Evolution & Causation — John Follette

There is eternal praise and worship offered to thee, continually saying, holy, holy, holy. O God, we thank thee that it's in our heart to unite our little part of it, so simple, so fragile, so frail, that O God, we pray that it may be from our hearts that what we have to offer in the way of worship may be all that we have, the whole self-giving, the whole surrender, the whole lifting up of all that we have, bringing it back again to thee, that thou mayest have the glory of thy creation.

Thy heart satisfy the pleasure which you had in mind in creation, that you may find at least a little of it in our hearts and in our lives. There shall be a continual thanksgiving unto God, a means of giving thy heart pleasure, reflecting again thy glory.

So we praise thee this morning that thou art being worshipped and adored this morning, eternally before the throne. And yet thou art mindful of us in our little travelings, coming and going, occupied with so many fleeting things, which in time will perish, vanish, and even never come to our remembrance.

The former things shall not come to our remembrance. And yet we are occupied with them as though they were the greatest things in the world. Today we pray that thou would again speak to us in the message or any way that you find good, break in upon our inner hearts and lives, and minister to our spirit.

We thank thee for these times of quietness before thee and looking into the word. We'll have all the other days when we leave here for the activity of church and service and singing and clapping and preaching and testifying.

We can have that later. But we are always grateful for just even a few hours that we can get away as it was with thee. Your heart longed for it and even said to the disciples, let us go away into a desert place and be alone, be quiet.

You continually showed that to us, Lord, how necessary it was to detach and get back again into the presence of God and life and light and communion, then move out in the energy and in the strength of it to live.

So with us. Bless those who are on their way just now, moving through the rain and the roads are not very safe. We pray, Lord, you'll give them journey and blessing. Let thy good hand be upon them. Let there be protection and safekeeping.

Remember, may it be those who may be coming. Make it convenient that they shall come. Blessing all of our activities are coming and going. Reading, studying, writing, doing the housework, whatever occupies us.

Lord, teach us how to keep it a consecrated matter before thee. And you can enter into our hearts and lives through these ordinary, plain, humdrum everyday means. You can come to us through them and we can offer it all back again to thee, sanctified by thy spirit and by thy blessing.

Be with us as we have our little study again this morning. Maybe we'll find something fresh and new that may be helpful to us. For Jesus' sake. Amen. While I was sitting here, we were thinking about worshiping.

I'm always encouraged in my heart for two activities in the heavens, eternally moving, two activities. We're occupied with so many things here and we're so dissipated. God is not condemning us for it because that's a part of the setup that we're in.

He doesn't expect us to sit over here and be like that all day long. God has good common sense. He doesn't expect that at all. So while we're very busy with things, I'm always glad that there are certain activities that are continually moving.

Now in the heavens, toward God, toward the eternal, toward God, there's a continual activity of worship. That's going all the time, moving, a vibration of life and life. The angels, the cherubim, the seraphim, the whole heavenly host, all the angelic.

They're occupied with this moving before God in worship. Well, when Christ has his eternal attitude both to God and toward us, whoever liveth to make intercession for us. Well, this morning before we were up, the Lord was praying for us.

Before we were up, before we were conscious enough to make our little prayers and our little supplications and our little requests to the Lord, and, O Lord, help, and, O Lord, O Lord, long before that, before we came back into our conscious state, Jesus Christ as my high priest eternally before the throne of God, offering to him the blood, the sacrifice, the redemptive scheme, all of that which has made it possible, he is offering that back again to God, accepted in the Beloved.

We are only accepted through that offering which he has made. Therefore, the blood is so precious. He has taken it through the heavens because it says the heavens in his sight were unclean. Everything needed the touch of redemption, not my little heart.

That's a very slight thing. That was needful, but all the whole universe needed the redemption that fell in the blood of Christ. That blood of Jesus. We've spoken of it before. The curse is upon the earth.

God never cursed man. He never cursed man. He said, Cursed be the earth for thy sake. Cursed be the earth for thy sake. Therefore, the old earth, which was his creation, which was God's creation, wasn't man's.

Man had nothing to do with it. It was God's thought. It was God's world. It was God's earth. It was God's plan. All of this was God. Yet he says, I'll put the judgment on that for your sake. I will make a means of getting you back again.

He has subjected all creation. Paul says in Romans, all creation is subjected to it. It's put under its power. Here's this judgment of God about it. Not that it willfully chose to be, but God said in his economy he did it.

Well, the first thing that felt the judgment of God was the earth, because that's where he placed the curse, the judgment. And when Jesus dies to bring us back again through redemption, to restore and recast it and bring us back into him, the very first thing that ever received the touch of the blood of Jesus Christ in redemption was the earth.

For it trickled down out of his hands and feet and went down on the earth long before it ever touched me. Long before the blood ever touched you for redemption. It touched the first thing which was under the judgment.

Cursed be the earth. And that old curse has been there until the first blood of Jesus that trickled down in his obedience, the first recipient of the blood, the very first thing that received its touch was the earth.

Then after it, he takes it to the heavenlies and all that. But it was according to exactly what he said. Cursed be the earth, redeemed shall be the earth. Of course, the earth didn't instantly respond to it so that we see it all restored, but it was the token of its redemption.

We see not all things in subjection to man, but we see Christ. I was reading that somewhere this morning in my Bible, and I saw it afresh. All things were made foreign by him and are to be subjected to him.

But it says we see not yet all things in subjection to him, meaning mankind. But, alternative, but we do see Jesus Christ, and when we see him, we see the answer. And the fulfillment is in him. Those are what we call judicial truths, judicial statements.

They are not objective yet, they are judicial. Judicial. And so there's a bit for our encouragement. Now let me help you with a word. That makes us hopeful. We live in hope. But you see, our English words change so.

Our English words change. And a word which meant one thing when this Bible was translated into English. The word that they used meant a certain thing. But in all these hundreds of years, the word has changed its meaning.

Now, for instance, the word hope. Today, when we use the word hope, it carries with it an uncertainty. And therefore we say, I hope it will be. I hope it may be. I hope so. Well, what do you mean? The thing is uncertain, but my desire, my wish is that it may be.

I hope. I hope. Well, that's never the use of the word in the Bible. The New Testament doesn't use that word in that sense at all. Not at all. That's the degeneration of a word, and our use of it, blurring the truth that's in there.

Now, in the New Testament, wherever you see that word hope used by Jesus or by Paul or by any of the writers, wherever you see that word hope, it doesn't mean an uncertainty that they hope something might come.

It is a truth, as true as our salvation. It is already a subtle fact, already a subtle fact, just as sure, just as sure as any of the truths which we have, but it has not come into its realization. And that's why it is called a hope.

It is a truth yet to be realized. It is a fact, a truth yet to be realized. But the fact, the thought that we say it hope doesn't mean it's uncertain and we don't know if it'll come to pass. It is a hope that we know will be manifest.

Now, the second coming is called what? The blessed hope, isn't it? But why? Because we don't know that we think it would be wonderful if he would come back. No, he is coming back. It is the hope which we entertain, but it is unrealized.

It has not come into its fruition. It has not come to pass. We are saved by hope. Well, does that mean I don't know if I'm saved? No. The hope is the security. We are saved by his salvation. We are saved by his salvation.

We are saved by that glorious hope, but the fullness of the salvation has not yet come into its realization. So always remember in the New Testament, when you use the word hope, it's not used with a sense of uncertainty as we use it.

We say, I hope. Oh, I hope it doesn't rain. I hope to do. I hope, hope. Not in the Testament. All the way through the Testament, the word hope there is not an uncertainty. It is a fact, a truth, eternally settled, but not realized.

And that's why we use the word hope, because it is a truth not realized. A lot of other truths we perfectly are conscious of. We have the fulfillment of them. So remember that, because sometimes people say, well, the Bible says I'm saved by hope.

You remember people always crawling out under that. You say, are you a Christian and you're saved? I don't know. I hope so. Oh, you mustn't hope. Well, the Bible says we're saved by hope. I hope so. See how they crawl out under that?

That isn't the thing at all. Not at all. We are saved by hope, but it's what? A hope which is already finished in the redemptive work of Christ. But it hasn't come into all its fruition. I want to talk a little while with you this morning about this creation business.

If you want to use your Bibles, you might want to take notes on some of the verses or look at them, and I'll help you with the verses as we come to them. We were dealing with creation, and we got partway through.

I want to move along a little bit. We'll get into the actual acts of creation. Where did we leave off? Well, I won't take this up because it's a little complicated, but it's very interesting. People have found the remains of these early creations, you remember, the fossils and all this formation of the animal moving from one period of its development into another, and they like to make a premise and feel that that should give them a guarantee to think man must have come the same fashion.

But we said the other day the reason why we can't accept it as Christians who have faith in the thought that God has brought us forth and the creation was from him and not an evolutionary process, we said that it was due to the fact that their data, that is the material that they use, is not complete.

They're only every little while finding some fresh material to add to it. Their data is not complete, and it is only a tentative system that they're working on. And we can't make a premise that is sound and good when anything has that character to it.

We can't. And so we don't accept those theories of evolution that they have because their data is not complete and it is only tentative. It's changed every little while. But what we have in the Word is already a settled statement.

Now it's for us to trust God to give us any life that we need to have, which is necessary for us, on the basis of what he has given. We said the other day that the questions that we have concerning our creation and all this business, it's not a question of life and death.

It's merely something that would be interesting to know. God will never judge us on the basis, did I know about all the intricate parts of the creation and all this. He won't. Because he has purposely put it in a remote, distant past.

We only know parts of it which are for our good. Well then, personally, I'm not disturbed about it. I don't get too enthusiastic, nor am I unduly disturbed. I just know that's a veiled thing. If God had wanted me to know for my welfare, it was good for us to know, he could have revealed it.

But if he hasn't revealed it, I'm not to be judged for that fact. I will only be judged upon the light which I do have. That's always thought to come. I am judged according to the light, or the little revelation I do have.

He can't judge me over conditions that I have no knowledge. He's a very fair God. He has to judge us, and Paul says so too, about these. He says they are judged according to the light which they have.

God can't come down and say to some creature that lived thousands of years ago before there was any revelation of anything, did you believe in Jesus? The poor spirit has never heard nothing. Go to hell.

You see, it's so ridiculous. That's ridiculous. But Paul says so. He says every spirit shall be judged according to the light which it has. And here with the question of the theories which are propounded, we don't know, we just say this is the way it looks.

This is the way it appears in the record, and I'll take it from that. But it isn't for especially that I get more into God about it. There's plenty of people who know an awful lot of theories in doctrine, so much doctrine.

But you can have all that doctrine and not know God. You can have all that and not know God at all. Look at the theologians today, writers and propounders. They give great commentary built on it, and yet if you should face them as far as a real special, specific relation to God, they are ignorant.

Now, I put those two little reasons down why I can't accept it. The way that our old teacher, Dr. Olin Curtis, he was my professor in theology and doctrine in the seminary, and he was a very wonderful genius, but in spite of it, he was a lovely Christian.

He was the sweetest old Christian. ...classes that were ever privileged to have him to lecture and to teach. He was a writer in office. The message that he knew God. He had such a devotion to the Lord and such a desire that we should see Jesus Christ from the human aspect as well as the divine aspect.

That's one thing that helped me, started me off years ago on a deeper appreciation of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is continually presented from that one side. He is the divine revelation, the divine Son of God, which he is, and people all the time forget that he had a human side.

They forget that. Now, the reason is they are so determined to keep the divine and the deity side that they emphasize that and the other side doesn't get it. It's to be counterbalanced. He is Jesus Christ.

Why do you say Jesus Christ? Because Jesus is the divine side, meaning Messiah or anointed one. Christ is. And Jesus is the human side. He is the God-man, not God and man. He is the God-man. He is the God-man.

One thing in our Methodist church that I didn't like... Well, he's gone now as a pastor. That's why I go to this other church. I go to the Episcopal church or the other church because they are still orthodox.

But here was my lovely old Methodist church that I was well brought up in. And then they had this communist in there preaching. He was the pastor of the church and higher critics had no place for the supernatural or anything like that.

And one Sunday he got preaching and he said, Now, when we talk about Jesus Christ, get all those ideas about deity and divinity out of your mind. Just like that, right from the pulpit. Why do you say Jesus Christ is of ancestors?

We are. But you see, he began to attain unto a higher life. And he attained unto a better level. And attained unto an understanding of the things of God. And God blessed him with this inflow. And we can have the same.

Just spoil the whole thing. Hadn't any idea that Jesus Christ had this miraculous birth. He was a man. Then he came into. Well, I went to as many Sundays as I could. It all disturbed my spirit. I don't like to sit in a meeting in a church and have somebody parading that.

And I felt bad about it. And I said to the Lord, Oh, where can I go to church for some fellows can hear something? And he says, You don't need to go there anymore to be insulted. Wasn't that nice? I said, Thank you, Lord.

He says, You don't need to go there to be insulted. And another Sunday he got up and he says, You will find quite a pink streak in my teaching. What do you mean? Right from the pulpit. One sermon, the last sermon I ever heard him preach was just before Christmas.

And I thought I must go. You know, because the Nativity season is on. And oh, the message he had. I felt just like I want to be all washed off when I got home. I'd heard all this trash. And I want to say, Oh, Lord, wash me quick.

Clean me all off of this. Isn't that a miserable thing to think of? Go to church and have some home be washed. But I mean it is. So after that, here he was. Well, my old professor, he did have. And this question of evolution, of course, naturally came up.

And the question of creation. Now, this is the way he explained it to us. I don't know if I can make it clear to you or not. But maybe I can. He used as an illustration our ABC. How many of you have a series right away?

It isn't just A, but you have A, B, C, D. A series in the development of my alphabet for my use. Well, now this was the question. Did A, in the beginning, in the arrangement of ABC, did A have something dynamic in it?

That A, in a process, produced B. Then, how many of you can catch on? Then B had in its own possibilities some, you know, potential power. That it produced C. And finally you got ABCD through that. Or was there another method he called the method?

Now, there is one method. Here is another method. The alphabet ABC is necessary. But it is not complete with A. But we must have distinctly something in B to finish the thought of A. Do you get me? A will not be complete without the B.

But the A does not of itself in its dynamic power produce it. But it is added to to complete the arrangement. Then C has to, of necessity, be produced to complete B or A. How many get me? Well, now, in your first, in your first arrangement, you have the seed thought of an evolution.

Didn't you see it? The seed thought. Well, now you are in metaphysics. That's metaphysics. That is causation. A had it within its power to produce the B. And B has it within its power. Well, now, that's causation.

How did these things, what was the cause of it? Well, now, when you start in causation, you are in metaphysics. Now, we'll go back again to ABCD. The alphabet, if we take it from the second way, is purely a natural arrangement.

Just a natural arrangement. To complete the thing, you had to have it. Because of the nature of the alphabet, you had to have the B to complete the meaning of A. And you had a seed to complete the meaning of B, having come from A, all right, to go along.

Now you're merely on a natural basis. It's not metaphysical at all. We are not talking about causation. We're talking about the relationship, one to another, for what it sells, for what it brings. The causation isn't there.

Now, in nature, when you find these remnants, and you find these fossils, and you find these strange evidences in archaeology of a race or of mankind, having lived thousands and thousands of years ago, when you find these, I can accept them, and you can as well, a necessary following in the producing of some form of creation that God wanted, such as the butterfly, for instance.

It was God's original plan that this butterfly should come from the arrangements which he had made, which was the worm. Then it is necessary that it shall take another form because it has to become yet a butterfly and must go through these stages.

And so in creation, everything had to come not animated things, but inanimated. For instance, the shaking up of the earth. There had to be a convulsion, a disturbance, a manifestation of power to even produce the layers and the strata.

In your creation. Well, it is only a series of things which we discover to show that God, in his desire to bring it forth, chose that pattern to produce it. But he didn't give it as the causation for the creation, but it's a pattern which he uses.

So we can, and they're never complete. They're never complete, you see. We don't know how far back they go. They're never complete. They are pieces. So to pick up a partial, a partial, the data that isn't complete, a partial, all I can say, well, that's a part of something that God had in his creation.

It went in a series. Now it's stopped. I don't know where it brings out again. It may bring out here. I can't use that and say this caused the others. No one is necessary for the others. It's necessary to have these, necessary to have these, but one didn't make the other.

They are only added to. In the building of this chalet that we're in, when you laid the foundation for this, did you have all this other structure hidden away in that foundation and finally it developed this?

No, it didn't. It did not. How did we have it? We had to have a series, a foundation, then the superstructure, then all the interior. What is it? It's an addition of one portion to another to complete the whole.

The chalet isn't complete with the foundation. It's not complete with even the superstructure. It has to be made complete by the addition, addition to what they have, not one evolving out of the other.

The foundation never evolved the post that came up. Then by and by, the post evolved the rafters. Then by and by, the rafters evolved the roof. Well, that's ridiculous. That's like creation. It's not brought through that, but it's brought by God adding.

His creation moves in all sorts of fashions. So sometimes a little simple illustration like that will help anyone. This building didn't evolve because the basis of it had dynamic power to produce some posts.

Then by and by, the posts produced something else. No, no, no. They were all added to, and yet it was the design of the architect to make it that way. That's the way the architect wanted it to come together.

It was his plan to build it that way. That was his passion. And so were the things in creation. We won't go on with that too far, but that should help you a little bit. Keep your provinces right. One is a natural province of the method of creation.

The other is metaphysical, and we can't get into that field at all. That isn't for us. He'll tell us about those things later. Now, let's look at this creation, especially about man because we come from the human side of it.

It says here in the beginning, God created Adam, created man. And here's something, too, that might interest us. You see, so many times, you'll find Adam called Adam, spelled with a capital A. The chapter is called The Man, and The Man did this, or The Man, The Man.

Well, now, the reason for that is God hadn't named him with a capital letter A. He was called Adam because Adam meant the human. Not a proper name at all. And the word man there is Ish. It's Ish. But that means man over against animal.

He was a creation, but he was the Adam creation, the Ish, over against a cow or an elephant. No capital letter to it. He was merely the animal creation that we call man. Well, in here, you'll find every little while he said The Man, and then he'll say Adam.

Finally, he doesn't use the word only by the feminine. He'll say Ish and Isha here in a minute. So don't be disturbed over it because sometimes he will use one, sometimes the other. You see, in the beginning, they are one.

Of course, you know that theory, don't you? The man was created male and female in the beginning. It says that. And created them, male and female, as man. And that was spoken of as Adam before Eve was ever taken out of his side.

Eve is a separate creation. He created Adam, this strange creature. But as he created it, it was male and female. The possibilities of man and woman were in that thing he called Adam. He called that Adam.

And he has a lot to talk about with Adam. Did you ever notice? You may not have stopped to notice it. But in the garden, where the Lord puts up what we call the probationary law of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil, and prohibits them, did he take Adam and Eve by the tree and say, now listen, don't partake of this fruit?

You look in the Bible, Eve hadn't been made yet. It was Adam. And he placed him in the garden. Not them. You see, they come forth, she comes forth. After all that, it was Adam to whom he spoke concerning the tree.

Do you want to look at it just for a minute? Just look at it for a minute. And the Lord took the man. This is in Genesis 2, round about 15th verse. And the Lord took the man, the Adam, the ish. He took this strange creature, this ish, this Adam, who had the human nature now, made in the image and likeness of God, and he put him in the garden.

Not them. He put him in the garden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord commanded the man, he's talking to this ish, this man, this funny, this strange creature, saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat.

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat thereof, for in thee thou shalt surely die. And the Lord said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him and help me.

See, it follows the garden episode and command. How many get that? Well, how does Eve know? Eve has to take the command of the forbidden. She has to take it secondhand from Adam. God never said it to her.

We don't think of those things. We get these Sunday school pictures in our mind of a man and woman standing naked under a tree, and a snake wound up on another one, and the Lord saying, do not eat the apple.

It's all about as upset as anything you can think of, because none of it was like that. It wasn't like that at all. Now, this creation of this Eve takes place afterward, because God says, now, he noticed that it wasn't good.

Many people said, why? Was it an afterthought in the mind of God? Well, now there's your speculation. If God knew in the beginning it wasn't going to be good, why didn't he at the same time take some of the dust and make the woman too?

It doesn't say, and he took dust and made them, made him, because the her, the female, is to come out of that. He didn't make Adam and Eve both out of dust and look at them both. He made this thing called Adam, which has the woman in him yet to be brought out in the story of the rib partaking, taking out, closing up.

Now he says, I'll make you the help me. Do you know what help me is in your Hebrew? To me, I thought it was really good. It corresponds to the thought of the answer. It means the answer. And I will make out of the rib the answer to the man.

Isn't that nice? That's what it really means in Hebrew. I will make out of this rib the answer for the man, because the man is the question. There it says, what is it all about? What's the sequel to this?

What is it? And so he says, I will make the answer, the help me, I will make the answer out of the man. And he causes a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he takes this rib and now he creates the woman.

And of course, then they go on in their garden life until they get into all this trouble. But you see, if you read it the way it reads, now we'll come. And out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found, and help me, called all these other things.

But it says for him there was no one that goes with him. Here they are. But there's no double for him, not good. And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept and he took out one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead of.

And the rib, which the Lord had taken from the man, made he a woman. He didn't make them both of dust. No, no, no, no, no. And brought her unto the man and Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman. Isha. Why? Because man is ish. Man is ish. And the woman is the manness of the man. Isha means the manness of the man. Ish, isha. She shall be called, hmm? I-S-S-H-A-H.

I-S-S-H-A-H. Now, how many get to, do you see why, when Israel backslides and all that, God calls Israel Ishai and all that? Don't you remember how that goes? No longer shall she merely be called Ishai.

She shall be called so and so. Well, that goes back to this. Because Ishai, Ishai is the manness of Ish. And man is ish. He calls her that. Because that's the origin. That's the origin. Now later, when she's called Eve, what's that?

That's her destiny, because Eve means the mother of all living. And Eve means the bringer forth, the fruit bearer. She shall be called Eve, because Eve means the mother of all. That is, oh, Hava. Ava.

Ava. Sometimes it's spelled with an H. Ava or Hava. It is Eve, meaning her destiny. She is to become the mother of all. But her first name will be Ish, because that's her origin. She comes from man. Ish.

Ishai. All right. Hava. Eve. Now you'll commence to get names. Well, now names in the scriptures are always symbolic of the character. Anything that is named is named because the name carries its character with it.

And so she is called Ish, because in character she is origin from Ish. Now she's called Eve. Why? Because the name Eve means mother of all living things. And she is the one who produces. She is the Eve.

The Eve. Well, now when he names these animals, let's get this clear. People think, of course, that all the animals came parading before him. He sat out there one day and a rabbit went by and he said, Rabbit.

And then a fox went by and he named that a fox. And then a bear came lumbering along and he says, Bear. No. It doesn't mean that. This is an illustration of the high mental intelligence gifts that were in this original name.

And so as a demonstration to show what a highly gifted and intelligent man this Ish was, this Adam, God says to him, Here are these animals. What does he do? He has a gift of penetration, an intuition, an insight, a discernment, that when he looks at nature, in his creation, God had made him superior to all creation, to all, all.

And here is one manifestation of his highly intellectual gifts and powers. What was it? That he could look at all creation and name it because he knew it. He names the animals because the name which he applied spelled it Carrick.

We don't do that. We call anything anything. Tom, Dick and Harry. But not with God. Not with that early creation. He says he named them. That is, he was able to discern the character which they spelled.

And he went by it. That's why in the Old Testament names that were given to children were always given because they foretold the character which they bore. Why did Jacob have to be called Jacob? Why didn't she say, Oh, he's a beautiful little baby.

Let's call him James. No, you can't do that. Because James won't be the character that this child. You must give him the name which spells his character. Why call him Jacob? Because Jacob means supplanter, crooked one, deceiver.

And that's what Jacob in the natural was, wasn't it? Absolutely. And so the names were given because they, they, what they are in their nature. We don't do it now because well, we don't have time for anything like that.

People name them after the grandfather so that he'll be remembered in his will. We'll name the baby after Uncle George because he has a lot of money and maybe he'll remember a thousand, a million miles from here.

But the name spells the thing. Once in a while, you know, it comes, I suppose, purely by accent because it's not thought. Have you ever noticed some people represent their name? They certainly do. I'll tell you a little something very personal.

You don't have to blab it out and tell anybody. But my name wasn't originally John at all. They changed my name. When I was born, I was called Levi. Well, what does that mean? Joined to the Lord. Joined to Levi.

Joined to. And that was my family name, grandfather. It's an old family name. And we named it Levi because Mother thought that she wanted it Levi. And Levi means joined. Well, my life has really been joined.

It was like a little prophecy. Well, Grandfather heard of it and he wouldn't have it. He said, I've suffered all my life under that name Levi. He said, this is horrible. I wouldn't name anything Levi.