Jep Robertson, the youngest of the four Robertson brothers, shared his testimony on I Am Second, along with his father Phil and nephew Reed. The Duck Dynasty heir has gone from licentiousness to redemption after a loving intervention from his Christ-centered family.
Growing up, Jep was always teased by his four older brothers. He would often fish with his father Phil and go to the market to sell the day's catch with his mother, Kay - though money was scarce in the Robertson household, he remembers his parents' kindness toward strangers. "My parents took in so many transient people ... they'd pick them up, bring them down the river, feed them, let them stay a couple of days," he says. "My Dad just wanted to share Jesus with people and get them to heaven. It didn't matter what color your skin was, how bad your past is - they were just going to help people out," he says.
When Jep was eighteen, he began to hang out with with a different crowd of friends. He says he wanted to experience what the world had to offer, and began to drink alcohol and use a variety of drugs. "I pretty much did anything that was put in front of me," he says. Jep even woke up one morning hanging out of his truck with skinned-up arms and no memory of what had happened to him the night before. Though it made him uneasy, he got up the next day ready to do drugs again. At this point in his life, Jep felt empty and had "no decency whatsoever," he says.
Willie found out what his younger brother had been doing, and told Jep that they needed to talk. Jep came home to find his father and three brothers sitting in the living room, waiting to speak with him. Phil asked, "Son, are you ready to change?" With tears in his eyes, the Robertson patriarch told Jep that he had two choices - to either join the family and follow after God, or to go out and be on his own.
In that moment, Jep fell to his knees and started crying. "What took y'all so long?" he asked. He told his father that he didn't deserve to be a part of the family because of how horrible he had been. Phil wanted Jep to know that God and the family loved him, but that he just couldn't live like that any longer.
Jep agreed - "Thank You for getting me out of this, because I'm done living the way I've been living," he prayed on his knees with his family. He said he wanted to come back home, and Phil welcomed his prodigal son with tears of joy (see Luke 15:11-32). "It was just one of the best days of my life," says Jep.
Phil told his son that he was on house arrest for the next three months, and that he had to hunt every single day - a condition that Jep gladly consented to.
Years later, Jep reflects on how comical it is that his family is now famous. "We're just some good old country folks from Louisiana," he says - "But you know, the way I look at it - God had a plan for us to do what we do [and] to say what we say, so other people can come to know Jesus."
