TESTIMONY OF HAROLD JACKSON
“With God’s Help”
. . . Harold Jackson
“From the disappointment of listening to a young pastor who was not mentioning our Lord Jesus, the resolution was made in my heart to make my Jesus and Lord known, first to this congregation, then to as wide an audience as possible through poetry.
Now it is not important that you should know my name but the name Jesus be forever in our hearts. How often I have had to call upon God for what I should write of or for just that proper word to carry the message.
This little book is as a result affectionately dedicated to Jesus the author and finisher of my faith, for it is not mine but His. I am only a servant, Harold, helping with our Fatherís business.”
HAROLD HENRY JACKSON
Harold Henry Jackson was born on January 26, 1902, in Elgin, Illinois. During his early childhood, his parents worked for dairy farmers in that area. In 1907, they moved to White Cloud, Michigan. Harold still remembers the country road there. A wagon track through the woods, with wisps of blue smoke rising from the stovepipe chimneys, huckleberries, rabbits, and fish for food.
His first work was farming in the summer and chopping wood in the winter. At age 15, he graduated from 8th grade, thereby completing his education (although he continues to read and study the Bible faithfully, currently in his 7th reading through the Scriptures as of 1984).
In 1919, Harold moved to southern Michigan to work on a mint farm. The next year he journeyed to South Dakota. There he worked as a ranch hand and related with the Cheyenne Indians in the area, even learning to speak their language.
He returned to Michigan and then moved to Chicago, where he married his wife, Dora, who years earlier had attended the same country school as he. After the deaths of his mother in 1935 and his father in 1937, he and Dora left Chicago to work on her parentís farm.
In 1953, Harold was transferred to California with the Jewell Tea Company. Although he has “retired” several times, Harold continues to work at age 82. He and Dora have been the caretakers at the White and Day Mortuary in Manhattan Beach for the past eight years.
Although he had to walk to Church (sometimes as much as three miles!), Harold attended whenever possible. He has been Free Methodist, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. He always had a desire to be a Christian and was truly converted in 1928 by, as he says, “a stern Lutheran layman who deplored wishy-washy pastoral attitudes of social teaching with no out-and-out commitment to Christ.”
Harold admits that from childhood, he had always wanted to be a minister but never shared this secret. But as he says, “On the side, I have led people to the LIGHT.” Those of us who know Harold understand exactly what he means. Pastor Lobdell 1984