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    From Ghetto to Glory
    From Ghetto to Glory
    From Ghetto to Glory
    Ebook113 pages2 hours

    From Ghetto to Glory

    By Bishop J. Delano Ellis II

    ()

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    About this ebook

    From Ghetto to Glory is a biographical story of a boy raised in dysfunction, prophesied to be a failure before he could finish school. Its about a boy who suffered beatings for his faith and dismissed from his family because he chose Christ over the religion of his father. The story is somewhat graphic, but the pain in each page culminates in a glory unexpected by the reader.

    Read the book and walk with Bishop Ellis from water to solid ground, and you will appreciate his need to praise God at every circumstance. You may just find yourself praising God along with him.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateJan 10, 2014
    ISBN9781490724218
    From Ghetto to Glory
    Author

    Bishop J. Delano Ellis II

    Bishop Ellis is the senior pastor of the Pentecostal Church of Christ in University Circle (Cleveland) Ohio. With more than a half century in ministry, the bishop serves as spiritual and moral father-in-God for more than six hundred bishops from various religious denominations within the Pentecostal community. He has a titular office as archbishop of the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops’ Congress. His writing and preaching calls us back to undisputed faith in Christ and holiness lifestyle from all who would enter holy places.

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      Book preview

      From Ghetto to Glory - Bishop J. Delano Ellis II

      © Copyright 2014 Bishop J. Delano Ellis II.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

      ISBN: 978-1-4907-2420-1 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4907-2419-5 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4907-2421-8 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014900531

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Trafford rev. 02/10/2014

      22970.png    www.trafford.com

      North America & international

      toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

      fax: 812 355 4082

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      FOREWORD

      T his is not a story of a person and the greater Glory God has worked to make that person. In one sense it is the story of God working in and through His bride, our mother called church. It is the church militant struggling in the ghetto a Cinderella story, how the Lord watches out for her and their children and lifts them out of evil into Glory, from earth to Glory, the great wedding celebration and feast. So J. Delano Ellis can say, So, this road that I have travelled has been glorious, but very dangerous. One could question, Does it ever end? And the answer is a most resounding Yes on the day of Glory.

      This story tugs at your heart strings, in that even when the Devil thinks he has you in his bondage, God works to bring us out of the ghetto, so that we may continue the fight unto Glory, not on our own, but through the church.

      The story begins with a little boy and I thought we were poor, and yet I had the love of a mother and father, we were rich in so many ways. Traveling from our home at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, we would take the old Dayton Yellow Springs road and drive through a poor area, where we saw negro families sitting on their rickety front porches while we drove to the department stores in downtown Dayton, OH. I always wondered about those children running around the front of those houses, their skin was a dark brown and we never saw them and none were in my classes in Fairborn, (this was by law). I think if only I knew I would have realized how rich we really were. We were not faced with whatever happened in our family that was evil and terrorizing. My problems of being an enlister’s son and trying to fit in with children of Colonels and Generals were nothing in comparison. Even the beatings at the end of my father’s belt were nothing in comparison; at least he was just trying to beat the devil out of me. And that is the dangerous road traveled, is it the wide highway of one trying to fit in or the narrow sheep path that leads to Glory.

      You will be riveted with the danger along the path trying to snatch this little sheep and keep him from Glory, when he finds sanctuary within the church and ministry and one day bask in Glory.

      Chaplain Lt. Col. Steven E. Thomas, CAP, USAF Aux.

      Great Lakes Region CAP Chaplain

      INTRODUCTION

      F rom conception to coffin, we are engaged in struggle. Without our consent, life makes arrangements for us and then challenges us to face our tomorrows with one tool in our travel case: hope. In most cases, everyone is supposed to come into this world with even opportunities. But if you’re Black, poor, and born into dysfunction, your chances for success are always compromised. One learns to decide to succeed early on so that failure is never an option.

      This little book is a story about a little boy nobody ever expected to succeed. From childhood through puberty into adulthood, this child of the ghetto was preserved to help others in their quest for survival and greatness.

      Some of the text may threaten the senses of the reader, but the greater point made is that real life often demands real descriptions of the times and happenings. For those borderline moments, we truly apologize and ask for your endurance of the humanity found in this story.

      Many thanks to the many who asked me to write something about my journey. My children, whom I love beyond words, nudged and pestered me constantly for the entire three years it’s taken me to write this one story. My wife and best friend, Sabrina, bought me laptops, notebooks, and jump drives, all in an attempt to get me to bear down on this project. Thanks, Boo.

      The fear of offending members of my family delayed so much of this book. My sister didn’t care, but my baby brother might have been most offended because he never knew the father of our family as I did. Two of our brothers knew Big Jesse in the early days but were enablers of his behavior and might have opened up a fatwa against me for writing such scathing truth about family business.

      As circumstances changed, much of the burden of fear was removed. One brother turned to Christ and educated himself at Morehouse in Atlanta. Another brother journeyed into Eastern mysticism. Another brother earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and made a wonderful life for himself, away from the Ellis family foolishness of our childhood. Our brother Michael was murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, and James died in the year of the publishing of this book. The other twenty siblings that our father sired through the Philadelphia community are generally unknown to most of us.

      Read this story and enter into my world, and you’ll begin to understand what makes me. You’ll understand my unrelenting zeal for God’s honor and God’s name. You will begin to understand my praise as you walk with me from my mother’s womb into the womb of God’s bride (the church). I invite you to read it and celebrate, with me, the true Glory of a man on a lifelong quest.

      Be blessed,

      29384.png J. Delano Ellis II

      CHAPTER ONE

      I HEAR VOICES IN WATER

      T his story begins on a cold winter night in 1943 in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 2204 Kimball Street. It was an address that will forever be stamped on the retina of my mind because…

      *     *     *

      The snow was falling, and a fourteen-year-old girl staggered across the street from our house to the home of two sisters, at 2205, looking for help because of the pain that I was beginning to cause her. I heard her scream and beg for God’s pardon as she entered the home of the two sisters. She fell on the floor, and the jolt seemed violent as the water sloshed across my little body.

      I must have been struggling to get out of that dark, wet, rubberlike balloon, and the more I stretched, the more the girl screamed. There was so much movement and rolling about in the balloon. I couldn’t see, but I could feel and I could hear. I don’t remember most of her words, but I remember the excitement my little body felt when she kept calling one name. That name would follow me throughout my entire life. The young girl continued to call that name, intermingled with an uninterpreted language and a sudden jolt. Suddenly, I heard sounds, clearly, crisply, and with such clang. I saw flickers of light, and I cried as I faded away from the voice of the girl who had been screaming a name I had become accustomed to hearing.

      *     *     *

      As unbelievable as the foregoing may seem, there is biblical evidence of another little boy who overheard a conversation between his mother, Elizabeth, and her cousin, Mary. This conversation was about the baby that Mary was also going to deliver. The little boy, later to be named John, was also in an enclosed water chamber, and his mother was six months in expectancy with him. John, the record tells us, was in Elizabeth’s womb and heard that the Messiah was coming through this family member, and the Scriptures say, "The baby (John) was filled with the Holy

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