PUBLISHED BY BIBLE-BELIEVING CHRISTIANSredeemedmagazine.com/assets/issue 12.pdf4 Volume 6, Issue 2 • September 2020 Redeemed Magazine P.O. Box 1389, Belton, TX 76513 5 Letters to

P U B L I S H E D B Y B I B L E - B E L I E V I N G C H R I S T I A N S

VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2 • SEPTEMBER 2020

REDEEMEDA M A G A Z I N E F O R P R I S O N E R S

Redeemed Magazine P.O. Box 1389, Belton, TX 76513 3 2 Volume 6, Issue 2 • September 2020

Oceans of Blood by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman ........................................................................................................... 6The Salvation of John Grady by Dr. William P. Grady ...................................................................................... 12Do You Really Love God? by James L. Melton .................................................................................................... 22As the Sun Arises by Arturo Ruiz, Michael Unit ................................................................................................. 25What I’ve Learned About God From The Bible by Dr. Samuel C. Gipp ......................................................... 26

Your New Life In Christ by James L. Melton ....................................................................................................... 42My First Bicycle by Steven Long, Texas Death Row ............................................................................................ 50The Glass Eye by “Tater,” Michael Unit ............................................................................................................... 52Believers A, B, and Me by Jessica D’Lene Robertson, Released ........................................................................ 54At Home On Pilgrimage by Stephen Stoeltje, Stiles Unit .................................................................................. 57

Who Am I? by Rotolet McGee, Pack I Unit ........................................................................................................... 58In The Day by Stephen Stoeltje, Stiles Unit .......................................................................................................... 61Of Life and Limb by Kevin Murphy, Stiles Unit ................................................................................................... 62Sharing the Pie by Michael Pearl ......................................................................................................................... 64A Letter and a Rose by Jeff Morrison, Clements Unit ........................................................................................ 67

Too Busy to Die by Dr. Samuel C. Gipp ............................................................................................................... 68Through Your Eyes by Randall Neal, Smith Unit ............................................................................................... 70Handprints by Chris Williams, Coffield Unit ....................................................................................................... 73Beautiful by Joy Armstrong, Released .................................................................................................................. 74A Road Worth Taking by Carl Lee Snider, Coffield Unit .................................................................................... 76

The Eye of Calm by Troy Glover, Estelle Unit ...................................................................................................... 78Solitary Confinement by Anonymous, Polunsky Unit ....................................................................................... 82Isolation by Joseph Karadeema Jr., Released ...................................................................................................... 84Reflection by Jeffrey Wallace, Released ............................................................................................................... 86Entombed by William C. Wallace, Released ....................................................................................................... 89

Finding Forgiveness by Albert Thompson, Polunsky Unit ................................................................................ 90Solitary Submission by Albert Thompson, Polunsky Unit................................................................................. 91Fallacious Stairs by Fernando Zuniga, Cotulla Unit........................................................................................... 92Dust on a Shelf by Marshall J. Lee, Jr., Released ................................................................................................ 96“Jimmy”; or “Funeral for a Grasshopper” by Jessica D’Lene Robertson, Released ........................................ 98

The World of the Forgotten by Phillip Jackson, Allred Unit ...........................................................................100Barbwire Saint by S. Marshall, Stevenson Unit ................................................................................................102The Scars My Father Gave Me by Michael Bishoff, Released ........................................................................104Short Short Story Contest ....................................................................................................................................106

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Who are we? We are King James Bible-believers. We accept the Book as our FINAL AUTHORITY in all matters of faith and practice. The Book says that you must be saved by grace through faith with no works added; that water baptism is not necessary for salvation; that, once a person in the Church Age is saved, he or she can never lose it. So that’s what we believe.

In This Issue From the Editor

Dear Friends,

Please find enclosed in this, the twelfth issue of Redeemed Magazine, articles and poems to encourage and inspire you, and to mirror your experience. These are indeed times to pray more, read the Bible more, and look expectantly for the imminent return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If the thought of Jesus Christ’s return strikes fear in your heart, then we implore you to get the matter of your salvation set-tled today (see the articles, “Oceans of Blood,” and “What I’ve Learned About God From the Bible”). “Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2)

Peace on earth will come only through Jesus Christ, and it will come first to Jerusalem in Israel, the “land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the begin-ning of the year even unto the end of the year.” (Deuteronomy 11:12)

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

TJ

Contest Deadlines:Short Short Story Contest (600 words or fewer) November 1, 2020Art Contest on the theme, “Freedom” December 1, 2020Memoir Contest (2500 words or fewer) December 15, 2020Poetry Contest (any form) December 30, 2020

Each winner will receive a complimentary issue for his/her portfolio plus one issue sent by request to a family member.


Letters to the EditorLetters to the EditorI truly know now that it was God’s will that I re-ceived this issue (Volume 6, Issue 1). “Waking Up Dead,” “The In and Out Lifestyle,” “From Test to a Testimony,” and “Caught in the Wilderness” were all articles that reflected me. I related to it all be-cause I saw myself in each one of the scenarios depicted in these articles. Life has never seemed to have any value to me because I’ve kept antici-pating doing the same old thing time after time—until now. I’ve found my purpose in life and to God be all the glory for giving me another chance to fulfill it.

Ronald, Gist Unit

Receiving your magazine is the one joy I look for-ward to like others do going to commissary. Your magazine opens up my mind to think differently about the choices I have made and shows me how others have handled the same issues in a positive way.

Scott, Hodge Unit

The waiting for this issue [6-1] was well worth it.Luis, Polunsky Unit

I want you to know how much I appreciate your magazine. I got to read it recently (Volume 6, Issue 1), and I’m addicted! The stories and poems are great.

Charles, Gurney Unit

Redeemed Magazine is so worth the wait. I have read it over and over. Inspires me to write again. Truly the most encouraging work I’ve picked up in prison.

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Someone gave me the Volume 6, Issue 1 of your Redeemed Magazine. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down.

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My cell mate received Volume 6, Issue 1. I found it to be so amazing! I can’t believe others feel the same way I do. I love it. The stories, poems, art-work. Blows me away.

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I was so happy to see [the latest issue of] Redeemed Magazine, just to know all was well with you all. When I showed people, their spirits lifted up too and they were like, “Can I read it?” So I started a line for all the people who wanted to read it, and

that made me happy to see I wasn’t the only one that really enjoyed it!

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There’s this guy in here who introduced me to your magazine for the very first time. A huge blessing to my life and my walk with Jesus Christ because it al-ways helps to read stories of others going through things, knowing I am not alone in this fight.

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It truly is amazing to know that there are individ-uals out in the free world who truly care for the broken men and women in the prison system. One of my podmates brought your magazine to my cell during the coronavirus lockdown, and it has truly been a blessing. God truly uses lots of unexpected ways to show His love to His children...

Matthew, Clements Unit

I can’t even tell you how many people wound up reading those last [issues] I had. Everybody liked them.

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One of my friends left one in our dayroom and I’ve hung on to it for over a year and keep reading it over and over. I keep finding bits of inspiration that never seem to end from different articles.

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I happened to come across a Redeemed magazine, Volume 5, Issue 1, and I was totally blown away by all its contents. I can relate to most testimonies, and I even cried on some of the poems.

David, Lychner Unit

I was blessed to pick up a copy that someone else had thrown out, and was amazed at such a great magazine specifically for prisoners. To say that it was a true blessing would be an understatement! Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out who threw that copy out and who here receives your magazine, so I haven’t been privileged enough to read another issue. It wasn’t until today that I re-alized I had your address on the back of a picture that I kept from that issue I had found. What a blessing that discovery is! With a life sentence, it’s easy to get caught up in the negative side of life, but I’m sure glad that the LORD allows me to see even the smallest of blessings.

Anthony, Robertson Unit

I am hoping you can send me the Redeemed Mag-azine free of charge because I just got the chance to read one of your magazines, and it truly was a blessing to me.

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I just finished reading one of your Redeemed Mag-azines. I thought it was awesome. We don’t get much Christian magazines at the Beto Unit right now since the coronavirus hit. The libraries are shut down like everything else.

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I want to tell you, that is the Best Magazine I have ever read.

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I just read the Redeemed, Volume 6, Issue 1, and let me tell you that I had never read a magazine like this one before, and I hunger for more...

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I am writing to say how wonderful I believe your magazine is, as well as uplifting. I saw a copy today and I am hoping that I can start to receive my own issue. I am serving a 10 year sentence, and it’s the first magazine that doesn’t give me anxiety.

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I’m in ad seg, and as I was being escorted to the clinic at 3 a.m. to get my insulin, I came across Vol-umes 5 and 6, Issues 1. As I got back from the clinic I asked the C.O. if he would give me the magazines that were thrown away; so he did. I’m glad that he did! It’s as if God had directed me. I love the stories, testimonies, and the poems. They touched my heart, and had me in tears.

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Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Psalm 122:6


oceans of bloodoceans of bloodby Dr. Peter S. Ruckman

“Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah. . .Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat? I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the peo-ple there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come” (Isa. 63:1–4). “For the indignation of the LORD is upon all

nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath de-livered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. . .The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. . .and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the LORD’S vengeance, and the year of recompens-es for the controversy of Zion” (Isa. 34:2–8).

WW hat you just read is an account of Jesus Christ coming at the Second Advent to stomp on 200 million UN troops (Rev.

9:16) until the blood runs five feet deep for 184 miles (Rev. 14:20). That’s not “highly figurative, apocalyptic” language. That’s literally going to take place in the next several years (Zech. 14; Rev. 19).

Now, I understand that the subject of blood is an unsavory one. To some people, the very thought of blood makes them sick. Nevertheless, blood is an important thing to you from the time you are born to the time you die. Leviticus 17:11 says, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” The Lord told Noah, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6).

It wasn’t until 1939 that the two clotting agents of the blood, Vitamin K and Prothrombin, were discovered to be at their peak on the eighth day after a child was born. That is why God command-ed those Jews to circumcise their baby boys on the eighth day (Gen. 17:12; Lev. 12:3).

The word blood occurs 447 times in 375 vers-es of your Bible. The first time is connected with murder—“the voice of thy brother’s blood cri-eth unto me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). The last time is where the Lord comes back and has “a vesture dipped in blood” (Rev. 19:13).


Blood is inseparable from true, Biblical Christi-anity. You may not like it, but the fact of the matter is, Christianity is a bloody religion, and that Bible is a bloody Book. That is one of the things that separates Biblical Christianity (I am not talking about some fake kind over in Rome that pretends to turn fermented hooch into blood; I am talking about the Christianity found in that Book) from ev-ery other religion on earth.

Rabbinical Judaism has no shed blood for sin-ners in it. Of course, back in the Old Testament, those Jews had an altar where they offered bloody sacrifices. Not any more. You won’t find one syn-agogue in your town where the Rabbi offers up shed blood for sins, although that is what his Book commands him to do.

Islam is a bloodless religion when it comes to getting one’s sins forgiven. Moslems don’t kill Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc., to atone for sins. They kill because those groups won’t accept Mohammed’s religion; they kill because those groups won’t recite the Shahada and confess that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. But when it comes to getting sins forgiv-en, no blood is shed.

Hinduism and Buddhism have no blood shed for sin. A Catholic professes to have a blood sacrifice for sin, but it is only a jug of liquor. There is no life in a cup of wine from Christian Brothers Distillery.

“Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).

There are five quarts of blood in the average per-son, the doctors say, and every 23 seconds, five quarts of blood are pumped through your heart. Blood is considered to be a liquid tissue of the body. It has 4,000 different components; the most important ones being red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma.

You can lose 33% of your blood and still live. In the Army, we were trained to kill a man by stab-bing him between the scapula and the clavicle with something as simple as a pencil or pen. When that carotid artery is punctured, the blood will spurt up in the air, and the person will bleed to death in twelve seconds.

The old saying is: “You can’t get blood out of a turnip.” Do you know from where that comes? It comes from a King James Bible: “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD” (Gen. 4:3), and God didn’t accept it (Gen. 4:5). God was looking for blood, and you can’t get blood out of a turnip that comes from the ground.

How about this one: “Blood runs thicker than

water.” Where do people get that? From Exodus 7:17–21, where Moses turned the waters in Egypt to blood. Of course, in that expression, “blood” is a reference to blood relatives: your close kin. But in the case of Moses there in Exodus 7, it was literal.

Among the “Limeys” (the British), one of the worst cuss words you can use is bloody. That’s a curse by God’s blood (Acts 20:28). The medieval ex-pressions were Odds bodkins and Odds blud; those are Old English for God’s body and God’s blood.

You can donate blood, and your body will re-plenish it from your bone marrow. The current world record holder for the most blood donations is John Sheppard of Ft. Myers, Florida, who gave his 315th pint in August of 2011. He beat out the previous record holder, Phillip Baird of Australia, who has given 231 pints as of 2009. In my notes, I have the record of a fellow named Joe Karkovsky, who donated 31 gallons of blood in three years back in 1940–42.

Men are bloody. Just nick yourself in the right spot while shaving, and you’ll find out: you’ll bleed like a stuck hog. How are you going to get to Heav-en, then, without blood? Water can’t get you there (John 3:5–6); you’ll have to come by the blood (Rev. 1:5–6).

History is bloody. The history of man is the his-tory of continual bloodshed. Ever since Cain knocked Abel’s brains out, men have been killing one another right and left. According to the Ency-clopedia of Military History (1986), there have been 4,345 battles from 3500 B.C. to the present, with estimates as high as a billion people, in the 6,000-year history of earth, having died in combat. There was so much bloodshed going on in the Twentieth Century that Ballantine Books called it The Violent Century. Men killed more men between 1900 and 2000 than they did in the 500 years that preceded them.

The end of man’s history on this earth has noth-ing to do with peace, prosperity, or progress. It

has nothing to do with news media propaganda like unity or outer space. The end of this age is marked by a battle with 200 million casualties (Rev. 9, 14, 19). I make no apology to a bloody, sinful world for my texts in Isaiah 63 and 34. Why should I apologize to a bunch of bloody killers for the Lord settling accounts in the only way they would understand, after rejecting free salvation through the bloody sacrifice of His Son?

We refer to the American flag as the “Red, White, and Blue.” That’s a strange combination. Why not

“Blue, White, and Red” or “White, Red, and Blue” or “Blue, Red, and White” or “White, Blue, and Red,” etc.? Why is it always “Red, White, and Blue” in that exact order? Well, blue is the color of Heav-en; white is the color of something clean. If you are ever going to be clean enough to get to Heav-en, you have to come through the “red” first—the blood (1 John 1:7). “What can wash away my sin? NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS!” “Red, White, and Blue”—the Bible controls the speech of un-saved men.

You say, “It makes me sick to think about blood.” You hadn’t better go to Heaven then. Up there, the saints sing about it. “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou

art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast re-deemed us to God BY THY BLOOD out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Rev. 5:9).

The citizens of Glory don’t sing about their good works, their church membership, their baptism, or their religion. When they sing about salvation, the words Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyteri-an, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, or Charismatic aren’t even mentioned. They sing about the blood that washed them from their sins (Rev. 1:5).

Next, the Bible is bloody. The Bible records thir-teen civil wars, 78 deliverances, 34 defeats, and two million casualties. That doesn’t count the 200 million that are coming up at the end of the Trib-ulation; those are the ones that have already tak-en place in Biblical history. That Book says, “The LORD is a man of war” (Exod. 15:3); He’s “mighty in battle” (Psa. 24:8). There are more passages in that Bible on armed conflict than there are on salvation.

This age will end in people drinking blood. In the Tribulation, those worshipers of the Antichrist kill Jews at the altar in the Temple (Rev. 6:9) and offer their blood as drink offerings (Psa. 16:4). So God returns the favor and turns their waters to blood

so they can drink it all the time (Rev. 16:3–6). That is why the drinking of blood was forbidden before the Law (Gen. 9:4), under the Law (Lev. 17:10–14), and under grace (Acts 15:29). If you find a religion that believes in drinking literal blood (offered in an “unbloody manner,” of course), that is a reli-gion that violates the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

If you take the blood out of our religion, it is as lifeless as any other religion. When Moses got through writing the book of the Law, he sprinkled it and the people with blood (Heb. 9:19). Any “gos-pel” that fails to require shed blood is not “good news” at all; it’s bad news. Cain found that out way back around 3900 B.C. or so.

When Jesus Christ died, He shed every drop of blood in His body and left it down here on earth. When He returned to Heaven, He didn’t have a drop of blood in Him. Why did He do that? To pay for your sins. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not re-

deemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). “In whom we have redemption through his

blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14). What did the high priest sprinkle every year on

the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant? The blood. What did the children of Israel put on the door posts and lintel of their houses there in Egypt so death would pass over them? The blood. What did Jesus sweat there in the Garden of Geth-semane as He agonized over becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21)? “Great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). What stained Eden’s beautiful garden when God made coats of skin to clothe the nakedness of Adam and Eve? Blood: an animal had to be killed to get the skin for those coats. What makes the robes in Heaven so fair? Blood! “And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest: And

Christianity is a bloody religion, and that Bible is a

bloody Book

If you take the blood out of our religion, it is as lifeless

as any other religion.


he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB” (Rev. 7:14).

R. B. Thieme had a doctorate from Dallas Theo-logical Seminary, and he was educated far above his intelligence. He, and later on John MacArthur, picked up the following baloney: Christ’s “literal blood had no significance whatsoever”; “Christ’s blood is a representative analogy which describes His spiritual death” (quotes taken from his book The Blood of Christ). Yeah, and Thieme’s brain was an incommunicable parody too.

Contrary to what the Bible actually said in Ephe-sians 2:13 (to which Thieme referred), he said,

“The red liquid that ran through the veins and ar-teries of Jesus’ mortal body is not related to our salvation.” Parroting Thieme, John MacArthur said,

“It is not the actual liquid that cleanses us from our sins, but the work of redemption Christ accom-plished in pouring it out.”

That actual, red liquid was necessary for my propitiation and cleansing: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith IN HIS BLOOD” (Rom. 3:25). You can’t separate Christ’s blood from His “work of redemption.” That’s what corrupt pieces of apostate garbage like the ASV, NASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, and ESV do in Colossians 1:14. They get rid of “through his blood” so that Christ’s “work of redemption” has nothing to do with it.

Thieme went on to say: “There is no Biblical basis for attributing any unusual properties to Christ’s bodily fluids.” That means that Christ’s blood was just like your blood. IN A PIG’S EYE! If Christ’s blood was just like your blood, how come He didn’t stay in the grave? “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50) because your blood is corrupt; it comes from your father Adam (1 Cor. 15:47–49). Jesus Christ didn’t get His blood from Adam; He got it from His Father: God (Acts

20:28). Here is the “Biblical basis for attributing. . .unusual properties to Christ’s bodily fluids”: “feed the church of GOD, which HE [GOD!] hath pur-chased with HIS [GOD’S!] OWN BLOOD” (Acts 20:28).

If “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (and it is—Lev. 17:11), what kind of life did Christ have in Him? Why, eternal life, of course (1 John 1:1–2, 5:11, 20). Then His blood can’t be like your blood.

“For as IN ADAM all DIE, even so IN CHRIST shall all be made ALIVE” (1 Cor. 15:22).

The reason Christ didn’t stay dead was because His blood was different from yours. The reason you won’t stay dead some day is because faith in that shed blood brings justification that’s con-nected to Christ’s resurrection (Rom. 3:24–25 cf. 4:24–25).

Now the purpose of Christ shedding His blood was:

1) To satisfy the demands of the Law. That was true of the law of conscience even before the Mosaic Law was given. When Abel wanted to show God he loved Him, he figured he ought to love God enough to die for Him. But being fearful of death, as we all are, he offered up a lamb of his flock in his stead. The Law demanded a sacrifice, and al-though the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin (Heb. 10:4), still God accepted that as a basis for remitting sin in the Old Testament (Heb. 9:22).

To get those sins completely removed, you need-ed something better than the blood of bulls and goats. You needed the blood of a sinless man to be shed in your place. When Jesus shed His blood for you on the cross, it was to keep you from hav-ing to pay a debt you owed God; He paid the debt for you (Rom. 6:23). When you refuse to trust the blood of Christ for your salvation, you nullify the payment He made on your behalf.

Back in the Reformation, when the Duke of Alba was killing Protestant Christians in Holland, one family killed a goat in their house and let the blood run outside under the door. When the Cath-olic “goon squad” saw that blood, they passed on because they figured the work of slaughter was done already. (I trust you get the message of that illustration: “when I SEE THE BLOOD, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you” Exod. 12:13).

2) To keep you out of Hell. One time over in Scot-land, a stoker at a glass factory was shoveling coal into the furnace when he heard a preacher talking to his buddy. They were discussing Hell.

His friend asked the preacher, “What’s Hell like?” “It’s like the furnace you’re putting coal in,” replied the preacher in his thick Scottish brogue. The next Sunday the stoker who overheard that conversa-tion showed up at church and told that preacher,

“I’ve come to find salvation so I won’t find out what Hell is like when I die.”

Smart man. You say, “Ah, Ruckman, I don’t be-lieve in Hell.” But what if it’s true? Are you going to wait to go there before you change your mind and figure out you don’t like it? Christ shed His blood to keep you out of the fire! Why do you think He cried out on the cross, “I thirst” (John 19:28)? Why, that’s the cry of a man in Hell (see Luke 16:24). Christ shed His blood for you so you don’t have to go through that.

Finally, I want to talk to you about the power of the blood. When a man trusts nothing but the blood of Christ to save him, something happens to him inside. I know every convert doesn’t “pan out” the way he should, but if that person stops trusting his own righteousness and trusts Christ’s blood alone for salvation, a new man with new af-fections is born inside him (2 Cor. 5:17). Of course, a Christian can fail to put on the new man in his daily life (Eph. 4:24) and refuse to yield the mem-bers of his body to the Lord (Rom. 6:19) and not set his affections “on things above” (Col. 3:2); I understand that. But that new creature is inside him, nevertheless, and he has interests and de-

sires he didn’t have before. That’s due to the pow-er of the blood.

He has spiritual discernment he didn’t have be-fore. The blood changes a person’s outlook to-ward the future: he has hope beyond the grave. I may be pessimistic about this world, but broth-er, I am the most optimistic fellow you ever met when it comes to life after death. I believe I will end up sinless (Rom. 8:29). You can’t get much more “positive thinking” than that. “There is power in the blood.” No sacrament can do for you what the blood of Jesus Christ can do for you. A sacra-ment might make you feel good about your own self-righteousness, and it might make you loyal to a church. But no sacrament can relieve you of the responsibility of facing God Almighty; only the New Birth through the blood of Christ can do that. “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes

were far off are made nigh by THE BLOOD OF CHRIST” (Eph. 2:13).

“How much more shall THE BLOOD OF CHRIST, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14).

Reprinted by permission from the Bible Believers’ Bulletin, August 2016, a publication of Bible Baptist Church, 1130 Jo Jo Road, Pensacola, FL 32514.

The reason Christ didn’t stay dead was because His

blood was different than yours.


John 1:46, ”And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

II grew up in a place called New York City. It’s a strange place; 36,000 people per square mile. The population density when I was

growing up was about seven to eight million; it was the largest city in the world. And it was wild with lots of violent characters. This is a story about me, but mostly about my father.

My father was raised by nuns in a strict Roman Catholic orphanage in Baltimore, Maryland. It was actually just a few miles from the orphan-age where Babe Ruth grew up. The nuns taught him everything, even how to box. But times were tough. He said that at one time, for a year or so, all they had was molasses and bread for supper just about every night. It was a very poverty-stricken orphanage.

When he was about twelve or thirteen years of age he got out of the orphanage and moved to New York City. He lived in Hell’s Kitchen, that’s 47th Street, West Side. They used to put Maxwell House coffee cans on the pavement to put the “tolls” in. If a guy came down the street with his girlfriend and didn’t put a quarter in the can, then he didn’t get to go by. Bad neighborhood. He re-members dodging into the street and hiding un-derneath the cars when there would be shootouts. That’s a rough way to grow up as a young man.

In the 1930s he got hired for his first real job working at the Empire State Building. (His first

boss was Al Smith, the former governor of New York who was also the first presidential candidate from the Catholic faith. My dad was his “gopher” and would buy him cigars; he would also take Al Smith’s wife, Catherine Ann Dunn, shopping sometimes.) He worked at the top of the building; it was the tallest in the world at that time. Every-body and anybody from around the world would come visit this building. My dad was in charge of giving them tours, and that’s how he met every-body and anybody that was important.

Later on, he began working in high level security buildings as a doorman. If you live in New York City you don’t own a house; you live in an apart-ment building. The doormen work there to be se-curity, to protect you and keep the bad people out.

For instance, my dad worked at 67th and 5th Av-enue for a while. Every morning at work, he would shake hands with Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller, both living in the same building. He worked at 730 and 740 Park Avenue. If you go to a library you can probably pull up some old copies of a magazine called New York. Inside the May 20, 1968, edition is a picture of my father and another doorman in front of that building with an article entitled, “Appraising the Most Expensive Apart-ment Houses in the City.”

There were quite a few wealthy people that lived in those buildings. Thelma Chrysler Foy, the au-tomobile heiress, lived at 740 Park Avenue, as well as John D. Rockefeller and Richard Rodgers. Rockefeller had two entire floors, the 14th and

THETHE SALVATION SALVATION OFOF JOHN GRADYJOHN GRADY

by Dr. William P. Grady

John Grady (left) in front of 730 Park Avenue.

RKO Theater, Yorktown, Manhattan, circa 1940


15th, along with his own elevator. Every morning my dad would meet him on his way to work.

The Duke of Windsor would come in every Christmas for the Chryslers’ big family party. Stan-dard operating procedure for my dad would be getting drunk with the Duke of Windsor. The Duke would come in often to visit “Mr. Rock” and all the Jewish financiers in the building. Every time Lord Rothschild would see my dad he would hand him a $100 bill just walking past him.

Doormen were coveted people to have. You could trust these men; they protected your very life and your home.

My father would have breakfast with Joe DiMag-gio about every other Monday during the sum-mertime. When I was little, the sports announcer Jim McKay handed me a baseball signed by the

Brooklyn Dodgers. He did that just because of my dad.

One time Russian Premier Nikita Kruschev came to the United Nations. He was visiting the French ambassador who had an apartment at 730 Park Avenue. One hundred-and-fifty New York City po-licemen were lined up and down the hallway. My dad met Khrushchev, brought him over to the el-evator and took him up to meet the ambassador. He then went outside and there was Kruschev’s chauffeur sitting in a big limo in front of the build-ing. Eleanor Roosevelt and all other kind of big wheels would be coming in also for this party, and my dad was trying to get them to move this limo.

He walked over and put his hand on the limo door and said, “Hey, Johnny...,” while tapping on it. A guy inside the limo pulled a machine gun out and put it in his face while he cussed him out in Russian, telling him this car wasn’t going anywhere.

My dad went to tell the policemen about it, and they said, “We can’t do anything about it. Diplo-matic immunity.” My dad just stood there like, “All right, no problem!”

Bing Crosby showed up one time for a party and came dressed casual. It was a tuxedo-type thing, and he came with a sweater on. My father thought he was a delivery boy from a drug store, told him to use the service door. He said, “But I’m Bing!” My dad said, “Yeah, sure,” and threw him out.

My father played both sides of the fence. Not only did he work these high-security jobs, but he had some very bad friends, to say the least. My stepmother (she’s in Heaven now) had a recipe for spaghetti and meatballs written in pencil, signed by Carlo Gambino. He’s the one Marlon Brando patterned himself after for the film The Godfather.

I can remember one Sunday afternoon I came back from a Boy Scout camping trip, and my dad was sitting in a tavern. There weren’t many peo-ple in there at the time. I was talking to my dad at one end of the bar. There was a bartender, two or three other people, and a man at the other end of the bar. Out of nowhere a whiskey glass comes flying across the bar, bounces off the wall, and just misses me. I didn’t know what was going on; I was just a little snot-nosed kid in about the fifth grade.

My dad jumped off his barstool and flew after that guy. At the same time three guys jumped over the bar and grabbed my dad and had him pinned up against the wall. I can still remember the bar-tender talking to the wino who threw the glass. He kept pointing to me while saying, “Don’t you know who that is? That’s Johnny Grady’s son!” The guy

lost it. There was an FBI sting that was orchestrated by

an agent named Joseph D. Pistone. He infiltrated the Mafia under the name of Donnie Brasco; this was in the 1970s. For six long years they never de-tected it, and he got out with his life. He obtained about a hundred major indictments which were known as the “Pizza Connection Trials.” Many of the pizza parlors in New York were fronts for her-oin trafficking and things like that.

He wrote a book called My Life With the Mafia. In the fourth chapter, titled, “Hitting the Streets,” he said the first place he frequented (looking for Mafia contacts) was called Carmelo’s restaurant at 1638 York Avenue, a pleasant restaurant off 86th Street. Now that’s 86th Street and York Ave. My last New York address was 86th Street and 1st Av-enue. That’s just one block away. We lived at 78th Street and 1st Avenue when I was born.

By the providence of the Lord I just happened to grow up in the social scene, the central headquar-ters of the New York Mafia. Joe Namath’s night-club, The Bachelors Three, was twelve blocks from where I grew up; Rodney Dangerfield’s nightclub was eight blocks away; the mayor’s house, Gracie Mansion, was just four blocks from our apartment building. Some of us have been around the block a few times; we’re not proud of it, but “it is what it is.”

My father was what they called a “connected guy” (or “associate”) in the Mafia; that means he had connections. You’re either a connected guy or a soldier. If you are a soldier, you have to murder somebody, and then you’re in full time. A connect-ed guy has all the benefits, but he’s not in full time so that he can hold a secular job. When you have a secular job, you have those social contacts all year round; it’s beneficial.

Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law, was always giving my dad bets on horses; he had his own horses he would run. My father was a loan shark and a bookmaker. You know what that means, if you don’t pay your bills...

My mother was a brilliant woman. At nineteen, she was a supervisor in a defense plant during WWII, overseeing the Norden bombsights. She could paint and also wrote poetry and songs. She knew all about medicine just by reading medical books; she even had her own stethoscope. She absolutely loved astronomy. My brother bought her a telescope so she could study the stars. She read everything she could get her hands on. She was an intelligent lady and a good woman.

The only problem was she had some depression. Her own mother died early in life, and it depressed her. She started drinking a little bit. She also had hypoglycemia and other health problems. In the fifties they didn’t realize the terrible reaction that could happen when you mix that with alcohol. Now they know it can really set you off chemically.

I remember waking up one evening about nine or ten o’clock, and my mother was straddled across my chest trying to kill me. I was about ten years old, and she had a pillow on my face trying to suffocate me. I literally had to wrestle my own mother off my chest to live. She had the gas jets turned on; I had to turn them off and remove the towels from the cracks of the doors. She was try-ing to kill me and kill herself. In her right mind my mother would never do that; when she was sober she was the greatest woman in the world!

After a while things got too much for her. She had bad arthritis. I used to massage her back and shoulders under a heat lamp. She just got too de-pressed. She even started playing around with a Ouija board trying to get in touch with her mother.

Now to March 17, 1964, St. Patrick’s Day. That was the big day if you were Irish in New York. I used to march in the parade with my dad all the time; lots of people in our neighborhood of Yorkville would march. Yorkville was predomi-nately a German neighborhood, but there were a lot of Irish living there as well. Yorkville was where the parade would end, and everyone would get drunk there.

Bill and his father, John Grady, at Bill’s elementary school graduation


That morning my mother said she wanted me to go to the parade with her, but I wanted to go with my friends. I should have gone with my mother, but I didn’t. I was a street nut; but looking back, I wish I had. Instead, my sister spent the day at the parade with my mother.

About 6:30 that night I came home, and my mother was in a depressed state of mind. I could always remember the time because we lived right behind the basketball court of Rhinelander’s Boys’ Club, and the basketballs would start bouncing at 7:00; that’s when the lights would come on. I start-ed hearing those balls bouncing out there, and my mother was very depressed.

She went into the kitchen and got a bottle of sleeping pills. She opened the bottle and just started chugging them right there with water. I was eleven and my sister was nine. My sister pan-icked and started to run around screaming. I didn’t know what to do; she had already taken the pills. Just a few minutes later she started to come under the effects of them and began staggering around in the kitchen.

This was the last conversation I had with my mother. She said, “I love you, Billy.” I said, “No you don’t! If you did you wouldn’t be doing this.” Then she fell on the floor. She had a house coat on. I went and grabbed her under the arms and start-ed dragging her down the hall from the kitchen into the living room. I put her up on the couch, then went to the kitchen. The first thing I thought about was her soul. My family was Catholic, but my mother was a Lutheran.

I was reared in a “Pay, Pray and Obey” strict Ro-man Catholic teaching. They always taught us if you ever have a non-Catholic person at the point of death, you are supposed to “baptize” them and make them a Catholic, so I grabbed a glass of wa-ter. I came back in and poured it over my moth-er’s head. I said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” I was taught that in Catholic grade school.

I then ran downstairs to the candy store next to our apartment building and called the Manhat-tan Rescue Squad from the phone booth (no cell phones in those days) and my father, who was cel-ebrating at the Three Swans Tavern. They came and got my mother, put her in a chair, and carried her out. She looked terrible; I’ll never forget it.

A big crowd of people was gathered around, wanting to know what was going on. She was in the chair, out cold, with stringy hair and wearing a house coat. She looked like a drunk. I felt so

ashamed standing there! Yet she was dying; but at eleven years of age, I only had a sneaking suspi-cion of how serious it was. They rushed her to the hospital and began pumping her stomach to try to save her life.

That night my sister and I spent the night at our half brother’s house. I can remember going across the Brooklyn Bridge and even the song that was on the radio. “Don’t let the rain come down, oh no, oh no.” He was tapping the roof as we drove along.

My half brother, Gregory, was a hard man. When he was fourteen years old he broke into and burned a grocery store to the ground be-cause they cheated him out of his paycheck. Just a few months after I spent the night with him, he learned that his wife was having an affair with another man. He got a gun, and when he found him, he chased him down the street and shot him in the hip as he ducked into a police station for help. He then chased him inside the station with the smoking gun in his hand! Fortunately, the man lived, but Gregory went to Sing-Sing Prison for three years for that offense. While he was in prison, his wife was beaten to death by another boyfriend.

The next morning after my mother went to the hospital, I woke up on the kitchen floor, having spent the night on a mat. My brother was sitting there drinking coffee. He looked at me and saw I was awake. He loved me, but he didn’t know any other way to break the news to me, so he simply said, “No more mommy,” then went back to drink-ing his coffee. That was the end of that.

My father, sister, Gregory, and I went to the viewing. There were all kinds of big shots there,

but the only one I can remember was the greet-er from New York, the man that gives away the key to the city. This was a big Catholic viewing; all the priests were there, all the nuns. Everyone was shaking my hand, but it didn’t do any good. I had no grace, no Holy Spirit, no anything.

My father took her death hard. He spent the night locked up in the funeral home next to my mother’s body with a bottle of Johnnie Walker scotch. The next morning we had the final family viewing of the body. Afterward, they were to close the casket and put it in the hearse to take it to the train station. I can still remember going up to the casket by myself. It’s funny when you’re not saved, you have no idea of anything. I just knew I missed my mother so much and wanted to see her again—some way.

I remember taking one of those little prayer cards that has the person’s name on it along with the funeral home’s. I walked up to the casket and gave her a kiss goodbye. I stuck that prayer card down into the casket when no one was looking. I said, “Now, Mom, you’re going to give that to me one day in the future, so keep that with you.” That’s the best you can do when you’re eleven years old and you’re not saved. Then they closed the casket. They shipped my mother’s body to New Hamp-shire for burial.

My father tried to hold our family together. He remarried too soon to a Catholic lady who turned out to be an alcoholic. That was all that remained of our family.

An ironic thing I realized was this: when my fa-ther got married to the second woman, I was the altar boy in the Catholic service. So I baptized my first mother, and I was the altar boy in the wed-ding of my second “mother.”

I used to see whiskey bottles thrown across the room by my stepmother and bouncing off the walls. I don’t know how many times I had to break into our house—up the fire escape and through a window—because my stepmother was stone cold drunk and couldn’t let us in the house. One night she got mad and threw my sister and me out in a snow storm. We walked twelve blocks to a bar (wearing only robes and slippers) to get to a phone to call my dad to come and get us.

My father got a divorce, and we moved back to New York. My sister ran away from home; she was twelve by this time. She was on the streets in New York, and we didn’t see her for three years. She fi-nally turned herself in. She then went to Madonna Heights School, a Catholic school for girls on Long

Island. I graduated from Salesianum High School, an

all-male Catholic school in Wilmington, Delaware; then went to the University of Delaware, where I met the lady who would become my wife. I left af-ter about a year and started selling cash registers for a living.

After another year and a half, my father got mar-ried again. This time he married a lady 20 years younger than he was, and I thought, “What a joke this is!” I think my dad didn’t want to get hurt again, so he married a younger woman who really loved him. I thought she was just a floozy; she didn’t reg-ister with me at all. I didn’t take her seriously for a long time until the Lord started showing me what a good woman she really was.

I went to New York to work for British Airways as a reservation agent. After nine months in New York, I transferred and was promoted to Philadel-phia as an air freight salesman. It was while I was working in Philadelphia that I got saved.

During my commutes to work, I would dial through the radio stations looking for the news. Instead, I picked up Oliver Green at 9:00 a.m. I thought he was a black preacher. “Who is this wild man?” Before Oliver Green was “The Voice of China and Asia Missions” from California at 8:30 a.m., and then Randy Carroll (who later became my pastor) from Marcus Hook Baptist Church in Linwood, Pennsylvania came on at 8:45 a.m. I had three of them right in a row, and I was enthralled.

I never had a Bible of my own, had never even seen a Catholic Bible. My parish priest, Father Dudley, used to be the chaplain for the New York Giants. Don Ameche was a member of my church and Jack Paar, all these big celebrities. Ameche would show up for 6:00 a.m. Mass, and if the altar boy didn’t show up, he would put on a robe and serve Mass to the priest. We had all that Catholic tradition in us.

But here was a preacher on the radio I could lis-ten to. He wasn’t threatening. I could turn it on and off if I wanted to. I really got into it after a while. I can remember driving underneath tele-phone wires which would mess up the reception, and I would start cussing, screaming, and beating the dashboard because I wanted to hear more of that Bible. My preacher would say, “Pull over to the side of the road; you in that kitchen, put down that piece of toast.” So I would pull over to the side of the road; I would be listening to that preacher. I really didn’t know what to do, but I was getting fired up.

John Grady and Evangelist Jack Patterson


I would show up to work with tears in my eyes and go into my office. My coworkers would come up and ask me, “What’s the matter, Mr. Grady?” And I would be like, “Get away from me.” I didn’t know what was going on, but I was getting under conviction.

I got married at this point. My wife was a saved Southern Baptist lady from Virginia. A Catholic priest performed the ceremony. At the reception, he started a conga line while playing “When The Saints Go Marching In” on his accordion. We were chauffeured in a limousine to the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia where we were going to stay over-night and then fly to Hawaii the next morning.

My wife gave me my wedding present. I opened it up, and it was a King James Bible. It was the first Bible I had ever had in my life. I told the Lord on the way back from that honeymoon in Hawaii,

“This is so good. I appreciate you for being so kind and good to me, giving me this big wedding.”

I thought all these things were from the Lord. I had a bottle of champagne from the pilot sitting right there in front of my wife’s nose. The captain had just given us the champagne and then got on the intercom and said, “We have the newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Grady, from British Airways, on board.” Everybody gave us a big hand.

That’s like the world’s last chance to hold onto you just a little bit. But I said, “Lord, when I get back from this trip, I am going to get this salvation business settled.”

We landed on a Saturday and had a bunch of our friends meet us at our apartment for a party. The next morning, it was time to go to church. I literally was stepping over the bodies in my apartment of people crashed there from the big party. Some-one said, “Hey! Where you going, man?” and I said,

“I’m going to church!” I left them in stunned silence, but they were interested.

I went to that church, went down the aisle at the invitation time, and got saved. It was then I learned that my mom was probably not in Heav-en; but my father was still living, so I went straight to his house to talk to him.

I didn’t know any better. I just walked in the door and said “Hey! Guess what? I just changed reli-gions.”

My father looked first at my Baptist wife kin-da funny and said, “You stole my Billy!” Then he looked at me and just freaked out; we had such a knock-down, drag-out argument!

I can still remember grabbing all the wedding presents that were at my dad’s house and throw-

ing them into the trunk of my car. All those silver boxes, boom!, things cracking and breaking. “I’m getting out of here,” I said, and we drove out. “You just don’t want to get saved!”

We were driving home, and I had a Nestle Crunch bar. I got so mad I just threw it at the windshield, and it broke all over the place. That’s how it was.

In the days to come, I tried everything and any-thing to get my dad saved. Besides all the dumb preaching to him prematurely and not living it in front of him, I went so far as to try to get a sports celebrity to witness to him. I found out that Bob-by Richardson from the New York Yankees, All-Star second basemen from 1955-1966, one of my dad’s favorite players, had gotten saved. He was preaching all over the place with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I found out he was going to be preaching for the New York Jets football team at Shea Stadium. I called that man and asked him if he would go by and see my dad, and he agreed to do it.

I then called my dad to get the address to where he was living in New York, and he wouldn’t tell me. He could smell a rat.

I had to call Bobby Richardson back. I said, “Mr. Richardson, I’m sorry but he won’t give me the ad-dress.” So that ended that.

Then we found out about another guy whom my dad might listen to named George Meyer. He was Al Capone’s former driver, had gotten saved and was one of the speakers at a big prison meeting in Chicago. He has a biography called Al Capone’s Devil Driver. He got saved after about 30 years at Leavenworth and Alcatraz.

George Meyer used to travel with Chaplain Ray in some of the Assembly of God circuits. I called that good man on the phone, and I worked a deal out with him. I said, “Look Mr. Meyer, if I can find a church that would book you and give you a meet-ing within 100 miles of where my dad lives, and I work it all out, would you go and witness to my dad?” He said “Yes.”

I spent three weeks calling every church with any kind of Assembly of God connection of any sort. I called them all, trying to find one that would book this man, George Meyer. No one would.

“Our committees and we have got to get this to our budget...” I got so frustrated. Then I asked the man to just call my dad on the phone, and he was good enough to do so. They talked on the phone for about an hour. My dad told me later he was checking him out, did he know so-and-so? He knew them all, so he believed him. But that’s not

the same as a one-on-one visit. Let me tell you how God works; He didn’t need

all my cute ideas. One day, my best friend, Evan-gelist Jack Patterson, went by to see my dad, just to visit him for my sake. He walked in the door, and he was only there for five minutes when my stepmother, Jessie, asked, “Mr. Patterson, would you like a sandwich?”

He says, “Yeah.” He was now in the house for only ten minutes,

and they had never met him before. So he’s sitting in the living room; he gets his sandwich and looks at it. He lifts the top piece of bread and says, “Is this all the meat ya got?” That’s street language for, “Now look, Mr. Grady, don’t worry. You know I’m here to witness to you, but take it easy, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

My dad looked at Jack, looked at my stepmother, looked back at Jack, and then looked at my step-mother again and said, “Get the man a sandwich!” Now that’s street language for, “Ok, you got one shot at it.” That was the first visit.

Jack continued to work on him, winning him over, and loving on him, buying him pastrami from New York City and Jewish rolls, and bringing it right to my dad’s house, just for him. After the third visit my dad asked him, “By the way, Jack, how in the world did you become a preacher anyway?” Jessie (who had recently gotten saved at a tent revival) was gone for the day. The Lord said, “Now it’s time, Jack.”

Jack spent 45 minutes giving him more of his tes-timony and really drilling the Gospel into him. Jack is pretending to watch the TV, reeling him in, act-ing like he’s watching the game, saying things like,

“Yeah, Mr. Grady,” just being smart. Finally my father says, “Well, what do I do? How

do I get saved?” Jack says, “Well, you just got to pray and ask the

Lord to save you,” and he goes back to watching the game. He looked back over and my father was already on his knees. He had taken his glasses off and laid them on the table, then looked at Jack like,

“Now what?” Jack said later, “Good night! I felt so bad, I thought

I’d better jump down there with him.” He turned the game off and got down beside him. My dad prayed and got saved!

The first thing my dad said when he got off the floor was, “I gotta call Billy and get him off my back!”

He called me on the telephone and was talking about a few little nothing things, and then said,

“Oh yeah, by the way, Jack saved me.” We all know someone like that, “Jack saved me.”

A little while later, I had the joy and blessing of baptizing my father in front of 7,000 people af-ter the evening service at First Baptist Church of Hammond in Indiana. But let me tell you some-thing, brother, there’s much more to it than that. Did you ever read that verse about breaking up the fallow ground? You serve a God who knows your needs before you even call. Here is how God broke up the fallow ground in my dad’s life to get him ready for salvation.

Two years before I even got saved, my dad and stepmother had a little baby girl named Melissa. They didn’t realize it at the time, but that baby was going to be retarded. My half sister Melissa can-not even pat her own hair. My father was provi-dentially caused to watch over that young girl. He was a hard man, and only God could break down a hard man like that. All the years of giving her en-emas, changing her diapers, feeding her, dressing her, and bathing her softened his heart.

Then Jack shows up and reaps the harvest. I read in a song book, “Lord, now indeed I find, Thy pow-er and thine alone can change the leper’s spots and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all.”

Several years later, when Jessie developed breast cancer, my dad spent thirteen days with her, sleeping on the floor at her feet most of the time, because she couldn’t lie down. She hadn’t been able to lie down in six months because the cancer had spread to her lungs. She was suffering


terribly, and to add to the situation, my dad now needed to have major surgery.

When my dad left for the hospital, Melissa had no one to care for her, so she was placed in a special care facility. She was only there one hour before she suffered a collapsed lung from a de-veloping pneumonia. They had to rush her to the intensive care.

Jessie had to get off her hospice death bed to visit my dad two hours away. She wanted to tell him that Melissa was no longer at home; she didn’t want it on her conscience.

Jack was at the hospital with my dad. He had tak-en over the whole place while he was there; they offered him a job as social director and chaplain. For the first few days he was telling them he was

“Dr. Patterson” and getting all these free passes.While my dad was in the hospital, a Catholic

priest walked into his room. My dad said, “What do you want?” Jack was just sitting there, watching.

The priest said, “Well, I want to give you commu-nion.”

He replied, “I’ve fallen away from the Catholic re-ligion, I’m a Baptist! And that’s my preacher over there.” That’s called, “God writes the last chapter if you wait long enough.”

The priest asked if they could pray; my dad said, “Go ahead and pray if you want.” While he was praying, Jack looked over at my dad, and my dad was winking at him.

Three days after Jessie visited him, my dad went home from the hospital. He walked in the door, went straight to her room, and they talked for about twenty minutes. The last thing she said was,

“I love you, John,” then slipped into a coma.Jack had already left at 4 o’clock that afternoon

to go preach in Pennsylvania, but on his way the Lord said, “Go back, Jack.” He turned around and got back to my dad’s house around 6:30 to 7 pm that night.

Jack asked my cousin Trudy to wake him up at 3 am. When she woke him, Trudy said, “Brother Jack, Aunt Jessie is in Heaven. She just died.” Jack took a shower, and while he was getting changed, the relatives were beating on the door, saying, “John wants you. John wants you.”

My dad called Jack into the room where Jessie was. He put his own stepsons out; Jessie’s sister, all the immediate family, put them out. He brought

Jack in, closed the door and got down on his knees beside the bed with his hands folded.

He looked Jack right in the eye and gave him a command, just two words, “Comfort me.”

You know what you do at a time like that? You start singing, “There’s a land that is fairer than day, and by faith we can see it afar; for the Father waits over the way to prepare us a dwelling place there. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beau-tiful shore....” Jack also sang “The Unclouded Day.”

Dad said, “Tell me about Heaven, Jack,” while patting Jessie’s face and weeping like a baby. Then, holding Jessie’s hand in one of his, with his other hand he held Jack’s hand up to his own face and said again, “Tell me about Heaven, Big Jack.”

This is the guy who used to run with the mob like I can’t tell you. But they have feelings, too. “Com-fort me, Jack.”

Jack said, “Well, she’s looking at you right now.” He said, “She is? She is?” He started looking up

toward Heaven, talking to her. Then he got up and said, “I’m okay now, I’m all right.” He walked out and told everybody, “I’m all right, Jack comforted me.” That was it.

Two days later, the hospice people came to take the bed out. The day before, my father had been lying on that bed all afternoon. My wife said, “He’s trying to get closer to Jessie.”

We loaded oxygen tanks. I helped the man carry the bed out and disassemble everything. We got out into the street, and Jack said to the hospice guy, “By the way, that mattress is sentimental to Mr. Grady, what would you take for it?”

Tongue-in-cheek, he says, “What mattress?” We brought that thing back in about twenty minutes later and shocked my dad. Of course, it cost us twenty-five dollars behind the scenes.

Two days later, I preached the funeral, with Bro Jack helping. He gave a short testimonial and sang several songs. My dad said it was the greatest day of his life.

I asked my dad for a message I could relay to the people assembled. “Dad, what can you tell them about quitting?”

He said this, “If you quit, that confirms that all you are is very weak; you won’t go very far in life. You’ve got to give it a good fight. You’re gonna get run over a lot. You’re gonna run over a lot of humps in life. This is one of those first humps in

your life; you got to get over it now. You got to take a few knocks before you get any place in life. The more knocks you take, the stronger you get.”

I left my dad on the front steps of his house. His wife had just died the very day he got out of the hospital, and his daughter was still in intensive care with a collapsed lung. As I left, he gave me a

“thumbs-up” and said, “Don’t worry about us Irish, we’re tough. If I can make it, you can make it!”

Dr. William P. Grady holds a B.S. in Pastoral Theology and a M.Ed. in Christian Education from Hyles-Ander-son College. He received a D.D. from Anchor Baptist Bible College in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, and holds a Th.M. in English Bible from Baptist Interna-tional School of Theology and a Ph.D. in History from Baptist International Seminary. He is also the author of a new book, Holy Ground: The True History of the State of Israel.

He Giveth More Graceby Annie Johnson Flint

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;To added affliction, He addeth His mercy,To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,His pow’r has no boundary known unto men;For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,When our strength has failed ere the day is half done;When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,Our Father’s full giving is only begun.


DO YOU REALLY LOVE GOD?LOVE GOD?

by James L. Melton “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord

thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” (Mat. 22:37-38)

EEveryone seems to be quite familiar with the facts that “God is love” (I John 4:8) and

“God so loved the world” (John 3:16). We enjoy pondering the thought that God loves us, but what about our love for him? How can a love relationship be proper when only one party is ex-pressing love? Can a marriage be right when the wife doesn’t love the husband? No it cannot, and our fellowship with God isn’t right when we only say that we love him, yet there is no evidence of it in our Christian walk. “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” (I John 3:18)

The sad fact is that most people, Christians in-cluded, do not really love God. This can be easi-ly proven by comparing our Christian testimony to a good healthy marriage. If a married couple truly loves one another, then there will be clear evidence of it. The same is true when a person loves God. “But if any man love God, the same is known of him.” (I Cor. 8:3)

DO YOU ENJOY GOD’S WORD?

If I really love my wife, I am going to have an

open ear for her. I am not going to come in from work and ignore her concerns while pursuing my own interests. If I did so, she would quickly come to realize that I didn’t love her.

The same is true with God. How can one say

they love God when they seldom read his words? Jesus said that if you love him you will keep his words (John 14:23). How can you keep them if you don’t read them? In John 8:47, Jesus said, “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye there-fore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” Friend, you spend hours each week absorbing the words of men, but how much time do you spend with the words of God? If you really love someone, you really want to hear what they have to say.

DO YOU ENJOY GOD’S FELLOWSHIP?

Suppose you came to me and said, “Brother

Melton, I think you’re the greatest! Your publica-tions have been such a blessing to me. I love you so much in the Lord, but I hate your wife!” Do you think I’m going to be close friends with you? I think not.

Well, many people claim to love God, but they visit their dentist more often than they attend church services! That’s not much love! The church is the bride of Christ, yet most professing Chris-tians are more comfortable with worldly unsaved people than with God’s people. The only things they love are themselves and the world. Such peo-ple can sit patiently through a television program, a ball game, or even a dirty joke, but they can’t bring themselves to sit through a preaching ser-vice with God’s people.

The fact is that you fellowship with those whom you love, be it God or the devil. Who receives your fellowship? “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” (I Cor. 1:9) “Be ye not unequal-


ly yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrigh-teousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” II Cor. 6:14)

DO YOU ENJOY PRAISING GOD?

If a woman really loves her husband, she will

praise him and speak well of him. The same is true when a man loves his wife. Proverbs 31:28 says, “Her children arise up, and call her bless-ed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.” He praises her because he loves her. It is human na-ture to praise those whom you love. Even God praises men on occasion because he has a special love for his special servants (Job 1:8; I Cor. 4:5). If you love someone, you will praise them.

Friend, how often do you praise God? How can you say you love God when you seldom praise his holy name? The word “praise” is found 248 times in the Bible, but how many times have you praised God this week? Hebrews 13:15 says,

“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” Of all the words which have flowed from your lips this past week, how many of them were offered as a sacri-fice of praise to God?

If you really love the Lord, you will praise him! You will praise him in the church, in the home, in the work place, in the school, and in the general public. God wants us to praise him “continually,” and if we love him we will.

DO YOU ENJOY SACRIFICING FOR GOD?

I love my wife and children, so I do not mind

sacrificing for them. I often have to do without the things in life that I would like to have because my family has needs which are more important than my “wants.” I love my family, so I sacrifice for them.

The Bible says that we are to offer up “spiritual sacrifices” to God (I Pet. 2:5). The needs of the ministry are more important than our personal

“wants.” A Christian who really loves God will set aside his own will and seek God’s will. Jesus said, “. . . not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42) Selfishness has no place in Christianity. It is an enemy of the cross of Christ. Paul said in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bod-ies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,

which is your reasonable service.” (Rom. 12:1) So it is unreasonable for a Christian to not give

himself to God for Christian service. If you love God, you will sacrifice in order to serve him and please him. You will gladly attend church services, and you will involve yourself in the various minis-tries of the church. You will tithe and give to mis-sions. Rather than jump to negative conclusions, you will give your brethren in the Lord the benefit of a doubt. You will forgive others who trespass against you, and you won’t hold grudges. When others step forward in self exaltation, you will take the “lower seat” of humility and wait on the Lord. Friend, if you love God, you will bear your cross and follow your Saviour.

DO YOU ENJOY THINKING OF THE LORD’S RETURN?

When you love someone you want to be with

them. I become homesick when I have to spend even one night away from my wife and children. If I enjoyed being away from home more than being at home, I wouldn’t love my wife and children. My love for them causes me to think of them when I’m away, and it causes me to look forward to be-ing with them again.

My love for the Lord should be the same. Every Christian should desire to be with the Lord. Every Christian should be “homesick” for heaven and looking for Jesus to return.

Friend, do you know the last prayer of the Bible? It isn’t a prayer for world peace, nor is it a prayer for anyone’s health, or even anyone’s salvation. After being shown all of the breathtaking events of the book of Revelation, the apostle John sent up one final prayer to the Lord: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Rev. 22:20)

Can you honestly pray like that? Can you hon-estly say that you want Jesus Christ to return more than anything in this world? If you could have any prayer answered in the next sixty seconds, what would be your petition? Would you express your love for yourself by praying for something selfish, or would you express your love for God by asking Jesus to return? If you love him, you should want to be with him. “. . . Now therefore why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?” (II Sam. 19:10)

James L. Melton is the pastor of Bible Baptist Church, Sharon, TN. www.biblebaptistpublications.org. Re- printed by permission.

As the sun arises,Let your light shine in me;That I too may awakeAnd overcome by your strength.

For I long to see that dayWhen I finally see your face:Reflecting in this mirror,Reflecting in this pace.

As the Sun ArisesAs the Sun Arisesby Arturo Ruiz


II have to admit, I don’t agree with everything God does. If you say you do, you aren’t pay attention. You can’t actually know what God

is doing and always agree with it. But one thing we do know for sure, that is whatever God does is right.

I have learned many things about God by read-ing the Bible. For example, I have learned that…

GOD WILL BLESS A SITUATION THAT MAN WON’T BLESS

DAVID AND BATHSHEBALook at the passage in 2 Samuel 11:1-4.1 And it came to pass, after the year was ex-

pired, at the time when kings go forth to bat-tle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the chil-dren of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But Da-vid tarried still at Jerusalem.

2 And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.

3 And David sent and inquired after the wom-an. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hit-tite?

4 And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness:

and she returned unto her house.I have an old Scofield Bible and in 2 Samuel 11,

right under the words “Chapter 11” it says, “Da-vid’s Great Sin.” Now this is not David’s great sin; there’s a greater sin than this. But this is the sin of David and Bathsheba. You know what transpires from this sin, that he ends up having Uriah the Hit-tite, Bathsheba’s husband, murdered. Then David marries her, and they have a baby; that baby dies. Then look what it says in chapter 12, verse 24.

24 “And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solo-mon: and the LORD loved him.

25 “And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, be-cause of the LORD.”

The first thing that I learned about God from the Bible is that God will bless a situation that man will not.

Is what David did with Bathsheba wrong? Yes. That he murdered her husband; was that wrong? Yes. Then he turned around and married her; was that wrong?

If you knew of someone who had done what David did, would you bless their relationship? David, all told, had ten wives. In fact, as near as I can tell, Solomon was not the firstborn, was not the second born, was not the third born, was not the fourth born. Solomon was somewhere down around number ten. But wasn’t it Solomon that the Lord chose to be king after David? Do you know that this is the only one of David’s children

What I’ve Learned about GODGOD From the BIBLE

by Dr. Samuel C. Gipp


that the Bible says, “. . . and the LORD loved him. And he [Who’s he? God.] sent by the hand of Na-than the prophet; and he called his name Jedi-diah, because of the LORD.”

Do you know what “Jedidiah” means? It means “beloved of the Lord.” After all that had transpired in the situation of David and Bathsheba, God still blessed that situation to produce a king over Isra-el. I don’t mind telling you at all that if I were God, I wouldn’t touch that crowd with a ten-foot pole. David had plenty of sons that God could have cho-sen to be king over Israel, but God blessed a situ-ation that man would not bless.

I’m not going to try to explain this, because I don’t understand it. The only thing I know is that God is never wrong. But if God and I don’t have the same values, it’s mine that are messed up.

You hear people say all the time, “Well, I don’t think God’s in that. God has His hand off his min-istry.” Maybe God is not as fast to withdraw His hand as you are. Some of the people that need to withdraw their hands don’t need to withdraw it from the ministry; they need to withdraw it from the telephone.

When you decide that God’s hand is no longer on somebody’s ministry, what you mean is that you better call everybody in the country to see that they get drummed out of the ministry. Then you can say, “See what God did?” Nothing is more scary than to have God bless somebody that you think is out of His will.

You say, “Well, God will never bless him again.” You don’t know who God will bless.

God blessed the situation with David and Bath-sheba, and it was a bad situation. I don’t under-stand at all why God did it, but I know that God is never wrong.

I see the same blessing from God in the situa-tion with…

JEHOSAPHATA second example is in 2 Kings 3.

1 “Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years.

2 “And he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD;”

Jehoram was the son of Ahab. Ahab was a bad man, and his son Jehoram was a bad man. But Jehoshaphat was a good man. If you study your Bible, you will find that Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, was a good king.

In 2 Kings 3, Moab has rebelled against Jehoram. So he calls Jehoshaphat, and says, “Edom and I are going down to whip on Moab. Will you come with us?”

Should a good man run with a bad one? No, he should not. But Jehoshaphat did.

Here’s the standard teaching: you line up with a bad crowd, you associate yourself with a bad guy, and God won’t bless you.

But Jehoshaphat says, “I’ll go with you.” That was the wrong thing to do. He had no business asso-ciating himself with a man that was evil. He was evil by the very definition of the verse we read. Yet look what it says when they call Elisha the prophet to talk with them:

13 “And Elisha said unto the king of Israel, What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay: for the LORD hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.

14 “And Elisha said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.”

Do you know what he just said? He said, “I wouldn’t even pay attention to you, Jehoram, ex-cept that Jehoshaphat is with you, and I will pay attention to him.”

So these three go down against Moab, and God gives them the miracle of water when they didn’t have any water. They go against Moab and defeat them; and in everything God takes care of them because the good man was with the bad man!

We say, “Oh, you line up with a bad man? God won’t bless any of you.” I’ll tell you what’s even worse: you had better watch what you bless with your presence. By lining up with Jehoram, Je-hoshaphat got a blessing on a wicked man. God blessed a situation that man would not.

“If God and I don’t have the

same values, it’s mine that are messed up.”

Please understand that I am not advocating compromise. I am not advocating that you should line up with people that don’t believe like you.

But let’s say that I had the opportunity to speak with some liberal preacher on the platform. Do you know what people would say? “Well, God’s done with Gipp. He’s up there with that compro-miser, that bad guy.”

It says here that God blessed the bad guy be-cause the good guy was there. When we would say God would withdraw His hand, instead God kept His hand on the good man. God’s goodness overlapped onto the bad man, because the good man was there.

People, watch what you bless. Watch what you associate yourself with that you should not, because you may be taking the blessing of God someplace where God doesn’t want it to go.

God will bless something that you won’t bless. Where you’ll withdraw your stinking hand, God may not withdraw His hand.

I know that in the case of David and Bathsheba, I would never bless that union, I would never bless a child born of those two. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

By reading my Bible, I have also been amazed to see that…

GOD WILL KEEP A MAN WORKING AFTER HE’S “FIRED” HIM

KING SAULIn I Samuel, chapter 13, Saul is anointed to be

king over Israel. Look at verse 1:1 “Saul reigned one year; and when he had

reigned two years over Israel,”You know that this King James Bible is supposed

to be so hard to understand. At least that’s what everybody tells me. I’m glad that they tell me, be-cause if they didn’t I wouldn’t know it. If you have access to a New American Standard Version, and a New International Version, read that verse in both of them. Don’t read it in one of them; read it in both of them. I’m not going to tell you what they say, but if you like a joke, you’ll like it.

Regardless of that, at the end of verse 1, how long has Saul reigned over Israel? Two years. What transpires in chapter 13, transpires after he has been king for two years. Here is what happens.

Samuel was going down to make an offering. But Saul did it instead. Saul was not a priest, and he had no business usurping a priest’s office. Look

what happens next:8 “And he tarried seven days, according to

the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him.

9 “And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering.”

He did what he should not have done.10 “And it came to pass, that as soon as he

had made, an end of offering the burnt offer-ing . . .”

He never even got to offer the peace offering. Isn’t that just like life? You wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and just about the time you decide to do something wrong, somebody shows up. You go around a building about eight times, and the only parking space is next to a fire hydrant. “Man, I don’t care. There’s no cop. I’ve been here for half an hour.” As soon as you pull in, a cop car cruises right up. “What are you doing there?” Isn’t that life?“. . . behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out

to meet him, that he might salute him.11 “And Samuel said, What hast thou done?

And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou cam-est not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash;”

I think Saul was the master at excuses. This guy had more excuses than a teenager. Look at it: “Why did you make an offering that you weren’t

supposed to?” “Well, I did it because the people were scattered

from me, and I did it because you weren’t here when you were supposed to be, and I did it be-cause the Philistines were here.”

I really like verse 12:12 “Therefore said I, The Philistines will come

down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the LORD: [“I really want to make sure I make this offering. I might be killed before I get a chance to make this offering.”] I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.”

How many times have you had to force yourself to sin?

Look what happens.13 “And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done

foolishly: thou hast not kept the command-ment of the LORD thy God, which he com-manded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.


14 “But now thy kingdom shall not continue: [Sounds like he got fired, doesn’t it?] the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be cap-tain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.”

Saul has been the king over Israel for two years. Then he got fired. Do you know how long Saul reigned over Israel? Acts 13:21 says he reigned over Israel forty years. But he got fired in the sec-ond year of that forty-year reign.

Do you know what I learned about God from reading my Bible? I learned that God will keep a man working after he’s fired.

The reason I say that is because the game that people play the most is who is and who is not qualified to be a preacher. We have the option to judge anybody not qualified to preach. I could for some reason judge that some pastor is not qual-ified to preach. I’m allowed to have that opinion. What I’m not allowed to do is try to get him out of the ministry. That’s our problem.

Once we decide somebody is not qualified for the ministry, now we feel that it is our mission in life to see that they are driven, not just out of the ministry, but driven to being destitute and starving. We want their marriage gone, we want their ministry gone, we want them hounded until there’s nothing. Then we can say, “See? They didn’t qualify.”

I was with a pastor one time, and he asked me, “What do you think about divorce and remarriage as a disqualification for the ministry?”

I said, “Brother, I believe that if you really have a heartfelt conviction that a man that is divorced and remarried is not qualified to be in the minis-try, then you have an illegitimate conviction.”

He was driving. We almost wrecked. He said, “Why would you say that?”

I said, “Because in I Timothy, chapter 3, there are 16 qualifications given for a pastor. And in Titus 1, there are 16. If you eliminate the doubles, the ones that overlap, there are 22 qualifications giv-en. If you would stress one and ignore the oth-er 21, then you’re not really legitimate, are you? That’s kind of crooked to make such a deal out of one and ignore 21 others.“I’m an evangelist. I can show you men who have

been married one time, have never been divorced or remarried. They’re not qualified to preach, though, because their children are not in sub-jection. That is a qualification. By the way, that is not a qualification that happens to be five words

stuck in the middle of a verse, like ‘the husband of one wife.’ There are two whole verses in I Timothy, chapter 3, about the pastor’s kids.”

I said, “I’ll tell you what else I can do, pal. I can show you a man who is happily married, whose kids are in subjection to him, and he is not given to hospitality. Isn’t that man just as disqualified as a divorced man? “

I’ve stayed in the basement of a pastor’s house where we had to carry the light bulb from room to room and screw it into each socket as we went, because we had one fifty-watt light bulb. When we went into the shower, we found out that it was carpeted in green—but it was not carpet. And there was no soap in the house, because the pas-tor had a conviction against soap. I am telling you the truth. Do you know what that is? That is not

“given to hospitality.”Do you know what an alcoholic is? An alcoholic is

not a man who drinks. An alcoholic is a man who is given to alcohol. A pastor is not supposed to be just “hospitable.” He is not supposed to be just cordial. He is supposed to be “given to hospitality.”

In I Corinthians, chapter 16, it talks about how they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. A pastor is to be addicted to hospitality. I can show you pastors who may meet 21 of the qualifications of those two chapters in Titus 1, and I Timothy 3, but they’re not given to hospitality. So, they don’t qualify to preach.

You say, “Well, what should we do?” I’ll tell you exactly what to do. If for some reason you think a preacher is not qualified to preach, you are com-pletely at liberty to think that. But at the point where you think you have to inform somebody about that, at the point where you think you need to keep that guy from preaching somewhere, or you have to undercut his ministry somewhere, you’re out of Hell, pal. Do you understand? You’re right out of Hell. The script that you are reading, and your lifestyle is from the devil; it’s not from God.

Saul was a man who was fired after two years, and God kept him on another 38 years!

Did you ever think about this: many of the peo-ple that you think are not qualified to preach, may-be God agrees with you? In fact, for all you know, they may have been fired 28 years ago. They may still have 10 more years. Did you realize that 38 years after he is fired, that’s long enough to retire and get the “25 years of service” watch.

Suppose you go into work tomorrow. Your boss says, “You made me mad last week, and you’re

fired. Do you hear me? You’re done here; you’re finished!”

You say, “Okay.” So you start cleaning out your desk.

He says, “Wait a minute. You’re fired. But if you want to, you can finish out the day.”“Well, okay. I’ll get the pay for the day.”At the end of the day, he says, “Look. You can

come in tomorrow.” So you put in the next day.Then he says, “Well, you can come in on Monday.

Don’t clean your desk out. Now you’re canned, but you can come in and work Monday.”

And a week turns into a month, and a month turns into a year, and a year turns into a decade and another decade. This goes on for 38 years. One day you show up, and he says, “What are you still doing here? Didn’t I tell you 38 years ago to hit the bricks?”

Do you see what I’m saying? If I didn’t preach for the people that I don’t think are qualified (I’m not talking about divorced and remarried. I’m talking about all 22 qualifications.), there’s a whole bunch of them that I couldn’t preach for.

Truthfully, I’ll tell you exactly why I do it. Here’s my God in action. In Acts, chapter 12, Herod gets up and delivers an oration. Everybody loved it so much that they said, “Oh, this isn’t a voice of a man. This is a voice of a god.” And because Herod did not glorify God, God killed him. By sundown, the guy’s dead.

We have a God that, if He doesn’t like what a guy is doing, He can make him worm food by tonight. If you know of somebody who does not qualify for the ministry that he’s in, don’t ask me why he’s still in the ministry. Go ask God. If God can’t get a guy out of the ministry that He doesn’t want in the ministry, I’m not going to try to get him out.

In Philippians, chapter 1, Paul said, “There’s a crowd out there preaching, and they know it grinds me. They do it just for contention. They just do it to be an affront to me.” Do you know what he said? Paul said, “Let ‘em preach.”

What do you think of that? What about the guy who you think doesn’t qualify for the ministry? When he leads somebody to the Lord, do you think they’re going to show up at the gate of Heav-en, and the Lord’s going to say, “Sorry, you’re not allowed in here because the guy who led you to Me wasn’t qualified”? Yeah, right.

Make sure you get up there early. Blow your brains out this afternoon so you get up there first. Then you can stop them all at the gate and turn them back. But, buddy, you better not get in front of me. I’ll trample you.

I also learned this:

GOD IS NEVER IN A HURRY TO DO THINGS

I’m not going to turn to any place in Scripture, because you know this is true. From the Bible I’ve learned that God is never in a hurry to do anything.

How many times have you tried to change that over the years? How many of us have appealed to God to at least advance His schedule for us. How many times have you said, “Hey. Hey! You’re up there in eternity; we’re down here in time! This is dust. I’m rotting right now! I can’t wait much lon-ger.”

He’s not in a hurry to do anything. When He sends Jonah to Ninevah, He says, “You tell those guys that in forty days the place is done for.” But they repented, so instead of forty days, He gave them forty years. I hope with some of the things He does for me, He doesn’t wait forty years.

THE MAN OF GOD’S CURSE In I Kings, chapter 13, the man of God goes up

against Jeroboam at the altar in Beth-el. Look at verse two:

2 “And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high plac-es that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”

He made that prophecy and, before that chapter closes, the guy who made the prophecy is dead. You say, “Oh, too bad he died and never got to see it come true.” It didn’t matter that he died. If he had lived another 100 years he would not have seen it come true. If he had lived another 200 or 300 years, he would have never seen it come true.

“We have a God that, if He doesn’t

like what a guy is doing, He can make him worm food by tonight.”


But 351 years later, in 2 Kings, chapter 23, do you know what you find? You find Josiah at Beth-el, and he is doing everything to the altar that was prophesied 351 years earlier. God sure wasn’t in a hurry to fulfill that prophecy.

THE BIRTH OF CHRISTGod made a statement in Genesis, chapter 3,

that took him 4000 years to fulfill. Does that scare you? Some of the things you figure God is going to take care of for you, maybe He’s going to do it—in 4000 years! What I’m saying is this: God is never in a hurry.

God called me to evangelism in 1971. I was still in Bible college. I graduated in 1973, and went into evangelism, because that’s what God had called me to do. I had one or two people who said that I should go pastor a church for a year in order to get a pastor’s heart. The problem is that you don’t get a pastor’s heart in one year.

Here is the problem with God. Let’s say I’m facing some doors in front of me, like in a church. I can see those doors. God says, “Sam, go out and stand on the front steps.” So I do what anyone would do: I head straight for the doors in front of me.

Then God says, “But go out another door.”“But Lord, the steps aren’t over there. They’re not

out this way.”“Just shut up and go out the other door.”“Well, it would be a lot easier if I’d just go out right

here.” “Do what I tell you: go out that door.”“All right.”I go out the door and down the ramp, heading to

where the front steps are. God says, “Wait a min-ute. Go back here into the corner of the parking lot.”“Well, okay. Lord, there’s a chain link fence here.” “Yeah. Climb it!”“What do you want me to do?”“I want you to climb the fence.”“I thought you wanted me to…”“Just shut up and climb the fence!”So I climb the fence. Then He says, “Head due

north for about five miles.”Wait a minute! God told me to go out to the front

steps. But He ain’t in a hurry about anything.I got out of Bible college and went into evan-

gelism. Three months after I graduated, I broke my neck. That will put a damper on your minis-try. I mean, even when it was broken I preached. Then after they repaired it, I lost my voice for four months. It messed up my vocal chords, which is

why I have problems with speaking now.Then I got my voice back, and I was in evangelism

from 1973 to 1978, during which time we starved to death.

Then the Lord said, “You’re going to be a youth director.”

I said, “All right.” So I did that for four years.All the time I was being a youth director, my wife

and I both knew that evangelism was my call, and the Lord would put us back on the road.

When we saw the end of youth directoring com-ing, He said, “You’re going to pastor a church.” In fact, do you know what He told me? He said,

“You’re going to go start a church.”Now look, I am not a church planter. I know what

I can do, and I know what I can’t do, and I am not a church starter. I told God this: “I am no church starter, but I’ll start churches the rest of my life if that’s what You want me to do.”

So I went to a place that was destitute of Bap-tist churches: Macon, Georgia! For nine months, we labored and did nothing. We left there, took a church in New York, and pastored that for five years.

At the end of about five years, the Lord said, “You’re going to be leaving the church.” I felt at that time that He was either directing me to go to the West and take a church, or even try to start anoth-er one, or to go back into evangelism.

I can expressly remember saying, “God, you ei-ther want me to go out West and pastor, or You want me in evangelism. If I have anything to say about it, please, not evangelism. You see, I like to do little things like eat, and pay bills.”

It was a Sunday evening in September, and my wife and I were sitting in our home. The phone rang. I had put out a feeler to a guy to look around at an area in the West where I thought the Lord would have me go. I told Kathy that, if this guy calls and tells me there’s nothing open, it means

“God made a statement in

Genesis 3 that took him 4000 years to fulfill. Does that scare you?...God is never in a hurry.”

God wants me in evangelism.That guy called and said that there was nothing

open. I hung up the phone and looked at my wife, and said, “God wants me back in evangelism. Next Sunday night, I’m going to resign the church. We are going back into evangelism, and if God doesn’t take care of us, we’re going to starve to death.”

I did not have one meeting. I left my church 30 days later. Within that week, before I announced my resignation, five guys called for meetings. I have never called for a meeting. I am now booked to about the middle of two years in the future. I don’t believe in a mid-Tribulation rapture, but I have to stay about halfway through it to fill out my schedule.

Here’s what I’m saying: God called me into evan-gelism in 1971; I went in back in 1973; and God didn’t bless me until 1986. That’s 13 years.

You say, “Do you have a complaint?” I don’t have a complaint. It beats 4000 years. It beats 351, it beats 40. Thirteen is a nice, round number; it’s a beautiful number; I just love that number. You say,

“Well, isn’t that an unlucky number?” It all depends (knock on wood). Good thing that we’re Christians, so we’re not superstitious.

I don’t like the next thing I learned about God from reading my Bible. It is that...

GOD MAY BE ON YOUR ENEMY’S SIDE SOLOMON’S ENEMY—REZON,

Look at I Kings, chapter 11. Solomon was the king over Israel, and he was the guy who God wanted to be king over Israel, correct? Yet look what hap-pens in verse 23:

23 “And God stirred him up another adver-sary, Rezon the son of Eliadah, which fled from his lord Hadadezer king of Zobah:”

Did God raise up Rezon against Solomon? That’s what it says.

SOLOMON’S ENEMY—JEROBOAM Now go down a little farther, and read verse 29:29 “And it came to pass at that time when Je-

roboam went out of Jerusalem, that the proph-et Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and they two were alone in the field:

30 “And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and rent it in twelve pieces:

31 “And he said to Jeroboam, Take thee ten pieces: for thus saith the LORD, the God of Is-rael, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the

hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee:”

Now, was Solomon God’s man? Of course. Did Solomon know it? Sure. Hadn’t he asked for wis-dom and God had given it to him? And hadn’t God blessed his reign over Israel? His was a tremen-dous reign historically. All the world came to see his reign. Solomon was one of the most famous kings of all time.

Do you know what I learned about God? God may be on your enemy’s side.

I don’t like that. I don’t care what you think; I know I’m doing what God wants me to do. What scares me is that when somebody stands against me, it may be from God.

You’ve got Rezon, you’ve got Jeroboam. Both of these men were raised up against Solomon, and God was with them.

ISRAEL’S ENEMY—NEBUCHADREZZARLook at Jeremiah, chapter 21. Here was Zedeki-

ah, the king of Israel. You can say what you want to about him, but he was at least the King of Israel, who are God’s chosen people. Surely God is going to bless his chosen people. Look at verse seven

7 “And afterward, saith the LORD, I will de-liver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their en-emies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.”

Do you have any idea some of the things Nebu-chadrezzar did to the children of Israel? Do you know what he did to the women who were expect-ing children? Do you know it was Nebuchadrezzar and his troops who would go in and take newborn babies, and grab them by the heels and walk over to a stone wall, and just splatter their heads all over the wall? And God was on his side? Do you know how much God was on his side? Look at chapter 25, verse nine:

9 “Behold, I will send and take all the fam-ilies of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebu-chadrezzar the king of Babylon, [What are the next two words?] my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhab-itants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hiss-


ing, and perpetual desolations.”Nebuchadrezzar was, without a doubt, Israel’s

enemy. He was also, without a doubt, God’s ser-vant. I don’t like that. But God is never wrong.

The problem is we get this idea, “Since I’m with the crowd that’s right, God’s going to bless me more than somebody else; and God will never be on the side of our enemies.” He was on the side of Jeroboam. He was on the side of Rezon, against His chosen man. He was on the side of Nebuchadrezzar and all of the horrible things that Nebuchadrezzar did to innocent people; He said,

“He’s my servant.”When an enemy comes against us, we don’t want

to be too quick to say, “Boy, they’re out of Hell.” They may be out of Heaven. We don’t need to ex-amine our enemy and point out everything that is wrong with them, and how right we are, and how we’ve got the right Bible, and we’ve got our doc-trine correct, and our clothing is proper, and our language is proper. I’m not saying to change any of it. What I’m saying is we need to find out what might be wrong with us for God to bring an enemy against us.

All I know is what I’ve learned from this Book: God may be on my enemy’s side. That doesn’t make me happy; I don’t like that. But I cannot ig-nore it, because it didn’t happen once, it didn’t happen twice. It happened far more than once or twice in the Bible. If it can happen back in those days, it can certainly happen in these days. I don’t like to think that we would be so lackadaisical, so apathetic, so preoccupied with our own personal toys and our materialism that God would have to raise somebody up to do to our women, and our children, what Nebuchadrezzar did to Israel’s. But there is a Biblical precedent here; and that is really scary.

All I know is this: God is never wrong; God is al-ways right. We may not understand it. But He is always right.

Here is something else I have learned:

GOD CAN USE THE “WRONG” MAN

MEN WHO WEREN’T “CALLED”—ELDAD AND ME-DAD

Now get Numbers, chapter 11. I like what God does, and I like that there’s an example of it both in the Old Testament and the New. Start with verse twenty-six:

26 “But there remained two of the men in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the

name of the other Medad: and the spirit rested upon them; and they were of them that were written, but went not out unto the tabernacle: and they prophesied in the camp.

27 “And there ran a young man, and told Mo-ses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp.

28 “And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them.

29 “And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!”

Do you know what I learned about God from this Book? I learned that God will use the wrong man.

Eldad and Medad were not in the right crowd. Yet God used them anyway.

MEN WHO WEREN’T CALLED: “THE OUTSIDERS” Look at Mark, chapter 9, starting at verse 38.38 “And John answered him, saying, Master,

we saw one casting out devils in thy name, [In those days they went around casting out devils. I’m not too keen on these guys running around today who have ministries of casting out demons. I’m not sure they’re casting them out as much as they’re collecting them. Still, that would be good. That was a good work.] and he followeth not: and we forbad him, [Why?] because he fol-loweth not us.

39 “But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.

40 “For he that is not against us is on our part.”

People, God will use the wrong man. He will use somebody that He didn’t call. He will use some-body that maybe “followeth not us.”

One of these days in my ministry letter I’m going to do a glossary of Christian terms. We need to re-ally define our terms, because there are the terms we claim we believe, and then there are the terms we live by. The terms we live by are unwritten; we never really tell anybody that we live by them, but we do.

The terms that we live by in the Glossary of Chris-tian Terms go like this:

1. Legalist: Anybody who has one more convic-

tion than I have. You think you’re balanced, so if somebody has a conviction that you don’t have, you think they’re a little legalistic.

2. Liberal: Anybody with one less conviction than I have. We always consider ourselves to be well-balanced.

3. Sin unto death: Make me mad. That’s the truth. If you cross some preachers, they will kill you. If you cross some Christians, they will kill you.

“Do you mean they’ll take a gun?” No, they’ll take a telephone. They’ll bad-mouth whoever “sinned” by angering them until they’ve destroyed their life, their ministry and their name. One of these days, when I get to Heaven, I’m going to look up Alexan-der Graham Bell and tell him what I thought of his invention. If I don’t find him, I’ll know he got what he deserved!

4. Unpardonable sin: To disagree with me. That’s the truth. Christians think that anyone who disagrees with them is not worthy of forgiveness.

You see? We can’t believe that God would bless anybody who “followeth not us.” I can’t believe how innocent the disciples were in their pride and their jealousy. “We forbad him, because he fol-loweth not us.”

You get these guys who say, “What camp are you in?” Or, “We don’t like him, because he’s not of our stripe.” Yeah, this wide, down your back, yellow!

I’m going to give you my disclaimer again, be-cause I want you to know what I believe. I believe in being independent, King James Bible thumping, all those things we believe. I believe the Baptists are right. I don’t believe in taking “Baptist” off the church name. I believe we are right. But I’ll tell you something, my friend: I believe God may use some people who don’t follow us.

Are you ready for this? There are some church-es who do not hold our doctrine. They’re messed up on eternal security. They’re messed up on post-millennialism, or a-millennialism, or thinking they’re going through the tribulation most of the way or half-way. They are not my enemy.

Do you know who my enemy is? Churches who don’t preach the gospel of salvation by grace alone. I am not looking for joint meetings with people who do not believe our doctrine. I am not going to preach in their churches.

One time I was flying home, reading my Bible on the plane. I had been out to the Philippines, New Zealand, and then preached in Hawaii. I’m flying back from Hawaii, and a Filipino man is sitting next to me. He looks over, and asks, “Are you a minister?”

I said, “Yes.”He said, “Well, I’m a pastor also.”I said, “I just finished with a meeting on the is-

land of Hawaii.”That’s where he pastored. He had a Church of

God. There are some of those guys, like Assembly of God, and Church of God, who are so rabid that believe if you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not saved. That’s nuts. Then there are some that teach salvation absolutely by grace. They still might be messed up about speaking in tongues, but they have salvation right.

This guy said, “Next time you come out, I’d like you to preach for me.”

I’m one of those evangelists, just like everybody else, whose mouth says, “I reserve the right to preach anyplace I want.” I can say that all I want, but something in my heart won’t let me do it. So I said to that guy, “Now, look, I believe once you’re saved you’re eternally saved. You can’t lose your salvation.”

He thought for a second and said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s all right, that’s all right. I’d still like you to come preach for me.”

I said, “Look, I don’t think there’s a biblical doc-trine of speaking in tongues.”“Yeah, yeah, that’s all right. I’d still like you to

come preach for me.” And then he gave me his address.

When I got off the plane I did something I nev-er do. I threw it away. Why? I don’t belong there! I can’t go preach for him; I just don’t have peace about it. But that guy is as saved as you and I are. That guy is not my enemy. Is he screwed up on doctrine? You’d better believe it. He “followeth not us,” but there are greater sins than following not us.

God will use a man who is not as so-called “per-fect” as us, one who doesn’t understand his doc-trine like we do. God will still bless him.

“When an enemy comes against

us, we don’t want to be too quick to say, ‘Boy, they’re out

of Hell.’ They may be out of Heaven.”


MEN WHO WERE NOT “PURE”—SAMSONIn Judges, chapter 14, verse 1, Samson saw a

woman and laid with her. In Judges 16, verse 1, the same thing happens again. Samson was not the kind of guy who you would want to be your child’s role model. But did God use him! I see that God will not only use a man who is not called; He will use a guy who is not pure.

Samson is not the kind of guy who I want my children to grow up like. I don’t even want them to have his haircut, all right? I don’t want my children to have Samson’s lifestyle. He was an immoral man; there isn’t any other way to cut it. Samson was very flippant about the Nazarite oath that was his from his birth, and he violated it time and again, and God still used him!

What do you think God’s doing? We say, “Who does He think He is, using the wrong person?” What we are really saying is, “Why does God use them when He could be using me?”

MEN WHO WERE NOT “PURE”—GIDEONLook at this one. In Judges chapter 7, God used

Gideon to whip the Midianites. Then, in chapter 8, verses 24 through 27, Gideon turns around and takes the gold from his defeated foes and makes a graven image! Gideon wasn’t pure but God still used him.

MEN WHO AREN’T EVEN HIS—CAIAPHUSNow look at John, chapter 11. The Jews are having

a damage control meeting over what to do about this guy, Jesus. All the chief priests and Pharisees are together because this Jesus guy is really mess-ing things up for them. Look at verse 47:

47 “Then gathered the chief Priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for

this man doeth many miracles.48 “If we let him thus alone, all men will be-

lieve on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

49 “And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

50 “Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

51 “And this spake he not of himself: but be-ing high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;”

Do you realize that God just used a guy who wasn’t even saved to prophesy? Maybe you shouldn’t be so shocked at who God uses.

Please understand this: I am one of those check-list people. I have a list of convictions, or standards, whatever you want to call them. I won’t die for them. They’re not preferences, because you can’t prove that anybody would die for a conviction, but they’re just things that, when somebody doesn’t fit the list, I think they’re wrong. So do you. But I am not so small-minded to think that because they don’t fit my list, God won’t use them.

God may use somebody that I would consider an absolute mess. I see in this passage that God used a lost guy. This guy was an absolute bum. This guy was one of the prime movers in the se-dition against Jesus Christ, and God used him to prophesy.

God used Medad and Eldad, and God used that guy that didn’t follow the apostles, and God used Samson. I don’t believe it’s because God is so des-perate. “God sure is desperate. He just doesn’t have much to use.” Doesn’t He have you?

What I’m saying is this: God will sometimes use the “wrong man”. That’s what I’ve learned about God from the Bible. I have also learned that…

GOD CAN EXEMPT ANYONE FROM SCRIPTURE

FROM THE PENALTY FOR MURDERGo to Genesis, chapter 9, verse 5:5 “And surely your blood of your lives will I re-

quire; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of ev-ery man’s brother will I require the life of man.

6 “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”

That’s pretty plain. Do you know what I learned

“God will use a man who is not

as so-called “perfect” as us, one who doesn’t understand his

doctrine like we do. God will still bless him.”

about God from the Bible? God can exempt any-body he wants to from Scripture. Doesn’t it say that if a guy shed somebody’s blood, he has to have his blood shed? But, by reading my Bible I see that…

CAIN WAS EXEMPTEDCain didn’t die. God turned him loose.

MOSES WAS EXEMPTEDDidn’t Moses shed a man’s blood? In fact, God

later used him to lead Israel out of Egypt.

DAVID WAS EXEMPTEDDid David shed a man’s blood? He didn’t die. He

killed a man and stole his wife. But God exempted him from the sentence of death.

PAUL WAS EXEMPTEDPaul, before he got saved, when he was Saul,

shed Christians’ blood. He didn’t die.

What do you reckon, that God’s a hypocrite? God can exempt anybody he wants to from Scripture. Don’t ask me how it works. Don’t ask me what the parameters for exemption are. Maybe you’re looking for some. “Are there a couple you could give me a little leeway on?” Are you going to stand outside of an X-rated theater, and wait for your dispensation of grace from God?

FROM THE PENALTY FOR ADULTERY

THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERYLook at Leviticus, chapter 20. Doesn’t it say that

if a woman lives in adultery she should die? In John, chapter 8, there was the woman caught in adultery. Jesus didn’t kill her.

THE WOMAN AT THE WELLBack up four chapters and there’s one at the

well. Jesus said, “You’ve had six husbands.” Do you know what He should have said? “You’ve had six husbands. Leviticus 20, Leviticus 20!” Bang! And she’d have been dead. But instead He exempted her.

I am not going to go contrary to Scripture, hop-ing for an exemption. If you would dare to try to use this teaching as an excuse to be wicked or im-moral, God ought to kill you! But I know He can exempt anybody He wants to.

You say, “Well, how does that work?” I don’t know; I didn’t write the contract. I did not write the manual of operation for this Book. I can’t exempt

anyone from Scripture, and don’t you. That’s why I’m not going to renege on my doctrine; that’s why I’m not going to renege on a lifestyle that’s proper. I can’t decide who it is going to apply to, and who is going to be exempt. I just know that God can exempt anybody.

FROM A JEWISH RESTRICTION

Didn’t He do it with that Syro-Phoenician wom-an? Jesus said, “I’ve come to the lost house of the children of Israel. I’m not going to throw the chil-dren’s bread to dogs.”

She said, “Yeah, but can’t the dogs eat of the crumbs from the table?”

He said, “Okay, lady, you’re in. It’s taken care of.”He exempted her just two verses after He said

that she was out. Pretty good exemption!I know from reading this book that God can ex-

empt anybody from Scripture.

GOD CAN DELIVER FROM EVIL IN A MO-MENT

THE DELIVERANCE OF ISRAEL FROM THE SYRIANSI’ve learned something else about God from

reading the Bible. In 2 Kings, chapter 6, Israel was surrounded, and four lepers go out there to fall on the Syrians’ mercy, and they find out that the Syrian camp is empty. Here was Israel, on the verge of shriveling up and being destroyed. They saw no hope whatsoever. Yet God made the Syr-ians to hear a great host, and they ran and Israel was delivered. And that happened overnight!

ISRAEL AT THE RED SEA I look at Exodus 14, and I see the children of Is-

rael facing the Red Sea. Here is the Red Sea on one side; behind them is Pharaoh’s army. That is called being between a rock and a wet place. That means that no matter which way we turn, we’re in trouble. You can go out there about ten feet, and then it’s over; or you can go back there about ten feet and get your head cut off.

What does God do? He rebukes the sea. He says, “Get out of My children’s way!” The Red Sea gets out of their way, and deliverance was there. It was done overnight!

Do you know what I’ve learned? You’re going to need to remember this in the coming days, months and years, if the Lord tarries. I’ve learned that God can deliver you in a moment. In a moment. Israel was surrounded, and they did nothing about their


deliverance. But God made those Syrians hear the sound of that great host, and the Syrians left.

Israel was facing the Red Sea; Pharaoh’s army was closing in on them. Israel did nothing to deliv-er themselves. God delivered them.

Good night, man, God got Peter his tax money on April 13th out of the mouth of a fish. “You’ve got two days to go fishing. You’d better hustle.”

I know from this Book that God can deliver in a moment. We may be headed for some desper-ate days. This thing is going to break down. I don’t know how it’s going to break down. I don’t know if it will break down militarily; I don’t know if it’s go-ing to break down as far as law and order; I don’t know if it will break down socially; I don’t know if it will be all of the above. But I believe that, if the Lord tarries taking us out of here and doesn’t send us revival, we are going to see some des-perate—I said “desperate”; that is a well-chosen word—days.

In 2 Kings, Chapter 6, a fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung was sold for five pieces of silver, and the next day they had more than they could eat. When Elisha said, “You’ll have more than you can eat tomorrow,” they said, “You are out of your mind.”

I’m telling you, people, when you’re facing a Red Sea of your own, and Janet Reno’s tanks are right on your trail, and you don’t have two nickels to rub together, and haven’t eaten in three days and don’t have anything to feed to you or your family, deliverance can be a moment away. Don’t ask me how.

Who could have figured out how He would have done it in 2 Kings? Who could have guessed He would split the Red Sea? Any rational person would have said, “Drop some hailstones on those Egyptians!” I know God can deliver in a moment’s notice.

I know that there have been times when you’ve been down, and said, “Oh, man, there’s no tomor-row.” There’s a tomorrow. God may deliver you to-morrow. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t you have enough problems to put wrinkles on your face, and gray hair on your head today? Well then, put today’s gray hair on your head; don’t grab up some of tomorrow’s.

I’m going through these points again, because I’m going to give you the most radical one next. I find that:

I. God Will Bless a Situation That Man Won’t Bless

II. God Will Keep a Man Working After He’s “Fired” Him.

III. God Is Never In a Hurry To Do ThingsIV. God May Be On Your Enemy’s SideV. God Can Use the “Wrong” ManVI. God Can Exempt Anyone From ScriptureVII. God Can Deliver From Evil in a Moment

If you want the one that doesn’t make any sense, look at the Gospel of John. If any of the things I’ve shown you don’t set well with you, and they make you want to demand of God an answer as to why He allows some of those things, why He blessed David and Bathsheba’s union, why He used Sam-son, or why He used somebody who “followeth not us,” I’ll show you one that doesn’t make sense.

HE REALLY LOVED YOU ENOUGH TO LET HIS SON DIE FOR YOU

SALVATION BY GRACE16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave

his only begotten Son, that whosoever belie-veth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life.”

That doesn’t make any sense. You have looked at several things I’ve talked about, and maybe you’ve said that they don’t make any sense. “Why would God do that?” you ask. You may see a bunch of things that don’t make sense to you. But the one that really doesn’t make sense is God’s gift of salvation by grace. You’ve never thought of it as unbelievable because you’ve experienced it and have heard it preached so much that it has be-come commonplace in your mind. Do you know why? You have grown used to God’s grace. You have become so familiar with it that you don’t re-alize how it doesn’t make any sense.

I used to be Roman Catholic. Do you know that the god of every religion is a harsh god? The god of the Roman Catholics is harsh; their Jesus is al-ways mad about something. He’s harsh, and al-ways mad about your sin, so you have to talk to Mary and not him. That’s what we were taught.

The gods of the heathen are always angry. Oh, the volcano’s angry! Go throw in a young girl! All of the heathen’s gods are mean, wicked, and cruel gods.

Do you know that our God is a God of grace? Our God is a God who loves us. Our God is a God who says in Ephesians, chapter 2:

8 “For by grace are ye saved through faith;

and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:9 “Not of works, lest any man should boast.”It is our God who says, in 2 Corinthians, chapter

5, verse 21:21 “For he hath made him [Jesus Christ] to be

sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

Do you want to explain that one? Do you want to gripe about God keeping Saul on after He fired him? No, gripe about Him crucifying His only be-gotten Son so that you can be made the righteous-ness of God in Him. Explain that. You aren’t going to explain it. You can’t explain it. If you don’t like anything else that I’ve said, you should like your salvation.

God had no business saving you. He had no business saving me. He had no business letting His Son die on a cross for a louse like you or me. But He did! It doesn’t make any more sense than anything else I’ve talked about. We may benefit more from it, but it doesn’t make any more sense.

Our God’s actions don’t always make sense to us. Do you know what I thank God for? I thank Him that I have a God I can’t figure out.

I am not a Calvinist. I was predestinated from the foundation of the world not to be one, so don’t blame me. Do you know what Calvinism is? Calvin-ism is cheap, lazy man’s theology. Calvinism says,

“If I understand five points [TULIP], then I under-stand the mind of God.”

Listen, if you understood 1/1000 of the mind of God, it would blow the top of your head off. It would be like taking an amplifier and running about 10,000,000 volts through it. We’d have a meltdown. You say, “I understand the mind of God.” You understand nothing. That is just cheap theology.

I’ll tell you what I found out by reading my Bible: I found out that there are a whole bunch of things about my God that I can’t figure out.

Are you ready for this? I can’t even agree with Him. I’ve shown you some things that I’ve learned about God. But I didn’t say I agreed with what He did. Yet I’m resolved to them.

You don’t have to agree with everything God does in your life; you just have to be resolved to it. I’m not crazy that God broke my neck, mainly be-cause it causes me pain every day. The last couple of days I’ve had a headache that just about takes the top of my head off. I’m not crazy about God doing it, but I’m resolved to it.

I don’t understand why God does what He does, but when He does something again I don’t think He should do, I take my hands off it. I say, “That doesn’t make any sense to me, but I know you’re right. You do anything You want. You’re God; I’m just a dirtball. Let me get out of Your way.”

Do you know what you need to do? You need to surrender to a being Who is going to do things all of your existence that you’re not going to agree with. Not just the bad things that happen in your life are you not going to agree with, but some good things that happen in other people’s lives that you think shouldn’t happen.

You’re going to have to resolve yourself to the fact that you don’t have your God on a leash. You’re not going to think of five points, or ten points, or any number of doctrines in a row, and think you have God in a box. You think that you’ve figured out all of His limitations, and all of His pa-rameters, and now you’re going to explain God to somebody. You gotta be nuts! You can’t explain God!

I can’t explain why He ever gave David and Bath-sheba a second look. There might have been some better men of the sons of David who would have been king. I can’t explain it; I don’t even try.

Do you think I’m going to defend God? I’ve had people ask me, “Well, why does God do this?” or

“Why does God do that?”I say, “That’s none of your business.”

“Well, why does God allow so-and-so to be in the ministry?”

That is none of your business at all. It isn’t even any of my business as to why certain men are in the ministry. I may think they are called of God, but if I thought that they weren’t qualified, it’s still none of my business.

If you don’t like some of the things God does in your life, if you don’t think that they make any sense, you should take a look at your salvation. When you went to Him for salvation, He should have said, “Go to Hell.” He should have told you the same things your friends told you. Instead, He saved you.

Don’t you tell me that salvation by grace makes sense to you. You can’t explain it. You can explain

“I know God can deliver in a

moment’s notice.”


how it works; you can explain that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” You can explain how the blood of Christ atones for our sins. You can explain adoption, you can explain redemption; but you can’t explain the

“why” of any of salvation.God didn’t need you in Heaven to make it Heav-

en. Do you think He needed your golden vocal chords? I like my wife’s singing, but do you think He needed her voice? He has seraphim, cherubim, four-and-twenty elders chanting. I wonder how many times they’ve thrown their crowns at his feet in the time I’ve talked with you?

Do you think He needs your talent? Did He save some plumber because He has plumbing prob-lems in Heaven? Do you think He saved you be-cause He needs some computer fixed? Do you think He saved you because He needs somebody to do wall arrangements for Him in mauve and blue? He benefited nothing by getting us. We will add nothing to Heaven.

I’ll tell you something I’m not going to do: I’m not going to say, “God, you shouldn’t do anything that doesn’t make sense to me.” I’m not going to say that. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever belie-veth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life.” He did something that didn’t make any sense, but I’m going to Heaven because of it.

God may do some things that don’t make sense to you. Just remember. They don’t have to make

sense to you. And whether you agree with what He does or not you need always to keep one thing in mind.

God is Never Wrong!God is Always Right!

Dr. Samuel C. Gipp is a former pastor, an evangelist, teacher, author and Bible conference speaker. He has the unique ability to digest large amounts of informa-tion and then present it in an analytical, understand-able, format. His humorous, informative and forceful preaching style make him popular with all ages and keeps him in demand as a Revivalist and Bible con-ference speaker. Reprinted by permission.

“You need to surrender to a

being Who is going to do things all of your existence that you’re

not going to agree with.”

Following is an exchange that occurred between a scholar and a “tinker” (a mender of pots and pans) named John Bunyan in 17th century England. John Bunyan was the author of one of the most significant works of English literature, Pilgrim’s Prog-ress. This exchange is excerpted from The Struggler, by Charles Doe.

As Mr. Bunyan was upon the road near Cambridge, there overtakes him a scholar that had observed him a preacher, and said to him, How dare you preach, seeing you have not the original, being not a scholar?

Then said Mr. Bunyan, Have you the orig-inal?

Yes, said the scholar.

Nay, but, said Mr. Bunyan, have you the very self-same original copies that were written by the penmen of the scriptures, prophets and apostles?

No, said the scholar, but we have the true copies of those originals.

How do you know that? said Mr. Bunyan.

How? said the scholar. Why, we believe what we have is a true copy of the orig-inal.

Then, said Mr. Bunyan, so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy of the original.

Then away rid [sic] the scholar.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God... (II Timothy 2:15)


WW hen you received the Lord Jesus Christ, you made the wisest decision you’ll ever make. Jesus will never leave you nor for-

sake you (John 6:37), and, if you’ll follow His in-structions, He’ll make your life more meaningful than you could ever imagine. It won’t be easy. In fact, it’ll be a very tough journey, but there’s a long line of godly soldiers up ahead of you who wouldn’t trade their battle scars for anything. We’re talking about a life of honor, faith, and courage. We’re talking about the highest calling known to man, the call to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ!

What does God expect of you?“And he said to them all, If any man will come

after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (I Cor. 6:19-20)

Technically, God expects nothing of you as a Christian. Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” He

Your New Life New Life in Christ Christ

by James L. Melton

said, “nothing.” A branch is no good without the vine. A branch by itself will die and become use-less. God expects all believers to deny themselves and acknowledge their need to allow Jesus Christ to work through them, just as a vine produces fruit through its branches. By simply obeying God’s word a Christian serves God and glorifies Him. Je-sus said, “...I do always those things that please him.” (John 8:29)

Every Christian is supposed to be a full time servant. Our Christian duty is to follow Jesus and please our Heavenly Father. God’s word gives us all the instructions we need to live a Christ-hon-oring life and to lay up great treasures in Heaven. Here are some of the more important duties of every Christian.

SUBMIT TO BELIEVER’S BAPTISM

“Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at

the same scripture, and preached unto him Je-sus. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be bap-tized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of

Every Christian is supposed to be a full time servant.


God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Phil-ip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.” (Acts 8:35-39)

Notice the proper order of events: (1) The eu-nuch heard the Gospel. (2) He was told that he must believe with all his heart before he could be baptized. (3) He confessed Jesus Christ openly. (4) Phillip baptized the man by immersion in water. (5) The eunuch then rejoiced.

Scriptural New Testament baptism is for believ-ers only, and the only mode of baptism is total im-mersion. Baptism saves no one, but it does serve as a perfect opportunity to be openly identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. If baptism were for salvation, then Jesus would not have been baptized, because He needed no salva-tion. Baptism pictures the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:” A sinner is saved by grace through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8-9), but an obedient Christian will submit to our Lord’s will and be baptized.

LEARN TO FEAR GOD

Psalm 111:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is

the beginning of wisdom: a good understand-ing have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.” Solomon said, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole mat-ter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every se-cret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” (Ecc. 12:13-14)

A person who fears God is a person who always considers God’s word and God’s will. A person who fears God is a person who lives a humble and obe-dient life before God, always being mindful of the fact that God is holy and He will not overlook sin. According to Proverbs 15:16, “Better is little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble therewith.” No matter how educated or wealthy a man may be, if he doesn’t fear God, he is foolish and poor.

In Matthew 10:28, Jesus said, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to

kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” A man who fears God has no one else to fear, but a man who fears not God has everyone to fear. Putting God first and fearing Him above all is the key to a happy and fulfilling life. Also see Psalm 118:6 and Proverbs 29:25.

READ AND STUDY GOD’S WORD

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God,

a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (II Tim 2:15)

Paul tells us here to study God’s word that we might be approved by God. A Christian who doesn’t spend adequate time in God’s word is a disobe-dient Christian. This world is filled with sin and ungodly elements, and only through God’s word can we find true spiritual refreshment to keep us clean and set apart for God’s service. David said, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” (Psa 119:11) God’s word will keep a Christian clean! God’s word is like a spiritual bar of soap which the Christian uses daily to be a sweet smelling savor to God. Speak-ing of the church, in Ephesians 5:26, the Apostle Paul said, “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Psalm 119:9 says, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.” Jesus said, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” (John 15:3) It’s all through the Bible, friend, a Christian cannot stay clean without God’s word! John Bunyan once said, “This Book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this Book.”

“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate there-in day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” (Jsh. 1:8-9)

That’s God’s promise. A daily habit of spend-ing time in God’s word will guarantee a prosper-ous and successful life. David said, “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” (Psa 119:97) Is this true in your life? It should be. Every Christian should love God’s word and meditate on it often.

PRAY ALWAYS Jesus said that, “...men ought always to pray,

and not to faint.” (Luke 18:1) God speaks to us through Bible reading, but we speak to Him through prayer. Every Christian needs a special time each day (perhaps more than once per day) when he gets alone with God in prayer. Mark 1:35 says, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” Jesus realized the need to pull away for a while and get alone with His Father in prayer. In our fast-paced society this is sometimes hard, but it’s very neces-sary and well worth the effort.

If you’re really trusting God for your daily needs and the needs of others, then you will naturally go to Him in prayer to make your requests known. When a child is really depending on his father to do something for him, he won’t quit talking to him about it until it is done. God expects us to come to Him on a regular basis to simply “empty” ourselves by laying all our wants and needs in His hands.

Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” in I Thessalo-nians 5:17. Prayer is to be continual, because our relationship with God is continual. Many Chris-tians wait until they’ve become loaded down with sins and many burdens before they pray, but this isn’t God’s will. God commands us to pray always so we’ll never become overloaded with problems. He wants us to carry a light load. Jesus said, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mat. 11:30).

The subjects of prayer are many. Thanksgiving is an important part of prayer (Mark 8:6; John 6:11; I Tim. 4:4-5). We are told to pray for forgiveness (I John 1:9), for personal needs (Mat. 6:9-13; Philip. 4:6, 19), and for wisdom (Jas. 1:5-7). We are told to remember others in prayer (Rom. 1:9; Jas. 5:13-16), to remember our government leaders (I Tim. 2:1-2), and to pray for our pastors, churches, and missionaries (I Ths. 5:25; II Ths. 3:1; Jas. 5:16).

Everyone needs to take time out of each day for such physical needs as bathing, eating, and sleep-ing. Likewise, every Christian needs a special time each day for Bible reading and prayer.

PRAISE GOD The word “praise” is found 248 times in the Bi-

ble. God desires to be praised by His people! Psalm 22:3 says, “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” God inhabits the praises of His people! Psalm 150:6 says, “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.”

Hebrews 13:15 instructs us on how to praise our God: “By him therefore let us offer the sacri-fice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.” The key words here are “lips” and “thanks”. It is your Christian duty to use your lips to let God know, and to let others know, that God is a great God and that you are thankful for His blessings.

This can be done in normal conversation or by singing. In Acts 16:25, Paul and Silas were in jail, yet they sang praises unto God in the presence of others. Romans 10:11 says, “...Whosoever be-lieveth on him shall not be ashamed.” God ex-pects us to praise Him.

When you love someone you speak highly of them. If you love God, you’ll speak highly of Him by praising Him.

BE AN INVOLVED CHURCH MEMBER

Just as a soldier belongs in the military service,

a Christian belongs in a Bible-believing church. It is your Christian duty to be an active member of a local New Testament church. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves to-gether, as the manner of some is; but exhort-ing one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” I Corinthians 16:2 and Acts 20:7 designate the first day of the week (Sun-day) as the proper day for Christians to meet to-gether for preaching and fellowship.

God expects Christians to assemble together on a regular basis to worship Him and to exhort one another. A true Christian will get tired of this world and its ways throughout the week, so God has es-tablished the local church for our exhortation and edification.

Actually, the local church has three functions:

A man who fears God has no one else to fear, but a man who fears not God has everyone to fear.


(1) the salvation of sinners, (2) the edification of saints, and (3) the glorification of the Saviour. Nev-er join a church which isn’t striving for these three goals (and plenty of them aren’t!). The church is God’s army on this earth, and God expects every Christian to be a good soldier. II Timothy 2:3-4 says, “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that war-reth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” Friend, a soldier is a man who has been disciplined and trained to work to-gether with other soldiers in a fight against an en-emy. The local church is not your enemy. Satan is your enemy (I Peter 5:8), so God wants you on his team so you can fight the good fight against the Devil (II Tim. 4:7). Paul fought a good fight, and he did so by being involved with and helping local churches all of his Christian life.

Read your New Testament. The whole thing is about churches! Even the last book of the Bible is written to seven churches! The words “church” and “churches” are found over one hundred times in the New Testament. Friend, God is very inter-ested in the work of the church. In fact, the church is the bride of Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:23-32; Rev. 21:2, 9). How could you really be close to Jesus Christ and not care for His bride? Friend, God wants you involved in a local Bible-believing church. Televi-sion and radio evangelism may have some good to offer, but this isn’t a church. A church is a called-out group of believers in Jesus Christ.

You say, “Well, there are too many hypocrites in the church.” That’s their problem, and God will deal with them about their sins, but you will give account for yourself (Rom. 14:12). God’s word nev-er gives us a good reason for not being involved in a local church ministry. Even with all their prob-lems, Paul never advised the Corinthian Christians to get out of church. He taught them to deal with their problems and grow as Christians (Read I and II Corinthians). Our Lord loved the church and gave Himself for it (Eph. 5:25), and in Matthew 16:18 He said, “...I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The church is God’s winning team. If you want to be a winning Christian for your Saviour, then join a good church, and support the pastor and mem-bers.

GIVE TO GOD In Luke 6:38 Jesus said, “Give, and it shall be

given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be mea-sured to you again.” This world is packed full of wicked and selfish people. God expects His people to be different. Anyone can be a taker, but it takes self discipline to be a good giver.

II Corinthians 9:7 says, “...so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.” Just giving isn’t enough to please God. He expects us to give cheerfully. There are basically three ways to give to God. You should give of your time, give of your talents, and give of your treasures.

GIVE OF YOUR TIME

Since you are bought with a price (I Cor. 6:19-20), you really have no time of your own. You have 168 hours per week, and God owns them all. You will give account for every wasted minute, and you will be rewarded for every minute that was well spent. Notice Paul’s instruction from Ephesians 5: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, be-cause the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” (Eph. 5:15-17) We are told to redeem the time. Make the most of every minute. Someone once said, “You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.”

GIVE OF YOUR TALENTS

I Peter 4:11 says, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man min-ister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”

When I was in grammar school my teachers often conversed with my parents about my prog-ress. I had the idea that I was doing well enough as long as I passed. My teachers would tell my par-ents, “James is doing okay, but he is able to do a lot better.” God isn’t just monitoring our Christian service: He is also comparing our service to our ability. You may very well be living a much more

honorable Christian life than your neighbor, but are you doing your best? Are you using all of your God-given talents for His honor and glory? If you have a special talent, start praying that God will show you how to use it for Him. Bob Jones Sr. once said, “It’s always a sin to do less than your best.”

Editor’s note: One good way to give of your talents to the Lord is to submit your works to this magazine!

GIVE OF YOUR TREASURE

A common practice among Christians is tithing. To tithe is to give a tenth. The first occurrence of tithing in the Bible is in Genesis 14:20 where Abra-ham gives God a tenth of his possessions. Jacob also vows to tithe in Genesis 28:22. Tithing was also a requirement under the Mosaic law (Lev. 27:30-32; Num. 18:21-28; Deu. 14:22). A tenth of all income was to be given over to the Leviti-cal priesthood for their living and for the mainte-nance of the Lord’s service. The blessings of God were promised to those who were obedient to His laws of tithing. Malachi 3:8-10 says, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

Today, although we are no longer under the Mosaic law, Bible-believing Christians still practice tithing because God accepted tithes even before the law of Moses. If an Old Testament Jew, whose sins had not yet been paid for, can give a tenth of his income to the Lord, how much more should we be willing to give, whose sins have been washed away in the blood of Christ?

Most Bible-believing churches consider tithing a minimum gift, which goes into a general fund to finance the basic expenses of the church, while special love offerings and missions are considered separate offerings altogether.

LIVE A HOLY LIFE

God is holy, so He expects His children to be holy.

I Peter 1:16 says, “Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.” To be “holy” is to be whole,

to be pure and blameless before God. It is to lack nothing in God’s sight. A Christian is not just a “sin-ner saved by grace,” as some teach. A Christian in the Bible is a disciple. “...And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” (Acts 11:26) A disciple of Jesus Christ is one who has been disci-plined to follow Jesus Christ. We have been called to live holy lives, just as our Lord lived a holy life. Notice these instructive words from II Corinthians chapter six: “Be ye not unequally yoked togeth-er with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infi-del? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the liv-ing God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” (vss. 14-17)

God demands holiness! He is glorified when we live above sin and His light of holiness shines through us. We cannot be too careful. Paul said that we should “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” ( I Thes. 5:22) Even things that may look evil can scar our Christian testimony, so God expects us to be watchful and live holy lives. He expects us to stay unspotted from this wicked world.

ESTABLISH SOME GOOD CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIPS

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a

new creature: old things are passed away; be-hold, all things are become new.” (II Cor. 5:17)

The last thing you need as a Christian is a bunch of worldly friends to hinder your spiritual growth. Amos 3:3 says, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” There’s no point in having close friends who aren’t spiritual. Acquaintances and distant friends are fine, but your closest friends should be God-fearing Christians. Keep praying for your old friends and witnessing to them, but make some new friends who are God’s friends. A Christian’s friends should be saved people who love God and understand His purpose and plan in life. They’ll be a great encouragement and comfort to you in life.“You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.”


LEARN TO GET ALONG WITH GOD’S PEOPLE

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, be-

seech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the uni-ty of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4:1-3)

The best way to get along with people is to want to get along with them. Satan delights in reaching our hearts through our old nature and causing us to look for sins and faults among God’s people. Remember, it is Satan who accuses the breth-ren, not you (Rev. 12:10). A sensitive and touchy spirit is not the Holy Spirit. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentle-ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22-23) We need to work hard and really try to get along with the brethren. Consider these fourteen items from God’s word:

1. Love one another - John 15:12, 172. Confess faults to one another - Jas 5:163. Pray for one another - Jas 5:164. Prefer one another - Rom 12:105. Receive one another - Rom 5:76. Admonish one another - Rom 15:147. Serve one another - Gal. 1:38. Forbear one another - Eph. 4:29. Forgive one another - Eph. 4:3210. Edify one another - I Ths. 5:1111. Consider one another - Heb. 10:2412. Exhort one another - Heb. 3;1313. Care for one another - I Cor. 12:2514. Comfort one another - I Ths. 4:18 As someone has said, “You’re going to live forev-

er with God’s people, so you may as well learn to get along with them!” I have learned that I can get along with anyone whom I want to get along with.

SUBMIT TO AUTHORITIES

The Bible is filled with instruction on how Chris-

tians are to respect and obey their appointed au-thorities. These authorities fall into three general categories: the home, the government, and the church.

In the home, wives are told to submit to their

husbands (Eph. 5:22-25), and children are told to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1-3). The “times” may have changed, but God and His words have not changed. The ideal Christian home is a home where everyone fears God under the leadership of a God-honoring Christian man.

The government is also an appointed authori-ty of God. Romans 13:1-4 says, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore re-sisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to them-selves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

Governments were ordained of God, and He of-ten deals with men through governments. It is our Christian duty to respect those who lead our local, state, and national governments. Sometimes we cannot honestly respect the people in office, but we can still respect the position that they hold and we can pray for them. Paul writes these words to Timothy: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giv-ing of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (I Tim. 2:1-2) Christians need to behave themselves by obeying their leaders and praying for them (Tit. 3:1; Jude 1:8; II Pet. 2:10-11; I Pet. 2:13-17), because it was God who made them leaders. We honor God by honoring our leaders.

Then there are authorities within the church. Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.” We are to honor God by showing true respect for our spiritual leaders. Your pastor, your deacons, and elders are men whom God has ordained to serve as church leaders. Remember to honor God by praying for them and respecting their authority. If you cannot honestly respect your church leaders, then find a new church. Never rebel against God’s authorities! Don’t start trouble. Just quietly be-

have yourself and find a new church. God always blesses those who submit to authority, because all authority comes from God.

BE A CHRISTIAN WITNESS

“But ye shall receive power, after that the

Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter-most part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

A witness is a person who tells what he knows.

Our job is to tell lost people what we know about the Lord Jesus Christ and His saving grace. A re-ligion worth having is a religion worth propagat-ing. If you are saved, it’s because someone took the time to witness to you. Well, you should wit-ness to others. Tell others what Jesus has done for you, and what He can do for them. Learn some good salvation verses from your Bible and tell oth-ers! Invite friends and family members to attend church services with you so they too can hear the Gospel and be saved.

Before you were saved you were like a candle

without a flame. Then God took one of His light-ed candles (a Christian—Mat. 5:15) and gave you light. Now He wants to use you to give light to oth-ers.

One hundred years from now, you won’t value the time you spent watching television, playing sports, or being entertained, but you’ll place great value on the time you spent trying to bring lost souls to the Lord Jesus Christ. So now is the time to purpose in your heart that eternity is what mat-ters most and your life needs to be filled with eter-nal investments. Your Lord and Saviour said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Mat. 6:19-21)

James L. Melton is the pastor of Bible Baptist Church, Sharon, TN. www.biblebaptistpublications.org. Re- printed by permission.

In Grief and Shameby Elizabeth Payson Prentiss (1818-1878)

I lie before Thee, Lord, just where I ought In grief and shame to lie;I am not worthy of a glance from Thee; Yet do not pass me by.

I have forsaken Thee, an earthly spring Yet once again to try;It leaves me thirsty, may I come to Thee? O do not pass me by.

In a sad hour, a false, yet glittering prize, Caught and enticed my eye;I sought, and lost it, in my grief and pain, Lord, do not pass me by.

I am so sorrowful, so sick and faint; Long so to feel Thee nigh;Have pity on me, tempted Son of God, And do not pass me by.


My First Bicycleby Steven Long, Texas Death Row

W hen I was just a little boy my moth-er got me my first bicycle, and then I got one every year. My first ride, boy, I

was joyously nervous. Mom helped me get on and told me, “It’s okay, Son,” and the whole time I was thinking, It’s okay. It’s okay. I got this.

She started to push me ever so gently forward. My feet began to pedal, so I started to smile. She was all smiles with me, and then she did what all mothers do—she let me go!

There I was, riding my bike all by myself. Wow! I was on top of the world! But then came the most important decision in my whole young life. How do I turn around?

As I started to pull my bars to the left to begin my turn, I panicked because I was going too fast. I started to shake, and all of a sudden I encoun-tered concrete. Bam!

Now I’m on the ground crying, telling my mom it’s all her fault. She rushed up to me with tears in her eyes. She pulled me up and told me, “No, Son, it’s the bike’s fault. You were just going too fast.”

She wiped off my hands and with a gentle smile asked me, “Do you want to do it again?”

Then I looked down at my bike. I began to smile too and said with all the boldness of a child, “I made it!” It was my first crash.

Life would bring many more of those. I should know, because I still have the scars to prove it. The scars we receive in this life will be with us forever. Jesus still has His scars to this very day! I read in a book recently, “If Jesus chose to live with His scars for eternity and not be ashamed, then why should we be ashamed of ours?”

Life’s scars can hurt us to the point of despair that drives us to a place that will eat at our hearts. All the troubles, all the pain and sorrows, and the agony of being defeated every time can take a toll on us. Most just give up and quit! But Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Most won’t turn to God for help; they live in con-stant misery. We have a hope that stands ready to pick us up, just like my mom did many years ago. All we have to do is reach up.


The Glass EyeThe Glass Eye by “Tater”

“P“Paw Paw, where did you get that glass eye from?” asked my 10-year-old grandson.

I stared into a brilliant pair of ice-blue eyes that nailed me to the seat of the Harley that I had just swung a leg over. There was no question that I would not be shaking Josiah’s questioning today as I had done at other times. I took a deep breath as I reached up to rub my constantly itch-ing eye, then looked down at the boy.

Should I just tell him the truth? I wondered. Hell no, I reasoned to myself; there was no reason to take this innocent boy back to the miserable time when I received this piece of colored glass that now mimicked the good eye on the other side of my face.

The missing eye was a “battle scar” from times past. It was an outward sign of a deep, mind-twist-ing, inner wound that I’d just as soon forget about. There was no need to take this young boy to the Beto Unit of the mid-80’s. Prison in general was hard back then, but it was especially hard for a small white kid, living on the toughest cell blocks the place offered.

Pow! I flinched as I re-experienced the sharp ex-plosion of pain and saw the lightning flash once again, as the can of refried beans in the sock con-nected solidly with my head, and bone with flesh broke under the pressure. Although I had noth-ing to do with the original altercation between the whites and blacks, I was white, and that made me an open target. That is simply how it was.

Then one day, thirty years later, I received a God-given epiphany that shook the whole foun-dation of my sorry existence. I sat in my cell, way back in administrative segregation, pondering my future. Over thirty long years had passed since that day on Beto, and I had had enough. I was finished hating. The epiphany blossomed into a great mushroom cloud of common sense. It was so simple, and I was amazed that I had never re-alized it before. If I would simply stop, quit hating everyone, I would be all right. I must instead love.

After many long prayers, some by me, and many more by others for me, I realized that my enemy was not black, brown, or yellow. He was not a gang member, or an independent. He wasn’t the police, or even the snitch. Nope! My true enemy was me,

and only me, whom the devil gladly rode until he drove me face-first into the dirt. My enemy was my own corrupted belief system. Everything that I knew, trusted, believed in, and whole-heartedly represented had to change.

Right there in that segregation cell on Ramsey III, I began the greatest transition of my life. God opened my eyes to the beauty, love, and limitless possibilities available if only I would stop judging people by their color, or past, and begin judging them by their potential instead. All men can walk with honor, integrity, and respect, if they choose to do so.“This glass eye,” I answered my grandson, “came

from lessons learned the hard way.” I reached out and pulled him up onto the back of the bike, and he wormed around until he found the footpegs.“I got this glass eye so that you wouldn’t have to.

You see, this glass eye once declared to the world that I was ignorant, and out for revenge. This eye represented the craziness of walking in anger, hate, and racism.”

Josiah reached over and grabbed my beard, pull-ing my face around so that I could see him. Those blue eyes burned into my soul. “I don’t understand, Paw Paw,” he said. “You don’t hate, you love every-one. Just last night you helped that crippled man at WalMart. You help old people, and even mow folks’ yards when they can’t do it for themselves. You don’t hate anyone, Paw Paw.”

“I know, boy.” I patted his knee and pulled away, fighting against the tear that threatened to fall from my eye. “That’s what makes this eye so great. It hurt me, and brought me to my knees so that the only place I could look was up. When you look up, boy, help will come, and God’s help will heal you from the things you don’t even know are wrong. He’ll turn your battle scars into a sign of His love.”“What do you mean?” Josiah said, picking at the

corner of a loose patch on the back of my threads.“What I discovered was that, this eye, this brown

ball of glass and paint, can fuel a senseless, venge-ful life, or it can represent a price paid for wisdom received.”

My only complaint is that wisdom did not come a whole lot sooner.


Believers Believers A, B, and MeA, B, and Me

by Jessica D’Lene Robertson

““BBeliever A” started the conversation at morning-time medical by stating that she hadn’t been able to use the library

in months, and that she missed her inspirational books.“Believer B” sat on the middle bench, making her

own book recommendations. “This one changed the way I think about prayer.”“What do you mean?” asked Believer A.“I don’t know how to describe it…,” Believer B re-

plied, fumbling with her fingers.“Believer Me” had now moved to the middle

bench from the back to join the conversation, not only because I had become sardined on the bench behind, but more importantly because I wanted to join the conversation. I told them I was current-ly binge-reading the works of one or two specific preachers.“I wonder if they’re gonna think it’s weird that I

want to go work outside?” Believer B changed the subject with downcast eyes.“No,” I said, attempting to dispel the shadows of

her doubt. “I know someone who wanted out of the kitchen, so she requested field squad, and they put her out there. She still works there, I think.”“Good,” she replied with a sigh. “Anything to get

me out from working in the dorm. Let’s just say that women can be cruel, especially when they notice something different.” She said the last part almost under her breath, tapping the side of her head as an indicator.

Morning time in medical is a very surreal place with a variety of emotional frequencies. The air is always thick with conversation, and the heat of words stored for a long time before.

My heart went out to Believer B when she talked of how she was dorm janitor of E wing and then mentioned the women’s cruelty over her differ-ence.“Classes are good,” I told her, referring to ways

for her to be able to get away from the dorm.“Oh, I’m applying for them, especially the faith

classes. I applied for the faith-based dorm too, but I don’t know if I’ll get in because I really need to be back on my medicine.”

The faith-based “Mary” wing dorm is rumored to have a no psych med policy. I recognized her pres-sured—almost stuttering—speech as a symptom I use to struggle with as well and let her know that I have to take my “meds” too. I have tried to stop my mood stabilizers before, and “It didn’t go well. At all.”

“I’ve been trying to go without them,” she con-fessed, “but it makes me feel more likely that I’ll snap back at them, and I refuse to let anyone bring me down to One Building.” (That’s where medium and closed custody are housed; G4 and G5 of-fenders.)

Good for her, I thought. I decided to share a sort of secret.“I was in E wing too, for two weeks this summer. I

Psalm 91’d out of there…or actually I got attacked


while reciting Psalm 91 and got moved.” It was pure hell, I thought privately.

As if to kindly change the subject, Believer A spoke up. “I like your tattoo,” she told Believer B. It was a cross on her forearm with bright pinks and technicolors.“Thanks. It was professionally done,” she grinned

brightly. “This one is the self-harm symbol,” and she lifted her off-white pant leg to show us more ink.“A semi-colon? Hmm…I didn’t know that,” Believ-

er Me said.“Yeah, a homeboy did it for me. He told me to call

him if I ever got to feeling that way. So, one day I did; and he came over and gave it to me.”

It was a slightly-darker-than-flesh-colored, en-larged semi-colon. “This too shall pass” was written in an elegant cursive script beneath it.

Then she showed us the two others on her collar bones: her daughters’ names. She pointed to the one on the left side and happiness sifted over her eyes.“Her name means ‘Gift from God.’” She was still

vibrant in spirit, but she quickly grew more bash-ful. “I want more.”“How many?” asked Believer A. “Five?”“No, just one more. I want a son to name after my

dad,” Believer B replied.

“What’s his name?” asked Believer A.“Richard. And I want his middle name to be after

my grandfather, Harry.”Still thoughtful, she gazed through the speckles

on the tile floor.“Richard Harry,” Believer A stated, paused a sec-

ond, then smiled and said, “I like that.”We all slowly turned more serious; with soft

smiles gracing our faces and our eyes reflecting pools of the generosity and goodwill we were sharing.“Do you have any children?” Believer A asked me.

Just then the dental assistant called for my ap-pointment.“Yes,” I said as if half-awake, peaceful in thought.

“I have two boys and a girl.”I walked out of the cage in a trance-like state,

quickly sleeving my jacket and heading for the medical office door. I don’t even know if I looked back.

But I hope I did. I hope I looked back and smiled reassuringly, and that my smile gave Believer B the God-given courage for the rest of the day.

God’s grace surrounds us.God’s grace covers us.No plagues over this place will harm us.I’ll keep on praying for us.For us to keep the faith.

Walking aroundCircling the day room Some will question “Where’ you going?” “I’m walking home.” Am I there yet?Oh! This is my home.

I am on pilgrimageMy heart is set on journey I live for the coming age;I travel mostly alone;I’ve finally let go of the rage; I’ve finally found my home, The road ahead I cannot see But where I am I’ll be at home, And I know I am free.

Each dayOne at a time, I turn a page.

At Home On Pilgrimage by Stephen Stoeltje


MMy name is Rotolet McGee, and I am a 35-year-old male from Dallas, Texas. I have been incarcerated since the age

of 18. I was born to a woman by the name of Wil-liette McGee at the tender age of 16. By her being so young at my birth, she passed me off and al-lowed my grandmother to raise me. At the time I did not know that my grandmother was not blood kin. After being comforted by her love and warm embrace, none of that mattered.

As time went on, my mother would come around and check to see how I was doing. My father was at least twenty years older than my mother, so the majority of the family did not like him. One night after coming home from church, he tried to stop by and check on me, but my grandmother ran him off. According to her, he was nothing more than the devil.

From that moment on, I yearned to see him. I wondered to myself, “What does he look like? What does he smell like? How does he sound? Are we alike in any or many ways? Will people ever tell me, ‘Boy you look just like your daddy’?“ These unanswered questions would haunt me for years to come. And without answers, I was left to create an identity of my own.

School days came and my grandmother did the best she could to provide for me, my little sister, and a young uncle. She worked as a maid, clean-ing houses for rich white people. Sometimes she would take me to work with her, because there was no one to babysit. I remember her in her old

age working hard, scrubbing and toiling for hours before taking a break. Then, as she sat down to eat, she would always remind me not to touch anything.

On the weekends she took us shopping to get toys from a hand-me-down store. While all of the toys sold in that old store were used, they were new to us. Without any complaints, we cherished what little we had. It was in these moments that I learned to distinguish the value between material things and riches. I also learned that it was bet-ter to have family that cared as opposed to family who were kin. What a lesson!

Starting school was both scary and fun. After getting settled in, I got involved in drama activities such as plays. It was nice to pretend that life was better than it really was, and even more nice when people believed it. However, reality was still reality, and my reality was that I was missing my parents. Seeing my mother here and there was not enough for me. As a result, I begin to feel abandoned, and my heart was so cold that it could freeze a feeling.

One night as I was lying in the bed with my grandmother in our small shack, I begin to get restless. Reaching over to wake her, I noticed that she was not responding. Puzzled by the moment, I started shaking her harder, but still to no avail. My aunt was in the next room, asleep, so I decided to report to her what was going on. She immediately came in and tried to wake my grandmother only to get the same response. Next thing I knew, an ambulance was at our house, taking her out on a

WHO AM I?WHO AM I?by Rotolet McGee


stretcher and pronouncing her dead on the scene. That night I knew my life had changed.

While waiting at the hospital to see what would happen next, my mother came through the door informing me that I would now be living with her. Although I wanted to be around her, I was not ready for it to manifest in this way. With no choice, I walked out of that hospital going from one world to another. That’s when I discovered...

I am the product of rape, not brute but statutory,

And I’ve stepped on splinters climbing to peak at God’s Glory.

I grew up on WIC because grandmother’s breast was dry;

My mama plundered tears from my eyes that I didn’t have to cry.

Three candles on my cake, I celebrated with no father;

I wanted to feel bliss, but reality made me harder

At the peak of my plateau, the best man to God’s foehad climbed up a stairwell,

but didn’t know that I was so low.

Lost for what to do, on a ledge in a pit;

Remembering the Bread of Life, I freely bit.

Lord, here I am a sinner, with a sigh;

Ready to do Your will, if You tell me who am I.

This is the day the Lord has madeA marvel to our eyes

A light that never fadesA life that never dies.

This is the Lord’s day a voice that speaks of peace

hear what He’s to say; A joy that will not cease

A day of peace for His friends where mercy and faithfulness embrace;

An ever now that never endsthe place we seek His face.

In The Dayby Stephen Stoeltje


OF LIFE AND LIMBby Kevin Murphy

Hate is an ugly, abrasive word. It’s a cancer that will eat away at anyone who carries it. I know, I was a carrier.

I’ve hated so many things in my life, but what I came to hate the most were two men.

The first is a man that my first wife cheated on me with and became pregnant by, something I didn’t find out until my daughter was ten.

The other was an in-between boyfriend of my second wife whom she got pregnant by and who caused us problems over the years.

For so long I hated these men, and for many years into my incarceration I used them as a way of escape from this place. I’d lie on my bunk each night and think of ways I’d get them. The way I’d show up at their houses, run into them at a store or on the street. How I’d confront them. I imagined the look on their drunken faces (I always saw them as drunk when I thought about them, both being drinkers). Everything that I imagined was harm at my hands, a black eye, a busted lip, or some hurt-ful thing or another.

Doing this seemed to help me to deal with the pain of being here, of them being free. Their de-mise would outweigh the thought of them living in a world where the women I love live, a world I’m no longer a part of. The thought of them being free while I wasn’t felt like an injustice on top of the many others that I live with everyday in this place.

For years this is the way that I lived, torn be-tween forgiveness that my spiritual walk asked of me and the ill feelings that I felt toward these men. It was a battle that I fought daily and would lose every night as I lay on my bunk deep in thought.

Both of these men are fathers to the girls that call me Daddy. My daughters in my heart. Girls that found out that the men that sired them were fathers in name only and not by any other means.

Recently I found out that the father of my old-est daughter lost his legs to diabetes and drinking. When I heard this, instead of being happy, instead of thinking that he finally got what he deserved, I was actually sad for him, for what he must be go-ing through. Living with no legs must be horrible and something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Soon after this my daughter from my second marriage stopped by my mother’s and told her that her father committed suicide. He shot himself in the head when he was drunk and fighting with

his girlfriend.When I heard this, I was instantly saddened. My

thoughts weren’t as I thought they would be. They weren’t that a thorn was removed, that justice was served, an enemy vanquished, things I thought about through the years of my incarceration.

What I felt was sadness. Sadness for what he left behind, for the wrongs he didn’t live to fix or re-store. Sadness for him not seeing the life-changing revelation that was his to find and grasp. Sadness for my daughter who has to bury her father, who has to live with the grief and loss. I even feel sad for my ex-wife who once cared for him and will have to deal with those emotions in the midst of her current relationship, her past life, and feelings crashing in on her present. Sad for the daughter she’ll have to comfort and help.

I’m not rejoicing in the loss of life and limb. I’m not what I thought myself to be. I’m not the man I was in my thoughts as I laid on my bunk at night playing out all the ways I would repay what I saw as wrongs committed against me. I’m not rejoicing, and I’m not happy. What I am is sad and ashamed for my thoughts and my unforgiveness. For the hours I lost, dwelling on things that should have never been dwelt upon.

Last night I prayed. I prayed for the one who lost his legs and is suffering. I prayed for my daughters and my ex-wives, for ease in what they’re going through. I prayed for the family and friends, for all of those affected by the loss and suffering. And I prayed for myself. I prayed that God would forgive me for my unforgiveness, and I thanked Him for showing me what it is I was meant to see.

I wonder what it’ll be that I think of tonight? What will be imagined as I lay on my bunk in that time before sleep finds me? When I try to leave this place. The time when I think about what I want, what I miss, of the ones I love and the ones that I don’t. Of all that was said and wasn’t.

What will replace the hate, the anger, the mis-placed misgivings of those who suffer enough without my harmful, hateful thoughts?

Maybe tonight I’ll imagine that I’m at the beach walking along the water’s edge. Maybe I’ll imag-ine riding a motorcycle down an open highway dancing with the wind. Perhaps I’ll imagine that I’m walking with God in heaven. Maybe tonight I’ll imagine being free.


T he first lesson that I learned in mar-riage, is that all women are irrational and emotionally unstable. The first

lesson I learned is that they just don’t make sense most of the time. All joking aside, they’re hard for me to understand. It took me years before I rec-onciled myself to the fact that I am not capable of understanding a woman. I can never press her in to the mold of my logic, my indifference, and my nonchalant approach to sense. There are things that I just don’t care about, that my wife cares about deeply. There are things that she needs that I just don’t have. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

For instance, if you are a person that has never had cold feet, and you sleep with a partner that has cold feet, you just don’t understand their need to put their cold feet on your thighs. It took me a lot of years before I learned to put socks on my wife before she goes to bed.

Marriage does involve a lot of compromises. It involves a lot of “OK, if you say so,” and it involves a lot of giving over. You see, it’s not 50/50; it is 100/100. It is one man giving 100 percent of all that he is to a lady for her sake and for her good. It is a lady giving 100 percent of all she is, her talents, her gifts and abilities, to one man for his sake and for his good.

The Bible tells us that love believes all things. Love doesn’t keep account. It doesn’t keep score. When we start keeping score in a relationship, we’re no longer in that relationship for the other person; we’re in it for ourselves. When we start keeping score, it’s a game. It’s a game where we are counting winners and losers.

We keep score not in hope that the other person

will win, but in hopes that we win. It’s a very lousy relationship where two people are trying to bal-ance everything out.

Have you ever seen two kids trying to divide something up? When I was young, I loved choco-late pie. My mother would usually fix one pie, and we would divide it seven ways; it never did go very far.

One night, when my brother and I were about eight and ten years old, Mom and Daddy went off to a class, and Mom said, “We’ve got a whole choc-olate pie. We are going to leave it here, and after you wash the dishes, you can eat this chocolate pie.” Now, we washed the dishes with our eye on that chocolate pie.

The time came to split it up when we dried the last dish. Being the bigger one, the elder one, and much more capable of determining where the middle of the pie was, I rushed over to slice it down the middle. My brother saw where I was laying the knife and said, “No, that’s not right, over this way a little bit.”

I said, “No, this way.” He said, “No, this way.” I said, “No, this way, this way. . .” Splat! Upside down on the floor was the choc-

olate pie. We both stood there looking down at that big puddle on the floor, splattered out every-where. Our opportunity for the first time in our life to have half of a chocolate pie was lost.

I looked at him and said, “You can have it all.” He looked at me and said, “I don’t want any pie,

you can have it all.” “You dropped it.” “No, you dropped it.”

Marriage, God’s Waysharing the pie

by Michael Pearl


“It was your fault.” “It was not! It was your fault.” “No, it wasn’t, it was your fault, because I was go-

ing to cut it in half.” “I know how you are. You won’t cut it in half, and

you’ll keep the biggest piece.”It’s kind of like a marriage, wasn’t it? We were

both wanting the biggest piece of the pie, and we didn’t end up getting any pie.

More than half of Christian marriages are ending up in divorce. In fact, the rate of divorce in Chris-tian families is about the same as in the world. Why? Because they can’t agree on how to divide up the pie, and they are fighting over it.

I am not here to tell you that the man ought to slice the pie, and the wife take what half she gets. What I am here to tell you is that, when it comes to time to slicing the pie, ladies, you should say, “I really don’t eat pie, I want you to eat all the pie.”

You men should say, “Listen, I just don’t really

care that much for chocolate pie. You can have the whole thing. I want to see you get to eat the whole pie.” “I’ll tell you what, let’s just eat one piece, and then

we will think about eating another one, OK? Here have a bite.” “No, you take a bite.” That’s the way marriages are built. They are built

on a concern that the other person gets the larger quantity, the bigger slice. “You can cut it.” “No, you can cut it.” “Well, whatever you want. OK, I’ll cut it.” It’s a matter of seeking the good of the other

person.

Reprinted by permission from No Greater Joy. nogreaterjoy.org. Mailing address: 1000 Pearl Road, Pleasantville, TN 37033. (866) 292-9936 There’s a rose

and a letter on the bed with things I wished I had said, They’ve been haunting me within my head.

I didn’t know how to tell you; I’ve been struggling deep inside, but in your heart I know you’ll find My love exists tonight.

You don’t deny me; You stand beside me, through all my darkness and pain; So I close my eyes to realize there’s no other to keep me sane.

A Letter & A RoseA Letter & A Roseby Jeff Morrison


Too Busy To Too Busy To DieDieby Dr. Samuel C. Gipp

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthu-siasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

OON May 26, 1943, Co. K, 32nd Infantry was again trying to inch its way to the top of Fish Hook Ridge on the Attu Island, in the

Aleutian chain off the coast of Alaska. The men were hampered by snow, bitter temperatures and their frostbitten feet and fingers.

During the attack, Pvt. Joseph P. Martinez was mortally wounded as he charged up the hill, just fifty yards from the top of the ridge. But Pvt. Mar-tinez was too busy to die. He continued to charge forward, killing five Japanese soldiers with gre-nades and his Browning Automatic Rifle. He fought on to the crest as Co. K followed his lead.

Once the ridge was secured, Pvt. Martinez laid down and died. Fight on!

Reprinted by permission from Fight On! Stories


F or years, Frank Mandusco traveled down a straight and narrow path of contentment. Though living on the borderline of poverty,

Frank always put his trust in God’s daily provisions. That is, until the day he came to a crossroads that revealed a crooked path leading to an unknown destination. Frank noticed the many travelers that swaggered down the crooked path with their heads held high. The diamonds around their necks and the gold watches around their wrists glittered rainbows of radiant colors in the morning sunlight.

None of those people seemed to have a care in the world. For a brief moment, Frank smiled as he thought about how it would be to live a carefree life. As Frank took closer notice of the glittering riches, he also took notice of the eyes that looked down on his ragged clothes. The looks he was re-ceiving prompted him to question God why he had suffered through many trials and tribulations, and the monstrosity of times he had faced just to maintain the bare essentials of life.

Frank Mandusco stood at the crossroads of his life, pondering the most crucial decision he would ever make. “Do I continue living in poverty and contentment, or should I follow the crowd of peo-ple and hope to find my own riches on the crook-ed path of the unknown?”

As he watched, more people swaggered by. Their glittering riches tempted him to start down the crooked path of what seemed to be prosperi-ty. The longer Frank traveled down this new path, the more he coveted worldly riches. His envy of others raised feelings of animosity towards any-one and everyone that had more than he. An an-

THROUGHYOUR EYES

by Randall Neal

gry and hateful man slowly took the place of the loving and gentle one that Frank Mandusco was known to be.

Frank noticed that all his old friends and fami-ly members turned their backs on him. He brief-ly pondered his predicament, then nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders. “Who cares?” he thought.

“With my new riches, I can buy all the happiness I want, not to mention deserve!”

As time marched on, Frank Mandusco grew tired of the path he was walking. To his good fortune, he stumbled onto a new crooked path that he thought would surely lead him back to the origi-nal straight and narrow path of contentment. And what was even better, he was carrying enough riches with him to last a lifetime!

As Frank followed the new crooked path, the sky began to darken and the rain drizzled down from heaven. There was a storm brewing just around the next corner. As the rainbows of radiant riches glittered when he had turned onto the new path, they blinded Frank to the fact that the path was leading him on a downhill spiral! The drizzling rain laggardly turned into a heavy downpour. Thunder boomed and shook the earth beneath Frank’s feet. Lightning lit up the darkened sky as he began to slip and slide on the muddy path.

When Frank finally realized he was on a downhill slope, he fought with all his might to turn around and climb back up. To his dismay, a sinister wind began fighting his progress. For every five steps he fought to climb upward, his feet slid three steps downward.“If only I can get back to the top, I can make it

“But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Psalm 73:2-3


back to the right path!” he cried out. But it was too late.

Frank Mandusco found himself in a tug-o-war for life. Five steps upward, three steps downward; five steps upward, three steps downward. As the tug-o-war maliciously raged on, he could feel the gravity of hopelessness pulling him down. Frank craned his neck around to see what lay at the bot-tom of the slope; a thunderous clap of lightning lit up the darkened path of despair. That’s when Frank saw the wide open pit at the bottom of the slippery slope.

Suddenly, Frank’s feet slipped out from under-neath him, and he fell to his hands and knees. His fingers began grasping at the rain-soaked mud as he fought with all his might to save himself. During his time of terror, he had never given any thought to tossing the bag of riches that was weighing him down. He believed that, if he could just muster enough strength to get back to the top, he could save both himself and his accumulated riches of the world.

In a moment, his chest fell over the edge of the dark pit with his fingers dug deeper into the mud-dy slope, leaving him dangling over the pit of in-certitude. Still, the bag of wealth hung heavy on his shoulders. Slowly, methodically, one hand lost its grip in the slippery mud, then the other. Frank Mandusco wailed with overwhelming appre-hension as he began free-falling into the murky depths of the unknown. He landed flat on his back with a loud thud, knocking the breath from his lungs.

As Frank Mandusco lay, frail and weak in the darkened pit of desolation, his eyes became fixed on the faintest shimmer of light. A distant star flickered a ray of hope as the storm began to subside. With a broken heart and contrite spirit,

Frank cried out to God to save him from certain death. An unknown strength filled his arms as they stretched out towards heaven. Frank plead-ed his case before the God of grace for one more chance to walk on the straight and narrow path of contentment.

Three days passed. Frank was hungry and thirsty, more than he could have ever imagined. Suddenly, he felt strong arms lifting him up out of the pit of despair and placing him in the glowing light of God’s presence. As he stood in the sanctuary of new-found life, Frank’s eyes filled with tears of in-describable joy.

With a renewed heart, Frank fell to his knees and began a sincere prayer to God.“O, my Father in heaven, You continued to walk

with me as I veered off the path You desired for me to follow. Your merciful and loving heart cried out for Your prodigal son to return to You. Thank You, Father, for Your longsuffering that none should perish but that all will come to repentance.“Through all my trials, my tribulations, and my

failures, only You, O God of mercy, upheld me with Your right hand and kept me from perish-ing in the darkened pit of eternal death. In You and You alone will I put my trust. Only You, O God my Savior, will I allow to guide my steps with Your wonderful counsel.“You and You alone, O God, my Righteousness,

will receive me to glory at the end of this life’s path You have chosen for me to follow. For whom, O God, my Hope of reconciliation, do I have in heav-en but You? There is none on earth I desire but You, O God my Redeemer. Through the mercy of Your chastenings, O God, You have spared me from Your wrath.“Thank You, O God, my Father in heaven, for al-

lowing me to see through Your eyes!”

I waited, it seemed forever,before you came my way.The smile to fill a daddy’s hearton that special day.

The moment left me speechless;I didn’t know what to say.Then you took your first breathand that took mine away.

Now days go by so quickly,as summer turns to fall;it seems like only yesterdaywas the day you learned to crawl.

Still, I can’t hide the feelingsway down deep inside;I remember itsy-bitsy spiderwas the first thing that we tried.

Then patty-cake the baker’s manwith hands so very small,and if you always stayed this young,I wouldn’t mind at all.

Now the boys I once knew,are young men standing tall.But I’ll always have your memoriesfrom the handprints on my wall.

HandprintsHandprintsby Chris Williamsby Chris Williams


The false views of beautythe world imprinted on her heartmake her feel ugly and worthless,

never knowing where to start.

She tries to decide what to wearto make her look like she is thin;

what she wouldn’t giveto feel okay in her own skin.

There are so many things about hershe wishes to remove,

in order to be “beautiful”and for life to improve.

She wants her skin to be tan,she wants less curl in her hair,then she’d be more attractive

and wanted by someone out there.

She thinks if she were taller,and if her face were less round,

maybe she wouldn’t think she was ugly,with no beauty to be found.

Even still, she rushes to get ready,and applies the make-up to her face,

never noticing all her beautyGod made perfect through His grace.

You see, beauty comes from within;we should all know this fact;we’re each God’s creation;

no beauty do we lack.

Beautifulby Joy Armstrong


A Road Worth A Road Worth TakingTaking

by Carl Lee Snider

II can remember how my dad always drove down one particular road when it was snowing, instead of taking the shortcut

back to the house. He would always tell us kids to enjoy what God has given us. It seemed that this road was ten miles long.

As he drove, we got to look outside and observe. It was very beautiful this time of year, with the tops of the cedars capped with snow. The moon’s light would show dancing snow flurries and the deer jumping all around.

I remember one night so vividly; it was quiet in the car as Dad spoke about everything we had seen. Something was peculiar though, different from before. We kids couldn’t wait for this winding road to come to an end. It seemed as if it would go on forever.

Before we knew it, the car slammed to a stop, and a huge buck stood no more than twelve feet in front of us. Then, our eyes saw a doe and two fawns trailing behind him, beginning to cross the road. It seemed the doe and fawns were fearless as the buck stood still to assure their safe crossing. There was a cavernous scar that ran down the left side of his face as he looked back at us, finishing the trek across the road and following his family protectively.

As we drove off into the night, it was as though he was watching us, and we were watching him

until he disappeared into the abyss of darkness and frost.

The road came to an end, and we turned to go home. When we arrived, it was very cold and we walked to the house. We then gathered together and drank hot cocoa while we talked about our unforgettable drive.

As the years went on and I became a father, my siblings moved away to begin their lives some-where else. I stayed and took my father’s house. One night, driving home with my family, I decided to take the long, winding road home. As we drove, I told my wife and children about how my father used to drive down this road and, as a kid, my brothers and sisters and I didn’t like it, until that one night. Afterwards, everything seemed differ-ent, more right.

I’d tried to explain more, looking back at them. Suddenly, my son told me to stop. As I turned for-ward, stepping on the brakes, a big buck stood in the middle of the road along with three other deer. I saw the same prolific scar on the left side of the face, and two grown fawn. Could it be they were still together? The buck stood in the road, watching us, and letting his family pass.

It is amazing how God puts something in our path along our journey to show us the beauty and grace of life, and how he, too, acts as that buck, protecting his family throughout all of life.


Chapter I

T revor rested his head on the steering wheel. The traffic light had changed from red to green three times, yet, Trevor nei-

ther noticed nor cared. Lightning illuminated the 2 a.m. sky, making the droplets of rain sparkle like falling diamonds, as the grumbling sound of thun-der drowned out the steady drumming of watery pellets upon his truck.

The blast of a horn drew Trevor from his de-spondency. He lifted his head and looked out of his driver’s side window and saw that a van had pulled up even with his vehicle. It was the occu-pant of that vehicle that had blown his horn in an effort to capture his attention. The motorist had lowered his passenger’s side window and was now looking at Trevor with concern. Trevor wiped the tears that had been sliding down his face, a parallelism of the raindrops being brushed away by the windshield wipers, and lowered his window.

The rumbling sound of the storm dancing with the deep baritone hum of his engine filled the cab.“Sir, are you okay?” the motorist yelled out of his

window.Unable to find his voice, Trevor just nodded his

head and waved. He tried to muster a smile to accompany the positive response but succeeded only in making a face similar to a baby tasting a sour candy.

The motorist, perceiving that Trevor was not all right, pointed to an I-HOP that was located on the corner across from them. “Hey,” he began, ’’Could you pull over to that I-HOP? Let me buy you some

THE EYE OF CALMby Troy Glover

“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart;” Psalm 34:18

breakfast. Maybe you can help me find the ad-dress I’ve been looking for?”

Not really knowing why, Trevor nodded yes and raised his window. He really did not feel like eat-ing right now, especially with a stranger. He just wanted to sit there in the rain, but he drove across the street anyway, pulling in to the empty parking spot near the entrance. The van pulled in along side and they both made a hasty dash into the restaurant as lightning once again lit up the sky.

Chapter 2

T revor and the driver of the van stood in-side the restaurant, silently observing each other. The stranger stood taller than

Trevor’s 5 foot 11 inches, and was at least 20 years Trevor’s senior, making him somewhere in his late 60’s. He was bold and had light brown eyes that shined clear with wisdom, from a face etched with tools from time passed. He finally held his slightly damp hand out to Trevor.“My name’s Fedoy Lordly,” he said. Trevor took

Mr. Lordly’s hand and, in that moment, felt a small portion of calm and tranquility. All of the stress and torment that he had been trying desperately to drive away from seemed to have been pushed back in that clasping embrace. Trevor looked deep-er into Mr. Lordly’s crow-footed eyes and saw em-pathy and compassion. Trevor felt his composure slowly start to return as he sniffled and wiped his eyes with his free hand.

The hostess greeted them and led them to an empty table. She handed them both a menu and


informed them that a waitress would be with them shortly. Mr. Lordly picked up the menu and began perusing the selections. ”What would you like?” he asked.

Trevor began staring out of the window. The momentary eye of calm he had felt had begun to move on and the tumultuous storm of thoughts had once again called to him.“I’m sorry, sir, I shouldn’t be here. I gotta go,”

Trevor said as he started to get up. Fedoy quick-ly reached across the table and grasped Trevor’s hand. That peaceful island of calm returned.“Hey, it’s okay,” Fedoy said soothingly, ”Just have

a cup of coffee with me and you can be on your way. I’ll pay.” Trevor sat back down as Fedoy let go of his hand. A waitress approached their table and Fedoy ordered two coffees. They both sat in silence listening to the soft steady rat-a-tat of the raindrops on the window pane. Time slowly ticked by and minutes later their coffee was placed on the table. Fedoy thanked the waitress as he reached across the table to retrieve the sugar dispenser.“I didn’t catch your name,” Fedoy said as he

poured himself an unhealthy portion of sugar.“Uh, I’m sorry. My name’s Trevor,” he said as he

brought his attention back to the table from out-side in the stormy sky.“Nice to meet you, Trevor. I hope you don’t mind

my saying but you look like a man suffering from a-whole-lotta-crap,” Fedoy said. Despite his mood, Trevor found himself smiling. ”So, if you want to, you could unload some of that stuff right here and I could listen,” Fedoy offered. Trevor looked at Fe-doy for the third time. There was something about his fatherly countenance and smooth James Earl Jones voice that made Trevor feel that it was okay

to share his pain with this stranger.“I lost my job this morning. The company I worked

for had been laying off workers for months, but I felt that since I had been with them for 16 years, I would be one of the few they’d keep,” Trevor be-gan. Fedoy took a sip of his coffee and nodded his head empathetically.“My mom has been in the hospital since the lay-

offs began, so it’s taken part of my income to help with her medical bills. I’m not sure what I’m go-ing to do now. After I was fired, I went over to the apartment of the woman I’ve been dating for six months and walked in on her in a, uh, compromis-ing situation,” Trevor eyes began to water.“I went home, and as I pulled into my driveway,

my next door neighbor, she,” his voice cracked, ”she tells me that she accidentally hit my dog.” Trevor’s eyes began dripping tears. Fedoy knew that this man in front of him was about to break. Like a dam whose water has reached a critical point, its wall was about to burst.“Have you tried taking your problems to the Man

Upstairs?” Fedoy inquired.“You mean someone at work?” Trevor asked, as

he wiped away runaway tears.Fedoy smiled at the confusion. ”No, I mean Je-

sus Christ, the Savior on the Heavenly floor,” he explained. “From what you’ve told me, everything that’s happening is beyond your control. If it wasn’t, and you could fix it, I’m sure you wouldn’t be here at 2:30 in the morning with this fuddy-duddy old man, sipping coffee and enjoying this beautiful stormy night. “Trevor, the old Black Book says that the Lord is

nigh unto them that are of a broken heart. He’s here for you.”

“You are never less alone than when you are alone.” Richard Wurmbrand

Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Christian of Jewish descent, was imprisoned and tor-tured for his faith by the communist regime of Romania in 1948, after he publicly stated that Communism and Christianity were incompatible. He served a total of fourteen years, three of which were in solitary confinement in a cell with no light, windows, or even sound.


I I have been in solitary confinement for ten years. There are many ways that I have improved my-self, including being closer to God. I grew up in

the Catholic church. But in March 2016, I became a Christian. I didn’t ever feel the Catholic church nur-tured me spiritually. It was just going through the motions. I stopped attending the Catholic church in my teenage years.

I would say that I am in God’s state of peace. I stayed in level three for almost two years. I rarely get to go to the store, so I had no reason to be level one.

In that time, I did many Bible study courses from many different prison ministries. It seemed like ev-ery day I would send out a Bible study lesson and receive another in the mail. I would spend most of my day doing Bible study lessons.

Before I even stepped foot in TDCJ, I accepted the fact that I will be buried in the Captain Byrd ceme-tery in Huntsville.

Prior to prison, I was not close to my relatives. I had little interest. Now that I want to be close to them, they have no interest in me. They don’t ever

solitary solitary confinementconfinement

by Anonymous

respond to my letters, so I stopped writing. I’m moving on.

I have simplified my existence as much as possi-ble. I have no interest in anything going on outside the concertina wire. I listen to very little news. I don’t read newspapers or magazines. I can go an entire day without speaking more than ten words aloud.

I wouldn’t say I was an angry person. However, my anger level has gone down significantly. An-ger serves no purpose. It’s pointless to get angry about the raw pancake on the tray. Anger is not going to make the pancake be fully cooked. I try to have as much equanimity with all the nonsense that goes on here.

I would say that I was a fairly patient person. In solitary confinement, my patience level has vastly improved. Being impatient is not going to make the trays get passed out. The cart will still sit there one hour before the guards start to pass them out.

Throughout the day I constantly think: Dear X, God bless you. May others treat you better than how you treat inmates.


Is there a way out of all this mess I’m in, or is it too late to call on your name? Is there

Something I can do to get your attention, Lord God, or have I pushed you to the point to where you have forgotten about me? Will you

Open your ears to my prayers, or am I just wasting my breath and tears? Will you

Lift your hand of affliction that you have placed on me, or will you keep letting the devil beat on me? Lord God, will you

Allow me to have love, peace, and joy in my life, or will I always feel this pain and anger inside? Will you take me to the

Top of the mountain so that I can tell others about your mighty miracles and blessings that you have done and given to me, and so that

I can praise your holy name and give all the glory to only you, or will you leave me in the valley to teach me a lesson, because I didn’t

Open my heart and mouth to call on you sooner? Lord God, will you break these chains that weigh on me so heavily, or will they be the death of me? Lord, I

Need to know, is it necessary for you to allow me to go through all of this? If so just let me know, because right now my heart and mind are clouded by all these problems that I face, as I

sit isolated in prison, waiting patiently and trusting in you to deliver me safely out of this place. Lord God, I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m

complaining, but right now I just need you to answer my pleading and prayers that I bring to you in your son Christ Jesus’ name.

by Joseph Karadeema Jr.


When I look in the mirror I see a reflection,But the man I see does not have my same complexion.I do not understand how this came to be,But I do not recognize the man I see.

I used to see a boy treating life like a game,Now I see a man with his head down in shame.He used to live life with out any fear,But now he hopes to survive just one more year.

The world outside these prison walls moves so fast,The only thing he seems to do is think about the past.He regrets all of his bad choices,And awaits the day he can hear his family’s voices.

The law of the land he will no longer bend,The friendships he destroyed he hopes to one day mend.So when you hear this man’s confession,Look in the mirror and see your own reflection.

REFLECTIONby Jeffrey Wallace


Entombed in concrete,Embedded in dread;

Wish I would’ve known these feelingsWhen those demons I fed.

Entrusted myself to a character unknown;So many opportunities missed,

So many chances I’ve blown.

Forever deconstructingAll that I built up;

Don’t know good from bad,Sometimes I just wanna sup.

Seeing all that I lost,The fallacies in my future;

Some wounds are just too deep,Regardless of the sutures.

So, if I continue to live my life,Letting my memories win;

Somebody, please show me how, And where my healing begins.

ENTOMBEDENTOMBED

by William C. Wallaceby William C. Wallace


my friends blew awayin the winds of changemy reputation was buriedright next to my namemy family formed questionsof just who i wasbecause a man is definedby the things that he does.

you could spend most your lifetimedoing everything rightand lose all your favor doing wrong on one nightno excuse acceptedbecause life deals with factswhich shine light and exposeneeded things that you lack.

you feel you’ve been played withlike a dog with his bonewhen your family and friendshave left you all aloneyou recall being therewhen they needed you mostand now when they’re neededyou’re haunted by ghosts.

well, i never prayed muchbecause i had controli was god in my lifeand i cherished that rolebut i needed to fallthen i realizedwhat i needed mostwas to apologize.

to God who created and His Son was sentto give me this changeto accept and repentHe died and got upso He could raise meso i could stand tallon my bended knee.

when i put my focus on God and His Sonand He wiped away all the bad things i’d donei noticed my familyand friends were still thereand i saw their lovebecause God shows He cares.

Finding Forgivenenessby Albert Thompson

Solitary Submission(musings on prayer)by Albert Thompson

a small roomintimately quiet—secretsurrounded by chaosideas with awful intentions

abducted peacelonging to come homewith accompanying graciousnesslistens high above the earth

waiting with answersbefore being askedspirit filled questionsfrom His child’s hopeful heart

searching in solitudewith so much to saya humble attitudedetermined to obey

giving Him gloryabsorbing His storymeditating on where all hopes gorespecting His powersubmitting controlbelieving without ceasingwhispering praise in His name

The name, Jesus,erases all sinmistakes and blundersthrough His perfect blood

He heals every ailmentHe supplies every needHe enjoys joyful noisesHe listens to bended knees.


II am originally from McAllen, Texas, from the south side of town. My home was situated in a barrio called “Smokey Town.” It was a small,

three-road neighborhood with a lot of dope ac-tivities, and, even though it was a small location, there was a handful of faithful homeboys.

I was raised in a Christian home, and my par-ents seemed to be wonderful caregivers in all that was within their means. However, I wasn’t a Christian. I was simply obeying my mama or my grandmother to attend the weekly services. In all truth, I didn’t want to go, but I went anyhow to keep from arguing.

Coming from a huge family, we simply didn’t have much to suffice for personal enjoyment. Oc-casionally Mom or Dad bought us each a gift, but there was a total of six of us, three boys and three girls. I’m second to the oldest.

I have plenty of childhood memories, from sheer joy to tearful times. My parents did all they could to provide, but I was a young, wild kid who wanted only the best things. I was ambitious, but my strong desires were hardly met. How could a thirteen-year-old boy get all that he wanted when his parents simply couldn’t afford these things? I quickly found a way to get fine clothes and nice shoes: stealing.

My parents’ relationship began to show signs of problems. Perhaps I wasn’t paying much attention before, yet I noticed that my parents argued quite frequently. That concerned me, but what could I do? I also noticed that dad was drinking too often. Mom didn’t like it, and I think this was the cause of all their arguments. Dad would spend a lot of time drinking and at the “cantinas” with his clos-est friends. He was such a macho. He seemed to not fear anything or anyone. Somehow, I looked up to that and I wanted to be the same macho kid. So I turned to gangs.

My roledogs and I used to spend a lot of time smoking pot. In the late eighties, that was our main drug of choice. I felt connected with my homies. We understood one another and we certainly had each others’ backs. However, as committed as we were to each other, we all had problems at home or school.

I spent three separate times in TYC for youth crim-inals. My pot smoking had increased, and drinking became the norm as well. Most of my days were spent stealing, drinking, smoking pot, and out on the streets. My home became the streets. Those streets didn’t have rules like my actual home. I believe it was those rules that prompted me to seek outside friends. Honestly, I thought that the streets were more promising, but I came to find out that my thinking wasn’t necessarily correct; I was confused. I didn’t truly know that in my faulty thinking existed a false belief system.

Sin had me by my throat. How did this start? In-fluences. I didn’t realize that external influences and neglect were forces that led me to think and act differently. At one point of my teen life I be-gan to listen to death metal and speed metal mu-sic with no thought about how it would infect my thinking. Music that spoke about killing, stealing, rebellion, and rape began to form my thinking to the degree that I became antisocial and autono-mous. No one would ever control me or bully me any longer!

Many years passed and I found myself married to a wonderful girl. I had just left Beto House in McAllen, Texas, and for the next seven years (1991-1998) life was good. We had issues like any rela-tionship, but those are the only years that made sense in my life. My wife gave me three daughters and a son. I honestly can say that I enjoyed those years, but I had a secret like anyone else, an addic-tion that haunted me for many years and nearly

fallacious stairsfallacious stairsby Fernando Zuniga Jr.


destroyed my whole life. I was addicted to porn. No one in my family knew about this. When I was

young, my dad managed to slip one day watching his porn stash, and I vowed to find it at all cost! And I did. But, I again didn’t know or comprehend the complexity of porn and how entangling it is, controlling and corrupting the mind.

It all started off innocently enough. No foul, no shame, as long as I wasn’t caught; but the more I viewed those video tapes, the more I enjoyed it. The more I thought about it, the more I craved it. It called out to me. Those videos were telling me that it would be okay as long as we kept it a secret; our dirty little secret. I was so emotionally entan-gled in those videos that I sought them each day. I became sexually active about 14 years of age. Lit-tle did I know that, as I viewed those videos, I had entered a demonic abyss of perversion.

My mind was being reshaped into something else. My childhood innocence was fallacious-ly guided by shapes and voices that subjectively made me feel good through that TV screen. Porn had convinced me that this was right and quite normal. My secret followed me into my adulthood years, yet my wife and kids didn’t know. Secrets are never healthy, emotionally or spiritually.

I look back and am shocked as to the lifestyle I was living. I am perplexed by all the harm and crimes I committed, yet I can’t change my past. All I can do is give my testimony on “fallacious stairs.” Steps on sand can’t lead up for the simple fact that sand collapses from the weight.

Much of my beliefs and thinking were false, and I started to live out these beliefs. I believed that sex was love, and though sex is a gift from God, I was misusing it for self-pleasures. My thinking was so corrupt that I couldn’t see the darkness I was living in. How could I break free out of this madness? How could my thinking be reshaped unto whole-ness and soundness? I needed time to think in solitude and to find answers, but how could I find such a place that would drown out the noise of madness in my life?

I found this place in 2003 when I landed in ad-seg for nearly ten years. I know that God was set-ting the stage for me to have to look up in faith to

him. Jeremiah 29:11 became very real to me.“For I know the thoughts that I think toward

you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

What I thought to be my most distressing mo-ments in ad seg turned out to be blessings in themselves. If it were not for the belly of that 8 by 12 prison cell, I would never have called out to God. I was sick and tired of walking on stairs of sand and sinking into a swamp of sin. Sin wasn’t my friend. Never has been, and never will be. Sin is madness to the soul.

During my stay in ad seg, I found out how truly wretched I was. I was lost in sinful pleasures, and my heart was sick. My eyes were open to the real-ity of sin’s path, as well as how it had affected my life. It led me into a path of false views, just like it did in my parents’ lives and their parents’ lives alike. I went from asking God, “Why?” to saying,

“What would you have me do, Lord?” in a more teachable manner. I needed God’s direction, and I needed my soul to be set free.

That dungeon cell sent me to my knees in search of truth, not just answers. Truth that would em-power my heart to live in light. A precious light that somehow I knew was solely found in God through His beloved son, Jesus Christ.

I realized that I stood guilty before God in his heavenly court system. I had violated his law and was found to be guilty. Once that conviction set in, that I was an offender under his divine law, I became fearful! “The fear of the Lord is the be-ginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7) I needed to turn from my self-righteousness and religious mind. I needed Christ’s own perfect righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21) to get me in the right relationship with God.

God’s goodness led me to true repentance. My fallacious stairs were destroyed by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ:

for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16)

Repent and believe Christ’s words and work. He alone saves. Trust in his righteousness.

“Salvation is wholly of the Lord. God thought it, Jesus bought it, the Spirit wrought it, the Bible taught it, old Satan fought it, but thank God, I’ve got it!”

Evangelist Lester Roloff (1914-1982)


Its cover is faded, tattered, and worn,And its pages are bent, yellowed, and torn;

But the words it contains are a beautiful thing,‘Cause they tell the story of an awesome King;

Who died for our sins, yours and mine,And the debt He paid was a great sacrifice;

‘Cause He did it to save a wretch like me;If you’re washed in His blood, then you are set free.

The grace He offers is pure and it’s strong;Keep faith in Him, and you’ll never go wrong.

Yes, its cover is faded, tattered, and worn,And its pages are bent, yellowed, and torn;

But it’s where I go when I’m in need of help,So my Bible doesn’t collect dust on a shelf.

DUST ON A SHELFby Marshall J. Lee, Jr.


“Jimmy”; or “Funeral For A Grasshopper”

by Jessica D’Lene Robertson

A fter two months of life behind bars with us, we laid Jimmy to rest yesterday. She said his antennae had curled up, but he

looked happy and that his little brown-green head had rested on his arms in the end. I remembered how she would bring him down to the dayroom and feed him soggy potato chips and sometimes drops of water from the tips of her fingers. She talked about him all the time and everyone knew who Jimmy was. I assured her he was much loved.

She brought him downstairs yesterday after-noon to give him a proper burial, having wrapped him in tissue paper and sock elastic. He had been found in medical, so it was only fitting that he should be buried as close by there as possible, in pill line.

Stealthily and with a certain notable care, she held his body in her forest green jacket pocket. When we first made it to the line we saw that the ground was much too hard; I was behind her and Laurie was in front. I thought maybe she should pour some water from her bottle to loosen the sun-baked red clay, but just then her eyes lit on

the perfect solution.“Is that a rock?” she asked.“Yeah, it is,” one of us replied, and she moved the

embedded gray stone from the hard ground, leav-ing a veritable tomb.

She gingerly placed his small neatly-wrapped body in the hole and pushed the earth in around it. Then she covered him with a layer of fresh green grass and placed the stone back over the indention.“Now he can have a tomb like Jesus,” Laurie said.

I smiled at Laurie and at the thought of the love of my Savior. Out there in the sun and fresh air, I handed her a Bible verse I had copied down just that morning.“It’s a good one for his funeral,” she said soberly.It read: “Come from the four winds, O breath,

and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” Ezekiel 37:9

And with that, we funeral-marched away from the burial site to get our evening pills, then into the chow hall, quietly remembering his short but meaningful life.


My house is one of heartache,A place of steel and stone,A barren cell, a home in hell,And here I stand alone;

And when I rage and pace my cageThat no man wants to own,My body aches with frozen stakesThat chill me to the bone.

I hear them sling their giant keysAnd crank the big iron locks;The scrape of feet upon concreteThe guards patrol the blocks.

Convicts’ knives take human lives;No jungle holds more danger;And each new day that comes my way;Each man remains a stranger.

I watch my back ‘cause there’s a lackOf men who can be trusted,And through the haze there comes a rageToward the rat that got me busted.

They came today and took awayThe man that lived next door;To end his strife, he took his life;He couldn’t take no more.

It’s quiet here upon the tier,Since death has claimed a brother;Now each of us are wonderingWho might be another.

THE WORLD OF THE FORGOTTENBY PHILLIP JACKSON

“But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.”

Lamentations 3:32-33


Barbwire SaintFor those who have served behind the wire

by S. Marshall

In a place of darkness, cold and steel,In a place that robs you of your will,In a place where it is so hard to feel, Like your soul is wrapped in sharp strands of steel.

Into this darkness, you come bearing light,And its gentle radiance reveals my plight;An ugly truth is brought into scope, Under all these scars, I’m afraid to hope.

At the sight of hope, these wires constrict upon my soul;They grip me so tight, I think they’ll never let me go!They cut and gouge my spirit, bleeding me dry, So, in the deepest darkness, I find I cannot even cry.

These are the odds that you know you face;Year after year with a smile on your face;Your courage is inspiring, amazing is your grace, As you struggle to show me there’s a better place.

You labor to unknot these wires and see my soul set free;I see your poor, persistent hands rip and tear and bleed;The blood of your love has hit my dry, parched soul, And awakened life on that once barren shoal.

For the many who say they can’t,Or too great is the taint,And for the multitudes whose hearts are faint I thank God for the barbwire saint.


TT here was a father who had a son he loved more than anything in the entire world. He loved to see his son smile, and he would

light up just as much.It was a beautiful day outside, so perfect, you

wouldn’t think anything bad would or could hap-pen. The father wanted to take his son out to the water to enjoy the day.

While the son was out in the middle of the wa-ter, splashing and enjoying himself, his father was contentedly sitting on the water’s edge.

With the flip of a switch, things took a terrible turn, as things sometimes do in life. Both father and son spotted a gator coming toward them from the other side of the water. The father was stuck on the shore, so all he could really do was encourage his son to swim like he hasn’t ever swum before.

The son swam the best he could, but sometimes it’s not good enough. As soon as he reached the shore, the gator got a hold of his legs. But at the same time, his father got a hold of his arms. Need-less to say, that gator got the biggest fight of its life! That boy’s father wasn’t going to let go; the gator was going to have to drag the father in the

water too!Where I come from, most people would call

certain types of folks “red-necks,” but on this par-ticular day, the father and son encountered one of these men who will instead forever be looked on as an angel. This ol’ red-neck was riding down this road in his truck and noticed what was taking place. He pulled over, grabbed his shotgun from the back window rack, went down, and killed that gator.

The son lived but was stuck in the hospital for some time due to all those cuts and scars. The news crew was in his room, trying to get a story. They kept questioning the boy about the scars on his legs. “He really tore your legs apart! Why don’t you tell us about those scars that ol’ gator gave you?”

With a proud smile, the son looked at his father and told the news reporters, “I don’t care about the scars that gator gave me. They mean noth-ing to me. But how about we talk about these scars on my arms? They’re my favorite scars of all. These are the scars my father gave me ‘cause he wouldn’t let me go!”

The Scars My The Scars My Father Gave MeFather Gave Me

by Michael Bishoff

106 Volume 6, Issue 2 • September 2020

Write a story based on this photo. 600 words or fewer. One submission per person. The top entry will be published in an upcoming issue.

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Escriba una historia basada en esta foto. 600 palabras o menos. Una historia por persona. La historia ganadora de éste concurso será publicada en la siguiente edición.

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