In this sermon, the speaker shares a story about a girl who had a terrible back condition and was suffering from fever and cuts on her arms and face. The girl had a powerful encounter with Jesus Christ and shared her testimony with her family. The speaker emphasizes the importance of worshiping God and seeking His intervention in our lives. The sermon also highlights the unconditional love of God and the assurance of salvation for those who put their faith in Him.

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 adjoin and to multiply millions of Baptists today who are sitting on the step of take it easy and they'll tell you they're alright. You to remember that Christ Jesus had twelve disciples and the only one of them that's dead sure he has 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's one of these no soul folks, I know I'm saved. You watch those folks, they're sure as hell as 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 alright. But he's the one that praised the Lord. 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 back from one job to the other and saved. Once saved, always saved. I'm going to have one or the other. The Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible says anybody who joins 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 process, don't know what prayer is, don't know what witnessing is, it ain't talking about them. They haven't laid a hold on Christ. 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'm going to read you about a testimony of a man who wrote the words about Christians of people who laid hold upon hope. See what I mean? I ain't just copying 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 soon and claim to be Christian. This generation of church members can put their filthy hands on the first $10 because it doesn't say the Christians ought to tithe. The Christians that tithe is a disgrace. That's all you do. You're just a disgrace. If 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 swallows that Bible, 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 pick up the streets of gold and put it in that safe deposit box. 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. I'm not talking about that gang. I'm talking about people who fled for refuge. Bloody, they got scared. They said, hell's a-popping, I'm fixing 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, that 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 text of Romans, he gives us a testimony. And I am trying to tell you that since you and I live in a country where nearly everybody says he's a Christian, the good question is, or any of us, I'm preaching to people, some of you I never saw before, and some I'll never see again, because 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 for everything, and just take it by faith because God said it. That's right, isn't it? And yes, the passage could make 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 Ralph Barnard and for you, and in his testimony in the first verse of chapter 9, he uses language that I don't intend 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 the 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 feel 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. 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 with 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 this. And if you dare go around your tree and to be a product of the grace of God, and the child of a holy God, you'd take down your sign, honey, and go on to hell by yourself without trying to take anybody else with you. Or show this ungodly world some of the marks of the Christian. And one of the marks would 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, which my youthful, my kinfolks go into 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. So be it. Paul said, I could wish that if it gets the job done, you'd just send me to hell, Christ. If that'd get my kinfolks, my Jewish brethren after the flesh, if that'd stop them in their tracks, turn them into seekers after the Lord, he said, I'd gladly be sent to hell myself. God help us, he's the man. That's the pattern for a Christian. And that sobers me. I look at scripture like this. I say, oh, my. I guess poor brother Barnum reached all his life for passion, for soul. I'm so glad I'm 58 years old. I hate to be brought up in this generation where you can't get a corporal's card to meet the pray together, where the nice rugs and beautiful floors of our church buildings have never felt the drop of a tear coming from the wet eyes of God's people. As they take time out in this busy day, pour out their hearts in supplication to God for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you are disgraced to the name of Christ if you're willing to pretend to go through the motions of having a revival effort without the greatest agony and intercession you ever experienced in your life. As long as this generation of people think more of visiting until 8 o'clock and make a beeline for the door as soon as the service is over to start cackling again. For nearly every Baptist congregation I have preached to, the minute the benediction is pronounced, they prove to you they didn't pay a bit of attention to what it said, don't give two hoots in hell about God or nobody else. They'll start asking about the corn crop as soon as you say it. They've turned little church houses like this into places where they visit about the baby's new teeth and everything else. There's no tears, there's no heartache, there's no concern. Kenneth said the person who does not live to save others hasn't met Christ himself, and he's right there. If the thing, if 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. God help us, little nice, fat, self-satisfied, in-for-hell Baptists that don't care about souls. Is that too tough for you? You're guilty of souls, and you're disgraced to the name of Christ to claim to be a Christian. That's somebody who belongs 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 them. Huh? I can backslide, that's not a Bible word, but I can backslide in the average family quicker than anywhere else, as well. Why, 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. Oh, you've got a minute out to be thinking about the latest fuss you had with your wife or who's going to pay your banknote 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. In fact, I, that we quit playing mumbo-jumbo, take down our signs, 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. My wife and I went out to California just before Passover to go to see our daughter. 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 that go as I ask 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, going through it at least on the way to California. And every few miles we'd see another sign, Make whoopee 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 whoopee 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 they're having and they won't make much whoopee. But you see, it even ain't nightclubs now after that word that the poor bits are silent about. And about some time later, there is somebody using it to cuss well. And this generation found out that God's too good to send anybody to hell. So we'd 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 sent 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. I've been in places where those people sucked the minds of and men would get in their cars and leave. Where men, it's God's righteousness who lives in his world and he's here. You can't even plant trees. You can't even grow corn. You can't do a thing. You're everything. Men live in God's world. Walk on God's earth. Breathe God's air. And sit in the face of God's sons. And when they come to the judgment field they'll be sent to hell to experience forever the awful penalty of the Holy. I don't want to have to live throughout eternity with the lash of God's holy indignation beating on my... It isn't any joke. It isn't any joke. If you get mad at me, if you ever start getting your Bible and reading and facing some facts, you'll quit asking God to bless people now. What this generation needs for God to judge them and bring them to their knees. 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. If I ever loved them instead of asking God to bless them, I'd say, Lord, burn this home up, cripple one or two of his children, send his wife to the hospital, take his job away from him, 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 if you're ready, you boys do have a little trouble in this life and go to heaven or get a long time and go to hell. If we believed the Bible, we'd be saying, Oh God, shut them up to where there's no hope, find 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 their something. And men will never put their faith in God's Son until he takes everything away from them and leaves them in a position where their Holy Spirit can get a word in their lives 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-bend 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 Oh Lord, save the lost. And somebody said, Oh Lord, save us. I ain't 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'd just as well be out doing tobacco and drinking whiskey and playing mumble tag. He didn't give a hoot with him about 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. And pray for him. I was a preacher. A preacher, 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 set sure we broke. He couldn't save me but he could set sure I asked God to save me. He couldn't set tide for 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 heart. But I can right now. I hate it. I'd hate to be some of you young folks. I expect you boys will just go right on to hell. Your mama don't give a hoot when you say you're not. Your daddy don't give a hoot when he doesn't mind you being religious but they don't want to be. They've been trying to frame 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 water took his children. We don't have that none of the day. Bless God mothers and poppers, deacons and preachers and old rams sitting with nice little people. And 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 wanted to have a revival effort and told every member of this church put a fire out there on top of that building and say the meeting's closed. 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. 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 in the way. Your arrogance won't get in the way. 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 family, don't you? I believe it could have. I believe it could have. I tell you what, I tell you what, you had to go and you to go and you had to go and you had to go and you to go and you to and had to and you had to go and you had to go and you had and 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 awfully tired in the flesh, but there you say, we're going to have revival, and needn't wet the rug with our feet. Don't know what weeping for sin is, don't know what intercessory prayer is, dressing the whole of God, and saying, block me out, God, but don't send my boy to hell. I should waste myself with courage to prove our fault, for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, they'd look at the Son of God over and say, you won't do, and you cannot reign over us. Oh, for a passion for sin, for a passion for sin, for a passion for sin. You know, it is a terrible thing to take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain. I don't mean get out on the street and use what we call cuss words, I mean 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 is a terrible thing for me to go down the street and say, I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian, unless I am. Don't take the name of the Lord, thy 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 knee high to a duck, and they done changed all the roads and everything, you know, 40 or 50 years later, 40 years later, and I thought I was lost. And I saw an old farmer with a one-mule plow, a Georgia stock, I don't know what that is, but he was plowing along, and I stopped in my car and waited a little, and I was there waiting for him, and I made myself acquainted with him, and I 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 dad. He was a schoolteacher in Alabama. Oh, yes, that's the one I told you about. And he had a big old shoulder back in his mouth, and he twisted it over to the other side and gave a big spit and squinted his eyes, and he said, well, Bud, 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 and say, boy, you're bound to be all right, because you're a child of God, ain't you? That humbled me. That humbled me. My daddy's the best man I've ever met yet. Greatest Christian personality I've ever seen. Guess I'm a little prejudiced because he's my daddy, but he walked with the Lord. And that old father knew it! I'm bound to be all right. Oh, God help us, if almighty God's our heavenly father, through the name of the Lord. The thing that's drying up our churches and the fiction to go out of business, honey, don't you kid yourself. God ain't going to put up with this stuff we've been calling Christianity forever. We're headed for judgment. And the only way it'll be a blessing, if there are any Christians in our churches, is when we go to act in 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 here and be spit upon and crucified just for a little exercise. He came down here because God so loved the world. He didn't come down here to condemn the world, but he came down here that the world through him might be saved. God helped us to be a little like the Lord. I was up in Boston, Massachusetts. The 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 mature, 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. And after the 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 as 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. And since you're here before I got here, and I'm the dear pastor, it's 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 on with it. And he was greatly disturbed. Oh, he said, just ruin everything. I either ought not to ask you to do some things, or I ought, 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. Well, he said, what are you talking about? I said, well, I said, you want me to pray? I said, I haven't seen your church on its feet sweeping apart 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 can 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 true, 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 Barton, we've never done anything like that in our lives. I said, well, my wife and I are going on to the room, and it's all right. I'll preach tomorrow night, and 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, and they filed in, and they were greatly disturbed. They said, close the meeting. He said, I just heard it. Well, I said, I don't know what else to do. And they said, Brother Barton, if you stay here, they wouldn't think about me as a reputation of their church. And so they said, if you will not close the meeting, we will do anything you ask us to do. I said, too late for that. 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 wouldn't want you to do it. The church got too serious with that. But if it's so, if I've been asking them to do what God's people ought to do and what they insult God if they don't do, and they, in these awful days, say they're going to have a religion, we just sit around. I can name you a thousand obstacles tonight. You can name me another thousand things. But if it's a prayerless, fearless, witness-less, began-to-call-himself-Christian, they know you. So let's talk about 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 gospel, 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've got off and get acquainted with a God who answers prayers. 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 can be. 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 had 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. They'd been having a little corporate garage. And those fool folks, when they did something, they did it all over. They went home, got on the telephone, and I don't know whether they killed anybody to get them down there, or bribed them. Nobody in Boston had ever been invited to Jesus. They were just very dignified folks, going to church once in a while. Not kill 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, and 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 was a little 16-year-old Italian girl, and that's the first gospel sermon she'd ever heard. And by some, the girls went and brought her. She didn't know A from zero, but to see a sovereign God, he can do things as he pleases. Sometimes it takes him 40 years to save a man, sometimes saving the first time he heard a gospel. And I think the little girls I've saved, of course, they won't know to get to the judgment. None of us will. But they liked to scare everybody to death. They'd never seen anything like that. On Easter, they always put the children into the church, you know, and that's all they knew about. And so I had them do like I do down south. I had them come around and change. And so the service was dismissed after a while. 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. We never saw anything like that. Nobody asked her where she lived. We don't even know her name. And I felt awful bad about it. But he said, tell you right now, he said, 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. My wife was sitting in the pew just in front of her. And that morning I preached on hail, the sinner's long home. And as I had been preaching about 25 minutes, they said, that little Roman Catholic Italian girl, that Thursday night had stood and said, Jesus is in hell. She began to cry, and she quit crying, and began to sob. And pretty soon her body was just rocking with sorrow. And my wife slipped her arm, put her arm on her shoulder, and pretty soon the wife rose, and the little girl rose, and they broke up my sermon. They 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, let them look at her face. Her back was just terrible welch, and there were festers and fevers. Her arms were cut, her face was cut. And she stood up at the choir, and I saw a church born. She told what had happened to her, that night, Sunday morning, crowd of Baptists in Boston. She said, Thursday night I ran home, I was so happy. I said, Mom and Papa, and my brother and my two sisters were in the front room. I said, I went in and told them that Jesus Christ had come in there, and he was mine, and I was his. She said, my daughter, you were a good theologian. She told what had happened. And the daddy said, where were you there? He said, I went down to the Baptist church. They had a meeting 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, in Italians I've seen in New York many times, he went and got an old black snake whip. I used to use it on the mules 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 and said, if I ever hear you talk like that again in this home, I'll kill you. Move 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 mortal agony. 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, and I jerked it right quickly. And he fell in the room, and I darted out. He said, I had so much fever, I guess I had superhuman strength. And I ran out of the building. He said, I wandered around the city and found an old empty freight car, and I stayed in it all day. When the sun went down, I went to a pharmacist, a drugstore, and the pharmacist knew me. And he treated my wounds, son. And I slept that night in the empty freight car. He said, Sunday morning, I was hungry, and I was sick, and I was hurting. And I said, what shall I do? And then she said, I remember the Jesus people. And I said, I'll go up to where the Jesus people are, and they'll help me. And she came and took her seat, and she was in pain, sorry for herself. She was afraid to go back home. And she said, I feel so sorry for myself. And then I began to listen to the preacher, and he talked about that awful place. And that's why I said what I wish 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. And 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 woman, Catholic girl. She didn't know as much Bible Scripture as you folks have forgotten. But 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. And 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, won't you, you will. 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. And I said, all right, I will. We made arrangements. And they had a vote. There came one tonight. It wasn't going to be baptized, and the Church was there. And the deacon got up and made a motion. The Church authorized the evangelist to bury in baptism a man and his wife, three daughters and a boy. And 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. I'll offer that. And it could happen just like that if we want it. Amen? Oh, for the passion of a soul. I am so glad somebody loved my soul. And I think that if you are saved, you can put your faith on somebody that loves you. Couldn't you? Huh? And I think that there ought to be somebody you love and just will not let go there. And that's God's way.