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Dalton
Roberts |
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You may not believe my stories about preachers I have known but they are all true. Some of them are so wild you are bound to know I could not have made them up. I wrote about a preacher named Jewett in my first book. He was a former moonshine runner in Kentucky. One night he lost control of his car. It turned over on him as the load of moonshine went into flames. He lost an arm and a leg. He figured this was God’s way of calling him to preach. He would walk all over the church when he preached, flailing the air with his one good arm. His artificial leg made creaking sounds as he walked and yelled. One night a woman in a pew had one of those old-time hearing aids with a volume control on it. Jewett noticed that she would turn the volume of when he touched on her favorite sins. He creaked his way over to her and stood right in front of her moving his lips but saying nothing. She thought her hearing aid had died and tapped it a couple of times, then turned the volume up full blast. Jewett screamed at her, “Don’t you ever turn me off when I am preaching the truth, sister!” She came a foot off the pew and probably lost the rest of her hearing. Then there was a preacher I will just call “Pew Walker” because he loved to walk the backs of pews. He was skinny and wore suspenders attached to britches at least two inches larger than his waist. He would stick his thumbs down in his britches and pull them down several inches as he preached and when he released his thumbs his pants would jiggle up and down. One Sunday morning in a revival he ran and started walking pews, working his way through a half dozen before he took a nasty fall. I’ll never forget that sickening sound of bone hitting wood. Several people ran to him asking, “Are you alright?” and he yelled, “Stand back! If I hadn’t been out of the will of God I would not have fallen!” He was preaching in South Carolina and had jumped from the platform to the altar several times when he noticed a huge chandelier hanging slightly beyond the altar. It was more than he could stand. He took a running shot from the platform to the altar, ricocheting upward, grabbing the chandelier and swinging out over the congregation. It would have been some feat had the chandelier not come loose and crashed down in the center aisle of the church, sending glass flying in every direction. Once again someone rushed up and asked, “Are you alright?” and once again he yelled, “Stand back! If I hadn’t been out of the will of God, I would not have fallen!” The wildest one of all had the nickname of “Hawk” due to his large eyeballs and penetrating stare. On one occasion he actually hid some chains near the main light switch of a church. He preached his way back to the light switch, turned off the lights, and went down the aisles telling how the devil would chain all the unsaved in the bottomless pits of hell. When the lights came back on, half the congregation was at the altar. One Sunday morning I heard him preach on “Whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.” He said, “Even if you tiptoe, do it for Jesus.” He quietly tiptoed all the way across the front of the church. Then he said, “I want someone to volunteer to join me and tiptoe for Jesus.” No one did so he grabbed a little mousy-looking man and dragged him out of a pew while the little man screamed, “Oh no! Please!” Together they silently tiptoed around the front of the church I loved them all. Their antics kept this preacher’s kid from the jaws of boredom. ~~~~~ Dalton's website is www.daltonroberts.com. His writings are gathered at www.ipsfeatures.com
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