"If I could train for ministry all over again the one thing I'd change is add some boxing classes."
Frank Higgins did ministry to one of the toughest groups of people on the planet. He was the only one sharing Christ with them, though. Listen to his incredible story and the impact he made.
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00:00 --> 00:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Revived thoughts is a production of Revived Studios.
00:05 --> 00:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to picture a cold snowy, dark night deep in the heart of Minnesota, and you're way way out in the woods, and this is a crowded room 20 to 40 people watching as one man stands in front of them sharing over 120 years ago, there's no electricity, of course, there's no phones, there's nothing like that, there's just men with some light from the
00:34 --> 00:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're watching and listening to this man talk to them and he gets up and one of the things he says Maybe one of the things he opens with as he says and I quote your boys.
00:43 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He says to them There's just one thing I regret if I had to prepare for ministry all over again I wouldn't make them same mistake.
00:49 --> 00:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I made I would have taken more boxing lessons
00:54 --> 00:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe I'm guessing the guys probably laughed a little bit at that.
00:57 --> 01:02 [SPEAKER_00]: These guys, he calls boys and he'll call them boys throughout this entire time.
01:03 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He's with them.
01:04 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_00]: These are men who party, who drink, who are rough, and they are not the kind of men you would want to see your children spending time around.
01:12 --> 01:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They fought, and some of the men in that room might have actually very well known that they had fought this particular gentleman themselves.
01:20 --> 01:24 [SPEAKER_00]: outside the howling winds of deep winter areas is going.
01:24 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It's cold.
01:25 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It's icy.
01:25 --> 01:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's snowy people who get lost in those kind of woods during that time of year can die there.
01:31 --> 01:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet some of these extremely tough people living way out on the edges society.
01:36 --> 01:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They respected one man more than any other.
01:40 --> 01:46 [SPEAKER_00]: These people who ran gambling bins knew better than to mess with one man more than anyone else.
01:46 --> 02:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He would go into bars and pull people out during their worst moments and somehow he had learned to not only live and minister to these people but to thrive and be well respected among them as well.
02:01 --> 02:19 [SPEAKER_00]: these guys were tough, and again, sometimes he was in literal fist fights with them, but they all cared about what he said, and as he finished his little sermon that he would give on that barrel, they would sing one of his favorite hymns to sing, what a friend we have in Jesus.
02:19 --> 02:26 [SPEAKER_00]: After all that, he'd share with the boys the gospel, and then he'd head out into the cold snowy night.
02:26 --> 02:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Did they begin traveling to the next place he would stay, or to return to his home to start it all over again the next day?
02:32 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They called him the sky pilot.
02:36 --> 02:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A pilot was somebody who helped steer the direction that the wood, the logging lumber was going to go.
02:43 --> 02:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And they believe this guy's job was to pilot your soul to the sky to heaven.
02:49 --> 02:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The sky pilot Frank E. Higgins.
02:53 --> 02:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This is Troy, and you're listening to Revire Thoughts.
02:57 --> 03:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Usually, we give you an episode with a backstory and then a sermon.
03:02 --> 03:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I wish we had a full sermon by this guy.
03:05 --> 03:10 [SPEAKER_00]: We do have a sermon fragment, not much, but we will read it, but that will come at the end of the episode.
03:10 --> 03:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You would also normally have Joel with you right now.
03:12 --> 03:14 [SPEAKER_00]: However, Joel and I are schedules.
03:14 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't work out for him to be able to be on with us in this episode.
03:17 --> 03:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So I decided I would tell an interesting person, character, sketch, and I had to be honest with you.
03:23 --> 03:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I had like a mission.
03:25 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted a story I wanted to tell you for a while.
03:28 --> 03:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, here's a good opportunity to do it.
03:30 --> 03:37 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, when we did our episodes on the French Revolution or on Woodrow Wilson, I knew for a while, a minister to monsters.
03:37 --> 03:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I had years I wanted to tell that story.
03:40 --> 03:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of those I think are very good episodes, but sometimes it just kind of comes together in the moment And it was a story.
03:47 --> 03:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know until I started putting it together for you And that's the case with Frankie Higgins.
03:53 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I had never heard of sky pilots I had never thought of ministry to lumberjacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s None of I knew nothing of this world.
04:02 --> 04:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in Florida and I currently live in Indonesia and in no part of my life and my world
04:09 --> 04:15 [SPEAKER_00]: has lumberjacking ever crossed past with it, let alone to think about those who did it hundreds of years ago.
04:16 --> 04:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But I will say, of all the people that we cover and revive thoughts, and all the stories that we get to tell, there is one particular type of person that I enjoy telling, I think they're story more than any other.
04:28 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know how to say it.
04:30 --> 04:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, the Lord uses all different kinds of amazing, wonderful people for His kingdom.
04:34 --> 04:58 [SPEAKER_00]: No doubt and I love that so many of the people that impact the kingdom are regular people who go to seminary or something They don't even and then they go and they write books and those books transform the church in the lives of many others Or are they preach and they pastor a church and they soon that church grows You know how many times I said us the classic story of the prodigal, you know the prodigal
04:58 --> 05:17 [SPEAKER_00]: who grows often does amazing things, but if I'm honest, as much as I love those stories, and as much as I love the diversity and the different people that we have on our show, the really rich, great guys and the really poor guys who, who through their smarts, make their way up and then sometimes the guys who really don't through their, you know, Charles Spurgeon and D.L.
05:17 --> 05:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Monday were both brilliant, but neither of them did go to Bible College, or seminary themselves, even though they both would go on to found Bible College's.
05:25 --> 05:27 [SPEAKER_00]: and seminaries and all of that.
05:27 --> 05:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I love it all.
05:28 --> 05:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I do.
05:28 --> 05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's one particular person that I have a soft spot for.
05:32 --> 05:43 [SPEAKER_00]: There's one guy who, who, when I see this person, he is, he's the one I'm most fascinated by every time we run into this type and we don't.
05:43 --> 05:45 [SPEAKER_00]: usually have sermons by this type.
05:45 --> 05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm blown away by the people who do ministry to the most undesirable, most uncharid for most forgotten people in society.
05:57 --> 06:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The ones who go and work with people that no one else even sees, that no one else ever cares about.
06:03 --> 06:05 [SPEAKER_00]: that they are away off there.
06:05 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They're giving up everything and usually they go down completely forgotten because they they give up everything to minister to these people way out on the outskirts.
06:15 --> 06:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to be famous.
06:16 --> 06:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to have the church of multiple thousands.
06:18 --> 06:21 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to have the books and they're not going to be going down.
06:21 --> 06:27 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, a lot of times we don't know their names at all because they they just aren't remembered by anybody.
06:27 --> 06:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And those are, and I think some of my favorite episodes we do.
06:32 --> 06:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned Minister of Monsters.
06:33 --> 06:39 [SPEAKER_00]: That was a guy who, he didn't go to the outskirts of society, but he went to the most evil people in society.
06:39 --> 06:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He was sent to be the pastor over the guys in the Nuremberg trials.
06:43 --> 06:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The Nazis that were being tried for their war crimes were required to have somebody who would speak the gospel to them, something that they did not allow the people in their concentration camps and their trials to have.
06:55 --> 06:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But the Nuremberg Trials wanted to be better than them.
06:58 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he went to the evilest people on earth and shared the gospel with them.
07:02 --> 07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And he did change some of their lives.
07:04 --> 07:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It's great episode.
07:05 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Go listen to it.
07:06 --> 07:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But another one is we had this guy on really recently.
07:09 --> 07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: William, Scott Anderson Scott.
07:12 --> 07:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He was the guy who went to the gold miners here in the gold rush.
07:15 --> 07:17 [SPEAKER_00]: These people are out there digging the hills for gold.
07:17 --> 07:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They have no one preaching to them.
07:19 --> 07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And this guy shows up and shares the gospel with them.
07:21 --> 07:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was many of you said one of your favorite episodes of 2025.
07:24 --> 07:53 [SPEAKER_00]: and it was one of my favorite as well, but the sermon Aiken's Gold was fantastic, but also just his story of seeing these people know when I saw, I think of another one at least did on her show revived radio years ago, Rolf Barnard went to these oil towns where people died all the time and he preached them or another example of these circuits, I told you many times on these shows if you listen regularly, the circuit writers who go all over the front tears way out, where nobody else is being oftentimes the only sermon
07:53 --> 08:12 [SPEAKER_00]: that a town will hear for an entire year because they don't have a regular minister at these circuit riders who would just go way out of their way to share the gospel and and we could keep going and these types of people to me are just so cool they're so fascinating how do you even think to reach these people most people don't even we don't even think about these
08:12 --> 08:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I see I've been in many minister groups and many different churches and when you're in seminary they'll have maybe a class on how to do church-point or even a degree church-planters and stuff like that but you know there's no degree for find the outcasts right there's no degree for find the lumberjack or the gold miners or the the Nuremberg trial people or the or the the people in the front here the people go find those who will be least likely to hear
08:42 --> 08:43 [SPEAKER_00]: and then go share it with them.
08:44 --> 08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Those are people that I am fast.
08:47 --> 08:53 [SPEAKER_00]: When you run into somebody who did that, and gave his life for it never expected to be famous, we're blessed that we even know his name.
08:53 --> 09:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of those groups, one of those people that society had forgotten that just been completely left to the side are the lumberjacks across Canada, across Minnesota, across Maine.
09:05 --> 09:12 [SPEAKER_00]: who were responsible for, I mean, providing the lumber of, you know, so many places and people and yet they were not remembered.
09:12 --> 09:26 [SPEAKER_00]: At their height around the 1870s, 1890s there were 500 loggers or lumberjacks across the United States and Canada, and they would format these longer camps, these big groups of them would come together, work together.
09:26 --> 09:38 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, cut down these forests and then off that wood would go and these isolated forgotten camps were just completely a world of their own and the way these men lived, not great.
09:38 --> 09:53 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you maybe wouldn't want your child to, you know, we hear people say, all lumberjacks are so cool today and today they are, it's still one of the, by the way, still one of the most dangerous professions in the world as being a lumberjack now with all of our safety, all of our equipment, but these guys didn't have any of that.
09:53 --> 09:55 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have electric sauce.
09:55 --> 10:01 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have gloves, they didn't have, I mean, they didn't have gloves, they didn't have like all the safety stuff we do today.
10:01 --> 10:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, these guys just went out there with saws and chopped out trees, and it was not uncommon.
10:07 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: For parts of those trees to fall on them and kill them for the logs, is they're trying to get them out of those camps and on the sleds and stuff to roll them over and kill them too.
10:17 --> 10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was an order for them to be, you know, to cut themselves with their rusty saw on the middle of the cold winter days.
10:23 --> 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It happened, and these people, when they weren't dealing with the threat of death, which was very real, they were also dealing with the fact that their jobs were hard 10 to 12 hours days, and they would have worked even harder if they could move after those hours.
10:40 --> 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But did it 12 hours of that work?
10:42 --> 10:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Is about all you got in you?
10:43 --> 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you've ever cut down a tree,
10:45 --> 11:04 [SPEAKER_00]: you know what that cycle imagine the trees in deep in the heart of Minnesota and you don't have an electric saw you're using these old hand saws with another guy slowly cutting down a tree in the middle of freezing temperatures and doing that day in and day out for six days a week or five days a week whatever it would be.
11:06 --> 11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: uh... to quote one of them they they tend to live rough lives and and uh... the quote went uh... on sunday morning it was a good thing the horses knew how to get us back to camp because we were in no shape to drive them there so when they would go out on friday say would begin to party
11:21 --> 11:23 [SPEAKER_00]: and they would party so hard that it was a good thing.
11:23 --> 11:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The horses knew how to get them back because they didn't.
11:28 --> 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: This was the group of people that Higgins found and found himself becoming the minister over and reaching and preaching the gospel to a group of people quite unlike anyone else.
11:42 --> 11:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He was born in 1865, Frank Kiggins.
11:45 --> 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Francis Sagan, this is a full name actually, but even by Frank and I can see why.
11:49 --> 11:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I was born in Toronto, Canada, in the 1890, at the range of 25 he moved to the United States to become a Methodist Minister.
11:57 --> 11:59 [SPEAKER_00]: However, he failed at his studies.
11:59 --> 12:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He just wasn't cut out to be good enough to be a Methodist Minister.
12:04 --> 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, he will become a Presbyterian Minister around the year 1899, and he will be fully ordained by 1902.
12:12 --> 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But he decided to go ahead and start ministering anyway, and he had different kind of ministry capacities, but in the year 1895, you know, 30 years old is when he gives his first ever sermon to lumber jacks.
12:28 --> 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to read, we're going to read quite a lot of quotes here from a book.
12:31 --> 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: called a man's Christian, a man's, a man's, a man's Christian.
12:37 --> 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a pretty good book.
12:38 --> 12:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't say it's perfect.
12:39 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They're right.
12:40 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They're right.
12:40 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They're right.
12:40 --> 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: If you quote to my wife, a lease of Mars missionaries, and I would say things like this is not the best word.
12:46 --> 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I said this.
12:46 --> 12:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Look at the guy did a good job.
12:47 --> 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really glad I told the story.
12:49 --> 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And you could tell he was personally, a lot of this is kind of first person.
12:52 --> 12:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Like he was going around with Higgins.
12:54 --> 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe as he told some of these stories and experienced some of these things alongside of him.
12:59 --> 13:04 [SPEAKER_00]: but also he wasn't always the best writer and some of the lines he used were a little awkwardly.
13:04 --> 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, these aren't too bad.
13:06 --> 13:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So he described how kind of Higgins got going on this and then when something like this, he preached his first sermon and then quoting here.
13:13 --> 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: They asked Higgins to come again, frequently after that, and even oftener, Higgins would walk into the woods while the driver was on, or into the camps in winter, to preach to the boys.
13:24 --> 13:24 [SPEAKER_00]: They welcomed him.
13:24 --> 13:30 [SPEAKER_00]: They were glad to see him, it was great delight they sang Jesus' lover of my soul, and throughout the lifeline.
13:31 --> 13:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else preached to them in those days.
13:33 --> 13:38 [SPEAKER_00]: A great body of men, almost a multitude in those woods, the church had quite forgotten them.
13:38 --> 13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Boys, said Higgins, you've always treated me right here.
13:41 --> 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Come in to see me when you're in town.
13:43 --> 13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The wife will be glad to have you.
13:45 --> 13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: They took him in as word.
13:46 --> 13:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Without warning one day, 30 lumber checks crowded into the little parlor of his house, and they were hospitably received.
13:52 --> 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Pilot said the spokesman, all now convinced of Higgins' genuineness as they saw how Kiny was at their home.
13:58 --> 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's something for you from the boys.
14:00 --> 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It was in the winter, Higgins says that the call came, and the voice of the Lord, as he says, was clear.
14:05 --> 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Two lumberjacks came out of the woods not long.
14:07 --> 14:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry, there's a little bit of a misquote there, but they gave him a little present of like $50.
14:12 --> 14:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And you could tell it meant the world to them and to him that they received it.
14:16 --> 14:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And then not long after, and the winter, Higgins says that the call came and the voice of the Lord, as he says, was clear in direction.
14:22 --> 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Two lumberjacks came out of the woods to fetch him to the bedside of a sick homesteader who had been at work in the
14:30 --> 14:32 [SPEAKER_00]: and he had asked for the pilot directly.
14:32 --> 14:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The doctor was the first to the man's small home.
14:35 --> 14:37 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no help for him, said he had a lock cabin deep in the woods.
14:38 --> 14:41 [SPEAKER_00]: If he could be taken to the hospital and doleuth, there might be a chance.
14:41 --> 14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, I think it's still a lot.
14:42 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, Duluth, the lotth.
14:44 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I got it again.
14:45 --> 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Didn't spend a lot of time in the north for that did not make it your way guys.
14:48 --> 14:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sorry, if you'd like to have me, you know, when some are when we're in the States and I can speak at your church and you can correct me on how to properly say the names of your northern towns.
14:56 --> 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: But in the meantime, you have to do
15:00 --> 15:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But to remain was death.
15:02 --> 15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It was down.
15:03 --> 15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, said Higgins.
15:04 --> 15:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll take him to the hospital.
15:05 --> 15:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The hospital doctor in Duluth said that the man was dying.
15:08 --> 15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So they took him all the way there, out of his cabin and he's going to die.
15:11 --> 15:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The pilot so informed the home center and bait him to prepare for the next life.
15:15 --> 15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But the man smiled.
15:16 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He had already prepared.
15:17 --> 15:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I heard you preach that night in the camp.
15:19 --> 15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: On the river he said, it seems that he had been reared in a Christian home but had forgotten for 20 years until he heard the voice of that minister
15:29 --> 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: As the man lay dying, he said quote to the chickens, go back to the camps, the dying man repeated, and tell those boys about Jesus.
15:37 --> 15:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else was doing it, so why shouldn't Higgins?
15:40 --> 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The boys didn't have a minister, well why couldn't Higgins be their minister?
15:44 --> 15:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't this the very work that the Lord had brought them so far to do?
15:47 --> 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Had not the Lord spoken with the tongue of this dying man, go back to the camps and tell the boys about Jesus.
15:53 --> 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The phrase became written on his heart, go back to the camp and tell the boys about Jesus.
15:57 --> 16:00 [SPEAKER_00]: how it appealed to this young preacher, the very form of it.
16:00 --> 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: All that night, the homesteader having died, Higgins, not yet the beloved sky pilot, walked to the hospital corridor and when day broke he had made up his mind.
16:08 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever dreams of a city pulpit he had, we're now gone, you would go back to those camps for good and all, and back he would regularly go.
16:16 --> 16:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It gets worked in some of the worst conditions you can imagine.
16:20 --> 16:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not to say the lumberjacks were poor and dirty.
16:23 --> 16:26 [SPEAKER_00]: They'd actually get paid quite well, then they would blow all their money and then back to it.
16:26 --> 16:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But much like the gold miners in California, 30 years before this time, blowing all their money on.
16:32 --> 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's very possible you could have been a gold miner in California, and then once the gold rush was over, you went off, maybe fought in the Civil War, and then went off to be a lumberjack.
16:39 --> 16:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you probably would be pretty old at that point, maybe didn't the strength to do it.
16:46 --> 16:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The bunk house as he stayed at and preached at were terrible.
16:49 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It's what they called the places they stay.
16:50 --> 16:52 [SPEAKER_00]: There would be about 20 to 40 bunks.
16:52 --> 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: These guys would work for 12 hours and they worked in cold conditions, but they worked very hard.
16:59 --> 17:04 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can imagine what these guys smell like and sweat it like.
17:04 --> 17:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And they only usually had a couple different outfits.
17:06 --> 17:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So they would take those outfits off as soon as they got back and hang them up to try to dry them off before they had to put them on again the next day.
17:13 --> 17:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And they maybe didn't have many shirts
17:15 --> 17:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Jacket say where the same one's over and over and over again, but they didn't many socks and those socks would be hanging up everywhere.
17:23 --> 17:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Gross as that can be just imagine the smell of one of these places.
17:28 --> 17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And then imagine trying to preach a sermon for, you know, hours and singing and all that with these guys and how about they were and they did not take common showers.
17:35 --> 17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It was not uncommon for them to only take a shower once a week.
17:39 --> 17:56 [SPEAKER_00]: right before they hit the town with all their money they would go and bathe and shave up and then hit the town nice and smelling good to do a bunch of bad things and then they'd come back and they'd work 12 hour days for several days in a row and then they'd take their next shower before they went back to the town and that was life for a lot of these lumberjacks.
17:56 --> 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not to say
17:57 --> 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, that some of them weren't just good on us people who had a wife and kids back home and were working a hard job, but just like soldiers who are far away from home and just like oil workers who are far away from home and just like any job that takes you far away from home.
18:12 --> 18:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, there are some good solid people amongst them, but there are also many people who are living a rough lifestyle because there's no one nearby.
18:21 --> 18:24 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the kind of place he was preaching to.
18:25 --> 18:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's a quote from the guy who was walking with him and kind of live in life beside him.
18:29 --> 18:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins and the midst of the unholy uproar, the visible manifestation, this environment and behavior, it seems to me of the noise and smell and the very abandoned myth of it all.
18:38 --> 18:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Hell is privileged to see he grabbed a young man by the throat and an unnecessarily gentle way to jerk him into the clean frosty air.
18:47 --> 19:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So in this story, he's surrounded by all these things, this guy meets him, and he sees as a young man's about to pie some alcohol at one of these bars, and he washes Higgins, grabbed him by the throat, and brought him outside, and runs some fresh air, and said, basically, get out of here.
19:00 --> 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't, this isn't for you.
19:01 --> 19:02 [SPEAKER_00]: You're not about this life.
19:02 --> 19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the kind of guy Higgins was.
19:05 --> 19:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He's rough, and I think in a lot of our churches today, he would have probably been thrown out because he grabbed people by the throat.
19:13 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It however seemed unwise for the young man to fight this so Higgins would then realize that he maybe he wasn't gonna leave so he said give me all your money, I'll hold on to it for you so you don't waste all your money on drink.
19:25 --> 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And the guy who went on a scribe of some more Higgins is not an eccentric.
19:28 --> 19:33 [SPEAKER_00]: His hair is tight, his fingernails are clean and there's a commanding achievement behind him.
19:33 --> 19:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He has manners.
19:34 --> 19:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He has a mind that's very interesting.
19:35 --> 19:37 [SPEAKER_00]: He's polite as the world demands.
19:37 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He's not a fanatic.
19:38 --> 19:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He could discuss things carefully and he could explain to you why things were good or bad.
19:42 --> 19:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He is a reasonable and highly efficient worker, a man dealing with active problems and an intelligent and thoroughly practical way.
19:48 --> 19:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He is a self-respecting and respected in his peculiar field as any pulpit pastor of the cities would be.
19:53 --> 19:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He is as sane as any engineer.
19:55 --> 20:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He is big, he's jovial, a little rotund, he had rosy cheeks, Irish Canadian, with a boy smile and an eyes and laugh, with a hearty voice and a way with a head held high, with a man's clean, confident soul gazing frankly from unwavering eyes, five foot nine and two hundred
20:12 --> 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: with a little bit of fat there.
20:14 --> 20:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He is a big, he is a big of body, heart, and faith.
20:17 --> 20:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And outlook and charity and inspiration, and belief in the work of his hands.
20:20 --> 20:23 [SPEAKER_00]: His life is lived joyously, notwithstanding the dirty work of it.
20:23 --> 20:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Though deprived of the common delights of life, he has no church that he can regularly attend.
20:28 --> 20:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He straps a pack on his back and trance the logging roads from camp to camp, whether the weather is good or bad.
20:34 --> 20:42 [SPEAKER_00]: 12 miles in a blizzard at 40 below, and then he'll preach every day and twice and three times a day if he can
20:42 --> 20:51 [SPEAKER_00]: and sadly he'll bury the boys when they die young, and he'll marry them to the kind of women that they know which aren't always the best, and he'll scold and beg and thrash them and bank them when he asks to.
20:52 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: That is quite a description of a man it might be a little bit overly romanticized, but it just painted a picture doesn't it to give you the idea he's not that tall by the way five foot nine and two hundred pound-thawing.
21:02 --> 21:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine him being up a bunch of these big lumberjacks who work all day on these trees.
21:07 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I think I must have been holding back, right?
21:08 --> 21:10 [SPEAKER_00]: These guys were probably absolutely ripped.
21:11 --> 21:12 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no way he should be able in those fights.
21:12 --> 21:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying.
21:13 --> 21:20 [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, we have this guy who on the one hand, he's saying it's a larger than life and on the other hand, he seems very down to earth.
21:20 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But she knows that line there in the middle.
21:22 --> 21:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He buries the boys and marries them to the kind of women they know.
21:24 --> 21:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He has just a little hit there that like this guy is living joyfully but in really difficult situations.
21:34 --> 21:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The men themselves were overwhelmed with sin.
21:36 --> 21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Their lifestyle was common.
21:38 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we told you before they get paid on Friday that go to the town, they drink it's terrible.
21:44 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of women that they interact with, the company that they keep, they often got into fights amongst each other.
21:50 --> 21:54 [SPEAKER_00]: They would often steal from each other, gambling, things at past the time.
21:54 --> 21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But above all, drinking was the biggest problem you'd find.
21:58 --> 22:04 [SPEAKER_00]: These guys often would drink themselves completely and become absolutely addicted to what they drink.
22:04 --> 22:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Often, you weren't allowed to actually, the camps did a pretty good job.
22:07 --> 22:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The bosses really did try to keep the drink out of the logging camps, so you'd become addicted to it in these binge sessions on these Saturdays that you'd go to town.
22:16 --> 22:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And you'd leave, you know, Friday afternoon, get showered up like we said, you'd go and spend all the money you've been working on for the entire week with the lumber company and you got paid well.
22:25 --> 22:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And you would blow it all and by Sunday night you are completely broke and you don't have any really memory so that we can You just had because it was a wild blur.
22:34 --> 22:41 [SPEAKER_00]: That is the kind of min that Frank Key Higgins is dealing with And he has some pretty crazy stories
22:41 --> 22:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Pilot said Old Man Johnson, take this here stuff away from me.
22:45 --> 23:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The sky pilot astounded that Old Man Johnson, in the beginning of his spree, across the town, was frantically emptying his pockets of gold and hundreds of dollars on the preacher's bed in the room above the saloon, and he blabbered like a baby while he threw the coins, keep it away, keep it away, Old Man Johnson wept drawing back the money with the tear.
23:04 --> 23:06 [SPEAKER_00]: For Christ's sake, Pilot will you just keep it away.
23:07 --> 23:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The pilot understood, if you don't cry the Old Man, I know it will kill me.
23:11 --> 23:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins took the money from Old Man Johnson when Old Man Johnson got home he brought it back to his wife.
23:16 --> 23:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He had ended the spree that would have probably been the last one Old Man Johnson ever went on.
23:22 --> 23:28 [SPEAKER_00]: There is no pleasure in these sprees that they go on, and the end of the spree they end up in a place called the Snake Room.
23:28 --> 23:35 [SPEAKER_00]: all of these bars and taverns across the lumber companies, these cities would all have a snake room.
23:35 --> 23:44 [SPEAKER_00]: By far the most of the Marymakers and the penniless condition of the pneumonia havers, and the survivors and the beggars, they all reeled and ended up in these snake rooms.
23:44 --> 23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: They would drink and they would lay around recovering from their drink.
23:47 --> 23:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Often once they ended up there, somebody would search them and steal all their money.
23:51 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Often they would end up beaten up and dropped in these rooms off to the side of the bars.
23:55 --> 24:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Many times they were sick from exposure to the elements, or there'd be a guy in their coffin up along, there'd be another person who'd been beaten, another person who couldn't stand anymore because he was so drunk, but you couldn't just kick them out of your bar.
24:08 --> 24:17 [SPEAKER_00]: because the weather is negative 40 outside, these guys are as drunk as can be, or beat up as can be, or a sick as can be, they can't go out into that weather.
24:17 --> 24:18 [SPEAKER_00]: You're killing them if you do.
24:18 --> 24:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And so you had this extra room in your bar that you shoved them into while they sat around to recover.
24:26 --> 24:38 [SPEAKER_00]: and he would go in there and he would talk to them, try to help sober them up, try to help take some of them home, try to get them back on their feet, and try to get them and point them to God.
24:38 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And the guy's book I was reading about him, the Christian man or whatever it was, he says like this is, did he ever wonder to himself that he is the most amazing exhibition of the primitive Christian feeling in practice?
24:50 --> 24:54 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, talk about being the hands and feet
24:54 --> 24:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Needed someone to do that and there he was in the snake room taking care of them.
24:58 --> 25:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If I don't know why they called it the snake room by the way I didn't look that hard to figure out why but it seemed to be The people in these places made a lot of money
25:09 --> 25:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And some of them didn't always like.
25:12 --> 25:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I didn't become friends with pretty much all these guys, but at first, not all these bartenders like having a minister come in there and grab people by the throat and say, stop spending all your money on this alcohol, don't you know what's going to do to you and take the people running, give them their money.
25:26 --> 25:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So they're not making money off this guy.
25:27 --> 25:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And some of them had a little bit of a problem with them.
25:29 --> 25:41 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, there was a young man who was trying to spend his money, but the minister for Higgins here says, you know, Stop some and so it tells him like what are you doing your mom would be ashamed of you.
25:41 --> 25:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Don't you know God died for you?
25:42 --> 25:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And quote
25:44 --> 25:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Listening to these large words, the boy gave up and gave his money to Higgins.
25:49 --> 25:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The bartender leaned over the bar, a gambler to Loungeine was watching the group.
25:54 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a pause, and the bartender says, look here Higgins.
25:56 --> 25:58 [SPEAKER_00]: What business is any of this?
25:58 --> 25:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Any of yours?
25:59 --> 26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, what business of mine asks the astounded pilot?
26:02 --> 26:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, why are you buttoning for?
26:03 --> 26:06 [SPEAKER_00]: This said Higgins is my job.
26:06 --> 26:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The pilot was leaning rathly over the bar, his face dressed brilliantly forward.
26:10 --> 26:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Alert for whatever would happen, the bartender struck Higgins.
26:13 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins had withdrawn, the bartender came over the bar for a fight.
26:16 --> 26:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The preacher caught a mid-John, the mid-air with a stiff blow, and he fell on unconscious.
26:22 --> 26:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So Higgins tells this guy not to drink as a young man, the bartender says what business of it yours is my job.
26:28 --> 26:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much bartender leaves across punches him and out the pastor knocks him out.
26:35 --> 26:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The next day the two made friends and the boy was safely out of town at that point.
26:38 --> 26:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not hard for Higgins to make friends with the bartenders on some level they seem to like him.
26:43 --> 26:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins always got along well with a lot of them.
26:45 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what in the world.
26:48 --> 27:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine you go to a church or imagine you, you're at church and your pastor comes in bloody for having beat up a bartender the day before and knocked him out cold with a punch because he was going to sell alcohol to a man that was too young and he just didn't think it was right.
27:01 --> 27:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean kind of heroic on the one hand, but if this was a regular occurrence, I think many of us would have some severe questions for our pastors.
27:09 --> 27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think our pastors would make it long in the past, and yet how else were you going to reach these guys?
27:16 --> 27:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Who else were they going to listen to?
27:18 --> 27:25 [SPEAKER_00]: If you couldn't talk to them and be like them and be there for them, you know?
27:25 --> 27:26 [SPEAKER_00]: What are you going to do?
27:26 --> 27:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Not long ago, on a town called a midgedy.
27:31 --> 27:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm again, not familiar with this problem.
27:32 --> 27:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a midge.
27:34 --> 27:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone from Minnesota or someone right in Minnesota is not to go out and wherever it is.
27:38 --> 27:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And right in and tell me how I missed pronounce by me, too.
27:42 --> 27:45 [SPEAKER_00]: uh, the pilot calls the worst town on the map.
27:45 --> 27:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It was indescribably lawless and vicious, an adequate description would be unprintable.
27:49 --> 27:50 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what the person writing this says.
27:51 --> 27:52 [SPEAKER_00]: This down is so lawly.
27:52 --> 27:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It just sounds like an old western town or something doesn't it?
27:54 --> 27:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, so bad, that an adequate description would be unprintable though.
27:58 --> 28:02 [SPEAKER_00]: If I told you how bad it was, they wouldn't let me publish this book.
28:02 --> 28:05 [SPEAKER_00]: The government, the police, the magistrates, whoever they are, they're wholly out of this.
28:06 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have anything to do with it.
28:07 --> 28:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a thoroughly awful settlement.
28:09 --> 28:12 [SPEAKER_00]: The town authorities would laugh at the pilot when he would explain some of the problems.
28:12 --> 28:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The state authorities would gently listen and then conveniently forget him for political reasons.
28:17 --> 28:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But he was determined to cleanse the place of established and flaunting wickedness.
28:22 --> 28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He ordered a patrol and then boys said he'd to the keepers of the places.
28:27 --> 28:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to clean you out.
28:28 --> 28:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to be fair to you though.
28:30 --> 28:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So he goes to these guys.
28:31 --> 28:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I'm going to make this a safe good town.
28:33 --> 28:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He says to them, I'm going to, to these like bartenders to these gambling debts to these people or any.
28:38 --> 28:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to clean you out, want to be fair to you.
28:40 --> 28:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm going to tell you upfront.
28:42 --> 28:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Don't you ever come sneaking up to me and say, I didn't give you a warning and try to get me hurt.
28:46 --> 28:51 [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, getting people killed in the Lumberjack login companies non possible.
28:51 --> 28:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be very easy to make someone like the sky pilot disappear if you so chose to do so.
28:57 --> 29:01 [SPEAKER_00]: These aren't the most scrupulous people and the scrupulousness of it.
29:01 --> 29:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I, um, over the summer we were in Colorado during some, you know, ministry traveling stuff.
29:07 --> 29:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And we read a old kind of prospector town and there were lots of casinos.
29:11 --> 29:14 [SPEAKER_00]: and saloon type things, and these are not the best people.
29:14 --> 29:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the exact kind of environment we're talking about here.
29:16 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: They can make you go missing in other words, if they need it too.
29:20 --> 29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes up to him basically says I'm going to clean you guys out, I'm going to fix this town myself, and I'm giving you a warning.
29:25 --> 29:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So don't sneak up on me, because I went to you fair and square.
29:28 --> 29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They laughed at him, and then he took off his coat.
29:31 --> 29:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's basically like, all right, I'm going to beat all you up and get you out of here in the bar rooms and they said, can you believe it?
29:35 --> 29:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins is coming.
29:36 --> 29:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins is coming and they started shouting and they started drinking and they got into a big fight.
29:42 --> 29:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And by the end of the day, they came up to him and they said, hey, Higgins, you sure gave us quite a show.
29:48 --> 29:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And Higgins was like, thank you.
29:50 --> 29:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And they said, well, hey, put it there.
29:51 --> 29:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Will you shake our hands and Higgins says, of course, I'll shake your hands.
29:54 --> 29:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean, and that was the end of the story.
29:56 --> 29:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He beat up, they all got into a giant fight and a brawl.
29:59 --> 30:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like he's going to beat several people up.
30:01 --> 30:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They got good punches back.
30:03 --> 30:05 [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, all right, well, I did the best I could.
30:05 --> 30:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, hey, shake our hands, take it, because you're kind of guy.
30:08 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand these people.
30:11 --> 30:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They do seem kind of cool, but they too, they are crazy.
30:15 --> 30:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And there were, there were women in these camps as well, but you'd not very many wives of some of the lumberjacks and some girls who would become cook sometimes, but often the type of women that came to these camps are exactly the type of women you might picture that would come to these camps, not the best women.
30:35 --> 30:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd go into more detail, but we all know there are some children who listen to this show, and I think we all understand.
30:41 --> 30:43 [SPEAKER_00]: These are not the best kind of
30:43 --> 30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: to have around these kind of camps.
30:46 --> 30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll put it that way.
30:47 --> 30:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't, he wouldn't minister to them to the best of his abilities as well.
30:50 --> 30:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he had to be prudent as a young man.
30:53 --> 30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But he would, you know, a young man, he's going to his 30s and stuff.
30:56 --> 30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But he had to be prudent.
30:56 --> 30:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But he would, he would do the best he could.
31:00 --> 31:01 [SPEAKER_00]: One quote, quote, here is one little story.
31:01 --> 31:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't much, but one story was, to women like Little Liz, to who's consumption, who not to seize out these camps here, being sick out in the elements all day.
31:12 --> 31:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Who's consumptive Han Higgins held while she lay dying alone in her small bed in the red house.
31:18 --> 31:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Am I dying pilot?
31:19 --> 31:19 [SPEAKER_00]: She asked him.
31:20 --> 31:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, my girl, he answered, dying right now.
31:23 --> 31:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins said again she was dying and little Liz was dreadfully frightened and then began to sob and asked for her mother with all her heart.
31:32 --> 31:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And so in the middle of these, you know, rough and tough fights that Higgins is in.
31:36 --> 31:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He's the guy who will beat you up for drinking.
31:38 --> 31:41 [SPEAKER_00]: He's the guy who will get a fight with a bartender for selling alcohol to a young man.
31:42 --> 31:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And then turn around a couple hours later and he's, you know, saying goodbye to somebody who died and he, you know, tough job, tough ministry.
31:50 --> 31:50 [SPEAKER_00]: For sure.
31:52 --> 32:00 [SPEAKER_00]: To fully describe all of Higgins altercations that is fights with the Lumberjack and all the gamblers and the like and pursuit of clean opportunities for the men, it would actually pain him.
32:01 --> 32:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, it was part of his ministry but it was a part he didn't like to talk about and would prefer to have kept hidden.
32:06 --> 32:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He feared that the people who didn't understand him or didn't understand the camps would think that he was a choral some fellow, but he was nothing of the sort, however.
32:14 --> 32:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He was wise, efficient minister of the gospel, but fought well upon good occasions.
32:18 --> 32:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Notwithstanding is 40 odd years in the Minnesota Woods.
32:22 --> 32:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Fighting was just a necessary part of his ministry.
32:24 --> 32:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a necessary as praying, and just as Tinder of his way of showing his love for the people.
32:29 --> 32:31 [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of crazy to think about.
32:31 --> 32:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you got to have an alepisare just asking the question, is there ever a time it's okay to punch people as a minister?
32:35 --> 32:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think before this episode, I think most of us would have said, I know, but I mean, at least the person who wrote this and the guy knew him pretty well and the camps loved this guy.
32:46 --> 32:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I loved it.
32:47 --> 32:48 [SPEAKER_00]: We haven't gotten to the part.
32:48 --> 32:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there will be people.
32:50 --> 32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a story I didn't, I think I had to delete it just for time.
32:52 --> 32:56 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a story of a guy who wouldn't let him preach the can't be showed up.
32:57 --> 32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The guy was like a new superintendent or boss.
32:58 --> 32:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't know when we said no.
32:59 --> 33:00 [SPEAKER_00]: We're not having any preachers here.
33:01 --> 33:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
33:01 --> 33:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And Higgins was like, okay, I won't, you know, whatever sounds good.
33:04 --> 33:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I won't preach here.
33:05 --> 33:06 [SPEAKER_00]: He heads back home.
33:07 --> 33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And the next day, this guy ends up beaten up thrown into a snow bank.
33:10 --> 33:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And the minister is walking by is like, what happened to him?
33:12 --> 33:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And the guy is like, oh, yeah, when he told, when he said, you weren't a lot of minister to us, we beat him up.
33:16 --> 33:17 [SPEAKER_00]: How dare you?
33:17 --> 33:18 [SPEAKER_00]: That's our minutes.
33:18 --> 33:19 [SPEAKER_00]: That's our sky pilot right there.
33:20 --> 33:20 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know.
33:20 --> 33:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Not the best.
33:21 --> 33:30 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think a pastor if he was over a church would With frown upon his congregation beating somebody up, but that yeah, these are really tough rough guys.
33:30 --> 33:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was their way of showing love and loyalty.
33:32 --> 33:33 [SPEAKER_00]: They love this guy.
33:33 --> 33:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They loved him.
33:34 --> 33:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know,
33:39 --> 33:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But he would punch them sometimes when they were out of flying.
33:42 --> 33:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what you think about it, so he said, just as much a tender profession of his love for them as he could give.
33:48 --> 33:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just, it's just such a weird thing.
33:51 --> 34:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you talked, I mean, if you're interacting in their world, working with these kinds of people, if you weren't willing to punch them, if you weren't willing to fight them, if you weren't willing to get rough house with them, it didn't really care about them.
34:03 --> 34:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And so for Higgins,
34:05 --> 34:09 [SPEAKER_00]: that was his way of showing it and that they understood it because that was how they were.
34:10 --> 34:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why he could said one of his greatest regrets was not learning enough boxing and that he wished he had done more.
34:17 --> 34:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When the examinant was before the Presbyterian to ordain him, a newly minted seminary graduate out from far east rose and quizzed him with some questions and asked him quote, well the candidate that is Higgins, tell us who the Caesar of Rome was when
34:35 --> 34:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he thought about it for a while so I'm confused, you know, I don't know.
34:38 --> 34:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought Caesar was Julius, that's the only Caesar I knew And he said if he said the emperor Rome he's like, I knew the emperor, but I just didn't know it under the name Caesar and he's like, I definitely would have been able to get it, but I didn't But then he said, you know, though who the right Caesar was who the right emperor was the boys in the camps don't really care
34:58 --> 35:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing, like you could sit there and say, excuse me, you know, Minister Higgins, punching people is wrong.
35:05 --> 35:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And I look, again, I'm with you.
35:07 --> 35:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't go around punching people.
35:09 --> 35:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to emphasize, yeah, at the same time.
35:13 --> 35:19 [SPEAKER_00]: all that high, you know, high learning and education and seminary would have been lost on these guys.
35:19 --> 35:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I needed a guy who could talk to them clear and straight and speak their language and he would be rough around the edges.
35:27 --> 35:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But knowing the emperor, the Caesar at the time of Rome, wasn't as important as if you could stop a young man from spending all his money and how were you going to do that if you weren't going to be willing to fight the bartender who was trying to stop you.
35:41 --> 35:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins' ministry was also gentle too.
35:44 --> 35:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Alex McKenzie was dying his hospital bed, a screen around his cot.
35:48 --> 35:52 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the pilot who sat with him as he did all the dying lumberjacks.
35:52 --> 35:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the pilot who told him you're in his nearer, nearing the landing, am I pilot that landing is where you kind of bring the logs in?
35:59 --> 36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yes, you're almost there.
36:01 --> 36:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Alex said the pilot, I have a heavy load, pilot, a heavy load.
36:06 --> 36:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Mackenzie was a four horse teamster.
36:07 --> 36:10 [SPEAKER_00]: He would haul the logs from the woods to the landing.
36:10 --> 36:17 [SPEAKER_00]: At Lake 40, at Lake 40 pounds of newly cut timber would be drawn by them over the logging roads.
36:17 --> 36:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Pilot, he asked, do you think I can make the grade?
36:20 --> 36:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That is, do you think you can get these logs into where they're going to go safely?
36:25 --> 36:28 [SPEAKER_00]: You can with help, Alex, the pilot answered.
36:29 --> 36:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Mackenzie said nothing.
36:30 --> 36:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They said, you mean that I need better leaders?
36:33 --> 36:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, you need the great leader, Alex.
36:36 --> 36:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he said, I know what you mean.
36:38 --> 36:39 [SPEAKER_00]: You need our need Jesus.
36:40 --> 36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: No need to tell what Higgins said, then he repeated the story of faith, love, repentance, and the infinite love of Jesus and the power of Christ for salvation.
36:48 --> 36:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Alex McKenzie knew it all and it hurt at all.
36:50 --> 36:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He had heard it since he was a kid, but hadn't heard it in a long time.
36:53 --> 36:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't utterly forgotten, prodigal, like many of the others.
36:56 --> 36:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But it came back to him as he was at the end of his life.
36:59 --> 37:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He sat silent for a very long time and said, pray for me, like a child.
37:04 --> 37:05 [SPEAKER_00]: McKenzie died that night.
37:06 --> 37:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say a word in the long time after the prayer.
37:08 --> 37:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But just before his last breath, he looked up at the pilot and he said,
37:19 --> 37:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I just love stories like this.
37:21 --> 37:26 [SPEAKER_00]: People who go and be the hands and feet of Jesus, they're not going to be famous for it.
37:26 --> 37:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins is only famous by accident.
37:29 --> 37:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to mean by that as he didn't do any of it.
37:32 --> 37:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody else found him out there and will write his story down in a magazine.
37:38 --> 37:43 [SPEAKER_00]: and that will get all this attention and people will come out to him and this guy will follow him around and write a book about him.
37:43 --> 37:45 [SPEAKER_00]: But none of it was sought after.
37:45 --> 37:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It was purely just some news article that that captured everybody's minds.
37:50 --> 37:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I love these people.
37:52 --> 37:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're going to meet so many people like this and heaven.
37:55 --> 38:07 [SPEAKER_00]: who preached to forgotten nobody's, who, who waste in their life, but they preached and they gave their all for Jesus, and I cannot wait to hear their stories.
38:07 --> 38:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I, another, I mean, another one, J. Gresham Meachan, he, in that there was a professor.
38:12 --> 38:21 [SPEAKER_00]: but in World War I, the great war he went off and preached and did Bible studies as a YMCA volunteer, but he would be on the front lines.
38:21 --> 38:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He would be in danger of gunfire and a chemical attacks.
38:25 --> 38:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He had to have a gas mask to eat work long hours.
38:28 --> 38:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of Sunday, he'd have a Bible study and often need to be by himself or with one or two other soldiers sharing the gospel and reading the Word of God on the edge of the trenches.
38:38 --> 38:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And these people who go and do stuff like that, who are willing to give up their everything, their fame, their fortune, their comfort to share the love of Jesus with the most forgotten unknown people.
38:50 --> 38:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't, I can't even begin to say how much I respect them.
38:54 --> 39:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And I can't begin to say how much I think that is one of the greatest evidences that what we believe in is real.
39:01 --> 39:08 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the accusations, the church only does this for money or you only do this for power, the Higgins' of the world.
39:08 --> 39:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Both Barnards, the Anderson Scott, that these guys who went and did it, with no one else.
39:15 --> 39:38 [SPEAKER_00]: was never gonna know their story that those are the people who tell me nah it's not about the fame it's not about the money that was just about seeing forgotten people loved Jesus and really they remind me they their stories remind you of Jesus Jesus could see the broken people that nobody else cared about society and and bring them to an understanding of themselves and people like Higgins do the same
39:38 --> 39:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's another one.
39:40 --> 39:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Pat the old road monkey now came to the end of a long career furious living terrible living, being about to die sent for Higgins.
39:46 --> 39:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He was desperately anxious concerning the soul that was about to depart from his ill-kept and degraded body and he was in pain and turning very weak.
39:55 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins waited.
39:56 --> 39:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Pilot Pat whispered with a knowing little wink.
39:58 --> 40:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to put in the fix for me to put in the fix Pat.
40:02 --> 40:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
40:02 --> 40:03 [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
40:03 --> 40:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to make it, you know, make it all right for me.
40:07 --> 40:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Pat said Higgins, I can't fix it for you.
40:10 --> 40:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Then said the Diane man in the basement.
40:12 --> 40:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what the heck are you even?
40:14 --> 40:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say hack by the way.
40:15 --> 40:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Did you even come in here for?
40:17 --> 40:20 [SPEAKER_00]: to show you, Higgins answered, how you can fix it.
40:21 --> 40:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And Higgins said, I can fix it, how do I fix it?
40:24 --> 40:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And then Higgins explained the gospel to the man, you I can't save you for you, but you can know Jesus, you can be saved, you just have to do it, you have to go, and you have to trust, and Jesus, but He will save you.
40:38 --> 40:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The man listened and nodded and understood, and with amazement, he just said, all night, huh?
40:44 --> 40:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Huh?
40:45 --> 40:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Eyes wide.
40:46 --> 40:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Mudder into the preacher.
40:47 --> 40:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
40:48 --> 40:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
40:49 --> 40:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
40:50 --> 40:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He heard a lot of things this whole life, but he never heard and understood the gospel.
40:55 --> 40:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He never actually said anything.
40:57 --> 40:58 [SPEAKER_00]: He again says, all night long.
40:58 --> 41:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He just kind of kept saying, uh-huh.
41:02 --> 41:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
41:03 --> 41:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
41:03 --> 41:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like that, huh?
41:07 --> 41:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins was overwhelmed though.
41:10 --> 41:15 [SPEAKER_00]: There are tens of thousands of lumber jacks and only one Higgins.
41:16 --> 41:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So Higgins began to recruit from the ranks of those who he was converting to Christ to join him and being these sky pilots.
41:23 --> 41:38 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most famous was John Sornberger, a former prize fighter, and Higgins kept saying he wished he was a boxer, where he found himself a boxer, who would become a heavy drinker, and in his life and the lumberjack seed became a murderer.
41:39 --> 41:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So, not a good guy.
41:40 --> 41:57 [SPEAKER_00]: but Sornberger came to Christ and he became very serious in the guy at the Lumberjack's listen to him because I knew he was and Higgins helped him find God, gave up sin, cleaned up his life and when it was really proven that he was a different guy and he was making an impact.
41:57 --> 42:07 [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a part in for the governor of the time saying like hey you could put this guy in jail but he's doing so much better with what he's doing and could you find a part in form and the governor did.
42:07 --> 42:12 [SPEAKER_00]: One of his best, I hear that story, I'm like, this is like straight out of a movie, isn't it?
42:12 --> 42:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I reminds me of the Elisa's episode, Mars Mission, he's glad to say the word, where she, this is glad to say the word, is sent to this little prison in the middle of China, terrible place to be a ministry in the,
42:24 --> 42:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And these really rough criminals are there, but they don't know what to do with her because she's a girl, and they start coming to Christ and they're these rough terrible people, but they're living differently.
42:34 --> 42:45 [SPEAKER_00]: That's, it's, it's, it's moving, I would love to watch the movie of these people and the stories in Frank Higgins, I'd love to see this movie moment where, you know, the prized boxer murder or suddenly preaching Christ and,
42:45 --> 43:09 [SPEAKER_00]: What a moment it would be right in 1902 Higgins was asked to head a Presbyterian home mission program to the logging camps The camps covered 200 square miles and included 30 men And it was way too much big and Higgins would it recruit people from in the camps, but he was also kind of going out and recruiting people Outside the camps, you know people who had ministry experience and stuff
43:09 --> 43:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and he met a guy from, uh, trained from Moody Bible College, which, uh, by the way, would have been during the time that deal Moody was still alive, so it would have been pretty early on and deal in the Moody Bible College career.
43:21 --> 43:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and this guy met Higgins and felt called to serve the lumberjacks alongside of him.
43:26 --> 43:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And we have this guy's story, like a quote of how much work he would do in an average year.
43:32 --> 43:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And so in an average year, this other guy, not Higgins, would travel that he recruited.
43:37 --> 43:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He would travel 19 and 48 miles.
43:40 --> 43:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And remember, this is before really cars and you're walking most of that, pretty much all.
43:44 --> 43:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a horse.
43:46 --> 43:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Deliver 217 sermons.
43:48 --> 43:53 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not a sermon every day, but in three days, you deliver to sermon on two of them.
43:53 --> 44:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Visit 222 camps, hospitals and missions, Sunday schools, and day schools, call on 902 families and 83 sick people, write 308 letters, letters, what happened there.
44:07 --> 44:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Hand out a 633 gospels and tracks and also hundreds of pounds of secular books and magazines.
44:14 --> 44:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, saying these guys are bored and a book goes a long way to keeping them out of trouble.
44:19 --> 44:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So you want to make that you want to get their attention.
44:21 --> 44:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, hey, when the preacher guy comes to town, he gives out some books and magazines too.
44:25 --> 44:27 [SPEAKER_00]: You can be a little bit of knowledge out there because you're isolated.
44:27 --> 44:31 [SPEAKER_00]: You're way out there from the world, even a little bit of news is something.
44:32 --> 44:42 [SPEAKER_00]: These pilots for also basically, I mean, picture a homeless traveler from the 1930s and 40s, kind of usually in my head, they're like in a suit with like a little stick in a bag on the end.
44:42 --> 44:44 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not really all that far off.
44:44 --> 44:46 [SPEAKER_00]: From what these guys were, I was basically what they were.
44:46 --> 44:47 [SPEAKER_00]: They were homeless.
44:47 --> 44:53 [SPEAKER_00]: When you put sky pilot into Google or Wikipedia, one of them, it was just like, do you mean Hobo?
44:54 --> 44:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, whoa, that's rough, right?
44:55 --> 45:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But these weren't Hobos, but they weren't as far off from that as you would maybe necessarily want them to be.
45:02 --> 45:05 [SPEAKER_00]: because that's the lifestyle they live traveling like that.
45:05 --> 45:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They had to carry everything with them because there's no car And so they would go from place to place with this bag of traveling a lot like a homeless person What church be like in these camps here wondering?
45:17 --> 45:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me tell you you had the church service and let me describe the the hut to you again
45:22 --> 45:45 [SPEAKER_00]: A low, long-hut, stifling, ill-smelling, unclean, infested, a row of double-decker bunks on either side, a great glowing stove in the middle of socks and jacket steaming on the racks boots put out to dry, dim-lit lanterns, half-clad, hairy men and boys with beards, lounging everywhere, stretched out and benches, peering from the shadows of the bunks, squatted on the fire, would cross-legged on the floor near the preacher.
45:45 --> 45:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Higgins rolled out his barrel for a pulpit and put a cover over it, then he took off his coat and mopped his brow from sweat, presently a hymn book or a testament hand he would sit at the pole.
45:56 --> 46:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He would usually sit on this, but he would kinda have a barrel in front of them that was supposed to be his pulpit, but most of the time he just ended up sitting on it.
46:03 --> 46:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Not much light in here, he would start and say I won't be able to read for you this time, but I'll say the first song, are you all ready?
46:09 --> 46:16 [SPEAKER_00]: You've lived in filth and blaspheme and whiskey so long, maybe you don't know any better, but I want to tell you every one of you that these boys don't want that sort of thing.
46:16 --> 46:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They remember their mothers and sisters and they know what they want, what's clean?
46:21 --> 46:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's have it.
46:22 --> 46:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they would, he would share with them and share the gospel with them as they went.
46:27 --> 46:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And he would, he would hit that pulp at sometimes with his fist, he would, it's sometimes get rough with them.
46:32 --> 46:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He would sometimes point them out in the room.
46:34 --> 46:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Jim Thompson, I see you sneaking into the back of the bunk there.
46:38 --> 46:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I see you trying to think in like you can get in here and listen to the sermon without me calling you out.
46:42 --> 46:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Jim Thompson would say some bad words.
46:44 --> 46:46 [SPEAKER_00]: the pilot would instantly confront him.
46:46 --> 46:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, you take that back.
46:47 --> 46:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to hear that from you right now.
46:49 --> 46:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Jin would laugh.
46:50 --> 46:53 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, you want to go and the preacher's like kind of getting ready to fight him.
46:54 --> 46:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jin's yeah, I'm sorry.
46:55 --> 46:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
46:55 --> 46:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's not cause me that.
46:57 --> 46:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't mean anything by the preacher would go back to preaching.
46:59 --> 47:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Just like nothing had happened.
47:01 --> 47:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, these kind of things would happen over and over again, and by the end of the day, Higgins is utterly exhausted.
47:07 --> 47:24 [SPEAKER_00]: You would have to talk to the guys afterward, he'd encourage him, he'd scold them, he'd hear them confess some sins, he'd pray in a quiet place with them in the snow somewhere outside, he'd share in their life and hopefully touch their hearts, he'd give advice, he'd help the ones that feel overwhelmed, he'd write letters because some of them couldn't.
47:24 --> 47:27 [SPEAKER_00]: read, but they wanted their mom to do their, no, they were doing okay.
47:27 --> 47:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd helped take care of some six, six, one, sick ones, or he catch up with someone, he hadn't seen it a while, he'd be introduced to some new lumberjacks, and on and on it would go late into the night.
47:37 --> 47:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And then oftentimes, he'd leave one bunkhouse and head out 10 miles and go to the next one.
47:42 --> 47:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Heygons was famous for calling people out in sermons or anywhere he went by the way rich poor The boss or superintendent of the logging camp the dangerous gambling boss whoever was he would do what he had to do and In 1909 while living this life a man wrote an article about him.
47:57 --> 48:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't think anything about it Something I don't even know if he had guns even knew this guy He was a journalist that kind of came through the camps and ran to Higgons.
48:04 --> 48:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It was fascinated with them
48:05 --> 48:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But soon he was famous, everyone knew who he was because of the sardicle and suddenly he was getting people reaching out to him, writing letters to him say, hey, can speak come speak and speak and you know he'd been wanting to recruit more people to help him so he thought, oh, you know what, I will go speak at these different places because maybe just maybe I can get out there so you have traveling a bit.
48:25 --> 48:45 [SPEAKER_00]: you know going to Illinois in a way out north west and when he got north west down to like the lumberjack groups and logging companies and Idaho and Washington he would walk up to some of the camps and then he'd kind of like say hey I know some of you and it would be some of the guys from Minnesota and they'd be like oh my goodness it's guy piralinity's here that's crazy and catch up with them so
48:45 --> 48:50 [SPEAKER_00]: again very well loved and very much just traveling all over this guy.
48:51 --> 48:55 [SPEAKER_00]: One story he says I failed to 90 said once to the superintendent there.
48:55 --> 48:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently.
48:59 --> 49:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Did you notice how attentive they were?
49:00 --> 49:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I tell you the boys are so good to me.
49:02 --> 49:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I was a little rough on them tonight but somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness around me it just makes me upset.
49:07 --> 49:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And nobody else seems to care about it, and since I'm their minister, I have to care about it.
49:12 --> 49:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And I yearn for the souls of these boys to be awakened, and so I just got fed up with it.
49:16 --> 49:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And I try to tell them the truth about themselves and give them some of that old message that I heard when I was a boy.
49:21 --> 49:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it's just like, just one of the things that I don't understand about ministers of the gospel.
49:25 --> 49:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He continued, you know, you've got a couple different types of ministers.
49:29 --> 49:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I can handle a minister if he fails.
49:31 --> 49:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If he falls in the sin, he's like me, he's like you.
49:33 --> 49:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We all do it sometimes.
49:35 --> 50:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of ministers I can't understand are the ones who don't get out there and tell the truth of the gospel with all their worth Who hold back when they're in the pulpit those are the ones I I can handle a lot, but I have no time for someone who does that One day he was he was he was kind of traveling through leaving one bunkhouse late at night and
50:03 --> 50:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He got hit, he got kind of lost, turn around, maybe he was tired, maybe he just, he's late, snowy, maybe he was a new unfamiliar area, but whatever it was, he got kind of, he got it mixed up, he got turn around, and he couldn't make it to the bunkhouse on time, and someone found him out there, he'd made a little shelter for himself, he was going to be able, but he got very sick from it, and he was able to withstand the elements of the night, the snow and the cold, but he got sick from it.
50:27 --> 50:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And when they found him, they took him to a bunkhouse and they could tell, oh man, the pilot is sick.
50:31 --> 50:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He's really not doing too well.
50:34 --> 50:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And they wondered what could be done for him.
50:35 --> 50:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And nobody knew they didn't have any medicine and their other medicine.
50:39 --> 50:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Alcohol, they didn't have any of that on them either.
50:41 --> 50:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Doctor was not nearby.
50:45 --> 50:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And they just wonder, well, what can we do to help him out?
50:50 --> 50:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, one of the lumberjack said, well, he always praised for us.
50:55 --> 50:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Why don't we all come together and pray for him?
50:57 --> 51:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And so they each took turns praying for the sky pilot.
51:01 --> 51:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And Higgins was awakened off, and he turned his head towards the wall, and it says he wept like a fevered child.
51:09 --> 51:11 [SPEAKER_00]: He just couldn't believe his how hard as such.
51:11 --> 51:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was by the way, so last line,
51:15 --> 51:26 [SPEAKER_00]: for his little, his lumberjack sees big tough men who are just absolute animals out there yet they're praying for their sky pilot to get better and recover and he did.
51:27 --> 51:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He did get better and recover.
51:29 --> 51:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But in 1914 he developed a pain in his shoulders and eventually it was so bad he had to go to a doctor.
51:36 --> 51:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Doctor said you have cancer.
51:38 --> 51:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They said carrying such a heavy bag on
51:45 --> 51:46 [SPEAKER_00]: to know if that's true.
51:46 --> 51:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I do know that at least told me she had an episode where somebody a similar story, a strap on a bag gave somebody breast cancer as what the doctors said.
51:54 --> 51:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
51:56 --> 51:57 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a doctor right in, let me know.
51:57 --> 52:00 [SPEAKER_00]: If you get cancer from carrying things, apparently that's what they thought.
52:01 --> 52:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say it's true.
52:02 --> 52:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the doctors are right in the carrying that heavy bag on a shoulder day in and day out, cost them to die of cancer.
52:08 --> 52:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in that case, what she did about a year later, he'll pass away from this cancer.
52:13 --> 52:24 [SPEAKER_00]: In that case, and at least to the people, if it's not true, the Lumberjack's thought, our sky pilot literally gave his life and his body to them.
52:26 --> 52:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't describe the love of Jesus more than that.
52:30 --> 52:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He was about 50 years old when Frank Higgins died.
52:34 --> 52:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned at the top of the episode, we do have a sermon by him.
52:37 --> 52:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna read it to you.
52:38 --> 52:41 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the first year I don't read the sermons on a revive thoughts.
52:41 --> 52:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Not the very first time I did, I did read an indulgent sermon that Martin Luther was up against so that you could hear it's very early episode of Martin Luther in the podcast, but I wanted people to hear.
52:50 --> 52:59 [SPEAKER_00]: one indulgent servant sounds like so that you can hear how impressive G Martin Luther's servants are in comparison but here we have another one here.
53:00 --> 53:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember this guy I'm okay it's kind of the guy I'm reading parts of it it's kind of builds in the story here but I want to read the story and read the sermon with you.
53:07 --> 53:09 [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see that this kind of sermon is you know what?
53:09 --> 53:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to win in the awards for being scholarly.
53:12 --> 53:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to give you the theological accolades.
53:15 --> 53:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not even sure if you broke down the Greek here, guys.
53:18 --> 53:24 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think you're going to listen to it and go as the perfect sermon that need to be preached for these kinds of people.
53:25 --> 53:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I well remember a sermon he preached on the prodigal son, but the environment must be present if one is to reproduce a sermon.
53:30 --> 53:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It was well suited to the audience, plain, too plain for the big city audiences, but an unmistakable message for the men of the forest.
53:37 --> 53:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Bigger's a speech had little place on it, poetry, it wasn't there, the poetry had direct simplicity, it was unadorned English with the crash, incline, and the language was of its strength of different type.
53:49 --> 53:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a story full of love of hope and cheer that appealed to the hundred men who breathlessly listened while the wind of winter beat the drifting snow against the camp.
54:00 --> 54:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Here are the extracts it's given from my own memory, says the guy writing this book.
54:05 --> 54:08 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the boys stayed at home, and one left the old homestead.
54:08 --> 54:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it wasn't the fellow that stayed at home that the father worried about, but the fellow that packed his turkey and went out to blow his money.
54:14 --> 54:27 [SPEAKER_00]: You lumberjacks are in that youngsters place in the old folks or wondering back home where you are and what you are doing, because a man leaves home and isn't necessary to be a prodigal, but his chances to make a fool of himself are better if he isn't away from the old home in his memories.
54:27 --> 54:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't tell the story of his own home leaving up when Higgins left home and how his mother would look out the road for him every day.
54:34 --> 54:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The mother's prayers have followed me through life.
54:37 --> 54:40 [SPEAKER_00]: My story is your story, but my names are changed a bit.
54:40 --> 54:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone wants to hear that you still live.
54:42 --> 54:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you written a letter to your mom tonight?
54:44 --> 54:51 [SPEAKER_00]: because the fellow had money he found friends, but there never was a friend worth having who was made or bought through money.
54:51 --> 54:57 [SPEAKER_00]: This young fellow in the parable reminds me of the lumberjack coming down the river in the spring and landing in one of our logging towns.
54:57 --> 55:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Minu had never heard of him become his friends all of a sudden, and the barkers at the dins went at the train to give him a happy hand.
55:03 --> 55:07 [SPEAKER_00]: He has friends galore, he's the most popular man in his town, while he still has money.
55:07 --> 55:10 [SPEAKER_00]: but they bleed them to death as they did the prodigal in the Bible.
55:11 --> 55:16 [SPEAKER_00]: There are men in these towns who have your wages figured up already and they smile and chuckle as they toast at these places.
55:16 --> 55:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Think you want a good time and they will have with your money when you come down.
55:19 --> 55:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Don't think you are working for yourselves.
55:21 --> 55:24 [SPEAKER_00]: The saloon men in the crowd, they are the ones who cash your checks and bank your coin.
55:25 --> 55:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them in the saloon business, they come to these parts.
55:27 --> 55:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And when I did, they were just poor.
55:28 --> 55:30 [SPEAKER_00]: They were poor than me, and now look at them.
55:31 --> 55:32 [SPEAKER_00]: They live in the nicest houses in the north.
55:32 --> 55:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They eat the best lands.
55:34 --> 55:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They can thank you for that because you keep paying them.
55:36 --> 55:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The wives of these men are dressed in beautiful silk dresses.
55:39 --> 55:40 [SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome for that.
55:40 --> 55:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're next in their hands, and they listen with jewels, and you bought it all with your hard labor on these trees.
55:45 --> 55:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And you still wear these sad socks and have hardly them any money in the bank.
55:49 --> 55:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Now men, where you ever invited to their nice homes, where the saloon men, the gamblers, and the brothel keepers built.
55:55 --> 55:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Were you ever given an introduction to the wives that you dressed in silk and jewels?
55:58 --> 55:59 [SPEAKER_00]: No, and you never will be.
56:00 --> 56:00 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't want you.
56:00 --> 56:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They just want your cash.
56:02 --> 56:07 [SPEAKER_00]: That's how they treated the old prodigal, and that's how they're treating you prodigal lumberjacks up today.
56:07 --> 56:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, after a while, the prodigal was broken.
56:09 --> 56:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He asked his friends for a lift, but his friends weren't in the lifting business.
56:13 --> 56:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It was their business to help spend, not to help him.
56:15 --> 56:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember when you spent all the day at the bar or at the brothel, or at the saloon, how you asked for a loan for a lodging for one of your friends?
56:23 --> 56:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'll have money soon, but I need help right now, and did they help you?
56:26 --> 56:26 [SPEAKER_00]: No.
56:26 --> 56:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the prodigal was just like you.
56:28 --> 56:31 [SPEAKER_00]: For they said to him, as they said to you, go up and find some work.
56:31 --> 56:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what?
56:32 --> 56:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe up the river, you can find some acorns to feed.
56:34 --> 56:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, for the prodigal, it was husk from the hog.
56:37 --> 56:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But when the men who rob and spoil you and not give you a hand, there is a father who will.
56:42 --> 56:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And the father's home was the only place the prodigal found love.
56:45 --> 56:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And in Lord Jesus Christ, you, lumberjack boys, will find your welcome.
56:51 --> 56:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he shares the gospel, cheering and loving hope, the story of God, who gave Christ a die, that prodigal was like them.
56:58 --> 57:06 [SPEAKER_00]: might find light and love, and they might have options that they never would have if it hadn't been for the love of Jesus as defiled and dirty as they were.
57:06 --> 57:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a homely sermon, a plain message, a description that they understood because they experienced it.
57:13 --> 57:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Their heads were bowed and shame as the story of the prodigal life was told for the listener's new.
57:18 --> 57:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It was their story that they were hearing.
57:20 --> 57:23 [SPEAKER_00]: not of the times of Christ but taken from their own lives too.
57:23 --> 57:30 [SPEAKER_00]: When the preachers spoke with the loving father who warmly welcomed them home and the wonders there, they all were moved.
57:30 --> 57:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It was after Mr. Higgins had preached his sermon on a former occasion that a young man came up to him for a private conversation.
57:36 --> 57:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The sermon awakened the longing for a better life and rich real love could be felt instead of the shame he felt every day.
57:42 --> 57:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He had been carried back to his reminders of his old home and the mother who used to pray for him when he was an absent young boy.
57:48 --> 57:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Pileady said, I want to pray.
57:51 --> 57:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me, can I do it still?
57:53 --> 57:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Come on, my boy.
57:53 --> 57:56 [SPEAKER_00]: The said the pilot, under the pine trees, let's go off together.
57:57 --> 57:57 [SPEAKER_00]: We will pray.
58:00 --> 58:08 [SPEAKER_00]: This is Troy, and you've been listening to Revive Thoughts.