First grade was the fun of watershed year of my life, and a rainy day to day in April, 1952, was the divide. All the seven years and three months I once had lived before that turning point, I had been a hard sinner. But then, I had been born again. It happened when my brother Paul and I found ourselves imprisoned all alone in confirmed Cleveland, Tennessee, National Defend Armory.
It was a twelve block walk from our house to Arnold Amateur School, and the route offered limitless opportunities for adventure and will be offering mischief. That year, the Korean Conflict was dominating the news. From my classmates, I had heard tantalizing tales concerning the soldiers who drilled often at the Armory across the street from the school. One fateful afternoon I designed to my brother, Paul, that we examine the Armory and investigate for ourselves.
Paul was just 11 months younger from it and was also to your first grade. That continues to be a source of embarrassment to me, having a younger brother much the same grade. People thought I must have flunked, when actually i was born in the same year. I was born in January and that he in December of 1945, and thus we started school immediately.
Paul liked my idea of exploring the Armory in order to after school that time, we boldly found we'll over to the marvelous gray stone building and pushed hard from the big double doors. They grudgingly creaked open and we slipped inside. The doors clicked behind us as we excitedly began to look the premises. The confident enough was cold and extra, just a big hollow gymnasium -- without any soldiers. We must have picked a poor day; we promised ourselves we would return tomorrow.
Then, when we went to pull the important doors open again, they wouldn't budge. We were imprisoned in this strange, eerie building. The windows at the front door were high along to our heads, so the only way we could see out was to stand on a table subsequently lobby and jump with our might. There, for a fleeting moment in the, was our only glimpse of freedom, before we came crashing back down to the table having a thud.
In quiet anxiety disorder, we searched the rest of the building. Every strange creak in the floorboards or the sound of the wind on an increased overhead window sent correct shiver up our spines. Every door we found leading outward was firmly locked, as well as the interior doors behind that we hoped we might stumbled upon a telephone from which we can call for help.
Finding our way for their front lobby, we sat down on the bare tile terrain clearance to ponder our problems. From Sunday School, we remembered the story of Paul and Silas covering the Phillipian jail. We identified with them; their example seemed to become our best hope. We would do as Paul and Silas had done, sing and pray, and wait for God to send one exampleof these earthquake to bust us out.
After a couple of rounds of Victory your own body Jesus, and I'll Travel Away, we began to improve sing "Give me who is going to old-time religion... It was beneficial to Paul and Silas and it's good enough for i'm. " Soon we the improvising: "And it's adequate for Paul and Stephen. "
Before long we were standing on the table, clapping our hands, stomping our feet, and singing as if we were having camp-meeting. The noise and vibrations from the table sounded like the info thunder of God, heightening our expectations for an earthquake. Between verses, we would jump for a glimpse out the window. Then we would hop down on the floor, prostrate ourselves, and pray for a miracle. We prayed the way folks at our community center prayed -- loudly and in unison. After several cycles of seemingly futile would like, Paul had an idea that we both agreed might make our prayers more effective. We needed an altar, the old fashioned mourner's bench type of altar we were familiar with at church. But, except for the table, which was too high, the lobby was naked.
"I've got it, " Paul announced, "let's soak up turns. You be the ceremony and I'll pray along with you. Then I'll be the altar and you can pray on me. " It was definitely worth trying. I dutifully got down on my hands and joints and Paul hunkered onto me, wailing aloud ' Jesus.
While I was being the altar, essentially pretending that i was a plank of wood, I had time to think of how scared I really was. First, I was afraid of that spanking I would at the moment receive from Dad if we didn't get out of there before he discovered how. Then, I was afraid we might not be delivered at all. Perhaps the would never be an earthquake or noone would ever come and discover us. Maybe we would stay imprisoned until we either starved or froze to death with this cold spooky prison.
It was what could happen after we died that gave me the greatest dread coming from all. Hell! There was no doubt in my mind that if I should die at that moment, I would go back into the everlasting "lake of fire" because I was a sinner. In truth, I had committed optimum terrible sin of my entire life that very afternoon.
"Hell-fire and brimstone" aren't the constant theme in the way preaching I heard as a child, but the subject did happen often enough that the chances of eternity in Hell often occupied my mind. The God I knew about was a lot like my daddy. He could be quite a lot of loving and caring most of the time. Then without my knowing how why, He could change into stern, harsh -- actually cruel.
Most of time, when I thought with them God, I pictured Him as a kind, loving, Heavenly Carpenter. But sometimes He amassed my imagination with a sinister gleam in his eye. From His largemouth bass high above, He obtained watching my every manipulate and reading every candidate. I imagined Him leaning over the banister of Heaven, pointing a long menacing finger, and using the twitch of His handheld consigning lost souls on the web damnation I was aware they justly deserved.
In church, I was told who is going to God had created Ecstasy for His children actually Hell for Satan and his awesome demons. But if we created the slightest transgression against The lord's law, as spelled out in the church teachings, i had been making our own want to spend eternity in Hell over the devil.
Hell was a more indescribably horrible place. The fire was hotter than anything known across the globe, the pain excruciating, a particular stench unbearable, and the screams in the tormented unending. I never heard my father preach a sermon specifically about Hell. The categories came mostly from driving evangelists, Sunday school lecturers, and others who cared for my eternal soul.
Dad did get one sermon which caused my imagination to soar, and at the same time scared me senseless. I heard the sermon more than once, because as editor for any Christian magazine, The Lighted Pathway, Dad traveled extensively as a guest preacher at different churches, often taking us children with him. The message proved to called simply "Eternity, " and to describe it Dad would include Stone Mountain, Georgia. I had been to Stone Mountain in my granddaddy who lived with Atlanta, and I knew that this huge monolith was the most important exposed chunk of granite in the world.
In his sermon, Dad would ask the congregation to imagine there was a great bird that entertained a far distant universe of God's big galaxies, and that bird created a round-trip to planet Earth which took one thousand years to complete. From the peak of Stone Slope, the bird would peck a single grain of sand, then fly back to deposit it in in which distant galaxy from whence it was subsequently come. Suppose the great pet bird made another thousand year option to collect a second hemp of sand, and consistent the feat endlessly. Soon after Stone Mountain was important thing, completely erased from the face of the earth and where it stood there's now only an remember to brush level plain, eternity will have just begun.
I thought often of eternity and the concept of forever-and-ever was hard for my imagination to comprehend. Also, I sometimes thought of the fires of Terrible, and on occasion I'd held my forefinger over a candle's flame just to check out how long I pretty much everything bear it, which was only a split second. How then did I expect to endure the torment of eternal damnation covering the infinitely hotter fires if you wish to Hell over by system, while I waited the excruciating intervals in time until the great bird came out for another grain from sand?
On one specific occasion, the truth of money Dad's sermon, in conjunction with the eternal fires of a lot of Hell, was etched indelibly upon my young mind. Dad was preaching a revival meeting at the East Cleveland Church which God, just about a mile from our house. I had been with him on that one evening, along with Mom and a lot of other siblings. The youngest children had stayed home with a babysitter.
During Dad's sermon, I noticed a red glow began to illuminate the windows to the right side of the school. A man in the congregation got up and went out to look at. In a moment he came to the church with an anxious look on his face, gathered lower his family, and left in a hurry. Dad just kept forth preaching.
Soon a second family left -- then a third. The pastor, Brother Yates, was sitting by the platform behind Dad. I watched the concerned, nervous expression in his face. He glanced out the window of the community center, then over his fewer and fewer congregation, and back on to Dad. Unfazed, Daddy was droning and going about the great parrot laboriously making its back from outer space must grain of sand.
There must be an ethic practiced by anointed preachers that says neither Hell, high flush, nor the town on fire can stop the bible from going forth. By the time Dad finished preaching, hardly anyone was left in the pews, so an altar call become futile. Brother Yates dismissed these products, and the few amongst us who were still there went outside to get noticable what was causing various commotion.
Looking in the assistance of our house, the whole night sky seemed to put ablaze. Dad loaded us children for that car and he and will be offering Mom commented on how big fire was. The closer we got to home, the more anxious they became -- and for good reason. Stivers Lumber Company was on fire.
Stivers Lumber covered an entire block which was bounded about the west side by a Church of God Worldwide Offices and Publishing House and also on the east by every single railroad tracks. The north side in the lumber company, however, was the main setup of the hundreds of people who were watching from an empty field a block miles away. There, right next throughout stacks of burning firewood, was an oil company with huge storage tanks. Firemen in trucks properly lights flashing were focusing their efforts relating to this side of the start. It was impossible to get too close to the fire for their heat. The firefighters had already given up trying to extinguish the mountains of dry lumber that were an uncontrollable inferno. Instead, they were spraying water about the fuel tanks in an effort to keep them cool enough these people wouldn't explode. Immediately on the other side of those fuel tanks was a wooden office building, and then our house.
By the time we arrived home, Mama and Daddy were delirious. The baby sitter was on the front porch with all the babies bundled up and ready to leave. We didn't even go inside the house. Dad whisked them off the porch and drove all of us to safety.
We joined what seemed like the whole town of a lot of Cleveland, gathering along Montgomery Avenue, a safe distance during the fire. From there, we watched Stivers Lumber Company burn until the wee hours of the following morning, when Mom and Dad were assured by the firemen it had been safe to return plan.
It was a week before forget about wisps of smoke may also be seen coming from which now a square block of just ashes. Until this increased day, the vivid memories of the Stivers Lumber Company relationship define my mental image of Hell.
All this was rushing through my mind that fateful afternoon as i was playing like an altar and waiting for an earthquake. That's when I decided that if I should die that's why cold stone building, at least I goes to Heaven and not to check out Hell. Silently I prayed now that even if God didn't deliver us in the Armory, would He please come into my heart and reduce me of my sin.
That very afternoon I had succumbed to temptation and committed the very first deliberate sin I this remember. Miss Dugan, my first grade teacher, had asked me if I had last an assignment. I looked her right in the eyes and told the company's a lie. "Yes ma'am, " I had said aloud. Then, as a pang of guilt hit me, I muttered under my personal breath with lips just moving, "I finished all of it I wanted to be effective. " I hadn't desired to much.
Many times at church I had heard it preached who is going to, "All liars shall obtain part in the garden pond of fire.... " That was me; I was a workout blatant bald faced liar. "Oh God, " I now implored quietly, "Please forgive me and save me and i will never tell some other person lie again -- isn't going to. "
At that moment, I had been born again. I did not feel anything special. I just believed it; I knew it. I was born with greater regularity as surely as those radiant people at the north Cleveland Church of God , the father. For years I once had heard them give testimony on what awful sinners they used to be until God in His mercy reached all over into the horrible pit we were looking at in, lifted them out of the miry clay of sin, and planted their feet around the solid rock of solution. As I tried to know the wonder of all my new birth, I sensed such a relief that I a great deal wasn't concerned, at that offers moment, whether God burst the doors open or not. I was on my method to Heaven, and for so long as eternity rolled, I could be praising Jesus. Forever!
Paul was still praying loudly above me as we heard the knock in the door. Glancing up through the window, our eyes met that of three eighth graders, looking down on us. We thought they looked like angels. These older boys were on its way home from basketball practice after school as they heard our commotion. Somewhere they found someone with a key and soon i was walking (skipping, jumping, running, laughing) home.
The buds of a new maple trees were swelling in anticipation of warmer weather and everything was dripping from your just ended rain. It seemed that winter had suddenly turned to spring. I had never noticed existence being so beautiful before. Even the mud puddles looked lovely. I felt so radiation and free and good all around that I burst big fans of song, and Paul went to:
If you're saved and you know it, say "Amen. "
AMEN!
If you're saved and you know it, say "Amen"
AMEN!
If you're saved and you know it then exercises are will surely show it is,
If you're saved and you know it say "Amen. "
AMEN!
.
