<TITLE>17. Par 189-198</TITLE>L-189 I was telling the wife, sometime ago. I may have told it here before. You know my family's background. I love my daddy. He has gone on. He died in my arms, praying. But he drank. All my family drank. They done great, harmful things; yet, disgrace to society. My brothers drink; not because I want them to. I cry for them, pray for them, everything else.
It used to be, before God called me, I'd be standing on the street, talking; somebody, they... On account of the name, they'd, oh, "Branham? Oooh. get away." Somebody else come by, look for somebody, say, "Get away from him." All right, then they'd get away. They wouldn't talk to me.
I said to the wife, the other day, "Now, I have to slip out in the woods somewhere and hide to keep people from all over the world, coming."
What did it? Because I studied a lot? Because I learned theology? Because I got an education? Because I joined some church? No. That would've been an uncertain sound. But something sounded one day, down in my heart, not in my mind, in my heart. God came in. It's been good ever since. That's amazing grace.

L-194 The other day I was amazed, above anything that's happened in a long time. I'm a great lover of nature. You know I am. I love animals. I just think they're wonderful. I was setting in my door. Brother Leo and Gene was there. And Brother and Sister Wood was down there. And little Billy Gillmore, the milkman, was standing there. And at ten o'clock in the morning, down the road come something a limping, pulling a leg behind it. It turned into my gate, and come up to my steps. It was an old opossum, at ten o'clock in the day. They're blind at that time of day. They're blind, all, in daylight. They're a night animal that runs at night. They prey, and prey around, and get their food at night. All you know that. A opossum is a edible animal.

L-196 And he turned into the gate. I went out to meet the opossum. I took a rake. I thought, "Strange. He may be blind. What makes him act and reeling like that?" I laid the rake over him. And he turned and looked at me, and growled. I thought, "There is something strange."
And I happened to look down in her pocket. A opossum is one thing, besides the kangaroo, there's only two that has a pocket they carry their young in. And in the pocket of the opossum, she had eight or nine little hairless babies in there. And a dog had got a hold of her, or either a car, broke her leg, her shoulder bone. Green flies all over her, maggots in the ears, and so forth, and here she was, hobbling up like that. And she growled because she thought I was reaching for her little ones.

L-198 I said, "That opossum has got more motherhood about her than a lot of women, especially this woman throwed her baby in the river the other day to get rid of it." I said to Gene and Leo, setting back there, I said, "Come here and I will teach you a sermon." I said, "Look at the morals of this woman. Look at the morals of this lady. It's a dumb brute, but she's got more lady about her than forty percent of the American women." Right. I said, "She has got just about an hour to live from the looks of her, but she will spend that hour fighting to protect them little ones. And these women go out here and have little babies, and smother them, and drown them, throw them in fire, and things: worse than dogs, worse than animals."


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