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CONTENTS

Section I - Chapters 1-4       Section II - Chapters 5-17        Section III - Chapters 18-25        Section IV - Chapters 26-30

EVANGELISM  FIRE -- Section II

49   

                                                                     Chapter Five

                                                     WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT

        Mike Gardner is a lawyer from Maryville, Tennessee.  I thank God for this young man and the sweet spirit he has.  With his life and his testimony, this young man will be used of the Lord to touch many lives.  I pray that many young people who are seeking to be popular and seeking the praise of men will be able to see what is really important as they read this testimony.

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        I was saved when I was nine years of age but through high school and college I was seeking the praise of men.  I liked the praise of my football coach.  I was captain of the football team.  I possessed Jesus, but I was not professing Him.  Instead of lifting Him up, I was seeking the praise of men as so many young people do.  I was miserable in my walk with the Lord.

        After I got out of Law School, my wife led me back into the church.  I joined the choir and other organizations.  God not only spoke to me through the preaching but through the songs we sang.  Did you ever notice a lot of these hymns?  Boy, they are deep.  Songs like, “I Love to Tell the Story” and “I Surrender All.”  Have you ever pondered on those words?  Have you ever meditated on them in your heart?

        God began to convict me.  I didn’t love to tell the story.  I didn’t love to tell about Jesus.  I had not surrendered all to Him.  I realized that, but I didn’t do anything about it for a while.  Then I began to lay aside some bad habits.  We were in a Sunday School revival with Leon Kilbert.  He does a thing about cigarettes and I laid those aside and I laid other things aside.  I guess you could say the Lord began a sanctification process in my life. 

        A little over a year ago, after a long, long illness, my father passed away in January, 1982, in the Baptist Hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee.  As he was lying near death, he said something that really began to deal with me.  He was wondering about his neighbors across the street -- if they knew the Lord.  Now, Dad had never been what you call a soul winner.  He was a Christian.  There was no doubt about that, but he had never gone out and shared his faith.  He had gone out and invited people to church, but he had never told anyone about Jesus and asked them if they would like to receive Him into their life.

        Dad knew he was going to be passing on and when you get down to that, you see things as they really are.  Important things come to the surface and the chaff just falls away.  He was really concerned about his neighbors across the street.  God used his concern to convict me.  I went to Greeneville, South Carolina with this lay team to the East North Street Baptist Church.  This was a springboard in my Christian walk because I began to see people lift up what was all in all important, Jesus Christ....not the church, not the program, not the pastor, but Jesus Christ.  People, there is a dying world out there needing Jesus and I began to see people lift up what is important.

        I had the privilege of leading someone to the Lord while we were in a lay revival in Greeneville, South Carolina.  This was the first person I had ever led to the Lord.  This is the fulfillment and the joy for a Christian.  That is it!  And it must be a vital part of every Christian’s walk.  That’s the emptiness that may be in your life tonight.  It was in mine.  But God is filling that void as I am obedient to Him.  There have been people saved and there have been people who rejected the gospel I’ve shared, but that is not the point.  The point is to bear witness to Jesus Christ and the fulfillment that He brings.

        I told you a minute ago about the people my Dad was concerned about.  Well, we had a Lay-Led Revival in November at my church.  Those people that my father was burdened about accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.  It was a beautiful experience.  God knows what He is doing.  I have found that one of the greatest scriptures daily to claim is I Peter 3:15.  “But sanctify the Lord God in your heart; and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”  I pray that God will not only give you the concern my Dad had, but that He will compel you to go.

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 51    

                                                    Chapter Six

 Dr. Gerald Naylor                                                               

 MARCH FOR JESUS CHRIST

        I consider Dr. Gerald Naylor one of my closest and dearest friends.  He has been a prayer warrior for this Lay Team for years.  To know this brilliant man, is to love him.  He is completely sold out to Jesus and really has a burden to see people saved. I have received letters from him with tear stains on the pages as he shares from his heart the burden he has for this lost world.  This busy man has driven many miles just to help us for one or two days in a Lay Revival.  Gerald shared the following testimony in a Lay-Led Revival:

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        I am thankful tonight to be with our team, my spiritual family, and also to worship with you.  Christmas Day, 1944, I decided to walk through about five miles of mud in Southern Italy to hear Chaplain Homer B. Reynolds.  He was our favorite Chaplain in the Fifteenth Air Force and God had used him to touch our hearts.  I was beginning to hurt in places I couldn’t help.  My wife and I had been married four months before I went overseas.  When I got overseas, I prayed a very selfish prayer, “Lord, if it be your will, bring me back home safely to my wife and I’ll do what you want me to do.”  I didn’t realize what that involved, because in the three months I had been flying as a B-24 Pilot, I had had many narrow escapes.  I recognized after three or four missions that if I survived, it would not be by my flying ability, it would be by God’s grace.  Even by this time, more than half the crew that we went overseas with had been shot down or killed.

        God spoke to my heart through Chaplain Reynolds in that service in 1944.  That night when the invitation was given, there was a force that came over me and God’s Spirit moved me to the altar.  I was anointed that night.  It was a powerful thing that I can’t describe.  Then February 7, 1945, our crew was in leadership for the 49th Wing.  We had an all-out attack.  We were flying over Vienna, Austria and we were shot down.  When we bailed out, the Germans shot at us all the way down.  We became POWs and were scattered around through Germany.  There were again many narrow escapes.  God really became real to me there in prison.  The word of God became alive.  No man has a right to expect me to accept a smaller God than the one I have already experienced.

        One of the men had a New Testament.  I began to read this to the men and God began to speak.  The words of the New Testament leaped out at me like Neon signs.  God gave me outlines of messages I had never heard before.  I could never get over the ease with which God seemed to speak to my heart and how hungry the boys were.  One evening after I spoke, I gave an invitation and asked those who had accepted Christ to raise their hand.  A lot of hands were raised that afternoon against the setting sun.  God began to speak to us as we prayed, we believed.  We got very hungry one day and we remembered God said we could ask and He would give, so we went back in a little closet and the three of us prayed.  In two days, we had food.  The boys began to call me Chaplain.  I was not a chaplain.  I was just a young Christian, but I was willing to let God have His way.

        They began to ask when are we going to be released.  I kept thinking about April 29^th, because that would be my first wedding anniversary.  The Americans got close and we had to go on a forced march for fourteen days and nights without food, except what we borrowed from the land.  Believe it or not, we got stronger every day.  We went down to Munchen.  We were liberated April 29, 1945, the date that had come to mind earlier. 

        When I came back home, I was searching for what I had found in Germany.  I became a student at Auburn University.  I had a football scholarship there.  The fad then was to dedicate one’s vocation to God.  I did that more than once.  I found out after several years of scientific training that God wanted more than my vocation, He wanted me.  At that time, I was getting my Doctor’s Degree at North Carolina University.

        In 1950, I did surrender all the way to the Lord.  I thought I would be an agricultural missionary.  That did not work out.  I felt I needed to work with young people.  The door opened for me to go to Carson Newman College in 1961.  I was in the Biology Department.  I became a professional.  I felt a need to get closer to the Lord, but I was wrapped up in the scientific world.  I guess it took rebellion in my own family, plus the death of my son-in-law, Dr. Chapman, a medical doctor.  He died of leukemia.  What do you do when you can’t help your own family?  Well, I learned about prayer again and God began to speak.  We have tremendous opportunity and tremendous power in Jesus Christ.   

        About that time I was dealing with a girl that was as deep in sin as you could go.  I shared some verses from God’s Word with her.  I had to give a lecture there where we were meeting.  After the lecture, she came to me and said, “Read me again those verses that Jesus said.”  I shared them with her again.  I said, “You know this is what Jesus said, but I want you to know Jesus loves all sinners.  He died for all sinners and that means there is no sin in your life that Jesus can’t take out.”  That night she was saved and changed by God’s power.

        You know as I look at Veterans around me today, recognizing that we were willing to fight for the cause of freedom of America, I believe there is a greater danger facing us today -- the danger brought on by lawlessness and by the evil wind blowing in our nation.  It’s time again for Veterans to march but this time for Jesus Christ.  If we were willing to die for our country to save our freedom, we should be willing to live for the Lord to save not only our nation but our young people and our grandchildren.  As long as I live, I’m going to talk about Jesus, and I hope to do a lot of that marching with this lay team.

        God did so many wonderful things to teach me one lesson.  He has all authority, all power and all grace.  The world is yet to see what God can really do in a people who are dedicated, who will pray and seek His face and let God have his way.  We are on the threshold of a great revival in America.  If we who are called by His name shall humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our evil ways, then God will hear from heaven and forgive our sins and heal our land.  That’s where I am tonight.  I am excited about what God is doing and even more excited about what He is going to do.

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54  

                          Chapter Seven

     Reba Davis         Amy Pinckard                                                               

AMY INSISTED WE TRY

        Reba Davis is a committed witnessing Christian.  She is a Sunday School teacher and plays the organ in her church.  She is involved in all the activities of her church.  She has been greatly used of God as she has worked with us in Lay-Led Revivals.  Reba’s husband, Garland, is one of the finest Christians I’ve ever known.  Reba shared the following testimony at First Baptist Church, Winter Garden, Florida in 1984:

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        This summer I got to go to New York with Fred and Amy.  There was a lady from the church that could drive us, but she could not get in and out of the car to go into the homes with us.  She had problems with her legs.

        One of the places we were to visit was a house where I had been the day before.  I recognized it when the car stopped.  I said, “Amy, that lady doesn’t want to talk to us.  She gave us all kinds of excuses yesterday.”  However, Amy insisted that we try.  I said, “Okay, you have got the gift of gab, you get us in.”  So, Amy got us into the house and made friends with the lady.  Amy found out she was divorced and had lost a teen-age son in a fatal motorcycle accident.  The telephone rang and she went to answer the phone.  Amy looked at me and said, “Now she is all yours.”

        She came back and I began to share John 3 with her, the story of Nicodemus and Jesus, where Jesus said, “Ye must be born again.”  We went from there to Romans 10:9-10 and 13.  Her attitude changed and she became emotional.  God just turned the situation around in front of our eyes.  I shared Revelation 3:20 with her where Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock:  If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him and he with me.”  In just that little time she opened her heart and asked Jesus to come in.  I had to say, “Lord, I’m sorry.”  I didn’t expect anything to happen because of the reception we had gotten the day before. What if Amy had not insisted that we try?

        That afternoon during the sharing time, Amy and I shared about this visit.  When the people in the church found out this lady had been saved, they could not believe it.  You should have heard the ooh’s and ah’s.  They had prayed for her so long.

        Several years ago we got to go to Hawaii.  We did not know that when you get to your destination, you must phone the airline to confirm your reservation so you will have an assigned seat to come back home.  There were several other couples with us.  Because we had not confirmed our reservation, we were not permitted to sit with our mates.  This really upset some of our group, but I knew God would put me just where I needed to be.

        I met twenty-five year old Sandy Stratton.  She was crying when I got on the plane and really couldn’t say anything.  I just simply said, “Did you leave someone special back there?”  Through those tears she said she did.  I sat down in my seat and began to pray.  I knew I had four and one-half hours before we would get to Los Angeles, California.

        After she calmed down, they served our meal and we began to talk.  I said, “Sandy, when you were growing up, did your folks take you to church?”  She said, “Occasionally.”  “Did your Sunday School teacher share the plan of salvation with you?”  She evaded my question and said, “Oh, I remember some Bible stories.”  I said, “Yes, but darling has anyone ever introduced you to Jesus?”  She said, “Do you mean being born again?”  I said, “Yes, that’s what I mean.”  She said, “No.”

        I began to share scripture verses with her.  I would let her read some of them and ask her what they meant.  She would take a stab at an answer.  I saw what it means in the book of Amos where it says, “There will be a famine in the land, it will not be of bread and water, but it will be to hear the word of God.”  There, on the plane, Sandy asked Jesus to forgive her sins and come and live in her heart. 

        When we parted in Los Angeles, she hugged and kissed me and said she was going to write her soldier husband about what had happened in her life.  Then she added, “Reba, you are the first person that has ever been interested in my eternal abode.”

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 56    

                                                 Chapter Eight

     B. T. Ladner                                                               

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

        We were in a Lay-Led Revival in First Baptist Church, Blytheville, Arkansas in 1979.  We had a marvelous service the first night of the revival.  The power and presence of God was so evident in that first service.  When we gave the invitation, a sixty-seven year old man with tears streaming down his cheeks was the first person to come to the altar.  Many others followed him, but how well I remember that man.  I didn’t realize at that time that God was truly transforming the man’s life and he would become a dear friend and a precious member of this Lay-Revival team.

        B.T. Ladner had been a Christian for many years but he had never been involved in trying to win the lost world to Jesus.  That night, he totally yielded his life to the Lord.  He was there to visit with us every day and had the opportunity to see several people saved as he took the different team members to visit lost friends.  By the end of the week, his cup was running over and the first thing he wanted to know was when and where was the next revival.

        B.T. was one of the friendliest men I have ever met.  He truly radiated the love and compassion of Jesus.  I remember a letter he showed me that a teenager had written him telling him how her life had been changed in just getting to know him the few days he was in her church for a Lay Revival.  I remember during the sharing time he would weep tears of joy if someone had been saved when he witnessed to them.  If they had not been saved, he would also weep from a broken heart because they did not accept the Lord.

        B.T. died of a heart attack while turkey hunting, April, 1981.  We called a few friends here in Cleveland and notified them of B.T.’s death.  They called other friends.  Our phone began to ring.  You would not believe the lives he had touched in the few Lay-Led Revivals he had helped with here in Cleveland.

        I remember being in a Lay Revival at First Baptist Church, Livingston, Tennessee.  I believe we had about twenty-five team members coming to help in this revival.  My wife and I were truly looking forward to seeing these dear friends as we arrived at the church.  The only team member to arrive for that Wednesday night service, other than my wife and me, was B.T. Ladner.  We always have so many gifted speakers that we did not get to use B.T. too often.  My wife would always say to me, “Now, Daddy, don’t use me in the service.  You have so many other gifted speakers.”  I always respected her wishes.  The team prays for one hour before the service each night.  We announce who will be speaking in the service during the prayer time.  Of course, there were only three of us in the prayer room.  That night, I said to B.T. and Amy, Do you want to guess who will be speaking tonight?”

        God really used both of them in such a beautiful way.  Most of the other team members came in on Thursday.  If you are in your sixties, seventies or eighties, God can use you as a witness if you will die to self and really let Him live through you.

        Ed North was B.T.’s pastor at the time of his death.  I would like to share with you what he said at B.T.’s funeral:

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        I want to speak to you today about my friend, B.T.  First of all he was a friend of Jesus.  “He Is So Precious to Me” could well have been the motto of his life.  I honestly never knew a man who loved the Lord in a more evident way.  It shown on his face.  It resounded in his voice.  It was expressed in his attitude and actions.  Job 42:12 says, “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”  I think brother B.T. was a wonderful example that it is never too late with the Lord.  He was a living testimony to Senior Adulthood and what the Lord can do through someone whose hair has grown a little white.

        About two years ago, he had a deep soul-changing renewal with the Lord and it was real to him.  I believe the last years of his life were the happiest and most fruitful.  The Lord gave him glorious opportunities and experiences in his last days.  He became involved in Lay-Led Revivals and went all over the country giving his testimony, bearing witness and talking about the Lord.  Every time he came home from one of those revivals, he would have to come to see me and give a report and tell me all that the Lord had done, and I well recall his excitement as he came back from the last meeting telling me how God had moved with great power among those people.

        The Lord let him become a deacon in the last year of his life. The Lord crowned the end of his life with great joy and blessings.  He did not go out with a whimper, he went out with a bang.  He went out with a shout, “Halelujah!”  The Lord used him in the last years of his life to serve Christ and his church in a marvelous way.

        He was a friend to Jesus.  He was a friend to people without Christ.  Among my sweetest memories of B.T. Ladner are those times when he and I went into homes where there was a spiritual need and I listened to him share his faith.  He did it simply, without pretense, and yet with great passion, urging upon people the need to trust Christ.  I think, Carol Ann, you said it best when you said, “Daddy loved the Lord and wanted everybody else to love Him too.”  I think that was the motivation of his life.  His heart broke for members of his family and friends who were not right with the Lord.  On more than one occasion he sat in my office, tears would come into his eyes and trickle down his cheek as he talked about someone he loved that did not know the Lord or had gotten out of fellowship with the Lord.  We would get down on our knees and pray for those individuals and ask God to reach down and touch them.  Above everything else in his life, he wanted people to come to know Christ as Savior and give their lives in service for the Master.

        Only eternity will reveal how many people will be in heaven because of the life and testimony of this man.  He was a friend of people without Christ.  He was a precious friend and source of support.  The hearty ‘amen’ that used to ring out in this room in affirmation of the sermon will be sorely missed by this preacher.  More than that, the capacity to understand and empathize with a preacher’s burden and concern will be missed.  He was a pastor’s friend.

       He was available and I mean that literally.  Any time of the day or night I could call on B.T. Ladner and anything and everything I needed, which he had or could get, I would have.  Anywhere I wanted him to go, he would go.  As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a revival in Columbia, Mississippi.  Friday evening, before I was to leave on Saturday, my phone rang and it was B.T.  “Do you need anything before you leave?  I want you to know I’m praying for you.”  Then he asked me, “Do you want me to go with you?  If you want me, I’ll go,” and he meant it.  He would have gone, he would have been a prayer warrior.  He would have gone into homes and shared his witness.  He would have worked with me during that week.

            He was available to his pastor.  He had a listening ear and a loving heart.  Somehow through the years, the Lord did a tenderizing job on B.T.’s heart.  I don’t know if he was always this way or not but when I knew him, he was.  A man of compassion who felt for people, who felt for his pastor.  He would listen to me pour out my burdens, heartaches, hopes and dreams.  He was a solicitor of my well being.  When he thought the burden of the pastorate was becoming too much, he would get busy and plan a supper or something where we could just relax and enjoy being together.  He loved me and I loved him.  It was not enough just to shake my hand, but most of the time he had to hug my neck and tell me he loved me. 

        Our people know that last Sunday, Easter Sunday, was one of the greatest days we have ever had in the life of this church.  B.T. had enjoyed all of it.  He came out after the morning services, threw his arms around my neck and said, “Isn’t God great.  What a sweet service we had today.”  In the evening service, he listened to our choir present the great music of our faith.  He listened to his grandson give a testimony and sing a song.  I like to think of last Sunday as his coronation day, as the crowning hour of a good and worthy life.  The note of Victory that was sounded in that resurrection service needs to be sounded today.  Because He lives, we shall live also.  B.T. Ladner has discovered the truth of that scriptural statement.

        Our friend and loved one is not dead.  He is alive.  He is more alive than he has ever been before.  Yesterday was his birthday.  He would have been seventy years of age.  His family was planning a surprise party.  My wife and children, who love him very much, were touched by his death.  As Sally was trying to share with the children to help them understand what had happened, she said, “Thursday was the Ladner’s 48^th wedding anniversary and Saturday was B.T.’s birthday.”  Our little Julie said, “Well, this will be his happiest birthday ever.  He will have the best party he ever had.”  Isn’t that great and you know that is true.  He is having a ball right now in glory.  We weep for ourselves because of pain and loss but we do not weep for our brother.  He was ready to go.  He was eager to go.  I heard him say it on more than one occasion. 

        Last Thursday, he was where he loved to be.  In the woods, doing something he loved to do, turkey hunting.  Our great God came down in the brilliant beauty of that spring-time forest and He walked with B.T. and He talked with B.T. and He said, “My son, you are tired, you are weary, you have served me well, come on home.”  Oh, my friend B.T. has seen the glory.  He is in the Amen corner of heaven, rejoicing at the feet of Jesus.  My dear friend, I’ll see you in the morning.  Till that glad reunion day, I thank God for every remembrance of you.

        Let us pray.

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       60     

                                            Chapter Nine                                                                 

   Charles Baird                                                               

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