Ernest Reisinger: a biography

Elmer Albright was a fellow-carpenter, born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, whose father was a coal miner. He and his wife, Evie, had come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour at the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Shamokin about five years earlier under the ministry of a Scotsman named George Atcheson.

As he worked with Ernie, Elmer began to speak to him of the Lord Jesus Christ, someone he invariably referred to as his Saviour. He told Ernie of God the Creator who made and sustained the universe, whose Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, had been sent into the world to deal with our greatest need, the guilt of our wayward living: ‘We deserve eternal death, because we are sinners, but the Lord Jesus, because he loved us, died for us.’ While Elmer explained the good news to him and urged him to read the Bible, he invited Ernie to come to the Sunday School which the government allowed a small group of Christians to hold in a recreational building on the base.

Don’t get too close

Elmer Albright and Reisinger had many conversations in the course of a year, but the other workmen had little time for Elmer. He was a good carpenter and a considerate follow-worker, but he had this ‘bug’ on religion. ‘Don’t get too close to him’, they warned Ernie. ‘If you do, all he will talk about is religion.’ But the men were wrong. Elmer never talked about religion. He talked about the Lord Jesus Christ in such an intimate way that Ernie began to think: ‘He really knows this Person’.

Some of the men used to make snide remarks when Elmer bowed his head over lunch to thank God for his food. They would badger him with such archaic questions as, ’Where did Cain get his wife?’ Elmer would smile and say: ‘I’m a Christian. I don’t bother with other men’s wives’, and continue with his work. The men would poke fun at him, but one thing they could not deny; Elmer lived a consistently good life and truly cared for this young man Ernie Reisinger, and so every Friday he would ask him: ‘Coming to Sunday School this week?’ Ernie’s reply was to shake his head. He had 52 excuses for not attending a Christian gathering, but Elmer never stopped his kindly speaking to and praying for this unhappy young man.

A longing heart

On Sundays Ernie Reisinger would watch children cross his yard on their way to Elmer’s Sunday School. A longing grew in his heart that his son, Donald, should attend as he had done when he had been a little boy. Now aged four, Donald had never set foot inside a church or had an ounce of Christian instruction. So after refusing invitations for an entire year, Ernie surprised everyone by taking Donald to Sunday School, but his chief reason was that the little boy should be acquainted with religious people who would take care of him spiritually, thereby relieving Ernie of his responsibility.

Ernest Reisinger sat there throughout the meeting, but failed to understand it. When the Sunday School class stood up and sang a familiar hymn, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear’, he could not lift up his voice with them because those words were not true for him. ‘I closed the hymnbook’, he later said. When he went home the words of the hymn went round and round in his brain. He determined that he would not return to Sunday School. Once was more than enough, and thus a month or two passed by.

Ernie was increasingly miserable, more than ever before, even more than during his childhood stay of several months in the Carlisle orphanage. He wondered whether he was having a nervous breakdown. He knew nothing of God the Holy Spirit’s work of conviction, preparing the heart of man for salvation. Reisinger was deeply troubled about his sins, and concerned about the whole tenor of his life.

A tearful face

Eight weeks later, albeit reluctantly, but feeling there was nowhere else for him to turn, Ernie returned with Don and Mima to the Sunday School. There was Elmer Albright waiting at the door. As Ernie stretched out his arm to shake hands with Elmer, he glanced at his face and saw tears running down Elmer’s cheeks. Ernie thought, ‘How odd — what’s emotional about shaking hands?’ Elmer’s tears made no sense to him until later when he learned of Another One who wept and whose compassion Elmer also shared. He had refused to give up on Ernie.

Elmer believed in the power of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is absolute reality, that his salvation is divine and that regeneration is a work of God that changes sinners. Elmer believed that the Lord Jesus continues to save men and women today. That faith made him a man of prayer. Soon afterwards Ernie went to Elmer’s home and met his wife, Evie. She said to him: ‘So you are Ernie Reisinger? I didn’t know who Ernie Reisinger was, but I was hoping he would soon move or get converted.’ All this was a new language for Ernie and he looked perplexed at Evie Albright. She then explained to him that on many occasions after Elmer came home from work, before supper, he would go to his bedroom, close the door and begin to pray. Evie would watch the dinner getting cold and then walk quietly to the door behind which her husband was crying to God for somebody named ‘Ernie Reisinger’.

That second Sunday afternoon, when the Sunday School was over, Reisinger invited Elmer to come over to his home. Elmer brought along with him the superintendent of the Sunday School and a woman teacher. They happened to come from different denominations: Elmer Albright belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance; the superintendent was a Methodist; the woman teacher was a Baptist. Ernie did not learn that from their conversation, but much later, for none of them asked him to join their organisations. They brought Bibles with them and talked to him about the Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation, they all agreed, had nothing to do with keeping the Ten Commandments, not joining any particular church, nor participating in baptism or the Lord’s Supper. It was to be found in the great work the Lord Jesus alone had done. Man’s response could only be to receive the gift of eternal life which God offered to men and women for the sake of his love for his Son.

Ernest Reisinger listened earnestly and intently, and they prayed with him before leaving and gave him some leaflets to read. That night Ernie became deeply serious about his relationship with God. If there was such a thing as salvation, he wanted it. He determined on Monday that settling this matter was more important than going to work. He stayed home and read the leaflets his friends from the Sunday School had brought him.

After his wife went to bed, he brought out the family Bible, removing the four-leaf clover and the baby curls from within its cover. Then he prayed: ’Dear God, if you live, if you exist, let me know something about being saved.’ It was the first honest prayer of his life.

What must I do?

Then he began to open the Bible, turning over pages at random. He found it baffling, especially the genealogies and the strange actions of the men of the Old Testament. He could not find anything about how to be saved. He turned from this page to that, Old Testament and New Testament — it was all a sealed book to him. He kept dipping into it in his frustration, but gaining no insights. Then eventually he came across a piece of paper tucked between two pages. It was a tract, and written boldly on the cover were the words: ‘What Must I Do to be Saved?’

The tract told him that he had sinned against God and that he would get no-where unless he acknowledged that to him. Ernest C. Reisinger knelt down in his living room and prayed the prayer of the publican of whom Jesus spoke in the gospel: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’. The tract then directed him to John, chapter 5, verse 24. There he read these words: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death into life.’ As the words in all their simplicity and hope registered in his mind and affections, Ernie’s heart was flooded with the assurance that Christ was now his Lord; he sat weeping before the Bible. On that day, through true repentance for his sins, and by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Reisinger knew he had met the God of grace.

Elmer Albright found a church with an evening service not far from the Aberdeen Proving Ground and encouraged Reisinger to come along with him. There Ernie first bore witness to his new life in Christ. It happened to be a Salvation Army gathering and Ernie was drawn by their zeal, but perplexed by the absence of the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both his neighbours were Southern Baptists; in fact, one woman, the daughter of a minister, lived as consistent a life as his friend Elmer. After her husband had been killed in an accident at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, she had displayed much trust in God through those dark months. she urged Ernie to speak to her minister. He was helpful to Ernie, and soon Ernie was baptised in the First Southern Baptist Church of Havre de Grace, Maryland.

Stream of people

Many years later, a telephone call told Ernie and Mima that Elmer Albright had passed away. Then living in Carlisle, about 100 miles from Elmer’s home, they determined to go to the funeral service. Leaving early one morning, they were the first to arrive at the funeral parlour where, in the empty room, the body of Elmer Albright lay in its coffin. Reisinger had an undisturbed time to stand there at the casket, quietly meditating and thanking God for his grace in bringing this humble, courageous man into his life, one who would not stop speaking or praying for him. Then a steady stream of people began to trickle into the room. The funeral director had not expected so many to attend. Elmer and his wife had had no children.

So Reisinger wandered about the room and listened as people spoke to one another after the service. He was deeply impressed by the number who told others that Elmer’s testimony and influence on their lives had inspired them to become Christians. There are probably men in the pulpit and on the mission field today because of the example of this modest, anonymous Christian.

This is an extract from Ernest Reisinger: a biography by Geoffrey Thomas, published by the Banner of Truth (£16.50, ISBN 0 85151 825 7) and used with permission.

Ernest Reisinger: a biography

An eminent American Christian, Reisinger died in 2004. He helped many gospel causes, including the Banner of Truth. Here Geoff Thomas tells how he came to Christ.

Don’t get too close

A longing heart

A tearful face

What must I do?

Stream of people

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