<TITLE>02. Par 5-7</TITLE>L-5 Mr. Roberts is a smart man: four years of psychology, and a fine education, smart and shrewd. He knows how to handle things. God could use him. And he went forth, and now, he really has a great work across the nations. And...
Now, God wouldn't permit me to do that. First place, I haven't the education. I hardly have any education, and so then, I couldn't do that. I have no psychology; I don't even have a grammar school education, just the seventh grade. So I--I couldn't do nothing like that, and God knew it. Instead of letting my meetings blast out, and many opportunities has been given me, but yet I feel that God don't want me to do it.
Now, how could I come here, and perhaps four nights, and I'd imagine, I don't know, but I'd imagine all of us are poor folks, about a two hundred dollar love offering would be just about sufficient.

L-6 How could Oral Roberts stay here for two nights or four nights, with a two hundred dollar love offering? Not because that he wouldn't want to come, but he can't come. He's got hisself under such obligations, till it takes him about seven thousand dollars a day to operate, every day in the week. The last I heard was seven thousand, probably more than that now, with his many other stations of television. He couldn't come here. He would love to do it.
Oral Roberts is a good man. I know him, and he would--he would come here with all of his heart, but he can't do it. And when you--you invite him, and he says, "I can't do it; got to be so many hundred churches cooperate." He don't mean that to be indifferent; he's means that he can't do it; he's under such obligation.
But you see, I've never let my ministry get like that. It's real small. My obligation's about a hundred dollars a day at my office, home, is about a hundred dollars a day. So therefore, I can go anywhere. And then, if the Lord wants me to preach before a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, He just puts it on somebody's heart, and they send me. I don't have to worry about no money. Don't need any, so I don't have to worry about it. So I'm...

L-7 Let's see, I had a birthday recently, and I was--I think I was twenty-five or just a little past it. I was born in 1909; that'd make me a little--about twenty-five, wouldn't it? Just a little over--forty-nine. So I've been in the ministry, twenty-seven years, and never took up an offering in my life. I pastored the Baptist church for seventeen years, and never received a penny of salary, or took an offering all the time. Worked as a state Game Warden in Indiana, and made my living. Never took an offering in all my life.
I remember one night, I usually tell it, especially, when my wife's not along, that I got to the place I couldn't make ends meet. Did you ever get in that place? Sure, we all do. And I said, "Honey, I'm going to take up an offering tonight."
She said, "I'll go over and watch you do it." And she gets her seat and sets down. Now, not that people wouldn't do it, certainly, they would. They'd have give me anything they had. But I was young, and I--I just had Wednesday and Sunday services, and I... that's all I just--I could work, so why not work, and not be obligated to--an obligation to them. All the money I got, I put right in the church, everything outside of my living.


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