<TITLE>04. Par 12-15</TITLE>L-12 I don't know any... Did you all ever see stocks? I've had the privilege of seeing them. They--they put them in your--across your feet. And then they put them across your hands. And then put them across your neck. And there you are setting there.
And the Chinese capital punishment, the way they used to do it, is very cruel. They'd put them in those stocks and put a drip of water, just one drip at a time, falling on top of their head, like that, until it just drove them insane. They would set there and wasn't giving them nothing to eat or drink like that. And their--their eyes would turn and everything. It was just horrible thing.
They say the first few drops, of course, for maybe the first day, it isn't so bad. But they say after a few days, that those drops, like fifty tons falling, you know, every time, hit right in that same spot. 'Cause you can't move your head; you're in those stocks.

L-13 And just think that Paul and Silas, for preaching the Gospel, was laying back in that old dirty place. And probably rats, and mice, and bugs on them, and everything. What a place for a man preaching the Gospel. And we think today, that we complain because we have things a little hard. Look what they did. And knowing what was waiting them, perhaps execution the next morning.
But they were faithful. They--they were... They stayed faithful. And along about midnight in there, and I--I can just think of how they must have felt, their backs sticking to the old dirt where prisoners... And it was leprosy and everything else that in--in them days, and laying against the old hard floor... Might have been a dirt floor, and rats running over them...

L-14 But in the midst of all of that, perhaps no supper. And beaten till they was bleeding, and bruised, and sore. And no doctor to wash out the wounds or anything for infection that we'd use today, or something like that. Just throwed them back there, and put them in the stocks, and put them in that condition.
But they wasn't complaining. Not one word of complaint came from them. And knowing maybe the next morning, they'd--the magistrates would probably call them before the emperor and when they did--or the Sanhedrin, and they'd be executed for preaching this heresy, that it was called in them days. The Gospel that we truly, earnestly contend for that same faith today...
And then when we go to thinking about that, then the miles gets a little shorter between one another (You see?), each time we go to thinking about it.

L-15 And then we find out that along about midnight, Paul and Silas must've talked about the Lord until about midnight. And then they begin to sing hymns, some good old Christian song. Oh, if we'd sing it today, we'd sing "There's Power In The Blood," or "O How I Love Jesus," or something like that.
And when they begin to sing, all of a sudden an earthquake struck the place. And notice how it done. Instead of piling those walls of that big old building right in on top of them and them--and mashing them to death, it shook the walls away from them. And not only that, but it--it--it broke the stocks and bars loose from them. And they were set free.


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