<TITLE>22. Par 165-174</TITLE>L-165   And I went, come over here at this tabernacle. From off this, where this platform stands, told the people, six months before it happened, "There'll come a flood. And I seen an Angel take a rod, and measure, 'Twenty-two feet over Spring Street.'"
Sandy Davis and them setting here, laughed, said, "It was only about eight or ten inches in 1884, boy. What's talking to you?"

L-166 I said, "It'll be. Because, I seen one of them trances, and It told me so. And It'll be there." And there's a mark on Spring Street, today, at twenty-two feet of water. I said, "I rode over the top of this tabernacle in a boat." I did.

L-167 During that time, my wife got sick. I prayed for her. And I come to the tabernacle, the people was waiting on her. I said, "She's dying."
"Oh, it's just your wife, that."

L-168 I said, "She's dying."
I went over there and prayed and prayed and prayed. And I'd hold my hands out. She took a hold my hand. She said, "Billy, I'll meet you in the morning, stand over There." Said, "Get the kiddies together and meet me at the Gate."

L-169 I said, "Just start hollering, 'Bill.' I'll be There." See? And she went out. I laid her down there in the morgue.
Went up home, to lay down. And when I did... Little Billy Paul was staying with Mrs. Broy and them, so sick. The doctor expect him to die at any time. Me praying for Billy. And here come Brother Frank and got me. Said, "You're baby is dying, the little girl."

L-170   I went out the hospital. Doctor Adair wouldn't let me go in, said, "She got meningitis. You'll take it back to Billy Paul." Had the nurse give me some kind of a red stuff to take, for some kind of an anesthetic, of something to quieten me. And I had them to leave the room, throwed it out the window. Slipped out the back door, went down the basement.
There laid the baby there, before the hospital, the isolated ward, flies all in her little eyes like that. I took the old mosquito bar, shooed them away, and put it over her. I got down, I said, "God, there lays my daddy and brother, yonder, and the flowers on their grave. There lays Hope, laying yonder. And here is my baby, dying. Don't take her, Lord."

L-171 He just pulled down the curtain, as if say, "Shut up. I don't want to hear you, at all." He wouldn't even talk to me.

L-172 Then, if He wouldn't talk to me, it was Satan's time. He said, "And I thought you said He was a good God. What's all this you're hollering about? You're just a boy. Look around, over the city. Every girl and every boy you ever associated with think you've lost your mind. You have." Now, he couldn't tell me there's no God, 'cause I had already seen It. But he told me He didn't care for me.

L-173   Set all night long, all day long. I said that to God, "What have I done? Show me, Lord. Don't let the innocent have to suffer for me, if I done wrong." I didn't know He was trying me. But every son that comes to God has got to be tried. I said, "Tell me what I've done. I'll make it right. What have I done but preach all day long, all night long, and just give Him my life, constantly? What have I done?"
Satan said, "That's right. You see, now, when it comes to you, and you've told all of them that you believe that He's a great healer, and there lays your baby laying there, dying. He refuses to even hear. Your wife died with tubercular pneumonia. You said He could heal cancers, and there He is. Now, you talk about Him being good, and how good He is to people. What about you?"

L-174 Then I begin to listen to him. That's reasoning. I thought, "That's right."
Said, "He can tell. He don't have to speak the Word. Just look to your baby, and it would live."
I said, "That's right."
"And as much as you've done for Him, and yet that's what He does for you."


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