By Michael Ashcraft –
One day, Ernie Toppin, a UK top 10 chart musician, was in VIP lounges with Boy George, the next, because he had left the world and was serving Jesus, he found himself delivering pizzas in a Panda Fiat.
“I used to have a Peugeot 205 Convertible. I used to drive Triumph Heralds and Triumph Spitfires. I was in limousines,” Ernie says on a Tucson Door Church YouTube video. “I was arguing with God. What am I doing in this car, doing this horrible job, with no money?”
God answered: “If you’ve got Jesus, you don’t need money.”
Today, Ernie Toppin is still into faith and out of fame and fortune. UK’s Top 10 Charts haven’t seen him since he became a pastor and evangelist.
Ernie traces his salvation back to his great grandfather, a missionary from Barbados to the men digging the Panama Canal. His grandfather and father, Ernie says, enjoyed great blessings inherited from the missionary’s life but they didn’t appreciate the cause and didn’t serve God.
Ernie’s father was charismatic and married a stunningly beautiful lady in southside London, but being a man of the world was a womanizer who lost his marriage.
Growing up in a single mom home, Ernie and his three older brothers fought against the skinheads of southeast London and got into trouble.
“We were so violent, I remember one night my brother got stabbed in his hand,” he says. “Another time I got cut on the wrist. We weren’t the ones who were the aggressors, but if somebody started something with us, we were known that we could take care of ourselves.”
Starting with street muggings, Ernie and his buddies worked their way up the crime ladder into credit card theft and stealing from factories.
With the stolen credit cards which a friend working at the post office got him, Ernie bought lavish items for his mom, his girlfriend and his daughter.
Two of his buddies got busted with serious jail time. But Ernie – who started feeling more and more the uneasiness that what he was doing was wrong – got off easy in his own court case. The judge ordered him to do community service – in a recording studio.
That’s how Ernie fell into fame. He started making music, got heard at a club, got referred to a producer, Kent Brainerd, and very quickly was shooting up the UK music charts. His music video went viral on MTV. He played at the same clubs as Boy George and was taken around in limousines.
With his partner in the band, “we drove to Dover Beach to watch the sun rise while on LSD,” he recalls. “We spent all night talking about Franz Kafka. We were reading philosophy and getting stoned and writing songs.”
His star had launched, but his heart was sinking.
In 1990, he was walking the streets when a girl from school was doing outreach and saw him. She pulled him aside.
“I’ve gotten saved,” she said. “I started going to church. Jesus Christ is real. You need to repent of your sins.”
Those words marinated in his heart under the ordering of the Holy Spirit.
Six months later, another friend spoke to him about Christ.
“I could no longer resist the Holy Spirit,” he says. “I accepted Jesus and felt so clean.”
Instantly, he stopped the drugs and dropped out of the record deal. He started singing for the Lord in evangelistic concerts.
Since he was not stealing merchandise or engaging in credit card fraud, and since the money from music dried up, he had to get a job. He delivered pizza. He started studying to become a plumber.
He wasn’t used to getting by with so little money. His wife and he had a couple of kids, and he was struggling. But God encouraged him.
After being out of the music scene for two years, Gordon “Jazz” Summers called him to the office and offered him a contract with the James Taylor Quartet. He would get publishing rights (which means he would get paid every time they play his songs on the radio).
Just sign here, Jazz told him.
Ernie realized his destiny in God would be lost.
As he walked out, the devil spoke to him in a Jamaican accent: “You idiot, you should’ve taken the contract. You idiot, you could have made all kinds of money.”
But God chimed in too, all in his head: “I’m about to marshal powerful forces around your life:”
Ernie went back to delivering pizzas, But the inspiration for Christian music came, and he began producing evangelistic music with his incredible talent.
Eventually, Ernie took up the challenge to pioneer a church in Northampton. He’s been pastoring and evangelizing for 16 years.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here
About this writer: Michael Ashcraft pastors a church in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
