Jay Brandon
Jay Brandon's Testimony
I was born Jack Francis Brandon in Bristol, Pennsylvania Septmber 13, 1964 to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother although my moms immediate family were Jewish, by the time I was born my Great Grandparents were the only ones active in the Synagogue. All I knew about being Jewish as a child was mostly cultural not religious. My Father insisted that we be raised Catholic. He and his family were from Alabama so we lived in the Philadelphia area only a short period of time. Being told by my Grandparents in Philadelphia be proud you are Jewish and being taught the religion of Catholicism I was very confused as a child.
God saw fit to take my father in a fatal truck accident when I was 9 yrs. old. It was 2 yrs.later that my mother re-married and we moved from Alabama to Georgia. It was in Villa Rica, Georgia as a 12 year old boy that I and my brothers and sisters started going to a Baptist church as apart of the bus ministry. I heard the gospel explained in such a clear way that my confusion began to vanish and my understanding of who this person Jesus Christ really was and what he had come to Earth to do.
My understanding of Jesus presented to me by the Catholic church was Jesus on the Crucifix, but I soon began to see him as a risen Savior who had conquered death, hell, and the grave for the sins of all humanity. I was the first person to trust Christ in my family, afterwards my mother, step father, and others as well as Jewish family members came to faith in the Messiah.
I surrendered to preach at age 30 while I and my wife Susie and our 3 sons were attending a local Independent Baptist Church in La Grange, Ga. my pastor put me right to work as the youth director for 3 years. I soon began to feel the call to Missions during one of Missions Conferences in 1997. Susie and I surrendered to to the call to be missionaries wherever God would lead, our Pastor asked us to pray about going to Bible College which we did and God put Crown Bible College on our hearts.I graduated from Crown in 2002, but it was at Temple Baptist Church when Pastor Clearance Sexton preached a messege from Isaiah 6 that God spoke to my heart about Jewish Evangelism.
After Bible college we worked on staff at Bible Baptist church / Newnan Christian School in Newnan. Georgia for 2 years, later on in 2004 we began to work with another Misssionary in the Atlanta area out of the Ministriy of University Baptist Church in Atlanta reaching Jews and Gentiles with the gospel. We began deputation in 2006 and were commissioned and sent out as missionaries to the field of New York City home to nearly 2 million Jewish people. We worked with the Brighton Beach Baptist Church in a community populated by 200,000 Russian /Ukrainian Jews for 7 years. We had the blessing of seeing many Jews and Gentiles believe on the Messiah for Salvation.
We are presently working out of our sending church University Baptist Church witnessing to the nearly 130,000 Jewish people in the Atlanta area. On occasion we do Passover Demonstrations as well as evangelistic outreaches with the other members of the JEM team in Cuba.
Susie and I have been married for 30 years and are blessed to have 3 sons Brent, Roswell, & Jared as well as 2 daughters in law and 5 grandchildren.