<TITLE>09. Par -</TITLE>L-12-4 He blessed me for about nine years, but in California it--my ministry looked like, begin to drop down somehow. Mail fell off, look like the people wasn't interested. Well, I thought, "God, that is all in Your hands." Where I used to get around a thousand letters a day or something like that, and be down there, would drop down to six hundred, then five hundred, then down to four hundred, three hundred; a hundred and seventy-five, somewhere got down to about like that a day, seventy-five letters a day, maybe.
Well, I thought, "Well, wonder what's happened? I don't know as I've done anything. If I have to--to--for the people, why, I'm--I'm sorry." 'Course I thought, "Well, I haven't got... I don't sell things, and the only thing people writes to me for is to get prayer clothes, and we don't sell them. We give them to them; so well, Lord, maybe You're fixing to change things."

L-12-6 And I went to California, went about--about fifteen thousand dollars in debt in the meeting. And that night when I left, I asked Billy to tell me; and the dear people who was sponsoring it, they underwrote it and was very, very fine. But that wasn't the promise. I promised God what I'd do. And when a dear brother taken me home that night out to the little cabin where I was staying, I went out upon the mountain to myself, about two o'clock in the morning, and we was to leave around four-thirty. And I prayed. And the moon shining down bright, I can just see it. It was last fall.
I said, "Heavenly Father, now, I--I leave the field. I go home, and whatever You want me to do from henceforth, You just reveal to me."

L-13-2 And so, I couldn't tell Billy and them; I didn't want to tell them, didn't want to tell my wife, but, oh, I said, "I'll tell them when I get to Arizona." Well, then I said, "I'll wait until I get to grand old state of Texas, where my mother come from." I said I'd tell them there, and then I got there... I told them as they come in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Well, Billy, he said, "Daddy, better be careful what you're doing." Said, "Don't the Bible say, 'Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel?'"
I said, "I never said anything about preaching the Gospel, I mean the evangelistic service." And I said, "Look, Billy," I said, "God's got men on the field everywhere. He don't need me out there. I can go back and get my job again, and--and go to pastoring, and pastor the Tabernacle or something. I may go down and rent the old theatre down there and have a Sunday afternoon international gathering and a broadcast or something." I said, "I can't stop all at once now, because my expenses runs about a hundred dollars a day at home, so I--I can't with my office and things." I said, "I just can't shut right down, because I can't do it."

L-13-5 And so my wife said, "Billy, I hope you know what you're talking about."
I said, "Well, I--I--I know one thing."
When I came here one time in a convention for a convention... And you know the story. Because I'd promised this dear little Swede friend of mine here, Brother Boze, that I would come and preach two days for him in the Philadelphia church after that convention's over; and I was told if I didn't--if I did do that, I couldn't be a speaker. I could take my choice. I said, "I'll stay with my word." And I went to Brother Joseph's, exactly, because I'd do it again.
A man that won't keep his word isn't very good. That's the way I take God. He give the Word, and I believe every Word of it, and if He wouldn't keep It, It wouldn't be God to me. I... He has to keep His Word; I believe. And He will do it, and I know He will.


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