The hounds of personal evangelism tracked me to Bible school. We even had a class in personal evangelism (the devil take it!) I had a friend in Bible school who was good at personal evangelism. He would get on the bus and pass out tracts (he is passing out tracts to this very day and is almost eighty years old). Everybody loves him. When I try something like this all I get are icy stares.

While in Bible school I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Soon thereafter the Lord began to speak to me about what He was going to do after Pentecost. Can you imagine? As green as grass and the Lord is giving me this profound word. This was in the late 1940s.

The wrestling match intensified. Was I to take a freighter to the Orient and begin to tell others about Christ or was I to listen to what the Lord was informing me about the feast of Tabernacles?

Souls are sliding into Hell by the moment. Babies in foreign lands who may die in infancy are going to spend eternity in the Lake of Fire because they have never heard of Christ. And I am wasting time eating lunch and thinking about what comes after Pentecost.

I went to a missionary service in the First Assembly of God church in downtown San Diego, Ben Hardin Pastor. The call to service was given. I hastened to the altar and flopped on my face while the piano player played parallel octaves with more than average facility. (He later became a Methodist minister and since has retired, which has nothing to do with my story.)

I was not married as yet. I cried to the Lord, "I will go to Tibet wearing only this sweater if this is what you want Anything, Lord! I am ready to stagger over the horizon and drown in the rice paddy. I am ready to burn out for Christ" (who coined this wild expression?)

All of a sudden I knew the Lord was going to speak to me. I turned over on my back (I was laying on the rug at the front of the church) and waited for my travel instructions.

The Lord said three words, "I love you."

I love you, when I am ready to rip it all up for Jesus?

I knew it was the Lord, so that ended that.

Well, I came to a decision. I quoted to myself from Shakespeare, I think it is, "To thine own self be true." I thought if I am ever going to be my own man I am going to have to do what I think is God.

If the world goes to Hell it goes to Hell. I am going to wait and find out what God wants me to do. What do you think of those apples?

God continued to speak to me about what comes after Pentecost, and this has led to related topics. The fruit of evangelism has occurred as a byproduct of our ministry. There is at least one fairly well known evangelist on the field who told me he is serving the Lord today because of one of our tapes.

So maybe I'll receive a commission. But my main job seems to be to get the Christians saved.

To be continued.