The Fowler Fortune
Philippians 1:21 For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24 Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.
Verses 23 and 24 were two of Ray Fowler's trademark Bible verses. If I heard him say it once, I heard him say it at least 100 times in the almost four years I knew him. Ray was always in a strait between going on to Glory and staying on down here in his frail and failing body and getting to preach a little longer. But Ray was never looking for death to take him; he'd tell you in a second that he was looking for the upper-taker of the Rapture and not the undertaker of death.
Late Tuesday night, March 2, 2004, the Lord saw things in His perfect way, and took Ray on home. In His Mercy, He took Ray as gently and quickly as could ever be hoped for, and I know in my soul that Heaven is a different place now. The shouting is louder, the singing is more spirited, and there's a right hand raised high over the crowd around the Throne in worshipful praise to Jesus - a hand that was more and more crippled by arthritis down here and an arm that sometimes didn't lift quite as high as Ray wanted it.
Now, all of that has been fixed in Glory, and we who are alive and remain are left to inherit The Fowler Fortune. Some may not have known Ray was a wealthy man, but he was. His banker might disagree, but that's only a measure of wealth as bankers know it. Ray was more blessed with the true wealth of God than any man I can recall. His life showed me that a truly Christian life can be lived by anyone who will trust in God, that a man can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and the promised Peace that passeth all understanding is not a mistranslation. What Ray Fowler had can be had by any of us, and by all of us. All we have to do is want what he had and be willing to do what he did.
Don't worry - there's enough of The Fowler Fortune to go around. No one gets accidentally left out, overlooked, or left behind. . . except by choice.
A Grin Of Grace
Matthew 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
You can't hide a man set free by the Lord.
The devil might hide some things, but a soul saved by the Savior is never hidden, and the devil could never hide Ray Fowler. Ray liked to get anywhere early and leave late, and give everyone a blessing in between.
He was grinning the first time I met him, and, as the song says about salvation, I can take you to the time and take you to the place. It was March 30, 2000, the regular Thursday night service at Victory Baptist Church, but it was my first time there on a Thursday night. I'd only been saved since November of 1999, and had only been to Victory the previous Sunday services before. Anyway, I was so thrilled with having found a church that my Spirit said truly preached the word, that I'd gotten there early, probably around 6:00 p.m. for services starting at 7:30. I'm standing around in the lobby, when through the door from the parking lot comes Ray, wide-open, Bible-toting, smiling from ear to ear, and, loud enough to set me back, hollers, "Well, hey there, ol' buddy! I'm Ray Fowler!"
And he was Ray Fowler, grinning the grin of grace that only God can give to those who could never deserve to earn it, the smile that only erupts from a saved soul freed from the bonds of sin and hell.
If a person could bottle and sell it, there'd be no limit to the price a single bottle would command. You could name your price, and get it. People would do more than steal to get it, they'd kill to feel as good as Ray Fowler felt for free. In my days, I have seen many people who claimed to have been happy, or who were deemed as having "Made It" and, therefore, should embody "happy" if anyone should, but I've never seen or met anyone that was actually, no-kidding, happy as Ray Fowler.
Anything one could bottle would, by definition, run out and come to an end. The Living Water that powered Ray Fowler's grist mill of exceeding great joy never ended while I knew him. Young preachers, old preachers, men, women, children, the great and the small, the wanted and unwanted, the newly-saved and the old saints - everywhere I went with him, he did just what Jesus does. He loved them all in His Name, and he still does.
Still does?
Certainly. I find no Bible teaching that stops a man's caring for those left alive when he's called home. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man, even though in hell, still cared for his brothers who were not dead. How much more, then, should a saved Christian continue to be allowed to care for and love and strive with and for those he has left behind? Love is the only thing in this universe, so far as I can tell, that never dies of old age. Why would a God that IS defined as love incarnate prevent our caring for those we love just because we've gone on?
I do find this in Hebrews 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
It was not in Ray's nature to sit silently by and witness anything. As he used to tell me: "I'm a shouter, not a doubter!" He'd also beat you silly if you'd sit with him during a service. He was forever slapping you on the leg or the arm or the back; that was Ray's way to make sure you got all the important points in the message. All Heaven had a sight to see when Ray was having a good time with Jesus. Ray enjoyed preaching the Word of God, and loved to hear it preached. He loved his Jesus, and I know his Jesus loved him - and they are having a time now, more than ever, my friends.
I believe as well as I know my own name that Ray is watching and urging and praying and shouting encouragement for those he left after him to continue to run the race and press on to the mark that he, by God's Grace, has finished and reached. Ray loved those he knew too well during the time he was here to just drop it all when he got to go on before us.
A Shout Of Salvation
Psalms 32:11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.
Ray loved his God, and beyond any doubt, God loved him. Ray never turned his Christianity off or set God on the shelf to let Him rest a while - as long as I knew him, there wasn't any resting from God for Ray. He was always listening to preaching or singing or going here or there to services, revivals, and there'll be a lonely, empty chair in the front row of the Victory Camp Meeting this May. Belair Baptist hasn't been the same since he went Home. It's just a shade darker now, for one of the big lights we had is now shining where there is no need for a sun or moon.
Ray was full-time, on-time, all the time, and was truly God's man. He embodied what we casually toss about as consecration - he was never anything less than Pastor Ray Fowler, Christian, Saved By Grace.
The world still has no shortage of people, including saved people, that still kept enough stupid to measure a man's worth by the size of his congregation or the amount of the offering or the brightness of the stripes on the parking lot. Such people overlooked Ray Fowler, and will die the poorer for it. Everyone should have been so blessed of God to have been able to say they stood next to a saint in this life.
I miss him just like I miss my father. The only sweetness I find to this is knowing they are together now, and they're waiting on the arrival of the rest of us. I know it's not a Christian thing to do to bet, but I'd almost bet that Ray bounced over to my Daddy, grinned, and said, "Well, hey there, ol' buddy! I'm Ray Fowler!"
Many are the times I was blessed to spend time with my old friend in the parking lot or on the front pew before, and I mean long before, time for service to start. Doing what? Talking about God's goodness, what we each thought about certain theological points, telling stories, and having a good time together in the Lord. Some nights, the Spirit would get real thick in the car before we'd go in, and one of us would say to the other that we were sure going to have church tonight!
Ray loved church, but Ray truly loved those not-every-time services where God becomes real to many people and starts doing serious business with folks. Those services where shouting and praising was too prevalent to bring a stare except from those trying to sleep on the back row, and where the spirit in the church and The Spirit of God are one and the same.
Those services that are hard to find sometimes these days, where the sermon is so straight from God that rather than everyone looking like stenographers with our little notebooks, we just rejoice and let the words of the preacher burn themselves into our hearts and we know we'll remember them all later!
That was a Ray Fowler-type of service, and I've been blessed to be able to sit by him in quite a few during the time we had together. Sitting by a man shouting his joy at his (and yours, too) Salvation can be a dangerous thing, unless you enjoy sitting near explosions. I enjoyed my short time sitting with a man who would never know what you meant if you asked him if he were ashamed of The Gospel - he'd have looked at you like you'd lost your mind. And you would have, too, to have known Ray at all and then asked him such a stupid question
Let me say this: I love being saved. I love understanding what it means to be lost as a man could be, and I love understanding there is One who cared if I was found. But just underneath my eternal gratitude to Him is my thanks for letting me get saved and at the same time to get around some people with some joy in their hearts over being saved. I'd had enough of joyless religion before I got saved, and soon after my Salvation, I met Ray - who taught me by example just how much fun a saved man can have.
Sure, there were those who labeled him an eccentric (and worse), and maybe even considered his joy as quaint, but somewhat out of date or style in these days of quiet and decidedly reverent spiritual reservedness, but I don't know that Ray cared. I don't know if he even knew how to spell those twenty-five cent words. But you can look up "Happy In The Lord" in Heaven's dictionary, and you'll find a picture of Ray.
A Hope Of Heaven
I Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
More than anything else in this world, Ray wanted to go home, spelled Home, more correctly Heaven. I cannot consciously recall ever being with him for more than an hour or two and not hearing the Rapture mentioned or some statement about how good it will be to see Jesus and be absent from these bodies.
For Ray, Heaven was more than a doctrine or a theory or even a teaching in the Bible. He knew it was real and that it was promised to him by his Lord and Savior, and he wanted it more, and yet with more faithful certainty, than any other man I knew. You could treat him badly, do him wrong, let him down, go back on your word, you could talk about him behind his back, take advantage of him, but you couldn't take his Heaven from him.
Ray never measured good or bad days in terms of wealth or favor, but in the blessed hope that the Rapture could occur at any time, and in any event, was one day closer today than it was yesterday. Ray knew the Rapture was even at the doors, and he only wanted to stay here long enough for everyone he knew to get on board so they could go with him to see Him.
He gave all he had, for all the time that I knew him, to the cause of Christ. He had his faults, just as anyone, but I love what I heard a man say at the funeral home about Ray's faults: "He never bothered anyone with 'em."
All Ray's aches, pains, leaky sinuses, failing knees, gnarled fingers from arthritis, bouts with shingles - these were all just means to an end. Ray said so then and he knows so now: Some day, Jesus would take all these from Ray and give him a glorified body, like Christ's, so that Ray could be like Him. Ray hasn't gotten his glorified body yet, according to the Bible, but Paul teaches in II Corinthians 5:6-8 that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. All Ray's tears are now dry, he's home with his Jesus, and it's almost suppertime and time for the rest of the family to show up. He's smiling. I don't have to hope he's happy; praise God, I know he's happy because he was happy while he was here!
A Legacy He Left
Colossians 3:23 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; 24 Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
Ray died the way Ray lived - having a good time with his God. Doing all things heartily, as unto the Lord, and knowing all the while that his reward was coming from the God he worshipped and the Jesus he served.
The last time I saw him, he was watching and listening to me preach in the pulpit of Belair Baptist Church on Sunday morning, February 29, 2004. One of my topics was "Things Lighthouses Don't Do", and Ray was sitting on the second row and shining like a big light on a dark night. Ray wasn't shining because of me, it was because of Who I was preaching about.
Ray wasn't shining because of himself, he was just doing what a good lighthouse does - taking the light he was given from Him Who gave it freely, and yet at so a great price, and turn it into a witness. Not even this sin-soaked world could walk by a witness that bright for God and not know that here, in this short, 86 year-old man, walked someone different from most men. God never threw the clay of Ray Fowler away; He just kept molding and making him to be like Him.
None of Ray's goodness or greatness was his. Ray's goodness came only from His Glory, reflected through the mirror of Ray's life, which He Himself had polished with His Blood to make it suitable to reflect Himself to what is left of this world.
The final legacy of Ray Fowler is free to all. It is the conscious decision to accept the salvation paid for by the death, burial, and resurrection of God's Son, Jesus Christ, and a commitment, renewed daily, to live the rest of the your days for Jesus. That is all that Ray had which separated him from the crowd - Jesus.
The last item Ray ever gave me is a tiny piece of paper with four lines scrawled on it. He told me he had put together the lines from four hymns to make up his own song, and that when he needed to, he'd just sing them and he'd be happier. I have to share them with you:
All to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all,
Tell me His Name again,
Till the storm passeth over,
Until then, I'll go on singing
The Bible teaches that all our lives are even as a vapor. We need to be mindful that this day could well be the last we are given to be for Christ what we need to be. Ray didn't know that March 2, 2004, would be his last day on this earth, but it didn't matter. His treasure wasn't down here, the center of his life wasn't down here, and the home he was seeking wasn't down here. He was just a man, positively sold out to his God and Savior, called to preach, and lived his life as well as he knew how to please his Savior and to hear, at the end, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
Thank You, Jesus, for Ray Fowler - for all he gave, and for all he left us, and thank You for Your Righteousness and Glory that makes such lighthouses as Ray shine for the rest of us still in the storms.
And from all of us, Ray, who knew you and love you - well done, too.
POSTSCRIPT
I gave this testimony when I went to church for the first time after Ray went home:
"Driving out here, I couldn't help but think that it wasn't going to be the same without him. I know it was the Holy Ghost that immediately replied that it wasn't supposed to be the same without Ray. Ray had done his service for The Lord, had left his mark on many lives for His Sake, and it was now our responsibility to, as Ray did, occupy till He comes."
It was a wonderful service, led by Brother David Brooks, full of the same worship and praise and preaching and praying we at Belair have been so blessed to enjoy.
And that, my brothers and sisters and friends - a church taught to be faithful, grounded in God, based on The Bible, and still alive and well for Jesus and awaiting His return - is the last and best legacy Ray could have ever left any of us.
Chuck Daley, 3/26/04