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FROM THE BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE OR OLD SCHOOL BAPTIST MINISTERS BY DAVID MONTGOMERY AND MARK GREEN:
ELDER J. P. DALE
WRITTEN BY HIS WIDOW, SISTER LELA DALE:
Elder James Preston Dale, Jr., was born on May 25, 1912 in McKinney, Texas, the son of James Preston and Emma Gotcher Dale. His brother (Elder W. R. Dale), his mother’s father (Elder John Gotcher), and his uncle (Elder Jim Gotcher) were all Primitive Baptist Elders.
Elder Dale united with the Primitive Baptist Church in Tioga, Texas in 1923 at the age of eleven years. He was baptized by Elder Henry Ball. He never regretted that experience, although he felt unworthy of the blessings of the church.
Later when he was a teen-ager, he began to feel that God had called him to preach His glorious truths. He felt so unworthy to attempt such a glorious work, but one night he dreamed that everything was on fire as if the world was a lake of fire. He felt that it was sure death for him. He was leaping from one plot of earth to another as if they were floating in a lake of fire; and finally he leaped the last time, and there was no plot of earth to land on, so he felt himself plunging into a lake of fire; then suddenly he thought he saw Jesus come out of the sky, and with His mighty wings He swept underneath him, and lifted him up, and he did not feel the burning of the fire. He felt Jesus carried him away on His wings. The impression came very forcibly to his mind as the reason he was called to preach, and to tell God’s people everywhere of His glorious salvation to them—how He sweeps underneath His loved ones, and bears them to safety through His Grace. From then on his desire grew stronger to tell God’s humble poor what a wonderful Saviour they have, and to teach them to live closer to Him for His counsel and leadership of their lives.
Through much prayer, tears and encouragement of the people of God, he lost sight of his weakness through the blessed grace of God, and trusting Jesus to help him, he made his first attempt to preach in Dallas, Texas when he was twenty-one years old. On July 15, 1934 he was ordained to the full work of the ministry at the Lone Star Primitive Baptist Church in Tioga, Texas. Elders in the Presbytery were H. G. Ball, E.L. Kemp, and W. R. Dale. Deacons were J. H. Ball, W. J. Scoggins, James Preston Dale (his father), J. W. McGee and Elbert Cook.On October 1, 1959 he married Lela, nee Baethge, in Dallas, Texas. They were blessed to spend nearly forty years together. Sister Dale is the daughter of Willie and Ethel Baethge. She was reared in a Primitive Baptist home, and can trace some of her family back through the Primitive Baptists for more than one hundred years.
Elder Dale was privileged to travel through thirty or more States to preach the glorious doctrine. He assisted in the constitution of five churches in Texas one in Louisiana, and one in New Mexico. He pastored churches in Oglesby, Quitman, Maud, Warren, Port Neches, Houston, Ft Worth, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Doss, San Antonio and Fredricksburg, Texas during his nearly sixty-five years in the ministry. He attended the Logan College in St Louis, Missouri, and the Texas Chiropractic College in Texas, and practiced fifty-five years in Texas. His work as a doctor and minister gave him many valued experiences in observing the suffering of God’s people, and their need for help along life’s way. He counted it a blessing to be able to administer to the sick, and to preach to the poor in spirit.
For two and one half years he preached on the radio over ten different stations, and that experience taught him that God’s people of all denominations were hungering for the truths that are found in the doctrine of grace.
Elder Dale passed away on February 12, 1999. He was preceded in death by his parents, three brothers, namely W. R., Joshua, Gotcher and one sister, Elizabeth, Mrs. J.L. Crues. He left to mourn his wife, Lela, one daughter and son-in-law Lynn and Tim Miller, three grandsons, two granddaughters, and one great grandson. Services were held February 15, 1999 in the New Hope Primitive Baptist Church in Fredricksburg, Texas where he pastored since the constitution, which was May 5, 1973. His body was laid to rest in the Greenwood Cemetery to await the resurrection. |
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