Arturo Skinner - Conversion To Christianity

Conversion To Christianity

Twenty-eight years of Arturo Skinner’s life had gone by before his miraculous conversion came while on the brink of suicide in 1952. He reached his crisis the year following his mother’s death after suffering a stroke at the age of 51. That fateful night, two voices conflicted inside of him. One compelled him to "go were your mother is," but the other said, "Arturo, I want you to turn your life over to me. Give me your heart." According to Arturo Skinner, he received his salvation in the middle of Brooklyn’s busy Atlantic Avenue thoroughfare, when Jesus prevented him from taking his own life.

Determined to start anew, he gave away custom-made furniture, opened his closets to friends and withdrew the money he had from the bank and proclaimed that it was going towards working for God. With a few possessions and his mother's Bible in hand, Arturo Skinner (he legally changed his name some time later) took a train to Hartford, Connecticut and spent the next 56 days in the Allen Hotel. He recalled later that those were some of the most torturous days and nights of his whole life, as God prepared him for ministry through dreams and visions.

Fully recovered, he returned to New York and promptly attended the Bethel Bible Institute in Jamaica, New York, where he received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. It was during this time that he went to live in the home of the esteemed Judge James Lopez Watson, Jr. and his mother, Viola Watson, who influenced him greatly and whom he considered his adopted parents. He and Judge Watson remained close friends for the rest of his life. While living in the Watson home, he worked as a houseboy to earn the money required for his personal sustenance and study.