E-34 And in there was a woman. I'd never
been in the country before. And there was a woman setting back in the
audience, and the Holy Spirit got among the people and begin to call
this one, that one, telling them. It was our Lord Jesus, His Word made
manifest in the body of His church. And then when He begin to speak,
Jesus stood on the grounds, knowing the thoughts of their hearts, spoke
to them, told the people about different things, as you all Bible
readers know: promised the same thing again to repeat in the last days,
promised it by His Scripture that it would do so.
E-35 Now, I want you to notice. Now,
when that was taking place, way back in the back a lady was weeping
somewhere on the big campground. Many, many hundreds and hundreds of
people were seated, and there was a lady crying. Notice, the Holy Spirit
went to the lady and said, "You're crying about your sister. Her name
is such-and-such. She lives at a certain place. You have a handkerchief
in your pocketbook that you put in there before leaving home. It's this
and this a-way, a handkerchief. You take this handkerchief and go lay it
on your sister. She's dying with cancer. And THUS SAITH THE LORD, she
shall live."
The woman took from the building, went and laid her handkerchief on the lady that night. And the next morning she was well.
E-36 Now. So I was... The season was
very hot. Squirrel hunting... As many of my fellow squirrel hunters
know, they're--they--the cracking of the leaves scares the squirrels,
and we... It was so dry, we had to go to a place where there was some
hollows that we could get into--little ditches, to walk through the
woods. My friend's name was Mr. Wood. He's setting over here to my
right.
And he said, "I know a man that's got a ground of many acres." But said,
"He's so hard to deal with." Said, "He's a infidel," and said, "he
don't believe in God." And he said, "He makes fun of it." And he said,
"But he knows me, he knows my father." And he said, "If I go ask him if
we can hunt on his place..."
I said, "Let's go."
E-37 We drove way back in the country,
way back on a side road, and two old men were setting under the shade of
an apple tree. He said, "There he is, the one to the right."
I said, "Being a minister, I better set in the car."
So he goes out, and he said, "How do you do?"
And the man said, "Come up, set down."
He said, "My name is Wood." He said, "I wonder if you would care if we hunted awhile on your place."
He said, "What Wood are you?"
He said, "I'm Jim Wood's son."
He said, "Jim Wood is a friend of mine, and any one of his children can hunt anywhere they want to."
He said, "Thank you."
He said, "I wonder now," he said, "which one are you?"
He said, "I'm Banks." He talked to him a few moments, and Mr. Wood said,
"I wonder if it'd be all right for me to take my pastor with us."
He said, "You don't mean you got so low down till you have to carry a preacher with you wherever you go?"
He said, "My pastor's out there."
E-38 I thought I'd better get out of the car. And I got out of the car, and walked over there, and I said, "How do you do?"
He said, "How do you do? So you're a preacher."
I said, "Yes, sir."
And he said, "Well," he said, "I'm supposed to be an infidel."
I said, "Well, not much to brag about, is it?"
He said, "I guess it isn't." He said, "But what I've got against you
people, you're talking about something you don't know about."
"Oh," I said, "is that so?"
He said, "Yes, sir. I hear them always blowing off about this, about a God, and everything." Said, "There is no such a thing."
I said, "Uh-huh." I said, "Well, 'course you know how it is, sir," I
said, "Everyone to his own thought." I was thinking in my heart, "Now,
Lord, You give me something to help that man, no doubt sincere."
And he said, "I only seen one preacher in all my life I--I'd like to hear--heard of him."
And I said, "Who was that, sir?"
He said, "Here about two years ago, there was a preacher over here at a
town called Acton." He said, "And old lady So-and-so up here on the hill
had been laying there for two years with cancer." Said, "Me and my
wife... They couldn't put her on the bedpan no more. They had to use a
draw sheet." And said, "We was up there that morning," and said, "the
doctor had said the day before that she wouldn't make it through the
night."
E-39 "She had cancer in her stomach. She
was eat up. She couldn't even drink barley water, and hadn't for weeks.
They'd fed her glucose through her veins, until her veins was
collapsed, and said there was nothing could be done for her."
And said, "Her sister was setting over listening to that preacher
preach, and that preacher didn't know anybody here, had never been here,
and told her who she was, and what her sister was, and thought about a
handkerchief she had, and said put it on that woman." And said, "That
night I thought they had the Salvation Army up there somewhere, of all
the screaming." And said, "The next morning we went over to see if she
was dead." And said, "When we got over there, she was up, cooking fried
apple pies and eating them." And said, "She even does the neighbor's
work." He said, "Now..."
I said, "What's so strange about that?"
E-40 He said, "Well, here's what I want
to know. If ever see that preacher, I'm going to ask him, what was it
told him about that woman, and whether she'd be healed."
"Oh," I said, "yes, sir." Squirrel blood all over me, and dirty whiskers
about that long, you know. And I said, "Don't look very much like a
preacher now."
He said, "Well, looks more human."
And I said, "Yes, sir." So I said, "Can I have one of those apples?" Little yellow jackets was all over them.
And he said, "Yes." I picked up one, and I bit it. And he said, "Help yourself. The yellow jackets are eating them up."
And I said, "Thank you." I took a bite of it. I said, "That's a fine apple."
He said, "Yep." He said, "That old tree's produced a lot of them for me."
And I said, "Yes, sir." I said, "How old is the tree?"
He said, "About forty years old." Said, "I planted it there, just a switch."
E-41 And I said, "Uh-huh." I said, "I notice all the apples are dropping off of it, and the leaves are leaving."
He said, "Yep. That's the way she does."
And I said, "I want to ask you a question."
He said, "Yes, sir. Go ahead and ask." He said.
I said, "What causes... Now, we haven't had no frost," I said. "It's
only the middle of August. We won't have no frost till about October or
November." I said, "But here in the middle of August them leaves are
falling off the tree." I said, "What's making them leaves fall?"
"Why," he said, "the sap's leaving it."
I said, "What if the sap doesn't leave it?"
He said, "Why, it would--the tree would get killed in the wintertime.
The germ of life's in the sap." Said, "If it would... It would it would
kill the tree. It would die."
I said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Therefore, the sap goes back down into the
roots where it's warm, stays there through the winter, then comes back
in the summer, bringing more leaves and more apples."
Said, "That's it."
E-42 I said, "I want to ask you
something." I said, "What intelligence... Now, the tree has none. What
intelligence says to that tree, 'It's coming wintertime. Get down into
the root and stay there until spring of the year.'?" I said, "Put water
in a bucket, and set it on a post, and see if it'll go down when fall of
the year comes. It won't do it." I said, "You have to admit there's
some kind of an Intelligence that makes that sap leave the tree and go
down into the roots. If it doesn't, it dies. It hides it away to protect
its life. Now, the tree has no intelligence. There's a law of God that
does that."
And he said, "Well, I never thought of it just like that."
I said, "Mister, the same Intelligence that tells that tree up
there--the sap in that tree to go to the roots, that same Intelligence
is what told me who that woman was, and tell her what was going to
happen."
He said, "You're not that preacher?"
I said, "Yes, sir." And there he was led to Christ, and died a Christian a year later about eighty-five years old.
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