The Rev. Terry Billings built a monster truck for Jesus.

“It’s the Jesus truck,” Billings said.

The tailgate has dripping blood painted on it, with the slogan, “Covered in mud but washed in blood.”

Billings takes the “Heaven Bound Mud Bogger” to car shows, revivals and patriotic celebrations at churches, where it inevitably attracts attention.

“If you want to get your picture with the truck, first you have to hear my story,” Billings said.

The story starts with an old farm truck worth about $300, and a rum-drinking farmer.

It was a 1987 Chevrolet four-wheel-drive pickup truck that Billings bought used in 1991.

He used it as a mud truck on the farm where he raised cattle and chicken.

“It was my farm truck,” he said. “The kids got in it and we’d ride through the mud.”

But the driver was in desperate need of Jesus, Billings said.

“I drank a lot and lived a bad life,” he said. “I was an alcoholic. My son Kyle got saved. I went to watch him get baptized. I lived a life that was not of God. I was drinking a fifth of rum a day. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I was cussing.”

Billings said he decided to turn his life over to Jesus in July 2004, admitting he lived a life of sin and needed to be saved. “I was so ashamed,” he said.

He gave up all his vices. No more drinking rum. No more smoking cigarettes. No more foul language.

Once he gave his heart to Jesus, his life changed instantly, he said.

“I couldn’t muster a cuss word,” Billings said. “It was my primary language before.”

He hasn’t wanted an alcoholic drink since, he said.

“My hunger became for God’s word,” Billings said.

Billings became owner of Billy’s Barbecue in Gordo in 2009.

He was also ordained and served as a bi-vocational pastor of Forest Baptist Church in Gordo.

At the restaurant and in church, Billings saw a lot of troubled people.

“People are stuck in life,” he said.

That’s when he got a vision of a mud truck plowing its way through the mud as a metaphor for Jesus helping people have the power to get unstuck from what bogs them down in life.

“In 2016, God gave me a vision,” Billings said.

It involved his old farm truck.

“That’s what he said use,” Billings said. “It took two years to build it.”

Among the first people Billings talked to were Trey Robertson and his father, Kip, owners of Crank N Chrome Garage in Tuscaloosa. When they heard his vision, they offered to work on it.

“We did the labor for about 50 percent of what we normally charge,” Trey Robertson said.

When the Robertsons began pitching ideas about what they could do, Billings could see the cost for parts rising.

He asked how much it would cost. “I don’t have any money,” Billings said.

“I thought you said God was doing this,” he said the Robertsons replied.

As word spread, donations poured in.

The truck cost more than $100,000 in improvements to turn into a monster truck, Billings said.

The truck has 52-inch tractor tires, with “Heaven Bound” stamped in the metal in the wheels.

The motor cost about $18,000, and runs at 850 horsepower on pumped gas and closer to 1,000 horsepower on race gas, Trey Robertson said.

“It opens up so many avenues of metaphors, getting stuck in the mud,” Trey Robertson said.

“You can relate that to being a Christian,” Robertson said. “There’s times you get stuck, and you’ve got to rely on God.”

Billings didn’t accept donations from anyone who wanted to advertise on the truck, which no longer even has its Chevy insignia.

“Nobody’s name is on it except for Jesus,” Billings said.

Billings formed the Heaven Bound Mug Bogger ministry in 2017 that would accept donations to maintain and show the truck and take it to events. Billings serves as director.

“I had to sell the truck for $10 to the ministry,” Billings said. “It actually belongs to God and he lets me drive it.”

The truck debuted for the public on April 23, 2018.

On Sunday, it was featured at the patriotic celebration at Hill Crest Baptist Church in Anniston.

Adults and children seemed equally fascinated and mesmerized by the truck. They eagerly climbed a ladder to get into the cab.

Billings shared his testimony and handed out New Testaments and pamphlets about the mud truck ministry to everyone who stopped by. He proclaimed a simple message.

“Even though we’re sinners, God still loves us,” he said.

The steering wheel of the Heaven Bound Mudder is easily removed, and Billings uses it to make his spiritual point.

He asks people how the truck would drive without it. It would go straight into the ditch, they say.

The same is true for living without Jesus, Billings said.

“You can’t steer it without Jesus,” he said. “You have to have him. Let him be the driver.”

Billings will be taking the truck to Little River Park in Monroeville on July 3, where he’ll run it through a mud pit as part of a patriotic celebration.

“Take her for a spin,” Billings said, as people climbed into the cab of the truck parked in the church lot in Anniston. “I guarantee everybody will get out of your way.”