Tonight I felt that I wanted to give
you a word of personal testimony.
I know more about myself than I do
about anybody else, and I'm a little slow
to do this because it does involve the
personal pronoun I, but I was down in
Boca Raton, Florida a couple of winters ago,
and Dr. Harold John Ockengay sat on the
very front seat.
He used to be, as you know, in
Boston, and after service he came up and
said, Vince, don't ever hesitate to give a
testimony, because we like to know what's happened
to you.
We like to know what one's own individual
experience has been.
And I don't know of any better passage
than Psalm 66, beginning with the 16th verse,
Come and hear, all ye that fear God,
and 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.
With your kind indulgence, I'd like to engage
in the favorite pastime of old folks anyhow,
reminiscing for a bit.
At my age, I'm supposed to be retired
and in a rocking chair drawing my Social
Security, talking about the good old days that
weren't so good.
After all, somebody wrote to Horace Greeley one
time and said, your magazine's not as good
as it used to be.
He said, it never has been.
And that's the way it is with the
old times.
Distance lends enchantment to the view.
My memories begin with an old home in
the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of
western North Carolina.
I grew up in a community known as
Jugtown.
My old home sat on top of a
hill from which I can see the lights
at five towns, like footlights on a stage
on the east, and on the west, Grandfather
Mountain and Table Rock, and all those peaks
like silent sentinels along the western skyline.
I grew up between those two influences, what
man had done in one direction and God's
mountains on the other.
And someone has said that the period between
1900, which was not the first year of
the new century.
People always get mixed up in that.
1900 was the last year of the other
century.
Everybody'll get mixed up now when 2000 comes.
They'll say that's the first year of the
new century.
Ain't no such thing.
It's the last year of the other century.
But why quibble over that anyhow?
But anyhow, from that year on to 1914,
when the First World War began, we were
having a remarkable period in America.
There's a book out, The Good Years, about
that period of time.
And I remember that the first big joke
that we had, things had been going pretty
well.
We'd won the Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt
personified Americanism, and there was peace just about
everywhere.
Then Mordecai Hamm used to say that God
gave us an object lesson in 1912 with
the unforgettable sinking of the Titanic.
That's one of the strangest events that's ever
happened, because it was supposed to be absolutely
unsinkable.
The only thing it ever did was sink,
and that was on the first trip.
It was as though Almighty God were saying,
no, you're not as smart as you think
you are.
We thought it was guaranteed.
I found eight different books in my Greensboro
library on the Titanic.
I didn't know they were writing so many
things.
There's one movie already out about it years
ago and another one in process maybe now,
I think, and they were looking for it
the other day and thought they found the
ship that corresponded in size, but they couldn't
go deep enough to take the right kind
of pictures.
But I believe that there was something, even
as an eleven-year-old boy, I remember
the shock that went over.
This just can't be.
Science had done its best.
They'd built a master ship, and all it
took was a hunk of ice out in
the chilly waters of the Atlantic to send
it down.
We had only two years to get over
that in 1914, and one big preacher in
New York City had said, we'll never have
another war.
We've learned enough not to have wars.
Nero Dwight Hill has said that, and then
came 1914, and then a Second World War,
and Korea, and Vietnam, and all the rest
of it.
And the war that we were ashamed, afraid
to win, and ashamed to lose.
Strange war, indeed.
I've heard sermons on it.
I heard just the other day a fine
preacher in Birmingham on TV preaching on the
sinking of the Titanic.
We don't seem to be able to get
over it because there's something eerie about it.
And there are a lot of strange things
happening lately that just don't make sense on
our little computers.
And God seems to be almost withdrawing his
hand on America in something.
We start to rescue the hostages, and of
all times for a sandstorm to come up
over there and spoil everything.
Well, I'm not a prophet nor the son
of a prophet, but these are times when
it behooves us to do some serious thinking.
I started out as a boy.
I never knew the day that it didn't
feel cold to preach the gospel.
Now, I don't know how you work that
out theologically, but that's your problem.
I came to Jesus at 10 years of
age.
I didn't understand all about the plan of
salvation.
I don't understand all about it now.
If I could understand it, there wouldn't be
much to it, if my little brain could
take it in.
I came to him, and I don't understand
all about electricity, but I'm not going to
sit around in the dark till I do.
And at 12, I stood in that old
Corinth Baptist church and asked him to license
me to preach the gospel.
I was just plain ignorant.
You know, a lot of things besides grass
and cabbage grow up green in the country,
and I was one of them.
Well, I not only didn't know anything, I
didn't even suspect anything in those days, and
yet the Lord had laid his hands on
me.
And these days now, when we're so advanced
and a preacher thinks he's cold to preach
or decides to preach, sometimes it's about all
there is to it, he gets out his
pad and pencil and begins figuring, now what
bracket will this put me into?
What will be the fringe benefits?
Will I be appreciated for what I'm worth,
which wouldn't call for much.
Anyhow, a cold to preach used to settle
it.
You either did or you didn't.
You said, here am I, Lord, send me.
I believe God Almighty is patient with people
who make a lot of blunders in following
Jesus, but whose hearts are set on following
the Lord.
Oh, Simon Peter, I'm so glad he's in
the Bible, so much like me, that impetuous
poor fellow who made more mistakes.
Nearly everything he said in the gospels was
a mistake.
He hid it one time, thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God, but
the rest of the time, three tabernacles, why
sayest thou who touch me, this shall not
be unto thee, thou shall never wash my
feet, I'll never be offended in thee.
No wonder the Bible says, Peter said not
knowing what he said.
And yet, when he cursed and swore, imagine
that he never knew Jesus, and then my
Lord looked at him.
He had the right stuff inside, because he
went out and wept bitterly.
You've never heard of a Pharisee doing that.
Went out and wept bitterly.
And Jesus said, Do you love me?
And he crumbled up and said, Lord, you
know everything.
You know that I love you.
Now, if you can say that from your
heart, God knows about it.
God will put up with a lot of
blunders, and that doesn't excuse the blunders, but
I like to think that we have a
Father who loves for his children, and even
when they stumble, when John the Baptist sent
that delegation to Jesus, are you the one
who should come, or do we look for
another?
Now, that was a record low for John
the Baptist, the very man who could stand
on the Jordan and say, Behold the Lamb
of God.
Now he's saying, Are you the one, or
do we start looking for another one?
Imagine that.
But on the same day that John the
Baptist said the worst thing he ever said
about Jesus, Jesus said the best thing he
ever said about John the Baptist.
No greater born of women.
Said, Go back and tell him I'm running
on schedule.
Blind or seeing, deaf or hearing, lame or
walking, lepers or cleansed, and then it gave
him this beatitude.
It was exactly seven years on Sunday, seven
years ago, that my dear one went to
heaven on at 2 15 on Sunday morning,
and I preached at 11 o'clock in
Westover Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, and this was
my subject, the beatitude of the unoffended.
That's the one beatitude nobody seems to know.
You know the ones in the Sermon on
the Mount and so on.
Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended
in me.
Blessed is the person who doesn't get upset
by the way I run my business.
And if there's something in your life tonight
that's causing you a lot of trouble, and
you're saying, Lord, I can't figure it out.
Why?
Why would this happen to me?
Why didn't you come down and help me
straighten out this mess?
What took place?
Blessed is he.
I said, Lord, I don't understand it.
We'd hope for old age together.
I don't know why, but I'm not going
to get upset about the thing.
Put that in your program, and it'll help
you over many a dark road through this
world.
Well, I started out preaching, and I gave
my first message in 1913 in the First
Baptist Church of Hickory, North Carolina.
We didn't have very few Model T Fords
in those days.
Certainly we didn't have one.
So we borrowed, and we had a friend
to take us in his, one of the
farmers, 30 horsepower, and 20 of them dead.
We started across those old dirt roads to
Hickory.
That's the only kind of roads we had.
And I've been in bigger towns since, but
never been in one that looked as big
as Hickory did that night.
That First Baptist Church, I've been in bigger
churches, but when I look down there, I
look like I'm out of the pulpit.
And my daddy said, I'll stay back here.
We were both not used to being in
town, in town churches.
I walked down there, and the pastor of
the church put me in a chair.
I stood in the chair, and he stood
on one side, and the state evangelist on
the other.
And I did the best I could.
And I've been trying to do that for
67 years.
And that's all God ever asks of anybody,
just be faithful.
You can do that.
There's no way on earth you can get
under that, through it, around it, or over
it.
Just plain faithfulness.
It is required of you, not suggested.
It's required of you that you be faithful.
That's all God ever asks of anybody.
Well, I started out, I didn't have social
security.
I didn't have financial security, but bless God
I had eternal security.
I didn't know much.
Sometimes I think the happiest fellow in the
world is a young preacher before he's met
too many Bible scholars.
Doesn't know any better than to just believe
Jesus and believe the Bible.
When old Amos went up to Bethel to
preach, he was just a country preacher.
Homer Odeheaver used to tell me that he
thought my best sermon was on Amos, because
Amos was a country preacher.
And he went up there into the capital,
I'll have you to know, Bethel, the religious
capital, the political capital of the country.
And no ministerial committee had invited him.
They asked him to leave.
But he didn't send his manuscript up to
headquarters, where some scribe in a swivel chair
who couldn't preach for sour apples anyhow, and
had never done any preaching, would take a
red pencil and go through to 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 the divinity school.
He was unwilling to be classed as a
member of the who made their living by
bowing to the wishes of the people and
preaching a pleasing message that would guarantee a
return engagement.
He wasn't looking for a return engagement.
He hadn't been asked the first time anyhow.
And he did not take the teeth out
of his sermons into Cohen and gum it
up at Bethel.
He didn't do that.
And when he got up there, Dr. Amos,
I.
D.
D., lit.
D, Ph.
D., said to him, where are your credentials?
What do you mean?
You belong in the backwoods, not on the
boulevards.
Why are you preaching judgment?
We never had it so good as we're
having it right now.
Go back where you belong.
Amos said, I'm not a prophet by parentage.
I'm not the son of a prophet, not
by profession.
I'm a prophet by providence.
The Lord took me.
And that's about the only credentials you need
to preach anyhow.
He didn't go to Bethel to make the
preaching acceptable.
He went to make it available.
He didn't go to make them likely.
He went to see that they got it.
And that's different.
Old Billy Sunday used to say, they tell
me I rubbed the fur the wrong way.
I don't.
Let the cat turn around.
When the cats go in the right direction,
you're stroking the cat.
It's when the cats go in the wrong
way that the sparks fly.
When I started out, some critics, it's a
strange thing when you start out trying to
live for Jesus, some of your worst critics
will be folks claiming to be Christians.
I had old sinners, and some of them
had a better word to say for me
than some church folks.
Oh, it won't last.
These boy preachers, they don't last.
Well, I think 67 years is long enough
to give it a try.
There was fire in my bones, and I
was weary with forbearing, and I couldn't stay,
but I made a lot of mistakes.
Learned the hard way.
My first passport was in a country church
after World War I.
New ideas were going around over the country.
The Scopes trial, the monkey trial, Clarence Darrow
and William Jennings Bryan.
And it's an index to the spiritual temperature
of this country today that they still applaud
Clarence Darrow and boo William Jennings Bryan.
We never had a better Christian in any
cabinet in Washington than William Jennings Bryan.
That man knew the Lord.
I heard him speak four times.
Harry Truman said never heard another man had
a voice like William Jennings Bryan, but he
said something with that voice.
He believed the old book and died three
days after that trying trial.
My heart goes out to that man.
Then Harry Emerson Fosdick was just coming into
prominence, and I'm telling this thing as it
is because I want to drive home a
point.
I was impressed with him as a speaker
because he was a master of pulpit English
or some kind of English.
He was a master, and I thought, well,
maybe we need to adapt the gospel to
the modern mind, which I found out later
is not very modern, not much mind, but
I didn't know that.
But the fire went out of my bones,
and I gave up my church, and God
closed every door, and I went back to
my old home on top of that hill,
and folks were saying what became of the
boy preacher.
One day I came across two lines of
a poem, how sad will be the days
in store when voice and vision come to
more.
I couldn't shake that off, but God had
called me, and he knew my frame and
remembered that I was dead.
Several things started happening.
I got hold of a book by Gresham
Machen, the great Presbyterian, on Christianity and liberalism,
and that jarred me loose.
One day I was telling your pastor about
it today.
Riding along on a train, I spied a
man that I knew from books I had
seen his picture in.
He was R.
A.
Torrey.
I was brash enough to go over and
sit down beside him.
He was a rather stern type, looked like
a prophet out of the Old Testament.
He looked at me and said, What are
you doing?
I wasn't doing much right at that time.
I thought right quick, tried to think up
something I was doing, and I said, Well,
I'm interested in this a little bit and
he said, Young man, make up your mind
on one thing and stay with it.
I've gone back many times to Montrose, Pennsylvania,
to preach and stayed in the house where
he used to live and climbed that hill
where he lies buried, and the epitaph on
the tombstone, I fought a good fight, finished
the course, and kept the faith.
Thank God for a preacher who could look
me in the eyes with those steely eyes
of his and say, Make up your mind
on one thing.
He wanted me to be like a sword
with one point, not like a broom with
straws pointing all directions.
I never got over that.
And the Lord made it plain to my
soul through all this, if you will get
these highfalutin notions out of your head and
go back and preach the old gospel that
you preached in your boyhood, I'll make a
way for you.
I took him up on it.
I did and he did.
And I had to go back to that
church and preach it straight for three years,
and he kept his word.
And that's the way it began the second
time.
It's a sad day for any preacher when
he has to say, Voice and vision, come
to war.
And that doesn't always happen when a man
is a failure.
A man may have a big church and
have a reputation to be popular.
I don't know why exactly.
Demas loved this present world, but there may
be something to the fact that his very
name means popular.
That may have helped to ruin him.
Sometimes a preacher may be the pastor of
Ichabod Memorial Church.
Great big thing, form of godliness, no power,
sardis, having a name to be alive but
dead.
You know, a mortician can make a dead
man look better than he ever looked while
he was living.
And sometimes a church expert can do that
to a church but doesn't give the real
life to it.
The great awakening in Nineveh didn't start with
Nineveh.
It started with a runaway preacher.
And many a revival is waiting to begin
over this land, not in a place, but
in a preacher.
But if you think getting into the will
of God will solve your problems and it'll
be peaches and cream from then on, you
better learn right quick that that isn't the
way it goes.
You make yourself a target for the devil
when you take a firm stand for Jesus
Christ.
The trouble today is so many of our
church members are not giving the devil enough
trouble to even get his attention.
He doesn't know they're around.
But he got them where he wants them.
People say, I don't understand all about spiritual
conflict over in the book of Ephesians.
I don't feel anything like that.
Well, they wouldn't.
The devil's got them right where he wants
them.
It's the fellow who's going somewhere that stirs
up the wrath of the enemy.
And I soon found that out.
In 1938, I was preaching through the state
of Iowa.
I went to stop over and preach at
a town next night in next town.
And in Creston, I preached and went to
bed and couldn't sleep a wink.
Next night, same experience.
And for two years, I suffered from insomnia,
depression, unforgettable, strangest time of my life.
And yet God began to open doors for
my ministry.
I couldn't put it together.
I said, Lord, I can't sleep in any
bed, let alone a different one every week.
Well, I can't do this kind of work.
And finally, I said, I better do it.
Maybe this is like an electric door.
It's not going to open until I step
in.
And so I gave up my work and
started out in the early part of the
next year.
My first date was to be in Grand
Rapids at the old mail trotter mission.
I got as far as Chicago and took
the flu and they put me in the
hospital and the devil sat on the foot
of the bed, it seemed to me.
Said, now what are you going to do?
Give up your church?
Can't preach.
I'd had a call to Florida Bible Institute
and I turned it down.
Any Southerner will go to Grand Rapids in
January.
It's not right anyhow.
I didn't know that.
So I went down there, wired them and
said, I'll come.
And I met two wonderful people.
One was a student, long toe, toe headed
fella, came up to me and said, I'm
Billy Graham from Charlotte.
I didn't know who I was meeting.
And the other was a charming young lady.
I hadn't married yet, 39.
I never bought a car till I was
66.
I didn't marry until I was 39.
I wanted to think it over.
But that young lady took mercy on me.
She would fix soup that I could eat
out in bad condition and leave at the
door and tap and run.
She knew the way to a man's heart.
All right.
And she was willing to undertake this traveling
ministry.
I didn't have much money and didn't even
know whether I could do this or not.
But we started out in 1940.
So I've been 40 years on the road.
And if you think that's a picnic, living
and readjusting every week to a new room,
water, climate, everything.
I've seen rugged preachers give it up and
say, I got to get back to my
bed.
But God had opened the door and I'm
still going on.
She changed some of my ideas.
Of course, I had one with a saying
that you can get married under orange blossoms
and get a lemon just the same.
She said, that's out.
And I found that she meant business.
And of course I gladly dropped it.
But all I can say is beloved tonight,
all the way my savior leads me.
What about ask beside him?
Can I doubt his tender mercy who through
life's been my guide.
Today, when I watch preachers, sometimes scrambling for
seats in the synagogue, degrees, recognition, knowing the
right people and politicking, you don't have to
put your name in the pot at anybody's
headquarters.
You don't have to know key men.
If you know the keeper of the keys,
he's got all of them key to every
situation.
You don't have to wait for a talent
scout to find you.
Not if you're open to the leading of
the Lord, God's got a waiting list and
he'll use you if you make yourself usable.
My work's kind of low key and simple.
We used to have an old song.
You oldsters remembered.
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the
air.
They fly so high and nearly reach the
sky.
Then like my dreams, they fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding.
I've looked everywhere.
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the
air.
That's what people are doing today.
And the bubbles are bursting.
And I said, Lord, I'd want to go
in the bubble and business.
I want to practice being a blessing.
And I said, Lord, there's two things I'd
like to do.
As I walk the top of that old
hill back there, I would like to write,
and I don't know how, and I'd like
to preach all over the country.
I felt led that this was my preaching
territory.
Somehow I never felt that the Lord was
going to call me to any overseas ministry.
That's the way it worked out.
But I didn't know how to go about
either one.
I operate on a shoestring, no organization, no
foundation except how firm a foundation ye say
unto the Lord.
I never had a secretary in my life.
I wouldn't know how to dictate a letter
if I had to.
And I don't get out brochures with my
picture on it.
I got more sense than that.
I just not got anything.
I never been on drugs, never been an
athlete, never been a halfback, fullback, or drawback
on any football.
I don't know, but thank God he takes
care of that.
And I want to tell you young folks,
if you'll take it from this old timer,
I've been on the road a long time.
I've enjoyed serving Jesus.
I've had my dark days, my lonely days,
my rough days, but I've had him.
And I sometimes don't believe you really get
through to all you want is Jesus to
all you've got's Jesus.
And he sometimes has to reduce us to
that.
I thought my dear one would be healed,
but she was not.
I read in Daily Light one morning where
Jesus said, This sickness is not unto death,
but that God may be glorified, speaking of
Lazarus.
And I thought that was it.
And I told my pastor, Claude Bone, I
said, I believe God's going to raise her
up.
Well, he didn't.
I had sat in Billy Graham's home and
heard Dr. Bell tell about the miraculous healing
of the other daughter in his family, Rosabelle
Montgomery, dying of tuberculosis in Albuquerque.
She had never married.
She was bitter in spirit.
She wasn't right with God.
One lung collapsed, and then she got right
with God.
And the next thing she said, Maybe God
would heal him.
I called in some folks who settled at
the prayer meeting, she said to the doctor,
I'm not taking any more treatment.
And he called up Dr. Bell.
Dr. Bell said he called me and said,
What do we do?
Well, I said, It seems like that if
that's what she thinks is the will of
God, we'll let her do what she feels
is best.
She got well.
She married.
Katherine Marshall has a chapter in one of
her books about it.
Now, God does that sometimes.
We must not let extremism drive away from
the fact that sometimes God does do these
miraculous things.
I think sometimes we're so afraid we'll get
out on a limb, we never get up
the tree.
God does sometimes heal folks.
And I came down that mountain on cloud
nine that night, thanking God that he does
when it pleases him, that's in his hands.
We leave it with him and he'll do
what's right.
But I found out that God had something
else in mind that he might be glorified.
And I wrote a little book, though I
walked through the valley and it has brought
more response than all the other 30 books
I've written.
And I hardly ever have a day go
by that I don't hear from somebody who's
been blessed by it.
That's God's recompense.
And I found out in Psalm 84.6
about those who walking through the valley of
Baca, make it a well, leave it a
well.
There's a new song out, Leave a Well
in the Valley.
This means when you go through a dark
valley, dig a well for the next traveler
so that he'll get a blessing.
Don't sit and moan and cry on everybody's
shoulder, but dig a well.
Fanny Crosby could have done that.
She could have said, Lord, why did I
have to be blinded by a poltergeist, put
on my eyes the wrong kind of a
poltergeist and be blind 90 years?
Now, you talk about something to grumble about.
She had it.
But she didn't.
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 the wells.
And there's not a Sunday goes by but
people drink from one or the other of
those wells.
So leave a well.
God has a way of taking care of
you that'll surprise you to death.
I had such trouble as I told you
about insomnia.
And then when this sorrow came into my
life, I said, oh, maybe that thing will
come back.
And my doctor gave me some Valium.
And he said, if you need it, take
it.
Well, I took three or four.
And then I said, Lord, if you want
me to preach, I'm going to have to
sleep too.
And so I'm going to take you up
on it.
He giveth his beloved sleep.
And I threw away the Valium.
Now it's all right in its place.
Don't misunderstand me.
It serves a purpose sometimes.
But we've got a nation full of Valiumites
today for one thing, living on it.
And I got to where I was like
the old bishop that couldn't sleep.
And he got up at two in the
morning and read, he that keepeth Israel shall
neither slumber nor sleep.
He said, Lord, if you're setting up, I'm
going to bed.
Good night.
Oh, it's, I preached at the Ben Lippin
conference one summer.
And while I was going through all that,
I said, I've been shipwrecked on God and
stranded on omnipotence.
Billy Graham heard it over there where he
lived.
And he wrote me a note next morning,
shipwrecked on God, stranded on omnipotence.
That's where I want to be when God
calls me, Billy Graham.
I treasure that note.
It means a lot to my soul.
Well, my times are in his hand and
I'm graven on the palms of his hands
and nobody can pluck me out of his
hands.
I call that having the situation well in
hand.
Well, I'm on my way home.
Three or four years ago at Hampton, Virginia,
that great black college, they asked me to
come up there and preach for three days
to between four and 500 black preachers.
I nearly preached myself to death.
I tell you, I said, if I could
get white folks to back me up like
you do, I might turn out to be
a pretty fair preacher.
Lost one of my cuff links preaching one
sermon, never did find it.
Oh, we had a time.
And the last night, that crowd, I was
the only white person on the place.
Those fine people fill that great church and
stood and sang, farther along we'll know all
about it.
And I sat over there and patted one
foot and just bawled.
I didn't cry, I bawled so full of
joy.
I said, Lord, this crowd's going somewhere and
I'm going with them.
They're headed somewhere.
Oh, I thank God.
I'd give anything in this world if I'd
had my receiver and said, then I'd take
down that thing.
I'd play it every day if I had
it, but let that one get by.
And I should have had it.
Well, I'd like to leave this wish with
you in request.
Some years ago in Narberth, Pennsylvania, I had
a meeting in a Presbyterian church, small church.
That pastor is now pastor of one of
the most prestigious Presbyterian churches in the whole
world, Fifth Avenue, New York.
He wrote a book titled Home Before Dark.
I love that title.
And I got to thinking about it.
And I said, Lord, if it's all right
with you, I'd like to get home before
dark, before the darkness settles one way or
another.
My daddy used to say when I was
a kid growing up on the farm, now
you'd be home by sundown.
That was a law of his.
We didn't dialogue back in those days.
Father monologued a lot and we said amen.
And I learned early to come in before
sundown.
And I found myself saying, Lord, I'd like
to get home before my physical faculties play
out, if it's all right with you.
Now, God doesn't always grant that.
Oh, I went to see a fine preacher
not long ago, used to preach in Tremont
Temple and other places.
He was built like a prize fighter.
And when I walked in and saw him,
I'm afraid my face registered such a shock
that he couldn't help noticing it.
He's in heaven now.
He's out of all that.
But I found myself saying like Culbertson at
Moody Bible Institute, Lord, when thou seest that
my work is done, let me not linger
on with failing powers, a workless worker in
the world of work.
God took him home.
He didn't stay sick too long.
Or like old Pappy Reveal of the Evans
Rescue Mission, Evansville, Indiana.
That man had no education.
He was a plain crippled fellow, but he
knew God and he got just about everything
he prayed for.
He got every preacher from Billy Graham.
He was glad to come down and preach
just to be with Pappy.
Because Pappy knew the Lord.
Pappy said, Lord, I want a quick getaway.
I don't want to lose any time.
And he got it.
His wife was preparing breakfast and he was
shaving in bed being a cripple.
And he shaved one side of his face
and laid the razor down and went to
heaven.
That's a great way to go.
I can't help wishing I could do that,
something like that.
I think it's all right to ask the
Lord about that, but put your name in
the pot.
It's all right.
He may not be as well.
Well, I think it's all right to do
that.
And I said, I don't want to lose,
I don't want to lose my faculties.
And so far I managed to keep going
around over the land.
You've got to keep your chin up, you
know.
You don't always feel like it when you're
79 right away.
Got to be like that old 90 year
old who's getting ready to go around the
world.
And a friend of his went over to
the airport to see him off.
Said, you oughtn't to take a trip like
this.
I said, I may never see you again.
No, he said, you may be dead when
I get back.
So that's the way I'm going on day
by day.
Then I said this, and I believe you
can join me in a prayer like this
for yourself.
Lord, I'd like to get home before I
make some big blunder the last mile of
the way.
Now, if you're saved, you're saved, but you're
not safe from making a blunder as long
as you're on this trail down here.
And the last mile of the way, you
may even through circumstances beyond your control.
You may be caught in some kind of
a situation that'll give the devil a happy
time, and something bad, they'll all remember that
and forget every good thing you did, clear
back up the road.
That's human nature.
And I've prayed that that might not be
the case.
And then I find myself saying, fast falls
the eventide, the darkness deepens.
Lord, with me abide.
The lights are going out all over the
world.
Oh, Henry, the great short story writer, lived
in Greensboro, and the last thing he said
when he died, I don't want to go
home in the dark.
Well, I don't know what he meant, but
I know what I mean here.
The darkness deepens.
Lord, with me abide.
R.
E.
D.
Sankey was blind in the last few years
of his life, a man who had sung
Sonobre for Moody.
A friend went to see him, said, Mr.
Sankey, could you find your way over to
the little organ and play just one piece?
He knew that his voice was cracked and
he wouldn't be able to sing like he
once did, but he made his way over
there, sat down to sing, and what do
you suppose it was?
There will be no dark valley when Jesus
comes.
Be no dark valley when Jesus comes.
Be no dark valley when Jesus comes to
gather his loved ones home.
That's a good one to be able to
sing at a time like that.
So my daddy went with me the first
year or two when I went out preaching,
and then when I was able to go
by myself, he would meet me at the
train in the little town of Newton, North
Carolina.
I can see him standing there beside that
little old Ford Roadster in that old blue
shirt suit that hadn't been pressed since the
day he bought it, waiting to meet me.
And I'd go up to him, and the
first question he'd ask would be, How'd you
get along?
And I always reported, I haven't seen Dad
in a long time.
One of these days my train's going to
round the last curve into Grand Central Station,
and I'm going to see him not in
that old blue shirt suit, but in the
robes of glory.
And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if
the first thing he'll ask will be, Well,
how'd you get along?
And I'm going to say, Pretty well, and
I owe a lot of it to you.
And then as we go down the golden
streets, I'm going to nudge him and say,
Dad, you remember when I was supposed to
get home by sundown when I was a
kid?
Well, bless God we've both made it, and
home before dark.