Dr. David Jeremiah experienced two bouts with lymphoma in the 1990’s, what he calls the most dramatic experience that shaped his life, when he realized that he was seriously ill. He underwent a stem-cell transplant, wherein the stem cells from his own body were removed and then put back into his system after toxic chemicals killed the cancer and his own white cells. He has been cancer free ever since.

“I remember when I came back to the pulpit after I had gone through that experience,” he told The Christian View magazine. “I wanted our people to know that God was enough, that He sustained me through that, and that, when I was totally at the end of myself, God was there and was always enough for everything I needed. The sermon I preached the first Sunday I came back, called The Bend in the Road, is my one sermon used by the Lord more than any other.”

Jeremiah has served as Pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California since 1981. He followed in the ministry footsteps of his father. Dr. James T. Jeremiah, an Ohio pastor and President of Cedarville College (now University), had a great influence on his life, as did Jeremiah’s mother, Ruby. “My mother was a very godly woman who prayed for us kids and, I think, especially for me,” he said. “Both my father and mother are in heaven now.” Jeremiah grew up with two sisters, Lois and Mary Alice, and one brother, Jim.

The Toledo and Dayton, Ohio native described his younger self as a teenager who lived for athletics more than anything else. “I was a basketball player in high school and in college and spent most of my time trying to become a better one,” he said. “I played in all kinds of leagues. I worked a job in the summer time, but, most of the time, I was playing basketball.”

He majored in speech at Cedarville College, where he graduated in 1963. It was there that he met his wife, Donna, whom he married the year he graduated. Today, they have four adult children, Janice, David Michael, Jennifer, and Daniel, and several grandchildren.

He earned his Master’s degree in Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1967 and his Doctor of Divinity degree from Cedarville College in 1981.

Three great influences on his life and his ministry were Dr. John Reed, his speech professor from Cedarville College; Dr. Hadden Robinson, his preaching professor at Dallas Seminary; and Dr. Howard Hendricks, who was head of the Christian education department at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Jeremiah was saved at the age of 14, led to the Lord by his own father. “My Dad was a preacher, so I had heard the Gospel for as long as I could remember,” he told The Christian View magazine. “But it was when I was a teenager that I realized it wasn’t about what family I was born in, but whether or not I had a personal relationship with Christ. My father led me to Christ when I was 14.”

He felt the call to the ministry as a senior in college. “I was headed in a different direction,” he said. “I ended up having the opportunity to go preach for somebody one Sunday, just because they couldn’t find anybody else. The result of that was, I began to realize that maybe this was something I should become a little more serious about. I decided, instead of going into radio and television as a career, to go to Dallas Seminary.

“When I became a Christian and then went off to seminary, I had no idea what the Lord had for me. I never expected to ever be involved in the kinds of things I’m involved in now. My life has been an adventure.”

Shadow Mountain Community Church is home to San Diego Christian College. Jeremiah served as President of the College from 1988 until 1998, at which time he was named Chancellor. Shadow Mountain is also home to Christian Unified Schools.

The Turning Point broadcast ministry, financially supported by listeners and viewers, has grown drastically. The radio program, started by Jeremiah in 1982, is heard thousands of times a day in the United States, and is heard on hundreds of Spanish stations, heard in Spanish in every country where Spanish is spoken, Jeremiah said. Turning Point has aired on television since 2000 and is seen each weekend by millions of viewers nationally and internationally.

What he enjoys most about being a pastor is preaching, he said. “I love to preach and study and teach. I like the opportunity of leadership and seeing things grow and building things. It hasn’t lost its excitement to me.”

Before coming to Shadow Mountain, Jeremiah had started a church, Blackhawk Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with only seven families in 1969. “I watched it grow to about 1,500 people,” he said. “That was a great experience, starting from nothing and seeing God bless it and grow it. Even now, it’s amazing to see how that church has continued to grow.” It was at Blackhawk that Jeremiah first started a broadcast ministry, with The Bible Hour television program. The church also started a Christian school, from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Jeremiah advises young men studying for the ministry to not shortchange their education. “A lot of guys I know go to Bible college and then want to go right into preaching, and they can surely do that,” he said, “but, if you want to have a long and sustaining ministry, you need to get a solid foundation, because you’re going to drink out of that stream for the rest of your life. I think the temptation is to go right to the ministry and shortchange the educational part of it, and I recommend against that. I think that the best thing you could do, if you’re going into the ministry, is determine you’re going to be a man of the Word and make the Word of God your focus in everything you do.”

Jeremiah said that, when he first began in the ministry, he sought advice and asked questions from many. “I was like a sponge,” he said. “When I first started the church in Fort Wayne, I knew a few pastors, and I’d call them and go see them and ask questions. I learned from everybody I could.”

When asked how he would describe the ministry of preaching the Gospel, Jeremiah answered, “Someone once said that preaching is truth poured through a personality. I think that’s about the best description I can think of, because preaching is not just studying words and then saying them. Preaching is allowing truth to filter through your own heart and spirit and letting the truth do its work in your life and then sharing it with others. Preaching is not just a vocation. Preaching is your life. It’s who you are, what you do. It basically colors everything you do, from morning till night.”

His favorite scripture is Colossians 3:23: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord; and not unto men. “That is my life’s verse, which I have held onto all of my life,” said Jeremiah. “I love all of the scripture,” he added. “Each part of the scriptures has its own particular place in ministry in my life.”

Other than Christ, his two favorite characters from the Bible are Joseph and David. “I’ve preached on both of their lives and have been greatly encouraged and blessed by both of them,” he said.

His favorite book to preach from is Revelation. “I suppose what I’ve preached that most people have told me has blessed them more than any other is a series of 42 messages from the book of Revelation,” he said. “And that’s been on the radio over and over again, and people have told me how God has used that in their lives.”

He enjoys reading, especially commentaries, and authors such as Philip Yancey, C.S. Lewis, and A.W. Tozer. “I read just about everything I can get my hands on,” he added. “If you’re going to be a preacher, you have to be a reader.”

Jeremiah, himself, is a prolific writer, having written many books, including A Bend in the Road: Finding God When Your World Caves In, Slaying the Giants in Your Life, The Power of Encouragement, Captured by Grace: No One is Beyond the Reach of a Loving God, Life Wide Open, Sanctuary: Finding Moments of Refuge in the Presence of God, and Why the Nativity?

“I believe that God put me here to teach the scripture to everybody I can, in every way I can, and every place I can, by any means I can, and to keep doing it with all of the energy that I have,” he said.

His favorite hymn, he said, is “It Is Well with my Soul”, written by Horatio Spafford. “The story behind that hymn is about a man who lost his daughters in a collision at sea and then God gave him the courage to face life, and he wrote that hymn,” said Jeremiah. In the summer of 2007, on his second trip to Israel, Jeremiah met Spafford’s 95-year-old granddaughter.

Jeremiah advises all Christians to be real in their walk with the Lord. “Don’t posture, and don’t make believe, and don’t just become a cultural Christian,” he said, “but be a real Christian and walk with Christ. Spend time with Him in His Word and be involved in serving Him with your energy and with your time.”

He would tell those who do not know the Lord, “You might have tried everything else to find happiness and success and joy, but you will never find it without God, because He made you with an empty place in your heart where He alone can fit. If you try to put anything else in there, it won’t work.

“Christianity is the answer to the major questions in life: Where have you come from, where are you going, and why are you here? Those are the questions that people who don’t know the Lord struggle to deal with, and they end up frustrating themselves. I don’t have any of those questions anymore. I know how I got here. I know where I’m going when I die. And I know why God has left me here, during these years that I’m here. That simplifies life a great deal. I think that the difference between the Christian life and life without Christ is that the Christian life is goal-oriented; it’s related to an ultimate purpose, and it has meaning.”

Knowing that his life has purpose and that God is everything he needs had led Jeremiah to want to be known for his faithfulness, in his ministry and in his life. “I would like to be remembered as an ardent follower of Christ,” he said, “as a loving and faithful husband, as a committed parent and grandparent, and then, ultimately, as a man devoted to the Word of God and to the church.”