<TITLE>20. Par 75-78</TITLE>L-75  I counted my money. I had exactly two dollars and seventy-five cents and had to go home. So I counted how much gasoline it would take me: a tank of gas to get home. I had seventy-five cents left. So they... Going on, their meeting was going on, they was having a conference, a national conference. And I went down and got me a whole big bunch of stale rolls with sugar on them and wrapped them up and put them under my seat. And I knowed I could live off of that. Although they was having dinner there, and so forth, but I had no money to put in, so I didn't want to eat from them when I couldn't put nothing in the offering. So I couldn't find a place to stay, so I went out in the country in an old corn field and stretched out my seat out of my car, and put my trousers under there to press them that night, and laid down.

L-76  And I know that night they had a big bunch there, and they begin to preach, and they said, "All the preachers come to the platform." Two or three hundred preachers walked to the platform. And they had different ones, they said, "Now we haven't got time for all of you to preach. Just stand up and give your name, and where you are. And when it come my time, I said, "Reverend Branham, Jeffersonville, Indiana." Set down. "Evangelist," like that. Just on next like that and went on through.
And directly he said some man was going to preach, a colored man. They had to have it in the north, 'cause they couldn't have it in the south on account of the colored and white together. They brought an old fellow out there; he had on one of those great big old preacher coats, you know, them long... Old colored man, a little bit of a rim of hair around like that come walking out like this, you know. And I'd heard all good preaching that day. He walked up.

L-77  First time I ever seen a microphone. And I was watching the public addressing outfit, little bitty thing hanging there at the big tabernacle. My, it all looked good to me. And I was looking around, you know, but what amazed me is those people so free and happy. My, I didn't--was used to that.
And then this old man come out there. I thought, "Look like they'd have some of the young men preach instead of that old man, about dead. And he come walking out there like this; he said, "Well," he said, "Children..." He got to talking, you know. He took his text.
Now preachers been preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I was listening close, and all these things. But he took his text from back over in Job: "Where was you when I laid the foundations of the world, when the morning stars sang together and sons of God shouted for joy?" and he begin to preach on that and him... They preach those things down here, but he went up, back there with Job, plumb down through eternity, and down, and come back on the horizontal rainbow coming. About time he got preaching there about five minutes, that old stoved up man let out a yelp, and screamed and jumped up in the air, and clicked his heels together, throwed his chest back, tipped off that platform like a little bantam chicken, said, "Well, you ain't even got room up here for me to preach."
I looked at that, and I said, "My, that's what I want. If it'll make an old man act like that, what would it do to me?" If it's that...?... Why, I thought, "That's what I want." And I said, "I ain't going home till I find out more about this."

L-78  That night, out there I knelt down. I said, "Oh, God, them people's got something that I want." I said, "Let me have some of that." And I was... Listen, I said, "Now, give me favor with them somewhere. When I go down there," I said, "May I'll just... Maybe just them things get all over me and I'll feel that way."
So I went on down there. You know the Baptists don't act like that, you know, they have the... You know. And now, no disregards to the Baptist church, now, and that's all right. If the Baptists would've stayed back...


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