Gus Nichols

by

W.A. Black

Gus Nichols was born in Walker County, Alabama, January 12, 1892. He was the oldest of ten children, and did not have the opportunity to obtain much formal schooling (yet he is a well-educated man). In 1913 he married Matilda Frances Brown, whom he says is the "power behind the throne" in his work. With her assistance he entered Alabama Christian College at Berry in 1919; but most of his education has been achieved through private study.

He began preaching in June 1917, and has baptized approximately 5,000 people. He has preached in 17 states, holding meetings for some of the largest churches of Christ in the nation. His busy schedule includes holding eight or ten meetings out of about three hundred calls per year. He averages fifteen to eighteen sermons and classes each week, including a daily thirty-minute radio program. He is the author of five previous books.

The high esteem in which he is held where he lives at Jasper, Alabama, may be judged by a brief editorial in that city's newspaper (''The Mountain Eagle'') on March 5, 1953, as follows:

"Twenty years ago . . . Gus Nichols accepted a call to the Fifth Avenue Church of Christ in Jasper. That was in January, 1933. For twenty years Gus Nichols has given practically his entire time to preaching the gospel to the people of Jasper and Walker County. During that score of years he has comforted the bereaved, and has rejoiced with those who have recovered from serious illness or met with good fortune.

"In his bigness of spirit, unhurried way, and love for his fellow men and women, this man represents much that is finest in Jasper.

Of the nearly one hundred debates which he has conducted, the Nichols-Weaver is also in print. He has helped many other preachers prepare for debates, and believes that honorable controversy is an effective means of presenting the truth. I have often heard him say, " Truth is like gold: the more you rub it, the brighter it will shine."