{"id":22117,"date":"2024-08-05T02:21:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T02:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/?p=22117"},"modified":"2024-08-05T04:32:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T04:32:39","slug":"the-salvation-testimony-of-don-fortner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/2024\/08\/the-salvation-testimony-of-don-fortner\/","title":{"rendered":"The Salvation Testimony Of Don Fortner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In May of 2019, the New Focus Conference was held at Gornal Baptist Church, Robert Street, in Dudley, West Midlands, England. Among the speakers was Don Fortner. He prefaced his sermon with a personal testimony on how the Lord brought his soul to a saving knowledge of Christ. Unknown to me at the time, my wife recorded the two minute testimony, for which I am forever grateful; not only to have a record of his testimony in his own voice, but to know that my grandfather, Jewell Smith, was the preacher under whom the Lord was pleased to open his understanding to the grace of God. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has not only put me into the ministry, but has been pleased to link me with these fathers in the faith and soldiers of the cross.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Jared Smith<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>Don Fortner\u2019s Testimony<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI began to hear things, and after awhile God showed me my wretched, corrupt, vile self. I had two men teaching a new adult Sunday School class who clearly taught the gospel of God\u2019s grace. And my pastor Dan Davis was about 62 to 63 years old and I wasn\u2019t quite seventeen. And uh, he had Jewell Smith come up from Orlando, Florida and preach for us that weekend. It was Memorial Day. And uh, for the first time in my life, God shined in my heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the crucified Christ. I had been trying my best, to do my best, to reform my life, to correct my ways, to change what I did and to offer God this and to offer God that; and I prayed and I prayed, and I begged and I prayed, and I repented and I prayed; and everything I offered God\u2026God screamed, \u201cNot enough.\u201d \u201cNot enough.\u201d \u201cNot enough.\u201d And my conscience screamed, \u201cTHAT\u2019S NOT ENOUGH! That won\u2019t satisfy God.\u201d But when God shined in my heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in a crucified Redeemer, I looked away from myself, to Him, and God said, \u201cThat\u2019s enough.\u201d And my conscience has been quiet ever since. It\u2019s enough. That\u2019s enough. Christ is enough. His righteousness is enough. His blood is enough. His power is enough! His grace is enough! Nothing else is. O, God give you light, which is for sinners, the Light of life, and shine in your heart now and cause you to believe on His Son.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"simplefavorite-button\" data-postid=\"22117\" data-siteid=\"1\" data-groupid=\"1\" data-favoritecount=\"5\" style=\"box-shadow:none;-webkit-box-shadow:none;-moz-box-shadow:none;\"><div class=\"bookmark-off\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In May of 2019, the New Focus Conference was held at Gornal Baptist Church, Robert Street, in Dudley, West Midlands, England. Among the speakers was Don Fortner. He prefaced his sermon with a personal testimony on how the Lord brought his soul to a saving knowledge of Christ. Unknown to me at the time, my wife recorded the two minute testimony, for which I am forever grateful; not only to have a record of his testimony in his own voice, but to know that my grandfather, Jewell Smith, was the preacher under whom the Lord was pleased to open his understanding to the grace of God. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has not only put me into the ministry, but has been pleased to link me with these fathers in the faith and soldiers of the cross.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":12896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1122,1018],"tags":[1232,1226,1239],"class_list":["post-22117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-don-fortner","category-jared-smiths-bits-and-pieces","tag-baptist-history","tag-gospel-preachers","tag-sovereign-grace","post_format-post-format-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22119,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22117\/revisions\/22119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.baptists.net\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}