In this sermon, the preacher shares a personal experience of a powerful encounter with God during a sermon. A young Roman Catholic girl in the congregation began sobbing and crying out that Jesus is present. The preacher emphasizes the need for Christians to take their faith seriously and not play around, using the example of Paul as a human pattern to follow. He also highlights the sovereignty of God in saving individuals and the importance of having a burden for souls. The sermon concludes with the preacher expressing his concern for the lack of revival and burden for souls among God's people.

Sovereign God, to be the pattern for everybody that claims to be a child of God. My wife gets down in the middle of the floor sometimes and gets her cloth all fixed, and then she gets a pattern down at the store, and she pins here and fixes there and cuts there. After a while she's cut out a piece of cloth according to the outlines of the pattern that she bought down at the store. And in the book of Timothy, every child of God is told that Paul has been divinely appointed by God to be the pattern, you to try to be like Paul. You to try to be like Paul. You're not to join the multiplied millions of Baptists today who are sitting on the step of take it easy, and they'll tell you they're all right. You to remember that Christ Jesus had twelve disciples, and the only one of them that's sure he is saved is the one that betrayed the Lord. The other eleven, when the Lord said to them that one of you is going to betray me, knowing the evil in their own hearts, they said, Lord, is it I? But old Judas, he is one of these no soul folks, I know I'm saved. You watch those folks. They're sure as hell I'm preaching to you. That's not what the Bible teaches. And old Judas, he didn't say that. Oh, no, sir, I'm all right. But he's the one that betrayed the Lord when I was wrong. Now, the Bible says that a Christian is somebody that has laid hold on the hope that is set before him, and says that hope we have as an anchor for the soul, which is sure and steadfast. And it acts as a strong consolation to everybody who has fled for refuge, to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us, which hope is now entered within the veil, whether our forerunner, the Lord Jesus Christ, has for us entered. Now, if your hope is in Christ, that's fine. But if you want to be, I know I'm saved, that's what they mean. They made a profession of faith once, and they switched that abacus from one job to the other and say, once saved, always saved. I'm going to heaven when I die. No, they ain't. They're going to hell. The Bible don't teach that. The Bible says anybody joined the Christ, married to him, united to him, a member of his body, a branch, and he's divine, amen, that person, he's saved. But this gang of church members that you couldn't drag to a prayer meeting, couldn't keep out of the frost, don't know what prayer is, don't know what witnessing is, it ain't talking about them. They haven't laid hold on tribes. They just made a profession of faith and joined the church and going to hell. You believe that? That's so. That's so. And I don't read you about the testimony of a man who wrote the words about Christians of people who laid hold upon a hope. You see what I mean? I ain't as cocky as this generation of hell-raising Baptists are. They can go see Grandma on the Lord's Day and claim to be a Christian. They can. This generation of so-called church people can start their vacation and travel all day on Sunday so they can get to wherever they're going to have their vacation sooner and claim to be Christian. This generation of church members can put their filthy hands on the first ten dollars out of that hundred that comes into their hands. God said that's mine. God said it doesn't save the Christians or the tithe. The Christian that tithes is a disgrace. That's all you do. You're just a disgrace. You ever get saved, you'll start giving. The Bible talks about hilarious giving. But I know lots of people in 36 years going up and down this country that swallow a stack of Bibles, they're going to heaven when they die, and they don't even tithe. Yet they say they're saved. They ain't saved, they're thieves. If God let them get to heaven, they'd take up the streets of gold and put it in that safe deposit vault. That's right. We've got a generation of church members now that break every law that God ever wrote and claim to be saved. But I'm not talking about that gang. I'm talking about people who fled for refuge, because they got scared. They said hell's a-poppin', I'm fixin' to fall into it. I don't want to have to deal with God's holy law at the judgment. It knows no mercy and no pity, and every sinner is going to have to face God's eternal, holy, perfect, just, immutable law at the judgment. And there's not a bit of pity in God's law, and there's not a bit of mercy in God's law. And the penalty's got to be exact. If you're looking at one person that don't want to come to the judgment and have to deal with the law of God, I don't want to have to deal with it. It kills everything it touches, and it'll damn your soul and send you to hell. If you stand at the judgment guilty of breaking the holy law of God, I need somebody to be my substitute. I desperately need a savior. If I can't be joined to him who is the savior of sinners, I've got to face that law and deal with it myself. I don't want to do that. I don't want a little push. I don't want a little help. I want a substitute to take my place. I want to stand clothed in his righteousness, and not in mine. I want him for my savior. But I want to read you about a man who was set to be the pattern for every Christian. And the ninth chapter of Romans, he gives us a testimony. And I'm trying to tell you that since we, you and I, live in a country where nearly everybody says he's a Christian, the good question is, are any of us? I'm preaching to people, some of you I never saw before, and some I'll never see again, because you, you're in for a little something different. I'm not the usual preacher. And you're going to have to die if you hear me, because no truth in the Bible can be accepted without you dying. You've got to die to take God's truth. This generation of church members never have even breathed their last breath in the claims of the Savior. You can't understand the word of God. You have to die to everything, and just take it by faith because God said it. That's right, isn't it? And here's a passage which makes me wonder whether I'm saved or not. I ain't cocky as you are. But here's a man who was set as a pattern for all foreigners and for you. And in his testimony in the first verse of chapter 9, he uses language. I don't pretend to understand. He says, I say the truth in Christ. I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. He says, when I say what I'm fixing to say, I'm not lying, I'm telling the truth. And he said, when I say it, that conscience, that thing that God gave every man, that rebukes you when you do wrong, and it's not yours to brag about, it's a gift of God. He says, when I say what I'm fixing to say, my conscience bears me witness. He said, Paul, you're telling the truth. What you so concerned about, Paul, the next verse says, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Now, he's the fellow that's to be the pattern for every Christian. And yet I go from place to place. Now, here I'm talking about God's people need to be revived, and God's people need to have a burden for souls. And I say it ain't so. God's people have a burden for souls. This gang of church people all over this country, they don't give a hoot whether everybody goes to hell or not. But I'm talking about God's people as a pattern. The apostle Paul, if you was a child of God, you'd buy your Bible, and you'd start paying a little attention to it, wouldn't you? And in it you'd find out that God didn't just put it in there to fill up a little space, that he means badness. And if you dare go around your clergy and to be a product of the grace of God and a child of a holy God, you take down your time, honey, and go on to hell by yourself, but try and take everybody else with you. Or show this ungodly world some of the marks of a Christian. And one of the marks will be a heavy heart. And a sorrow that never leaves you, brother. I have great heaviness of heart. I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. What's the matter with you, Paul? My kinfolk's going to hell. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. I don't pretend to know how to interpret that verse. I expect if I knew the awfulness of it, I'd go crazy. But if Paul said, if that'd get my kinfolks, my Jewish brethren according to the flesh, according to the Lord, he said, I'd gladly be sent to hell myself. God kept a schism over me. I look at a scripture like this, and I say, oh, man, I guess Paul, brother, wants to meet to pray together. Where the night is frozen, you know the drop of a tear coming from the wet eyes of God's people, ladies and gentlemen, you are disgraced to the name of Christ. If you'll wait until eight o'clock and make a beeline for the door as soon as the service is over to start the congregation, I'll get preached to the minute the benediction's pronounced. They prove to you they didn't think a day of business in hell about God or nobody else. They'll start asking about the corn crop as soon as you say it. Tenny said the person who does not live to save others hasn't met Christ himself, and he's right there. If the thing that's the biggest thing in your life is not your job or your family or anything else, but to see those for whom Christ died brought to him, you ought to quit going around here claiming to be a child of God. That's right. That's right. That's right. God help us little nice, fat, self-satisfied, infidel Baptists that don't care about souls. That too tough for you? You're as guilty as dogs, and you're disgraced to the name of Christ to claim to be a Christian. That's somebody belonging to Christ, and he loves souls enough to come and be spat upon and crucified. And we don't love them enough to take a little time off to weep over us. I can backslide, that's not a Bible word, but I can backslide in the average prayer meeting quicker than anywhere else. I'm talking to people here tonight, if God sentenced you to pray for five minutes, you'd go crazy. You couldn't pray five minutes to save your life. I'm talking to people here, you'd go nuts if you had to pray five minutes. Most of you couldn't pray a minute. Before you got a minute out, you'd be thinking about the latest fuss you had with your wife, or who's going to pay your bank note or something. You would. I'm pretty straight talking. But you see, I come here to represent a holy God and a Christ who died on the cross, and both of them meant business and high time that we quit playing mumbo tag and take down our sign, or go to acting like we're a little like the Lord Jesus Christ. And somebody says, well, we can't be like him. Well, we will be if we see when he gets through with us, but we could be like Paul, because he's our human pattern. He is a human, I'm a human, and I'm not to be satisfied unless I've got a heavy heart, unless I've got a continual sorrow. Amen. You see, my friends, we're living in a day now where they make a joke of hell, and it's high time people who claim to be Christians face the fact that hell ain't no joke. Wife and I went out to California for four or five summers ago to see our daughter, and we drove. And going into Las Vegas, Nevada, about 30 miles on any highway, going into that gaming, gambling, and divorce center, you know, Las Vegas, Nevada. Why, about 30 miles before you get into the city, on all the major highways they told us, I asked about. But on the highway we were going, we saw a sign board, 30 miles to hell. And we drove a little further, about two, three, four more miles, and we saw a sign, join your friends tonight in hell. And we kept on driving into the city, we're going through it at least on the way to California, and every few miles we'd see another sign, make poopy tonight in hell. And lo and behold, finally we found out that they had a nightclub in Las Vegas, and the name of the nightclub was hell. And people were urged to make poopy tonight in hell, and join your friends tonight in hell. And the tragedy of it is, some 80 some odd thousand people in the world will join their friends in hell while we're here, and they won't make much poopy. But you see the evening nightclubs now, after that word, that the poor fish are silent about, and about the only time we hear it is somebody using it to cuss well. And this generation found out that God's too good to send anybody to hell, and so we eat our big meals, and live in our nice homes, and come to our nice little churches, and go through the motions, and let people go to hell, unwept over, unprayed for, unloved, God help us. I stand here tonight because God set his affection on me, and he set a college professor after me, and that college professor wouldn't let me go to hell. He loved me, and he wouldn't leave me alone. He wouldn't leave me alone. God can't save a man until he judges him, and the sinner trembles there under the righteous weight of God's holy law, and realizes something of his awful condition. I had a loved one sit asking God to bless him. I said, Lord, burn his home up, cripple one or two of his children, send his wife to the hospital, take his job away from him, and do something. Maybe he'd stop him thinking, not be so anxious to go on blowing the smoke of his unbelief in the nostrils of a holy God. That sounds cruel. Which would you rather your boy do, have a little trouble in this life and go to heaven, or get along fine and go to hell? If we believed the Bible, we'd be saying, O God, shut them up to where there's no hope, farms, nowhere else to go. For it's only then that men will lift up their eyes and look, for men will trust everybody for the will of God. You know that? They'll trust their home or their children or their church or something, but men will never put their faith in God's Son until he takes everything away from them and leaves them in a position where the Holy Spirit can get a word in their eyes and plant the gospel seed. We need to start that kind of praying. That's right. That's right. I tell you what's the fact. This hell business isn't any joke. It isn't any joke. And I'm so glad I'm 58 years old and somebody loves me. I'm so glad that I lived back yonder when they didn't pray, O Lord, save the lost. And somebody said, O Lord, save all. I never heard of the Lord saving people in mass. You know, I go up down the land to call on some pious brother, and he says, if there's anybody in the service tonight that doesn't know Christ, please bless him. He just will be out there in the back and drinking whiskey, playing mumbo-jumbo. He'll give a hoot with him by saving us. If he did, he'd have got there on time and spied out some old sinner and sat beside him. Yeah, he would. Pray for him while the preacher prays. You wouldn't do that, no, but I'm talking about Christians. They're on the ball. They're looking for souls. For Christians know that no lost sinner is ever saved apart from a saved sinner going after him and seeking him and bringing him to Christ. That's God's truth. Somebody wouldn't let me go, brother. That old college professor, he waylaid me. He ambushed me. He prayed for me. He wept over me. I don't know why God laid me on that old professor's heart. I just thank God he did. That professor couldn't save me, but he could touch your weak old man. He couldn't save me, but he could touch your ass God to save me. He couldn't set aside from me, but he asked God to break my old stubborn will. I thank God I'm as old as I am. I wish I didn't have this awful hurt, but I tell you right now, I hate it. I'd hate to be some of you young folks. I expect you boys will just go right on bail. Your mother don't give a hoot where you're saved or not. Your daddy don't give a hoot. They wouldn't mind you being religious, but they don't want to be. They got tired of praying this generation of church members. They don't know what it is. The old time mothers used to have a place to pray. I've been in homes where the boys would show me the trail that mother made, where at a certain time of day, she went and took her children to God. I've been in homes where the old man of the house had a certain time of day, and come hell or high damn nation, he was at his place where he met God, took his children. We don't have that none today. Blessed God, mothers and papas, deacons and preachers, nowhere I'm fit with nice little people. We don't know what it is to weep for souls. We don't know what it is to cry unto God with strong supplications. Amen. I'm talking to you tonight. You said you want to have a revival effort. I'm talking to every member of this church. Put a fire out there on top of that building and say, the meeting's closed. Let people around us go to hell. We haven't got time to weep over them. We haven't got time to pray for them. We haven't got time to put our arms around them. We don't care. At least be honest. Do one or the other. Anything except keep on going through the motions of having services and insulting God, asking him to bless us when we don't know what it is to weep over souls. It's still true that he that goeth forth and does what weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing the seeds with him. Your truth won't get anywhere. Your argument won't get anywhere. But your tears is what God uses, not crocodile tears. But if you can't weep over lost people, for God's sake, quit claiming to be a Christian. My Lord wept over a whole city, didn't he? I believe if I was a Christian, I could weep over one sinner, don't you? I believe it could. I believe it could. I tell you what, I tell you what, you had to go up and down the country like I do. I told you the great landslide experience when the Holy Spirit just made a church over. It was amazing not long ago. And then I went the next Monday night to start a meeting this cold as an icicle. Why, man, they didn't even know how to spell the word prayer, much less engage in it. You talk about weeping over souls, they thought I was crazy. And to have to go into iceboxes like that, calling themselves Christian people, and to say we're going to have revival. Well, my God, there ain't nothing to revive. You've got to have something around there that's got some heart, somebody that's got something to weep with, to shed precious tears and break sinners' hearts with the salt of the agony of their concern. Oh, I get so tired. If I could do it, these people down here from Pennsylvania, they want me to come up and start a school and be pastor of that church and pay me about twice as much money as I make now. And I could sort of take it easy the rest of my life. And I couldn't do it. That's not my calling. I'd rather be doing what I'm doing. I hate everything about it, but it's all I'm good for. And you've got something God called you to do, and that's all you're good for. And you're happy if you're doing it, and you're not happy if you're not. But I sometimes get awful tired in the flesh. But there they say we're going to have revival. I haven't even wet the rug without tears. Don't know what weeping for sin is. Don't know what intercessory prayer is, dragging hold of God, and saying, brought me out, God, but don't send my boy to hell. I could wish myself a curse from Christ. Who's our Paul? Well, my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, they'd look at the Son of God over and say, he won't do, and he cannot reign over us. We'll not have him for our king, and they're going to hell, and my heart's broken about it. Oh, for a passion for soul. For a passion for soul. For a passion for soul. You know, it is a terrible thing to take the name of the Lord by a God in vain. I don't mean get out on the street and use what we call a curse word. That means claim to be a Christian unless you are. Because a Christian don't wear his name. He's been given a new name, hasn't he? He belongs to the Lord. And you represent him. You don't belong to yourself, don't you? Do you? Now, that's a terrible thing for me to go down the street and say, I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian unless I don't take the name of the Lord by a God in vain. I was going through the state of Alabama where I was born, and I headed somewhere, I forget where, alone in my car. And I got lost. I thought I got lost off of my big road. And I was going along, and I said, I'd better stop and find out where I am. And I signed ahead, I was going to go through a town where I lived. And I was about a knee-high to a duck. And they done changed all the roads and everything, you know. Forty, fifty years later, forty years later. And I thought I was lost. And I saw an old farmer with a one-mule plow, Georgia stock. I don't know whether you know what that is. But he was plowing along, and I stopped my car and waited until he got up to the fence row. And I was there waiting for him, and I made myself acquainted with him and told him my name was Ralph Barnett. And he told me his, and he scratched his head and said, Barnett, Barnett, Barnett. Oh, he said, would you know a fellow named Jim Barnett? I said, well, Jim Barnett was my daddy. He's a schoolteacher in Alabama. Oh, yes, that's the one I'm talking about. And he had a big old toilet back in his mouth, and he switched it over to the other side and gave a big spit and squinted his eyes. And he said, well, Bub, I never seen you before. But if you're Jim Barnett's boy, you're bound to be all right. See, he wasn't bragging on me, he was bragging on my daddy. God help you, Bud, going around here claiming to be a Christian, unless when people see you, they brag on your heavenly father. I said, boy, you're bound to be all right, because you're a child of God. Amen. That humbled me. That humbled me. My daddy's the best man I've ever met. Yeah, the greatest Christian personality I've ever seen. I guess I'm a little prejudiced because he's my daddy, but he walked with the Lord. And that old father knew it, and he just figured that if Jim Barnett is my daddy, I'm bound to be all right. Oh, God help us, if almighty God, thy heavenly father, through faith in his only begotten son, we're a member of his family, we're bound to be all right. We mustn't take the name of the Lord out of God and man. The thing that's drying up our churches and they're fixing to go out of business, honey, don't you kick yourself. God ain't going to put up with this stuff we've been calling Christianity forever. We're headed for judgment like we never dreamed of. And the only way it'll be a break, if there are any Christians in our churches, is for them to go to acting a little bit like Christ. There's one thing that's certain about the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't leave heaven to come down there and be spit upon, crucified, just for a little exercise. He came down here because God so loved the world. Right? He didn't come down here to condemn the world, but he came down here the world through him. I have to say, God help us to be a little like the Lord. I was up in Boston, Massachusetts. First time I'd ever been in New England, being from the South, they found it a little difficult to understand me, and I found it very difficult to understand them. They're very nice people, in Boston and New England, very cultured, very dignified, very quiet and reserved. And I remember that I started the meeting on Sunday morning. A wife was with me, and we preached Sunday morning and Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night. That service, Wednesday night, I said to the dear pastor, I said, Brother Pastor, I believe we ought to close the meeting tomorrow night, is what I believe. Oh, he said, Oh, no, no, we couldn't do that. Well, I said, I was just making it a suggestion. My judgment is that we ought to just close out, and I'll go back home. Well, he said, What on earth's the matter, Brother Barnes? I said, Well, we're not getting anywhere. I said, I don't seem to be able to get over to you and your people. And I said, So far you've not done one thing that I've asked you to do. Well, he said, Brother Barnard, you are a little strange to us. And I said, Well, I'm going this way, and you folks are going that way. We're dead sure not going to have the blessing of God that way. Something's wrong around here. And since you got there, and I'm the visitor at your invitation, and my messages and what I ask you to do, you don't do a thing about it, I think I ought to just say, Well, I'll close my part of the meeting. You folks won't go along with it. And he was greatly disturbed. Oh, he said, this would ruin everything if you did it. He said, What on earth's the matter with you, Brother Barnard? I said, Well, you just won't do a thing I ask. I ought not to ask you to do some things. Oh, and if I ought to ask you to do some things, and it's right that I do, then you ought to do it. And if I'm asking you to do things that are against the scripture, you ought to run me off. Well, he said, What are you talking about? I said, Well, you won't meet me to pray. I haven't seen your church on its feet, sweeping its heart to God. I've been asking you to do it. God's not going to bless people if they're not that kind of people, I'll just tell you that. You might ask more folks to join the Church, but God ain't going to save people in an atmosphere of dry eyes and prayerlessness. You know that's so, isn't it? And I said, I've been asking you to go out here and talk to people and witness to them, bring them in your cars, invite them out to the services. He said, Well, you know, Brother Barnard, we've never done anything like that in our lives. I said, I'm beginning to believe it. I said, Well, my wife and I are going on to the room, and it's all right, I'll preach tomorrow night and then we'll close the meeting. We went on to the little apartment they had for us, and after a while somebody knocked on the door, and the pastor, bless his heart, had gone and got the deacons. And they filed in, and they were greatly disturbed. They said, Brother Barnard, you just came before us to close the meeting. He said, it just hurt everything. People were on the wire. Well, I said, I don't know what else to do. And they said, Brother Barnard, if you stay, they wasn't thinking about me as a reputation of their church. And so they said, if you'll not close the meeting, we'll do anything you ask us to do. I said, too late for that. I don't want to ask you to do anything just because I asked you. I want you to do it because it's in the Bible and because God wants it. And they said, Well, tell us one more time what it is. Well, I said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to be the reputation of the church. I got too serious about it. But if it's so, if I've been asking you to do what God's people ought to do and what they insult God if they don't do, and in these awful days say they're going to have a revival effort, because all hell's against you, and we just sit around while we just well quit before we start having it, I'd name you a thousand obstacles to deny it, and you could name another thousand, Well, if there's a prayerless, fearless, witnessless, who began to call himself Christian, it ain't no use. Let's talk about having a breath from heaven. We ain't going to have it. We can use some tricks and get some children to make a profession of faith and go on to hell. But you can't raise dead people from the grave in that kind of an atmosphere, can you? You can't do it. And I think that a church insults God if it says, we're going to have an effort to have revival and don't have it, even if you've got an awful little God, there's something wrong with it. Huh? It's a shame and a disgrace to say we're going to try to have revival and not have it, because that's a slam on God. He's supposed to be a God that hears prayer, isn't he? And he's supposed to be a God that works miracles. He used to. Huh? Well, bless God, we'd better swap the God we got off and get acquainted with the God who answers prayer and does things. Huh? I think a church is under obligation to get its prayers answered, don't you? Don't you? Huh? It sure does. It's a slam on God as it came. And so we turn to the book of Acts, and we read about how daily in the temple they ceased not to teach and preach the Lord Jesus Christ in every house. And they said, We never have done anything like this, but it's in there, isn't it? I said, Yeah. And they went out. And Thursday night the house was packed and jammed, just been having a little corporal And those fool folks, when they did something, they did it all over. They went home, got on the telephone, and must have called every member of the church the next day, every spare minute those folks had. They invaded all the saloons and dives and everything else in that section of Boston. And I don't know whether they killed anybody to get them down there or bribed them, but they brought everybody to the door. Nobody in Boston had ever been invited to Jesus. They were just very dignified folks going to church once in a while, not killing anybody, you know, about like it is in Rome. And they just went out there, and they began to do what the Bible says. Amen. And I preached that night. When I got through preaching, a little old girl, before I got through preaching, began to sob. And we stood up before we could sing any kind of an invitation song, and she came running down to the front, just fell on all fours there in that left plush carpeted church building, dignified. And that's why I went down and dealt with her a little bit, and that's why she stood up and said, Jesus is in here. Found out she's a little sixteen-year-old Italian girl, and that's the first gospel sermon she'd ever heard. Some of the girls went and brought her. She didn't know A from zero, but you see, a sovereign God, he can do things as he pleases. Sometimes it takes him forty years to save a man, and sometimes to save him the first time he hears the gospel. And I think the little girl that saved him, of course, won't know to get to the judgment none of us will. But they liked to scare everybody to death. They never seen anything like that. On Easter they always took the children into the church, and that's all they knew about. So I had them do like we do down south. I had them come around and shake hands with them by coaching them a little bit. They were used to making a beeline for the door. But they all came down. Pretty soon the ice began to melt a little bit, and so the service was dismissed after a while. Well, Friday night, that was Thursday night. Friday night the little girl wasn't at the service. And Saturday night she wasn't at the service, and I got a little worried. And I went to the pastor and I said, Brother, something about it. I got trouble in here about that little girl. I said, You know where she lives? He said, No, preacher, I'm sorry. I said, We were so excited about what happened with her. Nobody asked her where she lived, and we don't even know her name. And I felt awful bad about it. He said, Tell you right now, if she's not here in the morning, we're going to organize and we're going to comb this city and find that little girl. I said, I'm troubled about it. But Sunday morning came, and she was sitting in the congregation. And so my wife was sitting in the pew just in front of her. And that morning I preached on hell, the sinner's long loan. And I'd been preaching about 25 minutes, they said. That little Roman Catholic Italian girl, the Thursday night, stood and said, Jesus is in hell. She began to cry and quit crying and began to sob. And pretty soon her body was just rocking and sobbing. And my wife slipped her arm and put her arm on her shoulder. And pretty soon the wife rose and the little girl rose and broke up my sermon that came down that richly appointed church building. And my wife brought her up on the platform with me, rolled up her sleeves, had her turn around, rolled her dress down as far as was modestly allowed, with a look at her face. Her back was just terrible welts, and they were festered and fevered. Her arms were cut and her face was cut. And she stood up at the fire, and I saw a church born. She told what had happened to her to that nice Sunday morning crowd of Baptists in Boston. She said, Thursday night I ran home, I was so happy, and said, Mom and Papa and my brother and my two sisters were in the front row. I went in and told them that Jesus Christ had come in here and he was mine and I was his. She said, why not? He was a good theologian, but she told what happened. And the daddy said, Where have you been? She said, I went down to the Baptist church. They're having meetings down there. He said, And there wasn't anything like it, Daddy. He said, All I know is that Jesus is in there. And her daddy got up, Italians I've seen in New York many times. He went and got an old black snake whip I used to use on the mule on the farm. He commanded his girl to stand, and she did. And he whipped her with that black snake until she lost consciousness. She said, I don't know how long I lay there, but I was awakened by pain, and said, I opened my eyes just in time for my two sisters standing on either side of me, kicking me in the ribs. When they got through, my brother came and spat in my face. My mother came and cursed me. And my father told me to get up. He said, I don't know how I did, but I did. He looked me in the face, said, If I ever hear you talk like that again in this home, I'll kill you. Go to your room. He said, I went to my room, and he turned the key in. I didn't have any medical attention Thursday night. Friday morning, my daddy came, unlocked the door, and handed me a piece of bread and a glass of water. I stayed in the room all day Friday and Friday night. In the meantime, those welts were feverish and festering, and I was in more laggardness. Saturday morning, he came, and I was waiting for him. I was desperate. As he turned the key in the lock, and as he put his hand on the door, as he turned it, I let him turn it just enough I knew it was open. Then I jerked it right quickly. He fell in the room, and I darted out. I had so much fever, I guess I had superhuman strength. I ran out of the building. I wandered around the city and found an old empty freight car. I stayed in it all day. When the sun went down, I went to a pharmacist, a drugstore. The pharmacist knew me, and he treated my wound some. I slept that night in the empty freight car. Sunday morning, I was hungry, and I was sick, and I was hurting. I said, What shall I do? Then she said, I remember the Jesus people. I said, I'll go up to where the Jesus people are, and they'll help me. She came and took her seat. She was in pain, sorry for herself. She was afraid to go back home. She said, I feel so sorry for myself. Then I began to listen to the preacher. He talked about that awful place. That's why I said what I wished would happen to me and to you. I forgot myself, and all I could think of was the daddy that whipped me, the mother that cursed me, the sisters that kicked me, the brothers that spat in my face. They go into that awful place the preacher's talking about, and then so help me. A little old Italian girl lifted her hand up like this and began to weep, and she broke the heart of that crowd. I saw them, just like a mass, fall on their knees. I was in a prayer meeting. She said, Oh, Jesus people, won't you help me keep my people from being sent to hell. Oh, I said, I'm going to tell about that poor little old Italian old Catholic girl. She didn't know much about the scriptures. She said, you folks have forgotten that she knew two things. First, Jesus said, yeah, and her loved ones were going to be sent to hell. She didn't want them to go. She thought she could say, Oh, Jesus people, you'll help me, won't you. It looks to me like that if we do belong to Jesus, she could say, you'll help me, you'll pray for me, for my loved ones, won't you? Oh, yes. I closed the meeting on Sunday night, and I began in New York City Monday. The pastor said, let me get on the telephone and call them in New York City and say, you won't be there until Tuesday. He said, you've just got to stay over Monday night. We're going to have baptizing, and I want you to have the pleasure, a great pleasure. I said, all right, I will. We made arrangements, and they had a vote. They came Monday night, they were supposed to be baptized, and the Church was there. The deacon got up and made a motion that the Church authorize the evangelist to bury in baptism a man and his wife, three daughters and a boy. I went down in that pool, and five people came there, and I got them all down in the pool together. I baptized that little 16-year-old girl, and I baptized her mama, and I baptized her daddy, and I baptized her two sisters, and I baptized her brother. You'd believe people were going to go to hell. You'd weep over them, you'd pray for them. God help you. Yes, we would, folks. One more time, little buildings like this would be known as places where the Jesus people meet to worship God, lift up their voices in unison, asking God who alone is the answer to come to the rescue. How long for that? And it could happen just like that, if we want it. Amen? Oh, what a passion for soul. I'm so glad somebody loved my soul. And I think that if you are saved, you can put your faith on somebody that loved you, couldn't you? And I think that there ought to be somebody you love and just will not let go to hell. That's God's way. Let us stand.