Peter Jenkins began a five-year, 4,500-mile walk across America in October of 1973. First published as two articles in National Geographic, his memoirs then led to two best-selling books.

Two years into the journey, he stumbled into an Alabama revival and ended up accepting Christ. Jenkins says:

I grew up in Connecticut in a very quiet, official, East Coast Presbyterian church. My parents believed, and they made their six children go to church and Sunday school. I wanted a religion that had emotion in it. I wanted a religion that had life, action, and the kinds of things I found in the kind of music I loved.

When the revival began, this guy from Texas named James Robison came out screaming and preaching and throwing his arms around. There was sweat dripping and everything. He was dressed in a three-piece suit and cowboy boots.

The two of us could not have more unalike. I was this young man with sun-bleached reddish hair down to his shoulders and an unshaven beard. But I honestly felt like when he was preaching the gospel, a huge sword was slicing me into a whole bunch of pieces.

He was saying, "Joining a church won't make you a Christian any more than joining a Lion's Club will make you a lion. From the day you were born, you wanted to do your own thing and you were rebellious against God. If you really want to really know God, you've got to repent of this rebellion which the Bible calls sin."

I could relate to that. I thought I was a pretty good person. I thought I was in search of the truth. The more I heard this stuff, [the more I realized that] religion is not the answer; salvation is. You just have something inside of you that knows when you hear the truth. All of the things we think about ourselves, how we define ourselves—all that is insignificant when it comes to what's going on in our soul.

James gave me one of the greatest gifts anybody could have ever given me. He led me to the Lord.