<TITLE>02. Par 5-7</TITLE>L-5 So my rifle went out. Now, a rifle is a strange thing to fool with. It's something that it takes the tension off of my nerves and things. Now, other people wouldn't give a care for it. And I believe our gracious brother Oral Roberts, I think he plays golf, and so does our brother Billy Graham. They play golf. That would get on my nerves, out there with them women half-dressed and things... I couldn't stand that, see, I just... But now, maybe, them brothers... I don't mean they get out there for that purpose, see. No, because they are... they are gentlemen. They are Christian brothers. But just to get out around there, I couldn't stand that, see.
And playing golf... I... that seems to me like it's for... it's for women, or something, see. Hit a ball with stick and run out there... Now, them brothers might think the same thing--setting around, fool with an old rifle. Well, you know we're made up different.

L-6 And so this rifle, the least little vibration of it any way, will throw it off. You can be shooting and driving a tack with it, and put your finger on the barrel, it'll just ruin your shooting, see. That's how accurate it has to be. Can't wrap your hand around the forearm. Lay it level in your hand.
And then you say, "What's all this got to do with what we're asking you?" But I'm trying to get you to something first, as a background.

L-7 Now, one day it went out, and I'd done everything I knowed how to do to make it... to bring it back in again. I tried rebedding it. I tried tightening, loosening, and everything else.
And a .22 you can't hand load it, because the primer's in the hull and you have to take factory loaded ammunition. Now, where we load the ones that's got the big shells, where we can knock the primer out and get a resizer and things, well, we can load that and keep changing powders, and grams, and weights of bullets, until we get it to where it'll shoot what it will shoot. Or either then we go into the bedding and so forth. Therefore we couldn't do it on that one. But I said, "Well, maybe I ruined the bedding. I sent it back to the Winchester company."
I returned it into the Winchester company, and they wrote me a letter which I keep for just a commemoration of it. They said, "Reverend Branham, this model 70 Winchester was not made to be a target gun," see. Said, "It'll group a inch... seven-shot group, it'll group an inch at twenty-five yards." And said, "You'll never get it any better than that, 'cause that's perfect for that type of gun; a inch at twenty-five yards."
I knowed that was wrong. I'd done put nine shots, one hole in the other one, at fifty yards with it. And that was the Winchester company made it.


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