<TITLE>07. Par 53-60</TITLE>L-53 All these things are types. Why did that prophet have to marry a prostitute and have... with these children, have two children by her? As a sign. Why did one lay on his right side for three hundred and forty days, and then laid so many days on the other side like that? As a sign. One stripped his clothes and walked before Israel. And, now, all those things, it was types and shadows, see; and we have to have those things, to fill in.

L-54 And, many times, things happen to us that we wonder why it is. It's God foreshowing us something.

L-55   Now, as a little boy, and you know my life story, I--I always believed, since I can first remember... One of the first things that I remember... Now this, now, you might have told me something yesterday, and I'd forget it by today. But there is some things, back, that happened in our young days, many of us are that way, that we always remember. And this sounds almost ridiculous to say this, but I remember when I was crawling, with a long dress on. Little babies, now some of you people my age would remember that, babies used to wear real long dresses. And I remember crawling, and dipping snow off of my uncle's feet and eating it, when he come in and was standing by the fireplace.

L-56   And then the next thing I remember taking place in my life, was a vision, the first one I ever had, and told me I would live a big portion of my life near a city called New Albany. And I was a little mountain baby up there, not even a doctor when I was born. And--and I--I... You know, they... I've lived here around fifty years, right here; a vision.

L-57 And then how I've always knew there was God somewhere, and as a little boy He spoke to me, "never to smoke, or drink, or defile my body," that's to run immorally with women and things. I had always had a dread of it, and was a young man.

L-58   And then I was out hunting one time, which seems to be a second nature to me, to love to hunt. And I was out hunting with a boy, Jim Poole, a lovely kid. I think his boy comes to church here, little Jim, and fine family of people. I know the Pooles. Jimmy and I slept together and lived together since we were little boys in school. We're about six months apart, in age. And Jimmy let his gun go off, and it shot me through both legs, real close to me, with a shotgun. I was taken to the hospital, and, there, laying there dying, no penicillin or nothing in those days. And, now, they had a rubber sheet under me, and I know that night... They was going to operate the next morning.

L-59 They just took and cleaned off the wound, and big pieces of flesh blowed up, and they take scissors and cut if off, and I had to hold a man's hands. And they had Frankie Eich, he just recently committed suicide, and they had to hold, pry my hands loose from his wrists, when--when they got through. I screamed and cried, and holding onto like that, and them cutting that part of the leg off. I was fourteen years old, just a boy.

L-60   And that night I tried to go to sleep, and they... I woke up, something splashed. And here was blood, nearly a half a gallon, I guess, had come from them veins. And they had... they taken the x-ray, and they said the shot was laying so close to that artery, on either side, that just a little scratch would cut it right in two, and I'd start bleeding. "Well," I thought, "this is the end of me." And I put my hands down like this and raised it up, and the blood running down my hands, it was my own blood I was laying in. I called, rang the bell. The nurse came, and she just soaked it up with towel because there was nothing they could do.


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