(Winder,Ga.,April,16,1936.7:37,A.M.(Age,82, weight,131, pulse 93.)
(By G.W.S.Ware)
TO INITIATE AND LEAD CHURCH WORK, IN ITS ATTACKS ON EVIL.
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Unconscious of it at time, this phase of church work dawned on me, picking cotton, in
Florida, in the middle of my eighteenth year. I had plowed a
crop of 40 acres, that year; which kept me stiring through the day, and sleeping through
the night. I had only common rough food and my tast and distast and a sense of fulness,
governed my appetite. We could have had better food and clothes, but we had determine to
get another start in life. That kind of food was best for me, with that governor of
appetite I war serving. But I will run back and pick where I started.
Providence Baptist Church, on Oluste Creek, Union County, Florida, was a large Country
Church, made up of well to do farmers, ex slave owners, Their slaves had not been freed
but seven years, and both sides were still awkward, in their new environments. So we were
all in a pile of comparative poverty; and it was a fine time chance and place, for two
young fellows to show what was in their head and muscles. Our pastor, Rev. J.H. Tomkies, a
college graduate, an exconfederate army chaplin, lived at Gainsville, Florida, 34 miles
away, and rode in on a pony once a month, and preached for the Church, four times, on a
salary, I think of $12.50, a month. As he could not be there each month to conduct the
Wednesday night prayer meeting, the Church did it. Their mode to conduct prayer meeting
was this way: Read a scripture, sing a hymn and pray; then he would step aside, then an
other member would go forward, announce a hymn, after it was sung, he would lead in
prayer. So that Wednesday after noon, picking cotton, I decided that I would go forward
that night, give out a hymn and pray. The thought frighten me, but I said to my self, I
will do it, or break a trace, and I did, I mean, I gave out a hymn and prayed. If I had
broken that trace in stead, it would have been bad on my spirit, so new and young in the
KINGDOM OF GOD.
As it appears to me now, after 64 years, this was my first plan that I initiated, for
me to lead others, in an assault against Satan, in his kingdom of sin in this world. I did
not occur to me at that time, that I would have to keep us up, or else back down before
Satan. But such is warfare against the Devil. Start it and it must be kept up till the
last breath on earth, or else surrender, and live in some sin against God; then Satan will
let up, and give you peace in the pleasures of sin, till after you are dead, then he will
start an eternal warfare against you, and you will have to take it, for you will have no
blood of the Son of God, to over come him with. You were careless enough on earth, to let
the Devil steal from you the blood of the Son of God, which he hates, and in Hell there is
no blood you can use against him. God sayes, Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.
If man failes to resist Satan, sin soon blinds the spiritual eyes of the man, he sees no
need to resist.
The last plan I initiated, to lead in an assault against Satan, is: An effort to
encourage every family, in the First Baptist Church, of Winder, Georgia, to worship God
together, as a family, at least once a day. For some cause, either masculine or feminine,
or both, I seem to be up against an obstacle.
