I want to express my appreciation to this
church for this gracious occasion and for the
extra feature of making my books available.
I do not sell my books and do
not push them.
I'm not ashamed of them.
They're half of my ministry, but I never
have had much to say about them.
I'm getting to where I'm a little nervous
about having written so many.
I'm reminded of the author who asked a
friend of his, have you read my last
book, and he said, I hope so.
But I'm not sure I've written my last
one.
One never knows.
But several years ago you had the most
gracious day here for me, and I haven't
forgotten that, and I treasure the memory of
it.
This church has some remarkable characteristics.
I don't know many that have had such
long tenure for pastors as you have for
the last two before the president, and I
hope he'll last as long.
I think Dr. McEachin said that he felt
like he was beginning a life sentence when
he came here after the long terms before
him, but I hope he makes it.
You know, you have to live a long
time to last through two pastors at this
place.
I came in under Dr. Turner and lived
through the Bowen administration, but I don't know
how far I'll get in the next one,
but I'm still here anyhow.
I've been an awfully delinquent member.
I'm sorry I'm gone so much, and when
I'm here I try to hide usually.
You know, you just have to once in
a while when you're goldfishing the bowl all
the time before the public, and I think
you folks have been very understanding.
I was just saying for Brother Ray that
I can't help saying now, and I know
he may want to pull my coattail and
make me sit down, but I appreciate any
man who can stay this long at the
church, and it speaks well for him and
for you too.
Sometimes, you know, folks get tired of each
other even in the marriage relationship.
I heard of an old couple in a
rest home that she couldn't hear not well,
and he was trying to make her feel
better, and he said, I'm proud of you,
and she said, hey, and he said, I'm
proud of you, and she said, I didn't
get it.
He said, I'm proud of you, and she
said, I'm tired of you too.
Sometimes it works out like that, but I
don't find a lot of that here in
the pastorate.
We're having too many two-year preachers these
days, and I like to see men that
can stay with it in the pastorate and
on the staff, and it speaks well, and
I think it glorifies God.
Now tonight, if you don't mind, I'm not
going to preach a regular sermon.
I think sometimes we like for a man
to tell us what happened to him, if
anything did.
We don't just want his opinions.
I don't care a lot about what this
man thinks about this and what he thinks
about something else, but I do find myself
saying, has anything happened to you?
Tell us about that, and I'd like to
leave with you a testimony, and I don't
know of any more appropriate text than Psalm
66, beginning with verse 16.
Come and hear, O 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 extoled 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.
After 64 years in the ministry, I feel
like I'm entitled to make a few observations,
maybe.
I think I'm entitled.
I'm going to make a few, whether I'm
entitled or not.
With your kind indulgence, I'd like to reminisce
just a little.
At my age, we're supposed to be in
a rocking chair drawing our Social Security and
reminiscing about the good old days that weren't
so good, after all.
But you know a distance lends enchantment to
the view.
It always looks better some other time.
Somebody wrote to a newspaper editor and said,
your paper's not as good as it used
to be, and he answered, it never has
been.
And you feel that way about the good
old days sometimes.
But my memories begin not too far from
here, an old home which I still hold
on to, on top of a hill between
Hickory and Shelby, with a view at night
of the lights at Hickory, Newton, Conover, Maiden,
and Lincolnton like footlights around the stage on
the east.
On the west, as a boy, I could
see Table Rock, Grandfather Mountain, and all the
peaks of the Blue Ridge standing like silent
sentinels along the western skyline.
And it had an effect on me, I
think, looking both directions, to what man had
done in the east, and what God had
done, and what was far more permanent on
the west.
The period before 1914 was called, in one
of our newer books, the good years.
Some of you remember that.
But America turned a corner in 1914, World
War I began, and we've never been the
same again.
Something happened.
God was giving us some signals, I think.
Mordecai Ham used to say that one of
them was the sinking of the Titanic in
1912.
That was such a strange thing.
It was a ship that couldn't sink, and
the only thing it ever did was sink
on the very first trip.
It was a strange tragedy indeed.
They had all kinds of folks aboard.
They had millionaires, and at least two couples
of them went down, man and wife, together
because she said, I've been with him all
these years and I won't leave him now.
I'm not going into the lifeboat.
As it went down gradually, the band kept
playing something I'm afraid they hadn't rehearsed much,
nearer my God to thee.
The strange thing about it was that it
did the very thing it wasn't supposed to
do, and all on account of a plain
old hunk of ice out in the middle
of the ocean, as though God used the
simplest thing to teach us a rebuke to
our proud pride, when we thought we had
overcome all the dangers.
All types socially were aboard, from the millionaires
to the poor folks down in the steerage,
but disaster was no respecter of persons.
I felt that with Dr. Ham that God
was trying to tell us something, but whatever
it was we didn't learn it.
I never did know the day that I
did not feel called to preach.
I don't know how you work that out
theologically, but that's your problem.
At 12 I stood in old Corinth Baptist
Church and asked them to license me to
preach, and those farmers didn't know what to
do with a 12 year old wanting to
start preaching right away, and the Bible said
lay hands suddenly on no man, and that
meant with regard to this sort of thing.
But they did, and I started out as
a boy.
I didn't know anything.
I really didn't know anything.
I didn't even suspect anything in those days.
I didn't get out a pad and pencil
and figure now what will be my fringe
benefits by being a preacher, and will I
be appreciated for what I'm worth, which wouldn't
call for much appreciation anyhow.
A call to preach in the old days
settled it.
You either did or you didn't.
Peter got out pad and pencil, you remember,
when the rich young ruler walked off from
Jesus in the great refusal.
I think there's a connection there, because this
is the next incident recorded, and Peter saw
him go away, and then it says, and
Peter said, Lord we haven't done like that.
We have left all and followed thee.
What do we get?
Now that's a poor question to ask.
I started out without social security, without financial
security, but thank God I had eternal security.
I remember that the first time I tried
to speak away from home was in the
First Baptist Church of Hickory in 1913.
They asked me to come over and speak
at the midweek prayer meeting.
They didn't have paved roads, and Hickory was
12 miles away.
My father secured the services of a farmer
who had an old model Ford, the kind
with the bulb horn and 30 horsepower and
20 of them dead.
We started to cross those dirt roads, and
the closer we got to Hickory the more
frightened I was because I hadn't been to
town much in my life.
It got bigger as I drew nearer, and
when we came to the front and looked
down, I looked like a mile to the
pulpit.
I went forward and stayed at the back.
They put me in a chair, and Dr.
Bradshaw stood on one side and the pastor
of the church, J.D. Hart, stood on
the other.
I did the best I could.
I've been trying to do that ever since,
and that's all God ever asked of anybody,
to be faithful, just plain faithful.
I often think of old Amos when he
went up to Bethel to preach.
He didn't follow the beaten path.
No ministerial committee had ever invited him.
He hadn't sent his manuscript on to headquarters
where some scribe in a swivel chair, who
never had done any preaching, went through it
with a red pencil to make sure there
wasn't anything in it to disturb the status
quo.
Dr. Kyle Yates used to say his time
had not been spent in the divinity school.
He was unwilling to be classed as a
member of the guilds who made their living
by bowing to the wishes of people and
preaching a pleasing message that would guarantee a
return engagement.
Amos wasn't looking for a return engagement.
The fact of the business is he wasn't
invited up to Bethel the first time.
He certainly didn't get invited back, but he
declared his soul.
He didn't take the teeth out of his
sermons in Tekoa and then gum it up
at Bethel.
When he came up there to preach, they
said, what do you mean with such boorish,
rustic preaching?
You ought to be back in the backwoods.
We never had it so good here.
He knew better because he had a hotline
to heaven and God had assured him that
judgment would fall.
Dr. Amaziah said, where are your credentials?
Amos said, I'm not a prophet by profession.
I'm not the son of a prophet by
parentage, but I'm a prophet by providence.
The Lord took me, and that's the only
credentials you need to preach anyhow.
He didn't go to Bethel to make his
preaching acceptable.
He went to make it available.
He didn't go up there to make them
like it.
He went up there to see that they
got it.
Billy Sunday used to say, my, what a
man, and a few of you still remember
Billy Sunday.
I got to know Moe Sunday right well
at Winona Lake, and she let me look
through his sermon outlines, double, quadruple-sized type,
because he didn't stand behind the pulpit.
He went back and forth all the time.
He had to have something he could see
in a hurry when he went by.
So I looked at these notes.
What a man.
What a man he was.
But he said, they tell me I rubbed
the fur the wrong way.
I don't let the cat turn around.
I found that when the cat is going
the right direction, I'm stroking the cat.
We get along fine.
It's just when the cat's going the wrong
way that we have trouble.
My first pastorate was near Elizabeth City.
One of your fine men here, Harold Pritchard,
was one of my flock back in those
days.
I hope he won't dislike my setting a
sort of a little age tag on that
by what I said.
But I remember that World War I had
ended and new ideas were going around.
The scopes trial came to pass with Clarence
Darrow on one side, William Jennings Brown on
the other.
I think it is an index to the
times we live in that today this world
applauds Clarence Darrow and scorns William Jennings Brown,
which is not to our credit and no
discredit to Mr. Brown.
Harry Emerson Fosdick was coming in to notice.
I was impressed with what looked like the
new reproof.
I thought the gospel ought to be adapted
to the modern mind, which I didn't know
then.
It was not very modern and not much
mind.
But I started out to try to adapt
it anyhow.
The Lord closed the doors in my face.
I had nowhere to preach.
I remember that when Rory Angel came, it
was his first pastorate by the way, married
his wife in that community.
He was preaching there and I was there
at that time.
I won't forget it was during that meeting
that I ran across a poem.
I don't remember the last of it and
I wish I could find the rest of
it.
All over this country I asked, do you
know it?
Nobody ever does.
It had these two lines and they spoke
to my heart.
How sad will be the days in store
when voice and vision come no more.
And that was my plight.
I didn't have anywhere to preach because God
didn't like the way I was preaching.
But he called me and he knew my
frame and remembered that I was dead.
Several things touched me, however, Dr. R.
A.
Torrey, that mighty man of God saying to
me one time, young man, make up your
mind on one thing and stay with it.
And then that book by the great Presbyterian
Gresham Machen on Christianity and Liberalism.
And it was made clear to me through
that book.
And God spoke to my heart and said,
if you will get these newfangled notions out
of your head and go back and preach
the plain gospel as you did when you
were 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
was to go back to Salem Church and
preach it straight for three years.
And to this good hour, I've never lacked
for a message or a place to preach
it.
You see, I was out in the novelty
shop and I needed to get back in
the antique shop.
The old truths of God's word.
We don't need something new today half so
much as we need something so that it'd
be new if anybody tried it.
They say, well, he didn't tell us anything
new.
No, I don't.
I won't be doing that next time.
And I started out preaching this way.
The devil said, you will start to death
at that.
And from the way I look, you may
think the devil is right, but I'm getting
along all right.
Thank you.
I'm having no trouble because God kept his
word.
I thank God for old fashioned preaching.
The sun's old fashioned, but no substitute has
been found as of now.
Air's old fashioned, but without it, you gasp
and die.
Water's old fashioned, without it, you go mad.
No substitute.
Don't you get excited just because we've split
the atom and gone to the moon and
talking about DNA and all the rest of
it.
Sin's as black as ever and hell's as
hot and judgment's as certain and eternity's as
long and salvation's free and nothing important has
changed.
I say that again and again to youth
today.
Nothing important has changed, just little superficial things
that have changed.
Living he loved me, dying he saved me,
buried he carried my sins all the way.
Rising he justified freely forever.
One day he's coming.
Oh glorious day.
That's what I'm preaching.
But if you think that getting right with
God is going to make it peaches and
cream from then on, you've got a lot
to learn.
The minute you start out for a closer
walk with God, the devil is aroused and
you can look for trouble and plenty of
it.
The devil hates that sort of thing.
The average church member is not causing the
devil enough trouble to even get his attention.
But you take somebody who does and the
devil gets active.
I remember in 1938, I was preaching across
the state of Iowa, a night at the
place.
I could do it in those days, or
I thought I could, but about the middle
of that trip I preached in Creston, Iowa.
Went to bed that night, couldn't sleep, next
night couldn't sleep, and for two years I
was plagued with sleeplessness and depression.
I couldn't account for it.
All the time God was opening doors for
me and I didn't feel that I could
do it.
No doctor would have told me to undertake
a work where you sleep in a different
bed every week, change water, climate, and all
the rest of it.
But I finally said, Lord, I can't figure
this out.
It's a lot easier to preach a sermon
on guidance than it is to get it
sometimes.
But I said, Lord, I'm going to make
the venture and if I'm wrong, stop me.
And I started.
My first date was in Grand Rapids and
I got as far as Chicago and came
down with the flu and they put me
in a hospital.
And the devil sat on the foot of
the bed and said, now what are you
going to do?
You don't have a church, you can't do
this.
I'd been invited down to Florida Bible Institute
for some messages and I turned it down.
The doctor said, get out of this country.
After all, any southerner who will go to
Grand Rapids in January to preach, there's something
wrong with him anyhow.
So we're going back down to Florida.
I went there and met two people that
have meant a great deal to me.
A long, lean, lanky North Carolinian wandered in
a student one day and said, I'm Billy
Graham from Charlotte.
I didn't know who I was talking to.
And a young lady there we met and
she took pity on me in my sad
condition, prepared soup that I could eat and
would bring it to the door and tap
on it and get away before I could
open the door.
She took mercy on me and she was
willing finally to risk traveling with a half
-sick preacher with not much money who didn't
know whether he could do what he started
out to do or not.
And I owe more to Sarah Ulrich than
any words will ever be able to express.
Took off on December 14, 1914 for 33
years.
We covered the country.
God knew what he wanted me to do.
I had started North, he turned me South.
The Lord knew which direction I needed to
go in.
There I was, half-sick, trying to preach
four and five times a day.
I don't know what makes preachers do that,
but I did.
Trying to arrange a preaching schedule in California
and planning to get married.
That's too much for anybody all of a
sudden.
But God was with me.
I remember that the last meeting I had
at that time there was a radio program
that every time I finished speaking it had
a headache powders ad and it always came
on immediately after my sermon.
You can always snap back with standby right
after my sermon.
And the preacher that week when we were
married sent me a telegram and after wishing
me every good thing he ended up, and
remember, you can always snap back with standby.
Now all I can say is all the
way my Savior leads me.
What have I to ask beside him?
Can I doubt his tender mercy who through
life has been my guide?
It was in 1973 that my helpmate went
to heaven and we thought that God might
heal her.
We'd heard of people who had been healed
and God does heal some people, but not
always.
And I remember in daily light that one
morning my reading was this sickness is not
unto death but that God may be glorified.
And I laid hold of it.
I said I'm going to take that for
my verse.
I told Dr. Bowen that.
But God didn't heal Sarah.
And then I began to look into it
a little more and I said now what
does this mean?
Then I remembered it was about Lazarus and
God didn't heal Lazarus, let him die.
But of course he raised him and God
will raise all that are in him.
But it said this sickness is not unto
death but that God may be glorified.
And so I wrote that little book, the
only one that I ever referred to or
had until that time though I walked through
the valley.
And I've never had such response to all
these years from people in trouble, sad, bereaved,
beset.
I never realized there were as many lonely
people.
I went to Travis Avenue Church in Texas
and that great church to the Single Adults
Bible Conference.
They met over in the country club.
They had plenty to make them happy, but
they said we want you to talk about
loneliness one day.
We've never had more entertainment.
We've never had more amusement we have today.
And yet we've never had more loneliness.
And even teenagers they set a record last
year for suicide.
And you'd think they'd be enjoying life too
much for all that.
And if you call that progress I disagree.
So I wrote the book.
Oswald Chambers when he was near death he
got hold of that same verse and thought
God would heal him but God didn't.
But Mrs. Chambers took his messages and put
them in books and they've gone around the
world.
My utmost for his highest and all the
rest of them.
And then I found in Psalm 84.6
about the man who walking through the valley
of Baker makes it a well.
There's a song out, Leave a Well in
the Valley.
I've never heard it yet but I've seen
it.
I believe that when God sends trouble our
way we ought to dig a well for
the next traveler instead of bemoaning everything and
pitying ourselves.
I think of Fanny Crosby if anybody had
occasion to grumble at God she did.
Why did they put the wrong poltergeist on
her eyes when she was a baby and
blind her for 90 years.
Couldn't she have fussed with God but instead
of that she started digging wells.
To God be the glory 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 oh gentle savior.
That's just a few of the wells.
And there's not a Sunday goes by but
that somewhere in America we're singing we're drinking
from those wells.
And I think of that dear man who
was staying at home alone while his wife
and two daughters had gone on a trip
to Europe and then came that awful telegram
from his wife I have been rescued in
the shipwreck but the girls are lost and
he sat there transfixed numb he couldn't move
for a few moments and then his hand
reached out for pad and pencil when peace
like a river attendeth my way and sorrows
like sea billows row whatever my lot thou
hast taught me to say it is well
it is well with my soul.
That's getting victory over you.
And so I thank God through these years
I'm back where I started more or less
but I remember Dr. Lee bless his heart
I wonder he's very very ill right now
I hope he's what a man what a
man I had lunch with him about three
years ago and when he walked in the
door there was this picture of Lady Lee
there on the wall he said well it
didn't get any better doesn't get any better
but what a man he said I never
tell people that I'm going home I'm just
telling I tell them I'm going back to
Memphis in the loneliness but my times are
in his hand thank God no man can
pluck us out of his hand we are
graven on the palms of his hands I
call that having the situation pretty well in
hand and one day when life's last picture
is painted and the tubes are all twisted
and dried when we reach the other side
we shall know him but the print of
the nails in his hands I'm on my
way home some years ago a long time
ago I had a meeting in Norbert Pennsylvania
in the First Presbyterian Church little church that
young pastor has gone up and up until
now he's pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in
New York City he's written a book Home
Before Dark it's a wonderful title and it
reminded me when I first looked at that
title when I grew up in the country
my dad and I had an understanding that
I was to be home as a little
fellow by Sunday we didn't argue about it
we didn't discuss it not then we didn't
have much dialoguing back in those times when
father stated it that suddenly he believed he
was the head of the family the rest
of us were inclined to agree with him
and so I saw to it and I
have found myself in these latter years praying
again and again Lord I want to get
home before dark this is old Henry's town
and the last thing he ever said on
earth was I don't want to go home
in the dark I don't know what he
meant but I know what I mean I
have found myself saying Lord if it's all
right with you I'd like to go before
I lose my faculties while I'm still able
to carry on I can't dictate that some
time ago I was down in Birmingham and
I went to see Carl Gears who used
to be pastor of First Church Chattanooga and
then went to Tremont Temple in Boston and
then down to the church where I was
in preaching in Birmingham when I walked in
the room I'm afraid my face betrayed my
shock this man such a rugged specimen I
never thought he'd come to where he'd appear
like that look like that they'd take him
to church and he'd cry like a baby
and I've said Lord I don't understand things
like this but I'd like to when thou
seest that my work is done let me
not linger on with failing powers a worthless
worker in a world of work and then
I found myself saying I'd like to get
home before dark because I might make some
great mistake the last mile of the way
nobody's safe you're saved if you're saved you're
saved for keeps but you're not saved as
far as spoiling your testimony till you get
home you can make a blunder the last
mile of the way and they'll all remember
the blunder and forget every blessed thing you
did back up the road because that's human
nature and so I found myself praying Lord
I'd like to end well Anthony Eden was
England's prime minister following Churchill he was a
brilliant man but he made a mistake in
the Suez matter and you ask an Englishman
today about Anthony and you say ah yes
too bad about Suez they forgot all the
other things I said Lord spare me that
and then I found myself saying Lord I'd
like to get home before the lights go
out in this world and they're going out
fast falls the even tide the darkness deepens
Lord with me abide and it may get
darker before it ever gets any brighter but
I saw a sign in a churchyard some
time ago the lowest ebb e-b-b
the lowest ebb is always the turn of
the tide it's when the when it lowest
it's getting ready to be fullest and that
happens sometimes in life and I pray it
may be so in the matter of revival
we may be in the darkness that precedes
the dawn either of revival or of the
Lord's return