Testimony of David Zuidema (Great Grandfather)

I realize it's the last meeting, hopefully it won't be long, but of all the meetings that I was given this weekend, I look forward to this one. And the reason I look forward to it is because I think I've been told that the conference in Garnavillo here has been going on for over 80 years. Yes or no? It may be longer.

I asked someone in the back who wasn't sure. And tonight I want to repeat, this is the first time I've spoken the gospel in Garnavillo. I've been here a couple times before but never had the opportunity to preach the gospel on a Sunday night.

So as the Sunday night gospel speaker, what was interesting to me is that the gospel message I want to tell you tonight was once spoken here on the Sunday night at the Garnavillo conference over 55 years ago. And it was spoken by a man who had the same name I have. And so it makes it kind of unique.

You might be kind of thinking, what is he talking about? My name is David Zudema and my great-grandfather, his name is David Zudema. And at one point in his life, he farmed in Iowa. And I want to tell you his testimony because many years ago, he'd come back to the conference here in Garnavillo and he told his testimony from this platform.

He was probably asked by a brand just like I was asked by a brand to come to the conference. And so tonight, I want to tell you how he got saved. He was born in Holland.

I want to tell you how he got saved because I'm looking out at an audience tonight and you're probably here because you have a father or a grandfather or like me, a great-grandfather who got saved. And now you're here with the same opportunity. So I want to tell you, and it's a wonderful thing to be able to do so.

If he spoke here and he told my grandfather and my grandfather told me about the time my great-grandfather come to Garnavillo conference just to be in attendance and they asked him to speak on the Sunday night gospel meeting. So it's a privilege to be the second David Zudema to do so tonight in 2024. I want to read the verse that my great-grandfather got saved through and then with God's help, I'll tell you his testimony.

A very powerful story as to the grace of God. He opened with me to Hebrews 9 and verse 27. Hebrews 9 and verse 27.

Hebrews 9 and 27, very well-known scripture, verses that are often used in the gospel. It says here, and as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. As it appointed, as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

So Christ once offered to bear the sins of many and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. I have a picture I keep in my library at home. It's in the top floor of my house and on it is a barn in western Iowa, Rock Rapids to be exact.

This is like if you're at Peter Ramsey here. He always has a nice big picture he puts in front of the pulpit, at least by us. I got the tiniest picture known to man.

If you want to see it later, I'll show it to you. For all the men here who have taken pride in a barn in this great state where your lives have been made by hopefully not tearing down barns and building greater, but by this very thing. I stand before you here tonight by the grace of God, but I actually stand before you here tonight because of a barn in Iowa.

And I make no exaggeration about it. You want to come see it, you can see it later. Evergreen Farm, Rock Rapids, Iowa.

You know that the Germans came to eastern Iowa. The Dutch, we went to western Iowa. And so I hold this picture here tonight if you want to take a look at it later.

My great-grandfather, his name was David Zudema, although that wasn't the name that he was given at birth. He was born in 1893. And in 1896, from Rotterdam, Amsterdam to Ellis Island, New York City, Klaus Zudema and Jenna Zudema and John, Nick Klaus, Datta, I remember all their names, Bernadine, Anja and Anna all came to Ellis Island.

And my great-grandfather was three years old, his name was Datta. That was the Dutch name, spelled D-A-T-E. But we got the kindergarten in Patterson, New Jersey.

The kindergarten teacher who had said this to probably a thousand other little Dutch kids said, we have no Dattas here, you're going to be a David. Thank God, it's a biblical name. You know, it could have been worse.

Could have chosen Igor or something. And so there, that family that came from Rotterdam, came all the way to Patterson, New Jersey, which was the silk capital of America. And what a place to come.

You know, I visited Ellis Island, and I don't consider myself an overly emotional person, but I was the first Zudema to go back to Ellis Island in a hundred years. And they showed me the original documents, they got them out, and there I looked on a ship's manifest on a late June day in 1896, and I saw the names of my ancestors. And there, as the second youngest individual in that family, I saw Datta Zudema, three years old.

And I actually got emotional, I think I still do, thinking of what it took to come to this, to come to America. Three years old, he's brought here. Not much good is said about his father.

And his mother must have been quite a woman, because she would have four more children after him. And he was just one of nine, growing up in a predominantly Dutch community in Patterson, New Jersey. I have a picture of him later on, I think he was about 12 or 15.

And there he is in front of the Holland, where he'd come from in Holland was a place called Friesland. But when he got to Patterson, the Frieslanders, who were the outcasts of Holland, they kind of kept together, they kept in niches. And it happened to be that he got a job working in a railroad yard in Patterson, New Jersey.

It was the Rogers Locomotive Railroad Yard. And there I have a picture of him, and he's taking one of those huge cast wheels and putting it onto a railroad. And I have another picture of him at the age of 16 years old with a big pipe in his mouth sitting there.

And I thought, I kind of laugh at it, but if I knew a 16 year old with a pipe in his mouth now, I'd be kind of be disgusted. But there, no one had to probably tell him that he was given to vice. But there, Dr. Zutema, David Zutema now, growing up in this urban landscape, working at a young age, family there.

And he grows up in this environment that teaches him a lot of what he had left in Holland, which was the Dutch Reform heritage and tradition. And so he had a slightly religious family. Slightly religious and yet convicted about work and doing the right things.

But the trip that he took, he got married in 1914, and he had a son in 1915. He named him Herman. We got that name out of the way.

And I was thankful that was his eldest son, that my grandfather's youngest son would be my grandfather, and that he got the namesake, David. Thank goodness, you know. And he decided, it was the first world war, he wasn't doing so well.

He had a wife who had parents out in Minnesota. And so he thought he would take his chances farming in Iowa. There has to be, I'm sure all you individuals here had ancestors who thought the same thing.

Not many people leave New Jersey and New York, right? Because that's where it's all happening, right? I know a lot of you guys want to come back to the east. But there were a few of us who thought, I don't want to remain in New Jersey, the armpit of America. I want to go to Iowa.

And so he set out. He had some family members who lived up in Minnesota. They were his wife's parents.

And sadly enough, just as he was coming out, his first wife passed away. He was left with a son, very young. And actually, he had to take his son and bring him to his in-laws.

And it was a sad story. My great grandfather actually had a number of wives die in childbirth, and was left with family members alone. And I would say, you don't hear about it a lot, but it was quite a struggle, quite a difficult life.

He got to Iowa here in the part of 1916, 1970, 1917, heading kind of closer to where his in-laws were from, but settling there in Rock Rapids, Iowa. And there he had a barn, quite a barn. I think he rented the property from an individual.

And this is where the story maybe begins that has the gospel in it. Every day he had going out plowing, he had a team of horses. In his testimony, which you can still hear online, the team of horses, he says, were four across.

He had his son with him, Herman, who actually, Herman didn't even know that he was his father, because they had been separated for so long. Very sad story. But he wasn't even aware.

He didn't call him dad, because he didn't know it was his dad. They had spent so much time apart since his mother had died. He had his son with him, and as he was bringing this team of horses up into this barn, my grandfather was not a man, my great grandfather was not a man given to exaggeration.

He would have been quite the stoic, tell it to you like it is, don't have any hyperbole. So what I'm about to tell you may sound to you very fanciful and very unusual, but I assure you, from his lips to mine, this is what he stated happened. He said, as he brought the team of horses up into the barn, the Evergreen Farm in Rock Rapids, Iowa, as he brought them up into the barn, he says, as clear as my voice to you, he heard these words, Dave, it is appointed unto men once to die.

He said, as clear as a human voice could be, there was no one else around. It was his son and him. As they entered that barn, he heard those words from Hebrews 9 and 27.

He wouldn't have even been able to tell you that they were biblical, but he knew they were true, like many of you know they're true. It is appointed unto men once to die, because one out of every one person dies. You know, my great-grandfather continued to but struggled, and he lost his shirt.

And with a son and with a family that was there, they decided to head back to New Jersey, and they did. And he returned sometime in the year of 1918, 1919. He set up a septic business in 1919, and that worked, thankfully.

But there he was, back in New Jersey. He got married again. He had another child.

He had another two more. And there were three children living there in northern New Jersey. The words stuck with him that he had heard in that barn long ago.

Dave, it's appointed unto men once to die. And it kind of bothered him, this idea that one day it's all going to be over. And he didn't know.

He didn't know that he was going to die December 22nd, 1970. He did not know that. None of you know when you're going to die.

None of you know. Teach us to number our days. We can only number them, but none of us know here when's the last day.

We'd love to look into the future. I'm sure my great-grandfather would have loved to have known some of the things that he could look into the future and just be assured that one day, before he was appointed to die, that maybe there would be some type of assurance that would come to him. But I don't know that he even knew to ask that.

How many here tonight would love to know the future? I look at it in an audience, and I'm almost assured that on a Sunday night at a conference, if you're not saved here tonight, you probably intend to be saved one day. I preach to a lot of people, and I preach to people who in many ways never want to be saved, and that causes my heart grief. It's hard to preach to people who never want to be saved, but the hardest people, the hardest people to preach to, without doubt, the most difficult people to preach to are people who look you back in the eye and can say to you with their eyes, I'd like to have this, just not now.

Because those are the people that never get it. If only you knew the future. If only you knew what would happen tomorrow.

If only I could tell you, look ahead, and maybe one day you will get it. If you knew the future, would that give you some confidence? You know, in my Bible, in my Bible, when I go to the last book of the Bible, Revelation, John writes Revelation, and he gets taken up into heaven. He gets taken to the future.

He gets to see the eternal state, and there he is in the future, and he gets to see faces, and he gets to hear names. I asked my audience tonight, when John was there in eternity, did he see your face and did he hear your name? Did he? When John was there in the future, what would have been for him 2,000 years if the Lord comes tomorrow? When John was there and he saw faces of people who were in heaven, when he heard the Lamb's book of life and the names that were read, did he hear yours? Did he see your face? He saw mine. He heard my name.

To see the future, how much easier? No, my friend, behold, now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. If salvation is worth having, it's worth having tonight.

If it's not worth having tonight, it's not something that you want. The Savior longs to save those who come to him, but now, now is the accepted time. My great-grandfather continued to work.

He was a hard worker, doing a garbage route in a place called Fairlawn, New Jersey, and also going and picking up people's ashes that they had burned in another state, and we still do the same thing today. I grew up in the same town as him. I do the same work as him.

I have the same name. I go to all the same schools that he went to, and so there's so much affinity between him and I. But there he was, starting and just starting this life, this new life for him and for his family. You know, the minister come to his house, and he said to him, David, he said, we'd like to baptize your children.

At that time, he had three. And my great-grandfather said, well, why do you want to baptize them? He said, well, Dave, you want to baptize your kids because you want them to be in heaven. And my great-grandfather, who was not a Bible scholar at all at that time, said, can you show me that in the Bible? And the man said, well, no, but we have another book that says it, and that book has come from the Bible.

My grandfather said, that's confusing. Just show me the Bible. Show me the Bible.

Baptizing my children will get them into heaven. The minister said, well, he said, we can't, but it's a good practice. Your parents, your wife's parents would appreciate it very much if you would baptize.

And it got him thinking about this idea once again of heaven and assured of heaven. And how could a man know? He even looked at his wife after the minister left, and he said to her, her name was Fanny, he said, do you think you're going to heaven? And she said to him, she said, Dave, I don't know. He thought, you know, she was one of the finest persons he had ever known.

She says, if he, she doesn't know, what are the chances of me knowing? How could I ever know? Where he lived then in Midland Park, New Jersey, he lived on Glen Ave, and he shared a house with his in-laws. They pitched a tent. The year was 1922, so a few years after he had returned from Iowa, a few years since he had heard the first part of Hebrews 9, 27 and 28.

But it still was in his mind, Dave, it's appointed unto men once to die. And you know, he agreed with that. He knew.

He had seen death in his own family. Before the year 1924 would be over, he would have buried two wives. He would have seen some of his siblings young die and buried.

He knew men died. He had seen it with his own eyes. No one had to tell him that.

You know that. They pitched the tent. I think the man's name was Ben Bradford, and he put a tent up there at the lower end of Midland Park, there on an open lot, and they broadcasted it to a Dutch Reformed community.

We're going to preach the gospel every night. And my great-grandfather saw the tent, thought it was interesting, thought maybe it was worth something to go to. And what he actually was most interested in, which was unique, was that these men didn't think you should baptize children.

And that, to him, was a good sign, because he was a little upset about being pressured into doing something for his kids that was not in the Bible. And so the week went by, and he didn't make it out to the tent. But the meetings were in September, and as the first week come to an end, he decided that he would go out to the tent.

He was invited by the guy next door, who was not a believer either, and they both went together. And he said, as he sat in the tent, he really didn't remember what they said, which is always a very big encouragement to anyone who preaches the gospel. And he heard the message, and the message came and go.

He was more looking around at who else was there from that very small, close-knit Dutch community in Midland Park, a one square mile town, and just seeing who else had come out, because it was a little bit of a... you could get ostracized for coming out, because obviously there was something different being preached. And the minister asked him afterwards, the preacher, Ben Bradford, asked him, David, would you like us to come visit you in your house? And he said, uh, I will think about it, and I will let you know. My great-grandfather went home and told his wife what had been going on that day, and he actually told her, he said, they don't baptize children there, and that's a good thing.

He goes, they've come here because there's some church in Patterson that wanted to have meetings here, because the assembly was in Patterson, they were doing an outreach work. He went back the next, I think it was two nights later, once again, doesn't record anything as testimony that he heard necessarily, but then agreed to have the minister come to the house. The minister came to that house and said to my great-grandfather, do you believe the scriptures? Do you believe the Bible is the word of God? And my great-grandfather, from his upbringing and from what he had known, said, yeah, I do believe that the scriptures are the word of God.

Do you believe that you have done God wrong, that you've sinned? Yes, I believe that. He says, Dave, do you know where you're going to be when you die? Came back to him, what he had heard that day in Rock Rapids, Iowa, as he brought his team of horses into the barn. Dave, it's appointed unto men once to die.

He said, no, I don't know where I would be when I die. The preacher said to him, Dave, he said, you don't have to still wonder, you don't have to remain in doubt. And the reason you don't have to remain in doubt is because Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.

It's a nice thing to hear both sides of the truth. My great-grandfather always knew the first part in Hebrews 9 and 27. It's appointed unto men once to die.

But it was something glorious to hear the second part. He agreed with that part, and most of us agree with that part. But the good news came to him that night.

Christ was also once offered to bear the sins of many. We die once, Christ died once. We had an appointment with death, Christ had an appointment with death.

We died and will die because of sin. Christ died for sin, for ours. My great-grandfather got saved that night.

Over 102 years ago, the rest of his life was living testimony of that. He returned to Iowa, I think in 1941, to pay back his debtors in the community. He went and paid back some of the men who had loaned him money for seed and for equipment.

And when they looked at him with this crazed face as to why 22 years later some random Dutchman had appeared in their community to pay them back, he said it was all a result of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He died at Christmas in 1970, and it was a sad, sad event. It was very sad, it was maybe premature, he was only 77 years old.

And my grandfather, who was also not an emotional man because of the death of his father, went and visited the birthplace of his dad in Friesland, Holland, and went to the small community where he was born, and they opened up for him the books of the birth register. And there on the page, December 2nd, 1893, he saw the date and he saw the name of his father, Datte Zutema. And my grandfather, who I don't think ever saw cry, said to me, it brought tears to his eyes, because going through his mind at that point was what a wonderful life he had known, but more importantly, the words of the Lord Jesus in Luke 10, rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Rejoice that your names are written in heaven. I never met the man, he died 13 years before I was born, but in many ways, I owe a lot to him, because he responded to the gospel. He believed what we all believe, that men die once.

But then he believed what we hope everyone tonight believes, that Christ also died once. And when he did, he did so for the sins of many. Maybe tonight you're only believing one side of the truth, and you could believe both tonight.

Tonight you could rest assured, because you are already believing the Bible. Last time I was here, I did a VBS on the human body, and before that I did a VBS on Jonah and the whale, and I bet if I asked my audience tonight how many people here believe that that that Jonah was in the whale, I might get a 99 percent. And you know what I'd say to you? You're believing something that's very difficult to believe.

If I asked my audience tonight, for those who are here who are not saved, if you die in your sins, where will you be? If you die the way you were born, where will you be? You would say, I would be in hell. And then I would ask you tonight, tell me, how do you know that? How do you know that? Are you sure? Are you a hundred percent sure of that? You would say, I am. How do you know that? Did a parent tell you that? Did a Sunday school teacher tell you that? No, the Bible told me that.

So then I asked my audience tonight the same thing with my great-grandfather who knew that men die once, but then found out, found out the better half. If you believe tonight that if you die in your sins and you would be in hell, and if you believe that because the Bible says it, then my friends and I believe the Bible with the good news that Christ died for your sins. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

That Christ died for the ungodly. That as is it appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and he's going to come back.

And when he comes back, will that be good news for you or will that be bad news? Tonight you could believe the good news of the gospel. You are believing the Bible already in one way or another. My great-grandfather believed the Bible.

It is appointed unto men once to die. But thank God he believed, he believed the Bible personally when it came time to believe that Christ died for him. How about you tonight? How about you tonight? You don't need a barn in Iowa to get saved.

You don't need to travel to New Jersey. You don't need a miraculous story like my great-grandfather. What you do need is Jesus Christ and nothing else.

You need to be in Christ. You need to believe that what the Bible says about you is true, that you are ungodly. And you need to believe what the Bible says about God's Son is true, that that's exactly who he died for.

You could believe that tonight and have salvation. You could have a testimony. You could have a story to tell.

And all stories are great because all stories that involve someone being forgiven involve the cross of Jesus Christ. When he comes back, like our verse said, he's not coming back to deal with sin this next time. He's coming back for those who are saved.

And so as we leave this conference, we will leave this conference and there will be two types of people. Those who look forward to his coming, rejoicing. And those who leave this place thinking that one day they will get what was preached here tonight, but not now.

Don't be that person. Believe God. Take Christ as your Savior, but do it now.

Now. Now is the day of salvation. We pray that this testimony and the gospel tonight would be of great help to those who are still searching for a Savior.

And that as we end this conference, you too might know the joy of having forgiveness with God, having peace with him, and having his Son as your Savior. We'll close in a word of prayer. Our Father, we give thanks for once again giving us the chance to preach the gospel, to tell our Savior as we know him, to tell others that they can be redeemed.

We're thankful to do it in our own language and to be able to tell it through the stories of others. But we're thankful, Lord, that our proclamation tonight would be nothing if it didn't include your Son. And so to be able to tell him as the Savior of sinners, the name, the only name that is given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved.

We pray, Lord, that what has gone on here this weekend would be a great blessing to everyone. But even more than that, that there would be salvation. There would be those who would trust Christ.

We ask all this in your Son's name, Lord Jesus. Amen.