Thank you.
It's good to have all ages represented here.
I have a big time with the old
folks these days, and I go out to
rest homes and so on.
I kid them a lot.
I'm one of them.
I can call them anything, get away with
it.
I can see with my bifocals.
My dentures work just fine.
I can live with my arthritis, but I
sure do miss my mind.
They love that.
After all these years in the ministry, I
think I'm entitled to a few observations.
I'm going to make a few, whether I'm
entitled or not.
With your kind indulgence, I'd like to reminisce
a little.
And we have in Psalm 66, a suitable
passage for such reverie, I think.
66, verse 16, come and hear, O ye
that fear God, that I will declare what
he hath done for my soul.
I cried unto him with my mouth, and
he was extolled with my tongue.
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the
Lord will not hear me, but verily God
hath heard me.
He hath attended to the voice of my
prayer.
Blessed be God, which hath not turned away
my prayer, nor his mercy from me.
At my age, I'm supposed to be retired.
I'm tired sometimes, but not retired.
In a rocking chair, drawing my Social Security,
and talking about the good old days that
weren't so good after all.
Somebody wrote Horace Greeley, the newspaper man one
time, said your paper's not as good as
it used to be.
He answered, it never has been.
And you feel that way about the good
old days.
Distance lends enchantment to the view, you know.
My memories begin in the old home in
the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Came from a little place called Jugtown.
They've got a book out about me now
called Journey from Jugtown.
They don't make the jugs there anymore.
They used to make not only the jugs,
but some of the contents therein, in some
parts of that community.
But my old home, and I still hang
on to what's left of it, and have
dreams of doing it over, but that'd cost
more than building a new one, so I
probably won't do anything.
I don't live there, but I grow up
once in a while.
And from the front porch one could always
sit and see the lights at five towns
at night.
On the west, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Grandfather
and Table Rock, and all the rest of
them.
And on the one side I was impressed
with man's progress, and on the other side
with the eternal goodness as those mountains stood
like silent sentinels along the western skyline.
I came along in 1901, which is the
first year of this century.
People always get mixed up about their mathematics
there.
Those of you that make it to the
year 2000, sure as you're born, they'll be
celebrating the beginning of a new century in
the year 2000.
That's the last year this century.
The new one doesn't start until 2001, but
a lot of folks don't seem to remember
that.
So I'm in step, really, with the century,
it seems to me.
And I never did know the day when
I didn't feel called to preach.
I don't know how you work that out
theologically, but that's your problem.
I came to Jesus as a ten-year
-old boy out there in the country.
I didn't understand much about it.
You don't have to understand it.
You stand on it.
I don't understand all about the plan of
salvation.
If there's no more to it than that,
there wouldn't be much to it.
I don't understand all about electricity.
I'm not going to sit around in the
dark until I do.
So I came with what I did understand
and trusted in the Lord.
I felt called to preach, and when I
was 12, I stood in a little old
country church and asked them to license me,
as we put it in those days, to
preach the gospel.
They laid hands a little suddenly, I'm afraid,
on me, those dear farmer folk.
They gave me the church approval, and three
years later I was ordained.
I didn't know much.
I was a typical, typical, typical country boy.
I not only didn't know anything, but I
didn't even suspect anything most of the time.
In those days, a preacher, when he was
called, didn't get out a pad and pencil
and start figuring what income bracket will this
put me in later on, and what will
be the fringe benefits, and will I be
appreciated for what I'm worth, which wouldn't call
for much appreciation anyhow.
I called to preach Saturday.
You either did or you didn't.
Here am I, Lord, send me.
I made my first talk away from home
in a little town 12 miles away, Hickory,
North Carolina.
I guess you'd say I'm the hick from
Hickory.
That was my hometown.
That was the nearest town I was to,
to use awful English.
And so when we went over there, we
didn't have an automobile.
There weren't many Fords running around even in
those days, and persuaded a neighbor to take
us, and he is one of the old
model, I mean old model, Jack Watson and
I two weeks ago.
He's got one on his place up there
at Word of Life.
We rode around all over the place blowing
the horn, and that picture's taken while you'd
have thought I was Billy Graham or something.
But this old Ford with the bulb horn,
30 horsepower and 20 of them dead, we
started to cross those dirt roads, and when
I got to Hickory, I've been in bigger
places since, but never been in one looked
as big as Hickory did that night.
Looked in down the aisle of the First
Baptist Church, looked like a mile to the
pulpit.
Father and I weren't accustomed to town churches,
and he said I'll sit back here, and
I went down.
They put me in a chair.
I stood in a chair, and the pastor
of the church stood on one side, and
the state evangelist stood on the other like
those fellows holding up the hands of Moses,
and I did the best I could, and
that's what I've been doing ever since, trying
to do the best I could.
That's all God asks anybody to do is
be faithful.
He didn't ask you to be brilliant.
He didn't ask you to be successful.
He just asked you to be faithful, and
that's what he'll reward you for, good and
faithful servant.
I didn't know much about theology.
Sometimes I thought, though, the happiest fellow in
the world is a brand new Christian before
he's met too many Bible scholars.
I didn't know any more than to believe
the Bible just like it read and trust
the Lord.
When Amos, and he's always been my favorite
preacher in the Bible.
He was a country preacher for one thing.
I'd like to hear Amos address the minister's
conference sometime today.
I think that'd be refreshing if Amos would
come along and give us one of his
messages.
When he went up to Bethel to preach,
no ministerial committee had invited him.
They asked him to leave, but they didn't
invite him to come.
He hadn't sent his manuscript on to headquarters
to have some scribe who couldn't preach
for sour make
sure there's nothing in it to disturb the
status quo.
He didn't know anything about that.
Dr. Carl Yates said his time had not
been spent in a divinity school.
He was unwilling to be made a member
of the guilds who made their living by
bowing to the wishes of the people and
preaching a pleasing message that would guarantee a
return engagement.
He didn't take the teeth out of his
sermons in Tekoa and then gum it up
at Bethel.
When he went up there to preach, I'm
sure that Dr. Amos I.D.D. and
all the rest of it must have said
to him, what do you mean coming out
of the backwoods to preach?
Don't you know you're in the capital?
Don't you know this is the religious center
even of the country?
You're talking hard times and prophesying judgment.
We never had it so good.
Go back to the backwoods.
You don't belong on the boulevard.
Where are your credentials?
Amos said, I'm not a preacher by profession.
I am not a prophet.
I'm not a preacher by parentage, not the
son of a prophet.
I'm a preacher by providence.
The Lord told me.
And that's all you need to preach anyhow.
You know, we have had generalissimos.
General Chiang Kai-shek was a generalissimo, and
Franco of Spain was a generalissimo.
And sometimes we have preacherissimos.
Now, the trouble is, when they get to
be a preacherissimo, they issimo more than they
preach.
They don't amount to very much.
But when I went up to my Bethel
to preach in those days, I reminded myself
that Amos didn't go up to his Bethel
to make his preaching acceptable.
He went up to make it available.
He didn't go up to make them like
it.
He went up to see that they got
it.
When I started, they said, boy, preachers don't
last.
They never last.
Well, I think 65 years is long enough
to give it a try.
But I had a fire in my bones
and was weary with forbearing, and I could
not stay.
I never traveled any beaten paths all my
life.
I didn't go where they said go to
school, and I didn't stay in any place
long.
I wanted to preach.
I was restless.
And I remember that since I started out
as a boy, the old principal of the
high school, now Gardner-Webb College in North
Carolina, came to me and said, Vance, you're
no genius, but if I were you, I
believe I'd blaze my own trail.
Well, you could have knocked me down with
a feather.
He was getting boys ready for Wake Forest
and girls for the girls college at Raleigh,
and for him to say a thing like
that.
And I got to thinking about it.
I followed that course through the years, but
I made many mistakes and had to learn
the hard way.
My first pastorate was a country church, and
after World War I, new ideas were going
around.
Modernism, with Harry Emerson Fosdick as its high
priest, was making their appearance.
We'd had the scopes trial, the monkey trial
down in Tennessee, and it's an index to
the condition of this country today that we
applaud Clarence Darragh and boo William Jennings Bryan.
And yet Mr. Bryan was one of the
greatest statesmen who ever had a government post
in this country, one of the greatest orators
who ever opened his mouth to speak.
I got to hear him a few times.
I listened all afternoon, no matter what he
talked about.
But he knew God.
He loved the Lord.
I was impressed in those days.
It looked like things were taking a turn
for the better, making the world safe for
democracy.
That's what we fought World War I for.
Some of you old-timers remember.
It hasn't been safe for anything since.
It certainly wasn't for democracy.
But the new gospel, according to the modern
mind, rather intrigued me.
I found out later that it wasn't much
modern and not much mind, but it did
intrigue me then.
And I became a tried to preach it.
I believe still in the virgin birth.
I hadn't gone that far, but I was
going.
And the fire went out of my bones.
And finally I gave up my church and
went back to the old home in the
hills.
People were asking what became of the boy
preacher.
And I had nowhere to preach.
The Lord closed every door right in my
face.
And one day I came across a poem.
It took me years to find the whole
poem, but I remembered, couldn't forget two lines
in it.
How sad will be the days in store
when voice and vision come no more.
I'll never forget that one.
But God, who had called me, remembered my
frame and knew that I was blessed and
he was merciful.
And then I ran into a couple of
characters.
Gresham Machen, that great Presbyterian with his book
on Christianity and liberalism, shook me loose.
And as a young fellow, I was riding
on a train one day and spotted R.
A.
Torrey looking like a prophet out of the
Old Testament sitting over there.
And I was brash enough to go over
and engage him in conversation.
He said, what are you doing?
Well, I wasn't doing much.
And my report card didn't look so good.
And I said, well, I'm interested in this
a little, that a little, and the other
thing.
I'm just sort of finding my way, I
guess.
He said, young man, make up your mind
on one thing and stay with it.
Never smile.
They used to say Torrey didn't win a
lot of people for himself, but he won
thousands at Jesus Christ.
He was a prophet.
I never forgot that.
I've gone to Montrose, Pennsylvania many a time
to preach the Bible conference, stayed in his
home there, his old home.
Climbed that hill many a day to where
he lies buried with the tombstone.
I've fought a good fight.
I've finished the course.
I've kept the faith.
And thank God for a prophet who could
look me in the eye and say, make
up your mind.
In other words, don't go out and try
to see to it that you're like a
sword with one point, not like a broom
with straws pointing every direction.
And then it came to my inmost soul,
and the dear Lord made it clear to
me, if you will get these highfalutin notions
out of your head and go back and
preach the plain old gospel you preached as
a boy, I'll make a way for you.
And I took him up on it.
I did and he did.
And the first thing I had to do
is go back to that church three years
and preach it straight.
I left the novelty shop and got in
the antique shop again, back to the things
that really mattered.
And I'm proud of the old-time religion.
The greatest things among us today are mighty
old-fashioned.
Sun's old-fashioned, but without it you grow
up in darkness.
Air's old-fashioned, without it you gasp and
die.
Water's old-fashioned, no satisfactory substitutes have ever
been discovered.
Don't you get excited over the fact that
we've split the atom and gone to the
moon.
Sin's as black as ever, hell's as hot
as ever.
Judgment's as certain, and salvation is free, and
eternity's as long.
And never forget that living you loved me,
and dying you saved me, and buried you
carried me.
Sin's all the way, rising you justified freely
forever.
One day's coming, oh glorious day.
Preach it as never before, live it as
never before.
It's a sad day for any preacher, and
I meet many of them over the land,
and there was one redeeming thing that came
out of my experience.
I can spot that poison when it begins
to work, and then's the time to spot
it.
That's the time to head it off.
It can come to a preacher not when
he, like I was, is out of work,
but when he's got a big church with
a reputation, popular.
Maybe one reason why Demas left Paul is
that his name means popular.
Sometimes it comes to a pastor of Ichabod
Memorial Church having a form of godliness without
the power, or Sardis having a name to
be alive and dead.
A mortician can make a dead man look
better than he ever looked while he's living,
and a church expert can do that with
the church sometimes, but God knows the difference.
The great awakening in Nineveh didn't start with
Nineveh, it started with a runaway preacher, and
Nineveh revival is waiting to begin, not in
the place, but with the preacher.
But if you think getting into the will
of God is going to settle all your
problems, and it's going to be peaches and
cream from then on, change your ideas, because
you become the target of the devil when
you make up your mind to live for
God.
I was traveling through the state of Iowa
in 1938, stopped night after night at a
different place and preached.
One night I went to bed in Creston,
didn't sleep a wink.
Next night, not a wink.
And for two years I was beset with
insomnia, nervous exhaustion, depression.
The doctors have better words than that for
it.
But my heart goes out to anybody who
has such problems.
They say there aren't but two kinds of
people in the world, nervous people and folks
who laugh at nervous people.
But I don't belong to that aggregation anymore,
because you learn the hard way.
And if some dear soul says, snap out
of it, you feel like saying, do you
think I'm enjoying it?
I'd be glad to snap out if you
could tell me how.
And yet the Lord began to call me
into the work I'm doing now, and it
didn't make sense.
I said, Lord, I can't sleep in any
bed, let alone a different bed every week.
There must be something wrong with this somewhere.
But the call kept coming.
And I said, well, it must be like
these electric-eyed doors that don't open until
you walk in.
I'm going to walk in.
I'm going to start, see what happens.
So I made the move.
My first date was supposed to be in
Grand Rapids at the old Mel Trotter Mission.
I got as far as Chicago and took
the flu, and they put me in a
hospital.
And I lay there, and the devil sat
on the foot of the bed and said,
now what are you going to do?
You gave up your church and you can't
preach, you can't do this.
I had turned down an invitation to Florida
Bible Institute.
I wired the man, I'll come.
The doctor said, get out of here in
this climate, anybody will come from the south
of the Grand Rapids to start in the
dead of winter.
Something the matter with him anyhow.
So I wired the man that I'd come,
got down there and met two interesting people.
A long, lean, tall, toe-head walked up
to me, one of the students, said, I'm
Billy Graham from Charlotte.
I didn't know who I was meeting that
day.
And then there was a young lady who
took mercy on me in my sad condition.
She would make a bowl of soup that
I could eat, and she'd leave it at
the door and tap gently and run before
I could open the door.
She knew the way to a man's heart,
you know.
And it worked.
And oh, my friend, I tell you, I'll
never cease to thank God that that dear
young lady was willing to start out with
a half-sick preacher who didn't have any
money and didn't know whether he could do
what he was starting out to do or
not.
That's faith.
We started out.
I ran across a batch of old love
letters that I'd written in 1940, three-cent
stamps, you know, way back to her, and
I was trying to brace up.
We were scared to death of getting married.
We were a little older than I was
almost 39 before I got married.
Sixty-six before I bought an automobile.
I wanted to think it over.
But she was willing to join hand and
heart with such a preacher, start out.
You'd have thought we were getting ready for
a funeral instead of a wedding.
I was trying to brace her up.
She didn't know it.
I was trying to brace myself up all
at the same time.
But we took off, and for 33 years
we traveled all over America.
And we were not sick, and the doors
opened, and God met the need.
All the way my Savior leads me.
What have I to ask besides?
Can I doubt his tender mercy, who through
life has been my guide?
I watch today in the church the scramble
for seats in the synagogue, the top place,
you know.
Degrees, recognition, knowing the right people, religious politicking.
We never had more of it than we've
got now.
You don't have to put your name in
the pot at headquarters.
You don't have to know the key man
if you know the keeper of the keys.
He knows the man.
You don't have to wait for a talent
scout to find you if you're right with
God and usable.
God's got a waiting list.
The eyes of the Lord run to and
fro looking for somebody in whose behalf he
can show himself perfect.
Not show you perfect in his behalf, but
himself in your behalf.
He's on the lookout.
He's shorthanded.
He needs help.
Sometimes people say, I don't know what's the
matter with me.
God doesn't seem to use me.
Listen, friend, God will wire you out if
you're usable.
You just get on the usable list.
He'll use you to the full extent of
your usability.
You find yourself saying, Lord, you're about to
kill me.
I didn't know you were going to use
me this much.
So I've been operating through these years since
on a low key, simple.
I don't think God ever had anything big
in mind when he made me to start
with.
I've operated on a shoestring, never owed but
$200 in my life.
Borrowed that when I was a boy to
go to school.
My dad said, I want you to keep
away from three things, debt, dirt, and the
devil.
They're all from the same source.
So I've tried to keep away from all
three since that time.
I don't even get out brochures with my
picture on it.
If I did that, I never would get
any calls to preach.
I don't know how I make it.
I don't have any of the qualifications.
I haven't been an athlete.
I haven't been a fullback, halfback, drawback on
any team.
Never have had drugs.
Don't have any sermons on sex.
I don't know how I make it.
I wrote with a young fellow sometime ago.
He's a real Christian, but one of these
quiet, this quiet sort that I love.
He said, Brother Abner, I've never had many
exciting experiences in my life, but I guess
you'd call me just plain vanilla.
I love that.
When I was a boy growing up on
the farm, if you had ice cream, you
worked for it.
You got the milk and the ice and
ground all afternoon.
You had something sweet and cold and wet,
but that tasted better then today's fancy concoctions
all smothered in goo.
There's something about it, somehow or other.
I love vanilla, Christian, just plain Christian.
We need more of that kind as we
make our way through.
I never know when I sit down to
some of these fancy arrangements in the ice
cream part of the day whether I'm supposed
to eat it or just admire it.
We didn't have anything to admire in the
country ice cream, but it was still good.
Vanilla, Christian.
Then in 1973, I was exercised very much
at the beginning of that year about my
own spiritual condition.
I said, I ought to be a better
preacher as long as I've worked at it.
I ought to be a better Christian.
And I made this prayer.
Don't you ever pray it unless you're ready
for trouble.
Lord, at any cost, bring me to the
place where I can sing that old line,
once earthly joy I crave, self-peace and
rest.
Now thee alone I seek, give what is
best.
It's easy to sing and hard to come
up to.
God took me up on it.
Sarah went to glory.
On Labor Day, it'll be six years.
She died at 2.15 on Sunday morning.
I preached at 11.
I didn't know whether I could or not,
but I preached on the forgotten beatitude.
When John the Baptist sent his delegation to
Jesus to ask, Art thou he that should
come?
Do we look for another?
Now, that was a low mark for John
the Baptist.
The man who had stood on the Jordan
said, Behold the Lamb of God.
Now he's saying, are you the one?
Or do we start looking all over for
the Messiah?
I'm so glad that Jesus didn't send word
back to him and say, I'm ashamed of
you.
I'm ashamed of you.
Didn't even send him a cute little tract
on how to be happy in jail.
Sent word back and said, tell him I'm
running on schedule.
The blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing,
the lame are walking, the poor are having
a gospel preach.
And then he added this, and this is
the forgotten beatitude.
We know all the others.
Nobody ever knows this one.
Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended
in me.
Blessed is the person who never gets upset
by the way I run my business, God
is saying.
Well, I certainly couldn't understand it.
I'd hoped for old age together.
And here, if ever I needed somebody along,
it seemed of all times, Lord, why?
That little word, why?
I preached sometimes on why.
And then I had read before Sarah passed
away in daily light, where Jesus said, this
sickness is not unto death, but that God
should be glorified.
And I grabbed it.
I said, that's my verse.
I believe, I believe God's going to keep
that verse.
And I told my pastor about it.
But Jesus said it about Lazarus, and Lazarus
died, and God was glorified after it.
And so I had to learn that he
meant afterwards, not after death, not in the
hereafter, but now.
I wrote that little book, Though I Walk
Through the Valley.
Many of you have it, and some of
you have already spoken to me about it
here.
And I've heard more from that little book
than the only other thirty that have written.
I never knew there were as many lonely
people in this world as there are now.
With all our amusement and all our entertainment,
we've got more lonesome people than we've ever
had.
And so many dear souls come up, and
I see a tear in their eye and
they grit my hand.
They don't have any little speech to make.
They've been down the valley, and I know
what they mean.
And then there's Psalm 84, 6, about the
righteous man who, walking through the valley of
Baker, leaves a well.
There's a new song out, I've not heard
it, Leave a Well in the Valley.
It's brand new, I think.
I'd like to hear it.
And that means when you have trouble going
through a dark road, dig a well for
somebody else when they come along to get
refreshment from it.
Leave a well in the valley.
Fanny Crosby could have grumbled at God for
ninety years.
She could have said, why did that doctor
put that potus on my eyes when I
was a baby, the wrong potus, and blind
me for life?
She started digging wells.
Blessed assurance, redeemed how I love to proclaim
it.
All the way my Savior leads me.
Draw me nearer.
Jesus, keep me near the cross.
He hideth my soul.
Jesus is tenderly calling.
Savior more than life to me.
When Jesus comes to reward his servants, rescue
the perishing.
Someday the silver cord will break.
I shall know him.
Pass me not, O gentle Savior.
That's just a few of them.
This concludes side one.
Continue to listen on side two.
And there's not a Sunday that goes by
that we don't drink from those wells.
She could have grumbled at God, but she
didn't.
She took the other way out.
And God gave me a new dimension and
a new note that I didn't have before.
Sometimes it looks like God has to have
killers to teach you some things.
You ought to learn without it.
But if God's taken you along a lonely
and hard path, he's got something in mind.
So I'm back where I started.
No home, an apartment, no family, but more
open doors than ever.
And I can't understand it.
It amazes me, absolutely.
I never thought that I'd be going around
like this.
And I don't ask for it.
Shipwrecked on God, stranded on omnipotence.
I said that in the conference.
North Carolina and Billy Graham heard me.
He lived right across on the mountain.
Sent a note next morning.
I'll keep it.
I have it.
Said it.
Shipwrecked on God, stranded on omnipotence.
That's where I want to be when he
calls me.
That's all he put.
As I look back, beloved, I see an
unseen hand, unseen but seen by faith.
A lot of things have happened that didn't
make sense, and I still can't figure out
some of them.
But God knows why.
I can't put it together.
And I hear people say, I don't understand.
These folks want to go to home sick
for heaven.
What are you talking about?
Who wants to stick around here forever?
I'm home sick for heaven.
Paul was.
Had a desire to depart and be with
Christ.
Sometimes the very fact we're headed that way
helps us.
I heard of a fellow who was seasick.
He'd lost breakfast, lunch, and supper all over
the railing.
One of these cheerful mortals that comes along
always at the wrong time.
Slapped him on the back, said, cheer up,
seasickness never killed anybody.
Said, don't tell me that.
It's the hope of dying that's kept me
alive this long.
So it's the hope of dying that's kept
me going.
Years ago, many years ago, I had a
meeting in the First Presbyterian Church of Norberth,
Pennsylvania.
The preacher has since gone to the most
prestigious Presbyterian church in America, Fifth Avenue, New
York.
He's written a book, Home Before Dark, and
that title intrigues me.
I love that title, Home Before Dark.
When I was growing up in the country,
Dad had an understanding with me that I
was to be back home by sundown.
We didn't argue about it.
We didn't do much dialoguing back in those
days.
Dad did a lot of monologuing, and when
he laid it down, it stayed laid down.
He believed he was the head of the
house, and the rest of us were inclined
to agree with him.
So I made it a point to be
home by sundown.
And you know, my ambition as I stand
here this morning, I want to get home
before dark.
O.
Henry, the short story writer, lived in Greensboro,
and his last words before he died was,
I don't want to go home in the
dark.
But I don't know what he meant.
I don't mean, I think, what he meant.
But I want to go home before dark,
if it will please God.
I'd like to before my physical faculties play
out.
I've seen some dear men.
Oh, I went to see one the other
day.
What a rugged preacher he had been.
When I walked into the room and looked
at him, I'm afraid my face registered the
shock, and I'm afraid he noticed it.
He's gone now, but I know the day
when he was such a burly physical specimen.
And I found myself saying, like dear Dr.
Culbertson at Moody Institute, in his last days,
Lord, when thou seest that my work is
done, let me not linger on with failing
powers, a worthless worker in a working world.
I know what he meant.
I'd like to get home before dark, that
way.
And I'd like to get home before dark,
before I make some blunder.
Because, dear friend, if you're saved, you're saved.
But you're never safe till you get home.
Safe from blundering, and safe from saying something
that was for your testimony.
And make that last blunder on the last
mile, and they'll remember that and forget everything
you back up the road that was good.
That's human nature.
So watch that last mile of the way.
You're not home yet.
Be careful about it.
The man that followed Churchill, Anthony Eden, was
a fine Britisher, brilliant man, but he sort
of blundered at Suez.
And if you mention him now, a Britisher
may say, yes, too bad about Suez.
But he did so many wonderful things before
Suez to watch.
And then I want to get home before
the lights go out in this old world.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
Fast fall, the evening time.
It's getting dark in this old world.
The night's far spent, the day is at
hand.
When I started out as a boy, my
daddy went with me for a year or
two.
And then when I was on my own,
he'd always meet me when I'd come in
at the little railroad station.
I can see him standing there beside that
little old Ford with that old blue suit
on that he hadn't had pressed since the
day he bought it.
And I'd go up to him and he'd
always ask me one question first.
How did you get along?
Well, I haven't seen him in a long
time.
One of these days I'm going to round
the curve into glory when I get there,
I'm going to see him not in the
old blue suit, but in the robes of
heaven.
I believe the very first thing he'll say
to me, how'd you get along?
And I think I'm going to say pretty
well, Dad, no, a lot of it to
you.
And then I think as we walk down
the golden street, I'm going to nudge him
and I say, you remember, Dad, when I
was supposed to get home by sundown?
Well, bless God, we've both made it home
before dark.
And I believe you want to do that
too.
They invited me up to Hampton, Virginia to
the great black college up there.
They wanted me to preach for three days
to between four and five hundred black preachers.
I nearly preached myself to death.
I said, if I could get my white
folks to back me up like you folks
back me up, I might turn out to
be a pretty fair preacher.
Oh, I preached so hard, lost one of
my cuff links, never did find it.
And then the last night that great crowd
gathered and sang as only our black friends
can sing.
Farther along we will know all about it.
And I sat there and patted one foot
and just bowed.
I didn't cry, I just bowed for joy.
I said, Lord, this crowd is going somewhere
and I'm going with them.
They know where they're going.
And I hope you do too.
God help us to make it home before
dark.
We'll all be there someday, sinners saved by
old time grace.
All because of God's amazing grace.
Are you going home?
Are you heading for home?
Are you?
I can help you.
Anybody can help you.
You say, well, I'll tell you, I'm not
sure I'm going to heaven.
Let me lead you to Christ.
Let me pray with you.
That's very important.
It's imperative.
Stand with me, will you please, everybody?
I'd like to have you sing just one
stanza of Fannie Crosby's Blessed Assurance.
Dr. Havner listed all those great songs from
Fannie Crosby.
This one I'm sure would be a good
benediction.
We're going home before dark.
We get there, all will be sunshine.
This would be a great benediction for this
morning.
Let's sing the whole song, shall we?
Listen here.
Blessed Assurance!
All God's
people said,