Welcome to Truth Talk Live! All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.
Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Stu Epperson here with Robbie Dilmore. Our hearts are heavy as we are talking about our dear friend, our dear colleague who has gone to heaven recently, Tom Booth. When you hear the words Bible for breakfast, Robbie Dilmore, you can't help but think of the legendary Tom Booth who manned the Truth Booth for so many years, bringing so many people some good news every morning. I mean, clearly for me, Tom Booth is a Truth Booth in so many different ways because I listened to the Truth Network in the very beginning when you first signed on the air and when you added Tom, which wasn't terribly long after, but all of a sudden, you know, it really, his love for the Word of God, but also his love for the program. And he had a love for people too, but he had a peace about him. There were so many qualities that Tom had that were just so absolutely unique.
God gifted him very, very, very humble, but oh my goodness, did he love doing what he did and certainly brought that to, you know, we stand on the shoulder of giants as far as I'm concerned. Well, when I first heard from him and met him and saw his resume, and we had kind of, you know, we both had been in media, you know, and he had been in the media longer than me. I mean, he was working with Glenn Scott. He was working with legendary radio and TV people for years in North Carolina area, and had done real well doing the weather, doing sports, doing all kinds of things. Always loved radio. And then he went into corporate America and just did a great job there in everything he did well. But to hear about how he came to know Christ and what our listeners are in for, you're in for a treat because Robbie, I listened last night driving to an interview you did with Tom over a decade ago, where we were scrambling, trying to find guests, and we were live at the Religious Broadcasters Convention.
You were hosting your show, Robbie's Hobbies, which is now called Keenan Pursuits across the Truth Network. And there's you, there's Tom, and you had this thought, wait a second, this guy's got a story. I should interview him.
Oh yeah, I'd always want to. I mean, to me, you know, he was a legend. I was like, how do I get to even work with this guy? Because I'd been listening to him for years and years, and he was the measure that I'd hoped to attain at some point in time in radio. And there he was, and I was like, well, I'll just interview Tom. So Tom, here, come let our audience know more.
Because obviously your show was always talking about Bible for breakfast, but you remember he had that other show where he interviewed authors that was similar to what? That's right, The Heart of the Matter. The Heart of the Matter, that was it. He did a great job.
He did a great job with that. And in its own way, that was a predecessor to Robbie's Hobby's Kingdom Pursuits, but I just was dying to hear the real story. Like Tom, you know, you were a big time in media.
What happened? How did you come to know Jesus? How did you get to know him? You know, everyone you hear on the Truth Network, be it our pastors, be it our talk show host, be it on affiliates that carry this show that may not carry all the other stuff. But everyone you hear, whatever station you're listening to right now, or you're listening on your phone, which is also radio, through the app, everyone you hear has a story. They came from somewhere. They at some point were running from God, like Jonah, and then at some point they were running to God, and then at some point they were running with God.
And then at some point they had run-ins with God, which is the outline of Jonah 1-4. And Tom Booth talks about that, and these sweet ladies that walked around his building at lunchtime while he was in there having a lunch break, and they prayed for him specifically. These ladies may be in heaven now. We don't know where they are.
This was decades ago, but who knows? And they may have had no idea then that the man they were praying for would be the big morning guy on the Truth Network, bringing people into these wonderful messages by powerful pastors all across the country. And his name is Tom Booth.
And one word that comes to my mind is overqualified. Does not everyone want the voice of Tom Booth? I mean, just amazing. He just opened his mouth, and just smooth as honey, just beautiful voice, and the heart matched the voice. And sometimes it's hard to get both of those together, isn't it, Robbie?
Oh, it's complete. The thing about Tom was that that was the peace he would bring into any situation. If you were in a meeting with Tom, or I can remember a few absolute crises I was on the air with, and Tom happened to be there with other guests that were making it worse, and Tom just brought that level of professionalism. He just brought the peace that transcended all understanding. Believe me, if you'd been in some of the places that I've been with Tom.
And often, from my stand, the early days of Truth Talk Live were when the Truth Network really started to make whatever mark. What people didn't realize is how much Tom Booth was behind that scene. And Stu coming in, quite honestly, at two minutes to five, whatever time it is. Tom's like, where's Stu? Well, that's a good question.
The intro music's about to play. Oh, there he is in the parking lot. But he had a cool head, a cool hand, and that's where he started with us.
Basically, in my mind, the Lord's leading me, just hire this guy. We didn't know what we were doing. We've been around 25 years, Truth Network. This had to have been maybe 22 years ago, 23 years ago, maybe in that range. Well, it's like 2002 or 3. Yeah, 2002 or 3. Early on, we just know, here I'm sitting at the Golden Corral off of Battleground Avenue in Lawndale, which is no longer there, by the way, in Greensboro.
They were sponsors, but they still have the location off of Wendover. But here we were, Robbie. I'm sitting across from this guy. He loves the Lord. He loves our station. He's telling me all about the wonderful pastors on AM 830, Alistair Begg, David Jeremiah. He just loves the programs, R.C.
Sproul. He just loves it. And he says, Stu, I don't understand it, but God's calling me back to radio somehow. He gave me his whole testimony, which everyone's about to hear. But one of our original producers of this show you're listening to right now, Tom Booth, has gone to heaven.
And so we're celebrating him today by playing a clip of an interview of his testimony, which is remarkable. And Robbie, you have the opportunity to be the one interviewing him, talking to him, and it helps our listeners have a perspective of who are these people on the radio? What are they doing?
Where do they come from? What's their background? And every one of them has a miracle story. And every one of you listening has a story of what God has done to draw you to himself and to work in you and to touch you. So we really want to dedicate this show to the legacy of a godly man, Tom.
Of course, his wife Ann, his sons Tommy and Chaz, his awesome daughter-in-laws and grandkids, and just a legacy that he has left for so many of us who have grown up in Christ listening to him introduce programs and do talk shows and interview authors in the Tom Booth kind of way. The Truth Booth will never be the same without our good friend Tom Booth gone on to heaven, but he was also host of this program you're listening to right now. So Robbie, when we come back, we'll do the big setup for the interview you did with Tom, but we just want to encourage everyone to stay tuned and be encouraged by this program. And we're going to make it a podcast, which means it's shareable. People can listen and share it with anyone out there that wants to hear a powerful story of what God can do with someone, no matter how gifted they are, if they simply surrender and say, God, I'm yours.
Use me. So we'll play that right when we come back here on Truth Talk and Truth Talk Live. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Stu Everson here with Robbie Gilmore, and we are going to take you into a time capsule. We're going to take you back just over a decade. It could have been a little farther back, Robbie, you and I are sitting here trying to triangulate the dates of when you and I were at NRB, the National Religious Broadcasters, broadcasting live from the floor. So you can hear the background, people clamoring around, setting up in interviews, all kinds of people, all kinds of our wonderful friends, Alex McFarland, Dr. Jeremiah, Dr. Stanley, Dr. Sproul were alive then.
Those two are in heaven. But there were a lot of these great, powerful speakers that still come to the Religious Broadcasters Convention. We would set up and do live broadcasts there, including this program.
Many of you can remember when we broadcast this show from the floor of the NRB, and we would grab these great speakers. And one of our special hosts was Tom Booth, who was also one of the original producers of this show, Truth Talk Live, in our infancy. And he went on to become the legendary storied morning man on the Truth Network, Bible for Breakfast, with Tom Booth. And he introduced programs on all of our stations every morning, and just kind of got us ready and gave beautiful quotes and scriptures. And Robbie, it's hard to picture turning on the radio and listening to the Truth Network and the programming without Tom Booth. I mean, he was a fixture, he was a staple, wasn't he? And for me, you know, a long time listener before I came to work for the Truth Network, and, you know, I loved the station. And part of the reason I love the station is because you could always tell that what Tom Booth was bringing for Bible for Breakfast, which was really, you know, this teaching that so many of us that love the Truth Network just totally depend on. So I can't think of all the people that, you know, when I would go to events and stuff, they'd go, where's Tom Booth? Where's Tom Booth, you know? And he was just beloved, yet he was a shy man.
Yeah, he wasn't anybody that would get out there in front of anybody or whatever. So to get this soundbite that we had on the NRB floor that day was priceless to me at the time. Because, you know, even though I'd worked with him for whatever period of time, and certainly listened to him for probably more than a decade at the point in time I'm playing this, I didn't know his story. And so it blew me away.
And Robbie, you have always been so good, and I think you learned it from the best, like people like Tom Booth, to have an intuition. This is a real challenge in ministry and testimony to all of us, to think about the person you're sitting in front of. Who are they? Where do they come from? What are the deep wounds and pains in their soul? How do they get to where they are today? How do they find Christ? What's their story?
What's their testimony? And all you gotta do is ask, but you gotta ask the right questions. And Tom was masterful at asking those questions. He was so thoughtful and insightful. And prepping me for a special guest, I said, Stu, now make sure you talk to Dr. Jeffers about such and such, about this experience that he had that led him to write this book. You know, the story behind the story, and Robbie, you're really good at that, you know, with these guests that come on. Sometimes the point where they're shocked, they're like, wow, how did you even know to think that?
And then they say things they didn't plan on saying. Tom was amazing with that. As the morning host of Bible for Breakfast, as the regular fill-in on Truth Talk Live, which now you've become, right? And as the producer of Truth Talk Live, and then as the host of his own show, which was really a powerful show called The Heart of the Matter with Tom Booth.
All of those things. Tom's in heaven. We're celebrating him today. And we're going to take you right now back over a decade to the floor of the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where our own Robbie Noemore sat down with Tom Booth and interviewed him about his remarkable journey to Christ and to the Truth Network and how God has used him since. Robbie, here we go. God has certainly used the passion of folks in radio, and I know for the Truth Network, when a lot of folks think of the Truth Network, they think of Tom Booth, and how cool is it that we here at the NRB have Tom Booth in our booth? Welcome, Tom.
In the booth, how about that? Thank you, Robbie. It's great to be here. And I am a fan of yours. I know very little about cars, and I don't have many hobbies, so I listen to you to kind of keep up on all of that.
It's fun to do. One of my absolute favorite parts of Robbie's hobbies, I normally do at the end of the show, but since I have you here, and I know probably so many listeners would love to know a little bit about the story of Tom Booth, is there was a Tom Booth before he met Christ, perhaps, and there was a Tom Booth after he met Christ, and I'm sure they would love to know a little bit about your life. What was going on that Tom came to know Jesus?
Wow. Well, I grew up in West Virginia, and I went to church, but I was not a Christian. It was sort of like, well, I'm a Boy Scout because I go to the meetings on Monday night.
I must be a Christian because I go to church on Sunday morning, and I just never made that connection. So anyway, I worked in radio and television after I got out of school. Weren't you a weatherman, I heard? Yes, I was.
Yes. Somebody said they still had one. We used to have these little toboggans and umbrellas we gave out. It said, Tom Booth said it would.
So you put the umbrella up. They're real collector's items now, but that's been many, many years ago. But yeah, worked in radio and television in West Virginia and Virginia, and then into North Carolina in the Winston-Salem. This was back when radio was black and white because that was a long time ago. This would have been 1974 when I came to Winston and worked at SJS Radio and then went into television at WXII. And I did the weather for a while. I did sports for a while.
I did news for a while. I was sort of the jack of all trades, master of none, but loved my time there. But really, my heart was in radio. But I went off into the corporate world for 19 years because my dad said it's time to get a real job.
So it was like, okay. So I worked for AT&T and Western Electric and Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies and General Dynamics. And I was never really fulfilled in all of that.
And my passion was the first job that I had was radio. Well, anyway, I'm in the corporate world and I'm going through some tough times in my life. My marriage had fallen apart. So here I am, divorced.
I lost the hearing in my left ear. I lost all my retirement money was tied up in Lucent Technologies stock. If you remember, Lucent had the big red zero.
Was there a logo? Well, that's a pretty good indication of where your retirement was going to be after the bottom fell out of that. And so I had just come to the point in my life where there was not a lot left. And it was like, okay, I've lived all these years and I've done all these things. And it was empty.
It was empty. And it was like we had just gone through 9-11. And I'm thinking, okay, here are these guys that had enough faith in their faith to fly an airplane into a building. And it's like, what do I believe?
What is this whole thing? So I just started to work through some of those issues in my head, in my heart. And God started to work on me.
And sometimes you have to get to the point where you hit the bottom before you see. I had to be smacked around quite a bit before. I was the same way. It's like, okay, you're going to lose your hearing.
Okay, well, that didn't work. Okay, now you're going to lose your retirement savings. So I had to have the wake-up call. But I had gotten to the end of myself and saw that there was really nothing there. So I had some ritter to Christ. I said, you can have all of me that's left.
And I don't know how much that is at this point. And I just realized the depth of my sin and my inability to do it. So was there a church involved in that or somebody around you that was saying, Tom? I had two ladies at General Dynamics who were praying for me.
That's basically how that happened. And they were both wonderful Christian ladies. And while I was sitting in the office at lunch, they would walk around the building and pray for me. And I didn't know.
I had no clue. And then when I finally, one of the ladies worked for me, and when I finally had my conversion experience, and I told her about it when I went into the office, and she just smiled. And she said, well, we knew that that was going to happen because we were praying for you.
So it was no surprise to them. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to The Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com Robby, Gilmore, what was going on in your mind when you sat there on the floor of the Religious Broadcasters Convention? It's just you and Tom Booth, which often it was just us and the radio station with no one else around. But you're supposed to be interviewing all these famous authors, Max Lucado and R.C.
Sproul and all these people at NRB over a decade ago. We've just heard some of Tom's testimony. We're going to hear even more as he gets into how God saved him and then how God brought him to doing all the stuff he did to make such a big impact as the Bible for Breakfast morning host on The Truth Network and as producer of Truth Talk Live and so many impactful things. Tom Booth, and you sat down at NRB, what was going through your mind as you were getting ready for this interview that we're going to hear the rest of here just now? Again, it was always like, God, how did you get me here? How did I get to pinch me?
It's unbelievable. Because again, anytime you'd interview somebody like Charles Stanley or Dr. Jeremiah, those things, you'd listen to these men and been taught for them by years, but I didn't listen to any of them near as much as I'd listen to Tom. And so to actually sit down with Tom and get a chance to hear that was a true honor for me. And honestly, I'd forgotten about it until somebody else found it after Tom's passing, which obviously broke all our hearts. But I was like, oh my goodness, I remember this and how cool it was.
I was like, oh, Tom, let's do Tom. And then he just, because he had those gifts. God gave him the gifts to do what he did with his life. So at this point in the interview, we're going to transition from sort of his conversion experience and then what happened in the corporate world immediately thereafter. So we're taking you back there right now.
Here's the continuation of the journey, the testimony of Tom Booth. And so at that point, the whole corporate world, my whole corporate world was starting to collapse. General Dynamics had bought four or five different companies that did the same thing.
So we had four presidents, you know, five, 15 vice presidents. And so they had all this duplication. So basically after 19 years, I was going to have to reapply for my job and they were going to move me to Massachusetts or someplace. And I just didn't want to go. And it was like, God, I don't think I want to do this anymore, but I'm not sure what you want me to do. And they offered a package to retire.
They wanted to clean the ranks a little bit. So I said, great, I'll sign up for one of those things. And I did. And then they told me, well, we didn't accept you.
I can't even get laid off. And they said, no, your job is so specific and we need that. But they came back and I said, okay, God, if that's what you want, I'll just stay here.
You just show me what to do. And at that point, it was just wide open. And I still had that love for radio that was in my heart.
And I'm sure God planted before the foundations of the earth. And so long story short, they offered the package again and I applied again. And finally they took it because they didn't have enough people to take it before.
So it was like in the movies. I walked out of the corporate world and I had my little box and had my pictures in it, my coffee mug. And so I'm walking out to the car and I put this stuff in the backseat of the car and it's like, what do I do now? I don't have a clue what to do now. I'm 50 years old. Do I just die?
Because you got so used to this is your job, this is what you do, and you get so wrapped up in that whole work thing. And that becomes your identity. Yeah. So anyway, I'm driving home that day. This is like noon and I go through downtown Greensboro and I see Urban Ministry there. And I thought, well, okay, my department, we had given them some money before we had done some things with them before. Now I'll just stop in there. So I pulled the car in there and what do you do?
I walked in. What do you do? And he said, well, we do this and do that. And I said, do you have any need for any volunteers? Well, yeah, we got a soup kitchen, we got a food bank. I did that for a year and a half.
Really? And just volunteer kind of thing. And I told God, I said, okay, I've got 26 weeks severance pay or whatever. I'm not getting paid at this job, but hey, this is yours.
You guide me. And that 26 weeks pay lasted me a year and a half. And I never missed a meal. And it was like he took care of me through that time. And I learned so much about myself, about other people in that environment where people have nothing.
They don't have any food. Yeah. Talk about people that have got to a place and they all, so many times I see that to the rescue mission myself. They're like, I don't deserve any of this.
I don't deserve anything. I know. I know. It is really heartbreaking.
It really is. And quickly, one or two stories. At the urban ministry in Greensboro, the homeless people come in for lunch. And then there was an optional kind of a prayer thing you could do, Bible study kind of thing after lunch. And so I was in there one day. It was cold. It was November. It was raining. And this woman came in and she obviously had everything she had in this little bag that she carried in with her. She smelled kind of bad and it was wet. And it was like, you could just tell.
And so we go around the group and everybody's kind of holding hands and say a little prayer. And I got to this woman and she said, I just want to thank God for all that He's given me. And I'm thinking, this woman's got nothing. But she had everything. She had everything. It was some of the rest of us that didn't have much. And I was next.
She squeezed my hand. I couldn't say. I couldn't talk.
Nothing came out. But it just touched my heart. And there was one other time when it snowed. And most of the people who worked in the soup kitchen were little old ladies that would come in and help out. Well, it snowed.
They couldn't get in. So they had to bring some of the guys down from the shelter to help out and cook. And so I'm there slopping off mashed potatoes in the thing. And there's this guy beside me who's up. And he kept looking up and he kept looking at this guy back in the back. And he said, excuse me a minute. And I saw him go back there and he was talking to the guy. And so he came back and I said, is that a friend of yours?
He said, no. He said, he said, but I saw him back there and I knew he was going to go back outside. He didn't have a coat. And he said, I went and gave him my coat. And I said, well, where's your coat? You're going to have to go back out. He said, God will take care of me. And it's like, man.
And so I went home in my closet and I got all the old coats that I didn't wear anymore and just take them back down there. But to see people who have little just give of themselves that much. And he didn't think anybody was watching him. It wasn't on television. It wasn't on radio.
It was not for show at all. And so anyway, that was a I learned more in that year and a half about human nature and about God and how God works. But anyway, God opened the door and and let me back into radio.
But Tommy, can you can you share with us how that happened? Well, I was working in the homeless shelter and I was filling up bags, grocery bags for people who didn't have groceries and making soup. And oh, by the way, if you ever need mashed potatoes for three hundred fifty, I'm your guy. I haven't learned to pare that down yet.
So when we have mashed potatoes at home, it's like the pot is really big. So anyway, I'm at Urban Ministry and I'm feeling a little led back to radio. And I had never done Christian radio.
I've done just about every other format you could think of over the years. And so I stumbled across the Billy Graham station up in one of the black absolutely. So I'm listening to that.
This is great. So I called him up and I said, I'm going to be in the area. You know, it's three hours away. I'm just going to be dropping by.
Can I come and see you? And so I went in and saw the gentleman there and we sat down and we talked. And, you know, you walk into the place and just sense the presence of God. I mean, it's just all over that place. And so I was just blown away. And it was like all this wonderful equipment and getting the gospel out.
And it was just really exciting. So anyway, we kind of left it there. I left my little resume and went back to the homeless shelter and I didn't hear anything from him.
And so it was three weeks, four weeks. And so I'm starting to actually I was in the homeless shelter filling up a bag one morning. And I wasn't particularly thinking about that whole experience with the job thing. And I'm not going to say I heard an audible voice because I don't think it was that. But somewhere deep in my spirit, when I was just putting cans in a bag, the impression came to me. You wanted that job for you.
You didn't want it for me. And as if God were saying that. And I'm thinking, that's right, because my whole thought process was this was what Tom was going to go off and do for God. And God was going to be happy to have me. That's just the way I felt about the whole thing. So it was a very humbling thing. And I had to say, you're right.
You're absolutely right. And I said, I did want that for me. And I said, I'm not exactly sure what you want. But if you want me to just fill up these bags every day and cook soup and mashed potatoes for 350, I am perfectly willing to do that. And I said, you're going to have to figure out how I survive on a volunteer salary, which is zero.
I'll leave that up to you. With your retirement with Lucid being exactly odd times odd equals odd. We got the math together.
The zero kept showing up in my life. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. So anyway, it wasn't a couple of weeks later that I had since I had stumbled across Stu Station. Oh, great.
Okay. So I just sent him a little email and didn't hear anything months about that. And then finally he calls me one day and said, hey, let's have lunch. So I went and had lunch and then I started filling in with producing his Truth Talk Live. And that was great, getting guests lined up.
And he would even fill in and interview the authors. It was just a wonderful, wonderful thing. And God blessed me with my dream. It was radio, to get back into radio and to do Christian radio. Robbie, when I was 18 years old and I was at a radio station, we had a rock station and the FM station was gospel. I was blasphemous.
I was actually blasphemous. I would go in there and pretend to preach in between records and stuff. And it was like, it's a wonder I didn't get struck dead, but it was God in His mercy and grace and infinite sense of humor put me into Christian radio. You want to preach on the radio?
Here you go. And it has been such a blessing to be able to, I remember the first day I was in the station. I was walking down the hall and I think I heard R.C.
Sproul or somebody over the speakers coming. And I thought, this is going places where I can't go. This is going in people's homes. This is going in people's cars. This is going in people's prisons. It's going into prisons.
It's going into homeless shelters. This is the Word of God going out. And what better privilege would there be to have a part in that? To be able to even just hit the button that says play and it goes out.
Just that by itself would be enough. But I'm blessed to be able to still be doing the morning show for Stu and interfacing with our listeners every day. And you had this show too. I got to remind our listeners that it was on Saturday mornings. It used to be.
I used to be when I was on my way to come do the Christian car guy. I got to listen to you. What was the name of that show? That was called The Heart of the Matter.
Oh, yeah. It was so good. And that was an interview program I did for a while.
And that was also a joy to do. But, you know, some things were on their course and that did. And I shifted more into the focus on the mornings. We grew as a network.
And the next thing you know, you were on in Salt Lake City and you were on in Richmond. Yeah, we came and the Lord blessed us. To see what God has done just with us, we came roughly about the same time. I guess I may have been a little ahead of you.
I can't remember exactly. I came in 2006. You started the Christian Car Guy in 2006 and you've been there a couple of years.
Okay, yeah. So there we go. So God has taken your passion.
This is a poster child, I'm telling you, for all these hobbies. Tom Booth on The Truth Network. He's taken his passion for radio and used it to build a kingdom. I know he's encouraged me many, many, many mornings.
He doesn't know the piece of scripture. And maybe I should share this for those people who wonder. Tom spends hours and hours and hours putting together what he feels should be in that morning show.
You may just hear five, ten, twenty seconds of what he puts together to introduce the show or whatever. But nobody knows the amount of time, unless you worked around Tom, to see what the amount of prayer and what goes into that. So you've blessed people. You've blessed me.
And now, really, just to hear your story is so similar to my own. I know. It's broken down in the world and Stu brought us to a place where God brought us to a place where Stu put us back on the hot track.
It's awesome. And here we are. I mean, here we are at the National Religious Broadcasters and you walk up and down. Oh, there's Erwin Lutzer. There's Charles Stanley.
There's Johnny Erickson Todd. Yeah, it's always amazing. I'm walking with kings. And I'm right here. I'm blessed. And we are blessed. And Robby, you have blessed me much over the years, too. And I really admire you, and I admire what you do, and it is a real pleasure just to be able to sit across the table from you. Well, this interview has been a treasure.
I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. God bless you, Tom. God bless you. Stu Epperson here on Truth Talk and Truth Talk Live, along with Robby Dilmore, celebrating the life, the legacy of a great man of God, our friend Tom Booth, who's gone on to be with Jesus very recently, long-time morning man on the Truth Network, his Bible for breakfast, introducing us to the Lord and to the Word every morning, early producer and regular guest host of Truth Talk Live, and host of Heart of the Matter.
Robby, what a delight to work with Tom Booth. Just a breath of fresh air. He just loved Jesus. He was a prayer warrior. He was led by the Lord, and he really brought so much into our lives, didn't he? Into all the lives of our listeners, the impact he had.
You know, part of what the original situation was, we started to expand. Tom was there. And Tom was an integral part of Utah, feeling like they were unique, because he did those shows for every single market individually. So he took that extra time to make sure that people in Salt Lake felt like that was a Salt Lake-branded thing, that Raleigh people felt like they were in Raleigh, Richmond felt like they were in Richmond. In other words, all those things happened because of his shows that he did to introduce all that stuff.
And so, you know, from my standpoint, he was always a big part of what made the network the network. Yeah, and I think there's so much tribute to some unsung heroes who you've already heard about, like those two ladies that would share Christ with him when he was working in the corporate world. And they would prayer walk the building during lunch and pray for him while he was enjoying his lunch. They were praying for his soul, the people along the way that planted those seeds.
And just the way God used him, in such a powerful way, to bless so many of us. So we're just grateful for him. We're just praying for his sweet wife, Ann. And he's got his sons, Tommy, Chaz, his whole family, grandkids, and we're praying for them during this season. And we're just saying thank you, Tom, and thank you, Jesus, for bringing Tom into our life and for how you used him in such a mighty way.
And we just have a few more minutes, Robbie. You sat down with him years ago at the NRB, and this is what we often do. We say, well, we just missed an opportunity to interview this huge titan of the faith who's written all these books.
He just walked down the hall, and there's another one there, and we've got someone coming up. Well, you had this moment like, well, wait a second. Tom Booth has a story. And I don't think you'd ever heard his story before. No, I hadn't. You had no idea what you were in store for, did you?
I said I hadn't heard it, but I can't help but think. In the book of Esther, right, when the king says what should be done for the man that the Lord delights to honor, right? And we know that the Lord delights to honor his saints that have passed on. And to honor Tom Booth, for those of you, I'm sure so many are listening, remember how he was the introduction to this network. He was the one that certainly got me involved with David Jeremiah, got me involved with so many of those early morning breakfasts.
Bible for breakfast, what a thing to eat, and it's an honor. It really is for me here to honor him at his passing, because he was truly the shoulders that we stand on on the Truth Network. Well, thank you for taking this time, and what a powerful moment even at the end when it all kind of hit you, the gravity of Tom's testimony and the impact he had had on you and so many. So here we go, those final minutes, you interviewing Tom Booth and his story. I hope you enjoy this. I hope you'll share, download this podcast and share it with all your friends. I know it'll be a blessing to many people. To close out today's tribute, we wanted to play a couple of Tom's classic Bible for breakfast Bible clips.
Sit back and enjoy. How long has Bible for breakfast been a part of your life? I'm Tom Booth, and recently I had a conversation with a father who started listening with his young son as he took him to school each morning. Day after day, year after year being filled with the Word of God from Pastor Greg Laurie in a new beginning, Chip Ingram living on the edge, that young man now a youth pastor. Can Bible for breakfast change the course of your life?
Well, tune in weekday mornings from 7 to 10 to find out right here on the Truth Network. Hello, I'm Tom Booth, and if you've been a faithful Bible for breakfast listener for the last 17 years or so, you may have about 884 verses from God's Word memorized. That's a lot of spiritual ammunition when you're facing a powerful enemy. Face this day and every day with the Word of God from Bible teachers like John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, Greg Laurie, Alistair Begg and more. Join me weekday mornings from 7 to 10. I'll serve up some Bible for breakfast for you right here on the Truth Network. Hi, this is Tom Booth from Bible for breakfast weekday mornings from 7 to 10. Start your morning in God's Word with us as we bring you the best Bible teachers on radio.
John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, Greg Laurie, all your morning favorites will be here each weekday morning. We'll share some food for thought. We'll review a weekly memory verse.
Take a look at what happened on this day in history and more. We'll also let you know how you can win a prize pack from our ministry of the month. That's Bible for breakfast weekday mornings right here on the Truth Network. Good morning, I'm Tom Booth.
It's 959. That's all the time we have together this Tuesday morning. Thanks for starting your day with me and sharing some Bible for breakfast. And I hope you'll be back tomorrow as we open God's Word again. Our memory verse for the week is Psalm 40 verse 16. Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. Let such as love thy salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified. Psalm 40 verse 16, truth from the Word. Still to come? More solid Bible teaching?
Complete program listings at TruthNetwork.com. I'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning. Until then, make the most of this new day the Lord has given us and may God be with you till we meet again.
To everything there is a season. Hello, I'm Tom Booth. Those words from Ecclesiastes deeply significant for me as I move into a new season of life. The last two decades of hosting Bible for breakfast have been the most rewarding of my career and I leave you in very good hands. My friend and colleague Beth Ann McBride will take my place at the table. She loves the Lord and His Word and I hope that you'll give her a warm Bible for breakfast welcome as she begins a new season in her life. Thanks for everything.
