Alfred King. TRIBUTE TO MY BROTHER STEPHEN GITTENS
I am greatly honoured to offer these few words in tribute to my very dear brother and true friend Stephen Gittens, but I am deeply saddened by the circumstances in which I am doing so.
For some days after learning of Stephen’s passing, I struggled in equal measure with shock and disbelief. When finally I accepted the fact, my first thought was that he and my wife Tranceita must be having a grand reunion of friends in the heavenly realm, for they shared a consuming passion for the things of God.
Stephen was the product of a godly father and a deeply spiritual mother, Ira Louise, both of whom must certainly be ecstatic at being reunited with their son, notwithstanding that we temporarily mourn here below. Mom Gittens was a saint to whom prayer and the study and sharing of God’s Word came as naturally as breathing, and Stephen was steeped to the gills in that noble triumvirate.
Reared with the likes of Stewart Russell, Dr. Irvine Branker and Winston Moore in the then-Pilgrim Holiness Church in which I also grew up, Stephen, with his siblings and parents drank deeply from the anointed preaching of such Gospel giants as Reverend Colin West and Superintendent I. M. Wickham, Dr. A. Wingrove Taylor and Reverend Hamilton Taitt, all of whom are, like him, in God’s heavenly presence today.
Well do I recall Stephen’s relating how, unable to land a job after leaving secondary school, every day for two years he spent hours upon hours doing nothing else but studying God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation, together with praying and fasting: in these he was truly Ira Gittens’s child, and it does no violence to the facts when one avers that Stephen, like Saint Paul, was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
The cumulative effect of this exposure to the Holy Spirit’s influence was, predictably, the pastor, preacher, teacher, leader, husband, father, f
Alfred King. TRIBUTE TO MY BROTHER STEPHEN GITTENS
I am greatly honoured to offer these few words in tribute to my very dear brother and true friend Stephen Gittens, but I am deeply saddened by the circumstances in which I am doing so.
For some days after learning of Stephen’s passing, I struggled in equal measure with shock and disbelief. When finally I accepted the fact, my first thought was that he and my wife Tranceita must be having a grand reunion of friends in the heavenly realm, for they shared a consuming passion for the things of God.
Stephen was the product of a godly father and a deeply spiritual mother, Ira Louise, both of whom must certainly be ecstatic at being reunited with their son, notwithstanding that we temporarily mourn here below. Mom Gittens was a saint to whom prayer and the study and sharing of God’s Word came as naturally as breathing, and Stephen was steeped to the gills in that noble triumvirate.
Reared with the likes of Stewart Russell, Dr. Irvine Branker and Winston Moore in the then-Pilgrim Holiness Church in which I also grew up, Stephen, with his siblings and parents drank deeply from the anointed preaching of such Gospel giants as Reverend Colin West and Superintendent I. M. Wickham, Dr. A. Wingrove Taylor and Reverend Hamilton Taitt, all of whom are, like him, in God’s heavenly presence today.
Well do I recall Stephen’s relating how, unable to land a job after leaving secondary school, every day for two years he spent hours upon hours doing nothing else but studying God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation, together with praying and fasting: in these he was truly Ira Gittens’s child, and it does no violence to the facts when one avers that Stephen, like Saint Paul, was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
The cumulative effect of this exposure to the Holy Spirit’s influence was, predictably, the pastor, preacher, teacher, leader, husband, father, f
