Early Preaching Adventures: A Personal Testimony

I said that tonight I would tell you something of personal testimony. I think I told you already I was converted when I was nine years of age, but it wasn't a dramatic conversion. Before my conversion, I had not shot a single policeman or robbed a bank or run away with anyone's wife or anything like that. I was just a boy of nine.

However, ten years later, I went to a friend of mine called Jim Wilkinson. I said, Jim, would you like to go out preaching with me? He said, can you preach? I said, no, can you? Well, he said, I've read a paper at the Young People's Society. I said, I've read two papers. Well, who's going to ask us to preach? I said, let's go out in the open air, I'll invite you, then you can invite me. Well, he said, I'm game if you're game, but how would you get a crowd? I said, we'll get a crowd all right.

I had a little ukulele about this size. My friend Wilkinson had a great pair of lungs, but he couldn't sing in tune. If I played in G, he always sang an octave lower in H flat. We never struck the same note together. But a crowd of Irish music lovers gathered to hear what was going on. And then when we got a crowd, I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and preached. Then we sang again, and the crowd drifted away, and some more came, and then Jim gave his testimony. That was our first experience.

We got such a thrill out of this, we decided to form a band of 24 young men to do this kind of work. We didn't want to be encumbered, so we wouldn't let any girls join us, just 24 young fellows. We were all about 19, 20, 21. And we kept a record of our prayers. We used to meet for prayer at my home before we started out on our bicycles. Once a fellow said, does God answer prayer, or is it just coincidence? I said, well, let's find out. How would you find out? I said, let's keep a record.

So we got a notebook. We ruled it carefully—one side of the folio for the date and the prayer request, the other side of the folio for the answer and the date when it came. There was the first request. We all decided that my ukulele was too quiet. When 24 young men started to sing, you couldn't hear the ukulele after the first note. So we prayed for a banjo mandolin or piano accordion or something with more volume.

About five days later, when I was in business, I was in business at that time, the phone rang and a fellow said, is this Edward Knorr? I said, yes. And he told me his name. I said, do I know you? Well, he said, I'm a friend of Sidney Murray. I said, any friend of Sidney Murray? He said, friend of mine. He said, I hear you're having open-air meetings. Could I come along? Well, I said, can you do anything? No, he said, I can't even give a testimony without getting confused, he said. But I play a banjo mandolin. If that'll help, you'll bring it along. There was our answer to prayer. We filled in the answer and the date.

That was the spring of 1932. In the fall, Lionel Fletcher, a very famous evangelist, had a simultaneous campaign in the city of Belfast. And in the final meetings, I heard Dr. Thomas Cochran say, God has answered my prayers for fifty years. So naturally, I thought of this notebook of ours and I looked it up to see one or two I had to write in because I hadn't been keeping it up to date. Then I discovered that all our prayers had been answered except one.

Now when I say all our prayers were answered, I don't mean they're all answered the way we expected. For instance, one night we prayed it wouldn't rain. Now what do you think happened? It came down in torrents. We were hoping to have an open-air meeting, but we were forced to take shelter in a little Presbyterian church where the midweek service was struggling. And the pastor thought we were angels from heaven, twenty-four young men coming in with testimonies and really waking up his people.

Well, all our prayers were answered except one, and one was for the conversion of a fellow who was really a tough nut to crack. I said, you see, the Lord's answered all our prayers except for this fellow. Somebody else suddenly came over and joined our group. Do you hear what happened? One of the ones who went forward tonight was so-and-so, and there was that fellow converted.

I called Jim Wilkinson, and I said, Jim, I'm so encouraged about this, would you join with me in praying for two hundred and forty young men? He said, that's a lot. Let me pray about it. Two days later, he called me back to tell me that he finally had enough faith. Well, I said, Jim, I've been praying in the meantime, and now I'm praying for two thousand four hundred. Now we let the girls in.

What we did was we linked up existing groups, a Presbyterian Bible class, an Episcopal Rover Scouts, Senior Scouts group, perhaps a Methodist Christian Endeavor, and so forth. And we put an open-air meeting across every main road running out of the city of Belfast on Sunday night after church. Those were the days of the Depression, when you couldn't afford to go anywhere if the fellow was courting a girl, he simply took her a walk. I mean, that's all you could afford, to go a nice walk. You could pay your streetcar fare to the end of the lines and then go walking in the country. But we put an open-air meeting across every main road.

Well, we called this the Revival Fellowship. You say, why did you call it that? My grandfather and grandmother, both sides of the family, had been converted the same year, which intrigued me, and I had heard about the 1859 Revival in Ireland. I talked to you about the 1858 Revival in this country. It's the same movement spread over there. So I was always interested in this subject. So we called ourselves the Revival Fellowship and urged people to pray for revival.

The head of a big organization in London heard of what I was doing in my spare time, asked me to come to London, which I did. He offered me a job. He wanted me to set up this kind of work around the world, and he offered to pay me a salary not only enough to pay my expenses but to take care of my mother, who was a widow. What an answer to prayer! I went straight back to Belfast, told all my friends. They said, the Lord's opened a wonderful door for you. Oh, they rejoiced with me.

The day after I gave up my job, my friend in London disappointed me. He had to go to India and China and Japan and other countries for missionary conferences. He was going to be away for about a year. His committee wouldn't be responsible for me while he was away. So he wrote me a nice letter and told me to go back to work. Now I could have gotten my job back. It was easier to give me back the job than to train someone else for it. But the more I prayed about it, the more I felt I was called.

So I talked to my friends. They changed their mind. Where they'd said, this is a wonderful open door, now they said, the Lord has closed the door. I said, does this all depend upon one man? You told me last week that God was calling me. Has the Lord ceased to call me? I had just finished reading The Life of Hudson Taylor. I said, look at the way God answered prayer for Hudson Taylor. They said, yes, but he was somebody.

There was one fellow, I mentioned his name already, Sidney Murray. He's older than I am. He's a ruling elder in the Irish Presbyterian Church, quite a well-known man. And in those days, he was encouraging in one way. All the others said I was crazy. He said he didn't know whether I was crazy or not. I remember him with gratitude.

Well now, the big problem was my mother was depending on me. I was the only support of the home. So I told mother, I'll send you the usual amount of money each week. She said, where will you get it? I said, I don't know, but I'll send it to you. She said, I know you'll try, but where will you get it? This was during the Depression. You know, the population of the United States back then was about 100 million, but there were 13 million unemployed, and proportionately high in Britain. They didn't have unemployment insurance, they had soup kitchens and bread lines. It seemed to be the wrong time to start anything.

Well, I waited upon God. A friend of mine asked me to do a favor for him in Liverpool, and he gave me a ticket across the Irish Sea to Liverpool. I arrived there with a bicycle, a change of clothes, a Bible, and two shillings and eightpence, about 65 cents in American money at that time. The only friend I had within 150 miles of Liverpool was a Roman Catholic scoutmaster whom I'd met at a jamboree. I'd been a, what you call a rover scout, senior scout, and I went to see him. He said, where are you going to sleep at night? I said, in bed. He said, very funny. Where are you going to get your next meal?

Well, I said, I don't know where I'll get it, but I know where I'll put it. Now, I wasn't feeling quite as cheerful as I sounded, perhaps as part of the Irish character that when you're up against it, you crack jokes and show good spirit and all the rest of it. But he said, look, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to serve the Lord.

He said, in the Catholic Church, when a man holds a vocation for the priesthood, we send him to a theological college. Don't the Protestants do the same? I said, yes. Then why aren't you doing that? Well, I said, I'm going to be an evangelist. Well, the only evangelists he knew were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They call them the evangelists. So he said, what do you mean? I said, an evangelist is one who travels with the Word. He said, I don't know what you're going to do. Look, I'll tell you what, I'll lend you enough money to go back to Ireland. Go back and get that job again. I've been out of work for three years, I'm glad I've got a job now. You go back and get your job again.

I said, no, Frank, I don't want to borrow your money. I said, Scripture says, my God shall supply all your need. If that's true, I can depend upon it. If it's not true, the sooner I find out, the better. So I left Liverpool, crossed the Mersey at Birkenhead, and started on my bicycle on a journey that was to take me around the world. At present, I think I can say I've been in 154 countries out of a possible 160.

You say, well, what happened? When I reached Chester, an old English town with a Roman wall around it, it began to rain heavily. So I prayed that I might reach Shrewsbury about 40 miles south without getting wet. Now, you'll agree, you couldn't cycle 40 miles in the rain without getting wet. Of course, in those days I was very thin, but even that wouldn't explain it. I got there without getting wet, and yet it rained all the way.

You say, did you hitchhike? Hitchhiking was unknown in England in those days. It wasn't until the G.I.s went over and showed the Limeys how to do it that they found out what hitchhiking was. In 1933, if you'd stood in a road in England with your thumb out like that, they would have thought you had a sore thumb. They wouldn't know what that meant. So I didn't hitchhike. In fact, I didn't know what hitchhiking was until I came to this continent.

I was preaching in Toronto, and I had to speak at Lockport. Is there a place called Lockport, New York? And it was out in the country, some kind of camp meeting. And I had to go a certain distance by train, and then take a little distance by bus, and then I had to call them. But I decided, try and get a ride. They asked me, how did you get here so quickly? I said, you Americans were so kind. I said, excuse me, I was quite wrong there. I didn't take a bus, I drove. I borrowed Oswald Smith's car and drove down. And they said, how do you ever find us? Well, I said, every road I came to, there's some fella pointing the way this way. So I just followed the signs.

Well, in England, nobody hitchhiked. But I got there without getting wet, and yet it rained all the way. A truck driver stopped to tie a waterproof cover over some bags of sugar. He wheeled around the shed, hello there! In such a friendly way, I knew he must have made a mistake. English people are notoriously shy, they don't speak to strangers. I wheeled my bicycle over, I said, did you mistake me for someone? Oh, he said, I'm sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine called Bert Cook. I said, that's funny, I have a friend called Bert Cook, too. He said, well, you're not English. I said, no, I'm from Ireland. He said, I knew you were a foreigner since you opened your mouth. He said, then you wouldn't know the Bert Cook that I know, because of course he was English. But I said, I was in England once before, and I met a fella called Herbert J. Cook. He was studying to be a Methodist minister at Northampton. He looked at me and then he said, blimey, mate, it's the same bloke.

He said, where are you headed for? I said, London. Not tonight. He said, it's going to take me three days on a bicycle. How would you like to ride with me? Are you going to London? No, he said, I'm going down towards Wellington. I didn't know where Wellington was, but he said, that's on the old Roman road. I'll take you as far as Wellington. So we tied the bicycle on, and I got on the truck with him. I still remember the roads were narrow and winding, just like in West Virginia. And the windshield wiper going back and forth, back and forth, and I witnessed to him. Finally, he said, Mr. Orr, if you're right, you don't need to be in a church to give your heart to the Lord. Could I be converted now? I said, yes. And I explained, you must pray. We drove around a few more bends, and he said, well, if I pray right now, am I supposed to close my eyes? I said, keep your eyes open, the Lord will understand. And he got converted with his eyes open.

Now I got to Shrewsbury about 11 o'clock at night, I had nowhere to stay. So I stopped a policeman to see where I could get a cheap accommodation for the night. In those days, the Salvation Army had working men's hostels where you could get a bed for about a dime. So that was something in my line, I'd already spent some of my 65 cents. The policeman looked me up and down, he said, what do you do for a living? Now I knew what was in his mind. It's in the books, in this country as well as in England, that you cannot be a vagrant. They can arrest you for vagrancy. That means just hanging around. The question they ask is if you have any fixable or any visible means of support. You're supposed to have an address, like you can't just say, I don't live anywhere. You're supposed to pay income tax and all sorts of things, you see.

By the way, I'm digressing to tell you this, but one night, one time one week, I was cycling from Scotland to London, and when I got down to Nantwich in Cheshire, beautiful full moon, a bit frosty, but just lovely for cycling. So I decided to cycle all night, the roads were clear, no rain, but I was stopped at four o'clock in the morning by a sergeant of the police and the constable. The sergeant, very suspicious of somebody in the roads at that time of night, wondered what I was doing in the roads. I tried to explain. Finally the sergeant said, I'm afraid, young man, you are of no fixed abode and no visible means of support. That's like saying you're warned that anything you say may be used against you. So I said, well, I do admit I've got no fixed abode, I just about live on this bicycle, but I do have visible means of support. He said, what are your visible means of support? I said, my suspenders. Then he said, you claim to be an evangelist? Could you prove that? I said yes. But I said, it would take five minutes. Well, we have all evening, don't we Jim? He turns to the constable. So I said, all right, you give me five minutes. So I preached the gospel to them. They decided I was an evangelist and they let me go.

That was a digression. The policeman said, what do you do for a living? Now what could I say? I'd been a bookkeeper in business, but I'd given that up, I wasn't an itinerant bookkeeper. I couldn't say I was a clergyman, I'd not been ordained. So I said, I'm an evangelist. He said, you don't look like an evangelist to me. Well, I said, what's an evangelist supposed to look like? Well, nowadays, of course, everyone tries to look like Billy Graham, but in those days we didn't have Billy Graham. Well, he said, you're very young. I said, I'm 21. Anyone who's 21 doesn't like to be called very young. But he said, that's young for an evangelist. How long have you been an evangelist? Well, I said, not very long. He said, how long? Well, I said, just a little while. He said, I have reasons for asking. How long have you been an evangelist? I said, well, sir, if you want to be technical, I started at 8 o'clock this morning. He said, do you have anything to show that you're genuine? I said, some letters of introduction.

When I was going away, I asked an Episcopal rector to give me a letter of introduction to people in the Church of England. I got a Presbyterian minister, Castles Cordern, to give me a letter of introduction to people in the Church of Scotland. And I had one from the Methodists and one from the Baptists. The last letter of the bunch was written by an obscure friend of mine who wasn't well known. He worked in what we'd call on this side of the Atlantic a storefront mission. He wasn't at all well known. But he wrote the most enthusiastic letter. By the way, I didn't ask him for one. But when he heard I was going away, he came and gave me a letter of introduction.

I thought, this policeman in the middle of England wouldn't know anyone in Ireland anyway. Thirty-five million people in England and across the sea to Ireland. So it didn't really matter what letter I showed him. So I showed him the letter written by my obscure friend. He read it through. Then he shook hands very warmly. He was a converted policeman. He was a deacon in the Shrewsbury Baptist Church. And he was a close friend of the William Phillips that wrote that letter in Ireland. He took me home that night. I slept in a feather bed. Next morning I had two eggs for breakfast. That was my first day trusting the Lord. And something clicked in my mind.

Frank Nelson had said, where are you going to sleep at night? Where are you going to get your next meal? There it was. I thought, now if the Lord can do it today, He can do it tomorrow. This week, next week, this month, next month, this year, next year. Now that's about 50 years. A little over 50 years ago. And apart from the fact that when I was in the Air Force, Uncle Sam insisted on paying me a salary. And while I teach at Fuller part-time, they pay me a stipend for the time I'm there only. I just live by faith. Except when you get in the habit, it doesn't bother you much. First, you know, you can be in a panic if you don't have the money. But it didn't bother me.

Oh, I could tell you so many stories of answers to prayer. You see, when the apostles, the disciples said to the Lord, Lord, increase our faith. He didn't say, I'll give you a great big ready-made faith. You can put it on a shelf. You can admire it. And any time you need a little bit of faith, take it down and take a little. No, no. He looked for the smallest thing he could find. A grain of mustard seed. He said, if you've got faith this size, you can move mountains. That's the secret. You use the little faith that you have. Because God's economy is not like ours. You've only got a pint of faith? Use it. You find you've got a gallon left. Only got a gallon of faith? Use it. You find you've got a tank left. That's the way it goes.

Now, for several months, I traveled around England. I made my headquarters in London. But I didn't have enough money to go back to Ireland for Christmas, so I knew the Lord had some other plan for me. An Englishman, whom I'd never seen before, asked me to spend the Christmas vacation with his family in Kent. That's the county between England and France. I cycled down there. Well, on the way down, my old bicycle broke down. I discovered I needed new handlebars, a new front fork, new back wheel, a new front wheel, new three-speed gear, new crank, new pedals, new tires, new tubes, and several other new parts. So I decided to pray for a new bicycle and the money to buy one.

Now, when I got to my friend's house, they got tired waiting for me. I had to wheel the bicycle ten miles. Have you ever wheeled a bicycle for ten miles? You get all twisted up. You wheel at this side, then you wheel at that side. So I was late getting there. But they left the back door unlatched. And food on the table and a welcome note. I was praying for a new bicycle or the money to buy one. The phone rang. There was my answer to prayer. A Baptist minister had taken ill in Essex. His deacons were in desperation trying to get another preacher to take his place two days before Christmas. They called various people, but most people have made their Christmas arrangements more than two days in advance, and they're reluctant to break them. I don't know how they got my name. Certainly wouldn't know how they'd make the phone call, but I told the man on the phone, but you don't know anything about me. He said, Mr. Orr, don't be offended, but we're so hard up, we'd take anybody.

Now, I preached in that church. Not a soul in the church knew that I needed a bicycle or that I was praying for one. But a man came up to me after the morning service, Christmas morning service. To make a long story short, he wanted to know if I'd be offended if he offered me a Christmas present. A bicycle that he had custom-built at Coventry. At that time, the best bicycle made in the world. Handball-bearing. You know, just like a Rolls-Royce. Handball-bearing, everything done by hand. Beautiful machine. I said, what makes you offer it to me? Of course, I had no intention of refusing it. I just wanted to know why, because, well, have you ever spoken at a church and somebody came up and said, I want to give you a bicycle? Well, his face got red. English people are very self-conscious. There is a difference in national temperament, you know. An Englishman's always afraid of making a fool of himself, so he's very careful of what he says. An Irishman doesn't care whether he makes a fool of himself or not, so he doesn't care what he says. An American doesn't realize when he's making a fool of himself. So there is a sort of difference in temperament. So he apologized. He said his father died and left him some money and he bought a car. He couldn't be bothered with a bicycle anymore. He said, while I was preaching, he thought the Lord told him, give that young fellow your bicycle.

With that bicycle, I visited every country from Land's End to John O'Groats. I sometimes meet British people and they ask me how well I know. I said, I've done every mile by bicycle. That's a way to get to know a country, by bicycle. Oh, I roughed it, slept under haystacks on occasion. I remember walking up and down the embankment all night in London trying to keep warm. He said, well, why didn't you pray for a bed that night? I did, but didn't get one. But at two o'clock in the morning, I met a down-and-out, an unemployed man who wouldn't have listened to a parson, but he was willing to listen to me. And I was trying to win him to the Lord. Finally, he said, well, look, if what you say is true, if God does answer prayer, why are you walking the embankment tonight? I said, that's the only way the Lord could arrange for me to meet you. And I had the joy of winning him to the Lord. He wrote to me several months later to say he'd found a job as a butler.

You say, what about your mother? I sent her the money every week that I promised. I remember the very first week I was in London, I noticed T.B. Rees was having a mission in North London Episcopal Parish. I knew T.B. Rees, so I went along. Well, he said, Edwin, this is a very small church, but if you'd like to help, we can't give you anything. I'm sure they'll put you up. So they put me up in the vicarage. The vicar was an Irishman. His wife was Irish. And, oh, we had a great time together.

On Tuesday morning, I had to have the money for my mother. And it hadn't come. I prayed very earnestly. I didn't mind going with that, but I didn't think it was right to not send it to her. But the maid in the vicarage put an envelope beside my plate. It was addressed to Mr. Hoare, H-O-A-R-E. And it was addressed to Mr. Hoare, H-O-A-R-E. That would be Cockney for Orr. I opened it. Inside was a note, I feel it is the will of Jesus to send you this. And inside was one pound. So I sent it to mother.

On another occasion, I met that Englishman who put me up for the Christmas vacation. He said, Edwin, what's your address? I said, 341 Ormel Road, Belfast, Ireland. He said, I don't mean your home address. You're never there. How can people get in touch with you? I said, I have an address in London, 92 Fleet Street. Fleet Street is the great newspaper street of London. What? He said, you've got an office in Fleet Street? I said, it's a man who sells grape juice. It's an upstairs office and he lets me use his address. He said, why don't you let people know? I said, how would you let people know? He said, write a letter to the Christian Herald about something. You know, about anything. And sign your name, J. Edwin Orr, and put 92 Fleet Street. Then people will know how to get in touch with you. He said, I wanted to write to you and I didn't know where to write. I said, all right, you save yourself a stamp. But I wanted to send you some money. I was hoping to send some to mother and it hadn't come. I'd been on a journey three weeks around the British Isles. No money when I got back. I didn't want to say, well, hurry up and tell me. I just waited. He said, I wanted to send you some money and I didn't have your address. But he said, I remember your Irish address. So he said, I'll tell you what I did. I sent it to your mother. I said, how much? Three weeks installment. He said, you know, the Lord's been laying you on my heart. How would you feel if I supported your mother for a year? He was a builder. That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Oh, I could tell you so many stories like that. I wrote a book.

It was my first book, "Can God?" That was from "Can God Provide a Table in the Wilderness?" "Can God?" with a question mark. That book, by the way, sold about 100,000 copies. You might say, well, you must have made a lot of money there. The royalty was one cent per copy. So over 10 years, I got about $1,000. Over 10 years. You don't make much money writing books, you know, unless you write a bestseller that sells by the millions.

But one newspaper in Fleet Street criticized me and said, it's easy for these things to happen in a Christian country like England, where people are kind-hearted. Well, I know English people are kind-hearted people, but I believe God can answer prayer anywhere. So I decided to go to Soviet Russia. Now, by the way, this was not during the Iron Curtain. This was before that, during the Steel Curtain, when conditions were worse. You remember reading or have heard of Stalin's purges? Those were the days, in the 1930s.

So I prayed about it, and I left England with about 11 shillings. That would be about $2.75. Came back with 6 shillings and 6 pence. That would be about $1.45. I had some wonderful experiences. I haven't time to tell you all about them, but I'll mention the sort. When I arrived in Copenhagen, the temperature was down to zero. I didn't mind missing a meal or missing a meeting. But I didn't want to spend the night in the streets. You can die of exposure. Or if I tried to sleep in the railway station, then I'd be picked up by the police and be deported. They can deport an alien from any country.

So I prayed very earnestly. Then it came back to me. Someone had told me there was a fine Lutheran layman called Sorensen in Copenhagen. They said, get in touch with him. He knows all the Lutheran churches, the state churches, he knows the free churches, the Baptists and the Methodists and others. Get in touch with him. So I looked up the telephone directory, and to my dismay, there were more Sorensens in Copenhagen proportionately than Smiths in Philadelphia. I didn't know his initials. Imagine a foreigner arriving, let's say in Philadelphia, and telling a policeman, I'm looking for a fellow called Smith. You'd say, what initials? Well, I didn't know the initials.

By the way, I used to wonder where all the Smiths came from. But I found out. When I was preaching in Toronto the first time, I discovered, I was preaching there for Oswald J. Smith, I discovered on, what was the street called? Near the Union Station. I think I've forgotten the name of that street. There was a big building with a big sign on it. The Smith Manufacturing Company. There must have been a Sorensen Manufacturing Company in Copenhagen because there were pages of them. Then it came back to me. Wasn't his name Nils? N-I-L-S. I wasn't sure, but you know the way you think now. You know sometimes when there's a telephone number and you think, no, I'm not sure of that, but they've tried it, that's it, all right. It's floating in the back of your mind.

So I looked up the telephone book, and there were only five Nils Sorensens. So I made a note of them. He said, why didn't you phone? I had only a dollar, about five Danish kroner, and if you only got a dollar, you're not going to waste a nickel on the phone. So I made a note of it, and the first one, I walked to the house. It took me about an hour and a half finding the place. He said, well, how could you find the place? I'd stop a man, and I'd say in my best Danish, Kleinsgatter, Little Street, that's the name of the address. And they would point this way and say something in Danish, and I'd head in that direction. If I went along, and I said Kleinsgatter, and they said, that way, you see, I knew I'd gone too far, so we'll go back to the corner and try it again.

I found it was a big apartment block. I read the names, went up, rang the doorbell, said, Herr Nils Sorensen. The lady came to the door. So I began in my best Danish, versus, Niele, Herr Sorensen, Herr, if you please, is Mr. Sorensen here? She replied quickly in Danish, but her Danish was quite different to my Danish. I didn't understand her, so I said, if you please, is Mr. Sorensen at home? I could say, hjemme, that means at home. She replied the same thing again. Now, I couldn't understand, and don't be too hard on me, I'd only been in Denmark two hours, so I didn't speak the language very fluently. I was going to ask her the third time, when she suddenly just closed the door on me. Most women are a little leery of someone who asks, is your husband at home? If they ask three times in a row, and you tell them he's not at home, she closed the door.

Well, what could I do? I felt very frustrated. It's useless to argue with a lady. She always gets the last word, but if you don't understand the last word, it's humiliating. So I went down the stairs, suddenly she called me back, I didn't know what she was saying, she was quite excited. Went in the house, came out again with a red-covered book in her hand. It was my first book, published in English, which she couldn't read, published in England, but it had my photograph on the cover. She pointed at the photograph, she said, photograph, dee, dee, dee. I replied in faultless Danish, she couldn't understand me, so she called her husband on the phone.

He spoke business English, good English, but with an accent. Mr. Orr, he said, this sounds incredible. I said, what does? He said, Miss Anna Christensen of the China Inland Mission sent me your book last week and told us to pray you come to Denmark. He said, I read your book, I thought it'd be wonderful you'd come and stir up our young people. I prayed that you'd come, and now you telephoned me from my own house. Surely that is the hand of the Lord. Let me talk to my wife again, please. So I called her over, and she was giggling and talking to her husband in Danish. I was trying to understand what she was saying. She laughed a lot. Then she gave me back the phone. He said, my wife says she has asked you a number of times if you will stay for lunch. So I couldn't speak Danish, but I could eat lunch, so I stayed for lunch.

I was hoping that that nice couple would ask me to stay for the night as well. They asked me for supper. I came back for supper after seeing the sights. But they didn't ask me to stay. They're a married couple without children, just a utility apartment downtown, close to town. And Sorensen said, tonight, Mr. Orr, you will have the opportunity of speaking to 500 people. I said, how did you arrange that so quickly? Oh, he said, we have a campaign going on. We've taken the ballroom and we're going to speak to 500 people. He said, Pastor Eric Larson from Sweden was to speak, but I've called Eric and instead you will preach tonight and I will interpret for you.

I had a wonderful time. Spoke by interpretation. Found it quite easy. You say one sentence, I say another sentence, turn about. You can't use slang. They learn their English in books, they don't know slang. There was Ella Legters from Philadelphia. He was speaking by interpretation in Shanghai and he used, in the old days, he used an expression, my friend was tickled to death. And the Chinese looked at him all the missionaries thought, I wonder how I'll translate this. He said in Mandarin, this I do not understand. Mr. Legters' friend scratched himself until he died.

Well, I spoke by interpretation. Of course, it takes twice as long and the meeting was over. Ten minutes past ten, I stepped out in the cold. The temperature had gone down. I still had nowhere to sleep, but I didn't advertise my needs. I didn't beg or anything like that. But Sorensen came out and he said, brother, oh, that was splendid. Now I want you to do me a favor. I said, what is that? He said, I want you to change your hotel. I said, what for? I should have said, what with? I didn't have a hotel. I'd left my suitcase in a little candy store. You may wonder why a candy store, because they'd be open late at night. He said, you see, down by the City Hall is a very excellent hotel run by Christian management. They give special rates to preachers. Now he said, I will go with you and make a change of plans so late at night. After all, we don't want to have to pay two places. That looked complicated to me. So I said, look, you wait here. I'll get my own baggage. But he said, you don't speak the language. I said, I'll manage.

So I went back to the candy store and I gave the girl a dime for looking after my bag. Came back, well, he said, you weren't long. I said, no. He said, apparently not. He said, let me carry your bag. He said, of course, you understand, Mr. Orr, while you're in Denmark, you will be my guest. That was good news. I didn't know how I'd pay. I was asked to pay in advance.

It was 11 o'clock now, and he introduced me to the booking clerk and went down his list of rooms. So Mr. Singer said, "Well, good night, Mr. Orr. We have a single room in the house." And he had already gone. My face may have shown dismay, but, oh, he said, "Don't misunderstand. We have double rooms. We have apartments. We have suites of rooms, but the single rooms are all occupied. The others are more expensive. However," he said, "Søren's such a good friend of ours. There'll be nobody else this time at night. We'll let you have a more expensive room for the cheaper price." I was thanking the Lord in my heart for the bed.

The man threw open the door and switched on the light. There was a big family apartment. There was a grand piano and a piano stool, a writing desk, a reading lamp, an easy chair, four other chairs, and four beds. He said, "You can sleep in them, turn about if you like." When the maid came up to make the beds, I was writing a letter to my mother back home. She looked at the beds and then at me and began clearing her throat. She was trying to think of something to say in English. She said, "Where is the rest of the family?" But I was the only one there.

I preached every night I was in Denmark. I met the count and countess of somewhere or other, the same thing that happened in Norway. I went across to Sweden, met Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the brother of the King of Sweden, and preached in the biggest church in Stockholm. You'd think somebody had been ahead and made all the arrangements. I went on to Finland. It was difficult getting a visa to Russia. I met a Swede in the YMCA in Helsinki. He'd heard I was going to Soviet Russia. He said, "Mr. Rogers, they will not even let one Bible into Russia." But I'm going just the same. He said, "Mr. Orr, you will never get in." I said, "Look, I've come from Ireland, you know where that is? Here I am in Finland." "Mr. Orr," he said, "you will never get in, you will never get in, you will never get in." But I said, "I've prayed about it." He said, "You will never get in, you will never get in, you will never get in." He wouldn't argue.

I said, "No. Do you have traveller's cheques to show us?" I said, "I don't have traveller's cheques." She said, "How do you travel?" "Oh," I said, "my father is very wealthy and he sends me whatever I need just when I need it." She said, "Well, can we get in touch with your father?" As I'm referring to our Father who art in heaven. She looked very puzzled. Then her lip curled. She said, "I'm a communist. I do not believe in religious superstition. However," she said, "that's your affair. This is my affair. The regulations say, unless you have a ticket back to country of origin, you cannot enter Soviet Union." I said, "Could I appeal to Moscow?" She said, "On what grounds?" "Well," I said, "I've written a book, I'm going to write another one. I understood you welcome journalists?" "Yes. All right. It would take one week. Otherwise, it would take one month." I paid for the telegram. The answer came back, they gave me a visa. Don't know why. But I went along to the Sweden YMCA and I said, "What do you think of that?" He turned around and said, "Mr. Orr, you will never get out, you will never get out, you will never get out." So I got in and out again and alive to tell the tale.

Well, I could tell you stories like that throughout the rest of Europe. Stories like that in Canada and the United States. And stories like that in Australia and Africa. All sorts of places. Even after I got married. I remember my wife and I were in Adelaide in South Australia, and I had to take her to a dentist to have an impacted wisdom tooth taken out. And that's pretty rough. The dentist said, "Now, when the anesthetic wears off, you're going to have a lot of bleeding, Mrs. Orr. So you must stay quiet and come here every day." But I said, "I'm starting meetings in Ballarat in the state of Victoria, the next state, on Sunday." This was Friday evening. "Well," he said, "you have to leave your wife here." I could see my wife not only having a toothache. She was rather tearful at the idea of being left on her own. It was a terrible thing. She was left on her own in a strange country. She had never been in Australia before.

So finally, the dentist relented. "Look," he said, "don't take a sleeper. Sit up all night. You've got to be very careful. Trains are very shaky things and it will start the bleeding badly. Be very careful." Well, by two o'clock in the morning, I'd used every big handkerchief I had, and she was in misery. There was a lady across the coach watching us, and finally she came over, an Australian lady, of course. She said to my wife, "Do you have toothache, dear?" She was sitting with her handkerchief like this, you see. So I spoke for her. I said, "She doesn't have toothache, but she had a wisdom tooth taken out and it's bleeding a lot." "Oh," she says, "I can help you." I could see my wife was a little reluctant to go with a stranger, but they went back to the toilet at the back. She had a zipper bag full of, you would say, cotton batten. They call it cotton wool. That's the British term. And a flask of hot water. Went back and expertly plugged the hole. She says, "Now that will do for about an hour. Try and get some sleep, dear. And I'll change it for you every hour."

I said, "How do you happen to be traveling all night with a bag of cotton wool and a flask of hot water?" She said, "I don't know. A bag of cotton wool and a flask of hot water." "Well," she says, "I belong to the Church of England and I was visiting my sister in Adelaide. I'm going back to Melbourne. And," she said, "we had prayer before we left. And," she said, "I felt very clearly, at least I thought I was going to help someone with toothache. So," she said, "I brought this along." But I said, "Why, why you? You're a well-known dentist in Melbourne." She said, "I've often helped in the surgery."

Well, we got off the train at seven o'clock in the morning. There was frost on the ground. So I said to my wife, "Now keep your mouth covered up. You know, in all the fuss having to take you to the dentist, I didn't send a telegram to say when I was arriving. If nobody comes here, we'll go straight to a hotel. Don't expose your mouth to the cold." But everybody else went away. He came over and said, "You're not Edwin Orr, are you?" I said, "That's my name." "Oh," he said, "welcome to Ballarat. I've been appointed by the minister's fraternal to welcome you. You're going to be staying with me. Is this Mrs. Orr?" I said, "What's the trouble?" I said, "You heard about answers to prayer? What do you think of this?" And I told him about the lady on the train. He gave a short laugh. I said, "Let's go to the surgery first of all and give her an injection." And that illustrates two verses. One is, "Before you call, I will answer." That man had been appointed to meet us before she had the tooth taken out.

Oh, I can tell you, story after story. But that was a sort of apprenticeship. You say, "Well, what were you doing all this time?" I was preaching. Of course, when I came to Canada, I landed in, first of all, in Halifax. And then I made my way to Toronto. But Oswald Smith, who was pastor of the Great People's Church, arranged to have a meeting advertised over the radio. And crowds got so big, we had to take the Massey Auditorium. So he was so pleased, he wrote to all his friends in the States. Dr. Ironside asked me to come and preach in the Moody Church. Dr. Talbot asked me to preach in the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles and so on. That was the first time in my life. Went on around the world. But I saw revival in certain places. I began to see that God's people could experience revival. In those days, lots of people believed that we were no longer in the days of revival. These were the days of the apostasy, they said. God doesn't work.

But perhaps the best thing to do would be to give you just one instance in rounding this out. In 1951, I had a strong urge to go to South America. My wife was not at all happy about it. She said, "Well, who has invited you?" I said, "No one." She said, "You're just restless." You see, we've been married about 47 years, and I suppose I've been away a little bit. When a missionary goes to the field, it's a sacrifice, but generally he has his wife with him. Sometimes he has to send his children home for high school, but his home is not quite broken up.

But in my particular case, I'd been away about 25 years out of, well, in that time it wasn't as many, 11 or 12 years. So she wasn't happy, but I gave her all the money I had and I started off for South America. I crossed the border at Tijuana, went by cheap Mexican line down to Mexico City, on down to San Jose, Costa Rica. Kenneth Strachan, the director of Latin American Mission, founder of Evangelism in Depth, said you couldn't have come at a better moment. He said he was moved from Colombia to Costa Rica. So we had meetings there.

Now, I went to the Pan American to see how I was going to get the next lap of my journey, right across the top of South America. They said the plane left on Monday morning at 5, so I'd have to get my ticket on Saturday before noon. This was Saturday at 11. And it would be $247.23. And I had to pay in American dollars, not local currency, because I had an American passport. Well, I was walking up and down praying when a jeep pulled up. There was Kenneth Strachan and the president of the student body of the American Missionary Students. "Hey, we've been looking for you. We wanted to give you something. The students took up an offering. They had such blessing out of your meetings. We didn't even count it. At least we have it all in this bag. We didn't bank it for you." I said, how much is it? And Kenneth Strachan says, well, it's all in American money because all these students have paid American salaries. So I counted, it was $247.73. It was 40 cents too much. Now, perhaps I shouldn't have told him, but I told him what an answer to prayer it was. He said, you mean you're going around to Latin America like this? Look, here's my credit card. You buy a ticket right back to Los Angeles, all the way around wherever you're going. Pay me when you can. Take it.

I traveled on. When I got to Rio de Janeiro, I stayed in a little hotel run by Presbyterian management called Hotel Argentina on Flamengo. That's a beach near Copacabana. I had to walk five miles every day to try and collect mail in case my wife had written. But they arranged for me to speak in the big Presbyterian church called Rua Silva Jardim. It's sometimes called the Presbyterian Cathedral. There were several hundred ministers and I spoke to them about revival. One got up, a very famous Presbyterian, and he said, it's interesting to hear of revival in other centuries and other countries. But we don't expect revival in Brazil. We are a minority here. This is a Roman Catholic country. I got up again.

I went on to Sao Paolo. There was a Presbyterian engineer there. His name was Vicente de Barros. I remember because his cousin was governor of Sao Paolo and ran for president, Ademar de Barros. After I'd gone, he went around all the churches in Sao Paolo and said, did you hear what that Irish evangelist said? If we pray, perhaps God will visit us. Eighty-one churches started weekly prayer meetings for revival. I doubt if you could get that in any American city.

When I got back to Los Angeles, told my wife all about my adventures, I said, let's all go to Brazil for a year. She said, what about the children? I said, we'll find some school where they have missionary kids who teach them in English so their education isn't interrupted. She said, how are we all going to get there? I mean, she could see me going along the way I did, but could you imagine with three children? I said, we'll just have to wait on the Lord.

Then I got a letter from the Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church USA saying they had received a letter from the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, the national church, saying that in seven years' time, 1959, they were celebrating their centenary, the first missionary. Ashbel Green Simonton came from here to Brazil. And they wanted me to come out in 1952 to tell them about revival. They thought the best way to celebrate their centenary was to have a revival. And they asked the American Presbyterians to send me the money.

There was a man called Richard Waddell there at the time, and he told a Presbyterian friend of mine, they're crazy. He said, they're celebrating a Presbyterian centenary so they invite a Baptist. And that's the first thing we try to get them to learn good Portuguese. However, they sent us enough money. A Presbyterian friend of mine, Bill Dunlap, decided he'd go with me. So he and his wife, and she was expecting a second child, but he and his wife and son went down and my wife and his wife set up home in Campinas.

Then the first setback. I met the Presbyterian Commission. Oh, by the way, there were Southern Baptists, the missionaries in Rio. What would the Baptists say if I accepted a Presbyterian invitation to come back to Brazil? One wise missionary wrote back and said it would take us Baptists about a year to agree on that, but if you do come, we'll all get on the bandwagon. When anything good is going, Southern Baptists get on the bandwagon, like everybody else. So I wrote to the Presbyterian and said, you know that I'm a Baptist minister, so I want you to invite the Baptists and the Methodists to start with, to join in with you, and the others as you feel like it.

But then they said, we don't want you to preach. I said, what did you invite me here for? They said, well, you see, the Brazilians are very nationalistic. They take the attitude of this man as something to say to us, let him learn our language. He said, it would take too long to learn the language. The pastors and the theological students all speak some English. So you'll travel around holding institutes, that's what they call them, explaining to the pastors the whole concept of revival and the theological students, because Brazilians know nothing about this. Well, I wasn't too happy. Bill Dunlap said, what am I supposed to do? Well, I said, I can't preach, I don't think they're going to invite you to preach.

However, on the Friday, I had a call on the phone from Bill Dunlap, who was the secretary of the commission. He's now president of the largest university in Brazil. But he said, I've been so busy writing letters to different places on your behalf, I don't have a message for Sunday night. Would you preach for me? I said, do you have an interpreter? He said, I've got an Englishman married to a Brazilian wife. Brazilian is very good. It's Portuguese. So Bill Dunlap and I and Jack Goldsmith and Pastor Ribeiro met to see what it does. But it's clearly as if it's a word from heaven. Make the way of salvation clear. So I set aside my message and gave an evangelistic message.

At the end of the message, I asked any who would like to declare their faith in Jesus Christ for the first time to stand up. There were 310 people in the meeting, 300 seats filled and 10 people standing, so I was sure of my numbers. About 100 stood. I said to Goldsmith, did they understand me? He said, I'm afraid not. So I said, please sit down again. They sat down before that was interpreted. So I said, now, I'm not calling for rededication. Oh, if you want to rededicate your life to the Lord, by all means do. But the verse of scripture I've quoted is if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord as well as believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. You must make confession for the first time to stand up. Again, about 100 stood. So I said, Pastor Ribeiro, did they understand me? He shook his head.

The leading Presbyterian evangelist in Brazil told me if any Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian pastor could report 10 additions in a year, he thought he was doing well. Now, about 100 people stood. I asked them to sit down again. Bill Dunlap says on a horse, did Edwin do something? He gave me a signal. So I said, all right. I said, if you really mean what you said, would you go to the social hall and my friend, Reverend William Dunlap and your pastor, the Reverend Paul Natchez Ribeiro, counsel you. 103 were converted. Out of 310. There was power in the meeting.

We just stayed 11 weeks. The last meeting was in the Pacaembu Stadium. Went from there to Belo Horizonte, started in a tiny little Methodist church and the stairs came up into the middle of the room. We had to move to the biggest church in town and then out to the auditorium of the Secretariat of Health and then out into the park. Revival was on.

Went to a place called Governor of Valadares. The four churches there were having a feud. Brazilians are very individualistic. Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal. But they knew they couldn't seat the crowds so they took a sports field. I felt sorry for the people. Most meetings lasted, by the way, from about 7 o'clock until midnight. I felt sorry for people standing all that time. So one night I said, tomorrow night we'll have the church benches here. Oh, that caused quite a stir. The Presbyterian elders said, nobody's ever asked us to take benches out of the church before. But one man said, the people shall be willing in the days of thy power. So there they had Baptist pews, Presbyterian pews, Methodist pews, and Pentecostal pews. The Pentecostal pews squeaked a little, but otherwise there was no difference at all.

But the believers came and sat on the pews. I said, no, no, these seats are not for believers. I was going to say they're for non-Christians. If his name is Paolo, he's a Christian, or if his name is Pedro, he's a Christian. He said, what do you think, I am a Muslim? So I said, these seats are for our visitors. If any believer wants to sit during these meetings, let him bring his own chair.

Well, if you were a Brazilian businessman going home from work, smoking a cigarette, staring between the bars, what would you do? Oh, we had the crowds, all right. All those feuds were settled. Went on to a place called President Soares, and in President Soares, we saw the streets packed from wall to wall, the buses couldn't run. Saw one night four churches packed out. Went from there to Cachoeiro do Itapemirim, in the mountains.

So the first discussion was where are we going to have the meetings? They suggested taking the Gloria Theatre. The pastor of the First Baptist Church said, my church is bigger than the theatre. They didn't want to take a denominational church; they wanted to try and have a neutral place. So they said, well, we're going to have a meeting at the Cachoeiro do Itapemirim. So they went to see the manager of the circus. They asked him how is business? He said, very poorly. Well, what's your trouble? Well, he said, our lion is old, he can roar but he can't bite, he's lost his teeth. And the monkeys have dysentery. How much money are you making? He said, I'm losing money. Well, how much would you need to break even? He mentioned so many thousand cruzeiros. Could we hire the circus for that figure? He said, what would your reverences want with the circus? They said, we don't want your circus, we want your big tent. They said, get medical attention for the monkeys and the men to work the lights.

I met six ministers. I said, are we all here? I was getting fluent in Portuguese by then. They were all there. So I said, would you introduce yourselves? Methodist, Protestant, Baptist, and so forth. I said, is there no Pentecostal church here? Oh, they said, we don't count them. Well, I said, I think the Lord counts them. I said, well, let's adjourn the meeting until our brother of the Assembly of God is here. I adjourned the meeting and they looked at each other. None of them worked with the Pentecostals. But they got a taxi and they went straight to the pastor's house. His wife was rather alarmed. What do you want him for? We want him right away. Where is he? He's visiting his people. Well, how can we find him? He's riding a red bicycle. I saw a red bicycle. Is Pastor so-and-so here? Yes, he was in praying with the family. They said, we want you. He was quite alarmed. They thought he was going to be taken for a ride by the Presbyterians, you see. So they brought him back and they sat him there. He was a little man. There he was with the Baptists and Methodists on either side. He was like a pussycat with three dogs on either side, really. That's the impression I got. But we had them all there.

Now, they filled the arena, no trouble this time, with as many Jews as they could get. The amphitheater was rather primitive. They walked on a plank and sat on a plank higher up and left your feet dangling. It was a captive audience. You couldn't leave the room, if you know what I mean by that. And as far as that was concerned, it was strange how I waited five nights before I gave an invitation. And I gave an invitation. Anyone wanting to declare his faith in Jesus Christ for the first time, to stand up. The first man to stand up was a Brazilian. He disappeared among all the planks. Had to be pulled up again. A great roar of laughter. I thought, oh, it spoiled my meeting. But it hadn't. The Brazilians have a great sense of humor. That was the talk of the time next day.

Next night, the Roman Catholic priest was there in his cassock and sandals and a girdle and tonsured head. They offered him a seat, but he wasn't sure whether he should take it or not. He stood. But then I noticed he was smiling and listening. He went back to Mass and he said to the evangelist Irlandes, the Irish evangelist. No, a Protestant, a Christian. He said, he's not a Protestant, he's a Christian. Well, what he meant was, I didn't attack the Roman Catholic Church or the Pope or anything like that. Just preach Christ. He urged them all to attend. About one third of all the people we counseled all over Brazil were nominal Roman Catholics. That went on for a year.

By the way, the whole thing was supported by the Brazilians, not a penny from anywhere else. There was a case. I had to rent my house while I was gone, pay the mortgage. I thought, well, who would want a house in a hurry? I called Bill Bright, Campus Crusade. He was just starting work at UCLA. I said, Bill, would you know anyone who'd like to rent a house? I said, well, please. He said, oh, I would. Praise the Lord! They had just rented a house to start Campus Crusade, and the people changed their mind and canceled the deal. There they were due to begin, nowhere to begin. So they rented the house. I got a letter from the States checking for $200. I said, well, I wonder what this is for. He says, what do you mean what is this for? He says, we can always use dollars in Brazil. Cruzeiros. I said, this must be for something. Next letter I got in the mail was from Bill Bright. He said, everything is going well, but I'm sorry to say your old water heater has blown up. I said, I don't know whether we are responsible or not, but I've talked to a man who can get me a new one wholesale, and it will be $400. It will be all right if we pay $200 and you pay $200. So I sent him the check for $200.

In Bahia, that's the second largest city, well, it's the oldest city in Brazil, and Salvador. It's called Salvador. But we started in the town square. Now, we found the Brazilian Roman Catholics very friendly, but there were foreign Roman Catholic missionaries that didn't like Protestant missionaries, Italians and others. When they saw us starting in the town square with about 5,000 people, they started to ring their church bells to drown us out. Clang, clang, clang, clang. Up got a Brazilian Presbyterian who was a member of Parliament, a member of the Congress, read the Constitution demanding freedom of speech. The noise got louder, a man rushed around, another church started to ring his bell. Nine churches ringing their bells to drown us out. But on Wednesday, in the local paper, O Diario, there was an editorial apologizing to us. It was called Por que nos sinos dobram? For whom the bells toll? He said, do these Italian priests realize that the best protection His Holiness has in Rome is not the Italian police but United States Army. This is in the 1950s. How then dare they insult on Brazilian soil a chaplain of the Air Force of our sister republic to the north? That's me. We urge all Brazilians of whatever faith to show their abhorrence of such lack of hospitality by attending these meetings. Take bus 11A to the College Gates. There you'll find the cards again.

Dr. Paul Pearson is Dean of the School of World Mission. He was a missionary in Brazil to the Presbyterians. He wrote his doctoral dissertation for Princeton. You'll find from the statistics the increase in the Presbyterian church alone was three times that of any other year for 50 years. The enrollment at their seminaries at Campinas and Recife doubled. It was called the revival of 1952. I'll just quote one thing in conclusion. The Bible Society's 1952 called it the year of triumph. While most of the growth of the evangelical movement could be attributed to day by day witness of members, special efforts also drew the attention of the people. In a nationwide crusade that crossed denominational lines and drew the interest of the multitudes, an evangelistic team went from center to center calling for repentance and dedication to Christ. Time and time again the largest auditoriums could not seat the thousands who came to hear the gospel. Hundreds upon hundreds came forward accepting Christ as their Savior. Some there were who compared the long feeling that 1952 had been a crucial hour of victory in the winning of Brazil to Christ. According to the secretary of the church council, the unusual features of the revival were six o'clock morning prayer meetings packed out. Probably the most significant was the results were greater after the campaigns than during the campaigns. We saw thousands converted and the Brazilian pastors took up the thing. And in the seven years following, all the denominations showed a great gain.

Well, I could tell you about revival in other places, but you see it's not just theory. I've tried to make a study of this, but I'm glad to say I've seen times of revival in some places. Now, as far as these meetings are concerned, I'm a veteran now in the sense I'm over 70, I'm not in a rush. Have you noticed that although the Lord Jesus was in the most important thing of all, he was never fussed, never panicked, just fulfilled his ministry.

My reason for coming here was just to sow the seed, water it if necessary, because if God in His good time sends an awakening, we'd want it to be as thorough as it could be. Therefore, we've got to wait upon Him. The secret is waiting upon Him until we're ready for Him to take over and pour out His spirit upon all our church members of whatever denomination.

Well, I've taken much more time than I thought I would, but I hope you haven't been bored. I'll turn the meeting back to you.