Dan Jacobsen
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First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. The main idea that my grandfather wanted to bring out in this book was that God changes people. I don't think a lot of us really wrestle with that concept enough, that change is possible. And so this book is written around the theme of transformation. ♪

His grandfather was Dr. Warren Wiersbe, and we'll learn about a book he left behind, which we can now read. Welcome to First Person. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and our guest is Dan Jacobson, who has edited his grandfather's unpublished book into a new devotional. The details are just ahead.

Thank you for joining us for this conversation. I enjoy bringing various guests to you each week as they all have stories to tell that relate to God's faithful leading in our lives. You can catch up on any interview you may have missed recently at FirstPersonInterview.com. And all of our past programs are listed there for you to listen to at your convenience.

Dr. Warren Wiersbe passed away in 2019 after a long ministry of pastoring and writing many books. But when he died, his family found unpublished works, and one of his grandsons, Dan Jacobson, set about to bring the first of them to light. It's called Becoming New, A 100-Day Journey of Transformation Through God's Word.

Dan and I spoke online about it, and I began by asking Dan about his own ministry. I'm a lead teaching pastor at a church in Olathe, Kansas. I have been serving Jesus in the ministry, preaching the Word.

I'm going on almost 20 years now. I'm a Moody Bible Institute graduate. I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. And God called me at the age of 16 through a radio preacher, also the president of Moody, Dr. Joe Stoll. I was preaching on the radio. I was driving into high school from Naperville, Illinois and driving in. And I would listen to Joe Stoll on the radio. And I thought, man, what he's doing is taking the Bible and making it relevant to life. I think I can do that.

So I applied to Moody, and God just kind of led me through a season of growing to love His Word, growing to love His people, growing to love His church. And so I've just been dedicating my life to helping people hear the gospel since then. Well, as the other voice on that program with Joe Stoll, I'm delighted to hear that report. So that was a part of my life for many years, and I grew from listening to Joe Stoll on the radio as well, so we have that in common. Yeah.

Hey, your grandfather, Warren Wiersbe, passed away a few years ago and such a, just a wonderful man. Everybody loved Warren Wiersbe. For the few who don't know the man we're talking about, introduce your grandfather to us.

Yeah, this is such an honor. He was a pastor, if I could just make it very clear. My grandfather was a pastor. That was his heart. That was his vocation. That was his calling. He pastored in the second half of the 20th century, one of the largest non-denominational churches in America at the time called the Moody Church right in Chicago.

He had a wide ministry. He left Moody to preach the word on the radio. So he enjoyed this format of talking to people through the radio. And he preached that back to the Bible for many years.

A lot of people today know him for his books. My grandfather was a prolific writer. Yes, he was. He wrote, you know, Wayne, to be quite honest, nobody knows how many books my grandpa wrote. If you Google Warren Wiersbe, you'll get 150, 170, 180. I tried to count them the other day. I got 320 ISBN numbers. He was so humble about it. He didn't know how many books he'd written.

He had no idea. And so, his days were spent studying the Word of God, loving the Word of God, and trying, you know, his real purpose was to help the child of God grow into the image of the Son of God by the Spirit of God through the Word of God. And so, I

If we could kind of summarize who he was, he was just that kind of person who wanted people to grow up in Jesus and take a hold of the life of faith. And so he spent all of his time that way. Well, his series of books, the B series, they call it the be real, be joyful, be loyal books like that. Bible studies really is what they were.

are still available and remarkable studies today, and they are widely available. People can find them easily online, but he also left behind some books. We're going to talk about that in a few moments, but before we go any further, let me introduce a little clip from an interview I did with your grandfather back a few years ago, and I asked him about the very first book that he wrote. Here's what he said.

When I was nine years old, on my birthday, somebody gave me one of those little magic sets that had little tricks in them.

You won't believe this, but when I was a child, I was very shy. I didn't want to talk to people. I lived in a public library and read books. But God ordained that I should start doing magic tricks. And I discovered I could tell jokes and my timing was pretty good.

So I started renting myself out at, I think, $20 for half an hour or something like that, which back in those days was a lot of money. And I'd go to birthday parties, one thing or another. And then I started inventing my own tricks. And my first book was published in 1945, and it was...

called Action with Cards. I was doing card tricks. It was published up in Chicago. And then I did one on mental magic, reading people's minds. And then I did a third one on thimbles. Thimble magic is not seen today, but back in that day we had a lot of fun changing the colors of thimbles and pulling them out of people's ears, etc.,

And then when I got into ministry, I thought, well, I don't need these things anymore. And that was the end of that. Are you one of those authors, I'm guessing you're not, that's kept track of how many books you've written through the years? No, Betty does that. She's the secretary of the corporation. She tells me it's up to about 160. Yeah, no doubt. And, of course, in many different editions...

Somebody said to me, well, I can't believe that. I said, well, it is unbelievable, but I suggest you go to Amazon.com and put my name in there and start scrolling. And they did. Well, that was Warren Wiersbe from a few years ago here on First Person. Dan, you've heard that voice so many times, and those stories are great, though. He didn't know how many books he had written, did he? He had no clue. You know, there's a lot about my grandfather that is just remarkable in...

what he knew about God, the Word of God, people, church, ministry, famous British people from the 1840s, but he didn't know a lot about himself. He didn't know how much money he ever made. He didn't know how many books he had written. He didn't know where he left his car keys, you know, just...

A lot of the basic things about life. My grandma was such a beautiful teammate for him and kept his life in order. And the two of them needed each other and just had a beautiful marriage, their life. Do you know offhand how many grandchildren there are? I'm doing some quick math. And I think it's around eight of us grandchildren. Great-grandchildren, I think is up to 12. Is that right? Okay. And yeah, the new book that we've got coming out is actually dedicated to each and every one of them. Oh, wonderful. Okay.

Well, let's begin to talk about that book. It's called Becoming New. I like the play on the Beam series. Becoming New is the book. And this is...

You've edited this book, but it really is your grandfather's book, isn't it? Yes. So my grandfather was in the midst of writing this book over the process of about 10 years, the final 10 years of his life. My grandfather lived till he was 89 years old. And when he was about 79, 80, he had really reduced his external speaking opportunities to focus more on some significant writing projects that he really felt were

God wanted him to help the church with some distilled knowledge of the decades of all that he had learned. And so his goal was to put into a simple devotional just that. And when he passed away, we found this book about 80% finished.

And over the course of the last couple of years, I was given the unenviable task of trying to edit my grandfather's words. Wayne, it was a daunting project for me to pick up, if I can confess that. Yeah, talk more about that. Well, my grandfather is so legendary. Just a prolific writer, so good with words. Part of knowing Warren Wiersbe and his trusted voice...

is there's certain ways he would say things. He had just a knack for a prose that was really sticky and really memorable, but also very biblically true and theologically true. And part of the challenge with this book was that he had just been assembling what he would want to teach essentially like a new believer, someone who had just started in the faith and wanted to know, what is this Bible all about? And what is God up to in my life? And how is he really going to give me the promises of new life here on earth?

And so he was trying to distill all this down and he kind of left a bit of a mess, honestly. I inherited the, I like to call it the diary of a madman, not because he had lost his mind, but because he was assembling first draft stuff. And I spent about two years just getting my head around it and learning it. And then there was a process of courage for me, Wayne, where I just had to start making changes, had to start deleting things, had to start adding things and

The day that I added a sentence and then later Googled it to realize my grandfather had already written that sentence years before, and I thought I had kind of invented it. I thought, well...

If anyone's up for the job, I guess it's me. And so together we finished this project and I'm very proud of it. It was such a delightful experience for me to learn the Bible from my grandfather, but moreover to learn God's heart for me in Jesus. And so I really, really am excited that this project is coming out here in November of 24. Well, I have to, I know, I don't have to think, I know that your grandfather would be proud of you for what you've done here today.

And again, it's called Becoming New, A 100-Day Journey of Transformation Through God's Word, edited by a grandson, Dan Jacobson, our guest on First Person now. Dan, are there other books like this looming in the archives, so to speak? Yeah, it's a great question. And as best as we know,

this is the most substantial book that my grandfather left. And so this was maybe the easiest one for us to work on and to bring to the light of day and to really bless the church with his authentic voice. We have a couple other projects in the works. I'm not going to lie. There's some other things out there, so don't be surprised. We'll leave it there. Very good. Now, I don't know for certain, but I have the sense that he was a writer. He

Many pastors will take, someone will take their sermons and edit them into book form. And that's okay. That's great. But I have the sense that your grandfather sat down and wrote these books, didn't he? Absolutely. Some preachers are preachers who write and some are writers who preach. And that was my grandfather. Certainly had a writer's heart and a writer's

aptitude, wonderful preacher. I don't want to, I run the War of Years and Sermons podcast on a weekly basis, still putting out old sermons of his and I learned so much from him, but he really did sit down and work words. Those were his tools. And he would love to actually help people through the written word. And his heart for writing was that as people, wherever they were, received a book from a friend or from a family member would sit down in quiet moments and

and actually take, you know, imagine this way, and people would actually stop and think in their busy lives and have quiet moments of reflection. And that's what I love about books these days, especially these types of books, is that they do slow down the pace of life and help me be intentional in my relationship with the Lord. And he thought that was just really important. And we'll continue our conversation with Dan Jacobson, the grandson of Warren Wiersbe, coming up on First Person.

Hi, I'm Ed Cannon. And as you know, situations around the world are changing quickly. Stay current with FEBC's ministry and get a deeper understanding of people who need to find hope. Hear how you can feel the pulse of God's Spirit moving through the hearts of believers dedicated to reaching the lost. Be sure you join me for the podcast until all have heard. Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world.

Search for Until All Have Heard on your favorite podcast platform or hear it online at febc.org. My guest is Dan Jacobson. Dan is a pastor. He's also the grandson of Warren Wiersbe, the prolific pastor and author that we loved so long for so many years with the Lord now. But man, what a ministry he had and still has with his books. His books are going to last forever, Dan. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's an incredible legacy.

I love just watching, you mentioned the Bee books earlier in our conversation, and those books still sell very, very well. And I continue to run into people across the country who say, oh, our small group is doing his Gospel of John Bee series book, and it's still being used in churches, big churches, small churches. I

I hear him quoted from pulpits on a weekly basis. Wayne, I don't know if this is okay to say, but I think my grandpa is the most quoted pastor in America. I believe that. And if he's not the most quoted, he's definitely the most plagiarized. I believe that too. But I think he would like that because he quoted so many people, as you said earlier, great writers and theologians. And that was one of his intellectual marks as well. So, yeah.

Yeah, my grandpa, I like to say that he was AI before there was AI. He was Google before there was Google. You know, a funny story about this book, Becoming New, that we're releasing here that my grandfather wrote. As I went through it, the publisher gave me back a list of footnotes that I had to verify.

They said, here's the quotes from the book that your grandfather quotes. We need you to substantiate that these are the authentic quotes from these people. And Wayne, I was floored that number... This is one of the biggest challenges of editing a book that someone who passed away left behind. I didn't know where to start. And thankfully, Google and stuff has all the records of things and I could easily find quotes, but...

The list of quotes that he pulled out really spanned decades and centuries, all the way back to Greek philosophers. He would read widely. I think a lot of people would be shocked at how much he read and of what he read, not just people who he agreed with.

but people who are maybe outside of his mainstream. And it's just incredible what he could retain. But he spoke to the common man. Oh, a hundred percent. He didn't share all of his knowledge and all of these wonderful things that he knew on a level that we couldn't understand. Yeah. He had a knack for picking, um,

I think Marilyn Monroe gets quoted in Becoming New. I think Hemingway. Yeah, there's just some really interesting, I mean, he had a really great way of picking out the cultural icons of a day or of a zeitgeist, if I can use that word.

And he would really show like, hey, the Bible speaks to this. God has something to say about this person's opinion that maybe we all inherently believe. But what does God say? And so he really had a great way of bridging context between what's maybe old and new or older generations and new generations as well. Well, I want to talk more about this book, Dan, but a sidebar here is that he was famous for his library.

And when he moved from Chicago to Nebraska to become a speaker on the back to the Bible broadcast back in the day, moving his library became quite a task, I understand. And what has happened to that library? I understand he donated it before his death.

Yeah, he did. Uh, Wayne, my grandma has a legendary quote about this time of life. She called a realtor when she was living in Chicago and she said she was looking for a library with a house attached to it, not a house with a library. That's how many books, 11,000 books. Um, my, my grandfather was a great friend of Cedarville university. Um,

I think Moody Bible Institute really had my grandfather's heart. He really loved the ministry there. No question. And Cedarville, he had such great friends at Cedarville. And when it was looking like my grandfather was about to...

His time on earth was winding down. He was very glad when Cedarville asked if they could reuse or put to use the library. Cedarville has built this beautiful reading room, the Warren and Betty Wearsby reading room. Oh, wow.

And, uh, there, any student from Cedarville can go pull off the shelves. My grandfather's books sit in this beautiful library. It is just gorgeous. And they can read his books. These books are all marked up, Wayne. They have his, his writings, his questions. That's the best part. If you ever saw or got a book from my grandpa, you, you realize you had a gem because it was

pre-read. He had already done the hard work for you. He had indexed the back of the book for you to get the key themes and the key quotes. And I just really, really am jealous for the experience that Cedarville students get by having those books nearby. Well, I'm glad to know that. I'm a Cedarville alum myself.

Back in the dark ages, as I say, but I really am grateful that these books live in that special library there. But let's talk about what's in this book. It is a devotional. So how have you organized it, Dan? The main idea that my grandfather wanted to bring out in this book was that God changes people. I don't think a lot of us really wrestle with that concept enough, Wayne, that change is possible. And so this book is written around the theme of transformation, around metamorphosis, how God takes...

A caterpillar makes it a butterfly. He takes a dead soul and brings them to life. And so he really was concerned that we understand that change is a part of every page of the Bible and that God shaping us into what he wants us to be

is really the goal of our lives. And so it's organized from Old Testament to New Testament, very simple progression. My grandfather didn't write something about every part of the Bible, but he actually wanted to bring about some biblical literacy

to this generation. And so he starts in the beginning and he gets all the way through the book of Acts. He kind of tells the story of how this thing called church got going. And the first half is just through the Old Testament. The second half is through the transforming work of Jesus, the son.

And he takes about a page and a half each day just to walk through a reading or two through the Bible and then give some commentary on it. And the beautiful part of this book is that it really contains his wisdom, his time-tested wisdom.

trustworthy exegesis. His Bible study is really there. Billy Graham called him one of the greatest biblical scholars of our time. And that really shows up on every single one of these pages. And it's designed to help us put it to practice, to put it to use in our lives, to not just leave it in our heads, but to walk it out. Do I understand it then that the manuscript he left, he didn't make it past the book of Acts? Pete Do you think so?

He did not. And in fact, you know, you asked the question if there's more books coming. He outlined another couple hundred-day devotion books, starting in Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians and on and on. So just be patient. But nothing, yeah, I guess, yeah, he left those for me to do, I guess. I don't know.

We don't have any words on those, but he was thinking along that way. Well, it must be an incredible experience, Dan, to sit down and to edit a manuscript like this left by your grandfather and hear his voice in your head. That had to be your experience. Yeah, Wayne, incredible, but also haunting. I mean, I did have a prayer the whole entire time I was at my Word document of God.

Help me know how to put this in a way that would resonate with the way my grandfather would put this. And I wasn't trying to imitate him. I wasn't trying to reproduce him. I was just trying to be honest to the fact that God had used his voice so foundationally for so many, myself included.

And to be able to put this together, I just felt this warmth of walking out the scriptures with my grandfather sitting right there. That is a real treasure. That's something that I'm eternally grateful to the Lord for. What a privilege for me to have that experience. The reader, I think, will just hear Weersbeet.

And you'll just hear my grandpa's voice. And that's great. That's what you wanted to happen. That's what I wanted. I love that when I turned in the manuscript, the professional publishing team looked for all of my cuts and edits and looked for the stitches and they couldn't find them. And I felt honored by that. But for me to have this personal experience in this book was really, really, really delightful. I know my grandfather better.

More importantly, I know Jesus better. And I know that each and every one of our readers will also know Jesus better at the end of their 100 days. Pete Well said. Pete Well said.

Well, as a pastor, a speaker yourself, is there a favorite insight, a favorite moment in this book that just sticks out to you? You know, I've got a couple degrees in the Bible, Wayne. Many of your listeners are very well-versed in scriptures and know those stories maybe inside and out. But I gotta say, I was a little embarrassed when I opened up a couple days, chapters, and

in the first manuscript and thought to myself, well, who is this person that my grandpa's pulling out? I've never heard of him. And he's got the mainstays. He does a whole week on Moses and time on Ruth. And there's a couple, like Beniana, one of David's mighty men, has a whole day associated with him. And I thought, well, I've never heard of him. I've

as I've thought about this book, it's the obscure characters like that that my grandfather pulled out have really stuck with me. And I've found myself often thinking the courage, the courage that that man had to continue on. It's a courage that I seek for and ask God for. And

Yeah, there are a lot of those moments in the book. Our guest has been Pastor Dan Jacobson, the grandson of the late Dr. Warren Wiersbe. Dan has edited one of his grandfather's unpublished books and brought it to us called Becoming New, A 100-Day Journey of Transformation Through God's Word. And we'll have a link to the book at firstpersoninterview.com so you can learn more about it and obtain a copy. Also, there's a link to the Wiersbe podcast Dan mentioned today.

And if you joined us late, this entire interview is included in our audio archive at FirstPersonInterview.com. These conversations are made possible in part by the Far East Broadcasting Company, who's committed to reaching the world for Christ through radio and several forms of new media. I was recently looking at more of the story videos at FEBC.org and highly recommend that you check them out as well. Please visit FEBC.org and let them know you enjoy First Person.

Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us next time for First Person.