God's Point of View

Earl descended from, and grew up among a long line of ministers and missionaries.  Owen Cripe, his step-grandfather and John Wolf, his grandfather on his mother’s side, were ministers in the German Baptist and the Old Brethren churches.  His oldest sister, the late Mary Elizabeth Cripe, served as a missionary in the Central African Republic (French West Equatorial Africa when she first went there) from 1949 to 1989.  An older brother, the late Dr. George Robert Cripe, pastored several churches and most recently an English Speaking church in Luzon, Switzerland.  Before that he served as the editor of Nav Press, the monthly magazine for the Navigators at their International Headquarters in Colorado Springs.  Erma Wolf, one of the twins and also older than Earl, was the wife of Rev. Ray Jones until his untimely death from cancer.  Rev. Jones served as Senior Pastor for First Christian Churches in Enid, Oklahoma, Twin falls, Idaho, and Eugene, Oregon.  Dr. Carl Cripe, an older brother, was a professor in Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, has recently retired from the California State College System, and is an ordained minister who does personal work with terminally ill patients at Memorial North Hospital in Modesto, California.  Rev. Charles Richard Cripe, a younger brother, pastored churches in Tracy, California, Ripon, California, and Turlock, California for more than forty years until his retirement in May of 2007.  Mary, Dr. George, Dr. Carl, and Rev. Richard received their theological training at Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana.   Don Cripe, another younger brother who studied at grace College in Winona Lake, pastors the Mitchell Road Community Church in Turlock, California.  Dr. Randy Jones, Erma’s oldest Son, received his degree from the University of Oregon and was an administrator at Northwest Bible College in Eugene Oregon for many years.  Dr. Dough Skinner, husband of Erma’s daughter Mary Lynn, pastors a First Christian Church in Dallas, Texas.  He received his theological training at Brite Divinity School and his PhD. from SMU.  Rev. Dan Jones, another of Erma’s sons, also pastors a First Christian Church in Dallas, Texas and received his theological training from Brite Divinity.  Rev. Timothy Cripe, Richard’s oldest son, and His wife Karen are missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Indonesia.  Rev. Matthew Cripe, another son of Richard and Mary Gail, pastors a church in Tracy, California.  Both Tim and Matt received their degrees from Dallas Seminary.  Another nephew, David Cripe, one of the twin sons of Earl’s late and oldest brother John, is attending Talbot Seminary in Southern California.  In addition to these of the immediate family, Earl has numerous uncles and cousins who are, or were, ministers and missionaries.

Earl Cripe made a public profession of Christ as his Savior and was baptized in the La Loma Grace Brethren Church in Modesto, California in the spring of 1948 by the late Rev. Peter Bury.  Although he had his moments the first 14 years of his Christian life were characterized for double mindedness, waywardness, and a fascination for the things of the world.  He had a talent for the theater and was awarded a scholarship to attend one of the famous so-called Playhouses of the day.  In time he realized that the moral confusion and darkness of that world was something that he could not live with but he was still not willing to make an absolute commitment of his life to the Kingdom of God.  Earl graduated from Modesto High School in 1952 and intermittently attended college until 1954.  At that time he decided that the world of academia was not for him.  He left school and began a life of adventure that took him to cattle camps, construction camps, logging camps, mining camps, and some of the famous resort areas of the West Coast.  His last effort at trying to find meaning in life in the secular world outside the Kingdom involved the decision to be a novel writer.  Earl was a gifted writer and was fortunate enough to link up with an excellent literary agent, Otis Burton Cannon, from Palm Springs California.  He had a definite future in the literary world if he had chosen to pursue it.  But his involvement with novel writing was not a quest for a vocation, fame, or money.  Like all of his other adventures of the previous eight years, it was a search for life and for meaning.  When he failed to find what he was looking for in the writing world Earl gave up the search and decided that only in Christ and His Kingdom was there any meaning to present at hope for the future.

Dr. Cripe began his entrance into the world of Christian service as a youth leader at the La Loma church in the winter of 1962 under the able guidance of the Senior Pastor J. Paul Miller.  In 1965 he accepted the call to pastor the Table Mountain Chapel, an Interdenominational Community Bible Church in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Sonora, California.  In November of 2005 he resigned from senior pastor work for the final time after forty years of service.

During the formative years, from 1965 to 1974, Earl Cripe came to realize that he was a Historic Orthodox Theologian and could no longer be committed to, and governed by, the Age of Reason Theology of his upbringing.  In 1965 Earl began and expository Bible teaching program on television and radio.  The program, which went under the banner of God's Point of View, was not a large network but it was diverse.  At various times through the years Gods Point of View has been heard throughout the US, South, West, and Central Africa, and Eastern and Central Europe.  God's Point of View was on the air somewhere for 43 years.