Gordon’s Conversion & Life of Research
Theologian and engineer for a large corporation in Chicago, a grandfather with four married children and 14 grandchildren. He grew up in a Christian home and became a Christian at 14. Although experiencing blessed salvation in his youth in full commitment to the loving savior at his church's altar of prayer, his theological training at a leading Evangelical institution indoctrinated him with the common idea that one is saved by accepting Christ as savior without necessarily becoming his dedicated disciple and total lordship submission. A crisis point in his Christian life occurred when many of his congregation had overwhelming experiences with God with a resulting happiness and lack of tension they disclosed to him that they were never saved in the first place, though he had spent much time assuring them of salvation.
This situation produced such turmoil and anxiety in him that he thrust himself into an intensive study of the Bible. These were the questions plaguing him: 1. is Christianity a present, overwhelming reality, or some kind of hope-so-future benefit? 2. If God loves me, does he think it's such an unhappy thing to be a disciple? 3. Can one be a Christian and not a disciple? As time progressed, he launched into a study of other areas also the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature and extent of sin, the atonement, and the nature of the Christian Life. He applied the scientific method of inductive research acquired from engineering practice to his exhaustive study of the Bible.
Through the months of research that began in 1933, he found the truths of God to be overwhelmingly consistent and logical. His in-depth study of 17th to 19th-century revivals showed that the beautiful simplicity of Christian truth is the key to real Revival.
It’s clear that our loving creator and savior, in unthinkable involvement of divine love and humility, is not going to enter our personalities unless he is allowed to revolutionize our lives by his tender forgiveness and presence (Revelations 3:20, John 17:3) and will not remain as an unwelcome inhabitant if we make him uncomfortable and embarrassed by our unresponsiveness and uncorrectableness ( Colossians 1:21-23, Hebrews 9:27-28; Revelations 3:21).
This momentous theological conclusion of 1935 demanded much further biblical research and adjustments of opinion and became the turning point in his humble Ministry. Early in 1936, he returned to tractor design engineering employment to enable the search for the simplest possible expressions of the God-man relationship and the whole process of man's reconciliation. This concentration was to go on for about ten years without much public ministry. Such expressions as: he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ourselves only but also for those of the whole world (1 John 2:2), would favor what came to be called the general atonement, which specifically did not pay for the guilt of an individual’s sins but made possible the salvation offered to all who would be willing for such loving reconciliation. This view became prominent in Holland England and elsewhere in Europe in the early 17th and 18th centuries and in New England and North Eastern America in great prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries in revival movements that spread westward. The nature and character of the Godhead, the nature of man and the whole process of the new birth, and the operations and manifestations of the Holy Spirit in man's redemption occupied the last 7 years of this period of concentration. After a period of part-time ministry and a year of pastoring, he left his engineer employment in 1950 for some seven years in a full-time effort, mostly on savings, mostly in more extensive research, including 110 days at Oberlin College, on past revivals holding the same basic theological conclusions he had come to. This time included periods of pastoral labor and obtaining M.A. credentials for possible teaching opportunities. This involved an extensive 253-page thesis on the General Baptist of England in the early 1600s and proceeding developments.
In November 1965, Youth With A Mission (YWAM) founder Loren Cunningham stayed at Gordon Olson’s home for one week to discuss his research. The following summer, Brother Olson and his friend Harry Conn taught at the YWAM Summer of Service in El Paso, Texas. Brother Olson also taught the following two years at YWAM’s Summer of Service in Dallas, TX, and Miami, FL. From 1970 through 1979, Brother Olson taught at YWAM bases and other training schools in Europe and the United States, which included 19 trips to Europe and 12 trips to Hawaii, delivering intensive 40-44 lectures during a two-week period, influencing thousands of students. In the later part of the 1970s, due to declining health, Brother Olson reduced the number of lectures to 30 over two weeks. Brother Olson’s Sharing Your Faith manual was the text used by students who attended his two-week lecture series. In 1980, Gordon published The Truth Shall Make You Free, which he considered a restatement of his Sharing Your Faith manual. He continued monthly meetings in his home as he was able until poor health caught up with him, and he went to be with His Lord in 1989.