Great Conversions: A History of Child Saints

While this information is consistent with other Barna studies over the years that have shown that a large majority of Christians accept Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach the age of 18, this is the first study that has calculated people’s probability of accepting Christ at different life stages. The data also challenge the widely-held belief that the teenage years are prime years for evangelistic activity. 1 • Polycarp, church father, was nine • Matthew Henry was eleven • Jonathan Edwards was seven • Isaac Watts was nine • Henry Drummond was nine • E.

Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary statesman, was moved to be a missionary when he was eight years old. He saw a picture of a big tiger standing beside a small Indian boy, and underneath was the caption, “Who will tell me about Jesus?” And Stanley Jones said, “I will.” • Corrie ten Boom asked Christ to be her Savior at age five. • W. A.

Criswell, the famous Southern Baptist pastor, was saved when he was ten, but he felt God cailing him into ministry even earlier. “I had been thinking about being a preacher for years, since I was six,” he recalled.

“I knew I wasn’t converted yet, hadn’t been saved. But I knew God wanted me to be a preacher.’’2 • Hymnist Philip Bliss was twelve years old when he made his public confession of Christ. • William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was fifteen. • Harry Ironside was thirteen. • Count Nicholaus Ludwig Zinzendorf, who gave rise to modern Protestant missions, was saved at age four.