God Speaking to America - Part 1 — J.C. Hibbard

Now, in just a moment, I want Sister Hibbert to stand when I tell her, and read some of the things that was in the morning paper pertaining to the attempt, the rescue attempt of our hostages, but how it foiled and it was called off.

God Is Trying to Speak to America

And I'm going to discuss this thing just for a few minutes tonight in the light of God's Bible. And I'm titling this subject tonight, God is trying to speak to America. This morning, I was listening to the morning news, and there was a commentator talking to someone.

They had a call in, people calling in, and this man on one of our main major radio programs said, I tuned in just in time to hear him say, well, isn't it odd? So many people are calling in and feeling the same way you do about it.

He said, man, I can't understand it. You can't believe a thing like that could happen. Wonder what in the world's happening? What's it all about? He said, these things haven't happened to us before, and he was talking about the strange way that this thing foiled out, failed out.

And everything went against it, and the world is concerned about it. We're not as Christians. We know the Bible, and we know exactly what God has said. And brother, God's not been quiet, silent. He's opened His mouth and spoke.

He said, whenever you are serving me, He said, no nation can stand before you, and I'll go before you, and I'll make the crooked places straight, and I'll win the victory for you. And nobody can stand before you if you're serving me and living for me.

But if you don't, He said, you'll run even at the drop of a leaf off of a tree. And you'll even run when nobody is after you. But when you're serving me, one of you can chase a thousand of the enemy, and two of you can put ten thousand to flight.

Brother, a lot of our successes in the past, don't ever kid yourself, it wasn't because of our cannons and our weapons and our warfare. It was the God that was on our side and the Dunkirk when they was coming across.

Brother, it was something that never happened. The fog that came down and shut off the Germans, they didn't know where to shoot. They didn't know what to do. They had to stay there helpless with their guns while we safely crossed the channel.

And it was an uncanny cloud that came down and protected. Why? Because there were people that didn't have all their time involved with sin and the devil and lust and worldliness. They were on their knees asking God to undertake, and God went to battle for us.

America’s Need for Repentance and Prayer

And if America don't get on their knees, and they're not on their knees tonight, they're reveling in sin up to their neck. And let me tell you, God's going to keep the squeeze on, and the squeeze is not let up yet.

You say, well, I wish the interest had come. Oh, it's going to come down. Sure, it'll come down. But God's not through. Let me tell you. I believe with all my heart that God is bringing to pass the dream that I told years ago when I saw Jesus Christ take hold of Uncle Sam.

And he had this ear right here, and he was pulling it. And brother, the Lord had his frock tail out, and brother, it was flopping in the air. Uncle Sam's frock tail was sticking out. I dropped my thing right here.

And his frock tail was flopping out in the wind, and his hat had blowed off, and he was just going like this, and the Lord had a hold of his ear, and right before him was a thing, and it had woodshed on it.

And he had a great big switch in his hand, and you need no interpretation of that. That's the Lord taking Uncle Sam to the woodshed. And let me tell you, there's a lot of things we're not to blame for.

There's a lot of things America's to blame for. The sins that are staring our nation in the face are coming from the top quarters, and God's going to start in there, start whipping, and we're going to see some things happen.

But we have protection if we'll trust in God and pray. But the only hope for America is prayer, and that's going to come from God's people. I want everyone to raise your hand right now and ask God to anoint the next few minutes.

Father in heaven, we haven't said a word but what you've heard all of it. You know all about it. And I pray to anoint your servant tonight with the Holy Ghost, but that's not enough. They've got to be anointed to hear it.

I can give out everything, but if they don't listen to it and open their heart and let it reach in and take effect, God, we thank you right now in Jesus' name. There's another prayer I want us to pray.

Spiritual Stupor and the Necessity of Awakening

God brought it back to my mind. I hear a lot of things that you only hear when you shut off and everything isolated. Early of the morning when I get up to pray, usually around 2, 3, 3 o 'clock, around in through there, I get up and do my praying, and the Lord speaks to me.

And the Lord spoke to me that we preached and preached on sleeping, on fainting, on spiritual drunkenness and all that. But he made the statement that there are many of his children that are still in a stupor.

They're still asleep, and they haven't awakened out of their sleep. And I want to say this, and I don't want people to say, Oh, that might be me, and I'm afraid I can't sleep tonight. I don't want you to start that foolishness you hear, and you love God.

But God spoke to me, and he said the tragedy, Some have gone so far, there is nothing I have. There's no preacher, there's no message, there's no tongues and interpretation, there's no miracle. Nothing I have can reach them.

They've done gone too far. And let me tell you, there's a lot of them that could be here tonight sitting in this church enjoying this message, but they're not here. You know why? They didn't want to be here.

Now, they want to come certain times. They're going to run the show just like they want to run it, and that's what I'm talking about. You're not going to do it and have God on the board. You're going to run the show like God wants you to run it.

You're going to serve God like God wants you to serve him, or you're not going to serve God. Now, there's individuals that God showed me that is on the verge of reaching the same place. You're going so far that God can't reach you.

You say, I don't understand. Well, it's very simple. God dealt with me with two people, and as far as I know tonight, they're both in sin up to the neck, and they're both lost, and they're both not serving God.

They were raised in Pentecost, had surrounded parents, prayed constantly, knew all about Pentecost, both saved, filled with the Holy Ghost, shouted, spoke in tongues, and danced in the Spirit. But way many years ago, 12, 15 years ago, God saw this reaching a place.

It was a dangerous place, and he showed me their condition. And it was so definite in the dream that I built the thing, and I have it next door. It's a square box about this square, and it stands up about 7 feet tall, and on the inside of it, you have two handles on this side.

There's a slot here and a slot here, and over here, there is a slot here and a slot here, and when you come up, it's on wheels, and you can roll it. On the thing, it says this way, this way to hell, and this way to heaven.

And the individual on the inside gives no hope for anybody to help pull them this way, you see, unless they reach in and get those two slots. Now, the thing is, it was a thing that went clear across. The slot was about this wide and about this thick, about this long, the slot was.

And it had a handle that when you pick it up and push it through, the handle came through and came out on this side, and anybody, if he was on the inside and slipped that handle in, they could reach over here and grab that handle and pull it this way toward heaven.

But if they pulled the handle out, there was nothing to take hold of to pull. And the Lord showed me these two individuals in this thing, and they had taken all the handles out on God's side and put all the handles over on the devil's side, and the devil was carrying them in the wrong direction, and everything that God could do to lead them to God, they had shut off prayer, they had shut off going to church, and anything that God could do to lead them to heaven, they had pulled the handles out and put it over on the devil's side.

And I have kept track with them for about 15 years until now. They have every opportunity to go to church. They don't go to church. They're not concerned about it, and I've still got the box over there.

That means they're not cooperating with God. There are people that are not cooperating with God, and God can only help you as you reach out and ask Him to help you. Now, I'm talking about God is speaking to America.

Prayer as America’s Only Hope

Could He be speaking to the people in the Gospel Lighthouse Church tonight? Are we to play a part in what God is trying to say to America? We're getting ready to have a million or more people go to Washington this next week, and we're going to present the need of Christianity in our nation.

If you can't go, you should go to your knees and pray as never before. And I'm going to come now to this point that I'm bringing. Something has just recently happened in our nation that would have caused Israel to have gone to the altar and lay hold on the horns of the altar to find out what was wrong.

Had they made the same attempt and failed in such a way, they would have certainly interpreted it, Our God is not fighting for us. They had a lot of reverses. It was not because they didn't have good equipment.

It was not because they didn't have seasoned men that were picked out, the very best in our nation. It was not because it was not rehearsed. They had rehearsed it hundreds of times, even in desert places, the very type of desert that they were going to.

This thing was a perfect plan. It seemed that nothing could foil it. The equipment they had was the very best. It had been checked out by the very best mechanics. And everyone involved, which the great number of them, every one of them was trained 100%, and it was scheduled to move right out.

What we don't know, but what is true, they had a ground crew that was very active. They knew what they were doing. They had certain equipment at certain places to be met at certain times. And they even said these things cannot be brought out now.

But they had everything there, and when they would go in to the place, not with helicopters, but keep them on the outside, and then when they would go in with these equipments that were furnished by the people there, they would go in, and they had this ability, which Uncle Sam certainly has, that for blocks around, everyone would become paralyzed, totally not able to do a thing in the world, just like you can paralyze a lion, operate on him, pull his teeth out, and you get through, just go ahead and walk off, and in a few minutes he comes just good as ever.

But he's absolutely helpless while they put that in him. They have something now they can shoot out, and for blocks around it will paralyze and completely enable anyone to do anything. And the ones that have the gas mask on, they can operate right on among them.

And this was all planned, and that much came out, that they had planned on going in and bringing the people out, putting them in the things, carrying them out, getting the plane, carrying them on, everything, they rehearsed it and all.

But they were depending on their equipment and their ability to do it, and they were forgetting God like they are in many other things today. They talk about great problems, but they don't bring in, I wonder if we need to pray.

The Tornado Vision and Divine Judgment

In the dream I had 8 weeks ago, no, I mean 12 weeks ago now, about 12 weeks ago, God showed me, and I preached to you that Sunday morning, that God showed me the people panicking. They'd run here, but there was judgment.

There was the tornado coming. They'd run this way, and there was a tornado. There were hundreds of tornadoes in the distance all around. And He showed me with their eyes buggy. They were panic-stricken.

They would run here and there, but they were not willing to run to God. And there was no escape. And then here come a tornado right down out of heaven, real close to the group. I was among the group observing what they were doing.

And when this happened, they looked and screamed, it's coming at us, it's moving this way. And someone hollered, is the building able to stand? They said, it's like a cracker box. It's fragile. It'll blow to pieces like a matchbox.

And then they run around on the other side of it, and they screamed, what can we do? There was no way to go. Someone let out a sound, and I heard it. Let's pray. Let's pray. And every one of them began to pray.

And when they prayed, I was standing there, and I watched the tornado go up and pass over. The other that was coming close by, it went up, while the others in the distance still remained a threat. But God took care of the group that prayed.

That's the way it's going to be. And when I woke up, God showed me it's not, the problem is not from other nations. It's not from earthly armies. This was a God-made disaster. Tornadoes are not made by man.

It's not made by our ability. A tornado is an act of God. What do I mean by that? Only God controls them, and He can control them. How many believe that? He can control them. But as these tornadoes were coming, naturally they didn't say, well, let's tell them we'll surrender.

But you had to go to the headquarters to get around that, because God was sending the judgment. And as they did, they turned to God, and God took care of those that prayed. God's showing me that our nation is going to be visited by things from Almighty God, and the only ones that are going to escape are those that are going to pray.

Now, it may be hard to get some people to their knees, but it won't if you don't go to your knees. Just wait. You'll go to your knees quick. It'll be too late, though. Too little, too late. Prayer is the only thing that'll save America.

Now, as you let Sister Hibbard, when I have her to come, I want you to know that it was not the lack of good equipment. It wasn't the lack of good thinking. Somebody said, well, I'd have worked it out different.

No, they said if they had to do it over a dozen times, they'd do it exactly the way they'd planned it. Because had everything not gone wrong, even they had 8 killed and 5 wounded, that's 13, that's a bad-looking number, isn't it?

But it looked like that everything went against them, but none of it was from man. There wasn't even one person out there that shot at them with a little slingshot. There wasn't one person that even kicked one of our soldiers on the knee.

There was nobody. Everything that happened to them, it was confusion among their own group at the time. It was things that happened that God could very easily move out of the way had there been prayer and trust in God.

Israel, Babylon, and the Meaning of National Defeat

Now, we're not saying that God is on the Arab side or the nation that they were going into, Iran. I believe they're ungodly, as sinful as they can be, and they're definitely unscriptural in their worship and in their beliefs.

So as far as their prayers would never touch God. But God, when Israel needed a whipping, He always took the sinful, the vile nations. He took a wicked Babylon and whipped the life out of Israel. He would also say that He would raise up the enemy to come in and devour His own people when they failed Him.

How many believe that's true? All right. So we're not saying that God was against us and for the other person. We're saying that God was using this thing, though it cost eight lives. In the five, we're hoping they pull through.

It cost that many, and if we learn the lesson that God is trying to speak to America, it might save 100 ,000 lives for those that died on the front. Those men that died, they were loyal to their country.

And I know God honors their loyalty, and I don't think there was one thing in the line of, we would say, wickedness or sin in the lives of the soldiers that went forth. God may have appreciated everything they did in the spirit of it, and I deeply appreciate it, and my hat's off to them, and I thank God for the motive they had.

Even the president, he's willing to do what he could. But, brother, God is... Now you say, well, why did He do it? Why did God strike Uzzah? Why did He... Yeah, Uzzah, wasn't it? No, it was one that balanced the ark.

Yeah. Yeah, anyway, it's Uzzah. When He put forth His hand, and God struck Him dead. Why? Because He said, It's wrong, and I want to get your attention. Well, brother, He got their attention. They was afraid of God.

They said, We're doing something wrong, and come to find out they were. But God said, This one thing may cause thousands of others not to die, so I had to kill one man to get your attention. And sometimes God has to speak loud.

America’s Moral Crisis

God loves America better than you ever dared to. He loves the red, white, and blue flag, and if it hadn't have been for the American standards and for God-fearing Christians, judgment would have come longer.

But, brother, this sin question is bellowing up. It's coming high. Just this last... Well, today it was. Wasn't it when San Francisco put on their little show? This last week. An hour. They had Friday or Saturday.

Out taking the whole city of San Francisco. Showing that they're going to take the whole thing over. Have open sex right out in the parks. Don't have to go anywhere. Just open sex everywhere. Brother, I'm going to tell you, coming to church tonight, I saw a large place there.

What did they do? Nothing but gamble, filth, just slime. And the cars, as far as you could see, were just packed. And I thought, Oh, God, in the hour that we're dwelling in, I'll go by there, because all my weight ain't coming.

And just circle this way, see if it's that way. And, brother, they had them parked here and there. They wasn't stirred. There's a message that's got to get through to them, brother. And God is getting ready to do it.

But you know what? Most of these things have happened since there has been 250 hours of prayer around the clock for God to awaken our nation, to stir our churches, and to bring America to their knees.

A lot of this has happened. And I say now we'd better all quit praying and just kind of settle back down like we were when we're half through. What do you think about an army that's going forth, and your fellow man has got all the weapons he's got, he's going over the top, and the enemy is now on the run?

God's got the thing on the run. He's got the man of American streets, no matter who you come to. He's stirred. He's ready. He's wide open. He's ready to attack. Like the other day, a man came in, a woman called the church, said, Oh, praise God, my prayer's answered.

Been praying for my husband. But he came in today, and he said, Honey, we've got to get together. We've got to start doing something. We're going to start going to church. Why? Because it wasn't the preacher.

It wasn't no one contacting him. It was his bald eyes open watching the news and seeing what's coming to pass. And he came in when he fought the church. He fought religion. He fought her trying to go.

But he comes in and said, We'd better start doing something. Brother, God's working, and God help a soldier of the cross today that will quit praying and backfire and go back, lay down, and become indifferent like we have if ever we needed to add a little more fire and a little more fuel to the fire, if ever we needed to add a little more to our prayer life, and maybe throw in a few meals and not eat anything, and say, God, please go ahead and be faithful in your position in the army.

Now, it was a perfect plan in every way, but never on earth could all these things accidentally happen. Only a God that sets up and handles the controls could permit all the things to happen that happened to show us that He's only cutting off eight now to maybe spare hundreds of thousands later if we'll take the lesson.

The Failed Rescue Mission and Human Dependence

If we do not hear the sound, we're going to feel the repercussion of insulting God. Says, Tibbard, step up, and I want her to give you, she'll just read one. Now, she's not even beginning to read all of it.

She's just reading a few of the highlights of the unusual things that happened that ordinarily would have never happened, and I'll let her read it as she goes along.

This is from the Dallas Times-Herald, Sunday, April 27th. The article is entitled, Quirks of Fate, Weathered, Doomed, Rescue Mission. It's by Frank...

Weathered, quirks of fate. Quirks of fate.

All right, go ahead. It's written by Frank Grieve, and I'm just reading certain excerpts from it. President Carter had just ordered what the Pentagon calls an expeditious extraction. The audacious, intricate, truckless effort to rescue the 53 American hostages in Tehran had ended in its first stage.

Three of the eight helicopters sent to Iran were disabled, and five were not enough for this mission.

Of all the practice, that never happened, but it happened when they started that.

Go ahead. But what happened next turned failure into disaster. Four of the five surviving H -53C stallion helicopters were fueled up, rotor-swirling, eager to fly. The last, however, parked behind the C -130 Hercules, needed to top off its fuel tank.

The copter rose 15 feet and moved forward around the C -130's starboard wing. It banked slightly to cross the C -130's nose, intended to continue on 1 ,000 yards to another C -130 tanker that still had fuel.

Suddenly, the 65-degree air turned to fire. The helicopters rotor-blank knifed through the C -130 just after the cockpit. Ammunition exploded in the inferno, spraying deadly shrapnel all over the landing zone.

Let me say this.

There was one place in that huge transport ship where they had all the ammunition piled that if they needed to use that against the enemy, they would use that ammunition. It was in the rear end. And it happened to be when the helicopter was going around and came down, the propeller hit right where all the ammunition was and set it off right where it was.

Go ahead.

A chronology shows that fate turned vicious almost from the moment eight helicopters and six troop-bearing cargo planes entered the Iranian airspace. Fate turned vicious. Go ahead. Sandstorms are the bane of desert flying.

They destroy natural visibility. They scar windscreens and inferior camera lenses into uselessness. And the eight helicopters were flying right into this thick, swirling wall of sand, the only active sandstorm anywhere in Iran.

No storm anywhere. Skies are clear everywhere. But the one thing that is the enemy to the helicopter, it says here, and she'll read it later, the one thing is fine sand. They cannot cope with that. So they always fly above the sandstorms.

Now, they can't fly. They've got to fly through it. But what happened? There was only one place, and right where they had to go, the sandstorm was right there at that time and nowhere else where else.

Go on. At 9 .30 p .m. Tehran time, two of the helicopters were reported grounding. They were grounding. Waded out the storm. These eventually flew on. A third helicopter, the first to fail completely, was down with an irreparable system which controlled the crash.

Rotors are vulnerable to leaks and sand.

Sand is the thing that's the enemy to them. Go ahead.

Normally, helicopters can rise above sandstorms, but these had to stay low to evade radar detection. Because of a radio blackout, the copters kept track of one another via a buddy system. But as luck had it, a bus, no, aboard the C -130s were jeeps, motorcycles, and Farsi-speaking commandos armed with Iranian-made G3 automatic rifles.

The plan was to set up roadblocks to divert traffic. Yes. But as luck had it, a bus with 44 passengers passed into the landing zone before the roadblocks were set up. Just a second.

Luck, not good luck, of all and everything, one right after the other, everything is bad luck. It's happening. Things that could have been kept from happening. It seems like everything is going wrong.

At a certain time, according to clock, they are to start landing. And they're to let nothing be in the way. But they forgot to put up the, they become confused and forgot to put up the roadblocks. Here come a truck.

Well, they hadn't had time. They hadn't had time. But just before they had time to put it up, here come the truck right in the middle of where they were supposed to land.

Go ahead. The bus passengers were detained. A truck disabled the rifle fire, but the truck's driver, hopping into the sedan, evaded the gunfire of marksmen and escaped. The sandstorm apparently had destroyed gyroscopes vital to the helicopter's navigation.

The crew became disoriented. It was said and perhaps consumed too much fuel getting out of the storm to continue the mission. In any event, the decision to return to Nimitz was said to have been the pilot.

Then came disaster. Then came disaster. With fire and shrapnel threatening the fuel-laden remaining helicopters and perhaps already having damaged them, the decision was made to abandon them. By 3 .48 p .m., all but one C -130 was off the ground.

In it, the mission's field commander appraised what he would leave behind. Four good helicopters, inexplicably undestroyed, one burned helicopter, one disabled helicopter, and the C -130 wreckage still burning out of control.

Let me go back and refer to the one thing maybe you didn't get quite good enough as she spoke it. When that helicopter and its pedal struck that transport on the tail end where all the ammunition was, they had many a yard, many an acre, it was a couple of acres there, on both sides of the highway where they were to land.

It said when it set this thing on fire and set off all the ammunition in it, it said it sprayed the whole entire area where all the helicopters were and where they're meant. That means thousands of wing, wing, wing, wing, and they were all these things exploding and they didn't have time to go and check because all this ammunition hitting and they saw holes in the sides of all their equipment as though a great army had come out of the sand and come up against them.

It was their own act of the propeller striking just at the right place and setting off all the ammunition, spraying all the helicopters to where they had to abandon them. The only ones out here they'd taken and said let all of them get in here and leave the rest of them.

They flew back, leaving eight dead, bringing five so terribly burned and wounded. And you would have thought they'd been in a massive war with some great army that even stood in the way. But all this happened to America to show us that we need God if we go into army.

Moral Decline and the Church as Salt

Would you like for your son or daughter to go into an invasion with Russia in the condition that our nation is in today? Would you like to do it? God has got to begin to move. I don't have to have time tonight to tell you what the sins are that makes God vomit.

Sex is a lot of it. Promoting sex and what God is looking at in the schools that you are forced to send your children to, it enangers God. The teaching that is forced down their throat to disintegrate every structure of God's teaching that we've ever put in them, we're paying our money to send them there and bus them over the country to carry them to a school that will take their minds and brainwash it, take away the fear of God.

Legalizing filth, lust, immorality. You're a square if you don't have an affair with a man. Instead of saying, God's Word said it's a commandment that's broken, that God said it'll send you to the lake of fire.

They forgot that. That's not the greatest sin. When we think of in our city how many prostitution homes are open, that's not as bad as to see the long line of women housewives that got husbands standing in line on their hour of lunch to get into an auditorium where a man comes in a car and they rush out and they get him and everybody begins to squeal, the women.

And hundreds of them, they're in Dallas I'm talking about, not only in Dallas but all over America. But the women rush in. They're willing to pay their little price because when he gets in he strips off and he has one little tiny thing right around here and they start grabbing for it.

And the women try to touch him and he comes up and that's the way the women do. And we permit it to happen. We permit the television to produce things that come into your home and teach your children while they sit there to insult God and use God's name in vain and we do nothing about it.

And God sits and listens to it. That's not the greatest thing. My friend, when God looks down at the condition our law system has got into, it makes God vomit. Justice, it's thrown in the street. There's no protection for policemen today.

We've reached a place, brother, that our nation, it's a risk to go out on the street at night. We let the dope addicts that peddle the dope, after taking months to bring them in, we let them come in and in five minutes time they've made their bonnet out on the street making more money selling dope.

The boys that own the dope addicts, they've got to bust somebody in the head. That's the only way they can make that kind of money. So it goes on. All over this city above a thousand, the ones and 90 of all these that are knocking them in the head and jerking purses off the women's arms are coming from people that have a storm inside.

They're on a dope addict. They're a dope addict. They've got to have a fix and they're willing to kill or rape or sell their body to any man. But yet there's nothing being done to bring it under control.

And how much is mothers getting down and praying? They're busy doing other things. God is seeing this. God said the church is the salt of the earth. But God said, God help if the salt has lost its saltness.

The salt is to preserve, to protect and to keep. But when the salt loses its saltness, it's henceforth fit for nothing. The church is the salt. And when God tries to bring a remedy to a nation, He never goes to the whoremonger.

He never goes to the streetwalker or the homosexual. He never goes to that fellow that's out there cussing and using God's name in vain. Never has our nation flowed with liquor as it is tonight. Never have we had as many mothers throwing cigarette ashes in their baby's face while they're trying to nurse them.

It's a sad plight. Never has a group of people sinned against so much light as America is sinning against light tonight. God is trying to speak to America. But He said, I speak first to my church. And brother, when we think of the slumbering giant that Satan has put to sleep in his cradle of sin, and he's rocking the church.

I'm talking about even many Pentecostal churches. Tonight, if the gospel-like house church as it holds was as stirred and awakened as the man that walks the street that wonders what's going to happen.

Watch this! With their sleeves rolled up, ready to hit the prayer room, bringing some of their loved ones in to get saved. You know why? They're asleep. The message that's ever been preached, it failed to get them.

They heard it. You can be half asleep. You can hear certain things. And you can bring the sounds into your dreaming. I've done it many times. And be dreaming about what would happen. But I was still out.

I was still asleep. But when I awakened, I saw there was a need of doing something right then. Many people are in that same condition tonight. I'm saying to you that are here, God help you. If you're not awake, get down and say, God, whatever it takes to wake me up.

The Seal of God and Protection of His People

Wake me up before tragedy has to do it. Now this is a way of comfort. God said to me, Go see your mama. Her grave. I said, yeah. Well, I didn't know why I was so anxious. Well, I didn't figure it was that he was so anxious.

It was just that I felt that God wanted me to go see Mama's grave. She'd been dead about three years. I thought, well, I'll go out to Missouri City. I'm in Dallas. I fly to Houston. I get a car. I go about 18 miles to Missouri City.

I turn across the railroad track and go down a little old road to a country graveyard. They have high prairie grass there in Houston, as you know. And as I went down this avenue, this little old street, about a half a mile, I looked out on my right and as far as my eyes could see, there was a jet black field.

There had been a fire the night before or the second night before. And I thought to myself, well, there's been a prairie fire. I looked and looked and looked until my eyes, as far as they could carry, the great waves of blazing fire.

And how many times have I seen it when I lived in Houston? The fire taking everything in its path as it comes. Fire is an act of God. Sometimes it's destructive, but I mean God is in fire. God is a consuming fire.

God can control fire. How many believe it? You talk to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and you get to heaven, they'll tell you you can control fire. And I thought before I got to where Mama was, I said, well, if they have any wood markers and that's all, most of them had wood markers, they'd be burned and the markers there.