<TITLE>08. Par 29-31</TITLE>L-29 And they were crossing the sea. Oh, it was real quiet, and smooth, and the oars dipping into the water, which is music to a boatman's ears, to hear those oars dip into the water. And they'd wave good-bye, and pull a few more times and wave good-bye. And as the little boat went on, and the sun got lower all the time. After while the people on the bank become smaller and smaller, and the little boat becomes smaller to them. After while they couldn't see them wave no more, nor could not hear them call "good-bye" to them any more.
And they said, "We must speed up." And so they'd pull pretty hard until the sun went down, all the way down. Then it got cool out on the Galilean lake. And it must have been the young John... He was a young fellow. He must've got tired quick, because he wasn't an old rough salt, like them other fellows was that knowed them boats, and how to fish, and everything. They were all fishermen, so they knowed how to pull them oars: Simon, and Andrew, and all of them.

L-30 But John was young. I hear him say, "Whew. My. Hm. Brethren, let's rest awhile. I'm getting tired." So they let up on the oars, and young John stood there with his head down a little while, and his dark hair hanging down his eyes. And he brushed it back.
He said, "I'd like to have a testimony meeting. That's a good thing, while we're resting. I'd like to have a testimony meeting. And I would like to be the first one to testify."
You know, when you've got something to say, you just can't hold it still. You got to say it. Just bursting out of you, you got to say it.
"I'd like to have a testimony meeting," said young John. "And I'd like to start this testimony meeting. Brethren (as he stood up in the boat, you know), brethren, I would like to say this. That no matter from this day on, how many people tell us we're wrong, they can never be able to tell me no more. I've heard them call our Master a fortuneteller, a devil, Beelzebub, all kinds of names. But I know that they're wrong. For today when I seen Him do what He did today, it settled it forever for me."

L-31 Now, he said, "You know, when our people first come over here from Egypt, come up through the Palestine, and come over into this country, I used to live on the hill just above Jericho. And as a little boy, a little Jewish boy, I used to run on the hills and play. And in the afternoon after my mother give me my lunch, why, she would call me in and set me down on the porch. And in the springtime, I'd pick a little handful of flowers and give her. And my pretty little Jewish mother used to set there, and stroke my head, and pull my hair back, and tell me Bible stories until I went to sleep. Oh, I remember those Bible stories."
It's too bad today that we tell our children so much about Davy Crockett, or something like that, instead of about Christ. We tell all kinds of other stories but the Bible stories.


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