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.