1968 Testimony No God for Me an Infidel — Rolfe Barnard

It's not often that I get to loaf a little bit, don't have my preaching clothes on me when I'm not in the meeting. I've been wanting to come down here since I met your young pastor. We set two or three dates and something happened yesterday when he called me.

I turned him down, then I unturned him, and I'm glad I did. One thing I like about the congregation is the preacher doesn't have to run to the back door while somebody benedicts in order to shake hands with folks.

And somehow he treated me like I was white, he came and shook hands with me. I've been in hundreds of churches where if you shook hands with any of the members, you had to beat them to the back door and you had to run off the path, and that's wonderful.

I tried to get one lady to start a movement to fire this pastor, this gray-haired lady over there. She was bawling out this morning, hadn't been to see her lately and broken bread with her. And I said, let's get him fired.

I'd love to have this church, and if the deacons will meet this afternoon after I get through preaching. I believe he's done his due here, and I'd love to be in this atmosphere. It's been a joy to be your guest.

I hope I haven't hurt you. It's difficult to dip in this way. You've had Brother Parsons a week and this blessed young preacher, but it's been a joy to me. And I've talked all afternoon to this blessed preacher, and another young pastor came over, and it will tell in my message tonight, but the Lord has been good.

I had a birthday this month, I'm 64, the 4th of this month, this September I'll have been preaching, trying to do 43 years, and I haven't got many more years with the Lord's parish. And you do not know how a gray-haired preacher that's been around a while takes courage, thanks God, gets in the big jar of star-navy tobacco juice, fits in the devil's face, tells him to go back to hell when he runs across a young preacher, hardly old enough to shave, like your dear pastor, who knows the gospel, knows the Spirit, anchored to the book.

The Call to Repentance and Saving Faith

You dear people here, if you go to hell, it's going to be mighty hard on you. You'll go against much light. Thank you for letting me come your way. And I feel like I want to teach you a little chorus tonight, we ought to get out for midnight, that'll be soon enough, some of you don't have to get up before 4 o 'clock in the morning, you'll get there easily.

And my wife isn't here, she jumped up, and I don't know one note from another, and I haven't apologized, I'm going to try to sing it for you, and the pianist is coming, and she can and she'll find out what key it ought to be in after I've butchered up every time you come on, lady, and set the piano.

And if you don't know this chorus, you won't be happy in heaven, and I want you to be happy in heaven, and so I'm going to try. And boy, this is hard, to start out with a song, as married as we are to our pianist and organist.

I've held many meetings up in Canada with the wealthy people. And I have one thing about you folks here, you don't sing well. You sing with your mouth closed. In 43 years, I've found you can sing better with your mouth open than you can with it closed.

And I advise you to try that sometime. And the wealthy people, they can beat the colored folks. I was raised, that teacher told a lie on me this morning, he said I came from Texas. I was born in Alabama.

George Wallace and I are running this country from now on. But if you've never heard the wealthy people sing, and all they've got is a little tuning fork. Do you remember those tuning forks? Or have you ever heard all these high-polluting organs and pianos?

But there's a lovely little chorus that I'd like to introduce the message with tonight. If I can get the key, if I don't, you won't know the difference. It goes something like this. I want you to pick up the words, and if we can get the key, we'll sing it together.

If you could just touch it. Suffered at the hands of many physicians and was nothing better. And she said if I could but touch the hem of this garment, I'd be made whole. And she pressed through the crowd.

I think they're having a Bible conference arguing over some doctrine. And she touched the hem of this garment, and the Lord said, who touched me? And the disciple said, you've gone crazy, all this great crowd around you, and you won't know who touched you.

And he said, this is different. He said, do you know, my child, who touched the Lord? I could walk in an hour and call that salvation. Pray in a little prayer and call that salvation. Salvation by grace through faith.

And faith is one beggar coming to the one who's got bread and say, give me bread. And evangelism is one beggar telling another where he found bread. And if you found it, you'll tell it. Reach out. Why don't you?

Why don't you come to God's house? Just listen to some man preach. Ain't nobody got anything much to say now. Ain't no preacher living who's got anything on the ball. We preachers had the power of God upon us, we'd get killed.

They killed the prophets. Not because they were bad people, the prophets just kept saying, repent, until the folks had to repent or kill them, so they killed them. They killed the Son of God, not because they was any different than us, but he just kept saying, repent, until the kingdom of heaven's at hand.

And they either had to repent or kill him. They killed Stephen. They've killed every preacher up to now who's had anything to say. Brother Barber, you needn't brag on yourself. We've bragged on you. You ain't got nothing on the ball.

Neither have I. And you Christians, you ain't got nothing to brag about. Bless your little heart. You ain't worth a pound of lead to take to kill you. Your neighbors don't even know you're saved. If you had a page that was on fire, we did.

We'd hound this generation until they'd repent or kill us. Amen. Lord, the living Lord. I love that song, He Touched Me, don't you? Oh, he touched me. And oh, what a joy filled my soul. Something happened when he touched me.

He touched me and made me whole. If you could just touch him, he'd touch you, brother. Reach out and touch the Lord as he goes, passes by. You'll find he's not too busy to hear your heart cry. Why don't you come to God's house to touch the living Lord and the Lord of life by faith?

Present Faith and the Danger of Presumption

You know hell's going to be full of you Baptists who trusted the Lord yesterday, but that's a day late. It's today. You're faithful in him today. You exercise faith in Christ today. If you're not, you're going to hell.

You repent today. If you haven't, you're going to hell. It's a daily business. Why don't you cut out listening to the radio preachers and send them a dollar to help the poor in this country worse than it is?

Get your Bible. You don't read the one you've got. Get under the Word of God and open your ears and let the Spirit of God teach you. Quit supporting everything on God's earth except the gospel. You'll support any preacher that fights communism.

You'll support any preacher that tells the women they ought not to wear shorts. You'll support any preacher that preaches against something. But you wouldn't give a dollar to support anybody. Just preach the gospel of the glory of the Son of God.

I'm down on these radio preachers. Ain't one of them got a word of truth. You better quit sending that dollar, sister. If they had, they wouldn't stay on the radio. That's the truth. You're faster than a coach.

You don't beg for money, do you? No? Well, that's why it ought to be difficult. Don't you know the devil wants us to fight communism? God may be going to use communism to conquer this world, to separate you professors from you professors.

We need to do some thinking. Well, I don't know how I got on that. That ain't my message, but I don't charge a thing extra. Why don't you get in touch with the Lord? Now, I've got that one key too low.

Can you give it up one hour? It's in the key. I don't know what key it is. You know that song, sister? You know the key? Try singing it one more time. Passing by this morn Mr. Pye, reach out and touch the Lord as he goes by.

Let's stand and sing it one more time. We made a little mistake. Thank you for the good one. That's got the gospel in it. That's the need of this hour. You poor old Baptists. I've been all over the country and get preaching the gospel and here come the deacons.

And say, now, Brother Byron, what you preaching so? But it ain't Baptist doctrine. The Baptists haven't kicked me out. They would. But you have to treat dumb animals kind, you know. Now, if I go on the message, this is the Presbyterians, the Catholics, because I ain't one of them, but I got them for you Baptists, see.

Because I remember that your granddaddy believed the gospel. And you don't. And that's the reason you're going to hell. And he's singing around the palm trees in glory now. They didn't know near as much as you citified folks, but what they knew was so.

And it linked them to a living Lord. Now, in the book of Psalms, chapter 14, we have the definition, Bible definition, of an infidel. I do not like to bring this message until I've preached three, four weeks to a congregation.

But your beloved under shepherd said if I could, he wished I'd bring it. And so I hope it'll not hurt you. And at the judgment we'll find out whether it's a pill. I, for six years, when I was 15 until 21, I professed to be an infidel.

My father was the godliest man that I've ever met. He's been dead 40 years. My mother lived to be quite old. She's been dead eight years in a Baptist home. Every time the church doors were open, that mother and the kids, he was a small-town school.

We used to call him superintendent. I think we call him principal now. Horrid jokes, turkey. But a godly man. I was 10 years old. I could quote 10 times as much scripture as I can now. And what you'd call the old sewer drill.

You ought to know what I'm talking about if you don't quit writing notes and wiggling. I'm going to bop you. And through the sewer drill I could turn through the Bible. You know what that is? Does it still do that or not?

Called it the B-Y-P-U then. I think training union now. I ain't heard nobody say ever training, but it's still training union. I was 15. I joined the ranks of professed infidels. Educated in a Baptist college.

I was graduated from Hardin Center University in Texas. I was a school orator. School debater. Second baseman on the baseball team. Leading actor in the Shakespearean plays. Worked my way through school.

Made the highest grade any man's ever made in that college. I'm giving you a little of my background. I went through a Christian college. Took four years. I had to take a certain amount of Bible in order to get my degree from that Baptist college.

Graduated and went to teach school. Years I was there, I'd go to school a year and drop out and teach school a year and go back. It took me six years to do three years' work. All the time I was an infidel.

I want to talk to you a little while tonight how God brought this infidel into a saving relationship with him. Through joining me in a living faith, not through a doctrine or a creed, but a living Lord.

An infidel is described in Psalms chapter 14, verse 1. If you have your pencil or pen, I hope that you mark your Bible just a little. We do not have the Bible as it was written, you know that. This book that I have is what we call the King James, the authorized version.

Perhaps still the best of them, I believe it is. There are many places where man has ever seen the Bible as it was first written. Those manuscripts have been lost, you know that. But we can go back mighty close.

But human beings make mistakes every time they touch anything. This book that I have is not the Bible. It's the nearest thing to the Bible that we have. Here in Psalms 14 and 1, there is a verse. And if it tells the truth, as it's written here in the authorized version, most of you have that, I guess.

Well, then we'll just throw the whole Bible away. Let me read it like it is here in Psalms 14. I got it on Psalm 4. I just missed it by 10 chapters here. I'll get over here to Psalm 14. The authorized version says, The fool hath said in his heart.

You boys down in the front seat, do you know what italics are? Some of you schoolteachers, I understand there are some schoolteachers around here. Any of you schoolteachers not ashamed to let it get out on you?

What does italics mean? It means these words are not supposed to be in there. Isn't that right? That the translators here thought that by adding these words, it would help the meaning. They were honest about it.

But now let me just read what they've said. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Now, that's just not so. There never lived a human being from Adam to this good day that didn't know there is a God.

They say there are no atheists in the foxholes nowhere else. We talk about atheistic Russia, that's silly. Then the person living in Russia doesn't believe there's a God. You couldn't be a human being without two things being true of you.

If you're a human being, most of you look like it. Some of you look more like monkeys than you do human beings. But you couldn't help it, you know. I don't blame anybody who wasn't born in Alabama. You probably couldn't help it.

I don't criticize you. My college president said he was born in Arkansas. But soon as he was old enough, his daddy told him he was born in Arkansas. He got up and moved to Texas. And there ain't room for all of you to live in Alabama.

So you just have to stay in and say right much like you folks do. I'll never forget 20 years ago, I moved to Winston-Salem. And I'd say, how far is it to Bill Pickletown? Bill Pickletown is right much, right much.

Nobody in the world says that right much as you North Carolinians. Right much rain today. Right much humidity. Well, that's North Carolinians. They can tell you all over the country. Now, nobody, nobody, nobody could be a human being and be left without a knowledge that there is a God.

God Almighty has done two things straight for human beings. He's given them a knowledge of himself. And they start in this world with a knowledge of good and evil. They know the difference. That's foolishness.

Talk about somebody that's an atheist, doesn't believe there's a God. You've heard, I guess, the true story that when this first astronaut who went up around the moon or wherever it was, the first Russian beat us to the punch, and he got back to the Earth, and the crew chef, who's later fallen on bad days, he went to him and he said, he was all up in there, did you see anything up there, anybody?

And he said, yes, he said, I saw God up there. The crew chef said, I knew it. Don't you tell anybody, it's against our policy. And this astronaut had a conference. He was summoned to the archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church of Russia, and this crew chef had pledged him not to tell anybody he saw God up there.

And the archbishop, representing Christianity, the big Christian mark, said to the astronaut that flew around the world up there around the moon, did you see anybody up there? The crew chef orders the astronaut, said, no, not a soul.

And the churchman said, I knew it. But don't tell anybody. That's the church's. Any of this generation of church people and preachers get to heaven, I don't want to go there, I'd rather be in hell. It's hard enough to have to put up with them down here.

You can't believe something now except church people. You have to say it in his heart, there is no God. Now leave out the word there is, and add to at the end. This is how the Hebrew here reads. The fool has to say it in his heart.

He's got too much sense to say it in his head. But in his heart, the thing that makes him tick, you know. The thing that makes him do like he does when he knows it's wrong, when he knows he's going to have to pay for it.

That's the way we do, you know. The fool has to say it in his heart. That's the whole of him. Not this organ. That's your average Baptist. That's what you're training in your Sunday school classes. That's what they're grinding out in our school.

Oh, I'm saving my soul. Well, you ain't got no soul to start with. You are a soul. And you didn't come down here to save yourself. You came down here to save you. You ain't got a soul. You are a soul.

Adam, the breath of life, and he became a living soul. God bless you. But wherever I go, I thank the Lord for saving my soul. I've heard some radio preachers say that. They've been quoting it ever since.

Well, that's a good thing. He saved your soul, whatever that is. He saved your body. You still live like a horse. Most of them eat enough to fill a meal. Read your belly all the time. I can talk because I've got an ulcerated stomach.

I can't eat much. Say that he saved that part of you. There ain't nobody left in there to put his finger on, you know, because he hadn't saved you. In your daily living, you still do as you please to hell with God.

The fool has set in his heart for me. I was a fool. I did what most of you folks do. I believed the Bible. Didn't know nothing about it. I believed Jesus died for sinners. That won't save nobody. I did.

I'm trusting the blood. What good would that do? There's only four folks trusting the blood that don't know the one who shed the blood. There ain't no salvation in the blood. It's in the one who poured his blood out on the cross.

In this heart, no God for me. God not going to run my life. We've invented a salvation now that now you folks can say, Thank God for saving me. But you do not bring your thoughts under the lordship of Christ every day.

He's not the lord of your thought life. You're going to hell. You don't bring your business under the lordship of Christ every day. You're going to hell. Where are you going? You're in rebellion against the lordship of Christ.

Amen. That's right. Most of you mothers, you hate your kids so much, you're bound them to tell them to go to hell. You don't bring them under the lordship of Christ. The average young mother thinks more of a child than she does the crown rights of Jesus Christ.

Greatest enemy I've had in the world, and he gives the glory to my sainted mother. He wants me to be a big preacher. I was a big preacher to start out with, and getting smaller ever since. I've had bombs put under the church building where I preached.

I had to go under the, I had to have two Texas Rangers sit on the pulpit stand for nine months. I couldn't get out of their sight. I've been through it. My mother, a thousand miles away, I'd read about it in the papers, and she'd write and say, Son, oh, they're going to kill you.

What she wanted to do, my oldest brother, he's gone to heaven, I hope, now, and he said, Ross, if you just tone down and wasn't so brutal and dogmatic and crazy, oh, what you could do? You mothers don't send your kids to hell, but I expect you will, because you want them to be religious and nice, but not nice.

You wish your husband quit getting drunk so you could buy a fur coat, and you'd love him to die in the church, but you don't love Christ because it'll show you up. You keep saying, oh, God save my husband.

You don't want him saved. You just want to fix it so you can sleep better at night and live like hell yourself. The fool who hath said in his heart, no God for me. I said it the first time in the Garden of Eden when God said, don't you eat of the fruit of that tree.

I said, to hell with you, I'll eat it. You're not going to run my life. I said it the second time, and you did, too, when I said, away with him, away with him, crucify him, release him into the far abyss, and crucify that fellow Jesus.

I'll not let him run my life. I said it every time I ever heard the gospel. You can't hear the gospel in me, but not before I beg you, open up the canopy of the sky and let what you are saying in your heart tonight in this nice, respectable, better than average Sunday night congregation with your blessed preacher and your good friendliness, and if he could hear the cry of your heart while it is split to atoms up above, as you are saying, we are still of the same opinion, we're still not going to be sold out to Jesus Christ.

We're willing to be nice, but he's not going to be the absolute totalitarian dictator of my life. And apart from that, brother Larry, isn't one bit of salvation for anybody this side of hell. Two strikes against me to start with, my nature.

I was born hating authority. So were you. A little baby sticks its tongue out at its mother time at three or four months old. I don't know who started this age of accountability business. Just ain't nothing good.

But you crossed that sweet little angel. We got a little grandbaby. Now you talk about cute. That's the cutest thing you ever saw. She's a year old. We just had two daughters. We lost the first one, raised one, happily married.

Now we have a little ten-year-old baby girl. Now there's your children and there's our grandbaby. You talk about old man Barnum and his wife. Man, we're just nuts about that kid. But she's mean as a devil.

She's either laughing or fighting. You cross her, and brother, her little eyes will come in, pick me up and she'll go to the ball. Nobody tells her what she can do or what she can't do. When her daddy comes in from work at night, he's a brick contractor.

After he takes a shower and they have an evening meal, he's got her in the habit of taking her bye-bye. A little old stroller cart. She's just a year old. Honey, you better take her too. The other night, he got busy about something and forgot it.

It's time to take her bye-bye. She's got her on the wall, rolled in the rug, just screaming. Rebellion. Right. Reborn that way. What's the issue this hour? Authority. I can tell who you are by your reaction to authority.

The school kids now, the teachers in Detroit, New York City, Chicago, have to take two clubs and some iron mugs and free shotguns to play with them. The kids will do it. They ain't gonna be under the authority of the school teachers.

You all ain't holding me for a preacher and a kid. Just like some of you have done, is acting a little ugly. Not much. And the pastor just got on out of the pulpit and picked that 11-year-old boy up from over me and just whipped the dickens out of him.

Mama and Papa didn't say nothing. The pastor said, when that boy's inside of this church house, he's under the authority of this church. You either will or go to hell, I'll tell you that. But all rebellion against authority is rebellion against the crown rights of Jesus Christ.

Christ's Authority and the Necessity of Submission

For God said, all authority is given. God's son said, all authority is given unto me. If you want to have authority, you have to be under authority. This generation of church members say, oh, I thank God for saving my soul.

But they know nothing of the iron self-discipline that's required in being under the absolute authority of the one who has a right and exercises it and demands that your very thoughts, every activity of your life be brought under his blessed rule.

I was born that way. I was born that way. And then I had another strike against me. I am a covenant child. My father and mother gave me to God as a public preacher before I was born. The girl heard me say that.

She said, Daddy, how did your mother and father know you were going to be a boy? I said, I don't know. But some of you white-haired people can remember when Ma and Paul, when they found out a youngster's on the way, they'd go off in the corner somewhere and turn that child over to God.

He don't do that. He ain't got time. He's too busy paying for the debt yet. Same time. But then Paul and Grandma knew what I'm talking about. My husband, my mother. Now, they never told me about it. They had sense.

I didn't find it out until after I'd seen it. They told God about it. They told God knew about it. That's all right. Power and infinity, rotten heart, grace, and glory. I am born with a nature that hates the very spelling of the word authority.

I ain't gonna let God and nobody else tell me what to do or what not to do. And I didn't know it. What you give to God, you never give back. Yeah, I was. I didn't know about it. Now, I'm gonna talk to you a little while about how I was butchered.

Religious Decisions Without Conversion

I want you to feel a little sorry for me. When I was 10 years old, I was having a revival meeting like you've had yet, and they stood for the invitation and my training union, BYPU sponsor or whatever they called it, came and put a hand on my shoulder and said, Mr. Rock, don't you want to be saved?

Well, any fool wants to be saved. And I said, yeah. They said, don't you love Jesus? Well, of course I did. I had no thing on God's earth about him, but Mama said he's a wonderful fellow and the preacher said he's mighty fine and I could quote scripture about him in my little old 10-year-old heart what I knew about him.

He's the most attractive, wholesome person this world's ever known. So I loved him. I said, yes, I love Jesus. He said, don't tell the preacher. And so I followed after him. You know, I sat down and they stuck a card under my nose and asked me if I didn't want to be baptized.

I said, yeah. And so Mama fixed up my little old palm-beaked suit. In those days, those 10-year-old boys wore short britches. You don't know what they are, do you? And just had one little old son of me in his palm-beaked suit.

And he washed it and drenched it and I duped him. I just as sincere and as honest as you folks were when the preacher got to you to make a decision for God's sake. I wasn't a hypocrite. Just some butchers.

At 11 years old, a missionary came to our little town where Dad was school principal. On Wednesday night, he talked about what they're doing over in China. Just broke my little old heart. And when they stood up to sing, they sang, I'll go where you want me to go.

I'll be where you want me to be. And he says, anybody here that'll surrender to do whatever the Lord wants you to do and be whatever He wants you to do, you come down. Before I knew it, I was there. Of course, I didn't know a thing on God's earth about what I was doing, but I was just as honest and sincere as I could be.

Now, isn't that butchery? God knows, look at your hands. You son of school teachers and deacons and Baptists that quit the gospel years ago and went into the butchering business. And a filling hill full of your people and all in the name of zeal.

Tonight, God gave me five of the ignorant butchers that claim to be in the service of God. I got along pretty good. I told my butchers I was a nice little Christian. I tipped my hat when I'd pass a lady on the street.

Ain't none of that going on. I knew better than to keep going in the house of God. Sometimes I keep praise for seeing the jaws working now. They always do. I spoke 15 in the fourth day of August and in September in college.

And I still wore new breeches. And they called me a peewee. Boy, that was enough. And after I got away from home I found out I didn't know the Lord. You hear me, young person? I'll tell you exactly how I found out.

I had no power within me to resist Satan and overcome temptation. And if you haven't got it, you ain't safe. I didn't say you could be perfect, but brother, if you're ever touched and you're able to touch the living Lord, that's what power is.

Transform. And keep on transforming and for one day you're just exactly like the Lord Jesus. And that's final salvation. And if you haven't got it, you can tell me how orthodox you are and you're blue in the face.

But when a man touches the living Lord and say temptation comes, you've got something that enables you to resist the devil and he'll free from it. There has no temptation overtaken a child of God. But such as he's able to withstand, for with the temptation he'll give you the strength and power if you're in touch with the vine.

Sin, Alcohol, and False Assurance

And I didn't have it. I never touched a drop of liquor, though I got to run with Baptist boys. But they all drank and I didn't want to be a citizen anymore. I committed everything in the catalog except under God.

I never touched any woman except my wife. My mother raised me to respect women. I wish to God there's some women now that deserve it. The good Baptist boys in that college, they'd put a pint of liquor in their hip pocket every Saturday night and go down to their armory and get some good Baptist Christian girl drunk and go out and rob her of her birth.

They'd all save. Once saved, you know all this? Have you heard that? I made my way partly through college playing poker. I was a good poker player. I'm ashamed of it. I won a hundred dollars playing poker one night from the president of the senior class during the revival meeting in that Christian college.

It wasn't the fault of the college. And he got saved the next day in the morning service. Gloriously saved. And everybody hollering and hooting around about the president of the class is saved. And he won that hundred dollars back that night.

Ladies and gentlemen, young folks, I'm not as foolish as I think. I know what passes to salvation the next day. It's as rotten as hell. You can't track what we call unchurched people today. It's us. If we all right, they say I am too, and they're telling the God's truth.

I hear a real good dirty joke. The prison company accepted you associate with the average Baptist deacon. Some real high-powered crosswords. You follow the average Baptist prominent church member down the way he works.

And I didn't have any power to resist the devil. And yet, God, I didn't know it. But I was raised in a Christian home. And I was a covenant child. Our mother gave me the Lord. I didn't know it. But for six years I lived in hell.

For six years I didn't darken the door of anybody's church. Well, when I was 15 years old and found out I wasn't a Christian, I found out what it meant for me to be saved. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that.

And when I found out that to be saved it meant that the will of God would be central in my life. Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of God.

You're not doing the will of God, you're sure for hell's I'm preaching to you tonight. This silly business about I'm a Christian but I'm not doing God's will, that's a bunch of foolishness. And I found out the Lord was good enough.

I had to work, you know. My father and mother gave me to him. I didn't know it, but God knew it. Had God hemmed up, praised God. I wish Mom and Pop would do their kids this way now. If you put God on the spot, he'd have to come across you if you couldn't have fun.

There's a lot of fun out there saying, isn't there? God raised an old man of hell doing everything except chasing the girls. Pop and Mom gave me to God. I didn't know about it, all I knew was that I came to such a terrible place when I found out salvation meant for me.

It means the will of God in your life. What that meant for me, I lived in hell for six long years. He didn't tell me there's not any hell. A man told me he thought we got all the hell we deserve on this life.

I tell him, I did too, brother. There's anything worse than that, no younger than the one I went through six years. It's bad, brother. You see, I had to come to the place where I could sleep at night.

When I found out I'd have to do in order to be saved, I wasn't willing to do it. My God, if there ain't a mess to be in. I never doubted I'd go to hell. I never doubted the Bible. I never doubted that Jesus is the Son of God.

I never doubted that he died for sinners. I just found out what God required of me and I said, I ain't going to do it. And I recommend to most of you dead people, if I was you, I'd become a drunkard. I didn't become a drunkard, I became an infidel.

I said, there ain't any God. There ain't any God. In the daytime I got by with pretty good. And I got to where I could sleep at night and graduated from college and went to teach school. I recommend that this generation of church members do something.