselves. Read, not little snatches here and there, but long passages that will really be the road to the heart of it. You will find it fill of real men and women not only but also of the things you have wondered about and been troubled about all your life, as men have always; and the more you read the more it will become plain to you what things are worth while and what are not what things make men happy, –loyalty, right dealing, speaking the truth, readiness to give everything for what they think their duty, and, most of all, the wish that hey may have the approval of the Christ, who gave everything for them, –and the things that are guaranteed to make men unhappy, –selfishness , cowardice, greed and everything that is low and mean. When you have have read the Bible you will know that it is the Word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart your own happiness, and your own duty. -Woodrow Wilson
President Wilson, in an address called The Bible and Progress said; “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.” Wilson ended by saying to those present that if they want to see America free and pure then they need to make their own spirits free and pure by a baptism of the Holy Scripture.
My Grandfather would go on to fight in WWII and then, later in life, come to follow Jesus with passion. He was ordained to the ministry at fifty-five years old.
Kenneth L. Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
November 2, 2015
