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  THE POWER OF GOD IN A REDEEMED LIFE
  by Pearl P. Poe
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An autobiographical account illustrating God's miraculous provision and
faithfulness in the lives of believers, demonstrating themes of divine care,
trust, and answered prayer.

  Chapters: 25

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. THE POWER OF GOD IN A REDEEMED LIFE
    1. Chapter 23
    2. Chapter 22
    3. Chapter 21
    4. Chapter 20
    5. Chapter 19
    6. Chapter 18
    7. Chapter 16
    8. Chapter 17
    9. Chapter 15
   10. Chapter 13
   11. Chapter 14
   12. Chapter 12
   13. Chapter 11
   14. Chapter 10
   15. Chapter 9
   16. Chapter 8
   17. Chapter 7
   18. Chapter 6
   19. Chapter 4
   20. Chapter 5
   21. Chapter 2
   22. Chapter 3
   23. Chapter 1
   24. Chapter CONCLUSION

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  CHAPTER 0: THE POWER OF GOD IN A REDEEMED LIFE
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  CHAPTER 1: CHAPTER 23
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

God once gave me a vision of folk going to hell. There was a shining path that
led upward, and another that led to a very large broad way and on to a great
circle of all kinds of worldly entertainment. Many people were going, but the
largest crowd came out from the church to go down to the pleasures of the world.
Now and then one soul would come out of the church and go up the shining narrow
path. There were missions and personal workers to warn them, but the people
continued to go on down the broad way of worldly pleasures. I kept going that
way, trying to warn them of the coming judgment and their danger of going on
that broad way. At last I came to a certain place, and Jesus was standing there.
There was a radium-like line drawn. I could see the pit of hell in the far
distance.

I said, "Lord, I never intended to go to hell." He said, "Not many do, but once
they cross this line, they are doomed to be lost."

An old man approached us. The Lord stretched out His hand and asked the man to
give his heart to Him, and go up the shining way. The old man said, "I have
lived too long in sin to change now." The Lord said, "Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. The old man shook his head "no" as he,
no doubt, had done many times before, and went on over the line. An aged woman
came, grave in her looks. Jesus reached His hand to her. She said, "Not now. He
warned her, but she went on over the line. Then some sober, middle-aged folk
went by. Jesus spoke to them, but they wanted the pleasure of the world, and
soon they were over the line. Then I saw some young girls coming. They were
laughing and chewing gum; their faces were painted and were they decked with
jewelry. The Lord spoke to them. One of them seemed interested, but because of
the others she, as well as the others, was soon over the line. One of the girls
turned and made a face at Jesus and the others giggled with a hellish laugh.

Some boys came next. They were smoking and acting very important. Again, the
Lord stretched out His hand and spoke to those boys, but they took it lightly
and went on over the line. Then a group came. He warned them, but they put up an
argument that they were trusting their lodge, and so long as they lived up to
the lodge they were as good as those in church, and named some who belonged to a
certain denomination. But Jesus said, "I am the door: by Me if any man enter in,
he shall be saved. It is not by joining a lodge or some organization. You must
be born again or you cannot see the kingdom of God. If any man climbs up any
other way, the same is a thief and a robber, and no thief or robber hath eternal
life. Turn to Me; give up these worldly organizations and be converted, or you
cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." But they trusted to their false hope
and passed over the dead line.

Then the Lord called Apollyon, the angel of the pit of hell, and said, "Take my
servant to hell, but bring him back." Then, in my vision, Apollyon put a sharp
sickle about my neck and we went to hell. I can only describe part of the
vision. As we were going down, the darkness was so dense I could feel it. The
air was filled with brimstone fumes. It was death -- without God. Down, down,
down, we went till at last our feet rested on the bottom. It is hard to
describe. It was dark, yet you could see flashes. of blue flame; the heat was
like a great smelting oven. I could hear the screams and wailing of the lost.
There were stages where they were being tormented. I would ask Apollyon if I
could go in there and see them. He would say, "You cannot go in there and live."
Then I would hear others and ask if I could go in and see them. Their shrieks
and screams were almost unbearable.

At last we stood at a precipice, overlooking a lake of fire. Just then I heard
awful weeping. I said, "May I go in and see?" Apollyon said, "There are those
who went to hell from church groups who would not obey God's Word and follow
Him. This is the worst punishment in hell." Then he explained the lake of fire
Apollyon said, "This hell will have to be enlarged to hold the people. Then, at
the White Throne Judgment, all who are here will come up to the judgment of the
Almighty God to give account of their deeds done in the body and the effect it
had on others. You see, this is just a prison. These are here in torment,
waiting the final sentence when all evidences are in; then, they will be
sentenced to this lake. This is the second death. When one is cast into the lake
of fire, it is for eternity. To sink in dark damnation, to rise, to sink again,
and after what would be millions of years here, eternity will have just begun.
The hand of eternity will never strike off time." Oh sinner, repent now! "This
hell is light punishment compared with the lake of fire." It was not like fire
as we know it. It will be a place where you will have to live forever with your
conscience and the ever-increasing agony of being lost forever from love and
mercy, where you will have all your senses and appetites, but nothing to quench
the ever-increasing thirst, nothing to ease the agonies of being lost forever
Then in the vision, we started to return. As we were going, I again heard cries.
I said, "May I go in there?" Apollyon said finally, "You may." A great door
several feet thick opened and I could see the form of the spirit-body writhing
and twisting in great agony. I said, "Apollyon, that looks like a youth." He
said, "It is." I said, "What could a child ever do to come here?" He said, "Sin
and refuse to repent and die in their sins." I felt so badly, I said, "Let me
suffer for it and let it rest awhile." Apollyon answered, "There is no rest in
hell, day nor night. Each one has to suffer for himself in hell. There is no
mercy given." I then asked, "How long has it been here?" He said, "For hundreds
of years and will remain until the Judgment Day; then it will be cast into the
lake of fire

Apollyon then brought me back to Jesus. I said, "Jesus, I don't expect to ever
go there." He said, "All that ever go to hell go there of their own accord. I
have my preachers, my mission workers, my personal workers, and the Holy Ghost
to warn them, and I stand at the last chance to save whosoever will." I wakened.
The vision put such a burden on me and I thought how awful it was. I didn't want
to see any of my loved ones in sin, for they might continue on and be lost. As I
was thinking, the Lord spoke to me by the Spirit and said, "Any soul is just as
dear to me, and more so, than yours can be to you."

Since that time, unselfishly, I have tried to reach the lost and would not quit
even when physicians advised that I give up preaching because of poor health.
Through faith and prayers, God has kept me going. I want to leave my testimony
here. I love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I know
without doubt that God has forgiven my past sins, the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses me right now, and the Holy Ghost abides in sanctifying power. Should I
be called to the other world before this book is off the press, I will be
looking for you in God's Paradise. I have had my battles, been short-sighted,
and failed, and many times have had to flee to Jesus for refuge. I have had
great joys in the Lord. I have had many sorrows and heartaches, and have been
made very sad at times, but never have I quit fighting for God, or lost my love
for Him and for His cause. I do not hold a thing against anyone; I have only
love for all, and hope to see you all in heaven.

MY CANCER EXPERIENCE

On October 6, 1954, I had a deep burning and soreness come in my throat. That
night both ears began to ache and then throb, and that continued, night and day,
for three years, lacking three weeks. After trying all the home remedies I knew,
my throat was worse. I went to an eye, ear, and throat specialist. He said I had
hay fever. I said, "Doctor, I may have, but I don't have the first symptoms of
hay fever, and I don't believe I have it." But he assured me that it was. The
only way he relieved me was of an examination fee.

About four months later I went to another doctor, an M. D. He said I had sinus
trouble. I told him, "It may be, but I do not believe it is." He wrote a
prescription for capsules that cost 58c each, but they gave me no relief. About
four months later I went to another medical doctor. He also said it was sinus
trouble. I told him I was pretty sure it was not, for I did not have mucus and
none of my sinuses were affected. But he affirmed that was what it was, and gave
me something to spray in my nose and more capsules to take.

In a few days I had a heart attack and was sent to the hospital in Lindsay,
Calif. I told my doctor, Brother Philmore, about my throat and ears. He also
thought it was sinus trouble. I kept telling him that I was getting worse. He
gave me the best of care and did all he could. But this time the glands under
the outer end of my tongue were swollen and throbbed hike a had toothache.

As soon as I was strong enough, after I was released from the hospital in which
I had been for thirty days, I went to Los Angeles, Calif., to see Dr. Wendell
Hendricks, who was using the Lincoln Bacteria Treatment, of which I had heard
some good reports of success. I took the tests there, and Dr. Hendricks informed
me that I had had a virus infection and it had damaged some cells in my throat,
and that my heart attack had been caused by the poison in my body. He said it
would take about nine months to clear up the damage. I started the treatment
with him. My heart improved rapidly, but my throat and ears and glands continued
to throb.

The next week, I said, "Dr. Hendricks, I would not be surprised if you would
tell me that I have a cancer; neither will it scare me." He answered, "You do
have, but we can clear it up." I took only nine weeks of treatments from him,
and that was broken, with three weeks between treatments.

I resigned my pastorate at Fresno, Calif., to go back to Iowa, to be with my
aged mother. She had been writing for me to come, that she needed me. I accepted
a pastorate at Quincy, Ill., and drove back and forth to Eddyville, Iowa, but I
was getting worse all the time.

In November I went to the doctor who had told me I had sinus trouble. He took a
blood test and X-rays, and looked in my throat, and said, "There isn't anything
the matter with you. Go home and forget it." It is pretty hard to forget the
pains, the throbbing and burning every moment, night and day, until one can
hardly stand it to swallow. I began to drink juices. To use anything with white
sugar on it, or in it, would burn my throat until there is no way to describe
it.

The next week I went to Mayo's Clinic at Rochester, Minn. After several doctors
looked down my throat (none able to see the cancer), 27 X-rays, blood count, and
other tests, one of the leading throat specialists said, "I cannot find the
trouble." I said, "If you will run your finger away down my throat, you will."
He did and said, "Yes, there is trouble there." Then he said, "Mr. Poe, what do
you think it is?" I said, "It is a cancer." He said, "I am afraid it is." The
next morning they put me to sleep and took a biopsy and found it malignant. They
advised giving me cobalt therapy.

When I took the cancer, I had a couple of insurance policies that were to pay my
doctor bill, medicine, and hospital bills, but they both dropped me, leaving me
to pay the bills. They only paid part of the bill when I was in Lindsay hospital
with the heart attack. So when I was at Mayo's, I did not feel I could pay what
it was going to cost me.

I phoned to Iowa City and asked if they had the cobalt therapy, and they told me
they did. So I went to the Iowa University Hospital. They did not accept the
findings by Mayo's, and I was put through that torture of tests again. They told
me I would have to undergo another biopsy. The M. D. told the doctors to put me
to sleep because of my weak heart, but they thought I needed only a local. I was
tied till I could not move, then a towel tied around my head, a board about
three or four inches wide placed edgewise on the back of my neck. My head was
pushed back to touch the table, then, with my tongue out, an instrument was
forced down my throat -- I cannot remember ever having anything hurt me so bad
in my life. I could not get my breath. They cut a piece out of the back of my
tongue on one side about the size of a half dime. I heard one of them say, "We
will have to take another one, but let him rest." It was hard to get my breath
again. When I did, I begged them to put me to sleep, but they didn't. The next
time they took as large a piece out on the other side, and then did not get down
to the cancer by over half an inch. I could tell. But the terrible pains caused
a heart attack. I was in the hospital in Iowa City from the first part of
November until January 10 before they offered treatment. When they did, they
offered X-ray therapy, which Mayo's would not recommend. In the meantime, some
of my friends in Los Angeles, Calif., phoned me and asked me to come out there,
and they would help me to get the cobalt therapy. So I asked to be released from
the Iowa City hospital.

I was met at the train depot in Los Angeles and was taken to Sister Stella
Clark's Rest Home. I was bedfast for a few days, and Sister Clark with others
who came in were very kind to care for me. Arrangements were made for me to take
the cobalt treatment at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, L. A. While waiting for the
call to take the treatment, Sister Clark would tell me how she had been praying
and could not sleep, and felt I should not go ahead with the treatment. I was so
sick and troubled with pains, I seemed to be unable to pray through, so we
postponed the cobalt treatment.

I went to Hoxsey's Clinic at Dallas, Tex. The checking and tests, to me, were
far short of what I had already experienced. I took their medicine. only to get
worse. I returned to the Lincoln Treatment and continued to take the Hoxsey
treatment also, but got worse. The smell of food made me so sick I could hardly
eat anything.

I was advised to try the grape cure. I tried it for 30 days, but got worse. I
had to be in bed most of the time by then, and had chills and high fever and
ached until I could hardly stand it. I was aware that I was walled in with
demons, but I also was conscious of a center, and I was in it, and the Lord was
present with me. I realized the demons were limited and could not touch my soul.
They could not bring against my soul an accusation of anything that was not
already under the blood. How I praise the Lord for that! I searched my heart and
asked the Lord to show me if there was anything in my life or heart that He was
not pleased with, and He showed me nothing. There wasn't a day when I was
chilling and suffering that He did not manifest Himself in some way, many times
by giving me revelations of Bible truths, sometimes visions.

One day I had had a very hard day. My chills had been worse. My temperature was
104. It was the reaction from the shots that I was taking. I had a vision; I was
wide awake. I was walking on a narrow highway, marked the Way of Holiness. It
was paved with the promises of God. I had my Bible open in my right hand. I
looked to the left of me, and there was a very broad way. Multitudes were on it.
I saw a large pit and smoke like as from a furnace. Some were running their cars
loaded with people into it. Others were blindly walking into it. Others were
being pushed into it, and others were being thrown in. Every branch in me that
beareth not fruit he taketh away . . . If a man abide not in me, he is cast
forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the
fire, and they are burned."

I turned aside in my vision to rescue some souls. A man standing near by in a
coat of mail said, "From whence comest thou?" I said, "By Calvary and full
consecration, on the Highway of Holiness, sir." I want to stop right here and
say, Thank God for a definite testimony of salvation. A young man came running
to me, and said, "I don't want to get mixed up in those sins and be lost." I
said, "You need not. Go back to the road Repentance. Follow it to Calvary. There
confess all sin and forsake it, accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. From there
take the narrow way to full consecration, receive the Holy Ghost, and follow the
Highway of Holiness to the City above."

Just then I saw four men gather a backslidden preacher and they were throwing
him into the fire. I grabbed him, and the man in the coat of mail helped me to
pull him back from the burning. I helped him to his feet and told him to hurry,
to flee to repentance, to go to Calvary and take up his cross that he had laid
down, and never to lay it down again; to go from Calvary to full consecration,
tarry till filled with the Holy Spirit, and from there follow the Highway of
Holiness.

Then I left the throng of people and started on up the narrow way of Holiness,
with my Bible in my hand. I saw a beautiful sunset. I had never seen one so
beautiful, so golden. The Spirit spoke to me and said, "This is your sunset." I
thanked the Lord. Just then I saw the City drawing near. It was beautiful, all
gold, and I was about to enter. I began to say, "Please, Lord, don't take me to
Heaven yet, for I cannot win any souls for You if You do. And I cannot encourage
Your children. And, dear Lord, there are hundreds of people praying for me, and
their faith will be weakened. Please spare me to preach Your Word, and to win a
few more souls for You. Then You may let me die with a heart attack, or by a car
wreck, but don't let this cancer kill me. Let me go some other way."

I began to cry under the burden for that backslidden minister. Sister Muller
came to my room to see what I wanted for supper, and she saw I was crying. She
asked the reason, for many times the pains were so terrible it would cause me to
cry. I told her my burden for _____ _____ and I asked her to call him long
distance, and tell him to come to see me because I was very sick and wanted him
to come at once.

He arrived about 8:00 p. m. On his way to see me he told his wife, "Brother Poe
does not know I am backslidden. No doubt he wants me to pray for him, and here I
am in no shape to pray for him." But as soon as he came into my room I told him
what the Lord had showed me. I was crying. He took off his coat and said, "I
will start back to Calvary right now. In about half an hour he testified to
being reclaimed. He went on to holiness and the last report I had of him, he was
preaching in a meeting.

For about ten weeks I asked the Lord to spare me to preach and win souls, but I
continued to get worse. I could hardly swallow, and my throat was so nearly
closed that it was difficult to get my breath. On one of my very hard days, the
Lord passed a vision before me; and the next day, the same thing came again. I
wrote it in the form of an allegory as follows.

A very beautiful young woman, who loved to engage for hours in the night in
earnest intercession, was just coming from family prayer. Her house was a house
of prayer. She came along a shining narrow path, clothed in a plain, but
beautiful white -- shining white -- dress. The fashion of it was beautiful -- a
collar around the neck, full length sleeves, a neat, full-cut waist, and a skirt
that came within about three inches of the ground. Her shoes were white; her
long hair was neatly done up; her cheeks were rosy: her eyes were clear and
sparkling; her hands were without ornament. She was engaged, and this was her
wedding attire. She was on her way to the garden to meditate of her bridegroom
to be, for he had told her he was going to prepare a place for her, and he would
surely come again. He had told her to be ever ready for him.

As I admired her plainness and beauty, a fine-looking prince approached her. He
chose carefully his words and conduct. He spoke to her of a group of young folk
who were having a gathering near by, and asked her to join them. She blushed and
said, "I was going to the beautiful garden to meditate and pray, for I go there
each day."

"I know," said the handsome prince, "but your influence in our gathering will be
greatly appreciated and it will do you no harm, I am sure.

As she turned from her path to go with the prince, he said, "You should change
this beautiful white garment for a more appropriate one, for this one you must
not spot or soil."

"But I have no other," she replied.

"Oh," said the prince, "come with me. In yonder store I have a large supply."
Shyly she listened and soon was enticed.

"Here," said he, "is one very becoming to thee." It was light in color,
three-quarter length sleeves, and a low neckline. But the prince spoke of her
beautiful neck and part of the chest. The dress was some shorter, to be true,
but the prince said, "It is for just a social gathering, you know." Soon they
were in with the crowd, and the day passed quickly. The young woman returned
home, too weary to spend much time in prayer. The change in garment was a
compromise.

The next day the prince called on her again. He talked of her presence among the
young people, how she had been respected, and assured her that if she would just
keep coming to their gatherings and engage in their interests, they would go to
the meeting house with her. "In fact, some of them have already expressed their
desire to go," he said.

Day by day the activities of the prince engaged her time until she neglected
going to the garden, and the family altar became a place of formal, hurried
prayers. And she was too tired to continue the long hours of prayer at night --
she must have her rest to carry on her activities. The prince made frequent
calls at her home.

Now, he is in the meeting house beside her. After service, he said, "I
understand you are going to have a meeting for the recall of the pastor. You
need a change of pastors. I know of several fine, up-to-date, good mixers, well
posted, broad-minded men. I will do my part to help you get a very suitable one
for the times." She listened and the old time preacher was replaced with one
transformed by the prince.

The church attendance increased. Then the prince said. "Your building is quite
out of date. You should have a new, modern building. If you will build, I will
help put on a drive and we will fill the building with people who are waiting
for a more up-to-date movement."

A new building was erected with a modern kitchen in the basement, plenty of
rooms for suppers and parties, side rooms for games and bridge, a recreation
hall, and a swimming pool. The prince helped in the planning, and the building
was soon filled with his associates. "More entertainment is necessary," the
prince suggested, and the fair young woman was in full sympathy.

The prince now suggested that she should cut her hair -- "not very short, just
short enough so it doesn't look too conspicuous." She yielded to his wishes,
keeping up with the swift changes And in a short time you could not tell her
from the world. The old-time prayer meeting had no place now. Sunday night
services were giving place to picture shows, and she must ever be ready for the
work planned by the pastor, while the television stole her time for reading
God's Word and prayer.

One night she stood before the mirror. Her eyes were very dim, her body almost
nude. Near by she saw the picture of herself when she wore her wedding garment.
She looked at it, then into the mirror, the Word of God. Her beauty was gone,
her long hair was short. She recalled the words of I Corinthians 11:15, 16, "But
if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a
covering," and that the church of God does not have such a custom as short hair.
As the bride's long hair is a glory to her, she had lost the glory. She
remembered her former days with her lover, her engagement, her love for prayer
and praise. She remembered the wedding garment, and remarked that it was far too
old-fashioned for her new crowd. She tried to stir up her first love, but found
it gone. Something was dead within and there was no response.

Turning from the mirror, hoping she would some day get a wedding robe, to be at
last a guest to the wedding, she heard a knock at the door. It was the
bridegroom -- he had come! She was miserable, naked, and unprepared. She had
lost her vision of eternal values.

This is the likeness of those persons who once loved Christ, wore the wedding
garment, but were turned aside by the prince of this world, and became popular
with the world, and will not be ready when the call comes from the Heavenly
Bridegroom.

In July, I was so had that Dr. Hendricks gave me up, and said that if I ever was
any better, or healed, the Lord would have to do it. I continued with his
treatment for two more weeks. I had been cared for in the Clark's Rest Home and,
at the last, Jack and Pearl Hamilton came of evenings to help care for me.

I could hardly breathe. Brother and Sister Clay Robison came then and took me to
their home in Venice, Calif., near the ocean where it would be cooler. They did
all that anyone could do to comfort me. At times I would choke until I felt that
a little more, and I would be gone. I weighed 187 when I took the cancer. At the
time I was in the Robison home I weighed 119 pounds. At times in the night I
would have to go and sit in the yard to get enough breath.

One morning, about 8:30, while I was in Venice, after reading a chapter in my
Bible I prayed and thanked the Lord. I was so blessed I wept and praised Him for
some time. Then I read the last three chapters of Hebrews. When I read Hebrews
13:20-21 the Spirit said, "This is your funeral text." I got so blessed reading
it, and I asked the Lord to let me live to preach it, for the other minister
might not preach it like I would. I could see so much in it.

All day, I would weep a while, and praise the Lord a while.

About 2:00 p. m. Brother Robison's boy came to take me to the doctor. He said,
"Brother Poe, you look so much better; what has happened?" I told him how the
Lord was blessing me. As we went to the doctor, I wept and shouted all the way
-- about four miles. He said, with tears, "Brother Poe, that must be wonderful."
I said, "Son, it is. It is fresh from Heaven." He said, "I believe it, and if
ever I get religion, I want that kind." I told him it was salvation he needed.
He did not know the weeks of conflict against the powers of demons that I had
fought through.

When I arrived at the clinic, I went straight to the office girl, Dr. Hendrick's
daughter. I was weeping and praising the Lord and testified to her. She began to
weep. I testified to the nurse and was so blessed I could hardly sit still. She
had a very hard time getting the hypo-needle in my veins. She said, "If you
don't quit praising the Lord, I cannot get that needle in your veins." I said,
"Sister, this is one time I cannot hold my peace." She was in tears. The office
girl came in and said, "Brother Poe, I want to see you when you are through in
this room." When I went to the next room, she asked if I could pray for her. I
did and in a little while she prayed through to victory. I was so blessed all
the way home as I dealt personally with the Robison boy.

When we arrived home, Brother and Sister Robison were home from work. I told
them of the day and its blessings, and wept and praised the Lord again. About
8:00 p. m., my son, James, called from St. Louis, Mo., and said, "Daddy, how are
you? I can feel the impact of a great blessing clear back here." That blessed me
till I shouted and cried over the phone for six minutes before I could talk (and
the phone company charged no extra for the six minutes I shouted over the
phone.) Then we talked three minutes.

Before retiring, the Robisons read some Scripture and prayed, and as I began to
pray I got so blessed again I could hardly stand it. I stamped the floor,
laughed, shouted, and praised my Lord for one hour and four minutes. Oh, so rich
were His blessings! It was so divine, so sweet, so powerful, so full of glory,
beyond words, heavenly! Oh, my soul was so flooded; so great was the blessing, I
thought it would overcome me. The Robisons said they never had seen anything
like it. They expected the Lord to either heal me or take me to Heaven. But when
I did get quiet and get to bed, I had to sit up. It was only a few minutes until
I was so bad that it looked as if I would die before they could get me outside
where I could breathe more comfortably.

I went to the Los Angeles Cancer and Tumor clinic. Twelve cancer doctors
examined me and put me through a check up -- 23 X-rays and other tests -- only
to say they could promise me nothing encouraging. I told the head doctor that my
folks lived in Iowa, and near there. He said, "If I were you, I would catch the
first plane and go home." I was soon on my way; to Iowa. My mother, a niece, and
Lois Williams met me at the plane. It was good to see them. Sister Williams was
the former pastor where my mother attended church. Mother was happy to see me,
but she showed the results of much sorrow. A little while before this my oldest
brother's wife had taken very sick in the morning and had passed away that
evening. About three weeks later my only living sister took sick one night and
passed away the next night. And now here I was so very poorly.

The next day after arriving back in Iowa, I was arraigned before the cancer
clinic in the Iowa City University hospital. They told me it was too late that
neither they nor anyone else could ever help me now. I calmly said, "The Lord
can." They told me that to treat me would only add more pains and I would wish I
had not started. The nurse brought me a morphine pill for pain. I told her I did
not want it, for I was expecting the Lord to help me, and I did not want to have
to fight being a morphine addict. She said, "I will give you a shot then." I
said, "No, I don't want it, for you would give me morphine in it." She said it
was the doctors orders. I said, "If non-habit-forming pills won't ease the
pains, then I will suffer them." The fourth night I was easier, and took pain
pills only twice that night.

On the sixth day I could lean back a little farther to sleep and could swallow
the milk and eggnog easier. Then the head doctor sent for me. He said, "You are
getting better." I said, "The Lord is helping me." That he could not deny. He
examined me and said, We are going to start treating you." I said, "If you do,
it will be the Lord that heals me." They told me, when they started the
treatment, that my throat would completely close, and the outside would blister;
they would have to operate and put a tube in my wind pipe so that I could
breathe; that I would have to be fed through the veins; and that I would get
still poorer and maybe die.

Instead, I gained 22 pounds in 30 days, and none of those predicted things
happened. They were amazed at how rapidly I recovered. After I was dismissed
from the hospital I rode a bus for 95 miles, and walked five blocks. In three
weeks after I arrived home, I attended a Holiness Convention, in five weeks I
preached a message and in two more weeks I entered the evangelistic work, and
the calls come from far and near. I am busy all the time.

And the Lord has supplied all my needs. People I had never known or heard of
sent offerings. The expenses were very high, but our Lord's promises cannot
fail. All His ways are best.

I was not healed instantly, but gradually. It is the ninth of May (1958) now. On
April 25 I had a checkup at the cancer clinic and one of the doctors said, "You
are a lucky man." I said, "No, it was the Lord who did it." He replied, "It
surely was, for He didn't help us." I weighed 190 pounds the day I had my last
checkup. To Jesus, God, and the Holy Ghost be all the glory and praise.

While praying for my healing, I asked the Lord to search my heart and, if there
was anything in the way, to show it to me. And I meant it with all my heart. He
did not show me anything in the way, but blessed my soul. Daily I asked Him to
help, and I was conscious of His presence. I also told the Lord that this world
had nothing that I wanted to live for but to win souls. I feel I have been
spared for a while for that purpose. If ever I die with a cancer, it will have
to be another one, for that one is gone. How wonderful to live again and be free
from severe throbbing pains! All the praise and glory belongs to Jesus. I do
love Him and praise Him for His wonderful grace and love.

The Lord promised me, when I surrendered my life to Him to minister for Him,
that if I would furnish the man, He would furnish the grace, the text, and the
places to preach, and take care of me and supply my every need. I took Him up on
His proposition and furnished the man. He has never failed me. In my sickness He
put it on the hearts of people to give for my expenses. The two days I was at
Dallas, Tex., at Hoxsey's Clinic, it cost me $554. With Dr. Hendricks, I took
four shots a day in the veins, and sometimes other shots. Those came four days a
week and some of them cost as high as $50 each; others ran $10 each, even though
Dr. Hendricks gave me a reduction. The money came in. I never had a moment's
anxiety about finances. May the Lord bless each one who helped.

One week I had not enough to pay my bill, but the Lord put it on the heart of a
blind lady to order a number of my books, and on Monday here came the money.

The room at Sister Clark's was furnished by her, without any cost. My
transportation was provided for, and at the time fixed for me to return home the
Lord put it on the hearts of the good people, where I attended church when I
could while I was sick, to take up an offering to send me home by plane. This
offering paid the fare to the penny. When I was able to preach again, the money
stopped coming in for my sickness.

One day when I was very sick and so low in body, I said, "Lord, if You can put
it on the hearts of people to help finance me, You can heal me." I was reminded
by the Spirit that the Lord had told me He would supply all my needs and take
care of me, and "He will not forsake you now." Oh, glory to God! I am so glad I
am His; and He is mine -- a never failing Savior! Praise His name for ever. "My
God shall supply all your need, according to his riches in glory by Christ
Jesus." "No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly." "My
grace is sufficient for thee." "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth
for you."

Be obedient. He cares. He understands. Do not doubt God, but be submissive to
His will. Do not let my testimony enbondage you, but may God use it to glorify
His Son Jesus and to encourage you. Trust Him at all times. He doeth all things
well. His will is best. Not my will but His: sick or well, He is my Savior.

When I was so sick at Sister Clark's Rest Home, one of the women who was staying
there was also sick, and she became bitter in her heart toward God. The devil
had accused God to her. She felt that God was cruel and mean. I was told of her
condition. Others had tried to reason with her, but could not get her to see
that it was Satan tormenting her, to cause her to be lost. With another person I
went to her room. I let her express her feelings, and then for two hours I
talked Scripture and reasoned with her and prayed with her. I left her happy, in
the hands of Jesus. A few weeks later she passed on to be with the Lord, fully
trusting in Him, and happy.

I never questioned the Lord as to why I was afflicted with the cancer, but I did
ask Him to use it to reach some souls. I have had different people tell me how
they were encouraged when they would come to visit me and we would talk of the
Lord. One man came from San Diego, Calif., to encourage me. When he went to the
El Monte Holiness Church of God that night, he testified that he went to
encourage me, but instead, he received such a soul lift and blessing that he
went away feeling more determined than ever to live close to God.

The first Sunday that I was in the Iowa City hospital, seven or eight men
gathered around my bed and pushed another man's bed near mine, and asked me to
preach them a sermon. The Lord helped me to preach for about twenty-five minutes
on the preparation to meet God. From then on, someone came to my bed for prayer
nearly every day, and sometimes several in a day. Surely the Lord did bless my
sickness in using me to help folks whom I would not have met had I been well.

Oh, the unsearchable riches of His wisdom! Words cannot express how I appreciate
His leadings and dealings with my soul and life. I love Him; all His ways are
best. And when my course here is finished, I am going with Him to rest. I praise
Him for His wonderful grace, His love, His fellowship. He is All in all to my
soul.

I did not ask for a long life, but to be spared to win souls and to encourage
the saints. I haven't felt better for years. May God encourage you and help you
to be in His will at all times.

My hand card philosophy:

The Way to Happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live
simply, expect little, give much, fill your life with love, scatter sunshine,
forget self, think of others, do as you would be done by. Put your trust in
Jesus. Pray often. Be filled with the Holy Spirit, and be led by Him.

BUT SATAN HINDERED

This text states a much-neglected truth. Satan starts laying snares for folk at
infancy to hinder them from becoming Christians and then continues to hinder
them lest they become their best for God, lest they might "recover themselves
out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will."

Satan is the arch deceiver. He deceived angels -- one-third of them caused war
in Heaven. Those fallen angels are chained in darkness unto the day of judgment
when they shall be brought before the lake of fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels, and they shall be cast into the lake that burneth with fire and
brimstone.

He deceived Eve and Adam in the Garden-causing them to doubt the Word of God, to
believe that God did not mean what He said. Satan still uses this art of
deceiving that he may hinder men from finding God. He transforms his ministers,
making them to appear as ministers of righteousness. They will quote the Word of
God, but imply, if not state definitely, that it does not mean just what it
says. They give Satan's version and translation, thus blinding the minds that
they may not see God. His ministers will take folk without a born-again
experience into their religious organizations. They require no separation from
the world and worldliness; they have low standards, causing their followers to
have a form of godliness, but at the same time to deny the power of godliness.
They deny the possibility of being saved, of having a transformed life, and of
having grace to live above sin.

Satan deceives and hinders by telling his ministers that once you make a
profession, you are eternally saved, though you sin every day. They deny
sanctification, that experience in which the heart is cleansed, made pure
through the blood of Jesus Christ, and is baptized with the Holy Ghost,
subsequent to regeneration, a second definite work of the grace of God wrought
in the heart of the believer.

Satan will deceive and hinder people from following the desire of their hearts
by getting them to worship a day instead of Christ. Or he will get some to
worship their denomination, or the leaders or founders of their religion, or
some man -- calling him infallible. Such heathenish ideas! He will get them to
do penance for sin instead of repenting; to confess to man instead of to God. He
will get them to pray in the name of someone other than Jesus, or to some dead
person who can never intercede for them. Jesus is the intercessor. Satan will
hinder true prayer from being answered. Daniel, when he was praying for a
certain thing, continued to pray for twenty-one days. Finally, an angel came and
told him that God had heard him the first day, but that Satan had hindered the
arrival of the answer. Most of us fall short at times by not holding on in faith
and prayer. When we do not pray through, Satan wins his point.

Some are deceived by Satan through vain philosophies, science so-called,
modernism, socialism, communism, and lodges. He will inspire his ministers to
say that the grave is all the hell there is. But the Bible says, "The wicked
shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Jesus said to
the Christ-rejecters in His day, "How can ye escape the damnation of hell?"

Since Satan is a liar and the lather of lies, he is deceiving folks with signs
and wonders -- lying wonders. They are not true, but false. Rev. 21:8 says, "But
the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and
whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part
in the lake of fire which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second
death."

We do not have to do spectacular things to prove that we have the Spirit of God.
Jesus when tempted of Satan, did not use a single method he offered but He said,
"Get thee behind me Satan and Satan did as commanded. People will be endued with
power from Satan to perform strange things and millions will be deceived. You
say, "How do you know?" Here is one proof: If people do not receive the love of
the Truth, that they might be saved, "God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the
truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." And again, "They that dwell on the
earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life ... when
they behold the beast."

One of the tools the devil uses to hinder God's people is compromise. Idleness
is the devil's workshop. If he can get people to be lovers of pleasure and
worldliness more than lovers of God, he has dimmed and hindered their
usefulness. The fall of Israel was in their eating, drinking, and rising up to
play, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. To seek place
or prominence over another, to be amused and entertained by games, and sports,
and amusements that are inconsistent with a deep spiritual life, to wear
clothing that is immodest, to wear jewelry, such as gold and pearls, and such as
is forbidden in the Scriptures, will dim one's testimony for God.

How often Satan has used careless conversation to hinder deep spirituality. Be
careful what you say. Satan starts lies on people to hinder them. He did on
Joseph, on Jesus, on Paul, and back in Jeremiah's time the people said, "Let us
slay him with the sword of our tongue." Satan has ruined the influence of many a
godly person by a lying tongue. Your influence is weakened when you become a
talebearer. "Thou shalt not go up and down among my people as a talebearer."

Hobby riding is a method often used by Satan to sidetrack people from the narrow
way. He will make them feel they are disobeying God if they are not riding a
certain hobby. They will unChristianize others who will not ride the same hobby.
A man in the insane asylum rode a hobby stick. One day a neighbor went to see
him. He said, "Say Bill, that is a fine horse you are riding." The man stopped,
and said, "Oh, it isn't a horse. If it were I could get off. It is just a
hobby." If an insane man can ride a hobby and know the difference, what about
the poor person whom Satan has put on one of his hobbies?

A man sold a hound dog for an enormous price. He bragged on the dog as if he
were the best deer and coon dog he had ever known. The man who bought the dog
took him hunting. Soon the dog started to chase a deer. A fox jumped up. The dog
left off chasing the deer to run the fox. Then a rabbit jumped up, and the dog
left chasing the fox and chased the rabbit. Then a little timber mouse ran up a
small bush, and the hound dog stopped chasing the rabbit and began to bark
"treed" at the mouse.

The man who now owned the dog thought surely his dog had a deer bayed. He
hurried to him only to find his fine dog barking up a sapling at a little timber
mouse. If Satan can get a man or woman, whom God could use, to leave the main
line of preaching the Word of God to preach some fanatical idea, he has hindered
that preacher from being a soul winner. Oh, may God open our eyes to be wise to
win souls.

Satan hinders some by making them believe that if they preach for anyone but
their own little clique it will be a sin. He tried this on Peter, to keep him
from obeying God and going to Cornelius' house. Cornelius was a man of God
though not an Israelite. Finally, however God got the vision before Peter and
Peter understood that it was from God. He went as he was led of God in answer to
the prayer of the Italian man. And the Holy Ghost came upon them at Cornelius'
house as He did upon the one hundred twenty in Jerusalem on the day of
Pentecost.

The Jews sought to kill Paul because Satan had put it in their hearts that such
a fellow should not live who would preach to anyone but to them. They were
living after the old Law and not under Grace. They felt no one else but they
were right. Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature."

If Satan can, he will get us to follow some fanatic who has forsaken Jesus'
command, one who feels like the Pharisee of whom Jesus spoke, who went to pray
and all the while boasted in his self-righteousness and praised himself. He
thanked God that he was not as that publican. But who went home justified, the
Pharisee or the publican? Oh, may God help us ministers to see the vision and
plan of God.

Jesus was accused of receiving sinners and eating with them. Now wasn't that a
terrible sin? If Satan can make you believe that you would do wrong to preach
for others outside your little clique, he is hindering you from fulfilling the
call that God gave you -- "Preach the word." When Satan tried to get Jesus to
obey his command, Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We must preach every word of God
that people may live spiritually.

It is Satan's purpose to kill the church. Here are some of his ways. He will
starve the people by keeping them from hearing the Word preached in its
fullness. He will keep people too busy to read the Bible and to pray. He will
inspire the preaching of a social gospel, inject a spirit of ease and
indifference; cause people to lose the vision; make them too weak to pray the
power of God down; put on social entertainment instead of fasting and prayer and
groans for the presence and power of God. He will make people content with a
profession, minus glory and power. He will paralyze the church with worldliness
and love of the world, and with a drowsiness and slumbering, in the face of soon
coming judgment. May God help us to awake before it is too late!

Many times when people go to church, Satan hinders them from getting the message
the man of God has for them. He will keep their minds occupied with other
things. Sometimes the man is still figuring and planning his business while he
is sitting in service. Perhaps the woman is planning the dinner, or the
housework, or noticing how someone else is dressed. Another may feel the
preacher is "preaching right at me; someone has told him about me; I'm not going
to come back to hear him." Satan's talk! It may be that the preacher has never
heard anyone speak even your name.

Oftentimes Satan uses someone's whispering to attract the attention of a
listener, and thus hinder them from getting the Bible message being preached.
Many times such whispering will hinder the preacher from carrying through his
thoughts, and making his message clear. Sometimes Satan will use the well-meant
words of rebuke of the minister to the offenders to cause them to get angry and
be offended. and sometimes the relatives also take offense.

Other times Satan will cause a drowsiness to come over a listener; and it is
certain, they are not hearing much while they are sleeping. We carry no burden
for souls while we doze.

Another may feel slighted if, for some reason, certain ones do not happen to
notice them, and Satan will use that to hinder their spiritual progress.

If Satan can get you to think how So-and-So needed that message, he hinders the
Spirit from applying the message to your own heart. If he can get you to pick
faults with others, he will likely blind you to your own. And if he can get you
to backbiting, he knows you will devour one another and bring division and
bitterness. Then he will tell the outsiders to "Look; that is their
Christianity." Thus others are also hindered. Some weak ones may be turned out
of the way and say, "If that is Christianity, I don't want any thing to do with
it." When Satan has accomplished a division, a split in the church, the lost
outside people usually turn aside in disgust. May God help us to be careful. We
are to be His lights, that men may see our good works, and glorify our Father
which is in Heaven.

I had preached on being led of the Spirit, and oh how careful we should be not
to grieve Him, and to guard against doing things that Satan could use to hinder
the meeting. One night, at the close of a good service, a spirit of conviction
was felt. A person, after coming forward, asked to speak, and I permitted it.
That person accused others, entirely out of order. It killed conviction, and one
man told me he had intended to come to the altar to get reclaimed. But when that
person said what he did, the spirit of conviction lifted. That backslider is
still away from God.

In another meeting, I related this and told how Satan had hindered, and how
careful people should be lest Satan hinder souls from getting saved. The next
night, after a stirring message, and lots of conviction, a person came to the
front as if coming to the altar. After asking permission to speak a word, and
before I could say, "If it is not going to involve others, but is for yourself,"
they were pouring out some old gossip, contempt, and feelings, and making the
thing look terrible, when it was all in their own imaginations. It was sickening
to hear. All conviction left and a feeling of shame came over us all. That night
a woman was in the congregation who had not been in any church for years. She
listened to the preaching with hunger, searching for the right way. She was
greatly moved upon, but what the person said hindered, and do you think she came
back? No, and likely never will. Others were there that night who never came
back. Satan hindered and that meeting was not a success.

In another meeting, after a powerful message and deep conviction on the
congregation, a person spoke up, criticizing me out of place. It grieved the
Spirit of God, pleased Satan, and people who said they had come to be converted
left the service unsaved and, so far as I know, they have never gotten right
with God.

A number of years ago I was helping pray with a young man at the altar. He was
crying and praying. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Pray through." In a
moment or so he quit praying and left the altar. The next day I heard him say
that he was about through when someone put a hand on him. He wondered who did it
and why and got his mind off his seeking God. Over twenty years later I talked
with him and asked him to become a Christian. His reply was, "I tried once and
just as I began to get in touch with God, someone put his hand on me and broke
the spirit of seeking. I never go to church any more." In a few days he got into
trouble and was sent to the penitentiary for a number of years. Satan used my
touching him to cause him to quit seeking.

In an individual's life, Satan's first effort is to try to keep him from seeking
salvation when he is young. The Bible says, "Remember now thy Creator in the
days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when
thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." If Satan can get one in the habit
of resisting the Holy Spirit, he will likely encourage that one to continue to
do so until the Holy Spirit is grieved away.

Satan will harden the heart and lead into sin and bad habits, then tell one he
has gone too far to be saved. He will give him a spirit which resents anything
that would condemn his evil ways, and a spirit that resists anything that would
bring him to God. After one has gotten into sin, then been awakened by the
Spirit to see his condition, he understands that he will have to make his wrongs
right, make restitution. Satan will endeavor to make him think he just cannot do
that; and so many go on in their sins rather than make restitution.

Satan also works to get individuals married to the wrong person. If he sees that
a young person is going to be used of God, if he can get that one tied up with a
person who will not go along with that one to serve the Lord, he has hindered
that life. Or perhaps he will get one married to another who makes a profession
but who will put up a fight when the companion is called of God to the work of
an evangelist or pastor or missionary or singer. Some examples:

I knew a young woman whom the Lord called to be in evangelistic singer. She sang
for me in one meeting where there were 240 seekers, so the pastor reported.
There was not one time during that meeting but what her special song was right
in line with the message the Lord had put on my heart to preach, and she did not
know what I was going to preach about. She was led of God in choosing the songs,
and was greatly anointed and sang in the Spirit. She told me she could not keep
saved and not sing for the Lord. She married a young man. After their marriage
he forbade her singing in revivals. That great talent was buried in a broken
heart and in a backslidden life. The man she married made life very hard for
her. What will the judgment reveal?

I know a young man who is a gifted, talented preacher, a natural evangelist.
Satan got him to backslide, then to marry a woman who will not reason to the
calling of God. Satan is using her to hinder the Lord from using her husband.

Another gifted preacher has a wife who nags and finds fault with him
continually. She has threatened to leave him if he obeys God and fulfills the
call of God.

Some so oppose their companions that they make life so miserable for them that
they are greatly hindered. Others will not write to the absent one when he is
away and, if they do, it is only to find fault and complain. I talked to one
woman about how she was doing, and she said, "Well, he makes my life miserable
when he goes out and obeys God." Many persons are unequally yoked together. The
Bible forbids such.

If Satan can get you yoked up with a companion who belongs to some religious
movement that does not believe in the new birth, or in holiness, he has
succeeded in putting a hindrance in your way to keep you from ever being your
best for God. To go with God many have to go with a broken heart, because Satan
has hindered.

Satan opposes and fights true holiness. He has a fake to offer you. It can be
detected. He substitutes human works for true holiness, which is a pure heart,
perfect love. He sidetracks some with gifts of the Spirit instead of the Gift --
the Holy Spirit. You can have a gift and not have a pure heart, but you cannot
have the sanctifying power without having a pure heart and the Holy Ghost
himself -- not one of His gifts.

Lovers may exchange gifts, but that is no sign they have one another; neither is
the gift the evidence that they have each other. But in marriage they say a
"yes," or "I will," and each receives the other. Each gets the giver, which is
far greater than gift. When you receive the Holy Ghost, you get a pure heart.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Christ is not ashamed
to call us who are sanctified brethren. As in marriage two persons are joined
together, in sanctification we are joined to Christ. Jesus prayed the Father to
sanctify us that we might be one. He also prayed for His love to abide in us.

Satan hinders the people of God by loading them down with debts. Avoid making
debts. Live within your means. God demands it. Satan plans to get you in debt so
that he can hinder you from being your best. He would keep you, especially you
ministers, so busy trying to pay for unnecessary things that you will not have
time to pray and read your Bible and work for God.

Satan hinders in the home, getting you so busy you allow the cares of this life,
the deceitfulness of riches, and the pleasures of this world to crowd out your
spiritual life. When he has robbed you of your peace and joy, he will get you to
be cross to your companion; he will make it easy for you to find fault with
little things the other one does. I have been where it looked like nothing the
companion did or tried to do pleased the other. Satan had gotten them into such
a state until I feared the one would just walk out and never come back. Don't
lay this to bad nerves -- just lay the big part of such on a bad case of
carnality.

He will lead you into a stage of self-pity and then suggest that you "bawl them
out; they need it; they don't appreciate the good you do anyway." He will blind
you to the fact that you are driving the devil's wedge to break your love and
home. And this pleases Satan, grieves the Spirit of God, and turns to an excuse
that dates back as far as the Garden of Eden, when Satan deceived Eve. Adam laid
the blame on Eve, and she on the serpent. Most of the fault lies in the one
finding it. He makes life miserable for himself and for those around him. Sure,
it is Satan breaking the love in that home.

Satan hinders when one parent is trying to correct a child by causing the other
to interfere.

Satan hinders at family worship, either by sending a spirit of hurry, or by the
disobedience of children, or by the demands of some unsaved one in the home, and
by one of the parents taking the part of the unsaved.

If you have a radio, Satan will try to have it going when grace is being asked
at the table, or he will get you to listen to that tin-canny, so-called music
that is grievous to a Spirit-filled person. Or he will suggest a television to
those who would not think of going to a theater. Then he will use it to take the
time that could be spent in reading the Bible and good literature and in
praying. Television with all its display -- pipe, cigarette, liquor, murder,
rape, robbery etc., is many times worse than the theater. Visual education stays
with one longer than any other kind. The Bible reads, "I will set no wicked
thing before mine eyes." The TV is Satan's latest hindrance to keep people from
church. Many stay home right during a revival meeting because their special show
will be on at that hour.

Satan hinders Gospel work by getting persons to be stingy, withholding their
tithes and offerings. He hinders in missionary work by telling people there are
heathen right here at home. And there are! But that is no excuse for not obeying
God and going to the field, if He calls you, or helping to finance another's
going.

Satan hinders the spirituality of our young people through the teaching of
evolution in our schools, by the wrong attitudes toward the Bible, and the
nakedness at the gym, which breaks down modesty.

Along with deceiving and hindering, Satan is also an accuser of the brethren. He
accuses the saints before God day and night. But he will soon lose his position
as the prince of the air, and he will be cast down to the earth. Then woe, woe,
woe unto the children of men because Satan will be come in great wrath. He will
know that his time is short and he will go out in great fury. He is the head of
the Antichrist powers.

Satan is leading men in government to put politics ahead of principles. In these
last days he is giving political men their power and wisdom and seat, and is
causing nations to wonder after that beast that he is organizing. He has already
had his forerunners as John was forerunner for Christ. They are men who have set
the way to lead their nations into the powers of this world of sin and darkness.
We in America, as in Russia, had forerunners to set up communism. The New Deal
is a forerunner for the Man of Sin.

It was a communist woman who rose up against the Bible being read in the public
schools and, with the godless men in our Supreme Court, the Romanists and
communists in Washington, D. C., the Bible was taken out while the teaching of
evolution remained in. That is strike number one against the Constitution of the
United States. What can you expect of our youngsters when moral laws are not
being lifted up, but emphasis is being put on the games in which they are
required to be immodestly dressed? We cannot help but come to a degenerate
people, and raise a nation of criminals and adulterers. When we tear away the
only foundation for real civilization -- the Bible, the pillar and ground of the
truth; when we legislate laws against the Bible, we lay the groundwork for the
Antichrist.

Satan is putting on a revival of false religion -- people making decisions, but
not truly finding Christ in the forgiveness of their sins. This is one of
Satan's methods to blind the people while he makes a way for the Man of Sin to
come to power. Jesus said, "Take heed, let no man deceive you." We are nearing
the end, and whosoever does not have his name written in the Lamb's book of Life
will wonder after the beast and will worship in devil power and darkness.

In what way is Satan hindering you? If he is tormenting you, resist him
steadfast, give no place to him, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments
of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield your members as instruments of
righteousness unto God." -- Rom. 6:13. If you will do this, it will help you to
keep the victory.

While in a meeting in Fort Scott, Kans., a young woman came to the altar. She
tried to pray and did pray a little, but doubts possessed her and she lived in
fear. The next night she was back at the altar. After several had prayed, I
asked her to lead out in prayer. She said she could not. I started to pray and
the Spirit showed me that truly she could not pray, for Satan had possession of
her. In the name of Jesus I commanded the devil to come out of her, and leave
her at once. She immediately began to pray with great earnestness, and in a few
moments she was on her feet, blessed, laughing, and crying. That blessing lasted
for two full hours. She was so blessed with the Spirit of God that when she had
stopped laughing and praising the Lord, she told us that she could not stop
until the Lord quit pouring out His blessing. Satan had tormented her and
hindered her from victory for a long time.

Too few know how to deal with cases where the devil possesses the seeker. There
are times when the seeker is helpless. Then the workers need to take a definite
stand against the devil, and pray for deliverance, and command Satan, in the
name of Jesus, to come out of the seeker and let him alone. Jesus gives us more
authority than we usually use against Satan. Where more grace is needed, God
giveth more grace.

Satan hinders revival meetings in many ways. By people who do not pray for it;
by keeping people from fasting and carrying a burden; by keeping folk from being
baptized with the Holy Spirit and being led of the Lord; by causing doubt and
unbelief which is sin. He will keep folk from lining up with Bible teaching on
plain living, and get them to take opposition to plain preaching against sin,
worldliness, and carnality, and get them to decline to do personal work. He will
get people to side in with the unsaved against the preaching on great moral
questions, and by keeping others from attending steady, or intentionally putting
on entertainment’s to draw people away from the revival. Any professor of
religion doing any of these things pleases Satan, grieves the Holy Spirit, and
hinders a revival.

Satan stirred up the Papal church to murder millions of Christians in the early
church age, and he is doing it yet in many countries. He is raising up the
communists, and they have murdered millions of Christians. We are living in the
last days, and Satan is working hard to deceive the people. He would deceive the
very elect if it were possible. Jesus warns us, "Take heed that no man deceive
you." We need a born again experience, and a sanctified life, or we will be led
astray by the false prophets that will be cast into the lake of fire.

May God stir us. Beware, be wise, make your peace, calling, and election sure.
His grace is sufficient.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 2: CHAPTER 22
========================================================================

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ANOTHER OUTSTANDING EXPERIENCE

I was on my way home from a meeting when the Lord spoke to me to get off the
train, go to a pastor's house, and stay all night. It was late in the afternoon
when I arrived. They made no effort to get supper, but appeared a little
embarrassed. About bedtime the good pastor and his wife asked me to pray with
them before retiring. I read one of the Psalms and we had a good season of
prayer. They showed me to my room, but I did not go to sleep soon. I felt sure
that it was the Lord who impressed me that those folk had nothing to eat. I
prayed for the Lord to make the storekeepers in that town restless, to wake them
up and tell them about the pastor and his wife being out of food. I said, "Now,
Lord, make them come in the morning." I prayed until I was sure the Lord was
dealing with them. I slept little that night.

The next morning, when I heard the folk stirring, I arose, went down stairs, and
asked if we might have prayer, for I would have to be going before too long. I
read of Elijah, and of how God commanded the ravens to feed him; of the widow
who had two sticks with which to bake a cake for her son and herself, and who
expected then to starve to death; of Elijah who asked for a cake first, and then
how the meal failed not and Elijah stayed until God sent him to Ahab. We knelt
to pray and reached clear through. The heavens opened and the power came on our
souls. We wept and prayed and shouted and, while we prayed, the grocer piled
food on the back porch -- a general line: flour, potatoes, beans, meat, and
other things. These were brought in and immediately the other storekeeper came
to the parsonage with another supply of groceries. After they had gone, the
pastor told me that they didn't have a bite of food in the house the night
before, and no money. How I rejoiced that I had stopped and again saw my Father
work!

My train was soon to come, so I left without breakfast, but I had had a soul
feast. On my way to the station, I passed the home of Brother L. V. Nash -- a
sanctified Presbyterian preacher. He was a cripple. He was putting a tire on his
car. I asked how he was. He replied, and then asked, "And you?" I said, "Brother
Nash, I am determined to hold out to the end." He looked up at me and, smiling,
said, "I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto
him against that day, even to the end."

I heard my train coming, and hurried on, taking with me a new revelation. I
thought of my saying that I was determined to hold out to the end; then I
thought, If I were going to bed to rest, I would not take a firm grip on the
head of the bed, and be afraid to move lest I should fall. I could not rest like
that. My thought continued. Why, that bed is made to hold me up, and all I have
to do is to let loose, relax, and trust the bed -- just commit my body to it.

Here is the spiritual application I received. God wants us to commit all to Him
-- in entire sanctification we consecrate all. We are to trust Him to keep what
we have committed unto Him. Wonderful peace! Soul rest! secure in Him for He has
power to keep. All I need to do is to leave everything in His keeping and take
nothing out of His hands. That revelation has been a great blessing to me down
through the years. How can I ever praise Him enough? Though despised and
forsaken by some, yet never have I become discouraged. All things shall work for
our good if we stay true. As I suffer the loss of all things, I become richer in
Jesus. If people could only see fully the plan of God, there would be no dark,
long, lonely times. He has fixed His plans but many, even professors, will not
see His plan and provisions because of their interpretations of God's Word.
Thank God, the closer to Him you walk, the easier it is to see His ways. His
salvation is not a straight jacket, a kind of prison. His is not a tyrant, but a
wonderful Savior, changing our vile natures to become like Him. His salvation
makes us free, not slaves in bondage. It is easy for human beings to put yokes
on others that they themselves would not bear, and if they were to have to, they
would see through some Scriptures that they refuse to see now. And it would be
very clear to them that God has made a way, and has made some exceptions that
they do not want to allow to the ones to whom he has spoken.

Experience is a great teacher. I am so glad the Holy Ghost can take the things
of God and show them to the ones who need His help. I am comforted in Him and
His Word. The Bible says, "I am the Lord, I change not." Thank God for that. But
He certainly has changed some methods of worship and dispensations, yet He
remains the same. I think if we could meet Jesus face to face, in person as we
meet man to man, and could talk to Him about some things that some argue so much
about, He would give a perfect understanding to the problems. He did when He was
here. We have only a very limited amount of His teachings which were written
some years after His resurrection. Did not one of the writers speak of the
amount of books that could be written of all the mighty works and words of
Jesus?

We take too much for granted, we do not search and compare the Scriptures
enough. Let us seek to live and let live and let Jesus be the judge. Let us do
our best to live to please Him.

A COUPLE OF EXPERIENCES with demon possessed people at Topeka, Kansas.

When in a meeting for Brother Ira Eisenhower, there was a man present who had
once traveled with L. M. Williams and Uncle Bud Robinson. When they had their
big tent, this man traveled with them as an intercessor. He was a man of much
fasting and prayer. One time he attended a tent meeting. The woman who was doing
the preaching said, "No one has the Holy Ghost unless they have spoken in
tongues." After he and his wife got home they had their usual family prayer. He
was greatly blessed and great was the power of the Lord's presence. His wife
said, "You can't tell me we don't have the Holy Ghost." He said in a kind of
light way, "Oh, if we had the Holy Ghost I would speak in tongues" Now folks,
the Holy Spirit is a person and is easily grieved, and that man did just that.
He said that almost instantly the Spirit left him and a strange spirit seized
him. He began to jabber in some strange jabbering. He had fear and torment and
each time he would pray, or try to, he would begin that jabber. He said that in
a few days he was overtaken by temptation and went into open sin. He would try
to pray, only to be tormented with that jabber. In a few days he was cursing.
Seeming to have no resistance within his heart, he went on out into sin until he
had broken his marriage vows. I tell you right here, if the enemy of our souls
can come in, he brings seven more vile spirits than the first, and our last
state is worse than the first.

That man struggled under that load until they took him to the hospital for the
insane. After two weeks, they examined him and said, "You are not insane." He
said, "I know it. I am lost."

He went to G. C. Bevington's prayer colony in Colorado. After eight weeks of
prayer and fasting, he still was not delivered. He was asked to denounce it and
claim that it was of the devil. But they had told him back in that meeting that
if he did, he would sin against the Holy Ghost.

He came to the meeting where I was. Here is his story:

"Brother Poe, I am in great fear and torment." I said, "Brother, the Holy Ghost
is not the author of confusion, and perfect love casteth out fear."

He said, "When I was at the prayer colony, Brother Bevington said the evil
spirits said to him, 'We will not come out. We were cast out of him once; now we
have gotten back in and we will not let him go.' " I said, "They never will come
out of you until you say that this is of the devil. Some you can demand to come
out, and they will; some come out by fasting and prayer, but others will not
come out until you expose them and denounce their work." That man was at the
altar each night for six weeks. When he would start to pray, he would jabber. I
said, "Brother, you keep still and just say 'Yes' as I pray." I would pray up to
where he was to say, "Yes, this is of the devil," and he would stop.

One night he came in smiling. I said, "What happened?" He said, "I asked the
blessing today without jabbering." That night I tried to get him to say that it
was Satan's work. He went home sad. He said, "I believe I will get delivered. I
am bound in darkness, but I can see just a little streak of light." The next
night he saw more light, and the next night, while at the altar, he said, "Lord,
I see this whole thing is of the devil." I was praying and he said, "Yes, Lord,
I do denounce it," and it broke the devil's power and he was set free and
forgiven and later was sanctified wholly. But he told me that never again could
he prevail in prayer as he had done before.

During the same meeting a young man came to the parsonage to get Brother
Eisenhower and me to go pray for his mother. He said she was sick. Brother
Eisenhower knew her, but did not say a word to me about her. When we reached her
home, the window blinds were all drawn and the doors closed. We were led through
a couple of dark rooms, to a front room with a bed in it, and the room was so
dark you could hardly see. Brother Eisenhower saw her sitting in a chair, and
asked me to pray. Just as I got on my knees, the Lord spoke, and it was clear,
"This is no place for you; get out of here." All that I had said was, "Oh,
Lord." I grabbed Brother Eisenhower by the arm and said, "Brother, this is no
place for us. Come on, let us get out of here." I said to her, "If you want to
be prayed for, come to meeting tonight." When service began, she was there. The
house was well filled with people and when we gave the invitation, the altar
filled from wall to wall. Twenty-five chairs were placed behind those at the
altar and they were filled, and some were at the front seats.

After a bit I heard someone gagging as if they were going to throw up. I looked,
and it was that woman. I dropped on my knees right in front of her. I heard
Brother Eisenhower say, "Oh, my Lord, help him." I commanded the unclean spirits
to come out of her. I heard them speak to my spirit, "If we do, we will jump on
you as we did on those Jews in Paul's day." I said, "You can't do it. I am under
the blood and I command you to come out of her in the name of Jesus; come out! I
adjure you by the living God." The woman dropped back on the floor as if I had
hit her in the head with a sledge hammer, her body jerked and foam ran out of
her nose and mouth for several moments. I feared she would drown from the froth.
Large puddles of it lay on each side of her face on the floor. I told the folk
not to touch her. Finally, she arose and testified that she was delivered of the
devil and the demons, and that she was saved.

After we were home again, Brother Eisenhower asked me if I knew about that
woman. I told him that I knew only what the Spirit had showed me. Then he told
me the story of their experiences during fifteen years. That woman would come to
their home to pray to be saved and would get to gagging and throw up and break
up the meeting. If she attended the cottage prayer meetings they used to have at
the parsonage, she would do the same thing. They would have to take the rug up,
scrub it, and send it to the rug cleaners. He said, "I expected to see you soon
covered with her vomit when you knelt in front of her."

She became possessed through reading Spiritualist, Christian Science, and
Millennial Dawnism literature. Flirt with the devil and his literature and you
invite imps to possess you. Any doctrine that denies any part of Jesus' teaching
is dangerous. The New Testament teaching of Jesus is plain enough that, if you
follow it, you will be safe. But when you turn to what seems to be an easier
way, you are in reality taking the hard way. For "the way of the transgressors
is hard." "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose
waters cast up mire and dirt." "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all
nations that forget God." God in His mercy loved us enough to give His only
begotten Son to save us. If we spurn Him, His mercy demands justice. He could
not be a merciful and righteous God, and not have justice. We must all stand
before Him in judgment. Therefore, let us not judge one another any more, but
rather judge this, that we put no cause of stumbling before our weaker brother,
for He is the judge of all the earth and judgment will He lay to the line and
righteousness to the plumbline. Be sure to make your peace, calling, and
election sure.

AN EXPERIENCE I WITNESSED at White Rock, S. Dak.

I started the meeting on a Monday night. A backslidden young woman, who had
graduated from Asbury College, attended the church. She had told the pastor that
if they called me for the meeting, she would put on a meeting for the young folk
and keep them from the revival.

I did not know what she had said, but in the first service I said, "Sometimes
when God puts on a meeting Satan starts one, too. The pastor said, "That is so."
After service I went home with the pastor. Next door, that young woman had her
gathering of over forty young people. She gave a party which turned out to be a
dance. She announced that they would have another gathering the next night and
each night as long as the revival lasted.

The next morning the young woman's mother told her what I had said. Immediately
she came to the parsonage. She tongue-lashed the pastor for what he sanctioned,
and said, "Where is that preacher?" I arose and went into the room where they
were, and said, "I am the preacher, but not the kind you said." Then I warned
her of the great danger she was in. I said, "You had better to get down on your
knees and repent or great will be your destruction. You have too much light for
God to overlook this." She flatly refused, and told of what she was going to do.
I said, "You are not going to do anything of the kind. If you continue to go on,
before 6:00 p.m. God will leave you and you will be a wild maniac before the sun
goes down." She continued to tell what she was going to do.

At four p.m. that afternoon she became insane and a raging maniac. She was taken
to the asylum, to scream out her hellish agonies and pull her hair day after
day. Some years later I was told that she was still there, screaming in her
awful hellish agony.

Folk, be careful; do not grieve God or fight against Him.

It is not how much you know that determines the harvest, but what you sow.

AN INCIDENT THAT OCCURRED when I was on my first pastorate.

Some poor folk attended the church as well as some of the wealthy. Someone made
a statement against large children coming to church barefooted, and against folk
coming in overalls. The news reached me and I did not know how to handle the
situation without offending some. I knew that if I mentioned it, I could be
misunderstood, so I went to prayer and prayed, "Dear Lord, You will have to help
me, for I don't know how to do. And James said that if any man lack wisdom to
ask of You, for You would give it."

I was impressed to put on an old pair of striped overalls, patched with plain
blue overalling, wear a faded and patched work shirt, run my fingers through my
hair, tousling it, and go to church barefooted. I preached with much freedom,
and did not mention clothes. The poor folk felt quite welcome, and those who had
spoken against the bare feet and overalls saw their folly, and I heard no more
about clothes except from one fine-spirited man of wealth who came and shook
hands with me and said, "Thank God, it is not the clothes that makes the man,
for God looks not on the outward appearance, but on the heart."

A MEETING IN KIRKSVILLE, MISSOURI

The pastor, Brother Gerald Patterson, asked me to help him in a revival. I told
him to pray and when the Lord showed me it was the right time, I would come. I
went through the town several times. Sometimes I would stop at prayer meeting,
and would be led of the Lord to say, "You are not ready yet. When you get ready,
we will have a meeting."

One day, a little over a year from the time I had been asked to hold the
meeting, I arrived at the service a little late on purpose. The six or seven
people present had just started to pray. They soon were praying earnestly, and
crying under the burden. I felt the revival spirit. After prayer meeting, I told
them they were about ready for the revival; to keep praying, and I would be back
as soon as I was through with the meeting at Pollack, Mo.

When I returned, Brother Patterson was in a meeting in Oklahoma. However, we
began the meeting with three young women, three elderly women, and the assistant
pastor present. In a few nights the church building was filled. We began to have
seekers -- young married people. At the end of four weeks, on a Sunday morning,
the pastor was back. He spoke to the congregation and said they should take an
offering for the evangelist, for the meeting would close.

I arose, and said, "Who told you it would close? I didn't hear the Lord say it
would," and laughed. He said, I just thought it would, since it has run four
weeks, but -- all right -- we will continue."

At the end of the sixth week we had our largest altar service, and seekers came
all through the seventh week. On that Sunday night, I told the people that I
felt the revival was over, but that the Lord wanted me to stay and teach them,
help them to get established. Most of them remain in the Lord to this time --
over twenty years later.

Today, people do not pray and get under the burden enough. Most evangelists do
not stay long enough to have a meeting, and are doing more to kill the spirit of
revival than to kindle one. Churches have called pastors to hold their meetings,
and have not recognized the God-called evangelists until the evangelists have
been about put out of the field of evangelism. A good place to stop and think!
How much place does God and the Holy Ghost have in leading in these days?

Programs and social entertainment’s will never produce what groanings and prayer
and fasting will. Why exchange old-time meetings for a few sermons? Why say we
have done what we could, unless we have really fasted and prayed and wept and
confessed our lack of power and have tarried as Nehemiah did? Conditions are bad
now as then, but when we reach the place where we touch God, He is able to give
us a revival. Amen and Amen.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: CHAPTER 21
========================================================================

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I was conducting a meeting in Muscatine, Iowa. There were seekers from the first
night. About the fourth night, a woman came to the man who was with me and said,
"Brother, pray for me." He had a keen spirit of discernment. He looked her
straight in the face and said, "I won't do it. All you want is sympathy. You
need to get down and pray through."

The next morning we were called out of bed to pray with a couple. After they had
prayed through, the woman where we were staying said to my helper, "I think you
misjudged that woman last night." He said, "No, I didn't; there she comes now
looking for sympathy." When she came in, she began to talk to Brother B____ and
he said, "I did not misjudge you. You are here now looking for someone to
sympathize with you. You need God." She then admitted that she had been
backslidden for a long time. By 5:00 a.m. we had prayed for seven different
persons.

Among those who came to pray was a very large woman. After praying awhile for
her, she said, "I cannot get through. I have a restitution to make." She left
with the woman where we were staying. When those two women returned, the large
woman said, "I didn't get it fixed up and I am lost." I said, "Well, you go on
to work and keep in an attitude of prayer. And I will be praying." She and
another woman had had a fight over their children. That night she was at the
church early. I said, "Now, I want you to do what I tell you to do at the altar
service." She promised that she would. While I was preaching, I located the
other woman though I had not known her before. I gave the altar call and some
responded. I went to the one I had located, at the end of the seat. I asked her
to go to the altar. She said that she was not going. I said, "Oh, yes, you are.
You are under such condemnation now that you can hardly stand it. You are
talking to the wrong person. Come on. And taking hold of her arm, I gently
pulled her into the aisle and got behind her, took hold of both arms, and took
her to the altar. She had on high-heeled shoes. She tried to brace her feet, but
I let her down until her high heels were like sled runners, and up to the altar
we went. I said, "Now, Sister, pray, for I perceive you are in the gall of
bitterness." And she did pray.

Then I said to the large woman, "You get down right here by the side of her and
pray." Both prayed for a few moments, then they looked at each other. The one
said, "I will forgive you." The other said, "I will forgive you." I said, "Now,
since that is not the way, you will be fussing again before a week has passed.
Pray some more." They both looked at me, and I continued, "Pray till you are
sorry, and God will show you what to do." We all prayed. Then it was the same
thing over. I said, "That is not it. Pray on." They were soon really praying,
squalling, and boohooing. They raised their heads, and the large woman said, "I
want you to forgive me. I am to blame." The other woman said, "No, you aren't; I
am. I started it; I have been hateful," and they hugged each other and God
forgave them. Don't fool yourself in thinking you are right with God until you
follow Matthew 6:14-15. If we do not from our hearts forgive, neither will God
forgive us.

An incident very similar to the one just given was experienced in
Spickardsville, Missouri. The song leader asked me to pray for him, saying that
he had a dormant spirit. As the meeting progressed, the crowds increased. On the
third night an elderly man, the father of the song leader, was in the service.
He was a preacher from a church which believed that water baptism was the only
way into the new birth experience. After I had presented the plain way of
repentance, the elderly man arose and asked me to tell those folk the way into
Jesus. I knew what he meant, but I again laid the ground work of repentance. He
arose again and said, "I adjure you by the living God to tell these folk the
truth." Again, I gave it Biblically, chapter and verse. He arose the third time
and I asked, "Brother, do you mean by water?" "Yes, like in Peter." I said, "All
eight of those folk were in the ark, not in the water. Now, Brother, we
appreciate your being here, but if you don't intend to listen, your absence is
appreciated more. The next day he told everyone he met not to go to that
meeting, for a deceiver was there preaching that you can be saved without being
baptized. That night the house was full. I told the son to tell his father that
I thanked him for advertising the meeting, and that any time he could come and
behave, we would welcome him.

I preached fifty-one sermons in that place -- all on holiness, but one. One
night while several were at the altar, a girl from the Christian church came to
the altar. She prayed until she fell under the power of God. It frightened some,
but I had seen such several times before, so I told the folk not to touch her,
but to leave her alone. In a few moments, her face began to shine, she smiled
and opened her eyes. She arose, put both hands as high as she could, walked the
aisles, praising God, with her face shining and tears flowing. Oh, what glory!
Others rushed to the altar, but all did not have faith. Some would not believe
because they did not fall under the power as the girl had done.

Another young woman, from a Baptist Church, came to the altar. She was very
haughty and proud, painted and powdered extra heavy, decked with jewelry and
wearing a big fur. Every time we gave the altar call she came. She would feel
her hair and place her fur just so. She did not kneel but hunkered down at the
altar. One Sunday night she started to the altar. She started to trot; her fur
fell in the floor; she dropped to her knees before getting to the altar and
began to cry for mercy. She did not feel to see if her hair were all right, both
hands were in the air, her head back, and tears plowed lines through the powder
and paint. Soon she stood as if she were reaching heaven; and she did with her
prayers. Off came her jewelry, she laughed and cried, and had the time of her
life. I tell you, people, it pays to pray through. Thank God there is victory.

One night a couple made confessions one to the other, not to the public. As I
shook hands I said to one woman, "That is what it takes to be in the clear." It
hit the nail on the head. She informed me that she would not make restitution. I
said, "You will or be lost, if you have any to make."

I was to preach the next morning at Star Light, Missouri, eighteen miles from
Spickardsville. That woman was so angry toward me that after she got home she
told her husband he had to take her to Star Light, for she wanted to slap my
face. So to Star Light they came. I was preaching about Benjamin when they
arrived. I said, "Until Jacob let Benjamin go with his brothers, he did not know
the fullness of joy that awaited him." The woman had nothing to say.

They were both in the service at Spickardsville in the afternoon, and her
husband came to the altar. Later he arose, walked a bit, and returned to the
altar. I said, "Brother, you have something to make right. Make the patch bigger
than the rent." He went to the singer and said, "Can you forgive me?" The singer
said, "If you will confess all and come clean." He was in private but before me.
He said, "You know, I have been going to your house when you were not home, and
have been laying with your wife. Can you forgive me?" "If you will not do it any
more, he said. Back to the altar he went, and such praying as that singer did
until that man got through! He went to his wife and asked her to forgive him.
She was so angry that she looked purple. She professed but did not have victory.
That night the singer's wife was at the meeting. When the altar call was given,
she ran to the altar. I went to the woman who was going to slap my face, and
said, "Come on, now. She hesitated. I said, "Sister, you are going and you just
as well walk." She took me for how I meant it, and I helped her to get right
down beside the other woman. The woman, who had been living the bad life, said,
"Oh, I am so sorry for what I have done. Please forgive me." The other woman
said to me, "Brother Poe, she is not in earnest." I said, "That is none of your
business, it is up to you to forgive her or go to hell." You may say, "Strong
medicine." Yes, but the kind that cures, if it is taken. This patting on the
back and saying, "That is all right. Just believe you are all right," will not
work until conditions are met.

Those women repeated their dialogue a half dozen times or more. Each time I
would urge them to pray, repent, and tell the one that she would either forgive
or go to hell, and each time she would go a little deeper. Finally, she let all
holds loose and begged God to forgive. She turned to the other woman and said,
"Oh, my Lord, help me. Then calling the other woman by name, she said, "Oh,
please, forgive me." "I do forgive you from my heart," was the reply. They went
into one another's arms and hugged and wept. The stubborn woman said, "This is
the first time in my life I have had my will broken. Oh, I am so happy!"

At the beginning of the meeting the pastor of that church told me how he used
tobacco, had fights, and when in Colorado Springs had received the baptism. I
said, What baptism?" He said, "Of tongues." I said, "Man, the baptism with the
Holy Ghost and fire is no such baptism." Then I showed him that he was not even
saved. He saw it and we prayed for about an hour. He was reclaimed and said, "I
used to preach under the anointing, but for twenty years I have been a
backslider." He was sanctified the next day. He preached a funeral the third day
and those who knew him said, "The old dry stick is on fire." Well, Amen! That is
what God can do if we will be honest and pay the price.

One night while in that meeting, a man and a woman came in. I had never seen
them before. She sat down about the center of the church. He sat on the front
seat beside the pastor. In a little while I was "in high," preaching. He began
to jerk and twist and say, "S - e - e - e." The Lord said, "Rebuke him." I said,
"Lord, what shall I say?" I was preaching while this was going on between me and
the Lord. He began jerking as if he had St. Vitus Dance. I said, "Thou child of
the devil, full of all subtlety, unless you repent you will shake worse than if
you had St. Vitus Dance when you are in hell; professing to be a Holy Ghost
preacher and putting up with another man's wife, claiming she is your wife." The
jerks were over. Both the man and woman turned pale and beads of sweat came out
on their foreheads. I tell you, it is not possible to cover sin. God, by the
Holy Ghost, will uncover it in a Holy Ghost meeting if the preacher obeys God.

After the altar service a man came to me and asked if I knew that man and woman.
I did not. "Well, how did you know about them?" "I didn't; but God told me to
rebuke him and what to say." He said, "That is my wife, and the man claims to be
a preacher. He will get out in a meeting among the tongues churches and will
speak in an unknown tongue, then tell them the Lord wants him to send for his
wife. They will be gone two and three months at a time. He speaks in tongues and
she interprets. When they have no other meeting, they come back here and tell me
I have to forgive her or I can't go to heaven. Then she will stay with me a
while and he will call for her again." He asked, "Now, do I have to keep on
forgiving?" I said, "You surely do, Brother, if you expect to get to heaven, but
you don't have to live with her." Then he asked what I would do. I said, "I
never like to say, but I will in your case. I would go home and, if they are
there, tell them that you will no longer tolerate that way of doing. If you want
her to stay with you, tell her it is up to her to make the choice, but that she
cannot go on this way." She decided to leave the good man. Now, don't mistake
me; not all the Pentecostal people are like that, neither do they all tolerate
such. But I do want you to see right here: the devil can fool folk with
"tongues", but he cannot fool the Holy Ghost. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is
a purging, purifying, and cleansing of the heart from inbred sin; not one of the
gifts, but the Gift himself.

Read Hebrews chapter ten, and think on some of the verses. The first verse
speaks of perfect; the second, purged; the fourteenth, He hath perfected them
that are sanctified. To purge means to make holy, a cleansing out of the old
nature. God, the Holy Spirit, comes in to dwell in a clean temple. In verse
fifteen, the writer tells us that the Holy Ghost is a witness to us. Ephesians
4:30 tells us what He does -- seals us, Notice, these are the evidences that one
has the Holy Ghost. He not only fills us, He teaches us and leads us. And as
many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

One time I was led to get in my car and go from northern Missouri to the
southern part of the state. I took my oldest daughter with me. We had tire
trouble and when we arrived at the pastor's home, he and his family were in
their "pick up". He said, "Get in Brother Poe. It is time we were going to the
meeting. We announced it to begin tonight." It was Saturday night, and a fine
crowd present. I was asked to preach, and the revival was on.

On Sunday I mentioned how I had felt led to come. I noticed some look at others.
On Monday I was asked by the pastor about my statement. He said, "We sent you
two letters -- the last one was a registered one with money for your trip." I
said, "I did not receive them." They had come but I was not told about them. But
my Lord knew, so he had the Holy Spirit to lead me. A large number of folk were
saved, among them several school teachers. May God bless the memory of those
people.

I have many landmarks of experiences, and no doubt I am coming near my journey's
end. I have fought to hold my own; I know I have made mistakes, but that was not
the fault of the Holy Spirit. And if in anything anyone feels that I have done
wrong in any way, I humbly say, "Forgive the mistakes of my head, they were not
of the heart." I have been so blest at times, I felt I could not live unless God
checked the glory.

One time I had a very heavy burden for a missionary. I wrote saying, "Do be
careful. You are in great danger." The missionary thought, "Oh, we are always in
danger; I see nothing different." The burden increased and I wrote again with a
stronger warning about being careful. About the time my letter reached there,
one night the burden became so heavy. I prayed very fervently. God gave me a
mind picture of that missionary's cottage and location -- the yard and the brush
along a path that led back of the house. I saw the missionary getting ready to
go out the back door. It was night, but the moon was shining through scattered
clouds. Back of one of those bushes a large witch doctor had crouched; his
intentions were to kill that missionary. I screamed, "Oh, God, don't let him do
it; make him get away." There was a rustling in the brush. He turned his head to
see what it was and the missionary passed him. The noise continued. I prayed
again, "Lord, make that man leave." He became afraid and sneaked away. The
burden lifted. The next morning that witch doctor left the community.

I met that missionary in Chicago when they were on their way home from the
field. We visited a while. I explained about my burden, and described the
mission house and yard, and told about that certain noise, They remembered the
noise in the bushes. I described the man, and they verified the fact that he was
seen going down the road, leaving the community the next morning. We must pray
for our missionaries, and one for another.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 4: CHAPTER 20
========================================================================

CHAPTER TWENTY

One time I was called to hold a meeting at a certain place. A rich man, who
professed to be a Christian, came to me and said, "Brother Poe, I want to
support this meeting. I will pay all the expenses, and I want to give you an
offering -- a good one that will take care of your family." He told the pastor
the same. There were several persons saved and sanctified in the meeting which
continued for four and one-half weeks. One Sunday afternoon, there were
twenty-three at the altar. Just as I knelt to pray, the glory struck my soul. I
began to shout. I had no more control over it than I could fight back a cyclone
with a tooth pick. When I got so I could see, there was not a person at the
altar. The people were like bees swarming, shouting, running, and praising the
Lord. The man who had made the above promise, was a man who would say, Praise
the Lord, and make quite a bit of noise, but when it came to Holy Ghost
shouting, he was out. That day he stood with his mouth open, looking on.

That night, while preaching, I felt that someone was getting his or her last
call. In the altar call we pulled for an hour for a young man who had driven
several miles to be there. He was crying all the while I was preaching. I went
to him and told him that Jesus could heal his broken heart (that was my text
that night), but he did not come. His father was dead. He had a sister and a
mother, a little farm and some debts. He had been going with a wealthy girl who
was to have come to the service that night. When the boy went after her, she
told him that she was quitting him to go with another boy. The other boy was
wealthy, but had some bad habits.

The boy went home from service, convicted and heartbroken, got his shot gun and
two shells, kissed his mother and sister good-bye, and drove over to where his
girl friend lived. There was snow on the ground. The moon was in full. He fixed
the gun on the fence by the barn, fastened a fish cord to the trigger, stepped
in front of the gun, pulled the cord, and both barrels discharged their death
charges. They missed his heart just a little. He fell, got up, took a couple of
steps, and fell. He did this three times before he died. The farmer heard the
report of the gun, but thought it was someone hunting, so paid no attention. The
boy was found dead the next morning. The girl married her choice, to great
sorrow.

The meeting closed and the man, who promised to care for me and my family's
expenses, did not give me enough to pay my carfare. In a few days a bank closed.
He lost $17,000.00; in another he lost $12,000.00; and in another he lost more.
Cattle prices dropped and he lost $4,000.00 more. He told some of the folk that
attended the meeting of his losses. A girl spoke up, "Good enough for you. You
promised to take care of Brother Poe and his family's expenses, and you didn't
give him enough to pay his train fare home. If you had given him a few hundred
or even one hundred, God would have told you what to do and you could have saved
your money. But money is your god." When I heard of it, I felt sorry for the
man, but admitted that what the girl had said, no doubt, was ordered of the
Lord.

In a dream one time I saw a certain man coming to meet me. I saw a pit, and a
ladder going down into the pit. I saw Satan put a false ladder at the end of the
one already there. If anyone would put his weight on the false ladder, he would
fall. I saw fire far, far below. The man whom I saw started down the ladder. I
called him by name and warned him of his danger, and told him not to go a step
farther or he would fall into hell. The dream so impressed me that the next
morning I wrote a letter. Using iodine to make it look more like flames, I drew
a picture, and told this man of his danger. I told him that he had started down
the ladder and that if he went another step, he would go to hell.

The next day four other preachers and I were going down the road in a car. I was
driving. I pulled to the side of the road, stopped, told the men my vision
briefly, and said, "That mail carrier is visiting, and in a few minutes it will
be too late." We were over a hundred miles from where that man lived. We began
to pray and prayed until the burden lifted. A few weeks later I saw the man. He
had gotten saved and here is the story.

The man had seen something that was heartbreaking and had meditated upon it. He
had gone to the hay mow to hang himself. The mail carrier had stopped at a
neighbor's and talked for about an hour. I had edged the letter in black.
Finally, he said to the neighbor, "I have a letter edged in black; I had better
hurry on and deliver it." He honked his horn at this man's mailbox. The hired
girl ran out to get the mail, and saw the letter to the man edged in black. She
had seen him go in the barn some while before, so she hurried to the barn,
opened the big door, and called, "You have a letter from Pearl." Hearing him
answer, she looked up. He had a rope tied out over the driveway to the track in
the haymow and the other end tied around his neck. He was standing on a beam,
ready to jump. He untied the rope from his neck, read the letter, and prayed
through.

Suppose I would have said, "Oh, that is just a dream. No use to write." Or
suppose I would have said, "Well, we are in a hurry and these preachers will not
understand," and would not have prayed. Oh, how we ought to be careful to obey
the leadings of the Spirit. We would see a great deal more accomplished for God
if we were more obedient.

One time a preacher called me to help him in a meeting in a Friends church. I
took all the money I had and started to a town seven miles from the place where
I was to help him. On my way over there, as I was walking, a man in a new car
had the driver stop and pick me up. The aged man asked me where I was going and
I told him. When we stopped at his house I asked where I could find the
evangelist. He said, "I have been attending the meeting. You come and stay with
me." They had a large house. He was a high-degree Mason and his wife, an Eastern
Star. They were members of another church in the town.

We went to meeting early and he introduced me to several people. The singer, I
knew well. The evangelist came just in time for prayer. He looked around, and
said, "I see Brother Poe is here. He is a minister who is passing through; we
will ask him to lead in prayer." I had had a feeling all the way down that I
would not get to preach, but still felt I was in Divine order in going. When the
preacher said, "He is just passing through," for a moment it seemed a hard blow,
for it was not so; he had sent for me. After that I had risen above that
statement, I had freedom in prayer and asked God to make people truthful and
honest by convicting them of all sin. The man preached. The folk I stayed with
said, "We cannot understand this. You say he wrote for you to help, and he says
you are just passing through." I showed them the letter and asked them to say
nothing to anyone about it. We talked until midnight. Both were under awful
conviction for sin. We began to pray. They prayed up against their lodge. He
stopped praying and told me how he felt. I said, "Praise the Lord. I had to give
up the lodge to get saved." They vowed they were through with the lodge and
everything of sin and the world, if God would give them an experience by which
they could know for certain that they had been born again. A few moments later
they were both on their feet, saying, "It is true! It is true! We know it!"

The morning following, after we had had prayer, the man left the house and was
gone about an hour. When he returned, he said, "Brother Poe, I have several
families gathered in a home down here. We want you to come and read a Scripture,
and tell them how to really know they are saved." When I arrived, there were
over twenty persons there, I read Matthew 18:1-5, talked a while, and we started
praying and seeking the Lord. Several prayed through. The elderly man with whom
I was staying, had told them how God had really saved him and his wife, and how
they gave up the lodge.

After dinner we attended a cottage prayer meeting of the Friends. I was asked to
read a Scripture and comment a little. We had a free time praying, but one old
fellow, who chewed tobacco, prayed up against it and stopped. No one had
mentioned tobacco. The evangelist and his singer were not at the prayer meeting.

The next morning, the old gentleman where I was staying had another group of
inquirers for the way of holiness, and he and his wife were on hand for the
blessing. I gave them several verses of Scripture, and we had prayer meeting
from ten until one. Most of them experienced the witness of a pure heart and
knew they were sanctified. That night I met and talked with a few outside the
church. The evangelist recognized me only as a tramp preacher. However, I was
asked to pray each night and had freedom in doing so. I told one of the men that
I felt I should leave and go back home the next morning, and would like to catch
the train at a stated time. I also told the folk where I stayed how I felt.

The next morning the elderly man went up town. I was praying, "Lord, help me to
get enough money to get out of this country." While I was getting ready, the man
with whom I had talked the night before drove up, and said, "I have come to take
you to the train." I bade the lady of the house good-bye. She had so royally
entertained me. She was wiping tears, and said, "We thank God for sending you
our way. Pa and I felt God would have us give you ten dollars, but he has gone
up town and has all the money but a dollar." I don't know when a dollar looked
so big, but in order to catch the train we had to leave before the mister
returned. When we reached a store, the man who was taking me to the train,
stopped, ran in, and returned with a little paper sack of change. He asked me to
count it. It was ten dollars. He was shedding tears when he said, "That is
yours. God told wife and me last night that you did not have any money." I began
to cry and thanked him for it. His two daughters were in the back seat. They
began to cry and before we had reached the station, both of them claimed to pray
through. God told another family that I did not have any money and for them to
take me ten dollars. They missed me by a few seconds. I saw them coming just as
our train pulled out. They sent it on to me. May the sweet memories of those
dear people always remain in my mind and may we all meet in heaven.

The latter event happened during the year that I was on the farm of which I told
you earlier.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: CHAPTER 19
========================================================================

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A FEW INCIDENTS IN MY FIRST REVIVAL

Brother Everett Allen, a colored boy, and I conducted it in the Mission where we
were converted a year before. We met in the mission to pray. We asked the Lord
to send in the worst there were in the town to be converted. The meeting lasted
for six weeks. In the second week, I was preaching when a young woman opened the
door. She put both hands out as if she were going to put them against the door
casing, but she did not touch it. She found a seat about half way to the front.
I saw Everett look at her, then drop his head in his hands, and begin to cry and
pray. I could hear him say, "O God, I covet that soul for Thee." His tears
dropped on the floor as he wept and prayed. When the altar call was given, about
a dozen responded, but I kept holding on for the young woman.

The superintendent of the Mission said, "Brother Poe, the people have to work.
We'd better gather around to pray." I said, "All right," and went straight to
that woman and asked her to come to the altar. She looked up and said, "I am too
low in sin to disgrace that holy place. I am low, degraded." I said, "Jesus
loves you and will forgive you." She said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "Yes, they
do. Jesus has put love in my heart and Everett's heart for you. Let us kneel
here and repent and ask God to forgive you." She knelt and was soon wonderfully
converted.

That woman arose and gave her testimony. "I have been in jail more times than I
have fingers and toes. Everett and I used to go to school together. He knows me.
I just got out of jail and thought I would go out to let the tough men know I am
out, but when I left the house I came across the tracks toward the Mission. I
thought, 'What am I coming this way for?' But it seemed I could not turn. I
heard this man preaching. I said to myself, 'I am not going in there,' but I
did. As I opened the door, I tried to put my hands against the door case, and
stop, but a strange power gripped me. As soon as I was seated, an awful
conviction seized me. I felt so ashamed and sorry for my sins I could not keep
back the tears. I am glad that God for Christ's sake has forgiven me, but oh,
what will I do!

"I have no place to go but back to a house of shame that my folk are running.
You know I had a sister that jumped off the river bridge at the Whitmore mill
and drowned. My folk have run a house of shame for years. When we girls were old
enough, they asked us to sell our bodies so they could make more money. I sold
myself, but my sister said she would rather die than do so, and she was asked to
leave home. She left that night and drowned herself. I went into a life of sin
and shame, but God has forgiven me. But what will I do when I go back tonight?
The bad men will be there. How can I protect myself?"

"Take this along," I said, as I handed her a new Bible that I had just bought,
"and tell them that you are saved and are going to live like this Book says."
Jesus said that class of people would enter in before the self-righteous would.

The next night the woman returned, bringing with her another woman from that
place. She, also, was moved upon by the Spirit and cried all the while Brother
Allen preached. She sought God with all her heart and was forgiven. The next
night each of them brought a woman from the house of shame, and they were so
moved upon just before I was through preaching that they both ran to the altar.
The next night those four were all there with one other woman and the man who
helped to get others to that house of shame. The latter both claimed to pray
through. The man and woman that ran that place sold out and left the country.
Most of those women came into the light of holiness and claimed the victory. The
first one claimed her call to preach, and preached her first sermon in that
meeting. The last I heard of her, she was in Minnesota preaching holiness.

One night in the summer before the meeting, my brother-in-law was at the county
fair. He saw a man with whom I had worked on the railroad, My brother-in-law
asked him if he had seen me or my wife at the fair. He said, "Pearl, at the
fair? He has salvation; he won't be here." I had never thought of the fair. When
my brother-in-law came to my house to see me, he told me what this man had said.
In my heart I said, "If that is the way John thinks about it, I surely never
will let him down."

John had gone into much sin. One night during this revival, John and another man
were walking up the street. John stopped and said, "Listen, I hear Pearl
preaching. Let us go hear him." In a few moments the old-time power of
conviction got hold of them, and they wiped tears. I finished by telling of my
conversion. Both men came to the altar. John gambled and drank and did other
sinful things. After he had prayed a while, he took out a deck of cards and put
them on the altar, then his dice, then a bottle of whiskey. Then he pulled out a
revolver and handed it to me, and said, "Here, Pearl, take that and unload it."
I said, "John, I never was cowardly enough to carry one of those." I laid it on
the pulpit. They, with others, prayed through. When John arose, he picked up the
firearms, took out three cartridges, and said, "One of them was for my wife, one
for another person, and the other for myself. I had heard of Pearl's conversion
and that he was preaching. We used to work together. Since he quit the railroad
and said he was going to become a Christian, I have been watching him." How glad
I am that I did not go to the fair, for if I had, he would not have had
confidence in me. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. We are the light of the world.

I was holding a meeting one time and a drunk woman came. She was a very rough,
bad woman, and was drunk most of the time. She would attend the services and
when I would give the altar call she would invite sinners to the altar, and was
very successful in getting them to go. One night I saw her start to a young girl
about sixteen. I made it a point to speak to a young man just in front of the
girl. I heard that poor fallen woman pleading and crying for that girl to go get
saved. She said, "Just look at me, poor miserable wretch. I once was pure and
innocent like you, but I rejected God when I was convicted. Look at me! Oh,
please, don't follow my path." She brought about fifteen persons that night and
someone every night she was there.

I was asked to stop her, but I said, "Not for the world would I interfere." On
the last Saturday night she took sick during service, and vomited on the floor.
She left. I saw her the night the meeting closed and asked her to come to
meeting and give her heart to God. She said, "Since I threw up on the floor, I
won't come back. But, preacher, God left me when I wouldn't serve Him, and I
don't want anyone else to suffer the hell I am in. Oh, it is terrible! It seems
thirsting demons and lust demons have me under their control all the time. I
don't want to be bad, but I cannot get loose. I cannot help it. I run after men
and drink." She is to be pitied, but my God could have delivered her if she
would fully have repented. But it is dangerous to reject the Holy Spirit. You do
place yourself the more in Satan's power.

ONE TIME WHEN I LIVED IN OSKALOOSA

I came home from work on the railroad, and without washing or cleaning up, sat
down in the shed to read my Bible. Suddenly, I felt a great urge to go down town
at once -- the Spirit drawing me a little as He did Philip, I think. I did not
say a word, but obeyed. When I reached the main part of town I saw a man with
long hair in curls, and a woman -- called a virgin -- sitting near him. He was
lecturing a false doctrine. I listened to him until he was ready to sell his
books, then I raised some questions with him. I asked, "Sir, I heard you say
that there is no heaven or hell. If there is no heaven, where did Jesus go?" He
said, "You know there is nothing impossible with God. He may be behind some big
iceberg around the North Pole." I said, "Your argument is as cold as that
iceberg. You said that there is no hell. Where are the spirits of the wicked
dead?" He tried to explain to me, using Greek words, but the God that sent me
there had also arranged that a Greek from Greece -- a professor -- should be
standing by me. The man was hushed on his false Greek. I said, "Mister, you say
that if we live right we will never die physically." "That is true," he said. I
asked, "Why do babies die?" He said, "Because of the sins of their parents." I
said, "Because of the sin of Adam," and showed my Bible high in the air, and
shouted, "Be not deceived, for in the last days false prophets will rise up and
deceive many." I heard the town clock strike four. God came on me in mighty
power and I stood on that street corner and preached until I heard the clock
strike twelve.

I had been preaching for about an hour when the man who had been lecturing
packed his things and left town. But the crowd gathered, until at times there
were, no doubt, three hundred there; some came and went and came again with
others. Many listened by the hour. Folk, God did that; it was not I. I only
furnished the body for Him to use. That man with the false doctrine told the
Salvation Army officer about it. He said he did not get to sell a book, but he
never had heard anything like it. Oh, my soul is hungry to be used more of God.
I am spoiled for anything else. I have seen the movings of God and been moved by
His great power. Formality never can move the soul and fire the Spirit and
satisfy the soul. When I reached home, wife said, "Where have you been?" I said,
"On the street, preaching since four o'clock." The sweat had made streaks down
my dirty face. I had on my dirty railroad clothing, but that was not thought of
on my part. Glory! Well, praise the Lord! I still get a touch from God as I
recall the past. Amen and Amen.

I WAS TRAVELING FROM A CAMP MEETING IN OKLAHOMA

to Trenton, Mo. I had been praying, "Lord, help me to pick up some hitch-hiker
that I can help by telling about You and Your salvation." I had not gone far
after praying until I saw a Negro man. He was so black. I stopped and said, "Get
in, my friend I would not have picked you up if you had not been so black and
for Jesus." I asked him if he knew Jesus as his Savior He said, "No sir, I sure
don't. You see, down where I come from they done told me we Negro’s don't has
any soul." I said "Well you do, and God so loved you colored folk He gave His
only begotten Son to save you. He then told me, "My mother died when I was just
a baby. I don't know where my father is; I have never seen him. He gave me away
after Mother died. I have been told that she was a good woman." As I talked to
him about the love of Jesus, he said, "Nobody loves me." Tears were in his eyes,
and mine, too. I said, "Yes, my boy, I love you. If I didn't I wouldn't have
been interested in your soul and future happiness. I do love you." By this time
he was crying. I put my hand on his knee and said, "Sonny, it is God speaking to
your heart, wanting you to be saved from sin," and quoted several Scriptures.
Crying, he said, "Parson, nobody ever told me I had a soul. They said I didn't
have. Nobody ever talked to me like you is." We came to the parting of our
roads. I prayed for him before letting him out. He started to go but came back
to the car crying, saying, "I is so glad I ever met you -- a person I could feel
loved me. I sure is going to do what you said. No one ever talked to me like
that." I told him I would be praying for him. He said, "I sure is goin' to
pray." I said, "Good-bye and may God direct you, and we will meet in heaven." In
traveling I always ask God to help me speak to some hungry soul.

AN EXPERIENCE WHILE RIDING A TRAIN

At the next stop after I boarded the train, a young woman came on whose
reservation put her in the seat next to me. It was in the forenoon. I asked her
if she were a Christian. She said, "I am a member of the such-and-such church."
I said, "I asked if you were a Christian, not a church member. Have you ever
been born again, prayed through until Jesus gave you a new life and His Spirit
bore witness with your spirit, until the old things you once loved have gone out
of your life and Christ is living within? Paul said that it was not he that
lived, but Christ that lived in him." She said, "According to what you quote, I
am not a Christian, but a member of a denomination." Then the Lord helped me to
give plenty of Scripture. I read a few verses and explained them. She said,
"Mister, I have heard more gospel in the last forty-five minutes than I have
heard in fifteen years before."

That evening I said, "You have a right to the seat you are sitting in and I have
a right to the one I am in. You could sleep in your seat and I in mine. But just
behind us is a boy and his mother. Now, if you want to sit here, I will ask the
woman if she cares to change and sit with you through the night." I asked, and
the little boy sat with me for the night. The next morning, the women said, "We
know now that you are a Christian."

Another time I was leaving Seattle, Washington, for Minneapolis, Minnesota.
While at the station I felt the sacred nearness of the Lord, the presence of His
great love. I would shed tears, get up, and walk around the room. Once, while I
was walking, I saw two U. S. Police come in with a man to the ticket window.
They had him to buy a ticket to New York to see a certain rabbi. This man was a
Jew and had come to this country without a passport. He had been a lawyer in
Germany, and when so many Jews were put to death there, he left his wife and
daughter and hid out, going to different countries to get to the U. S. A. The
police were sending him to this rabbi to secure papers for his stay in the
States. On the train he sat just in front of me.

God had me greatly charged with His Spirit. At once I entered into conversation
with this Jew. I told him the only hope for the Jew was Jesus Christ. He said,
"I am a lawyer from Germany and because of what I have seen, I am an
unbeliever." I said, "Impossible. You cannot be. You are too smart a man to be
so stupid as to not be a believer in the Lord." I began with Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, Moses, the prophets, then Jesus and the saying of the Jews "Let his blood
be upon us and our children."

Two hours passed All in the coach were spellbound. Then I spoke of Paul, the
veil of Moses that still is over the eyes of the Jews, and that veil of unbelief
in the Messiah, God's Son, Jesus Christ; and for another hour I talked about
Jesus and Him crucified. Then he broke in, saying "This is extremely
interesting." I said, "Here is a new Bible; just read it and believe. I will
make you a present of it." It was now late, and they turned the lights out.

The next morning, the man was reading, and now and then he would ask a question
as to what this and that meant. God helped me to explain it, sometimes taking a
half hour on one subject. I felt under the power of God all the way on that
trip. In that coach were two rabbis from Czechoslovakia, a Catholic priest, and
a Catholic woman, who was a missionary. These sat in separate seats across from
me. Just behind me sat a River Brethren preacher, and across from him, a
Nazarene preacher. I kept much in prayer in my heart that God would use me. I
noticed that one time the Catholic priest had his paper upside down for over an
hour, not reading, surely!

While I was explaining to that Jew what Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Ye must be
born again," I felt God helped me especially. I pressed the point hard. No works
of our own, no matter how good, could ever save us. Joining churches, learning
catechisms, or creeds, or mode of baptism -- none of these can save us. I said,
"Mister, you are not far from the kingdom. If you will repent, confess your sins
to God, tell him you are sorry, and accept Jesus as your sacrifice for your
sins, accept Him as your Savior, the true Messiah, you will be saved." Tears
were in his eyes. He said, "I do believe He was the Messiah." I said, "If you
fully repent and accept Him as your personal Savior, He will save you, and I
believe He will work for you that you may see your wife and daughter also." He
stood and gave me his hand, and said, "I do," and hugged me. He had gone to the
lounge room and was there a while. I felt he had prayed.

When we arrived in St. Paul, he received a message from Seattle. The message
said, "Your wife and daughter are in New York. Arrived last night." If you ever
saw a happy man, he was one. He hugged me, and said, "Oh, I thank God, I found
the Messiah. Now, my wife and daughter. I can never thank you enough." Most of
the folk in the coach were in tears. The Catholic woman shook hands and said, "I
never learned so much about the Bible in all my life. I have enjoyed this trip."
The priest looked rather annoyed when she said that. But to God be all the
glory.

Most of the people on the coach shook hands with me before I left. One man and
woman said, "When you walked past us in the depot, we asked each other, 'What is
different about that man? There is a look on his face as if he were very happy.'
" I said, "It was God."

That incident happened when I was in the thickest of thorns. God did encourage
me now and then. Oh, He never left me, but I had to go through those thorns
without many great overflows; however, there were experiences rich and deep.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: CHAPTER 18
========================================================================

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Luke 15:8-9

Women in the Bible are oftentimes used as a type of the church. Jesus speaks of
the bride, referring to the church. In the incident of Isaac and Rebekah,
Eleazer is used as a type of the Holy Ghost seeking a wife for Christ. As the
servant of Abraham, he sought a wife for Isaac. Hannah is another character
oftentimes used as a type of the church. She was barren and it was a disgrace, a
reproach for her as a bride, not to bear children. So it is a reproach for the
church not to have spiritual births.

What has the church lost? One thing, she has lost her respect by her looseness
with the world. James says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that
the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God." When we are converted, we are in love
with Jesus; when we get sanctified, we are espoused, or in our speech, engaged,
to Christ. To flirt with the world makes us spiritual fornication’s, and the
worldly church members have disgraced the worthy name of our Christ and have
caused the sinners of the world to lose respect for her, the same as the women
of today have done.

When I was a boy, the women were respected. If a man would meet a woman, in
speaking to her, he would tip his hat, but not so now. Why? I will tell you why.
The woman has lost her self-respect. She bobbed her hair, which the Bible
forbids; she painted her face; stuck a dirty cigarette in her mouth; dressed
immodestly; and became bold and careless. Her brazen performances are disgusting
to a man that is a man. The Bible says she is to be chaste, a keeper at home,
not a gad-about, running to liquor joints, running the streets with only a pair
of shorts and a little fixin' about her breasts. Shame on such disgraceful folk.
Many mothers, if they should be given that worthy name, are not rearing their
children to have any self-respect. And many school activities are a disgrace to
decency. No wonder we have so many nudist colonies in the U. S. Shame! Shame! if
there is any shame. The Bible speaks of a time when "they were not at all
ashamed, neither could they blush." With all that is lust-breeding, it is no
wonder that American homes are going on the rocks and the divorce courts are
crowded. You can open the window and cool off a little here, but that crowd will
never cool off in hell.

The church has lost her self-respect by being worldly. The Word says, "Come out
from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord."

The church has lost her burden for souls. Where are the all nights of prayer,
the groanings for souls, in pain to be delivered, weeping over the lost. Oh, I
know there are a few who travail, but where are the rest? When the church loses
her burden, she loses her vision. "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
They become blind leaders of the blind and they shall both fall into the ditch,
or pit. When they lose the burden, they get at ease and the Bible says, "Woe
unto them that are at ease in Zion." When she has lost her burden and her
vision, she has lost her power.

When the church has lost her power, she caters to programs and social
entertainment’s until the house of God is a place of social gatherings. She is
Godless, powerless, burdenless, and blind. May God help the few who remain to
pull together and be at peace one with another. It is Satan's work to scatter
the power of the holy people. It was Jesus' prayer that we might all be one.

Women, get the light; get your broom and go to seeking and keep at it, for what
you have lost you must find for your survival. The average holiness church has
lost so much of what it once had that the people are going after a false
holiness because it seems to have more life. Who is to blame? We are, for not
having more fire and glory in our services. We have some churches that have not
desired so much the things of the world, but they have fussed among themselves,
and shown such a critical spirit that they have driven the hungry away.

Neither fanaticism nor formalism is the way. John Bunyan's Christian, in
Pilgrim's Progress, saw two lions chained by the way. He became frightened, then
he saw they were chained. If he would keep directly in the middle of the road,
he could pass without harm or danger. So is it with us, if we will keep in the
middle of God's perfect will, He will keep us from dead formality or wild fire.

When the woman found what she had lost, it was then that she called in the
outside folk and they came. They made merry and had a jubilant time. Oh, may God
help us to see our duty and not shirk it. A burdenless church does not have
genuine live births. May He help us to see our part to do to have genuine
converts to Christ -- not to a movement, but the Christ; healthy children that
will have a good appetite and desire the truth of God and grow thereby. Oh, the
weaklings, the sickly, the dwarfs, the blind, the cripples in the so-called
church! Many times the child's deficiency and blindness is caused by his
parents' not being what they should have been, and sometimes by a deficiency of
certain minerals or calcium or vitamins. May God help the preachers to feed the
people not just on one ration, but on the whole Word of God, so that the ones
born into the kingdom will he strong and of a sound mind.

I knew a child who did not develop properly. It was not the child's fault. His
mind did not develop right. He did not grow like the rest of the children and
his body was deformed. The doctor could not help the child. The cause lay with
the mother because she had a deficiency of what the child needed before birth.
There lies the trouble with many folk today. The so-called church has been so
low on what she needed to have strong spiritual children that those children
have not developed right. Many cannot see harm in the things that the Bible
condemns. Some never come to the knowledge of the truth because they cannot
develop their minds. Oh, preachers, feed the flock on the whole Word of God, for
Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Oh, church, awake, awake! put on thy
beautiful garment. Be clothed in righteousness and true holiness; feed on the
whole Word of God that you may have strength to bring forth children for God.

Let us examine ourselves and see if we are trying to pick our rations and thus
becoming lean in our souls and weak and subject to the devil's epidemics, such
as unbelief, doubts, fear, jealousy, envy, strife, haters of those that are
good, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, worldly minded,
lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Can not we see this condition
wherever we go? Just put on something of worldly pleasure, and such an interest!
Oh, yes; they will pat you on the back, and compliment you for your
broad-mindedness, but when it comes to the truth of God, they are not
interested. Such an attitude breeds modernism, formalism, and deadness, and
sends up a stinking savor to our God. It will paralyze a church, kill the good,
starve the Christians, grieve the Holy Spirit, and cause apostasy to set up its
authority where the power of God once reigned. That has happened to many.

Let us take heed, lest Jesus come and find us followers of the terrible whore of
Revelation. We cannot do these evil things and be guiltless. "Come out from
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord." If we will do so, He will
receive us unto himself. We are to be in the world, but not of it, even as He
was not of the world. Folk, keep pure, keep the faith once delivered to the
saints. These are the days of the falling away. Keep prayed up, in touch with
Him, with hearts made pure and with the glory of God on our souls. That is what
it will take to be prepared for His coming.

We cannot be Whisperers and backbiters and at the same time glorify the Lord. We
must lay down our petty notions and live by the Bible. To be sure, not all who
profess to be Christians will see eye to eye, but we must love the children of
God and, if we have the Spirit of God, we will. "Oh, yes, but they don't follow
me." Just who do you think you are anyway? The Word tells us to follow Jesus.
Watch out for selfishness and littleness; all genuine born-again people who
continue to walk with God are His children and my brothers and sisters in the
Lord. Beware of Phariseeism. May God make us small enough that He can use us,
and big enough to stand for all that for which He stands in the spirit of
meekness.

The dancing, card-playing, and theater-going crowd never pray a soul through.
They may belong to some religious movement, but not to God. They are in an
apostate condition, compromisers with the world, apostles of Satan, and
promoters of dead works. "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth
to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it." "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom
of heaven," saith our Lord.

Not long ago, I was asked to pray with a woman at an early morning prayer
meeting. The woman said, "Brother Poe, I wish you would pray with me. I don't
have the victory." I said, "Sister, are you willing to take the old-fashioned
way to get it." She said she was, and did. I was taken to one side by one in
authority and told that I had grieved the Spirit by what I had said. I said,
"The only spirit grieved is that compromising spirit." May God pity those who
are putting the damper on and shutting the mouths of some. I swear allegiance to
the right. I intend never to let the devil pull the fire out of my soul by
compromising with the black vamps of hell and with sin. Just count me out there.
If anything, I want more fire and glory on my soul. I do not want to come up to
the judgment with the blood of souls on my hands because I saw sin in the land
and did not warn people to flee the wrath to come, and because I failed to tell
them that the love of Jesus could change them until they would not want the
world or sin. Amen.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: CHAPTER 16
========================================================================

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I will give you two visions and let you interpret them. Anyone would be pretty
blind that could not see the handwriting on the wall, and who it was that sold
us out to the Reds.

A VISION FROM THE LORD

On July 18, 1923, God gave me a vision.

A very high levee had been built along the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
I climbed to the top of the levee, and saw the ocean as a cesspool of filth. I
said, "This is foreign element." While on top of the levee, I asked, "Will this
wall be able to hold that ocean from flooding the United States?" I tested the
levee. It was as tough as buckskin.

A person appeared beside me, and said, "That levee represents the Constitution
of the United States, and our religious freedom. If no one tampers with it, it
will hold that ocean of foreign element out."

As I turned around, I could see the various states in the United States as small
acreage’s. Then I saw two men, each leading a party. Those men went to the
flagstaff and loosed the rope with which our flag was hoisted. They did not pull
the flag down, but slowly it began to move down. I saw those two men go to the
City of New York and talk with a man. Then they went to meet him in Savannah,
Georgia. He was elected President of the United States. As he took his office, I
saw strange things.

This man was to have more power than any other President. Extra offices were set
up in all the capitals of the different states.

My attention was again drawn to our flag. I said to the man by my side, "Let us
go and defend the flag, and keep it from coming to the ground."

As we came down off the levee and reached the ground, we began to bog down in
the mud. I asked, "What does this mean?"

The man who was with me said, "It is an under-seepage of that cesspool, seeping
through our government."

The going was hard. Finally, there appeared a slimy filth on the ground. We
turned, and looked back toward the levee. The man who had become President of
the U. S. A. was digging a large tunnel to the levee. I said, "Oh, look! He is
tampering with the levee, and will cause that ocean to come in on us!"

As I tried to get the people to see the hole in the levee, he covered it with a
camouflage, and people would not believe my report.

That man was destroying our Constitution. I saw him go to the White House four
times to be President. He dug so nearly through the levee that one big charge of
explosive would blow it through. He fixed the explosive, and from it ran a fine
wire to the White House. In the center of the levee he put two large doors. He
had them so constructed that it took pressure from the ocean side to open them.
Then he placed a large, ugly machine near the outside, and covered it so that it
was very hard to he seen. When he went into the White House the fourth time, he
said, "I will yet set off the explosive." He did, and disappeared. A few years
later, when the pressure of the ocean came against it, that big machine started
the opening of the camouflaged gates, and the ocean began pouring in on us.

I then saw those two men come back to their parties, and each had a flag. One
was a red flag with a handsickle and a machinist's hammer in it. The other, a
black flag, with a bundle of arrows and an axe, bound with a band. These two
parties began persecuting the Christians, and put them to death. The ocean and
these two parties with strange flags ruined the churches, and killed the
Christians. This will come to pass; then shall the end be.

A REVELATION FROM THE LORD

In the year of 1931, I was in a meeting in Topeka, Kansas. After preaching one
night, I went to where I was rooming with Brother Ira Eisenhower. We sat down in
the front room. Brother Eisenhower was tuning in the news on the radio, when I
had this vision. It was like looking at a moving picture.

I saw a very dark cloud come over the Rocky Mountains. As it came, I saw a flash
of lightning, and the dust rolled back. The wheat crops were almost ruined. I
saw hundreds of cattle and hogs lying dead. I then saw the lightning strike east
of the Mississippi River, and floods and disaster followed. The clouds became
very large, and moved over Italy, and the lightning struck there. I saw an army
from Italy go into Ethiopia.

Then the great cloud spread over Europe. The lightning struck in Germany, and an
army from there started a war which involved most of the country. It went into
Czechoslovakia and Poland, then to England, France, Belgium, Holland, Wales,
Finland, Russia, Japan, and China. Then the lightning hit our islands of the
Pacific, and we went into war as allies with our worst enemy.

I saw Italy, Germany, Japan, and Finland subdued. I saw the United States giving
to Russia, until Russia became the fear and dread of the nations. I saw a
Foreign Aid Program set up that made Russia rich and powerful, while we became
weaker and poorer. I saw the north part of Korea given to our enemy, Russia. I
saw China fall to the Reds, then a battle in South Korea, that our leaders would
not permit to be won. I saw another leader rise up in the United States. He did
not wholly follow the full plan of the other, neither did he follow the American
way. I saw great unrest and a dearth come in the United States.

People's hearts grew faint as world powers continued to organize. A great
darkness covered the earth, Christianity was greatly forsaken, and there was a
great falling away. A terrible army came with Russia, to go into Palestine.
Meanwhile, things in America were getting worse -- changes in government
planning, and becoming more corrupt because of betrayers of our original form of
government. (Russia has many foreign agents at work in the U. S. A.)

Finally, one laboring party rose up against another, one city against another,
and the few saints were bitterly persecuted, and many were put to death.
Suddenly, a great trumpet was blown. The remaining saints were caught away, and
the terrible destruction of God's wrath brought distress in the nations.

I came out of the vision, and we (Brother Eisenhower and I) went to prayer. We
wept, cried and prayed. Finally these words came to me:

"America has seen her best days. These things will soon come to pass; then the
end will be."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER 17
========================================================================

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Read John 15:1-11. Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the
husbandman," the one who cares for the vine. The word "true" would not be used
if there were not a false vine, a wild vine. We, by nature, were born in sin,
and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Israel was a vine
planted of God, but when He looked for the precious ripe fruit, behold, it
brought forth wild fruit. God said, "What could have been done more to my
vineyard, than I have not done in it? . . . I will tell you what I will do to my
vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof . . . and it shall be trodden
down," until the time of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. We are now in the time
of the fulfilling of the time of the Gentiles. God is dealing with Israel as a
nation now, the fulfilling of the Scripture. We were all on the wild vine. Every
child or person out of Christ is on the wild vine. We that are born again are
grafted into Jesus, the true vine. We cannot grow into it; we cannot work and
get into it by works. We must be born again.

Suppose we fix in our minds a picture of two vines. One is the vine of the
world; the other, Jesus, the true vine. Imagine them as two grape vines. If the
branches of the world vine would grow until it covered the other vine, it still
would not be a part of it. The one would be wild, the other tame, and any judge
of fruit could tell, by the fruit, the one from the other. Even the leaves do
not look the same. Now there is no way that we can be branches of the true vine,
only by the help of God, by His Holy Spirit convicting us of sin and of
righteousness and of judgment. Old-time conviction will be as a sharp instrument
in the hands of the Holy Ghost to cut us loose from our habits and the world.

Then He will help us into repentance, and if we stay in repentance, the Holy
Ghost will bring us to Jesus. But we must stay right in the vehicle called
repentance until the Holy Ghost -- not some person -- helps us out. When He
helps us out, He will graft us into Jesus, the true and living vine. He will
wrap the promises of God around the place of grafting, and, at once, the nature
of the true vine pours into the branch. He said that His Spirit would bear
witness with our spirits when we become children of God.

Some talk about giving up the world to get sanctified. Nonsense! Can't you see
that one has to be cut loose from the world in order to be grafted into Christ?
We can no more be saved and be of the world than that branch can be grafted into
the true vine and still be on the wild one. The Bible says, "If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him." There is something in being cut
off, in genuine heart repentance, and in being born again that transforms one
and makes him a new creature in Christ Jesus. We are not only transferred but
transformed and made new creatures -- not made over, but made new; not reformed,
but transformed; not of ourselves, but God in us. We at once produce the fruit
of the Spirit -- love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance.

Every branch that bears this fruit, the Father, God, purges it that it may bring
forth more fruit. More of what kind of fruit? More of the same kind. He purgeth,
makes holy, when? Not at the grafting, but after it has become a fruit bearing
vine. That definitely shows two distinct workings of God in the heart of those
whom He receives. Some people say, "Once in grace, always in grace." Listen to
what Jesus has to say, "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he (God, the
Father) taketh away." Those branches are gathered and cast into the fire and are
burned. That is what Jesus said -- not man.

In the purging, God takes out the old man -- the carnal mind -- the thing that
is not subject to the will of God, neither indeed can be. And He perfects our
love for God and holiness and His will in our hearts. He fills us with His
Spirit. We receive power that Jesus said we should. He said, "If ye love me,
keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter." He prayed that promised prayer in St. John 17:1-26. He prayed, "They
(His disciples) are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not
that thou shouldest take them out of the world (meaning from the earth), but
that thou shouldest keep them from the evil (that is in the world)." Then He
asked the Father to sanctify them. Why? "That they all may be one; as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee." Some say the disciples were not saved until
the day of Pentecost. Listen to Jesus' own words, "Thine they were, and thou
gavest them me those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost,
but the son of perdition (referring to Judas)." Now if they were not converted
until the day of Pentecost, how could Jesus say they were not lost? For all
unconverted people are lost after they have reached the age of accountability.

He told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they should receive the
promise of the Father. When they received the promise, they must have received
that for which Jesus had prayed for them. That would only be sensible to
believe. At the day of Pentecost where were the disciples? They, about one
hundred twenty in all, were tarrying for the promise. They were continuing in
prayer and praises when the promise was fulfilled and they were all filled with
the Spirit. What happened? Jesus had prayed, "Father, sanctify them," and He did
just that very thing. You cannot separate the sanctifying power from the baptism
of the Holy Ghost, for it was when they were sanctified that they were filled.

John the Baptist testified concerning himself that he was not the Christ, but he
also said, "I indeed baptize you with water: but one mightier than I cometh, the
latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire." Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?
I will tell you right here, it is the cure for deadness and formality and
carnality. It will take the laziness out and put the go in you, and you will go
wherever He leads. It will take the fuss out of you, the fret and stew, it will
put God's will first in your life and give you victory over the world the flesh,
and the devil. Holiness is the passport to heaven. Hallelujah! Glory to God! It
is bigger than man's program. Thank God it is the highway to heaven. "Follow
peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." It is
in answer to God's demand, "Be ye holy, for I am holy."

What does holiness do for us? It perfects our love. It gives us boldness in the
day of judgment. It was the plan of God from the beginning. He could not have
created us in His own likeness and not have made us holy. According to Luke, we
are to serve God "in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our
life." I am glad it says, "Before Him."

A little article was sent to me by a very special friend. I will relate it here.
The world is color blind, scoffing wrongfully. A minister was asked by a Quaker
woman, "Does not thee think that we can walk so carefully, live so correctly,
and avoid every fanaticism so perfectly, that every sensible person will say,
'That is the kind of religion I believe in'?" He replied, "Sister, if thee had a
coat of feathers as white as snow and a pair of wings as shining as Gabriel's,
somebody would be found somewhere on God's footstool with so bad a case of color
blindness as to shoot thee for a blackbird."

A few years ago, the man who had said he was going to do all he could to kill my
influence and get me out of the work, intended to spend a three-day vacation at
the home of a friend of his and of mine. At the same time I was in a revival and
staying at this friend's home. The friend knew how this man had felt and did not
know what to do. I said, "Let him come. I would love to see him." The man and
his family arrived about supper time. We all went out to the car to meet them.
We shook hands, and greeted them, and I said, "We are in a meeting and will be
glad to have you attend while you are here."

The Lord wonderfully anointed me for preaching that night. In the message I
related the incident of a half-truth -- the story told by Joseph Smith. At
family prayer the next morning, the visiting brother was given the Bible and
asked to read. He turned to a good chapter and began to read. His eyes filled
with tears. He came to me and asked me to forgive him, saying, "I have made it
hard on you. Forgive me." We hugged each other and I said, "From my heart you
are forgiven." Shouting and weeping took place for over an hour. It was a great
day and I love that man. But who will be responsible for the souls of the people
that, no doubt, would have been saved where my influence was hurt and where
those letters had been written to stop me in meetings that I was to have
conducted? Notwithstanding, the Lord kept me busy. Who is man that he will rise
up to oppose God's elect, God's called?

Cain rose up and slew Abel. And when has there ever been a time when such hasn't
been done? In Jeremiah's time they rose up and said, "Let us slay him by the
sword of our lips." How is that? By gossip and slander. Liars were even hired
against Christ. Look at Joseph -- sold by his brothers, made a slave, lied on by
a woman, and, no doubt, many died thinking him guilty. All he could do was to
suffer until God vindicated him. Oh, folks, we have no excuse to do it no matter
what Satan puts in the minds of people to do or to say. Jesus said "Follow me."
Now, if you do, you may expect to suffer wrong and have persecutions. Beware if
all men speak well of you. If you are doing something for God and His cause you
can expect Satan to oppose. He will hit where it will be the most felt and do
the most damage. By God's help I don't want to be found fighting God's children.
Jesus said that it would be better to have a millstone hanged about our necks
and we be drowned in the sea than to harm or offend one of His little ones. Oh
what will the judgment reveal? Jesus said, "Not everyone that saith unto me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will
of my Father."

If you follow Jesus, there will be some who will despise you. The closer the
cross you get, the more you will feel the weight of a lost world, and you will
say like Jesus, "Not my will, but thine be done." With ninety people dying each
moment, so I am told, and only a small percent ever having heard the gospel of
Jesus who is able to save to the uttermost, millions perishing that you and I
will have to answer for at the judgment, what can we say if we haven't done our
best to reach them. Oh, may God wake us up! It will soon be too late.

Can I sit idly by while souls are perishing and not give of my means, and my
prayers, and myself, for the Lord to use to help rescue them? Am I my brother's
keeper? Yes, I am responsible to live for God so that I may help reach the lost.
The Bible says, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion." These are days when the
devil is doing all he can to put the church folk to sleep, and to keep those
whom he has put to sleep from waking up. But the Bible says again, "Awake thou
that sleepest." May God help us to awaken before it is too late.

The five wise and the five foolish virgins were all asleep when the call came --
"Behold, the bridegroom cometh." Remember, they were all virgins; they were all
going to the same place. When the lamps were trimmed, the foolish ones' lamps
had gone out; they had been burning. That is a type of conversion. They had all
been converted, for they all had lamps and they all had been burning. The record
says they all arose to trim their lamps. The five wise had taken oil in their
vessels besides in their lamps. Oil is a type of the Holy Ghost. Notice, the
foolish said, "Our lamps are gone out" -- a confession, "We are in the dark.
Give us of your oil."

Listen to the answer, "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go
ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." It was midnight, the
farthest hour from light, and the most unlikely time to find any place to buy
oil. Notice those foolish virgins. Their lamps going out indicates that they
lost out, backslid, on their way to meet the bridegroom. When they returned from
seeking oil, the door was shut. They knocked but the master said, "I know you
not." He had known them, but his words, "I know you not," proves they had
backslidden. If he would have said, "I never did know you," it would mean that
they never had been saved. It was when the wise virgins began to fill their
lamps that the others saw they did not have enough oil. May God help us holiness
folk to trim our lamps and get a refilling, to show the professor without
holiness his need of more grace. Unless we get a refilling, we will not be
shining when He comes.

One time I had a dream that Jesus had come. We were going up to meet Him and I
saw a brother holding on to something His feet were straight up in the air. I
spoke to him, "Let loose and the Lord will take you. He is trying to." He said,
"I can't let loose." It was such a small thing that I could not see what it was.
He said again, "I can't let loose. God wanted me to let loose when I was
converted and I wouldn't. Now it is holding me and I cannot let loose." Friends,
we had better to let loose of everything that will keep us from being our best
for God, that we cannot do to please Him, or that we cannot take with us when we
die or when the rapture comes.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: CHAPTER 15
========================================================================

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I was thirteen years going through the thorns of my vision. It was very hard,
but God's grace was sufficient. I felt so weak under some of the severe tests;
there was so much involved and the enemy struck death blows as he waged war on
my soul. In the beginning of these thorns I was very conscious that I was in for
a long battle. I realized it was as the vision of my path had revealed. I wish I
could write all, but it involves some things that would not be fair for me to
mention on the part of the one that Satan tried to use to stop me from obeying
God and my calling. My Guide, the blessed Holy Ghost, kept me posted; He never
lies.

As I started through those thorns, to make things harder, Satan had a certain
preacher to say that he was going to do all he could to get me out of the work.
I had stood for the right on a misappropriated fund of $800. It had been raised
for a certain fund and had been used in another. I said, "Brothers I have a
conscience void of offense. My word is out; this money should be used for what
it was raised." We got that straightened out temporarily, but it did not set
well with some. I was made the goat. I faced one man four times over things
being said that were not true, until God said, "Say no more. This is part of the
thorns."

Letters were written that hindered me from holding some meetings that had been
previously arranged. Lies upon lies were told. And facing the thorns in other
ways pierced very deep into my heart until one time I lost thirty-four pounds in
fourteen days and was not sick. I cried till tears would not come. I thought I
could never smile again. When I needed my brethren to stand by me, they were
like Job's comforters. Different ones of my children said to me, when I was in
the worst of it, "Daddy, don't do anything that will make us lose confidence in
you." I never will forget one evening when the thorns were so sharp. I took my
three precious little boys -- Pearl Junior, Winfield, and Melvin -- to the
timber to pray. It was a very sad hour and we all wept and prayed. There are no
words to express the value of those prayers to my heart. Those dear little boys
sobbing and praying will never be erased from my mind, nor in heaven.

Later, just before Pearl Junior was to go to war, he came home. He and I were in
the back yard. I put my hands on his shoulders and said, "Junior, I have never
been with you like some fathers have been with their boys, but I love you as
much as any father can love his son." He put both arms around me and said,
"Daddy, I wouldn't have had you change for anything in the world. I am not
ashamed of you and will be praying for you," and kissed me. We wept on each
other's shoulders, not saying a word for sometime. It pays to do our best.
Sometimes when I look on myself, I say, "Oh, I wish I could have done this or
that," but I did the best I could or knew how at the time. I do see now where
some things might have been done differently.

When I came out of those thorns, I thought I could not live. My heart ached. My
home was gone with all my possessions. I was alone, yet not alone, for I had
Jesus. He never forsook me. I feel so unworthy of His great love. During this
period of time, God helped me to keep a forgiving spirit, and if I would do or
say anything that I thought did not sound or was not just right, it was easy to
say, "I am sorry. Please forgive me." No matter what people did to me, I kept a
forgiving spirit in my heart. Many times I said aloud, "Lord, forgive them, they
know not what they do."

One day old Satan said, "This is the pay you are getting for preaching. You just
as well quit." I said aloud, "Satan, you are a liar. My pay day will not be
until I stand before my Maker." Many times he suggested that I just as well to
quit, and once he whispered the discouraging words, "Your children are all now
in sin." They had backslidden. I said, "Old Satan, you are to blame for the
whole thing and do you think I will ever serve you? I hate you and your works.
It was you who caused all these heartaches. Do you think I will ever serve you?
I tell you right here and now, I will never serve you, but I will fight you till
I die."

My heart was very heavy and sad one day. It seemed that Jesus whispered to me,
"I am a man acquainted with sorrow and grief. Cast your burdens upon me." I
thought that I had, but I found that I was carrying something I could cast on
Him, and I did. One day, I had such a burden for my unsaved children. All but
two were backslidden at that time. I went to a timber to pray for them. The
brush was thick. I fixed a place and knelt to pray. The burden increased; the
agony for their souls became so heavy I felt I would die unless God helped. I
cried out, "Oh, God, I can't stand it to see my children lost." I felt impressed
to open my Bible, and these words seemed to stand out, "Your children shall
serve me and yet be taught in my ways." I leaped and shouted, "It shall be
done." That old brush patch could not hold me any longer. All but one are
serving the Lord now, and five of them have been called to preach and three of
them have married preachers. How good our Lord is. He saves us to serve, not to
quit. I say, Praise the Lord for His goodness to His children and to me. The
Lord has given me many very precious experiences.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: CHAPTER 13
========================================================================

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The summer following, I came to my big stumbling block. I had just closed a good
meeting and had a few hours I could spend at home before going to my next in
meeting. (I speak this in carefulness. Old Satan had been tormenting my wife and
she was under hard trial.) I arrived home on a hot morning. I sat down on the
porch in the shade to rest a few moments. My wife came to the door and said,
"Are you going to go hold that meeting?" I said, "I will have to. Then I can be
home for a while." With tears in her eyes, she said, "I can't keep saved and you
be gone from home." It was hard, I know, but God had called me. She then said,
"If you have to preach and be gone, I will take the children's lives and mine
and then you will be free to preach. If you go to that meeting, that is what I
am going to do." At that moment, I literally said, "Lord, I told You I would go
through, but I can't."

The vision of my path through life appeared before my eyes: the big object
before which I had stopped in my vision and where Satan stuck his pick in my
path and I began to fall backwards, and I said, "Oh, Lord, I will take this
leap." I felt I was falling, and leaped from the porch, and said aloud, "Lord, I
will take this leap." It was the saddest moment I had ever witnessed in our
married life up to then. This song came to my mind, "What a Friend We Have in
Jesus." I sang it and when I came to the last verse, "Do thy friends despise,
forsake thee?" He blessed my soul beyond words. It was the first time I had ever
rejoiced when I had fallen under test.

I had to pack my suitcase to be ready to go. After dinner I kissed my children
good-bye, feeling that they were all dying because I was obeying God to keep out
of hell. When I went to kiss my wife good-bye, she refused, saying, "You can
kiss me when I am in my coffin." It seemed my heart lost its strength yet I must
go. But no one will ever know the agony of those days.

During the time of that meeting, I stayed in my room by the hour and wept and
prayed. Every time the phone would ring I was afraid it was for me. If I would
see the telegraph boy coming, a faint feeling would come over me. As I was
closing that meeting the Lord spoke to me and said, "I want to use you at home."

In the meantime, just the day before I arrived back home, a neighbor woman was
talking to my wife, and knowing that she was going through a trial, said,
"Sister Poe, do you think your husband has the Lord?" She said, "I know he has
or he would not be out preaching now."

When I arrived in Oskaloosa, where I could catch the street car to University
Park where we lived, the superintendent of the Mission where I was saved saw me
at a distance. She caught the next street car and came to see if they could get
me to hold a meeting in the Mission. I said, "I will have to pray." I went
upstairs. As I prayed the Lord said, "This is the place I want you." I came
downstairs and arranged for the meeting to start that night. The next night my
wife was reclaimed. The next morning when we were having family prayer, wife was
thanking God that I had stood true to Him and stood the test. God was flooding
our souls. We heard shouting in the yard. Some preachers had come to see me and
when they heard wife say those words, they got blessed and shouted.

I had now crossed the seemingly impossible object in my path to heaven.

In the fall following that experience, I was to go to California and my brother
Albert was to go with me. But a few days before time for us to leave, he sent me
word that he could not go. I felt he should go and sent word to that effect, but
he said he could not. Four years before that I had had a dream of seeing him
hurt in the mine and saw him dying. I wrote to him at once, told him my dream.
and asked him to quit the mine at once and never go back inside one. While I was
in California, he said to his wife, "If Pearl had come by, I would have gone
with him." He went to my home and told my wife to tell me to come up as soon as
I returned. I regret that I didn't, but when I returned home, another meeting
was waiting for me and they desired that it be held before Christmas. I told my
wife to write to Albert and tell him that as soon as the meeting closed, I would
be up to see him.

A man that owned a coal mine asked Albert to return to the mine and help them.
He told them that as soon as his brother Pearl returned, he was going to go
preach with him. He was persuaded to help them for a few days, and there he met
with a fatal accident.

I was in Missouri in the meeting. I had an uneasy feeling for two days. On the
second night I told the people at the church how I felt, and that if they were
going to get right with God in that meeting, they had better be doing it, for I
felt something was wrong back home. We had a number of seekers that night. I
walked home with some people who had asked me to stay all night with them. They
lived a distance from the church.

About 1:00 a.m. I heard the phone ringing. I called to the man of the home,
"Answer that; it is for me." I began dressing at once. I heard him say, "Yes, he
is here." Then I heard him say, "I will tell him." He then said, "Your mother or
brother is not expected to live until morning." My car was about three miles
from there, frozen in what had been mud. We walked to the car and dug it out of
the frozen ground. My luggage was about four miles from there. I got in the old
Dodge car and drove over rough roads where the mud had rolled up, dropped off
the wagon wheels and had frozen. After getting my clothes, I had ten miles to go
over that same kind of roads. When I came to the highway, the Lord said "Drive
carefully."

I had been praying much, asking God to spare whichever it might be until I could
get there to see them. It seemed that my arms from within me reached the throne
of God and took hold of the altar. When I reached mother's home, I was told that
it was my brother Albert, and that he was in Des Moines, Iowa, in the Methodist
hospital. I drove on to Des Moines. When I arrived, all my brothers, my sister,
and mother were at the hospital. I went to see my brother, but the doctor
refused to let me in, saying, "He is normal and has a chance to live." When the
doctor went out, my brother sent for me to come in, telling the nurse that I was
his preacher brother. She refused him, but he said to his wife, "Go get Pearl. I
want to see him." I went in. He said, "God bless you, old boy. I have confidence
in you. Pray." I knelt and prayed and he praised the Lord. When I finished
praying, he wanted to get up. He felt that whatever I would ask of God, He would
do it. But they had two needles in his chest and a tube fastened to him. I said,
"I will keep on praying."

That evening, I was out in the hospital yard, still holding on to God. So
clearly God spoke to me, "Pearl, are you willing for Me to have My way?" I said,
"Yes, Lord, I am, but I am not willing that the devil kill my brother." The Lord
said, "I can do nothing as long as you hold on like this. It is My will to take
him, but if you hold on like this, I will spare him." It seemed my hands that
had been holding on to the altar of God let loose as I said, "Lord, if it is
Your will to take him, Thy will be done, not mine." I want to tell you here, it
took the grace of God to say that, but I am so glad His grace was sufficient.
Oh, it pays, it pays to obey Jesus at any cost.

At Albert's funeral, I was asked to dismiss, and to have the closing prayer at
the graveyard. As I prayed the power of God came in torrents of glory. Strong
men wept aloud. One hardened sinner told me that he never felt so near being
converted in his life. Another hard sinner came and put his arms around my
brother Vern, my mother, and myself, and said, "Oh, my God, I would give
everything in the world if I had what you folk have." I said, "God is no
respecter of persons. That is just what you will have to do -- give up the world
and seek Him with your whole heart."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER 14
========================================================================

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I was called for a meeting in Missouri. When I arrived, I began to pray for the
first service. All I could hear the Spirit say was, "Let patience have her
perfect way." I went to the church and prayed. It was the same thing. I knew
that was not for the church, but for me. I did not get the text until they were
singing the last song. When I started to preach, a couple of young women began
to throw mud balls, talk and laugh aloud. The Lord said, "Let patience have her
perfect way." So I did not say a word to reprove them. Once I caught them
looking toward me, and I gave my head a little shake "no," but they paid no
attention. The Lord kept reminding me to let patience have her perfect way.

The next night those two girls came with their pockets filled with shelled corn.
They wore red sweaters. They moved up about three seats from the back. A
bald-headed man sat near the front. Those girls threw grains of corn at his bald
head. The first grain hit his head and slid off. It brought quite a laughter and
I could tell by the way he was acting that he was almost ready to do something
about it. I shook my head at him. Those girls kept up a commotion all through
that service. The next night they came for frolic again and sat about half way
toward the front. I thought, "Girls, you are getting on dangerous grounds now."
They started their disturbance again. but it wasn't funny. Even they didn't
enjoy it. Soon the Holy Ghost smote them with the power of old-time conviction
and they began to weep. When I gave the altar call, both hurried to the altar.
Before they knelt to pray, both asked me to forgive them. I told them that I
freely forgave them and if they would ask God in the same way as they had asked
me, He would also forgive them. They prayed through. The first night they had
carried on, some of those in power in the church wanted to do something about
it. I said, "Let the Lord take care of it. He can do a much better job than we
can." Thank God. He did.

I became very restless. I went to the church to pray, to the hay mow, to the
timber, but could not seem to pray through. On Saturday night I was to sleep
with the pastor of the church. I was under the burden and was restless most of
the night. I fell asleep long enough for God to show me some visions. The first
that he showed me was a cane mill. The cane had been run through the juicer
already. God said, "Pearl, put those cane pummies through again." I said, "Lord,
those are dry." He said, "I know it, but tighten down the machine and put them
through the mill, and you will get enough to make a batch of sorghum, and it
will be very good." I said, "Lord, I will do it." I wakened and prayed some
more. The Lord impressed me that the dry pummies were the church folk.

I went to sleep again and had another vision. It was of a woman; she was dead,
but was to give birth to a child. A crowd of people were gathered. They said to
me, "That child is alive and you must help it." I said, "I am no doctor." They
said, "You will be responsible for that child's life." I said, "I will do all I
can," and as I knelt by the side of that mother and began to help her, she came
to life. I said, "Pray and the child will be born." I wakened, and the Spirit
said, "This is the meeting you are in." I again went to sleep and dreamed that
the preacher was closing the meeting the next day. I wakened and God said, "You
are responsible for these souls."

Again I went to sleep and had a vision of many happenings in that community back
for as far as twenty years. I wakened and spent the rest of the night in prayer.
The next day the pastor said to me, "The weather is getting bad. I think we
should close the meeting." I told him that I did not feel that way. He replied,
"I am not in favor of it going on." I said, "If you don't want to stay, you may
go home, but God has shown me, that I am responsible for souls here, and I am
staying. He said, "I am pastor and I am not in favor." I said, "Brother, it was
the church that called you as pastor and it was the church that called me for a
meeting. I am an ordained elder and I am going to obey God." He went home and we
had a wonderful meeting.

One night in the second week, a man and wife came in, whom I had seen in the
vision. The next day I was sent for to go to their home. The man with whom I was
staying said "You had better not go down there. He has a bad reputation." I
said, "I will go; you pray for me." When I arrived, I was asked to come into the
house. The father sent their two small boys out of the house and told them to go
over in a pasture on a hill where he could see them from the window. They were
to stay there until he called for them.

There was only one door in the house. I was asked to sit down. He took his chair
and set it against the door. He began talking by saying, "Last night, when we
came in the church, you looked at us as if you had seen us before." I said, "I
have." He asked, "Where?" I answered, "In a vision on Saturday night." He turned
pale, and said, "What did you see?" I said, "The clothing you have on is stolen
and all the goods in this house was stolen from the railroad cars. You helped
rob a store," and I told him where, and described those who helped and told him
where they had a lot of stuff hidden. He said, "What next?" I said, "You struck
a man in the head with a club and he died later from it. You murdered that man.
Though the law could not pin it on you, God has." Then he said, "What next?" I
said, "Down around the bluff, you have a hole dug in the side of the hill and
you have it covered with brush. In it you have a still, a barrel of mash, and
twenty-seven gallons of booze." He said, "My God, Wife, this is of God, and it
is true. Mr. Poe, what can I do?" I said, "You have stolen meat from your
neighbor's meat houses and stolen stock from their pastures. You must repent and
confess your sins. Go to those from whom you have stolen and tell them you are
getting right with God and that you will pay them as soon as you can get the
money." Every one of the men forgave him. He took back the things they had not
used that had been taken from the store, and was forgiven. He went to the altar
and was gloriously saved. He sought holiness and claimed a call to preach. I was
told that his wife opposed it and that she backslid and made it hard for him and
left him. God knows the future.

There were men in that community who were afraid to come to meeting because of
their sins. After this one had confessed, one man quit coming. I had been asked
to take dinner at his house on Sunday. He did not come to church that morning. I
went to the house for dinner. I asked where he was and they said, "At the
river." I went about a mile to the river to find him. I heard someone in a boat
and located him by the sound. I slipped up to the bank of the river, keeping
low, so that he could not see me, for I knew that if he saw me he would hide. I
was standing within a few feet of him when he looked up and saw me. He said,
"Oh, you have found me. I never wanted you to see me again after I heard that
you had a vision of So-and-so."

"I knew you were hiding out on the meeting, but I will not tell others what He
showed me about you." He said, "I knew you knew about my sins." I said, "God
knew and He is the one you will have to face some day. You had better to face
your sins here and now than to face them in the judgment." I coaxed him to take
dinner with us. While we were eating the phone rang. We were all asked to come
to pray with a woman.

I had been warned of God not to have an open testimony meeting, only to ask
those who had prayed through to tell it. This woman, with whom we were to pray,
arose one night and said, "Whee, whee, I have the victory, Whee. Brother, I
don't know if you will get to preach or not tonight." I said kindly, "Sit down.
You don't have anything of the kind. Sit down," and down she went. In a couple
of nights she began the same thing again. I said, "Sit down, please. You are not
saved. I know that when I have a message from God, I am to preach it. Please
take your seat." She did, but she was not back for a couple of nights, and some
good folk said, "Brother Poe, you offended that woman. I said, "No, she is home
praying through." They said, "Do you think so?" I said, "I surely do, and it
will not surprise me if the whole church is called to her house to pray with her
most any time."

When we arrived at her place, there was the whole church; she had called them in
to pray with her. After we had prayed for some time, she jumped up and came
across the room to where I was and said, "Now, Brother Poe, do you think I have
the victory?" I said, "No, Sister, you do not have the victory." She stopped,
stood still, and said, "I don't have, folks. I have been backslidden for over a
year. I am ashamed and sorry." By this time she was broken up and began to sob
and cry in humble repentance. She prayed in agony of soul and prayed through. It
was wonderful. The meeting continued and she was sanctified.

The meeting had not closed but a few weeks when that woman dropped dead. Then
God showed me that if I had not obeyed Him and been faithful, she would have
been damned forever. Oh, folk, there is a praying through. There is no use to go
on with a profession that is not true. We have so much shallowness in these
days. That is one reason why we do not see more done for God and more people
having greater victory in their lives. God wants us to believe Him, obey Him,
and be used of Him. We do not let loose and let God have His way enough. He
wants us to be free.

Before the meeting closed, a number of people prayed through -- over fifty young
people. What a fine group! It paid to let patience have her perfect way.

I learned afterward that the reason those girls acted the way they did was
because some had spoken to them when they were not to blame and the young folk
had been misjudged and threatened. We must be careful. The devil is looking for
something to drive our young folk away from church. If I had scolded those
girls, I would not have won them to Christ. How I thank God that He told me to
let patience have her perfect way.

Sometimes people see things that really are funny and if you are in church where
you want to be good, sometimes it is hard to keep from laughing. One time while
I was backslidden, just after I was married, there was a special meeting at the
Methodist Church. Wife and I were going and I asked a young man to go along. We
sat in next to the front seat. This young man was bashful, but a good boy. A
family came and sat in the same seat with us. They had a girl that was not too
bright. She sat by this boy, and reached her hand over and laid it on his.
Easily he pushed it off, then she put her hand on his leg. His face was so red,
I don't believe it could have gotten any redder. It was all I could do to keep
from laughing aloud. Just then the people were asked to kneel to pray. I
whispered to that boy and asked if he wanted me to speak to my wife and have her
to get over where he was. He was so bored that he spoke out loud and used a
by-word and said, "Yes." That was just too much. Try as I would, I snickered
aloud and could not help it.

I went from the meeting in Missouri to the West Coast. I conducted the first
meeting in Long Beach, California, then went to Oregon. While in a meeting in
St. Helens, Oregon, I was called to Newburg, Oregon. I prayed about it and
answered that I could come. While in St. Helens, a converted Catholic told me
that he and his wife had been fasting one meal each day of that meeting and some
days, they fasted all day. There were seekers from the first night and each
night of the meeting When I left for Newburg, he and his wife said, "We are
going to continue to fast and pray for the meeting there."

When I arrived in Newburg, I met a man who was a Russian, and converted
Catholic. He said, "I am going to fast and pray for this meeting each day." It
was a great meeting. Brother M. C. Clark was pastor. We were having seekers
almost every night.

One Saturday, I went upstairs to pray. After praying for about an hour, I seemed
to have come to the end, and said, "Amen," and got up. The Spirit checked me,
"You have not prayed through. Go back." I went back, prayed about another hour,
and got up again. The Spirit said, "You didn't pray through. Go back." I prayed
about another hour, got up, started to the door, and the Spirit spoke again as
before. I went back to pray again, only to get in an agony of soul for souls,
but not for long. I began to shout, "Victory! Victory! Victory!"

About that time I heard Sister Clark shout, "Glory! Glory!" That night we had a
big altar service. About midnight a young woman, who had poison in her hand with
which to commit murder, prayed through. About that time a young woman who had
not come to the altar, dropped out of her seat and began screaming as if she
were being scalded. About an hour later, a young girl came in and asked if I
were Brother Poe. She said, "I was here the other night, but there were so many
here that I could not get in. We stood outside and listened. A group of us young
people were meeting tonight and I told them about the services. We want to get
saved." I said, "Bring them in and we will pray for you." She said, "We are not
dressed to come in. We just have on our everyday clothes" (that was not slacks
or shorts either. They were dressed modestly. The boys had their overalls and
lumber jacket shirts on). I went out to the car and there were seven besides
herself. We told them the way of repentance and started praying. We prayed all
night, and at daybreak, all but one was saved.

The District Elder came that morning. (The meeting was in the Free Methodist
Church.) I said, "You will have to preach this morning." He said, "Only on one
condition -- that you preach in Sunday school," to which I readily agreed. There
were sixty five at the altar when I finished I preached again in the afternoon
and that night. Many were at the altar.

Brother Clark announced that the meeting would close that night and that I would
be leaving the next day.

Monday morning, Brother Clark and his wife went to Portland. He was getting
ready to go to New York City to the General Conference. In a little while after
they had gone, a person came, wanting to be saved. While we, Sister Clark's aged
mother and I, were praying, another came. It kept up like that all day. We had
no time to stop even to eat. At 4:00 p.m., the time for me to go, there were
eight people in the room to be prayed for. I could not go. Brother Clark came
home. He said, "Well, since you are still here, what do you think of having
service tonight?" I replied, "I believe it is of God." He phoned to a few, told
a few others, and we went to church early, and could hardly get in the house for
the crowds. He went outside while we were singing. He returned and said,
"Brother Poe, this house is packed, but they are twenty-five deep around this
church." He continued, "There are over twenty-five hundred people out there that
cannot get in." He announced that the meeting would close that night, but the
next day there were so many who came for prayer that we could not get away. It
was like that until Thursday night, with great crowds and many at the altar. We
continued until Sunday, and closed with an overcrowded house and numbers
standing outside.

It was reported that over a hundred prayed through in the parsonage that week
besides the many who prayed in the church. That meeting ran for five weeks. This
ten-day stuff just begins to awaken some, in my opinion. It is a church killer
instead of a revival, and that is one of the reasons we are not seeing revivals.
Oh, you say, the people are getting tired. Let them pray through until they
strike victory, then get under the burden and pray until the Lord has put
conviction on and it will not be so troublesome. Amen! I am not writing this
book to get pats an the back. Most people are so dead and don't know it that it
is pitiful. It is hard to get people awake, but God is able. He needs someone to
travail in pain for souls. Too many are in a state of indifference and it is
hard to get them out of their lethargy long enough to get them revived so that
we can reach the near-damned world. Many have never seen a revival and never
will unless we can get them to see that God is depending on them. It costs
something to have a revival and most people are not willing to humble themselves
and, like Nehemiah, weep and cry and confess until God answers. It costs fasting
and praying and self-denial. It is our job. Will we wake up before it is too
late? O God, keep me stirred. I must keep the fire, the burden, the vision, the
passion for souls. Without a vision, the people perish.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: CHAPTER 12
========================================================================

CHAPTER TWELVE

The winter following, I was strangely led of God on an outstanding mission. I
told my wife that I felt led to go to the railroad station and take a trip, but
was not clear as to where, but perhaps to Eldon, Iowa. The Free Methodists had
asked me to help them in a meeting sometime when I could. When I arrived at the
station, I was impressed to get my ticket to Ottumwa. When I arrived there, I
prayed and asked the Lord where I should go, and He said, "To Fort Madison."
When I arrived in Fort Madison, I went to Brother Armstrong's. On arriving
there, he told me that my brother Vernon was preaching near Dallas. We went to
hear him and he asked me to preach the next night. I told him that I would if I
were there. That night I stayed with the Saintclairs.

The next evening, as we were getting ready for supper, they asked me if I knew
that Sister Carpenter was not expected to live till morning. I had not heard it
before, so I said, "Let us go early to see her." The doctor had said, "She may
live until midnight, but not likely." When I went into her room, she said, "I am
so glad you came. I want you to preach my funeral." I said, "I did not come to
preach your funeral. God is going to heal you and you are going to go hear me
preach." She said, "That is impossible." I said, "Not with God." I knelt by the
side of the bed and laid my hand on her arm that was under the sheet. Just then
the power of God came in glory -- torrents of it. I did not pray a word, but
shouted and praised God and wept for joy.

There were unsaved people in the room. They knelt and began to pray and call
upon God. I could not stop shouting to pray for them. The sick woman was
shouting with all the strength that she had. That lasted for nearly three
quarters of an hour. When we quit shouting, she said to her husband, "Get my
clothes. I haven't an ache nor pain now." She dressed and walked to the car and
rode nearly seven miles to meeting. She had been bedfast for nearly a year and a
half with Bright's disease, in other words, T. B. of the kidneys. She was so
poor in body that she looked like skin and bones. I tried to preach, but the
people kept watching her, and I could not get their attention. Finally, I asked
her to testify.

Sister Carpenter arose and said, "Folks, you know the doctor said I could not
live till morning. When Brother Poe came in, I asked him to preach my funeral.
He said, 'God is going to heal you.' I said, 'That is impossible.' 'But nothing
is impossible with God,' he said, and knelt down and the healing hand of God
touched me. It seemed I could see a stream of gold come down from heaven and
touch me on the forehead and fold to my feet, back and forth over my body. It
went through and through me. I am healed." She then praised the Lord for His
great work. Her husband and she asked me to stay that night with them.

Upon arriving home from service, I felt clear that I was to leave for a place I
had never heard of. I told them that I would be leaving on an early train in the
morning. About three quarters of an hour before I was to leave, I heard a knock
on my door and I answered. "Get up. We have breakfast ready." The night before I
had asked them to stay in bed, for I could slip out early and not bother them.
But there were hot biscuits and a steaming breakfast. After returning thanks,
she said, "Brother Poe, I slept like I did when I was sixteen and feel so good.
I did not waken until God told me to get up and fix breakfast, and I feel so
well now. But I want to make a request: When I do die, will you preach my
funeral?" I said, "You may outlive me." Five years later she had not had a
headache nor had she been sick. That is Divine healing. To God be all the glory
-- not to me, nor to any other, but God through His dear Son Jesus Christ, our
Lord and Savior, had done the work.

As I took the train, and arrived in the little town where the Lord had led me. I
went into a restaurant and inquired if there were any holiness people living
there. They said, "Some people live here that they call 'the saints.' " I said,
"Mormons?" They said, "No, they are very strict people." I found where they
lived. It was planned of God.

We had a good visit and talked of the workings of our God. Toward evening, they
said, "Do you know Sister Paget from Fresno, California? She is holding a
meeting about eleven miles from here." We went to the meeting and on the way the
Lord gave me a message. I told the folk I was with, not to tell the evangelist
that I was a preacher. When we arrived and it was time to start the meeting, the
evangelist was not there. I was asked to lead the singing. After we had sung
about three songs, prayer was called for. Then I asked that we sing, More, More
About Jesus. We were almost through the song when the evangelist arrived. She
looked at me and said, "You have a message for us." I said, "Me?" "Yes," she
said "I was in my room praying for a message and the Lord told me that the man
leading the singing has the message." That I could not deny, though I had told
no one. God gave the message and many souls were moved upon.

After returning from the service, we talked for some time of the leadings of the
Lord. The next morning, I told the folk with whom I had stayed that I was to
leave on the 8:00 a.m. train. We ate breakfast and got down to pray. A young
woman in the home began to seek the Lord. I heard the train that I was to take,
whistle into town. We prayed on for nearly an hour. The girl prayed through and
said, "The Lord has just called me to go as a missionary," and praises were
heard. I said, "My mission is fulfilled. I must hurry and catch that train."
They said, "That train has been gone an hour." I said, "The Lord has told me to
go." I did and there stood the train. I told the conductor where I wanted to go
and he said, "Aboard."

When I arrived at the next place where the Spirit had led me, I found there was
a Holiness Association meeting going on there. I started to it, but received a
checking of the Spirit. I hurried back to the depot, and asked the Lord where He
wanted me to go, and He told me to another town. There I prayed again and the
Lord led to Washington Iowa. That was back toward home. When I arrived, a train
was there going to my home. I started to buy my ticket, but felt a very slight
checking. Then came a quick urge, "Get your ticket for home." Again I went to
the window to get my ticket, but again, a slight checking I left the window to
pray. While praying I heard the conductor say "Aboard." That same quick spoken
Spirit said, "You have grieved the Holy Ghost and I became fearful and uneasy.
Finally I thought, The Holy Ghost is not the author of confusion. "Dear Lord,
Thou knowest I did my best to obey Thee. Now where do you want me to go?"
"Muscatine." I arose from my knees went to the window and asked when I could get
a train to Muscatine, and was told that it was then coming in. I bought my
ticket and was soon on my way, in the perfect will of God.

I want to say right here that it is not always easy to know the will of God, but
if it is to do something on the spur of the moment, it is best to wait. The Word
tells us to "Wait on the Lord," and if we wait, we can be much more sure. Now on
the train, it was getting late and I saw that it would be midnight when we would
arrive in Muscatine. I bowed my head and said "Dear Lord, have some one in town
that I know so that I can go out in the country to where I know some people." As
I was walking up the street, I saw a family sitting in their car. I walked over
to them and spoke and said, "I am ready to go." They said, "We have been sitting
here ready to go for an hour but it seemed that we must have forgotten something
or that we should not leave." I told them how I had prayed. I rode with them to
the home of Brother Hepter.

The next morning (Sunday), Brother Hepter and I planned for service in his home
for that night. We went to Muscatine to tell some folk about it. On our way out
of town, we both spoke about the same time, "Why didn't we stop somewhere for
service?" He wanted to turn back, but I said, "I don't feel that we should."
About four miles out in the country, we saw a church. I said, "There is the
place," and we went in. There stood a tall man, just announcing his text. He had
a great subject about discerning the evil and the good. He had a small box,
which was divided into two parts. He had sand in both parts, and the sand in
each looked the same. He said, "One of these will make glass, the other will
not. The reason -- the one has a substance in it that will not unite in melting.
The other is clean sand. That is a sanctified person; the first, a justified
person." He preached a striking message and I amen-ed him. He was a Methodist
preacher and had the experience.

As soon as service was over, he came to me and said, "I perceive by the cut of
your gib that you are a preacher." I replied, "I am." He invited me to preach
for him that night. I told him that I was engaged. "Well, by the way, what would
hinder you from preaching for me in First Church in town this morning." I
consented.

They sang one song had prayer, and announced that I would preach. Never, in all
my life, have I had an easier time preaching. In fact, I didn't preach. The Holy
Spirit so came upon me until I was carried so far out in God and the Spirit, I
could not tell after the message what my text was, and neither could anyone
else. Those old-time Methodists were up on their feet, waving their hands and
shouting, and the preacher patting me on the back and shouting. He would no more
than sit down until he would be up shouting, with perhaps twenty of the people
at a time. I had never seen anything like it. I want to say right here that I
have met more courtesy in some of those churches than I have in most of those
where I have given the greater part of my life. Jealousy and envy are terrible
sins.

We had a good service in the Hepter home that night, with several seeking
salvation. I was asked to preach on Monday night in a home where the people had
been reading infidel books. They claimed to be unbelievers, but God got hold of
them when they heard their daughter testify to how God had caused them to stay
in town for an hour in answer to my prayer. After I preached that night, both
the man and woman were converted. On the way to the Hepter home again, I said,
"I am through. God is speaking to me to go to Toddville, Iowa," and I was taken
to the train in the morning to go to Toddville.

On arriving in a new town to me at about 9:00 p.m., I bowed my head and said,
"Dear Lord, show me the house I am to stay in." I was impressed to go to a
certain house. When I knocked, a crippled woman came to the door and asked me
in. I lifted my cap, walked in, went in the front room and set my suitcase down,
put my cap on it, and said, "The Lord has sent me to this town to hold a
meeting, and to this house to abide." About that time I heard springs of a bed
making a noise. In a moment here came a man, with a long beard, out of the
bedroom, shouting, "Glory toos Got. Glory toos Got." He grabbed me and hugged me
and said, "We have been praying every day for two weeks for God to send us an
evangelist. Let's go tell the pastor." I asked where the pastor lived and found
that it was several miles away. I told him, "This will keep till morning." He
went to see one of his neighbors who carried the mail and told him the
happenings and wanted to know if he would take us over to see the pastor the
next morning. Arrangements were made, but we must be back before 7:00 a.m. At
5:00 a.m. we were knocking at the door of the pastor in Marion, Iowa -- over
twenty miles from Toddville. The pastor, a total stranger, asked when I could
begin. I said, "Tonight." He said, "Go ahead. I won't be able to be there before
Sunday." I said, "Brother, I am a stranger to you. Are you going to turn me
loose in your pulpit, not knowing me?" He said, "In this case, I can, for it is
of God. A great load has rolled off and I can feel the Spirit." I said, "I do
not belong to your denomination, but I do belong to God." He said, "You go ahead
and obey Him and preach what He lays on your heart."

The first night that I preached, a woman jumped up, praising and shaking hands
as she did. I had a feeling in my inner consciousness that it was not real. I
said nothing but went on preaching. The next night it was rather quiet, but the
third night, when I was about two-thirds through preaching, that same woman
jumped up and said, "Come on, folks. You know the evangelist is pounding on cold
iron. Let's go to the altar." About forty-five came. They all prayed and as they
were getting up, I said, "Go home, sinners as you were when you came. None of
you prayed through." About every other night they would all come back to the
altar, but I would always send them home, saying, "None of you have prayed
through." You may say, "How did you know they hadn't prayed through?" I knew
what I was preaching when they went under and I knew they hadn't done anything
about it.

On Sunday night, it was about the same ordeal -- all the members at the altar. I
said, "Go home, sinners; not a one of you prayed through." The good pastor said,
"Brother Poe, some of those folks are the best in the church." I said, "That may
be, but they are not praying through." He said, "Very well. Do your best. We
need a revival." Those people kept repeating, coming to the altar for nearly
three weeks.

On Sunday morning I preached in the Sunday school hour and we had a break --
twelve young people prayed through. When I started preaching in the regular
service, the same woman that had gotten up the first night and put on a shout
that registered something was wrong, arose and went across the room to some
people and asked forgiveness. I said, "Now, come and ask God to forgive you and
He will do it," and they came. I kept right on preaching. They soon arose with
victory. Others did the same until they had all confessed. I do not know how
many times folks were at the altar that morning. The service closed at 4:00
p.m., and no one complained of the late hour. We were in for a revival.

While preaching on Friday following that Sunday, I felt God would have me say,
"There are three people here tonight who, unless you give your hearts to God,
will be in hell before I am through preaching Sunday morning." One person became
angry and said he would never go back to hear that preacher again. While I was
preaching on Sunday morning, one of the men that was present on Friday night,
was driving his car. It skidded and went into a deep ditch and he was instantly
killed. As I was about half through preaching, some boys came to the door and
said, "A black man is in the barn behind the church." Some of the men near the
back went out. A man who had been in the service on Friday night had hung
himself and was dead. About that moment, some boys drove up and told a man on
the outside the church to tell So-and-so to come out. He went out and was told
that his boy had accidentally shot himself and was dead. That boy had also been
in Friday night's service, and was one of the boys of that Sunday school. When
his parents went to church, he went hunting and was killed by his own gun. The
three were dead and it was not yet noon.

When the man, who had said he would not come back, heard what had happened, he
said to his wife, "I have to go to church and give my heart to God or I will be
the next to go to hell." He was a seeker that night. The meeting closed with
victory. A year later I received a letter from the pastor, and he said, "We had
a missionary meeting today. The glory fell and we didn't get away from the
church until 4:00 p.m. It made us think of the big day when victory really came
-- that Sunday when they all met God and met His conditions."

If we see old-time revivals, we must not compromise, but we must be led of the
Holy Ghost. Amen!


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: CHAPTER 11
========================================================================

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After moving to town, I was kept busy in the Lord's work. Having finished the
year of pastoring for the Friends Church, God opened the door for full-time
evangelism, and led me from meeting to meeting. He led me to Dallas City,
Illinois. Sister Bassett was pastor. We started the meeting on Thursday night.
By Sunday night there had been 51 seekers and a great visitation of the power of
God.

On Monday night, as I was giving the altar call, I saw a large crowd of men
gathering in front of the church. I had a feeling that all was not well. I knelt
at the altar and prayed, "Oh, Lord, what does that crowd of men mean?" The
Spirit said, "It is a mob coming for you." I said, "Lord, what have I done?" The
Spirit assured me that I had preached the Word. I said, "Then, I am ready to die
in defense of it." Just then, with my eyes closed, a large shining angel
appeared before my vision. He held a drawn sword. He said to me, "Fear them not.
Lo, I am with thee even to the end." How he inspired me with boldness! I leaped
to my feet. By this time those men had opened the door and had filled the aisles
and the front of the church. There were eleven seekers at the altar. I leaped
out on the altar and said, "You set of cowards, I dare you to touch me. God will
smite you if you do. I dare you." I could see revolvers, clubs, and knives. One
man with a piece of furnace grate had it drawn back to hit me on the head, but
he could not strike. God put a great fear on that mob. A radiance of light
seemed to encircle me. It was my guardian angel, I do believe. The men on the
outside began to run. Some fell and others trampled on them. Those inside the
church began to crowd to get out; some were so smitten by the power of God that
their strength left them. One man grabbed around a tree to keep from falling.
His strength gave way; he fell backward and lay on the walk.

The people of the church wanted to escort me home. I said, "No, I do not want a
one of you to walk with me." They warned me of the danger of going alone. I
said, "I am not afraid, and I shall walk alone." My protection was not in man,
but in God.

That same night Brother Armstrong of Fort Madison, Iowa, said to his wife, "I
feel a great burden for Brother Poe. Let us pray." He said that while praying
for God to protect me, and with his eyes closed, he saw three angels walking and
heard one say, "You go on your errand for the Lord, and I will go help Pearl."
Oh, beloved friends, did not He say that His angels were ministering spirits?
Did not an angel help Hezekiah slay an army? Does not the Word teach us that the
angels of the Lord encamp round about those that fear Him? I faced that mob each
night for four weeks.

One night I went home with some folk from an adjoining town. The mob found it
out. The following night as we were going to meeting, they were out along the
road -- a hundred or more of them. The young woman who was driving the car was
frightened, and said, "Oh, what shall we do?" I told her to drive slowly and
keep going. The young woman's mother was a crippled woman; she remained very
calm. I was sitting in the back seat of the old model T Ford. I unsnapped the
side curtains and as we passed the mob, I stuck my head out in plain sight and
said, "Come on to the church. I will be preaching in a little while." No one
attempted to take hold of the car.

On Saturday night, a week before the meeting closed, I had a heavy burden. I
prayed a long while at the church, went home, and prayed with the family where I
was staying. I was asking the Lord to give us twenty souls on Sunday. I went to
my room, prayed a long time, went to bed, and was praying again when the Lord
spoke, "If you want to talk to Me, get out of bed and get on your knees." I
obeyed, and the Lord said, "Ask largely." I said, "Lord, give me twenty souls."
He said, "That is easy; ask largely." I said, "Give me all over that that you
see fit." I am ashamed that I did not ask for hundreds instead of twenty that
morning. I was asked to preach in Sunday school. More than twenty came to the
altar. We prayed and several claimed victory, but there were three or four left
at the altar. I said, "You at the altar, stay until you get victory." I began
the next sermon, and before I was through, people began coming to the altar.
Some walked over the benches to get there. Again, over a score came. We prayed
until time to start the next service at 2:00 p.m. The altar was again filled in
that service. God had spoken to me, "This day thou shalt not eat nor drink
before Me while people are still praying at the altar." We had testimony
meeting, and by the time all had prayed through around the altar, it was time to
begin the night service. We closed with a full altar of seekers. It was a great
day to all who were there.

Just before going to Dallas City, I was in a meeting in Denmark, Iowa. One day a
lady came to the place where I was staying to get me to go pray for a sick
child. I asked the parents if they would put away all sin and forsake all
worldliness and repent and serve the Lord. They said they would. I prayed for
them and for the child, and she was instantly raised up. After a few days the
aunt of the child came for me, saying, "Hurry, Brother Poe; we believe the child
is dying." And it did look like it. I said, "What have you done? Have you gone
back on the Lord? If so, I cannot pray for the Lord to heal your girl." They
began to cry and say, "Do pray for our girl." I said, "If you are not going to
raise this girl for God, if you are going to bring her up to serve the devil, it
will be better that she die now. What have you done?" The father said, "I went
back to my tobacco, and the women to their clubs and lodges." I said, "Then I
will not pray for her healing, if you are going to live like that." The man
hurried to the door and threw his tobacco away. The women gave up their lodges
and clubs and all worldliness, and such seeking one seldom sees. God met with us
and the child was instantly healed.

The aunt of the girl went home and told her husband what had happened. She said,
"I am through with sin. The money you used to give me for lodges and clubs, I
will give to the church." The husband had boasted in the fact that he was an
unbeliever. He and his wife were pals and loved each other. She had always gone
hunting and fishing with him on Sundays, but she told him she could not do that
any more. He said, "We have been pals. I will tell you what I will do. If you
will go with me one Sunday, you may go to church the next. She said, "Husband, I
told the Lord that if He would heal my niece, I would serve Him. He has healed
her and I am afraid that if we do not serve Him, we may lose our own daughter."

The first Sunday that I was in Dallas City, in came the folk from Denmark -- the
so-called unbeliever, his wife, and daughter, and the father, mother, and little
girl that had been healed. The father, mother, and aunt were at the altar to be
sanctified, and the uncle and his daughter to be saved. It pays to take our
stand for God. That woman never could have reached her husband if she had
compromised.

We saw many cases of healing during the Dallas meeting. To God be all the glory.

The last Sunday night of the meeting, while we were at the altar praying with
seekers, a man came in, tapped me on the back, and shoved his right hand in
front of me. On his hand, in red, were the initials of the Mason lodge, the K.
K. K., Odd Fellows lodge and the Moose lodge. He said, "If you are not out of
town by tomorrow night, we will kill you." I rose to my feet and announced with
a loud voice that there would be meeting on Monday and Tuesday nights, and for
as long as the devil's crowd should fight. Then the Holy Ghost inspired me to
foretell some happenings to that mob.

I said to them, "Before six months have passed by, over a score of you fellows
will be in hell, and unless you repent, all of you will go without remedy." The
meeting closed Tuesday night. In a few nights one of that crowd died a horrible
death, while men held him in bed. A few days later a train hit seven of them in
a car and ground them to pieces under the train. A few days later a man was
burning brush. In throwing a limb on the big fire, he caught his jacket and was
pulled into the fire. One scream and he was gone. On and on until within five
months twenty-three of that mob had met death instantly. The rest of the mob
crowd learned that I was in a camp meeting in University Park, Iowa.

Three men and a car were sent to plead with me to come back to hold another
meeting. They said, "Don't let him say 'No.' We want this curse lifted. We want
to ask him to forgive us." I went with the men and had meeting that night. The
house was packed and many asked forgiveness.

I told them that it was to God they should repent, and that I forgave all of
them.

I was asked to go home with one of the leaders of the mob and I accepted the
invitation. The church people were afraid and thought it unwise, but I had
protection -- my angel -- and I was not afraid. We had prayer and retired. The
next morning, after reading some Scripture and praying with the family, the man
said to me, "Brother Poe, you may have my wife and daughter to sing for you in
your meeting any time and any place and I will pay their way." I said, "I cannot
use your wife and daughter, but I can use you and your wife and daughter." He
said, "What a fool I have been. Brother Poe, can you forgive me? I helped to
stir up that mob against you because my wife claimed victory in the first of
that meeting, and she and the pianist sang specials. I told that mob that you
would be having her go with you to sing and it would break up our home." I never
had thought of such a thing, but the old devil is a troublemaker. He will tell
lies and a lot of people will believe him. Why be an agent for the devil to pack
his lies around and peddle them to other people? All you receive for your labor
for him is hell. Anyone who carries gossip, takes up a reproach or a scandal and
peddles it to others, is working for Satan. May God help us to see it. I refuse
to be a peddler for Satan.

Many a good person's influence is wrecked by lying tongues and Satan's peddlers.
Check up and see if what you are peddling pleases the Lord, if it edifies, and
if it glorifies Him. If a lot of folk would unload their minds of the devil's
trash and abominable works -- yes, I mean professors of religion they could be a
blessing for God. Why not live in Philippians 4:8, "Finally brethren whatsoever
things are true whatsoever things are honest what soever things are just
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be
any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things." If this had been
practiced instead of backbiting, evil surmising, faultfinding, and talebearing,
thousands would be Christians today who are now lost.

REPUTATION -- Philippians 2:7

One time as I was meditating on this verse, the Lord spoke to me and gave me a
vision. He said to me, "You are very much concerned about your reputation, but
Jesus made himself of no reputation. Are you willing to lay down your reputation
and follow Me?" I spoke aloud, "I am, Lord," and laid it down, in my will, as
much as if I had held a book and laid it down with both hands. I walked with
Jesus. It was not long until He led me up on a mountain. There he showed me
several people who were rolling a large stone. It was getting larger as they
rolled it. As mud and other things -- old dead carcasses and filth -- stuck to
it, they rolled it upon my reputation. Many gathered all the mud they could to
smear on that rock and on my reputation. As they did so, I saw that all their
hands were unclean. Jesus said to me, "Only those who have clean hands and a
pure heart can enter heaven." I noticed that all those who rolled the stone and
smeared with mud, became dwarfs -- very small -- and when they would lift up
their hands to Jesus, they would turn the backs of their dirty hands to Him.

Then Jesus spoke again and said, "See that beautiful white garment you have on."
I said, "Yes, I do." He said, "That is your character since I have forgiven and
cleansed you. See, it has no spots on it. They cannot smear that," and oh, how
He blessed my soul with such a sense of His holiness! Then He showed me those
little folk trying to wash their dirty hands, but, try as they would, their
hands were still dirty. One of them went and took of the mud that he had smeared
on my reputation and washed in Jesus' blood, and his hands became clean and he
became a full-sized person. And the Lord began to use him.

Again the Lord spoke to me, "See those many mounds? Those are other people's
reputations that have been smeared, and many of the ones they smeared they also
killed because the smeared ones became discouraged and gave up. See that large
mound in the distance. That is Joseph's reputation in Potipher's house, where he
laid it down. But he took courage in the Lord and became great. See that one
yonder? A very large one? That is Mine." Jesus said, "where I laid it down and
it has been smeared for over 1950 years. Follow Me and I will lead you home."

He showed me those smearers and gossipers trying to have a revival, but sinners
were not attracted. It was wondered why those people were so small and their
hands so dirty, and why only now and then a poor sinner would go by them to
Christ. The stone rollers and mud-smearers were always behind some mound they
had made over someone's reputation. Those mounds were between them and Christ,
and the only way they could possibly get clean and get to heaven would be to
move the mounds they had built. May God help me; I humbly ask forgiveness of any
that I have spoken against. The Word tells us that we must not take up a
reproach against our neighbor. Life is short eternity is just ahead. Prepare to
meet thy God.

Following the second meeting in Dallas City, I was asked to preach for the
Nazarene people at Lomax. On each of the three nights that I was there, the
altar was filled. One night there was a woman at one end of the altar and a
young man at the other. I heard the woman say, "Lord, I can't give him up." I
said, "You had better to say 'Yes.' " I went to the other end of the altar and
heard the young man say, "Lord, I can't." I admonished him to say "yes," but he
insisted. "I can't." I remarked, "Decisions are being made tonight for eternity.
Pay the price at any cost or God will be displeased and someone will go into
eternity without having a chance to pray. The woman arose from the altar and
went to the young man, and I heard her say, "Sonny I can't say 'Yes' for you to
go." I said, "You will be sorry Son. You had better say 'Yes.' " He said, "I
can't."

I learned later that that young man was called to the mission field and was
struggling over it. That winter he died very suddenly without any chance to
pray. Folk, what God makes clear to us we had better say "Yes" to. "He, that
being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that
without remedy."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: CHAPTER 10
========================================================================

CHAPTER TEN

When I arrived home my wife said, "A man was here this morning wanting to hire
you. He will give you $4 a day." He was a good holiness man. So after doing some
needed things the next morning, I set out, walking, to go see the man. About a
mile from our place there was a railroad. As I started to walk up the tracks, it
seemed that Jesus met me. No, I could not see Him, but His presence was real.
The Lord said, "Pearl, what are you going to do about that call to preach? What
are you going to do about this work?" I said, "Lord, you know I didn't get but
$36 last year." He said, "Did not you fare better than this year?" I said, "Yes,
Lord." He said, "I called you to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, not
part time." I lifted my cap, knelt down, and said, "O Lord, I will preach the
gospel, if I never see my family alive again; if the last friend forsakes me,
and I get so poor I have to go barefooted and make my clothes from grain sacks."
The Lord said, "You furnish the man; I will furnish the places and the grace. I
will give you the message and take care of you." That was the biggest deal I had
ever heard of. I took the Lord's promise and said, "I will do it." Oh,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! He has done that very thing. He has
furnished the grace, the places to preach, my clothing, and supplied my needs to
this very day.

I got up, walked right on toward where that man wanted me, but I walked in the
presence of God. When I came near where the men were working and where the man
wanted me to work, it seemed the Spirit began to move on and I had to nearly
trot to keep up with Him. I spoke to the men. The man that wanted me to work
said, "Wait a moment." I said, "I don't have time." Then he said, "Do you want a
job?" I called back, "No, I have one with the Lord," and hurried on. I walked
five miles farther, nine miles in all, and came into Oskaloosa, Iowa. I went
into the Leader Store. One of the clerks came up to me and said, "Anything I can
do for you, Mr. Poe?" I said, "No, I am just waiting on my Lord." He looked at
me and turned to leave when in stepped a preacher. He said, "Well, praise the
Lord, Brother Poe. What are you doing?" I answered, "I am cut loose to do
anything, anywhere the Lord wants me." "Will you go with me to West Grove, Iowa,
and hold a meeting in a Friends Church?" "I will." I walked back that nine
miles, prepared to go to the meeting and didn't have a cent. I borrowed a dollar
from my mother. That paid most of my way and I caught rides the rest of the way.

With no money, I could not even send a penny postal card home.

Christmas came in a few days. I could send no greetings to my family. I was
asked to eat dinner at a rich man's home. His rich brother was there. The table
was loaded with a bountiful meal. I was called on to ask the blessing, but wept
while doing so. I asked to be excused; I couldn't eat. We were poor and I did
not know how my family was faring. I had arranged for them to get anything they
wanted at the store, but I could not even send a card to them.

I went out behind the barn and wept and told God I was glad He had saved me,
sanctified me, and called me, and asked Him to especially bless my family and
give me many souls. I meant it when I told Him that I intended to go through
with Him at any cost.

The next day I received word, "Daughter Ethel has double pneumonia and double
mastoids. Come home." I went to get my things, and the Lord said, "You told me
you would preach if you never saw your family alive again," and I could not go
home. By this time we were having seekers in the meeting and a great visitation
from God in the community, inasmuch that I was being accused of hypnotizing
people. The second day word came, "Ethel is worse. Come home at once." Again the
Lord reminded me of my promise. In about three days the doctor wrote. He didn't
think Ethel would live and thought I should come home. Again the Lord reminded
me of my promise and impressed me that if I went home before He released me, she
would die. If I expected Him to keep His promise, I must keep mine. The future
hung on this.

I stayed for two full weeks after getting word of Ethel's illness. Eighty-seven
people claimed to be saved and sanctified in that meeting and 23 were called to
the Lord's work.

I was given a dollar right after Christmas so I was able to write home. I wrote
many times telling my wife that as soon as I felt the Lord would let me, I would
come home. Poor woman, how the enemy must have tormented her during this time,
for she didn't know the awful battles I had been going through and what I had
promised the Lord.

The day I left for home, the church folk made up an offering and gave me $160. I
owed more than that for rent and groceries, but how thankful I was for it. I was
called to pastor that church until the yearly meeting. I accepted, and we had no
Sunday services without seekers.

When I arrived home from the meeting, we had company. Poor little Ethel had been
given up to die. She had not slept for five days. Great sores were on her head,
and the water that came from her ears had nearly eaten through. She appeared
almost dead.

I had eaten no dinner or supper and I had walked three miles to get home. It was
now 9:00 p.m. I asked if there was something to eat, and was told that a
hypocrite such as I did not need anything to eat, and other bad words
accompanied the statement. I said nothing. After I had eaten a little fruit, my
wife said, "You will have to go down town and make arrangements to take Ethel to
a specialist." I said, "May I pray first?" The reply was, "God will not hear a
hypocrite like you pray."

I read three verses of Scripture, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will
I do." "These signs shall follow them that believe." "They shall lay hands on
the sick, and they shall recover. I knelt by Ethel's head (she was lying on her
mother's lap) and said, "Dear Lord, I can trust You to heal my girl on these
promises," and touched her head that was so sore. I prayed a few words and
thanked Him for healing her. By this time she had quit moaning and had gone to
sleep. There was great rejoicing in my heart. I calmly said, "She is healed, but
I will go as you have asked." When I returned, Ethel was sleeping soundly. About
4:00 a.m. she aroused and said, "Drink." It was given her, and she went back to
sleep at once.

The next morning as I was getting ready to go to the specialist, a neighbor
woman came in. She asked wife about Ethel. She replied, "She is asleep now." At
that moment the car drove up to take us, and the neighbor slipped out the back
door. Ethel did not wake up until the doctor wakened her. He checked her lungs
and her ears, then double checked her. He said, "There has been a miracle; she
is healed. Take her home and feed her." We were soon back home, happy in the
Lord's doings.

As I was putting on my work clothes, that same neighbor woman came again. She
had not seen me and did not know that I had come home. She and some others had
stirred up the people that when I should return, I should be mobbed, tarred and
feathered. She asked, "How is Ethel?" Wife said, "Her father came home last
night and he read some verses from the Bible and laid hands on her and said,
'Lord, I can trust You to heal my girl on that.' And the Lord did. The
specialist examined her well and said, 'There has been a miracle; she is
healed.' " The woman said, "Where is Pearl?" Wife said, "Changing his clothes."
The woman quietly slipped out the back door and went home. The news soon spread.
As I met different ones of my neighbors, they would ask me to forgive them.

I began to make arrangements to move to town. I still owed by landlord. He came
over at my request. I told him that I wanted to settle up and would sell my cow.
He said, "That offer that I made you still stands good." I said, "No, Joe, that
cow is giving bloody milk. If you want to pay me market price for a cow like
her, you can have her. I will still owe you some. She brought, over the scales,
nearly forty-six dollars. I let a feeder have the calf, and I paid the rent.
About four months later I saw Joe. I asked "How did the cow come out?" "She quit
giving bloody milk in about a week. She is the best milk and cream cow I ever
owned." Well, thank the Lord, I was as honest with that man as I would have
wanted him to have been with me. I know my Redeemer liveth, and man must give an
account of any dishonesty. God keeps the records, and His book is true.

One night about a year after the Lord had told me that if I would furnish the
man He would supply the message, a place to preach, and my needs, I had three
letters, each of them asking for a meeting on the same dates. I spread the
letters out on a chair and knelt down to pray to know where the Lord wanted me
to go. I said, "Dear Lord, here are three places all asking for the same date. I
do not know where You want me." I was impressed, "Cedar Rapids, Iowa." "But,
Lord, I have no call for there, but if you want me to go, I am ready." It was
clear, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I went up-stairs, kissed the children and wife, and
said, "I won't be here when you get up. I am to go at midnight tonight on the
train. Wife asked, "Where?" I told her. She said, "But you don't have any call
there." I replied, "Yes, I have. I have just heard from Heaven and I am to go to
Cedar Rapids." I caught the train at midnight, went to Washington, Iowa, and had
to wait ten hours for a train to Cedar Rapids.

A blinding blizzard blew up and our train came near being snowbound. They had to
buck high drifts. When I got on the train, I met a professor from the State
Teacher's College. He saw that I was a clergyman, and asked of what faith. I
told him I was a fundamentalist. He laughed a devil-like laugh and said, "Ho,
ho, we are going to make you fundamentalists lay your Bibles down in twenty
years." I said, "We who?" He said, "We, the Atheist Association of America." I
said, "How?" He replied, "We are going to put teachers in the schools to do it.
We will put in textbooks with no morals, take out the Bible, teach evolution,
and promote games." He continued, "You church folk put on your meetings in the
fall and winter. We will put on games and keep the students so busy they cannot
attend your meetings. You teach modesty; we are going to teach the young folk
not to think seriously on any thing, and that all the God there is, is in
nature, and any part of nature they serve is God. When we get them to be
immodest, nature will make its demands."

I asked, "Mister, am I hearing you right? Do you mean to say that your plans are
to teach our young people that living a loose life sexually is God?" "Yes, sir,"
was his reply. Then I talked to him about Romans one and part of chapter two. He
moved to another seat and I followed him. When he sat down, I sat down beside
him. I said, "Mister, you started this, but I will finish now, and God will
finish hereafter." God helped me to put it plain to him. Then I told him my
experience. He said, "That I cannot argue with you." Then he said, "You know
there are forty billion stars." I said, "No, and neither do you know it. In the
first place, you can't count to twenty billion, and another thing, God fixed the
stars and no one knows how many there are." Then I went back to my subject of
warning him, and quoting Scripture until he was like Felix -- he trembled.

I had never been in Cedar Rapids before, and it was dark and with this awful
blizzard, I again prayed for needed guidance. After walking a few blocks, I
stopped on a street corner and prayed again. I was impressed to look up. There
was a large electric sign -- Jesus, the Light of the World. I was sure that was
the place. I saw a light in the building. I found the front door locked, so I
went to a side door, stepped inside, and saw a man standing behind a counter.
Supposing me to be a transient and a stranger, he asked, "What can I do for
you?"

I told him of my letters, my praying, and how God had led me there. That man
hopped over the counter, grabbed me, hugged me, and shook me until a lot of snow
fell down our necks. With tears in his eyes he said, "I never had a more
definite answer to prayer in my life, except when I prayed through to be saved."
He continued, "Last night at 9:00 p.m. I was praying, 'Lord, send someone here
to preach. We need a revival, and the Mission must be kept open each night. Wife
is sick, and father is in California. Please send Your man.' " I was there. He
told me to "take over" and he hurried home after showing me to the "prophet's
chamber" and telling me that I would eat my meals on the third floor with the
matron and warden of the rescue work. That night we had about a half dozen come
in off the streets for service and about thirty-five who stayed in the building.
The meeting got off to a good start and ran for over five weeks. Many prayed
through and several were sanctified.

It was at this place where I was given my first suit. Someone had given me a
Prince Albert coat, but I felt condemned in wearing it. I felt I had not "proved
it," so I asked the brother who ran the mission if he knew who could wear it. We
gave it to an elderly Methodist preacher, and I preached in my shirt sleeves.

That night as I got down on my knees, I told the Lord of my need of a suit. I
believed what He had promised, and the next morning a man from Marion, Iowa,
manager of a clothing store, brought a new suit and handed it to me. I asked him
if it were for the mission. He said, "No, it is for you. I couldn't go to sleep
last night and, as I was praying, God told me to take a suit and give it to a
man at the mission and described you." I had always wanted a dark gray suit.
From then to now, I have always had one. I have bought one new suit and felt
condemned for doing it. He supplies. Oh, what a wonderful Savior.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 15: CHAPTER 9
========================================================================

CHAPTER NINE

One day while I was pastoring my first charge I felt the Lord leading me to go
to Chillicothe, Iowa, for a meeting. I went to Chillicothe to see if I could get
the church where I first went forward, when I was yet a boy. I was promised the
use of the church building. Arrangements were made to start the next week and
the meeting was advertised. It was in the winter, and very cold the day that I
was to go. My brother Vernon was going to take me. About three miles from where
we started, the old Ford stopped. We worked on it until it was getting late. I
said, "Vern, you go back home and I will walk the rest of the way," which was
seven miles.

It was dark when I arrived. I went to one of the stores and found that the man
who ran the little hotel was out of town for a few days. I asked the people, who
were loafing at the store, if any of them had a room where I could stay all
night. All said they did not. I had stayed in several of their homes before I
was called to preach, but that was different. I was now a holiness preacher, so
no room.

Finally, I went to the man that had the key for the church. He and his wife
lived in an eight-roomed house. I told him that I had been unable to find a
place to stay. He did not ask me in, so I stood on the north porch, waiting for
the key to the church. He closed the door and went in search of the key that had
not been used for eight years. No services had been held in the church for that
long a time. It took him along time to find the key, and I was getting chilled
through. It was a bitter cold night. I went to the church, but had no matches,
so could not build a fire. I was not too warmly dressed. I took my things out of
the suitcase, put them on the seat, and lay down to sleep. I was tired from the
walk and from having had nothing to eat since morning. I soon fell asleep only
to waken, nearly frozen. I felt that even my bones were cold. The Lord had
wakened me, for I was freezing. I rubbed my body, stomped my feet, whipped my
arms, and walked the floor to keep from freezing.

When morning came, I asked a coal hauler if he would get me a load of slack
coal. There were two big canon stoves in the church building. I had only three
dollars; the coal bill came to two dollars. There were gas lamps, so I bought
mantles and gasoline and matches. I had fourteen cents left with which I bought
a lunch. I went back to the church, built a fire, and prepared the lamps for
lighting. That night we had the house quite well filled. No one asked me home
with them.

After all had gone home, I turned out the lights, and knelt down by a seat near
the stove to pray. As I was praying, I said, "Lord, I don't know why I have to
sleep on these church seats." About that time, I heard the Spirit say, "The
foxes have dens, the birds have nests, but the Son of man had no where to lay
His head. Take up your cross and follow me." Right there I asked the Lord to
forgive me, and told Him I would stay there until I died or had a revival.

I began to visit the sick and shut-ins, and have prayer with them. Some prayed
through. I would go by the town pump and get my daily supply of water, and
thanked God for good water to drink.

One night after I had been staying in the church for over a week, it came a big
snow -- about 18 inches. The next day I went my usual rounds, calling on the
sick and aged. As I was going down a little hill I met an old man with heavy
beard about six inches long. He was walking with two canes. As I met him, we
spoke. He said, "Are you the preacher that is preaching in the Christian
church?" I said, I am." Then he asked, "Is your name Pearl Poe?" and I answered,
"It is." Then he said, "The Pearl Poe that lived south of town?" I replied, "I
am." He then asked me if had had my dinner. I told him that it had been many
days since I had had anything to eat. He said, "We have a late dinner. Will you
come in and eat with us? I think Mamma has it about ready now."

We went in the house. I knew "Mamma," but her husband did not look natural to
me, for I had never seen him with a beard. As we sat down to a well-filled
table, they asked me to say the blessing. My heart was melted and I cried and
prayed. Oh, what a blessing!

As we were eating, Grandpa Burgis said, "Pearl, you were too good to our
crippled son to sleep on those church benches. There is his bed. He is not
here." I asked no questions. He said, "When you get through preaching tonight,
come home. That will be your room."

After service that night I closed the doors to the church and went to my new
home. As I went to my room and got down to pray, I felt so unworthy. I said,
"Dear Lord, you did not have a soft bed to lie on," and I cried freely. The bed
was so warm and comfortable, and I cried until I went to sleep. Baby? No, I was
touched of God. The next morning after breakfast, I asked if we might have
family prayer, as I always do wherever I am.

While I was praying, after reading a very appropriate chapter from the Bible, I
heard the voice of dear old Father Burgis as he began to pray. Our prayer took
on power. He prayed through. The next morning dear old Sister Burgis prayed
through.

The son, whom the father said was not there, had been a crippled boy. Some years
before, when I would be driving to town, I would drive by their place and take
the boy with me. Some of the town boys would tease him, but though I was only a
lad, I would not stand for that kind of treatment to a crippled boy. The Bible
says, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days."
Thank God, in this case it returned to me many fold, as well as many other times
in my experience.

The meeting took on power. One day as I was out calling I came to where Uncle
Jim Hornback, as we called him, was splitting stove wood. I said, How are you,
Uncle Jim?" He said, "All right, I guess." I said, "Uncle Jim, you can know that
you are all right." He replied, "There are so many hypocrites." "Yes, uncle Jim,
that is right, and unless you repent, you will go to hell with them to be with
them forever. He put down his piece of wood and raised both hands toward heaven,
and right there he prayed through. God for Christ's sake forgave him. That night
he testified in the meeting, and it seemed to break things loose. Many found the
Lord in that meeting.

Great victories were won after hard battles. I would gladly sleep on church
benches and nearly freeze to see again what I saw in that meeting. We must get
orders from the Lord and be true to His calling at any cost. It will not all be
roses, neither will it all be thorns, but what matters if we are in the will of
our Lord. That meeting is still being talked about to this day by some who
attended it. To God be all the glory.

When I was a young person, it was in that church where I first went forward.
There were thirty-four young people in that community in their teens. It was in
that community where I received my call to preach. Oh, that I had obeyed! Twelve
years later I went to hold this meeting. My thought was to reach those young
people. One day I said to Mr. Burgis, "Where are the young folks that were here
when I was here?" He said, "Part of them are over on the hill." One day I went
over "on the hill" to the cemetery. The snow was deep, but it was a beautiful
day. As I looked on the tombstones I saw the names of several of the young
folks. I knelt down by the side of one large stone and sobbed and cried. I said,
"Oh, Lord, if only I had obeyed You at the first call, these might have gotten
saved." There is no way to express the agony I felt for not having said "Yes" to
the Lord and started preaching as a young man. What I would give if I could
recall those lost years! Oh, those poor lost souls that I might have reached.
Some of the boys had been killed in war. Their opportunity had passed forever.
How sad to think that I had failed when a lad to obey my Lord, and I will have
to stand before Him some day and give account of my time and of my calling. I
must do my best while time lasts for me. God has been so good to take me back
and forgive me, but that doesn't answer for those lost years. Perhaps I could
have helped them to God, for I seemed to be a leader among them. I know of only
one other boy of that group that is a holiness boy. May God keep our hearts
stirred to our responsibilities till Jesus says, "It is enough."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: CHAPTER 8
========================================================================

CHAPTER EIGHT

Now I would like to tell you concerning the church which the Lord showed me the
night we prayed and settled the question about preaching.

I talked to the Sunday school superintendent since they had no pastor. I wanted
to go at once, but he talked with a Nazarene preacher about me coming. They
agreed that I should wait until fall, then have a tent meeting. I should preach
one night and Mr. Clark, the Nazarene preacher, the next. I waited but nothing
developed. I held some other revivals and saw many pray through.

In the spring, I was holding a meeting in the Buckeye Schoolhouse. On Saturday
night an awful burden came on me just as I was entering my home. It seemed that
I could see a girl from the neighborhood that I mentioned above. I heard her
say, "Pearl, if you had come out here and preached when God told you to, instead
of listening to others, I would not be lost tonight." Oh, the horror of that
night! I got down on the floor and wept and prayed until nearly morning. News
reached me that the girl had been killed in an accident about the time the
burden came upon me. I attended the funeral. Arrangements were made for a
meeting to begin as soon as I could get through the one I was in. God had shown
me 23 saved, but when I conducted the meeting, we had only 22; one was dead. Oh,
sad are the memories of that incident. It never pays to delay when God says go.
But I was honest and had listened to others.

I was asked to pastor that Methodist church, for they had no pastor. We had
large crowds. I was young in preaching and did not take up any offerings. I
received $36 for the year; I worked to pay expenses. Some of the church folk
came to me and said, "Pearl it is not right for you to have to be away so much.
Why don't you rent a farm and study at evening so you won't butcher the English
language so. During slack times you may preach in revivals." The spokesman was
the church boss and was causing trouble, opposing me because he had some
restitution’s to make. One morning he came to me and said, "Thank God, you won't
hit me this morning. I won't go to shows anymore." I said, "Thank the Lord." But
when I got to bearing down in the sermon, I quoted, "If a soul sin . . . In a
thing taken away by violence . . . he shall restore that which he took violently
away." I said, "If I am renting a farm on the shares and I go through the
cornfield, pick seed corn, and sell it, I owe the landlord half the profit. That
is, if I am renting for half the grain."

I saw the church boss' head go down. Then I said, "Suppose one of my neighbors
has some good fat hogs. Another neighbor, who meets and plays cards with me, and
I see the first man and his family go to town. If we plan to steal one of that
neighbor's hogs and butcher it and we send our wives down through the timber to
open a gate and drive a nice fat hog away while we men fix the barrel and heat
the water; then, if we kill the hog, burn the hair, and divide the meat, I will
have to pay for that hog." The church boss turned in his seat. After service he
came to me and said, "If I give you $50, will you pay my restitution’s?" I said,
"No, you will have to make them to the one from whom you have stolen." He said,
"I cannot do it." Then he asked me who had told me about the hog. I said, "The
Lord, while I was preaching." "That is exactly what my neighbor and I did," he
replied.

A little while later he began to make contention in the church and influenced
some other good folk, so I left and rented a farm, much to my sorrow. I felt
condemned after I had rented it. I gave $11 an acre, and that was high rent in
those days. If I could have sub-rented, I would have done it for half what I was
to pay.

We moved to the place I had rented. We were away from a holiness church, but a
holiness group were having prayer meetings not far from us. We attended and
preached often for them.

I made this statement when we moved, "Well, wife, we have a big orchard. We have
our cow and our chickens. I will preach and if they don't want to give me
anything, we will still have our own living." We had better make our boast in
the Lord, for He rules the universe and He can bless, or curse with plagues, and
I received the latter. Our chickens would not lay. Our cow, a very heavy milker,
started to give bloody milk. My landlord had seen me milk her before this, and
had offered me $150. for her. That was extra high for a milk cow then, but I
told him I needed her for our family. The next week the blood showed up, so we
had no milk, no eggs, and our sow that was to bring pigs, died. Blight struck
our fruit trees and we only had a small amount of fruit, though I had sprayed. I
put out three acres of watermelons, one acre of muskmelons, a large potato
patch, sweet potatoes, a patch of cane, and a field of corn.

I needed some hay. I had a wagon that I put double sideboards on to hold the
hay. I had borrowed my farming outfit from my brother Oscar, even the mules. As
I was going out of our yard I noticed a limb of a tree that was in the way. I
asked my wife to hand me the axe. I chopped the limb off and let it drop into
the wagon.

Down the road, I came to a place where the dirt had washed away almost to the
road. I stopped the team and lifted the brush. In so doing I also lifted the
six-tine pitch fork and it fell back with the points of the tines up. As I
dropped the brush in the ditch, the team jumped. This jerked me out of the seat
and I fell with my back on that pitchfork. I stopped the team, but could not
pull the fork from my back.

I drove down the road almost a quarter of a mile to get my neighbor to pull it
out. He tried and failed. I said, "That is in my backbone." I sat down, put my
hand on my backbone, and told him to put his foot against my hand and pull.
Together we pulled it out. We could see where the rust had been pushed back on
three of those tines which had run into me over one and a half inches. I was
advised to go to a doctor.

Another of my neighbors saw the condition I was in and soaked a cloth with
turpentine and bound it over my wounds. By this time I was getting pretty sick.
The men lifted the sideboards, put a chunk under them, and I lay down in the
wagon box to drive on to town. While I was going, thinking of the doctor, the
Lord said, "If you had not listened to the counsel of the ungodly, this would
not have happened. 'For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every
son whom he receiveth.' " I wept and said, "That is so, Lord." Before I reached
town, I knew that no doctor could help me. I was paralyzed from my hips down. I
drove the team in front of a store and called. The clerk came out. I told him
the groceries that I wanted and that I was paralyzed from my hips down. I did
not go to see the doctor. I had the man, from whom I was getting the hay, to
throw it in, and I worked myself up on top of it. He filled the wagon and piled
it high. I drove on home. I had no use of my limbs at all.

Wife had heard about the accident, but did not know how serious it was. She came
to the barn as I drove in. She put the team away and asked, "How are you going
to get down?" I said, "You reach up and take hold of my hands and pull, and hold
me so that my head will not hit the ground." She did and that is the way I got
off the wagon. I sat up, put my hands on the ground, and pushed myself backwards
to the house. For three months that was the only way I could go -- push
backwards and let my feet drag.

During that time a plague of cutworms came. Remember Jonah and the cutworm? I
did. They took my cane, my corn -- all of it, and got in my melons. I pushed
myself from hill to hill and sometimes found as many as four worms in a hill. I
put powder around the hills to keep them out, then the striped bugs came, and I
had to go from hill to hill, pushing myself backward, putting London Purple and
moth powder on to check them.

One day I pushed myself about a quarter of a mile to a plum thicket, and there
prayed, "Oh, Lord, if I cannot be my best for You and have Your blessings and be
in Your will, let me die right here in this old wild plum thicket," and I meant
it, for I would rather have died than live out of God's will. From that time I
began to mend. It was not many days until I could move my feet, then I could
stand on my knees, but with much pain in my back. A little later I could stand
up by holding to something, and soon I was walking, but was still feeble.

A man came and asked me to help him in a tent meeting. We were to preach each
night about. I did not have clothing fit to preach in. I borrowed $8 from my
wife and went to help in the meeting.

I went to a clothing store to buy a pair of trousers. The manager was an
Orthodox Jew. He wanted to sell me a suit for forty dollars. I told him that I
had only eight dollars. He said, "Vat you do?" I told him, "I am going to preach
in that tent meeting near the synagogue." "Vell, I tell you vat I vill do. I
vill lets you have the suit for $25 and you trust God and I vill trust you for
the balance. I bought the suit. I told the other preacher how I had gotten the
suit.

Each night that the other preacher preached, he would get up and say, "Now we
are going to take an incidental offering to meet the expenses." He would put the
money in his pocket, for there were no expenses; they were all paid. The
offering ran from five to ten dollars a night. On Thursday night after the
meeting had run five weeks, he said to me, "Brother Poe, I want you to take up
an offering for me tomorrow night, and I will take one for you the next night
(Saturday). We do not want to take up any on Sunday." We were having large
crowds. I took up one hundred and fifty-six dollars in cash and some pledges.
The next night he did not say a word about an offering for me, neither did he do
so on Sunday. The meeting closed that Sunday night. I had promised that Jew that
I would pay him when the meeting closed, but I had no money.

I stayed all night with the other preacher. Monday morning, he took me to the
railroad station where I could catch a train home. He said, "Well, Brother Poe,
I must be going. I want to paper a house for a family today." The train was at
the station. He drove away without giving me a cent of money. I had my few
clothes and a gallon of honey that had been given to me. I walked from there
home -- nine miles. That preacher came later and asked me to pray for him. We
prayed from 5:00 a.m. until noon, but there was no moving of God in his heart.
He continued to preach, but he told me, "My soul is paralyzed. I have no
response to God." I said, "Brother, are you willing to right your wrongs?" He
said, "I don't know how or where to begin." I reminded him of the meeting we had
held a few years before, but he did nothing about it.

I arrived home that Monday from the meeting. I pulled our cabbage, dug our sweet
potatoes, part of our potatoes, took some fruit, and loaded them all in the
wagon. On Tuesday I was at the store to pay for my suit. The man had a grocery
store on one side of his clothing store. He said, "Vat? You get no money." I
said, "No." He said, "I heard you take up money for the other man. You get
none?" I said, "No, but I have brought you these vegetables to pay for my suit."
He gave me exactly what he sold them for and had eight cents over. Thank God, my
bill was paid, but we were without food at home.

In later years, I conducted a revival for this same preacher. He was a seeker,
but still paralyzed in his soul. He said, "I am going on and preach, and do the
best I can." At one time he had been a power for God, but greed for money had
blinded him and robbed him, and he had lowered his standards in preaching. Oh,
folks, we must be honest with God and man or we will not enjoy salvation.

Blight hit my patch of melons just as they were about ripe. I could not sell
melons like that -- perhaps a car load, but they had not fully ripened. So I had
a total crop loss.

I was called for another meeting. A number were saved and sanctified. It was in
this meeting on a Friday night, that a Catholic young man attended. He was under
deep conviction. Though he did not come to the altar, he stayed until the altar
service was over. When I spoke to him, he said he would like to be saved. I
invited him to come then. He replied, "Not tonight, but if these boys (they were
young men) will go with me tomorrow night, I will go." The boys promised they
would. They professed religion and were members of the denomination where I was
preaching.

The next night there was a birthday party for a young person, some ten miles
from there. We had a large crowd of middle-aged folk and children, a few old
people, but none of the young men that said they would go to the altar with this
young man. He sat in next to the front seat. As I began to preach, I noticed
that he looked around several times. He was looking for those who said they
would go with him. His countenance changed. He did not move at the altar
service. Some had responded and were praying. I went to the young man and said,
"Tonight is your night. Come on. I will go with you." He stood and wiped tears
from his eyes, and said, "Those boys told me they would be here and go with me.
No, not tonight. I had intended to, but not now." I said again, "I feel this is
your time." But he said, "I will tomorrow," and went home disgusted because some
professors thought more of pleasure than they did of his soul. There are
hundreds of folk who will go to worldly pleasures when God is dealing with
souls, and are the means of those souls being lost forever.

On Monday morning the young man was helping his father put up hay. He was
loading the hay. The team of horses stopped over a bumble-bee's nest. The
bumblebees began to sting the horses and they jumped. The boy was near the back
of the load. It threw him off, broke his neck, and he died at once. I told that
church group that they were responsible for that boy being lost because they had
an entertainment that took the young folk from the meeting that night.

Then I pointed to the group of young men and told them they had promised the
young man that they would go with him to the altar on Saturday night, but
instead, they went to a party. That night there were between forty and fifty
seekers -- mostly church members, including the pastor. But he did not pray
through that night.

The next Sunday morning there was a large altar service, but it rained hard that
evening until church time. The man I stayed with said, "No use to go. No one can
come the way it is raining." So we didn't go. We would have had five miles to go
over dirt roads. I learned later that over forty people had walked to be there.
In the night the phone rang. It was a call from my neighbor. My wife had injured
her foot and had blood poison. She wanted me to come home. There had been no
offering taken, so the man I stayed with paid my train fare and said, "You will
be hearing from us," but I heard nothing. The next year he said, "Brother Poe,
why didn't you answer the church's letter? We sent you $88." I said, "Are you
sure?" "Well, we took it up for you and turned it over to our pastor." I
replied, "I never received it."

After wife was better, I went to preach over Sunday for a Methodist preacher. We
had a good service; sixteen sought the Lord. They at once asked me to hold a
meeting for them, but their pastor thought I didn't have enough education. So he
called a D.D. There were no seekers during the week and a half that he stayed.
They gave him $175, and he called them tightwads and stingy, and said, "No
wonder you cannot have a meeting." But that was not the reason; man had gotten
in the road of God.

I started to help my brother mow weeds along the railroad in order to pay my
grocery bill and rent. The first week, my fat hog died that we had intended to
butcher. In a few weeks it was time to shuck corn. I owed the doctor who had
cared for our family. He had a large field of corn to be gathered and my brother
and I promised to help. I agreed to work for $4 a day. The doctor was such a
good man; I loved him and he loved me. He told me he had not taken up doctoring
to make money, but to help the sick. After we had been shucking for two or three
days, he came over and said, "Pearl, your wife and one of the children has
pneumonia, but I have a nurse to care for them, and I will go out twice a day to
see how they are." They got along fine, and in four weeks we had his corn in the
cribs. When I arrived home, my doctor bill was all paid. He had given me $5 and
had not charged me for the nurse nor for his calls while I worked for him. I had
some money over. I put it on my store bill and went home broke, but glad the
bills were paid.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: CHAPTER 7
========================================================================

CHAPTER SEVEN

We had moved to University Park, Iowa, and I was attending Central Holiness
University. Because of my sickness, I was running out of money and was unable
yet to work to buy proper feed for my milk cow. She was giving only about a
quart of milk at a milking. While I was praying one morning the Lord spoke to
me, "Give half the milk that you get to Brother and Sister Cooley." As I went to
one of my Bible classes I met Brother Cooley. I told him what the Lord had told
me about the milk. I asked, "Now when do you want to get your part?" He said,
"At night." When we were getting all that the cow gave, it was not enough for
us, and now the Lord had said, "Give half of it away." I did not question the
Lord, but gave the milk as He had said to do.

In a couple of days, my neighbor, Brother Farnsworth, said to me, "You don't
have any shed for your cow. Bring her down and put her in my shed. You can leave
her in my lot. I will have my cows in the pasture in the daytime. My cow began
gaining, and in a few days she was giving over half a gallon at a milking. Soon
she was giving over two gallons at a milking.

One morning I had to milk earlier than usual. What did I find my cow eating?
Ground corn, ground wheat and oats, sugar beets, and bran. God had spoken not
only to me; He also had spoken to my neighbor. He not only gave a shed for my
cow, but fed her, and fed her well.

I did not get to finish the semester of school, but I attended the graduation
service. Several of the students testified. Among them was Brother Cooley, and
he gave this touching incident. He told how he and some of the other boys stayed
in "the tower" so that they would have money enough to get through school. Then
he told of his marriage and their poverty. He said that about the last of
January, they counted all the money they had, then the remaining days of school.
They found they had five cents for each day. They figured they could buy one
loaf of day-old bread each day, and how they wished for some milk to go with it.
Oh glory! It makes me cry for joy just to mention it! What a wonderful God we
have! Oh, Hallelujah, glory! His glory is flooding my soul just now!

Brother Cooley said, "That morning when I went to school, a very poor man called
me to one side and said, "Brother Cooley, God told me to give you half the milk
that my cow gives. I chose the night milking. At first we received about a
quart. Then it increased until we were getting a milk pail nearly full. We had
milk to sell to buy other needed things. This will be an ever-standing monument
for our faith as we go to China in a few months." Dear Brother Farnsworth sobbed
and cried.

It pays to obey God. I could easily have missed that blessing. I could have
said, "Lord, I am not well and have no money, and my children need that milk."
Or I could have argued, "It is just an impression from the enemy," and have
tried to reason it out. But thank God, it was He who spoke. If we will obey, He
will make ways where there are no ways.

Soon after this incident the Lord healed me of the leakage of the heart. But it
was not until twenty years later that I was healed of diabetes.

I was so weakened at one time that the doctor said, "I don't see anything to
keep you from dying, as bad as you are with that diabetes." I said, "Doctor, the
Lord is keeping me going." He said, "You are now in a stage where you should be
in a coma. You must take insulin." I said, "No, I will diet and watch the Lord
work."

I was going to hold a meeting and stopped over in University Park, Iowa, where I
had a little property. I asked Brother Glendening if he would shingle the south
side of my house. He said that he could if I would help him.

On the ninth of September, 1938, we were working on the roof of the one and a
half story house. The comb board broke off, letting loose the ladder on which I
stood. This caused me to drop twenty-four feet. As I was falling the end of the
ladder was against my left side. I called on Jesus to help, knowing that falling
with the ladder in this position would mean certain death. By the hand of God
the ladder was removed and it dropped six feet off to the side from me. I landed
with one foot on a side piece of cement and the other foot in an open cellar.

Upon striking the ground, these words came to me, "For we know that all things
work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. 8:28) Lighting in this
position caused serious injury. Because of the one foot lighting in the open
cellar, the right V bone of the hip was broken. The left foot striking the
cement caused the slitting of the heel bone, breaking off the socket that the
heel bone sets in and that bone was driven up into the ankle. This split the
large bone, breaking the ankle bone and also the limb above the ankle. All the
vertebrae were slipped until there were no two in the proper position. This
caused a complete nerve tension of the entire body. These being pinched put the
flesh in a cramp, which caused my body to be in a state without relaxation for
thirteen and one-half days.

When the boy came to pick me up, I said, "Don't pick me up, but bring me a chair
and let me pull myself up." Even at that he had to help me. He then helped me
into the car and we started to the doctor. I took hold of the broken part to
steady it and began to sing:

"Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to take Him at His Word, Just to rest upon
His promise, Just to know, 'Thus saith the Lord."

The boy began to cry and asked me how I could sing under such circumstances. I
told him that it was blessed and wonderful to have one's trust in Jesus.

We arrived at the doctor's office and examined the injured limb. He told me that
he would have to take an X-ray. I remarked, "I see on the board that the terms
are cash. I'm prepared to live or to die; I'm prepared to go anywhere in the
world, but I am not prepared for an accident. I haven't a dollar. You say the
terms are strictly cash, so you can't take an X-ray."

"I can play Santa Claus, can't I?" he asked. I answered that he might have to.
He took three X-rays and informed me that my limb would have to be put in a
cast. He also told me that I would have to go to the hospital.

"Doctor, I can't go to a hospital. They want money out there and I don't have
it, but I can go to my mother's place about twelve miles away."

Once again we got into the car and again I had to hold the broken part to steady
it. Now I began to sing:

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

There was a foretaste of glory in this. I had never tasted Christ more blessedly
in my life.

When they had gotten me in bed, the nerve tension set; the leaders in my neck
stood out and this caused severe pain. In those thirteen days I did a great deal
of suffering. I couldn't sleep so I began to pray. I prayed for everyone, every
place, and everything that I could think of, over and over and over again. But I
will say this -- in all of those thirteen days I do not remember of saying one
time, "Lord, remember me" or "Lord, relieve the pain."

Just a few nights after the accident, it was whispered around that they couldn't
have the prayer meeting as planned at my mother's home because of my nervous
condition. I got hold of it and told them to go right ahead and have the
meeting.

When the lady who led the service read the Scripture lesson, the spirit of
exhortation came on me and for thirty minutes I exhorted and preached and
enjoyed the Lord's blessing while doing it.

While at mother's and in the condition I was in, I sent a card to a dear brother
who contacted the folk at Tabor, Iowa, and some other folk who could pray for
me.

The doctor told my mother that I would pass away about the next day as the nerve
that led to the heart would cramp and that would mean death. He also said that
he would like to see me the next day.

The next morning there was an unusual presence of Christ in the room. I felt Him
as a person. He seemingly came to my bedside and said, "My visitation has
granted unto thee life and favor." No sooner had He said that until the lumbar
vertebra at the base snapped into place, then the one next to it, then the next,
until the great Chiropractor and Osteopath had slipped them all back into place.
I had felt before this time that if I could just stretch, it would help me. Now
it seemed that the great hand of God stretched me, and every muscle relaxed, and
every nerve became normal. I called for Mother to get my clothes, and said, "I'm
getting out of here. The Lord has healed me."

She brought my clothes. Someone came from the kitchen and asked what was going
on. They said that out there in the kitchen they had felt wave after wave of
glory. I told them that the Lord had come and I was healed. I then wrote a note
to my deaf brother and asked him to come and take me to the doctor's office
since he wanted to see me, and there was no use for him to make the trip out
there.

We went into town and I walked up the stairs and was lying on the couch in the
doctor's office when he came in. I shall never forget the look of surprise that
came over his face when he saw me. Then he said, "Thank God."

I said, "Doctor, you know what has happened, don't you?" "It is a miracle,
indeed," was his answer.

He had fixed the cast so that my toes were out. He took hold of my toes and
moved them and asked if it hurt. No, it didn't. He asked me to move my toes and
I did. He took hold of the leg that had been broken so badly, lifted it a
little, and let it drop.

"Did that hurt?" "No," was the answer I could give him, "our God doeth all
things well." I then asked him if I could go home. He answered, "There isn't
anything to hinder you, but I'm not going to take that cast off for two weeks."
It had already been on for thirteen days.

The folk at Tabor gathered and fasted and prayed, and may I say to the glory of
God, that He answered their prayers. While they prayed they also put religion
into action by an offering of money and goods. They felt they should send a
couple of the elders down to anoint me, but the Lord arrived first. They shared
their vegetables and means. When I received that money I did not have a dollar.
No one will know how I thought, "Religion in action." I felt I should keep the
money to pay on my doctor bill.

The day that the doctor cut the cast off, he patted me on the foot and said,
"You must be living awfully good."

I answered, "It's no goodness of mine, but it's the good God I am serving. It is
through the goodness of Christ that this has taken place -- it is none of mine.
Now, Doctor, if you don't talk too big, I can pay you."

He replied, "The state requirement to set a broken limb is $65. You had four
broken bones."

I began to figure -- fifteen dollars for the first X-ray, five dollars each for
the other three -- it was running into figures fast. He scratched his head, sat
there a moment, and said, "How does $30 sound?"

"The church at Tabor sent me $25. You mark me down for the other five." When I
said that, he wouldn't ask but $25. That twenty-five dollars paid off a big
debt. God will take the little and make it go a long way.

I said, "Doctor, I'm going to pray that God will bless you fourfold." "Just pray
that God will make me worthy of that," was his reply. "I'll do that also."

As he shook hands with me he said, "I want you to come back. I want to see that
limb in a few days." He then said something to me that was a bit of
encouragement. "I once knew God, but I allowed my student life and my practice
to crowd Him out. Wife and I both knew God."

After three weeks I went back as the doctor had asked. This time he said,
"Pearl, I went back to meeting yesterday and heard a good message. I'm going to
take up my cross and serve God."

Thank God! All praise and all glory belong to Him. "All things work together for
good." I just took it for what it said. Having known something of His presence
in suffering has made me appreciate my Lord more.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 18: CHAPTER 6
========================================================================

CHAPTER SIX

One evening when I came home from working on the railroad, the Lord spoke to me
to go pray for Earn. I did not know where Earn lived, so I told the Lord I would
ask Bob the next morning

Bob said that Earn was in the hospital and no one could go in to see him. That
night I was impressed again to go pray with Earn. I said, "Lord, he is in the
hospital and they won't let me in to see him." I was only a babe in Christ. The
urge continued and I prayed, but not in the place where I should have.

The next morning I still had the call, "Go pray with Earn." Again, I said,
"Lord, they won't let anyone in to see him." I did not know then that a minister
could go in when others could not. That urge to go pray with Earn continued for
three days and a half. Earn's brother would tell me each day, "They won't let
you in."

All day Sunday I felt very sad. In the evening I was preparing to go to church
when my aunt came and said, "Pearl, Earn is at Bob's and they need help." I
hurriedly got ready, told my wife to go to the Friend's Church and tell them
that I would not be there that night to preach. I ran eight blocks to Bob's
home.

When I arrived, Earn was dying. I asked those in the room if he had gotten right
with God. They said, "Not as far as we know about." They asked Earn if he knew
me. In his dying gasps he said, "Yes." Bob said, "Who is it?" Earn replied,
"Pearl." He had not seen me since I was twelve years old.

"Earn, have you gotten right with God?" I asked. He said, "Last Wednesday
evening I began to pray for the Lord to send someone to help me. I prayed all
day Thursday and Friday and Saturday, but He wouldn't answer me." I seemed to be
shot through with darts. I said, "Yes, Earn, the Lord did answer your prayer.
God told me to come pray with you, but I was told I could not get in to see you.
Do you want me to pray for you?" In his dying gasps, he said, "No, give me the
promises."

I gave him the promises of God as fast as I could, and never prayed harder from
my heart. Earn turned his face and, with a weak smile, looked into the great
beyond and said, "It is finished." He never drew another breath; he had gone out
to meet God. I went into the other room and told his folk that he was gone.

I asked Bob if I could use the front room; I wanted to pray. I told the Lord how
sorry I was, and that if Earn was lost, I ought to be. I also told Him that if
He would forgive me, and if he would ever lay another soul on my heart, I would
do whatever He said, no matter what others said. I meant it then and do to this
day. We must obey God at any cost. It is He who has called us as His servants.
He is our Master; and does not the Word teach us that we ought to obey God
rather than man, and that obedience is better than sacrifice?

I quit work on the railroad to go to school and had gone to school only fifteen
days when I took very sick. I had preached that night to a full mission on
Matthew 18:3, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." I went home with a severe earache.

After sitting up all night, heating pads to put to my ear, I went to see the
doctor. He examined me and said, "Man, you should be in bed. Your temperature is
103 degrees. You have scarlet fever, a mastoid, and bronchial pneumonia.

I went home, but my ear hurt so badly that I sat by the stove and put hot packs
to it. That was the eleventh of November. I kept getting worse. Wife called the
doctor that evening. My temperature had gone up to 105 degrees and for five days
we did not know of it being less, but often above that.

On the sixth night, I told my wife to go to bed, and that if I needed her, I
would call her. But I got worse and could not call. About 4:00 a.m. she wakened
and came to my bed, and said, "Is there anything you want?" I asked for a drink
and said, "I am awful sick. You had better call the doctor." The night before
there had been two doctors to see me. On consultation, she called the one we had
been having. He had been called to the hospital and could not come. She then
called the other man. He said, "All that can be done is being done," and he
could not come. Wife came back and told me. I said, "Call Mother and Dr. Abbott.
He will come if he thinks I will die before he gets here." She left to call. My
oldest son was standing near. I wanted to speak to him, but could not. I wrote,
"Preach my funeral from Matthew 18:3, Brother Lemon (a Friends' preacher)."

Just then old Satan, the accuser, appeared, and said, "Now, where is the God you
love? If He loved you, why is He letting you suffer life this? When you served
me, you were not sick. You didn't know your strength then." I wanted to hit him,
but he stayed too far from my bed. Then he stretched himself along the ceiling,
face down, just over me. I said, "I know you are the prince of the air, and it
was not the Lord that made Job sick, but you. I love the Lord and I know right
now that the blood of Jesus covers every sin and cleanses me from all sin," and
he was gone. I tell you, friend, you had better have the blood applied and be
sure, for in a time like that you will need an unmistakable testimony and the
blood of Jesus.

It seemed that my bed began to swing. I felt I was going; all consciousness of
this world was gone. I cannot tell you what it was, only this -- I seemed to
leave the body and travel in spirit. It was not long until I could see the moon
beneath me, then the sun, then a bright whiteness ahead of me. I saw a shining
highway and I was on it. I saw the City, the gate of pearl, which swung open a
little before I arrived. I got a glimpse of the inside. The pure gold streets
gave a yellow glistening in the pure white and the dearness of the heavens.
Angels met me. Four of them had a Bible. They came two on one side, two on the
other, and read portions of the 33rd of Ezekiel. When they had finished, they
went into the city, and I came back to earth.

As I landed in our yard, I looked through the glass in the door. I felt as if I
were slipping into a sack. I opened my eyes. Mother said, "How are you?" Again I
could not speak. In a few moments I opened my eyes again. Mother stroked my
forehead and said, "How are you?" I said, "I will soon be all right." The doctor
looked at his watch and said, "It is now 11:30. If he is alive at noon, come to
the office and get something to deaden that pain in his ear." I said, "I will be
here. You just as well to go now."

I was warned that if I saw sin and failed to warn the people and they died in
their sins, their blood would be required at my hands. And many a preacher will
go to the judgment with the blood of people on his hands because he failed to
warn them. In these days of compromise and worldliness, the blame lays with the
preachers.

When I was able to get up, I was deaf in one ear, had severe leakage of the
heart, and was a diabetic. The doctor told me I would never be able to hear out
of that ear again. I went home from his office after the examination. That night
I knelt by the side of my bed, all alone, and told the Lord what the doctor had
said about my hearing. I do not know why I did not tell Him about it all,
instead of just about the ear. I told Him that I was going to be out preaching
for Him and that if I were deaf in one ear, and someone should speak to me from
that side and I would not hear them, it might offend some. "Now, Lord, for your
cause and Jesus' sake, please give me a new ear drum." I went to bed, went so
sound asleep that I didn't turn over all night. When I wakened the next morning
I could hear my watch ticking. I have perfect hearing in that ear.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 19: CHAPTER 4
========================================================================

CHAPTER FOUR

One day while at work, the call to preach came very strong. I said, "Lord, if
you want me to preach, give me a text and a place to preach it." After I went
home I was reading the Bible and came across this verse of Scripture, "Let not
the foot of pride come against me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove me"
(Psalm 36:11). That night, as I entered the Mission, Sister Hilliard, the one in
charge of the Mission, came to me and said, "Brother Poe, I feel you are called
of God to preach, and would like for you to take the service on Sunday
afternoon." I prayed over the text God had given me, and asked Him to meet with
us in a great way and to put His seal on the message, if I were called to
preach, by giving me two to be saved and two to be sanctified. Another thing I
prayed was, "Lord, don't let any preachers come." When I arrived at the Mission,
there was a full house and no preachers. After song and prayer and the speaker
was introduced, I stepped to the pulpit and started to read my text. The door
opened and in came seven "big" preachers! Oh, I thought, God has let me down! I
trembled from head to feet, but God strengthened me and in a few moments I had
victory over them all. I am glad they came, for I have never feared man from
then to now. Soon those preachers were backing me and saying "Amen" and
shouting. God cut me loose and for one hour I preached so fast I could hardly
get my breath. At the close of the service two people came to the altar. They
soon prayed through. While they were praying, Satan suggested to me that I was
not called to preach, for I had asked God to put His seal on the call by giving
two to be saved, and two to be sanctified. He was putting the damper on. He
reminded me that I had asked God not to let any preachers be there. Just then
the wife of the man at the altar, said, "We know we are forgiven and Jesus saves
us. Can we get sanctified?" I said, "You surely can," and they did. Old Satan
went after other tactics while I praised the Lord.

I was saved the third of January, sanctified the thirteenth, started preaching
the seventeenth, and from that day until June nineteenth, I missed only three
nights in service and preached most of those nights.

I had a fourth grade education, had to spell common words to pronounce them, but
God furnished a great Teacher, the Holy Spirit. I read my New Testament through
eight times that first year and the entire Bible once, and my teacher in
Theology and Homiletics and Doctrine was so perfect in wisdom that I have never
cared to change. When I read the best books on these subjects, I say, "Well, the
Holy Ghost has already showed me that." Dear readers, there is no substitute for
the Holy Ghost. You never will deny the Bible when He is your teacher.

After thirty-four years of being taught by Him and led by Him, I can foresee the
fall of any denomination or holiness movement when they go to putting stress
upon human teaching and relying upon their own ability, rather than putting the
stress on the importance of being filled with the Holy Ghost and led by Him. It
isn't long after man starts in the human channel until Satan gets in, causing
him to depend upon his learning and higher criticism, lower the standards and
permit compromise and worldliness, and the Holy Ghost soon has no place and
Jesus gets no glory. Do not misunderstand me; I think we should study and get an
education, but we should keep always in the forefront the leadership of the Holy
Ghost, and have His anointing and wisdom.

I prayed daily for nearly five months about my call to preach. I wanted to be
sure, for I felt the tremendous responsibility of preaching. One evening as I
was coming from work, I asked Everett Allen, a colored boy who felt the call to
preach, to come down and we would pray until it would be so clear that we would
never question it, no matter the test. At 4:00 p.m. we read a few verses from
the Bible and got on our knees to pray. We did not stop praying until l:00 am.
Heaven and earth never seemed closer -- such power of God, such sacred presence
and glory!

After praying for several hours, there came before my vision a wheat field so
large that I could not see across it any way I looked. I said, "Lord, what is
this vision?" These words came to me, "The harvest is truly ripe. Cast in thy
sickle and reap, for one of these sheaves is worth more than the whole world."
Just then those heads of wheat became people of every nationality, multitudes
and multitudes. Then these words, "Preach the gospel the year around and I will
take care of you." I said, "Lord, where shall I start?" A church was shown me,
and a number of seekers. We prayed on. My last request was, "Lord, show me my
path through life." These words came, "You have asked a hard thing;
nevertheless, I will grant it."

Our prayer meeting closed with it settled for all time that I must preach. Many
times through these years of preaching I have seen the importance of being sure.
I have felt that my first text was for me as well as for others, for many, many
times the hand of the wicked has tried to remove me. I have been made to suffer
mental agony and physical pain as the hand of the wicked has tried to move me. I
have been misunderstood, misrepresented, lied upon, many snares and traps have
been laid for me; I have suffered the loss of all things and been left alone to
stand on what I knew to be the will of God, suffered perils of false brethren,
and had letters written against me, but my God has stood by me. And today, as I
suffer loneliness from the human part, I am in an ocean of love of my Lord.

After praying about my call and asking the Lord to show me my path through life,
I seemed to be awake. I saw myself climbing a very steep mountain, nearly
straight up. I came to a place where I could go no further neither could I
safely go back; to try meant that I would fall and be dashed to death on the
rocks below. I was holding on by the tips of my lingers. I said, "Lord, help
me." I was lifted above that place and found myself standing on a very narrow
path. (Let me pause here to say that if you ever start for heaven, you cannot go
back when the going gets near impossible.)

On my narrow path, I would say, "Lord, by faith I will take this step and by
faith, this one," all the way to the end. This a walk of faith. We are to live
by faith, "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith:
as it is written, The just shall live by faith." Praise Him.

I had not gone far on my narrow path until I stumbled over a small thing. It is
usually the small thing that one stumbles over -- not a ten-story building, or a
mountain. I then came to an object in my path about waist high. I had some
difficulty getting over it. As I walked on by faith, I noticed my path had a
light shining on it. I also saw that there were no sides for me to step off on.
I was up high and I could see smoke and fire far, far below me. I realized that
if I fell from there, I would drop into the fire. I must be careful, but go on
by faith.

Soon a very large object stood high on my path. I stopped; I looked at it. There
was no way around it. It looked too high to possibly go over. I said, "Lord, I
told you I would go through with you at any cost and I mean it, but I cannot go
over that." Just then old Satan appeared with a large pick in his hands. He
stuck it in the path, which was only about four inches wide. The path gave way
and I began to fall backward. When I took a leap, saying, "Lord, I will take
this leap," I lit on the path ahead of Satan, and said, "Lord, help me, and I
will take this leap." I jumped and caught the top of the object that was in my
way. I stayed on my knees until I was across that big obstacle. When I arrived
at the other side, I could not see my path, but I could see my light. I said,
"Lord, by faith I will go on." I dropped into total blackness up to my neck.
When I went to take my first step, there was no path. I reached as far as I
could with my foot. I felt the path and said, "Lord, by faith I will take the
step." There were several pits in that darkness, but I escaped them all by
stepping by faith. Then the darkness began to disappear and just as I could see
my path again, I saw a snare and a man's hands. I pushed the snare away and by
faith took the next step only to see a big bear trap and a woman's hand holding
the chain. I pushed the trap aside and went forward.

Then my path became covered with thorns, sharp briers, and barbed wire tangled
among the thorns. I started pressing my way through the thorns. My clothing was
torn, and my flesh suffered many cuts and pricks as I pressed on through the
entangled mass. It took a long time to go through, and my heart was torn and
aching.

I entered a large room in the side of a mountain. Light was coming from a hole
in the rock wall. There was no way around this wall. Suddenly, many people, I do
not know from where they came, tried to push me back over the edge into the
field, but I held my balance. They would pass by and drop over the precipice
into the fire -- wave after wave of people going over.

I got up to the small hole in the wall, got down on my knees, and prayed, "O
Lord, I have come this far and can go no farther." A voice said, "This is where
you die."

It seemed that I was about to pass away when the ceiling above me, like a vapor
or steam, then like a white veil, unfolded from the spot. It took form and there
stood Jesus. He picked me up in His arms. I was as a little baby. He said,
"Preach the gospel the acceptable year around and I will take care of you." He
stood me on my feet. I said, "Lord, I am a baby; I cannot stand." He said, "By
My grace you can," and I did, and began to run up my path. I then came to full
consciousness and was wide awake to think over my path.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 20: CHAPTER 5
========================================================================

CHAPTER FIVE

As I have traveled life's path, I have been made to realize what each thing in
my vision has meant and where I was on my path. I do not know just when the end
will come, but I do know I am just before the wall, near to where the light came
from that shone on my path. God is just on the other side.

The little thing that I stumbled over was the way someone did, but I did not
fall. The larger one, I met in a National Holiness Camp Meeting.

A little while before my son James was born, my wife had the flu. It was the
year so many people were dying with it, and especially expectant mothers. I was
not saved at the time. I did all I knew to do for my wife. We called the doctor,
but he was so busy he did not come until five days later. I used lemons and
baking soda and gave Epsom salts each night. When the doctor did come, she was
over the worst part. The doctor asked what I had used and I told him. He said,
"Go ahead. You have done better than the most of us doctors." The flu left wife
feeling so tired and run down.

We had both been saved in January before this camp in June. It was our first
camp meeting and I thought nothing could be greater. I was working on the
railroad then and could attend only the nights and Sundays.

On Sunday morning wife said, "I want you to stay all day, but I don't feel able
to stay so long. I will have to rest." We agreed and I took a sandwich for my
dinner. As she was getting ready to go home after the morning service, I walked
with her to the car. She was to ride with someone from the Mission.

A certain woman came up and said, "Oh, Sister Poe, aren't you going to stay for
the rest of the day?" Wife said, "No." The other woman said, "Uncle Buddy
Robinson is going to speak." We had not come prepared for her to stay, so wife
said, "Oh, I haven't a change of clothing for the children and did not fix
dinner. I had better go home." She bade me good-bye, and wished me a pleasant
day. Old Satan is always on the job to put his interpretation on a partly said
statement. That woman began to tell how awful it was that Sister Poe had to go
home because she didn't have a change of clothing for her children. It soon
spread to others.

That night after the preaching, a number of people were at the altar. As was my
custom, I went to help pray for the seekers. As I prayed, a man began to crowd
in between me and the seeker. I kept on praying and he crowded back against me.
I turned to the steps that went to the platform and kept on praying. Soon I was
ordered by a minister to shut up, and not in a very nice way. Just "Shut up;
shut up, I say!" But I continued to pray until folk with whom I was praying got
through. On arriving home, I found a note on the table, "Dad came up and wanted
me to go home with him. Will be seeing you Wednesday or Thursday."

The next morning when I arose, I thought I would read a chapter and pray before
I went to work. As I did so I got so blest that I did not have time to get my
breakfast. I only had 15 minutes to go a little over a mile to work. I hurried
across the street, bought a lunch for noon, and was so blest that tears flowed
freely. Every few rods, I said, "Praise the Lord," as I hurried on to work.

When I arrived at work, I was told that my buddy and I were to put a deck in a
coal car. Usually, that took two men a day and three-quarters. My buddy was to
bring me the material; I was to put the boards on. Every few minutes, I would
feel the power and glory of God until I would shed tears and shout, "O glory!"
As I worked on, the blessing increased. I thought, No one can be blest like this
and live. If it comes again I will go to heaven, and about that time another
wave of God's glory would hit me and sweep over my soul.

At noon I sat down on the new "decked" part to eat my lunch. I started to ask
the blessing and could not stop until I heard the whistle blow for work. I
placed my lunch aside and started working and praising the Lord. By the middle
of the afternoon it had been noised around over the shops where I worked that I
had had a mental slip. The men would come and peep through the cracks of the car
and I would hear them say, "Poor fellow. Now what will his wife and children
do?" About that time another wave of glory would come. I laughed and cried and
said, "Glory, glory, glory!" The next I heard, "Sure enough, boys. Now we will
have to watch him. He doesn't know his strength," and that much was true. I was
supposed to be the strongest man there. They said, "If he starts to do anything,
we will have to hog-tie him." If I had gotten out of that car and started toward
them and hollered "Boo!" they would have run like scared jack rabbits. Just a
little while before quitting time I placed the last board, drove the last nail,
lifted my tool box to my shoulder, and climbed out of that car, leaving behind
me one of the biggest days work any one man had done in that line and had
shouted half the time. As I went home that night, I had a wide way all to
myself. I knew why, but I was blest. "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich,
and he addeth no sorrow with it."

Upon arriving home, I read a few chapters in the Bible and had a good season of
prayer. I did not feel hungry, so prepared and went to camp meeting. As soon as
I reached the camp, that great blessing I had had was gone, like darkness comes
at night when the lights are put out. I could feel a coldness toward me. I could
see some talking and nodding and looking at me. I did not know what was wrong,
but I knew there was something. I went back of the Tabernacle to the timber and
knelt down to pray. After praying a few moments, asking God what I had done and
why this awful feeling, I received no answer only, "Go to service."

There was no altar service that night. A person came to me and said, "Brother
Poe, we are so glad you are saved and called to preach, but your wife and
children come first." I said, "No, Jesus comes first, and my family next."
Another person walked up and said, "Brother Poe, where is your wife?" I said,
"Her father came up Sunday and she went home with him." Another unfinished
statement and Satan took advantage of it.

Following are the two statements, not fully explained -- the one by my wife, the
other by myself -- as they were interpreted by Satan and those whom he helped to
talk. "Do you know that preacher, that railroad man, Poe? His wife was here
Sunday; had to go home because he won't support her. She didn't have a change of
clothes for her children. He said her father came up and she has left him. Isn't
it too bad?" So more wood was added to the fire. There were over 5,000 people at
that camp, but it was not blessed of God in the last part as it was in the
first.

The next night as I came to the camp -- more coldness and whispering A sermon
was preached to hit me, but I was innocent and didn't know then that it was for
me. I amen-ed the preacher all the way through. After service a man came to me
and said, "Brother Poe, what is all the talk I hear?" I said "I don't know. I
haven't heard anything, but I surely can feel that something is wrong." He then
told me. I had two keys for our house. I said, "You take three people and go to
our house and if you don't find more clothing than my children will ever wear
out, I will pay for it. Then go across the street and ask the grocer if my bill
for groceries isn't $70 for two weeks, and if I have kept it paid up." They did.

The next night wife was back home when I returned from meeting, but that had
been a hard day. I tried to reason it out. I could not see how such could
possibly be in a Holiness camp meeting.

Everett Allen, the colored boy, came home with me that night from work. He saw
that I was troubled. He said, "Brother Poe, what is the matter?" I told him. He
said, "Get your Bible." "Now open it and read the first verse you see." My eyes
fell on John 15:18, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it
hated you." I said, "Yes, but Everett, these are not people of the world." He
said, "Close it and open it again," and I read these words, "Blessed are ye,
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil
against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is
your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before
you" (Matt. 5:11-12).

By this time the Lord had begun to lift me, and He lifted me above the whole
thing. But it stands out as a great lesson to me. Be careful in repeating a
report about someone. It may not be any more true than that was about me. But I
have suffered from that until now, for they never cleared the matter before
those thousands of people. It also taught me not to believe every report. Some
folk are used of Satan to put the wrong construction on a thing and others are
anxious to carry the story

I heard Joseph H. Smith, the great Bible preacher in the Holiness camp meeting,
preach a great sermon from James, on the tongue as an unruly member. One thing
he said has stayed with me -- "A half truth, when wrongly used, is worse than a
whole lie."

Brother Smith illustrated the truth by an incident that happened when he was a
young fellow in his teens. One day in the early fall a few big boys about his
age had gone to school. It Had rained the night before. The boys had their shoes
off, their breeches legs rolled up, and were wading in the grader ditch that had
not drained. A girl, also in her early teens, came down the road to school. Her
hair was in braids, with pretty pink ribbons tied on her hair that came to her
waist line. She wore a neat, clean dress. She spoke politely, "Good morning,
boys." They all spoke gentlemanly by saying, "Good morning," and called the girl
by name. She had been in the schoolhouse only a few moments when she came
running out. The boys ran and caught her and threw her in that old muddy water
in the grader ditch. He left the story there. You could hear "Oh-h-h" going over
the congregation.

In order to let Satan have time to magnify what he had said about the girl,
Brother Smith continued preaching from his text for about fifteen minutes. Then
he said, "Hark! What I told you about that girl was true -- every word of it,
but it was only half the truth. The girl was helping the teacher clean the room.
She was burning the scrap paper in the stove and caught her dress on fire. She
came running out of the schoolhouse with her clothing on fire and we ran and
grabbed her and threw her in the muddy water to save her life. That is the whole
truth." A sigh of relief was heard. It was a great lesson to me. I have had to
suffer many half-truths told on me. If what we are telling is going to injure
the one of whom we are speaking, we are guilty of slander, and hurt our own
soul, the one of whom we speak, and the one spoken about. If the thing is true,
we should go to the person and help to restore him.

I continued to preach in the Mission, Salvation Army, and other Missions in town
until in October.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 21: CHAPTER 2
========================================================================

CHAPTER TWO

In the spring after father's passing away in the fall, we had a very sad
experience. Before father had taken sick, he was having a well drilled. They had
drilled down fifty-five feet and struck rock. Father took sick and was in bed
when the man that was drilling the well returned with a churn drill, but the
churning and noise seemed to bother my father. So the man moved his rig to
another place after having put twelve-inch tile in the hole they had drilled. He
promised to come back later to finish it. The well was safely covered.

In the spring, in May, he returned to see if the well had any water, but the
hole was dry. He left it uncovered.

My baby sister, now two years old, would often go to the barn to play in the
hallway and in the cob bin. A neighbor woman came to see my mother about some
sewing that day. My sister had been asleep. Upon waking, Mother played with her
a few moments, then went about her work. Soon she heard my sister crying.
Mother, thinking she was in the barn, hurried there only to find the cries were
behind her and coming from the well. Sister had fallen into it. There were no
phones in our neighborhood in those days. My older sister got out of bed,
dressed, and crawled one-half mile to tell my oldest brother. My brother Albert,
who was sick in bed, arose and staggered down the road to tell neighbors. As he
came in sight of the schoolhouse, I saw him staggering and reeling. I ran to
meet him and he told me what had happened. I ran from house to house to get
help.

One man made a hook and took a small rope and let it down. My little sister took
hold of the rope and they pulled her up to within a few feet of the top, then
her little hands gave way and she slid back to the bottom. This was repeated
several times.

As others gathered, someone told her to hook the hook in the band of her
waistline, but she could not as her hands were up. Another said, "This hook is
dangerous. We should dig her out." So men went to work and dug furiously and
fast. A windlass was needed. There was one four miles away and it was soon
brought. But about 8:00 that evening my sister's breathing became heavy, and
then silent. She had asked us ever so many times to help her while she was
breathing her last.

We heard horses' hoofs beating the ground as they came running up the road. A
man had heard about it and brought a special spotlight, the first one we had
ever seen. He had borrowed it from a policeman. They flashed the light down the
now much shallower well, only about twenty or twenty-five feet, let the hook and
rope down, hooked it in her dress, and brought her little lifeless body out of
that dark hole. The doctor was there and pronounced her dead.

I know now that it was God who spoke to me about two hours before this. I was
running for help when something said, "Your sister will die." I told my mother.
We laid our little sister away beside our father in the country graveyard. The
shock and strain almost took my precious mother. She was in peril of life for
two years.

We children worked hard to make a living. We older boys would work in the
timber, then my brother older than I would haul the timber that we had prepared
to the mines and get part cash, the rest being traded in for groceries. This
kept me out of school much of the time.

Finally, we sold the little farm that was home and, listening to poor counsel,
rented a large farm. We boys were not used to farming on a large scale. We
worked hard, very hard, but with floods and too much rain, crops were small. In
two years we were $1800 in debt. We moved from there and my oldest brother and I
tended 120 acres with horses. The place was sold, and we had to move again.
There was a drought and we went in debt again.

The year that I was 14, I hired out to a farmer for $20 a month. While there I
received my first call of God.

One night I had a dream. I dreamed that I died and went to heaven. I saw my
father and little sister at a distance. I cannot describe heaven nor its
atmosphere; it is beyond words. While there I saw the fruits of every kind for
the saints, but there was no place for me. I saw Jesus. He was standing, and as
I approached Him, I knew him. He looked so tenderly at me, and said, "Pearl,
what are you doing up here?" I answered, "Lord, I have died and come here to
spend eternity." He looked so sad and said, "You didn't prepare to come here.
There is no place for you." I said, "Lord, I will work for you. I will do
anything to get to stay here." Jesus said, "The time to work for Me was on earth
while in that life. There is nothing anyone can do after death to stay here.
Depart from Me into hell fire."

I started falling. I thought, as I fell, If ever I light on earth, I will serve
the Lord. But to my horror and fright, I saw myself falling, head first, into
hell. I could hear the shrieks and screams of the lost. I was near to the fire
when I awoke. I got out of bed and promised God that I would join the church the
first chance I had. The next morning when I got up, the woman, where I was
working, asked what was the matter; I was so pale. I told her my vision or
dream.

That fall they had a protracted meeting in the Christian church. After a few
nights, they asked for those who wanted to accept Jesus to come forward. I went
forward with some others. The preacher asked me if I believed Jesus was the Son
of God. I answered, Yes. Will you accept Him as your Savior? I said, I will. I
went home that night and told my mother that I had accepted Christ as my Savior.
She did not encourage or discourage me. I was baptized in a little while after
and then smoked the first cigarette I had ever smoked.

I had gotten in the habit of using profanity. The next day after being baptized
I went hunting with a boy. I said to him, "If you hear me cursing, tell me about
it, for I am a Christian and don't want to do those things." After he had
rebuked me several times, he became angry and said, "You don't have a bit more
religion than I have, and if you profess, you are a hypocrite." I felt awfully
bad, but he had told me the truth and made me think.

About a week later, I was coming from the Methodist church. All summer I had
been walking five miles to Sunday school and then staying for church. This night
on my way home, God moved me to a deep sorrow for sin. I realized that I was
lost. My churchanity was not working. I kneeled down by a stump, turned my face
toward heaven, put both arms up, and asked God to have mercy on me and forgive
me. I promised Him that I would live for Him. Oh, the joy and the peace that
flooded my soul! I knew I had been forgiven. I was not bothered about using
profanity nor cigarettes. I ran the rest of the way home, and as I came in, I
went to mother's room and said, "Mother, I am saved and know it." She said,
"Praise the Lord."

About a week after I was saved, I was thinking of what I would be when I became
a man. My ambitions were to be a carpenter, or a railroad engineer. But as plain
as I ever heard anything, God said, "I want you to preach the gospel." Oh, I
thought, I cannot. I have no education and I must help support my mother and the
rest of the family. Right there I grieved the blessed Holy Spirit and for ten
years I went without God.

Many, many times I have wished that I had answered the call at that time. But
He, the blessed Holy Spirit, was grieved and I was without His guidance through
my teens. I was making life's decisions without the leadings of God. Oh, how
sorry I have been because I said I couldn't. Right when I needed the Holy Ghost
so badly to lead me through life's untried path, decisions were made that will
never be forgotten and, oh, the heartaches they have brought. Besides, I seemed
to be a leader among the young folk and I might have been able to have led many
of them to Christ.

I married before I was twenty. I was restless and had taken up the tobacco habit
and was using profanity again. I quit going to church. I would not stay long in
a place, but would always tell the men my dream. However, I never told anyone I
had received a call to preach.

During this time I had a brother-in-law, my sister's husband, and we loved each
other. He took sick and, after some weeks of sickness, I asked the doctor his
condition. He told me that my brother-in-law could not get well. He told me the
nature of the sickness -- T. B. of the lungs and bowels -- and said that he
could not live long. I went to see him. At once I sat by his bed, and said,
"Buddy, how are you?" He said, "I am better. I believe I will be up in a little
while." I then told him what the doctor had told me. I did not want to see him
die unsaved. I preached my first sermon though I was a backslider and I knew I
was in sin. I told him how to repent and what to do; I quoted Scriptures to him
and left him in the hands of the Lord.

A couple of days later, I returned to see him, and asked how he was making out
in getting saved. I met a broad smile and here are his words, "Buddy, I did what
you told me and Jesus has come. I am saved; oh, I am so happy. I was sprinkled
yesterday after I was saved. It was the nearest to baptism that I could meet in
my condition." Right here I want to praise my wonderful Lord for my first
convert. Then my brother-in-law said to me, "You are the first person in my life
that ever talked to me about getting right with God. Now Buddy, I want you to
give your heart to God and do what you told me to do." I promised I would, but
neglected. He passed away praising the Lord and shouting.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 22: CHAPTER 3
========================================================================

CHAPTER THREE

In the spring just before I was twenty-four, I was working on the railroad. I
bought a young cow from a neighbor. She was to be fresh in a few days. I was to
give him so much for the cow, and if she brought a male calf, he was to pay me
$5 and get the calf before it was a week old. She had a nice heifer calf, and I
gave it to my wife. We let it have plenty of milk and fed it good. It grew fast.
One day in early October, my wife went to see her folk. When I passed by my
neighbor's, I saw a dressed baby beef hanging in his yard. When I got home,
there was $5 and a small piece of paper, saying, "I came up and got my calf." It
was then worth about $40. I became very angry and purposed to go to the road,
fight the man, and kill him.

I was soon on the road and I could hear a wagon coming. I knew it was my
neighbor. Then, for the first time in ten years, I heard the voice of God:
"Pearl, what you do on earth you will have to give account of at the judgment,
and what you do not do, you will not have to give account of." I turned and
climbed through the fence. I would not look back. I could hear him passing, but
God had spoken. I went home, picked up the milk pail, and when I came to the
lot, my cow was there looking for her calf. I told her my wicked neighbor had
murdered her calf. And I patted her on the neck and said, "I am sorry." She
looked at me as if she wished she could speak.

I sat down to milk, and when I was about half through, I was thinking of God
speaking to me again and I said, "Praise the Lord." It frightened the cow and
she ran from me. I called to her and she stopped, raised her head high, and I
told her to come back, for I was just praising the Lord for speaking to me. She
trusted me and returned to the lot and I finished milking.

I had become discouraged, thinking that I might never be saved, but now God had
spoken to me and it inspired hope. The next day I resigned my job. I told the
man I worked with that I was going to move to Oskaloosa, Iowa, straighten up,
and be a Christian. I moved to Oskaloosa, got work on the M. & St. L. railroad,
building cars. It was not until about the first of the year that I became deeply
convicted of my sinful life through another dream.

I saw a black object light near where several of us railroad men were. I said,
"That is Satan." Just then I saw an angel passing through the air going
southeast, and slowly I said, "The angel of the Lord. I am following Him." I
seemed to go without human effort. I was soon in the center of Africa. It was
noon; I saw the sun nearly overhead. I saw a rainbow with a strange color in it.
I said, "This is the sign of the end of the world," and I knelt and prayed "O
Lord, clean me out and fix me up for heaven." There was a great blast of fire
and I was in it, but felt no harm. I awoke, went back to sleep, dreamed the same
dream again, and prayed the same prayer, but this time I came back to my work on
the railroad. As I returned, I asked God to deliver me, and told Him I would
serve Him. I awoke again, but not to go back to sleep. I was pondering the dream
in my mind and could not sleep. When I left for work that morning I took a chew
of tobacco. It tasted awful. I spit it out and have never taken another chew,
nor craved it, since, and that has been over 34 years. God was answering the
prayer I had prayed in my dream, by cleaning me out and getting me ready for
heaven.

Conviction for sin deepened. I had not been in a meeting for over five years,
and I had become so discouraged during the last year that I had been tempted
greatly to end my life by self-destruction, but God prevented.

I became desperate in my seeking and praying. I spoke to the man with whom I was
working and told him I was quitting sin and was going to give my heart to God.
He said, "You are too wicked." That only deepened the conviction. He said,
"Anyone who curses like you do, won't get saved." In my desperation that night I
went into a spare room, got down on my knees, and prayed, "Oh, God, I am through
with the life of sin. If You never forgive me and I die and go to hell, I will
go serving You." I meant it. That night at the supper table, I looked my wife in
the eyes and said, "Wife, if I straighten up and live a Christian life, will
you?" She smiled, tears filled her eyes, and she said, "I have been waiting a
long time to hear you say that." I said, I am going to."

After supper I picked up a little old Bible that I asked for when my grandmother
-- my mother's mother -- had passed away As I read it, my wife said, "Aren't you
going to lodge tonight?" I answered, "Wife, I have been lying to you. I have
been going to the show, not to the lodge, then stopping at the pool hall, but I
am not going any more." Who was preaching to me? The Lord. He had convicted me
of sin and I was through with the whole mess of it.

That night (a Saturday) a leaflet, announcing a revival meeting at the
Lighthouse Mission, was placed on our porch. I said, "Wife, let's go." We did
and she went forward. The old devil, the deceiver, said to me, "You have done
all you can do now. Just profess it," and I did not go to the altar. The Lord
showed me that if I professed, I would be a liar. I went home, but not to rest.
I rolled and tossed most of the night. In the night I told the Lord that if He
would just let me live until I could get to the meeting Sunday afternoon (they
did not have morning service), I would go forward.

I sat on the front seat and cried through the preaching. When the altar call was
given, I felt I was bound; I could not go. My feet would not move. I was crying
aloud now. Finally, I fell -- it seemed I was going; to hell. But between where
I stood and the altar, in my falling I cried in desperation, "Oh, save me,
Jesus." When I hit the altar, I was saved, reclaimed, and I knew it, for the
love of God came into my soul. I had lost love for all people a while before
this. Oh, I respected them, but love was gone. I went home, erected a family
altar that to this day I have kept up. I told my wife, who was so glad I had
gotten saved, that I supposed I would get my call to preach again. I will never
forget her looks and words: "Again? I never knew you ever had a call to preach
or I would never have married you." I said, "Yes, I backslid over it, but have
never told anyone." And I am sure that the largest percent of backsliding today
is because God has asked individuals to do something they are not willing to do
and they grieve the Holy Spirit. That night as I prayed, God spoke, "Now, will
you go preach for me?" I said, "I will, Lord." He said, "Would you be willing to
go to Africa?" I said, "Yes, Lord, anywhere," and I meant it, and it holds good
today. I will go anywhere He calls. He is my leader, my All in all.

That night I had a vision. I was standing in a beautiful yard with fruit trees
to my right and tall fir trees to my left, and a beautiful house behind me. I
was looking west in the evening. The lane was over-arched with limbs of elm
trees. I saw a man walking slowly toward me. I recognized that it was Jesus. He
said, "Follow me." We were in front of the house. We crossed the lane, went
through a fence, and, after we had walked some distance, He turned and faced the
place I had left. He said, "See that beautiful home?" I said, "I do." He said,
"That represents the homes of America. See those fruit trees?" "Yes." "Those
represent fruit-bearing Christians. See those tall fir trees?" "Yes." "Those
represent preachers in America. Follow Me." We were soon in a barren land; not a
living thing -- no trees, no weeds, nor grass. Jesus sat down Hindoo style, and
began to pick up handfuls of black, sandy, loam soil. He said, "See how rich
this soil is?" I said, "Yes." He said, "This is in the heart of Africa. I have m
any millions of souls here that have never heard the gospel. You sow the seed
and I will reap the harvest." I said, "I will." Then He said, "East of here
England has her breweries -- the whirlpool of hell, and thousands are drowned in
it each year. The Catholics and Mohammedans are pressing in on the North and
West and thousands more are deceived by them and will be eternally lost."

The next morning as I was going to work, I found a picture of Africa describing
exactly what the Lord had showed me in the vision. I overtook a group of the
railroad men with whom I worked. I was a new creature -- happy in the Lord. They
saw the change in my looks, my habits, and my talk. One asked, "What has
happened to you?" I said, "The Lord Jesus has saved me and He is in my heart."
One of them spoke up, "Ah, you can't get it that way -- get so good all at once
you quit everything." I said, "Thank God, I did." Some said, "Oh, you will soon
be back." Some gave me a day, then a week, a month, six months, a year, as time
went on. But it only made me more determined to be true. Without ever hearing a
holiness sermon preached, I saw my need and became an earnest seeker. Three days
after I was converted I asked some of the men to come to the service and one
came. They chose a song, "The Holy Ghost Has Come," and it set my heart aflame.
Several began shouting. I had never heard that before and, as they shouted, I
thought of the man I had asked to the meeting, Satan took advantage of me and
began to lie to me. He told me that man would tell the other men at the railroad
and they would make fun of me. Satan put his disapproval on the shouting and
stirred carnality in me until I was angry. I was sitting on the front seat and
had made a couple of remarks that were not good. Just then the preacher, blest
as he was and who could nearly have touched me with his finger, said, "Now
Brother Poe, lead us in prayer." I had only been saved three days and now in a
state of anger and disgust. I was in no shape to lead a congregation in prayer,
but I was honest. We went to our knees. All was quiet. I started to pray, "Oh,
dear Lord, if You will forgive me for being in this place, I won't be found like
this again. And if You can help some poor soul here, do it for Jesus' sake,
Amen." Under the anointing the man preached on the need of salvation. When the
meeting was dismissed, I would not look around until I felt sure all had gone
home. I felt I never wanted to see again that man that I had asked to come.
Satan gave me an awful tussle. When we stepped off the Mission steps to go home,
I said, "Wife, we have started, we won't quit. We will go to a certain church
down town. They don't act that way down there," and they didn't; they were too
dead. Now wouldn't it have pleased Satan if he could have gotten me in one of
his refrigerator churches?

We had prayer after we got home and nothing more was said. We had prayer the
next morning before I went to work, but I went with a heavy load on my heart and
mind. It became so heavy about 9:00 a.m. that I climbed up in the car for a
moment of prayer. The Lord said, "Did I not cause you to weep over your sins?" I
said, "Yes." "Did I not make you rejoice when I forgave you?" "Yes, Lord." Then
He said, "I have a second benefit that will destroy this other feeling." I began
at once to seek for light and deliverance. I got out of the car and went back to
work, determined to go through with Jesus.

Going to work that morning I had not walked fast; I arrived just in time to
punch my card. I did not want to meet the man I had invited to service. He
worked several blocks from where I did -- he at the north end of the rip track,
I pretty well to the south end. After I had had my prayer, I looked up and saw
him coming about two car lengths away. I went to the far end of the car that I
was working on. He came around the car. When he got to one end, I would be at
the other. That happened twice. He knew I was dodging him, so he crawled under
the car and came up in front of me. He said, "How are you?" I said, "Not so
hot." He said, "I know what the trouble is. Old Satan tried to make you think I
would tell the men and we would make fun of you. I saw it bothered you last
night when they were shouting." I said, "Yes, it is all true." He said, "I came
down to encourage you. Don't give up. I am not a Christian, but when I get it,
that is the kind I want. I enjoyed the shouting and my wife has that kind. She
has prayer in our home and gets to shouting. About that time, Satan, the old
devil, went sneaking away somewhere, as I told him he had done the tempting and
accusing. I could hardly wait to get home to say, "Wife, come on, let's get the
children ready and go to the Mission." She said, "I thought you weren't going
any more. "Well, we are. God showed me I needed something more -- the second
benefit." Then I saw these words, "Follow peace with all men, and holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord." I wanted to see the Lord and became an
inquirer for holiness. The only answer I received was, "Brother Poe, let the
Lord lead you. He will show you."

I waited a few nights. They were preaching repentance. At the close of the altar
call no one had responded. I said, "May I speak a word?" The preacher said, "If
it is in the will of God." I said, "I don't know about that, but I know I am
forgiven, and I know I am converted, but there is such a hunger in my heart for
something more, I can hardly stand it. I am going to the altar and if there are
any others who feel like that, will you come, too?" I was told that about
fifteen others came, but I was there for myself. After earnestly praying for God
to satisfy that hunger, someone said," Ask God to sanctify you." I did not know
what the word meant, but I asked the Lord to sanctify me. Then, as I was getting
along quite well in prayer and felt the nearness of the Lord, someone said,
"Give up all you know and all you don't know," and that confused me. Then they
said, "Now you are the gift and Jesus is the altar. Get up and claim the work."
I arose and said, "My heart is still hungry. I am not satisfied."

I went home to pray it out, and about three in the morning I reached a place of
utter abandonment of my life to God. I arose to my feet and said, "O God, I will
stay here till I die or be sanctified. Here, Lord, I give myself to Thee; it is
all that I can do." My will submerged into His will. My heart was purified and
cleansed -- the hunger has gone and I was filled. The Spirit said, "Read the
sixth chapter of Romans." I did not know where to find it, but when I had
located it, I read, "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him," and
I knew that my old nature was dead and cleansed. Then, "As ye have yielded your
members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield
your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." I knew I had yielded. If
people will get under enough conviction to truly repent and get a bedrock
experience of regeneration, with a clear witness, you won't have to coax and beg
and pull to get them to seek the Holy Ghost in His sanctifying power. God
sanctified me ten days after my born again experience.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 23: CHAPTER 1
========================================================================

THE POWER OF GOD IN A REDEEMED LIFE

And My Cancer Experience By Pearl P. Poe

DEDICATION

Lovingly dedicated to my precious mother, who has prayed for me so faithfully,
and to my dear children whom I want to meet in heaven.

INTRODUCTION

Many of my friends have requested me to put into print some of God's dealings
with me. I am doing so only that such incidents might be to the glory of God and
to encourage some souls to go through with Jesus.

CHAPTER ONE

When I was but a lad of eight years, my father had a long siege of sickness --
typhoid fever -- and passed away in October. The morning before he passed away
in the evening, he called us to his bedside. First, my mother; then, one by one
each of us children: my older brother, the second brother, my oldest sister,
then myself. When I came to the bedside of my dying father, I thought my heart
would break. He put his hand on my head and said, "Dear Lord Jesus, Put Your
hand on my boy." Then he asked me to be kind and to help mother, and to never
use liquor nor gamble, but to be a good boy and to meet him in heaven. I told
him I would try. He talked to my two younger brothers, then placed his hands on
my baby sister who was soon to meet him.

I spent much of that day sitting on a stairstep at the foot of the bed. My
father was a kind, loving father. Often through the day he would say,
"Farewell." That evening, a number of our relatives gathered in; among them were
his father and mother and his brother and wife, Aunt Elizabeth. My father and my
aunt were good singers. Father asked my aunt to sing, and she began, "Meet Me at
the Cross Roads, Angels, Meet Me There." My father said, "They are already
here." There came a beautiful expression on his countenance. My aunt could not
sing for weeping, and father began to sing, "O Happy Day When Jesus Washed My
Sins Away." When he finished, he said, "Jesus is the Lily of the Valley and
fairer than ten thousand to my soul. Strive to enter in at the straight gate,
for many shall strive but few shall enter," and he left us to be with the
redeemed.

There were sad days ahead. We children were young. My brother next older than I
was sick most of the winter with pneumonia and the grip. My older sister had
typhoid fever when my father did. It left her bedfast with inflammatory
rheumatism. My oldest brother quit school to work at home. Part of the time I
helped him work in the timber to make props for the coal mines.

We were very poor and had a mortgage on our little farm, besides a large doctor
bill and funeral expenses to be paid.

I went to school only part of the time. We had three three-month terms with a
two-week vacation between fall and winter, and winter and spring terms.

One bitter cold morning I went to school. At noon it was 20 degrees below zero
and getting colder. A blizzard came up in the afternoon. With the snow that was
on the ground blowing and more snow falling, it was soon a blinding storm. In
those days, big boys attended the winter term. They were all farmers. The
parents had come from over the ocean as well as some of these boys. I was the
only child in the school that was not of their nationality.

Those big boys thought it would be a big trick to hide my cap and mittens and
neck scarf that day. Soon their fathers began coming to the schoolhouse with
sleds and sleighs to get the children and the teacher. School was dismissed. I
had no father to come for me. Big brother was away working.

The other children all ran out and were on their way home. I could not find my
cap and mittens and scarf. The teacher told me I should have put them up. I told
her kindly that had, but that someone had hidden them. She took hold of me,
shook me, and led me to the door and closed and locked it. I had one and
one-half miles to go facing a northwest blizzard -- no cap, no mittens, and no
scarf. The snow was piling in drifts. My little coat had no high collar, and the
sleeves were too short. My mother had made it for me the winter before. I soon
felt my face and neck and ears were freezing. I rubbed them with my freezing
hands to try to get them warm. Wading through deep drifts made it slow going. I
thought I would freeze to death.

As I thought of the awful thing those boys had done, I felt hatred and anger
stirring in my heart. I felt revengeful and my anger increased. I struck my
freezing fist in the palm of the other hand a few times, which caused
circulation of the blood. I would hold my hands over my ears and face. Finally,
I became very weary, but I knew that if I stopped, I would freeze. So I fought
the angry wind and blinding snow and drifts until I reached home with face,
ears, and hands all frosted.

I did not go back to school until the spring term. The big boys were then at
home helping on the farm. I had hatred in my heart and a deep desire to get
even. Oh, what a sin, and I just a little boy. I began to do things to get even
and would fight the boys of my age and older. My younger brother was now in
school and we would team up. How true to the Word! Man perisheth not alone in
his sin -- always affecting someone else. I was punished in school for the
things I did, but it only seemed to agitate the evil hatred.

One night it came a hard rain, but by morning the sky was clear and the day was
beautiful. As my brother and I were going to school, we passed a home where
there were twelve children in the family. The girls had gone on. Tommy was my
age. He came out to go with us to school. He wore a white waist with a wide
collar, knee trousers, and a little cap. He looked so neat.

When we came near a wagon that crossed the creek which was swollen from the
rain, I said, "Tommy, you can't walk that banister like I can," and I looked at
my brother. He knew I was up to something. I climbed up on the banister and
started across. When in the middle, I pretended to have lost my balance, and
jumped to the floor of the bridge. Then came Tommy, walking the banister. Just
as he came even with me, I pushed him into the creek, which was swollen from the
rain. I said, "Tommy," I hurriedly found a limb from a tree that had lodged
against the bridge and reached it to him. We had a hard time pulling him out.
How ashamed I am as I think of it now. Tommy was covered with mud, and had lost
his cap in the creek. He went back home, crying.

That day at school, I got even with another boy and for punishment I had to stay
an hour after school. On my way home, I had to pass Tommy's house. A long shed
and large barn stood near the road.

Just as I was coming alongside the barn, Tommy's mother stepped out in front of
me with one hand behind her. I thought she had a club and was going to punish
me, and I knew I needed it.

She asked me what Tommy had done to me to cause me to do as I had done. I told
her, "Nothing," and was backing up in my steps, watching the chance to pass her.
But since the road was narrow, she could easily keep it blocked. Just as I was
going to make a run to pass her, she drew her hand from behind her. She did not
have a club, but a big piece of apple pie. She offered it to me, but I began to
cry. I told her I could not eat it; that I did not want it. She had touched my
heart; it was broken. I was no longer afraid of her.

She hugged me and placed a kiss on my forehead. I asked her to forgive me. She
then said, "I know why you did it. Those mean boys hid your cap and mittens and
scarf, and you were trying to get even." She was right, and dealt with me with
wisdom from God. I loved her. She had returned good for evil. I left her to go
home, a different boy.

On my way home, by the roadside, there were four weeping willows with branches
reaching the ground. I crawled under one of them and wept for a long time. I
often say that we wept together, and I seldom see a weeping willow that it does
not remind me of that evening in my boyhood. After weeping for some time there,
I went on home, still sobbing.

It was my job to milk the cows. It was late -- getting dusk. I did not know that
good woman was following me, but as I went to the back of our house, she went to
the front. I picked up the milk pails and went to the cow lot. While I was
milking, she told my mother all I had done and what she did, and how broken up I
was, and asked mother not to say anything to me. When I came in with the pails
of milk, she had gone home.

Mother placed some supper on the kitchen table for me, and asked me to eat, but
I told her that I didn't want any supper. I went on to bed with my mind made up
that I would never hold a grudge. From then on, I loved those people.

After I became a young man, I gave my heart to God. He called me to preach and I
answered His call. After I had been preaching for twelve years, mother and I
were talking one day. I mentioned the night I came home and did not eat, and
told her why. She told me that she could hear me sobbing in the night, but that
that good woman had followed me home and told her all about it. I am now a
servant of Jesus and an evangelist, but I, no doubt, would be in hell if that
woman had not dealt wisely with me.


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  CHAPTER 24: CHAPTER CONCLUSION
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CONCLUSION

I ask only for His will, not mine. I love Him and His work above all else. As I
near the City, I find the cunningness of the enemy very subtle, therefore I must
have a guide, the blessed Holy Ghost, to lead me step by step. My Guide shows me
where greater men than I have turned from the narrow way and others have tripped
and fallen. I desire to draw a little closer to Him and listen to what He has to
say that He may show me the way. There are some very inviting paths, especially
the way that seemeth right unto men. My Guide has told me that there are many
paths leading off from the narrow way and so He asked me to walk by His side,
and I ask Him to hold my hand that I lose not the way, for as evening shades are
gathering, I fear lest I from Him should stray. So I am listening more carefully
to catch every word He says, that I may hear Him say, "This is the way, walk
therein." As I am writing this, my soul is resting on the blest Rock of Ages.

The higher I go, the more danger lies around me. And lest I take a wrong step
and fall, I am waiting for Him to order my steps just now. I have made a few bad
steps in life and it has caused much grief and pain.

But me-thinks at times I 'most hear the angels sing. "Who-o-o! Who-o-o-o! Oh,
Glory! Just a breeze from the other world passed over my soul to strengthen me
for another climb as I continue up the mountain of great dangers. My Guide is
showing me some dangers, called pitfalls, into which one would fall if he were
left to go alone. I must not near the edge of any, even to look into them, for
many have fallen therein and have been unable to get out. I shall be glad when
we have passed them. He warns me to watch for them as He names them one by one.
He tells me they will be all along the way to the gate of the City.

Some of these pitfalls are worldly honor, deceitfulness of riches, carelessness,
prayerlessness, and failure to pay close attention to the Guidebook which God
has placed in my hand and which He said would show me where these pitfalls are.
There are others: love of self, ease, worldly pleasure, people's opinions, and
many more.

My Guide showed me a place where many have stopped and starved to death -- the
place called self-pity. There is not a morsel of food there. As I was passing
it, I had such a concern for others that I hardly noticed it. If I can live for
others, I can best live for Him.

May the fire burn the hotter to increase the passion for souls and make the
vision brighter, for my own load gets lighter as I help carry the load for
others.

I am in touch with Him who died for me; all my ways are before Him and my life
is in His hands.

I have one request that I have made for several years. Please do not bring any
flowers about my body when I am dead -- none at the funeral. I mean it from my
heart. I like flowers now, but please do not bring them after I am gone. But I
do want my old tear-stained, thumb-worn Bible opened and laid on a plain coffin.
Let those who would give for flowers, please place their offering on the Bible
and casket. I ask that the one who shall preach the funeral shall mention my
request to the crowd. Should you who read this book desire to contribute a gift
at that time, the money is to be sent to help missionaries in foreign lands. I
will have specified the ones to whom it shall be sent.

I leave my last request and testimony -- all for Jesus until He calls me away.

Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher of His Word, Pearl P. Poe

THE END


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/the-power-of-god-in-a-redeemed-life/
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