<TITLE>25. Par 94-97</TITLE>L-94  And I got out there and I couldn't get my outboard started on, like that, the string just froze. Sleeting and snowing, and I was trying to get it started. It wouldn't start. And the current caught me, and there the falls just below me. And I knowed what was going. And there, setting in that boat, out there, rocking back and forth, and the waves twisting like this, me pulling on that string, and it wouldn't start. And I'd pull again, it wouldn't start. I thought, "Oh, my, a half a mile farther, and down through that chute I'll go and they'll never find a piece of me, when I go down through there." I thought, "Oh, God, the wages..." The way of a transgressor's hard, friends. Don't you never get that, but what it is. And I thought, "Oh, God..." I begin to remember it. I begin to remember Him then, that He called me to go and I didn't go and I refused to go. During that time though, we'd went ahead and received the Holy Spirit, both of us.

L-95  And I was pulling the string; it wouldn't start. I got down, I thought, "There's little Billy Paul. I'll never see him again. There's little Sharon Rose. I'll never see her again. There's wife laying there in the hospital, right at the point of death. I'll never see them when they break the news to her that I'm gone and find my truck setting there, and then it... Well, some of them might've seen the house move away. What will happen?" I said, "God, have mercy upon me. Please, dear God, I don't want to die. I'm sorry that I did what I did." I said, "Help me to start..." I pulled the chain and away it started. Cut through and come way down by Howard's Park and come back. Went and got my car real quick, left my boat tied up, top of the tree where I could get back to it. And I come up and got my car real quick. And some of them said, "Why, they're telling the depot washed away awhile ago," where the wife was.

L-96  And I run up through there real quick, and I met a major there. And I--I stopped and I said, "Major Wheatley..." I knew him. I said, "Is it true, that I...?"
He said, "Yes, the water broke through." said, "All that hospital bunch was taken out though." Said, "I think that all of them got on a car, a train, and they've gone to Charlestown, Indiana, and you can find them up there."
I jumped in my car. I remember the last time I seen my little associate pastor. He grabbed me by the hand; he said, "Brother Branham, if I never see you again, I'll see you in the morning." And that's the last salutation one another as we saluted one another. He died during the time of the flood. And all... Oh, he never died; he went home to be with Jesus during the time of the flood: a little boy, filled with the Holy Ghost, a little Frenchman, DeArk was his name.

L-97  And away we went. I--I went out there to try to--to get across and when I got my boat down there and got up there, the Lancassange Creek up there was backed through for about eight miles of water through there, twisting. There wasn't a river where it cut around. And some of them said, "Well, last train that crossed, went on a trestle. The trestle washed away and every one of them was drowned right by the...?..."
Oh, my, I said, "It can't be? It can't be," and I tried again; I tried to pierce it. And I couldn't...  try into the night. The waters taken me back. Come to find myself cut off from everybody, setting out in the room, up on a hill. And there, for about five or six days I had plenty of time to think all over my wrong, when God called me to go and I didn't go. And setting there thinking, "My baby and wife has drowned. My mother, where was she at? I didn't know where she was at. I didn't know where no one was at.


<A HREF="P26">Next Page</A>