As a recently retired man was sitting on his porch down in Kentucky, his Social Security check was delivered. He went to the mailbox to retrieve it and thought to himself, IS this all my life is going to be from this time on? Just sitting on the porch waiting for my next Social Security check to arrive? It was a discouraging thought.
So he took a legal pad and began to write down all the gifts, all the blessings, all the talents, and everything he had going for him. He listed them all, even the small ones. For example, he included the fact that he was the only person who knew his mother’s recipe for fried chicken.
He went down to the local restaurant, asked if he could get a job cooking their chicken. Very soon the chicken became the most popular item on the menu. He opened up his own restaurant in Kentucky. Then he open a string of restaurants and eventually sold the franchise, built on a chicken recipe of 11 herbs and spices to a national organization for millions of dollars. Colonel Sanders became their public representative and continued in that role until his death.
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https://www.facebook.com/notes/jesus-love-is-so-great/colonel-harlan-sanders-testimony-the-founder-of-kfc-kentuc ky-fried-chicken/586059284737449/
Colonel HARLAND* SANDERS’ TESTIMONY (The Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken)
April 17, 2013
By H. C. Vanderpool
While living in Louisville, Kentucky I was privileged to meet Col. Harland Sanders and discuss with him his spiritual condition. He told me he was a Christian and how wonderfully God had blessed him. In addition to his conversation with me, he gave some of the experiences of his life and his Christian experience written to be used for the glory of God.
Harland Sanders had put several years of back-breaking work into a small motel and restaurant business. The state decided to move the highway seven miles away and this left him high and dry, facing economic strangulation at age sixty-five. Instead of giving up, he loaded his car with what he could salvage by way of capital and started out to sell his franchise idea, which today bears his name and picture from coast to coast.
His father died when he was five. He says, looking back, “I did the cooking, and Mom did sewing for the neighbors, When I was seven I baked my first bread. I cared for the two youngest while mother worked.”
His mother was a God-fearing woman. “We went to Sunday School every Sunday regardless of weather. We walked there and back two and a half miles.” At ten Sanders was working as a hired hand for a neighbor farmer. At 11 he hired out to an elderly German at $4.00 a month. Every evening there were cows to milk, sixteen of them, seven days a week.
At 40 he had tried his hand at blacksmithing, running ferryboats, railroading and selling. He reached a decision and that was, folks had to eat. He had not had much time for formal education. After he got up into the millions he quoted Will Rogers and said, “I don’t know what all these college graduates are going to do for jobs if we eighth grade failures don’t take care of them.” He likes to say, “The Lord kept me on earth either to use me or punish me.”
He tells of various accidents in which he was connected, yet he always escaped. After he had gained wealth and fame the Colonel was asked to be a delegate for his church and to attend a conference in Australia. During the trip he turned to his companions and remarked, “If this plane goes down, you fellows will go to heaven and I’ll go to hell. I hope I can find the peace of soul I need at this conference.”
He did not find that peace in Australia. Back home he was paying tithes. He was particular about that. He learned at age 75 that tithing would not take you to heaven. He had always been the preacher’s friend. He helped many churches in their financial struggles, he had heard thousands of sermons. Yet he didn’t know the Lord. You can be in the church and be lost, just ask Col. Sanders.
He enjoyed giving scholarships. Yet, he never sent a boy or girl to college who smoked or drank. All his life he tried to live by principles of decency, hard work, patriotism, and a high standard of morality. It was not enough. There was a void inside. An unanswered question with him was; “How could a man know that his sins had really been forgiven?”
While attending a service in Louisville and showing concern about his condition he was asked to bow and pray, asking God to forgive him, to have mercy upon him. Suddenly the Colonel lifted his head and the pastor related, “He looked at me and said it was the first time in his life he had ever experienced the presence of Christ within his heart.”
Colonel Sanders’ testimony was, “You can join the church, you can serve on committees, you can be baptized and receive communion, you can become superintendent of the Sunday School, and not be saved. I know, it happened in my life. I needed to know something deep within my soul. There is an inner experience, a new birth, that brings peace. Morality and good works cannot accomplish it, it is the work of the Holy Spirit.”
So, after age 75, Col. Harland Sanders, a millionaire, found out that money, good works, good living, church membership, etc., would not save his soul and prepare him for heaven, that it took the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit bringing about the new birth to give him peace of soul and prepare him for eternity. This is just what Jesus told the Jewish ruler in John 3.
I trust this testimony will help someone somewhere, I’m glad I had the privilege to talk to Col. Sanders and hear him with my own ears tell what God had done for him.
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Sources:
http://www.pastortim.org/baptistbeacon/2002/col-harlan-sanders-vanderpool.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
http://www.kfc.com.my/colonel-story/
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http://qpolitical.com/before-he-died-col-sanders-shared-a-huge-secret-what-he-said-c hanges-everything/
“Before He Died Col. Sanders Shared A Huge Secret, What He Said Changes Everything”
“Dude Named Ben”
January 2016
Most Americans have grown up having eaten at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Despite the popular restaurant chain’s worldwide presence, it almost wasn’t the case. Harland Sanders, who would become “Colonel Sanders,” was always a hard-working man. He had to be.
His father died when he was only five-years-old, and quickly learned about responsibility and what it meant to provide for those who couldn’t provide for themselves.
“I did the cooking, and Mom did sewing for the neighbors. When I was seven I baked my first bread. I cared for the two youngest while mother worked.”
For Sanders, the seed of faith was planted in his heart at a very young age. His mother was a God-fearing woman, and she took Harlan to church every Sunday.
“We went to Sunday School every Sunday regardless of weather. We walked there and back two and a half miles.”
By the age of ten he was already taking on full-time jobs. For a while he was a farm hand to an elderly German. He would milk the cows, collect the eggs, and feed all the animals that needed to be fed. All for $4 a month!
Throughout his life he would have many jobs, and tried his hand at too many occupations to list. He almost stumbled into food because he realized that people just needed to eat.
He started selling chicken dinners out of a Shell Oil station and worked a deal with Shell to use the station for free – as long as he paid them a percentage of the profits. Through struggle and hardship this simple chicken dinner concept eventually became Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Successful as he was, it wasn’t even until he sold out to a large corporation that had the power to multiply his franchises, that he actually saw millions.
He recounted driving down the highway and saw a church, and felt a powerful tug on his heart that he needed to give ten percent of his check to THAT church. So he listened and obeyed.
This was the beginning of Christ calling him back.
Sanders began a relationship with the church again. He was notorious for cursing like a sailor, and lost numerous employees who would quit on the spot, because of how he verbally berated them.
But that seed planted in his heart as a young boy just wouldn’t die.
He knew he needed a Savior and began paying tithes faithfully, and was searching for some deeper experience that told him his sins were truly forgiven.
One time he was on a plane with other church leaders who were going to a conference:
“If this plane goes down, you fellows will go to heaven and I’ll go to hell. I hope I can find the peace of soul I need at this conference.”
It was at this time when he realized that just being a friend of the Pastor’s and helping fund churches didn’t mean you had a relationship with God.
Sanders was 75-years-old and sitting in a church service in Louisville, Kentucky, still TRYING to be saved. The pastor knew his struggle and saw him asking God to have mercy on him. In that moment somewhere deep inside the Colonel, he knew he had what he had been searching for his whole life, and he told the pastor about it. The pastor retells it,
“He looked at me and said it was the first time in his life he had ever experienced the presence of Christ within his heart.”
Sanders was awash with understanding, and a realization that he finally had what he was missing in his experience with Christ, the Holy Spirit.
“You can join the church, you can serve on committees, you can be baptized and receive communion, you can become superintendent of the Sunday School, and not be saved. I know, it happened in my life. I needed to know something deep within my soul. There is an inner experience, a new birth, that brings peace. Morality and good works cannot accomplish it, it is the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Colonel Sanders is an amazing example on so many levels. If you’re in your fifties and sixties and feel that you’ve reached the end of your professional career – you haven’t. Just look at the Colonel as an example. So many men in history didn’t win their greatest victories until later in life.
If you feel like you’ve ran from God for too long, and He doesn’t want you anymore – you’re wrong again. No heart is too tough for the love of God to melt.
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An excellent online article on Harland Sanders, with photos, can be found at < https://www.damninteresting.com/colonels-of-truth/ >.
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* Holwick: many articles (and even some of the links above) use the name “Harlan” but it should be “Harland.”