NEVER FORSAKEN
“I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread,” Psa. 37:25.
How very much that verse describes my own experience. I look back over the years and see the hand of the Lord protecting me and caring for me. More often than not I see him delivering me and protecting me from my own folly.
I made my first effort to preach on the fourth Sunday in July, 1952. That was sixty years ago; so by the time you receive this mailing I will have begun my seventh decade in the ministry. Whether I ever finish that seventh decade I have no idea.
As I approached my fiftieth anniversary, some of my family wanted to plan some kind of meeting recognizing the event. One afternoon during the Spring Meeting would have sufficed. But I did not feel comfortable with the idea. I said I might agree to it, if I ever reached my sixtieth anniversary. But this time nobody mentioned it and I am relieved. I feel less inclined now than I did ten years ago.
I am sure that if we had such a meeting my friends would have said some good things and bragged on me. But sometimes when I go away on preaching appointments, the pastor does that, and it makes me very uneasy. I did not want to subject myself to that sort of thing for an entire meeting. I doubt that I will feel any more inclined if I should reach that seventieth anniversary.
But, even though I am not interested in that sort of meeting, perhaps it would be alright for me to make comments about some of my experiences. Paul was forever telling his experience, so it should be alright for me to do it.
I cannot remember a time when I was not interested in religious matters. My grandmother began to talk to me about my destiny as soon as I was old enough to understand what she was saying. Just before my sixth birthday, we moved from Monroe County to Maryville, Tennessee. There was a little Presbyterian mission just up the street from our house. They did not have preaching, but they did have a Sunday School. My parents did not go to church at that time, but on Sunday morning I would walk to the Sunday School. I attended there most every Sunday for the next five years.
For the most part, the day of revival meetings has passed, but in that day, churches had revival meetings. They almost always lasted two weeks. If a church scheduled a one week revival, other churches wanted to know what was wrong. In rural areas, like Monroe County, where I was born, and where my parents grew up, I remember them having service morning and night for two weeks.
Nowadays, I sometimes hear of a one night revival. Very often a revival will be scheduled for Sunday night through Wednesday night. That just adds two services; they meant to have Sunday and Wednesday night services, anyway. But in that day churches were more serious about revival meetings. To be sure, a lot of the people came because they were bored out of their skull, but they came. Then television came to this area about 1950, and revival meetings have never been the same.
In December of forty-seven, a little church on the next street began a revival. It lasted into the seventh week. It was in that meeting that I first made a public profession of faith. I had just turned eleven. My father made a profession during the same meeting, and we all began to attend that church.
I felt at that time that the Lord had called me to preach, and one Wednesday night I told the church of my impression. Nobody paid any attention to me. I cannot imagine why they should. Little boys do get strange ideas. For the next four years I did conduct prayer meetings, and sometimes I taught a Sunday School class, but I did not make any effort to preach until I reached the ripe old age of fifteen. At that time I again told the church of my impression, and that time they took me seriously.
Looking back, I cannot imagine a poorer prospect for a preacher. I was small, very small, for my age. I was so skinny I looked like I might blow away. We lived in the poorest section of town. I was bashful, and I had an inferiority complex that was just eating me alive.
I was very much like the old boy who had heard about a psychiatrist who might be able to help him with his inferiority complex. The good doctor put him through a battery of tests and came back with the report. He said, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that you don’t have an inferiority complex. The bad news is, you really are inferior.” In some ways I still wrestle with that problem.
In July of fifty two they allowed me in the pulpit for the first time. I preached on 1 John 4:7, “Beloved let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.” That is still one of my favorite texts.
That church was committed to Arminian doctrine. That was all they knew, and all I knew; but the doctrine never did satisfy me. There were too many contradictions. One night a lady attended our church who had been sent as a missionary from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. It was her mission to evangelize us here in Appalachia. She was given permission to speak.
She explained that God was depending on us to help him save souls from hell. She explained that, “God has no hands but your hands, no feet but your feet, no voice but your voice.” I was about twelve years old at the time, and small for my age. I looked down at my tiny little hands, and my tiny little feet, and I thought, “If God does not have any hands except these hands, and no feet except these feet, he must be a mighty small god.” I learned later that God is a lot bigger than the good sister thought he was.
That church had broken away from the Primitive Baptists about thirty years before, and they went immediately into Arminianism. They were probably unsound before they left. But they still carried the Primitive Baptist name.
That doctrine was all I knew, and I did not know anybody who believed any different, so to the best of my ability that was what I preached for the next six years. Then in 1958, Brother O.D. Young from the Chattanooga Church came to work for the same company I worked for. He told me he was a Primitive Baptist and invited me to come to a special meeting at the Chattanooga Church.
We Primitive Baptists preach a lot about what the gospel will not do, and we have it right. The gospel was never intended to make children of God. It was never intended to save souls from eternal damnation.
But, while that is true—so far as our experience in this life is concerned—the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the most powerful force man has anything to do with. When the heaven born soul hears the gospel preached in power, it can turn his world upside down. I attended that meeting, and my life has never been the same.
By that time I had moved to Athens, Tennessee to work. That was fifty miles from Maryville, and Chattanooga was another fifty miles. For somebody who had never been anywhere, and never done anything, that was a long way. When I got to the church, I discovered there were people who had come from Georgia and Alabama for the meeting. That struck me as strange. They had passed any number of churches on their way, but they seemed to think there was something special about this church. They thought this church had something none of the churches they passed up had.
And they had a different attitude toward the preachers than anything I had ever experienced. I had always heard, “There is room to differ.” It was clear they did not believe that. I got the idea that if one the preachers strayed, these people would know it.
It must have been a fifth Sunday meeting. They had two visiting preachers, and those preachers had an entirely different attitude toward their subject than I was used to. I had never heard anybody preach with such confidence, with such conviction, as those two preachers did.
The preachers were Elders M.P. White and Holland Crumbly. I am sure that by seminary standards they would never have won any prizes for oratory. They were not polished orators. But in their own down-to-earth, homespun way, they were as powerful—and as eloquent—as anybody I ever listened to—either before that time or since. They made their points, and nailed them down, and I would not have dared question anything they said. It was so different from anything I had ever heard, that I did not know what to do with it, but it turned my world upside down.
Those of you who remember Brother Crumbly remember how he could be preaching in power. You could see the very Spirit of God reflected in his countenance. He would pause for just a moment, pound the bookboard and say, “Boys, this is hit.” I had no idea what hit was, but I had no doubt he knew.” He’s gone now, but I will cherish his memory,
till the day I die.
Years later, when he came to die, he had been sick for a time. For several days, the thought kept running through my mind, “Harold Hunt, if you want to see Holland Crumbly again, you had better do it now; before long it will be too late.” I was appointed to be the visiting preacher at the Annual Meeting at Harmony Church in Alabama. I had preached on Friday and Saturday nights, and when I got up Sunday morning, I discovered I was expected to preach that morning and again on Sunday afternoon. I told Elder J. L. Harper, the pastor, they would have to excuse me from that afternoon’s service. It was a long way home, and before I left Alabama, I had to go see Brother Crumbly.
I took a shortcut across the mountain past Grant, Alabama to Woodville. I knew about where he lived, and I finally found his house. When I got there, he had a lot of company. They probably felt the same way I did. They must have thought the time was near; it was; he died just a few days later. When I came in, somebody said, “Brother Crumbly, look who’s come to see you.”
He said, “Oh, Brother Hunt, my traveling days for the Old Baptists are over. I have just got one more trip to make—that long trip. But,” he said, “Brother Hunt, I don’t dread it.”
As I sit here pounding out these words, my heart is in my throat, and tears run down my cheeks. Oh, how I miss him.
In a few more months it will be fifty years, since I turned my back on all my former religious connections, walked down the aisle at the Knoxville Church, and requested a home with the Primitive Baptists. Very nearly all those who were preaching for the Old Baptists at that time are gone now. Those of us who are left are in our seventies and eighties. I love those who are left, but I really miss those who have passed on. It cannot be long before I join them.
But to get back to the Chattanooga meeting, those preachers stirred my soul, even though I did not understand much of what they said. Brother Young asked me to go to his house for awhile after the meeting, and he explained the doctrine of the Old Baptists. As you might imagine, I had never heard anything like that, and I did not agree with him; but I could not reject it out of hand.
If I was going to reject his doctrine, I had to disprove it. Saying I did not believe it was not enough. I went home intending to find the necessary proof texts to drive him out of the Bible. I am sure many of you have heard others tell the same story—just before they joined the church. I went to all those passages I had used to preach the contrary doctrine, and one by one they failed me.
I found plenty of texts that seemed to almost say that a person’s eternal destiny is in his own hands; but I could not find the text that said it in a way that could not be denied. On the other hand, I began to find texts that seemed to say exactly what Brother Young had told me. After awhile, I gave up looking for texts to prove my point, and started to look for texts that proved what he told me.
All of my earning years I worked in direct sales. I would have done something else, but I did not know how to do anything else. Besides, direct sales allowed me to set my own hours. It did not interfere with my preaching, and that was my first consideration.
My job involved route work, and being alone in my car, I had plenty of time to think. One day I had just left a service call, and I was pondering what O. D. Young had told me. I said to myself, “He told me Christ only died for the elect; I know better than that; Christ died for the entire world.” About a hundred yards down the road I came over it again, “I know that cannot be right; Christ died for every believer.”
I had no sooner said it, than it seemed like somebody doused me with a huge bucket of ice water. A voice seemed to shout in my ear, “That is not the way you said it a moment ago. Back up the road you said Christ died for the whole world. Now you say he died for every believer. You can’t have it both ways; not everybody is a believer. Did he die for the whole world—or did he die for believers?”
At that moment the first glimmer of light began to shine, and I began looking for texts that proved election. No sooner had I learned about election, predestination and sovereign grace than I wanted to preach about it. But after six years of preaching it the other way, it was not as simple as just shifting gears. Try as I might, I had trouble making the change. I would come right up to the door, but I could not go through.
I was serving a church in a little mountain community called Happy Valley, and one Saturday night I came right up to the point where my faith had always failed me, and the door seemed to open. I preached for close to two hours before I found relief.
From that moment on, you could not get within speaking distance of me, but that I wanted to know, “Have you heard about election; have you heard about predestination?” To me that was this morning’s headlines. It was the most exciting news I had ever heard, and I could not keep from telling it.
For the next two years, I preached the sovereign grace of God in Arminian churches. That was an interesting experience. Nobody argued with me. I had my proof texts. The Lord blessed me to explain them in a clear manner, and they just left me alone. They did not run me off, but they did breathe a sigh of relief when I left.
About that time, the pastor of the Progressive Primitive Baptist Church in Lenoir City asked me to fill in for him. Not long after that, he resigned and they called me as pastor. I moved my membership there and they received me by letter. Nobody mentioned that my letter from an Arminian church was insufficient. Actually, I had first been baptized into a Missionary Baptist church, but that did not seem to bother them.
At that time there were a few Progressive preachers in this area who knew something about sovereign grace, but most of the others were Arminians. Those who believed, and those who did not, simply agreed to disagree and they got along just fine.
For twenty-one years Elder Leonard White had been the pastor of the Progressive church at Lenoir City. He left three or four years before they called me. Just after he left, Elder W.A. Pinkstaff from Lynchburg, Tennessee held a week’s meeting, and he went through the major doctrines of grace. That disturbed some of the members. They said, “Elder White never preached any such thing.” Others said, “That is exactly what he preached.” A few weeks later, they saw Elder White at a special meeting and they told him what Elder Pinkstaff had preached, and asked if that was what he believed. He told them it was, and they wanted to know why he had not preached it at their church.
He said, “I knew there were some of the church who believed it, and some who did not; so I preached in types and shadows. Those who believed the doctrine understood it, and those who did not believe were not offended.” That may explain how those who believed, and those who did not, were able to get along.
When I joined the Progressives, I did not know the difference between them and the Old Line Primitive Baptists. I am a slow learner and it takes me awhile to sort things out, but it did not take me long to realize I had not helped myself. They had a piano, and an organ. They had a beautiful painting of Christ behind the pulpit, and they had a Sunday School.
The Sunday School must have bothered them at one time. It had been established about the time the Old Line and the Progressives separated, and they called their Sunday School, the Union Bible Sunday School, as if the Sunday School had no connection with the church; they just used the same meeting house. I did not bother to ask; the reasoning was obvious, but the fiction had worn through long before my time.
I had always been determined to go as closely by the Bible as I could, and I soon began to comment on those practices I thought were not authorized by the Scriptures. That went over about as well as it did when I preached God’s sovereignty among the Arminians I had just left.
I learned there were Old Line churches in the area, and I began to attend some of their Saturday services. I recognized the difference, but I could not see my way clear to join. In the course of my inquiry I had gotten hold of some old Puritan books and they had made a Calvinist out of me. Those old Puritans thought God predestinated everything that ever happens, good, bad, or indifferent. By then I had heard the Old Liners preach often enough to know they did not believe that.
That left me in limbo. I did not agree with the Arminians I had just left. I did not agree with the Progressives on their innovations. And I did not agree with the Old Line preachers about the predestination of events. It appeared that I did not fit in anywhere.
And then, somehow, I got hold of an old worn out copy of Elder Lee Hanks’ Church History. It contained an article entitled The Absolute Predestination of Sin Impossible and Why. He explained that everything God does is good, and if God predestinates sin, then sin must be good. But sin is not good; therefore we should not accuse God of predestinating it. It appeared to me that was too simple to be wrong.
That cleared my way to ask for a home among the Old Line Primitive Baptists. On the first Sunday in January, 1963, I offered myself to the Knoxville Church. They received me, and I asked if I could be baptized right away. My alien baptism was annoying the life out of me, and I could not wait to get to the water. They wanted to know if it would be alright to eat lunch first. I thought that was a good idea, and I was baptized that afternoon by Elder J. L. Wolfenbarger in Fort Loudon Lake.
It was cold as whiz and the water took my breath. The lake was not frozen, but the ponds around there were. A day or so before that I noticed cow tracks in the snow where a cow had walked across a pond. But when I came out of that icy water, I left a burden I had been carrying far too long.
We were always short on money. I worked in direct sales because I did not know how to do anything else. About all I knew about selling was to knock on the door, and stumble and stammer until I got it out as to why I was there. How very many times I have knocked on a door, and stood there saying over and over in my mind, “I hope they are not home; I hope they are not home.” But somebody would be home, and I would say my piece. I would usually sell enough to survive another day, and if I did not, we survived anyway.
We would not have survived if it had not been for my wife. God only knows what would have become of me if he had not provided me with her. The last thought on my mind every night, and the first thought every morning, and any time I wake up during the night is, “Thank you Lord, for providing me with her.”
She could stretch a dollar to its limit, and if we did not have the dollar, we just did without together. We had one boy and three girls. For years she made all her own clothes, and all the girl’s clothes. She was very good at the job, and she kept those girls and herself dressed as well as anybody we were around.
I did not fare quite as well, but when the collars of my shirts wore through, she knew how to take them off, turn them over, and put them back on, so I could wear them through from the other side. I learned to preach with my coat on in July and August, so people would not notice that the seat of my best pants were patched.
My wife was an excellent seamstress, but she did not like to do patches. One day I had taken a suit to the cleaners. They had a lady who did minor repairs, and I had her to patch a pair of pants. As soon as I got back to the car, I checked to see if the patch was going to hold. It was, and I felt encouraged, but when I looked over at my wife, she was crying. I could not understand why she was crying—the patch was going to hold.
We might have gotten along better, except that for much of the first thirty-five years of my ministry several of the more affluent members of the church were vigorously opposed to the concept of the support of the ministry, and that affected the outlook of the entire church. They always saw to it that I had gas money, but there is more to car expense than keeping gas in the tank, and there is more to living than keeping a car running.
For the last twenty-five years, our financial situation has been much improved, but for those first thirty-five years, our situation was precarious. I am tempted to provide a list of chilling illustrations, but I am afraid that would sound like recrimination, and that is the last thing I want to do.
I have to confess that at the time I did feel more than a little resentful when some of the better-to-do members seemed to enjoy the fact that I was suffering, and sometimes they taunted me because of it. But we survived, and looking back, I realize that I actually benefitted from the experience. There were things I learned from poverty that I could never have learned from affluence. The miraculous way the Lord provided for me and my family during that time strengthens my faith for the future.
Regardless of how dark the outlook might be, deliverance always came. Sometimes it came from unexpected sources, and sometimes it came just in time—but it always came.
Even though we were often on the brink of destitution, I can honestly say that I never allowed the fact that I had to hold a job to interfere with my ministry. More about that in a moment.
One way we managed to survive was that I drove some of the most gosh-awful clunkers you ever saw. There was no way I could even think about the payment on a new car. I bought most of my cars from a buddy of mine who owned a used car lot. Some of them were back-row-specials; but they got me where I needed to go.
I bought at least three cars from a local junk yard. They always had a dozen or so cars they were not quite ready to cannibalize. They would let me make weekly payments, and if the transmission or the motor went out, they would replace it, and adjust my weekly payments. To anybody who has never been there, that has to sound like a ridiculous arrangement, but at the time I really needed it and appreciated it.
I drove those old clunkers all over the South attending meetings. I had an old Pontiac 1000 I bought from my buddy at the car lot. It was a back-row-special, and already worn out. I wore it out again. By the time I let it go, you could get it up to almost sixty miles an hour— that was pedal-to-the-metal, going down hill. The last trip I made was just over eight hundred miles. Going down the interstate, every so often, I would run on the shoulder for awhile to dismiss the following I had been gathering. When I got home I sold it to my insurance agent for $100. He said he could use it on his farm. My conscience bothered me until I remembered that I had just put a new starter on it. So I rationalized the sale by explaining that I sold him a $100 starter, and threw in a used car.
The Old Baptists I have visited have been very considerate. On one trip I had two flats on the way to the meeting, and got up the next morning to another flat. During the song service one of the deacons asked for my car keys. I did not think I had anybody blocked, but he seemed to think he needed my keys. After the service I learned that he and another deacon had taken my car downtown, and put two tires on it so I could get back home.
When I say those old cars were held together with duct tape and bailing wire that is not just an expression. One year at the close of the Annual Meeting at the Sycamore Church in Georgia, I noticed that the tailpipe had broken loose and was dragging the ground. Brother Raybon Lord went to his house and came back with some bailing wire, and wired up the tailpipe. That bailing wire was still holding the tailpipe in place when I sold it to my insurance agent for $100.
Finding a home with the Old Baptists, and being able to preach for them, gave me some relief, but I had another burden that would not let me go. For years I had felt the impression to publish a church paper. If I was a poor prospect for a preacher, I was an even more unlikely person to put out a paper.
The main problem was that it takes money to publish a paper, and there just was not any money at our house. But the impression would not let me go. Brother Joe Hildreth had put out The Christian Pathway for many years, and I went to see him to find out what he thought I needed to know about putting out a paper.
I was planning to start a paper from scratch, but about a year before that, Brother Hildreth had turned the Pathway over to Elder H.D. Fulmer. I had no idea, but after a year Brother Fulmer was ready to give the paper up. Brother Hildreth contacted him and told him of my plans. To cut to the chase, I wound up with the Pathway and its subscription list. Without that list I would not have stood a chance.
Sometimes the very best service a wife can perform for her husband is to rain on his parade. For a little over six years I served Enon Church in Mississippi. That is four hundred miles each way. I went down there twice every month; sometimes I went more often than that, so I thought we should move to Mississippi. My wife allowed it was alright with her if I wanted to move to Mississippi. She did go on to say, “I hope you will come back and see me every now and then.”
That settled that. I have no doubt that Enon Church was where God intended for me to be at that time, but after six years the need no longer existed. I gave up the church, and I did not have to go to the trouble of selling out and moving back to Tennessee. We were still living where we had always lived.
Her reaction to my starting to put out a paper was very much the same. She explained that was not the brightest idea I ever came up with. She was right and I knew it. I was having trouble coming up with my car payments. If somebody was having so much difficulty providing the barest necessities, what business did he have in taking on the responsibility of a paper?
I very reluctantly decided that was an idea that would have to wait for another day. But by that time I had ordered a typewriter from a small shop in Knoxville. I thought the right margin had to be justified (made straight) like the left margin.
I was determined to have a straight right margin, and I had ordered a typewriter that would do half spaces. I could not afford to hire somebody to set the type, so I typed every article twice. I would type it once, then I would draw a straight line along the right margin to see how many times I had to double space to draw the line out, or how many times I needed to do a half space to pull it back. Then I would type the whole thing again. Today a computer will justify the right margin at the push of a button, and I don’t do it. I have decided I would rather have a ragged right margin than to have white spaces spread all along the line.
After my wife explained things to me, I did not need the typewriter, but I could not leave the shop owner holding the bag. He had trusted me enough to order the typewriter; he was obligated to pay for it, and I was obligated to pay him. Besides he was obviously sick, and there was no way I was going to take advantage of him.
I had just held a special meeting, and the offering from the meeting and my car payment money were almost exactly the price of the typewriter.
I went to Knoxville and picked up the typewriter. By then I was sure I had no real need for it, but I did what I thought was the honorable thing to do. When I ordered the typewriter, I told the shop owner why I needed it, and when I picked it up, he said he wanted to help me. He took out his billfold, and counted out eight one dollar bills. He gave me all eight of them. That emptied his billfold.
For some reason, I could not bring myself to tell him I had decided I was in no position to put out a paper, and I could not take his money. He truly wanted to help, and I am sure that would have hurt his feelings. But I did take his money—the last dollar he had—and that for a paper I had decided not to start.
You cannot imagine the load that fell on me as I carried that typewriter to the car. Here was a man I did not really know. It was obvious he was barely making it with his little business, and he gave me the last dollar he had to help pay for a work I had already given up on. I have never had anybody drop a heavier load on me. I drove home with my heart in my throat. What was I going to do?
By the time I got home, the decision was made. I had no choice but to put out, at least, the first issue. Then maybe the way would open up for the next issue.
I had believed all along that if I could get one issue in the mail, by the time for the next issue people would send in enough subscriptions to put out the next one. Looking back, it is hard to imagine there is anybody that naive. Any publication operates in the red for years before it begins to pay its own way. My wife was right; it was not the brightest idea I ever came up with.
I was flat broke. Paying for that typewriter took all the money I had. I cashed out a little burial insurance policy to pay my first printer’s bill. Elder Glenn Hall gave me a $20 bill. At that time, second class postage was less than one cent per piece. It is more than thirty times that today. That $20 bill and the money from the burial policy got the first issue in the mail.
But what about next month? That was the only burial insurance policy I had. There is an old saying that, “God takes care of fools and little children.” It has been a long time since I was a child, but the Lord has always taken care of me.
Before the next issue was due, I attended the Mt Zion Association. Elder Guy Hunt had heard what I was doing, and at the close of one of the services, he had me to stand near the front of the building. He told the people what I was doing, and he told them to all get in line, and give me their name and address, and $4 for the first year’s subscription. More than forty of them did just that. I took in enough that day to pay the next month’s printer’s bill, with enough left over to pay that delinquent car payment.
Before the third issue was due, I attended a special meeting at Mackey’s Creek Church in Mississippi. Elder Clifford Rinehart did exactly the same thing Guy Hunt had done and with a similar response. By then I had three issues in the mail, and renewals from the old subscription list began to come in.
That was thirty-seven years ago this month, and from that time on, there has always been enough to pay the bills. There was very rarely anything left over, but there was always enough. If there were extra expenses, they would send more. It was almost as if, in times of greater need, they had all gotten a memo, suggesting they should send a little more this month.
I mentioned before that for the last twenty-five years, our finances have been much improved; but for the first thirty-five years of my ministry our finances went back and forth from despair to destitution. I devoted most of my time and energy to the ministry, and I did the best I could to scratch out a living, but for those first thirty five years it was really tough.
I learned that in the sales business the pressure is at the two ends of the relative standing bulletin. That is the summary that shows how you are doing, relative to all the other salesman. If you get too near the bottom, they wonder if you are worth keeping around. If you get too near the top, they think you have potential, and you can never do enough to satisfy them.
My sales career was one of dependable mediocrity. For the twenty four years I sold life insurance, I hid out about one fourth of the way down the list. If I stayed ahead of three fourths of the others, my job was safe. And I rarely got near enough to the top for them to think I had enough potential, that if they would push me a little harder I might do better.
I had always had managers who were sensitive to the responsibilities of the ministry, and they never complained about the fact that was my first consideration. As long as I got the job done, they did not complain about how I arranged my schedule.
After twenty-one years all that came to an end. During my last three years in the business the Lord blessed me with two of the most irreligious, disagreeable, uncooperative managers anybody could ever wish to have. I first got a new District Manager. The first time we met he let me know what contempt he had for preachers, all preachers. But for the next three years I had a Staff Manager who took care of me. A Staff Manager is between the District Manager and the agents. Then I got a new Staff Manager. He made the District Manager look sweet and gentle. Between the two of them, they put me out of the insurance business.
I will thank the Lord for those two men till the day I die. It was about that time we paid our house off. Our last child had married and moved out. We did not have as many expenses as usual, and the time had come that I needed to get out of the business. They took the decision out of my hands. The time had come, but I doubt I would have had the courage, if those two men had not come along.
God is not the cause of everything that happens in the world, and he is certainly not the cause of the wickedness we see around us. But we should never carry that thought to the point of denying that God is still in charge. He is able to take the wicked and bend their will to his purpose. He can cause the wrath of man to praise him. David said that (Psa. 76:10). Those disagreeable managers did not have the least interest in my welfare, but God was able to let them take their worst shot, and turn it to my advantage.
When a preacher gives up his secular job, it is customary to refer to his going full time in the ministry. That implies that he was not full time before—not in the way he is since he does not have a job.
But, brethren, I think we have this full time business all wrong. There are a lot more full time preachers than we have ever imagined, and many of them are doing as well, if not better, than some of those who do not have a secular job.
When I was still very young in the ministry, I met an old preacher, who had raised a large family on a little hard-scrabble farm. He was a poor man; he was barely able to scratch out an existence—and that was by working from can to can’t every day. If he was in the fields, plowing or chopping weeds most all the time, and if he went to sleep as soon as he ate supper, I wondered how he ever found the time and energy to study his Bible. His answer just blew me away.
He said he did work from early til late every day, and he did fall asleep as soon as he ate supper. But he also explained that, no matter how long and hard you work, you cannot do it without taking a break every now and then. He said he would take his Bible to the field with him and leave it at the end of the row. He would wear himself out working. Then when he took a break, he might take a quick nap, and he would read his Bible for awhile before he went back to work.
That cast a whole new light on the subject. I never did plow with a mule, and I will not take the time to tell you how much I have grieved over having missed out on that experience, but you don’t have to know a lot about following a mule to know it is not the most intellectually stimulating experience. I imagine that when your entire outlook on the world is the north end of a south-bound mule, you tend to think about other things.
That old preacher taught me that day. Far from being deprived of time to study his Bible. He did very little else.
Following that old mule did not require a lot of concentration. Every time he took a break he would read his Bible—and until he took another break, he thought and pondered on what he had just read. He was not only a captive to that little farm and the chores that went with it; he was a captive to that mule—and his Bible.
He worked from early til late, but he either read his Bible, or studied and pondered on it most of that time. Perhaps he studied and meditated to get his mind off that mule, but he had plenty of time to lose himself in thought. No wonder he got to church on Sunday morning anxious to tell what he had learned.
He may have been deprived in a lot of ways. His clothes may have been old; and there may have been holes in the bottom of his shoes—but he was not deprived of time with his Bible. I cannot imagine that many Doctors of Theology with their well stocked libraries, and their air-conditioned studies spent more time with their Bible—or knew it any better—than that old man did. They may think they are full time and he is not, but they just need somebody to explain things to them.
Not all of our preachers have situations like that old brother. But we have all figured out ways to redeem the time. We have learned ways to use what time we do have to the best advantage. Some of our brethren have very demanding jobs, that require concentration every moment. With most of us it has been somewhat different. Whether you drive a truck for a living, or if you drive nails, or cut hair, or any of the many other ways we have found to earn a livelihood—after you have been on the job for awhile, you usually find ways to redeem the time, ways to make your time work double.
You may have figured it out by now, that it really bothers me when I hear somebody refer to a minister as being full time, as if those preachers who have no choice but to hold down a secular job are any less full time than those who are better provided for.
If I might digress, I have noticed that sometimes those who have to hold down a job, spend about the same amount of time earning a living as some full timers spend with busy work and leisure time. Holding down a job does not interfere with the responsibilities of the ministry nearly as much as it rules out hunting and fishing and playing golf. More than that, Paul tells us:
2 Cor. 8:12 “For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.”
He was talking about money, but the principle applies to time as much as it does to money. God accepts what you have; he does not require what you do not have.
While all that is true, we should not carry it too far. Paul also said:
2 Tim. 2:4, “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
If those he ministers to are willing and able to provide a preacher’s needs, it sometimes indicates covetousness that he simply adds to his bottom line by holding a job.
But every case must stand or fall on its own merits; and every preacher must make his own decisions. Nobody has the right to demand that somebody else follow the same course he has himself followed. A situation that exists today may not be the same next year. And nobody has the right to insist that a preacher leave a job that provides security for his family, when there is every possibility he will desperately need that job next year.
My own experience was not the same as the old man with the plow, but there are some similarities. I did work long hours; I left early and came home late. But I found ways to redeem the time.
I began preaching in 1952. Battery powered tape recorders did not exist at that time. They came along about six years later. I bought one of the first of those recorders that were sold in Maryville. They were still reel to reel. It was another five years or so before pre-loaded cassette tapes were developed; so Alexander Scourbey’s New Testament on cassette was not available either. The old 78 rpm disks were available, but that did not help me when I was driving down the road.
My job was mostly route sales and service. Those first battery powered recorders were very inefficient. A set of batteries only lasted about two hours and a half; but I would record portions of the Bible, and listen as I made my rounds. I also had portions of the Bible clipped on the back of my route card, and I would refer to them as I walked to and from the customers’ houses.
Listening to those tapes, and reading from the back of those route cards, wore me out, and probably explains why I was never much of a salesman. It is hard to sell one thing when your mind is on something else.
I still wear myself out studying, and working on these publications, but looking back, I realize that I spent as much time with my Bible then as I ever have since. Sometimes I would come home at night with my head just spinning from listening and repeating along with those tapes. If I was not full time in the ministry before I gave up that job, I never have been. Listening to those tapes all day long, and reciting after them, I was able to quote my proof texts better then than I ever have been since.
For all those years, I had no choice but to hold a secular job, but I can honestly say that the ministry was always my first consideration. For the first twenty-one years my managers recognized that, and they did not complain. One Thursday morning, I asked my manager if I could be off the next day; there was a meeting I wanted to attend.
He said, “Sure, you can be off; if I tell you you can’t, you will just quit, and I don’t have anybody to replace you.” “But,” he said, “ is it worth it? You will roll out early tomorrow morning. Daylight will find you way down the Interstate. You will be in meeting all day Friday and Saturday. You will come rolling into Maryville way in the night Saturday night. You will preach two or three times on Sunday, and on Monday you will just barely be able to drag yourself from the parking lot to your desk. You will drag around all day Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday you will begin to show signs of life. Then come Thursday morning you will come around to me and say, ‘James, can I be off tomorrow; there is a meeting I want to go to.’”
He said, “It is a good thing you have life insurance. Some day they are going to scrape you up off the Interstate, and Doris and the kids will need that money.”
I cannot imagine there is anything unique about my experience. I have no doubt than many, perhaps most, of those preachers who are sometimes referred to as being not-full-time could tell very similar experiences. Details vary, but the principle is the same.
After I gave up my job, or perhaps I should say, after I lost the job, I put together a little sales business of my own. I made just enough to make my car payments. That was not a lot of money, but it sure beats not being able to make the payments. When I paid off my last car I gave that up that endeavor too.
Sometimes it takes me a long time to get to the point. But If you get nothing else from my rambling, I want you to know how much I appreciate your support for all these years. I have said all that has gone before to let you know that it is you who have provided the means necessary to do this work. You have kept us going from the very start. I have always needed you, and you have always been there.
Some of you have sent substantial amounts, others have sent what, by most any standard, would be considered small amounts. But every donation, large or small, is essential to the work. Large donations go farther, but it has always been the smaller donations that have kept us going. Without those smaller donations we would have bit the dust long ago.
I told about Ernie Summers and his eight one dollar bills to make the point that a single eight dollar donation absolutely changed my life. Had it not been for those eight one dollar bills, I would probably have given up on this work before it even began.
A couple of years later, when it appeared the work was going to survive, I went back to that little typewriter shop in Knoxville to tell him what a difference that donation made.
The new shop owner told me Ernie had died. I will always regret that I did not go back sooner.
There is much debate over whether we will know each other in heaven. I am firmly convinced that we will, and if that is truly the case, I assure you that I cannot wait to find that good brother and do what I did not get to do down here. I want to thank him and let him know how he impacted my life.
It is your generosity that has enabled us to continue, and I assure you that I appreciate every donation large and small. I have an idea that sometimes those two or three one dollar bills wrapped in paper represent as much sacrifice from that person as a large check does from somebody else.
There are so many of you who have been a blessing to me. I wish I could take the time to mention every one of you, single you out, and say, “Thank you.” But singling people out is the surest way to hurt the feelings of those you miss.
I have to confess that for the last few years I have had some discouraging times. Sometimes a feeling of total worthless-ness overwhelms and almost paralyzes me. I rarely question whether I am a child of God, but I often doubt whether I have ever been worth anything to myself or anybody else—and then I get a note from one of you, telling me you have benefitted from our work, and the sun comes out again.
My race is almost run. It has been sixty years since I went into the pulpit for the first time. I will not get another sixty years. With my health history, it is questionable whether I will get another ten. Whether I have ever been worth anything is not mine to say. Paul said, “Yea I judge not mine own self” (1 Cor. 4:3). That seems to be a good rule to follow.
Perhaps somebody is wondering why I have not mentioned the state of my health. That is just not on my mind at this moment. With the Lord’s watchful care, the attention of some very good doctors, and thirteen prescriptions, I am still around.
My friends seem to be far more concerned about my health than I have been. Of course I am concerned. Suffice it to say that the Lord has brought me through several life-threatening situations. Five years ago, when I came down with cancer for the third time, I thought my time had come. I boxed up most of my library. I did not want to leave that job for my wife to take care of. Most of my books are still in boxes. I am in the Lord’s hands, and I am perfectly content to accept whatever he has in store for me.
Rom. 14:8, “For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord’s.”
Phil. 1:21,23,24, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain….For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.
THE END