Troy walks through the life of Jerry McAuley. He played a hugely pivotal role in church history in a story I had never heard before. Listen to his life as a Riverboat thief, a prisoner, and how Christ came in and changed him.
Also, sorry for the awkward audio in the final few minutes. The power went out in my house!
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00:00 --> 00:10 [SPEAKER_00]: this is Troy and you are listening to revived thoughts and today it is just me and studio kind of bringing you a solo conversation just a conversation by myself today.
00:12 --> 00:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I have had a Joel can't be here he'd like to be here we have plenty of sermons we have lots of sermons for you to listen to but Joel couldn't be here and I have had this episode this idea of an episode sitting on my folder I'm a tabs I don't know if you do this but I have all the tabs like on my
00:29 --> 00:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And this one's been sitting there since April, since I did men who destroyed the church, which many of you really appreciated that episode.
00:37 --> 00:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But the other episode I almost recorded was this one on a man named Jerry McColley.
00:43 --> 00:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was really fascinating by his story.
00:45 --> 00:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I did not think it was the best time to do it.
00:47 --> 00:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And when Joel told me he couldn't be on this episode, I thought, okay, this is this is then the time to do the Jerry McColley episode.
00:54 --> 00:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've been putting it together.
00:55 --> 00:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It is fascinating.
00:57 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you have been a listener to the show, if this is your first episode, I don't think this is a great, you know, I hope you're listening to it.
01:04 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're enjoying it.
01:04 --> 01:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that this would be an episode that I would say is a really good example of what we do at Revive Thoughts.
01:10 --> 01:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We do episodes like this sometimes where myself or I think Joel has done a few where we just talk for a while and share an idea, some story or something from church history.
01:19 --> 01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But this is not a good example or, you know, of the natural way things are.
01:23 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: This is us on side show mode kind of thing.
01:26 --> 01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We've heard from all of you throughout the years and some of these side episodes, these kind of projects that don't fit into the natural flow of revive thoughts, but we kind of pulled them out of our hat.
01:36 --> 01:49 [SPEAKER_00]: In that being some of your favorite episodes, I know that in the beginning of the year, I didn't episode on Frank E. Higgins, the pastor who punches and I'm still here, there's a whole fan club now, a Frank E. Higgins people who love that guy and historian.
01:49 --> 01:51 [SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't listened to that one, I really loved it.
01:51 --> 01:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It was really good.
01:52 --> 02:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We've done other episodes like this too, so once in a while every few months Joel and I are both very busy I don't think Joel is traveling right now because of this reason, but he is a mission's videographer So he goes around the world filming missions and stuff.
02:04 --> 02:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You should check out his work and support him in any way that you can You could also support him by going to his new podcast real missionaries in real time another way to check out what he's doing If you're missing Joel right now, I want to hear him
02:16 --> 02:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, with all that said, jump it in here with Revive Thoughts.
02:19 --> 02:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, Jerry McColley, I think it's, if you, if you listen to the show for a while, if you're brand new, this might be new, but if you're not, you click on a show like Revive Thoughts and you expect to hear what our taglight as great as his sermons of all time, right?
02:32 --> 02:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, and I think that's true.
02:35 --> 02:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But for me, and I don't know if you know this is me going really inside baseball here, so if you're not into this, it might not be a part you care about, we're getting to the story, don't worry.
02:45 --> 02:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But there had been copycats of our show.
02:47 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: There had been people who have attempted to do what we hear at revived thoughts have done, and I remember when we about a year into our show, some of the speakers who had been on our show actually gathered together under a
03:04 --> 03:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and they basically attempted to do what we did.
03:06 --> 03:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't edit the sermons, they didn't modernize the sermons, and they didn't give the back stories.
03:11 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And they suck with the big names.
03:13 --> 03:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They suck with Robert Murray McChain.
03:15 --> 03:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They suck with Charles Spurgeon.
03:16 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They suck with Jonathan Edwards.
03:17 --> 03:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They suck with the names that you would expect on a show like this.
03:20 --> 03:27 [SPEAKER_00]: When we put those names out, when you see John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, those guys come across your feed, we know that we're going to get more downloads.
03:27 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to get more hits.
03:28 --> 03:32 [SPEAKER_00]: More people are going to view that episode because of that big name attached to it.
03:32 --> 03:33 [SPEAKER_00]: That's just the facts of the show.
03:34 --> 03:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But you also know if you listen to her if I thought we don't just hit the big names.
03:39 --> 03:40 [SPEAKER_00]: That copycat show didn't make it.
03:41 --> 03:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you a number of reasons why I don't think they never talked to me.
03:44 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Even some of those speakers eventually came back over to our podcast and read servants for us in the future.
03:48 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But that copycat show and many other copycat shows that have
03:52 --> 03:55 [SPEAKER_00]: trying to do what we do here at Revye Thoughts have kind of come and gone.
03:56 --> 04:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the big reasons why those shows don't make it is they want to just do the big names.
04:02 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: A podcast like this could really just run on, you know, tin mate.
04:05 --> 04:06 [SPEAKER_00]: There are YouTube channels.
04:06 --> 04:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I have hundreds of thousands of subscribers that are just Charles Spurgeon's Sermons or Sermon Audio.
04:11 --> 04:16 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll go and read old Sermons and then it'll be this, you know, there are people who just do the pretend big ones.
04:16 --> 04:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon, Calvin, Augustine, Chris Austin, it may a few others and that's
04:22 --> 04:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But we revive thoughts don't and I think you listen to our show not just to hear the big names not that they're not great.
04:27 --> 04:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I have a strong version episode coming out in a while and we just did a Jonathan Edwards episode.
04:32 --> 04:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So we like the Martin Luther here at the end of October as well.
04:35 --> 04:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We do.
04:35 --> 04:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We have the big names as well.
04:37 --> 04:40 [SPEAKER_00]: But we also like these obscure guys.
04:40 --> 04:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I love the stories of the church.
04:42 --> 04:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I love what God has done.
04:44 --> 05:00 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a sermon coming out and next week or the week after, by Oswald Chambers, called the Ministry of the Unnoticed and it just talks about all the different people got us used throughout history that who've been forgotten, who don't get noticed who's work will tirelessly away and only maybe God truly saw it.
05:00 --> 05:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe a few people close to that person, but God saw it and they are gonna be rewarded and have an eye to think that is one of the coolest,
05:07 --> 05:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Things of our faith, and so I love those stories.
05:10 --> 05:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I think they are some of the most encouraging Oftentimes people when they hear a story they want to hear somebody they can relate to.
05:16 --> 05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can really I could really relate to him I don't know if I'm just weird and I really might be but I do not really care if I can relate to you Or I mean I guess it's fine if I can relate to you if you if you have my lived experience But the thing is if you tell me you and I have like the same lived experiences I'd probably just immediately go not at all
05:33 --> 05:35 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I probably not and you're not me.
05:35 --> 05:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I just, I'm going to immediately start to notice the ways we're different because you try to compare us, right?
05:39 --> 05:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm just contrary in that way.
05:41 --> 05:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really care that much if I can relate to you.
05:44 --> 05:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What I care about is what have you done for God?
05:46 --> 05:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What have you done?
05:46 --> 05:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And these people who like Frankie Higgins, the guy who who lived in Minnesota, beating people into submission for God, and that sounds crazy.
05:54 --> 05:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Go listen to the pastor punches and tells me that tell me that's not what he did.
05:56 --> 05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.
05:57 --> 06:00 [SPEAKER_00]: We lovingly, awesomely, and he brought so many people to Christ.
06:02 --> 06:07 [SPEAKER_00]: by a gold a guy who was preaching to gold prospectors and bringing them to Christ in California.
06:08 --> 06:09 [SPEAKER_00]: A couple years ago, at least on Rev.
06:09 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Dreddy, I did a Ralph Barnard had the guy who was preaching to oil their cowboy towns.
06:14 --> 06:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I am fascinated.
06:16 --> 06:25 [SPEAKER_00]: We just did a three-hour podcast on bleeding cans that's available to the patrons of these people who moved to Kansas and were like with standing up to say, I can't relate to that.
06:26 --> 06:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I did it can relate to moving to Kansas.
06:27 --> 06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I did living cans for a while, but I can't relate to
06:30 --> 06:34 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, fighting slave people or do break, I can't relate to that.
06:34 --> 06:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I love about them.
06:35 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They're different.
06:36 --> 06:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They remind me of how easy my battles really are comparatively.
06:40 --> 06:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They put me in my place.
06:41 --> 06:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They convict me.
06:42 --> 06:47 [SPEAKER_00]: They show me godliness in places that are hard and so many of the most amazing people that have ever lived.
06:48 --> 06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: lived and had giant battles and stories that are completely forgotten to history.
06:52 --> 06:59 [SPEAKER_00]: But when I see them and I see how they were faithful and I see how God delivered them or how they they held faithful to God when things were hard.
06:59 --> 07:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm blown away.
07:00 --> 07:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't, you know, as I was weird, I don't want to hear a bunch of people I can relate to.
07:03 --> 07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want a bunch of people like me.
07:04 --> 07:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to see God's amazing tapestry of amazing men and women and I want to grow from learning from them.
07:10 --> 07:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And so with that said, I have found another one of these stories and I had to tell you this story.
07:17 --> 07:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And I wouldn't have found an April.
07:18 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I found this book is called Transformed the Life of a River Boat Thief.
07:22 --> 07:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to get into what a River Boat Thief is in here just second.
07:25 --> 07:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's the story.
07:26 --> 07:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty short.
07:27 --> 07:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I was interested because the guy was a River Boat Thief.
07:29 --> 07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And when I looked up River Boat Thief, literally this book is like the ninth one down on Google and the internet archive where I found it.
07:35 --> 07:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It is not a well-known thing.
07:37 --> 07:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there was like a fantasy book series.
07:39 --> 07:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I had like River Boat Thiefs or something.
07:40 --> 07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And a couple of other things.
07:42 --> 07:49 [SPEAKER_00]: This is not like a well-known thing, and yet when I describe it to you, I think you're going to go like, wait, those people have probably lived all throughout history.
07:50 --> 07:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I can think that this is, I mean, on islands out here in Indonesia, they probably have Riverboat thieves historically speaking at some point.
07:56 --> 08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: They had them, he this guy is going to his story, Jerry McColley's story, was in New York City, but I bet you all over the world, wherever there are boats and docks, I bet you there have been little Riverboat thieves.
08:06 --> 08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: These people
08:10 --> 08:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just fascinating.
08:10 --> 08:24 [SPEAKER_00]: A little side show, a little glimpse of a different world that I don't think you and I can relate to today, but yet it was a part of our world and probably has been a part of our world since the beginning of time since people first got boats.
08:24 --> 08:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine there have been river boat thieves sneaking around doing what these guys were up to.
08:30 --> 08:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And so again, I can't relate to these stories in terms of like they're like me, but I'm fascinated by them.
08:34 --> 08:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I love them and I don't know if I originally knew this or I forgot, but when I was putting this episode together, I'm going to give you a spoiler.
08:41 --> 08:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you've been kind of like, I'm on the for her, I don't know if I want to stay.
08:44 --> 08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What is this, this Jerry McColley guy.
08:47 --> 08:52 [SPEAKER_00]: goes on to do something extremely important to the, important to the church, important to world history, important to everything.
08:53 --> 08:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was shocked at the end of the book that he did this because I was just, I was just fascinated by the riverboat, the part of the story.
08:59 --> 09:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't realize what he does.
09:02 --> 09:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So I do, for me, I got to that page in the story as I read the book and was like, whoa!
09:06 --> 09:10 [SPEAKER_00]: This guy, he's actually really big deal, but I didn't realize it.
09:10 --> 09:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I do apologize if I'm spoiling that for you, that shock, well, you won't get that moment of shock, but I'm not going to tell you what it is.
09:15 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to tell you why he's important.
09:16 --> 09:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So you got to stick with me here to figure out why this guy is so important.
09:20 --> 09:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And he is, he did something that no one has ever done before.
09:26 --> 09:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I cannot tell you how many lives have probably been transformed by this guy.
09:31 --> 09:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So let me go ahead and jump in here.
09:32 --> 09:34 [SPEAKER_00]: 1839 is when he was born.
09:34 --> 09:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He dies in 1884.
09:35 --> 09:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He only lives 45 years, so he is not a very old man when he dies.
09:38 --> 09:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry McColley, he opens his book, I really like this line.
09:42 --> 09:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He opens his book with, do not attempt this record of my life.
09:44 --> 09:49 [SPEAKER_00]: From any feeling, I do not attempt this record of my life from any feeling of vanglorie.
09:49 --> 09:51 [SPEAKER_00]: any craving for notoriety.
09:51 --> 09:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Neither is it because I have had a remarkable history.
09:53 --> 09:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I have been a great sinner and have found Jesus a greater Savior.
09:57 --> 10:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is why I would tell my story that others may be led to a door and seek the blessed friend who saved and have so far kept me by his grace.
10:05 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So he could say, all he's just being humbled, I genuinely think that he just wanted to tell his story, probably because someone said, hey, you need to tell your story and he said, you think it'll help people and they said, yes, and he's like, all right, if you think it will help somebody else, I will do it.
10:19 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the vibe really is the vibe I get from him, that he's not telling the story with any expectation, a fame or a name.
10:27 --> 10:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry is born in Ireland.
10:28 --> 10:34 [SPEAKER_00]: His dad was a counterfitter, a guy who made fake money and traded it out.
10:35 --> 10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like maybe before he was even born, the law came after his dad.
10:39 --> 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And he had to make a run for it.
10:40 --> 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Jerry, he never knew his father.
10:42 --> 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He never, they had no relationship.
10:44 --> 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He was gone.
10:45 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: That counterfitter was out of there.
10:47 --> 10:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think if you knew nothing else about him, that gives you an idea of where we're going with the story.
10:51 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't it?
10:52 --> 10:53 [SPEAKER_00]: We got a good picture.
10:53 --> 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, kind of man, you might be growing up around.
10:57 --> 11:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He was putting to the, eventually, putting to the care of his Catholic grandma and his Catholic grandma very devout should always doing her prayers, always counting the rosary beads, and Jerry did not like, did not like it any of it.
11:09 --> 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He's very clear from the beginning of his story.
11:12 --> 11:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He does not care for what his grandma is about.
11:14 --> 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He does not like Catholicism at all.
11:17 --> 11:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And And he, part of the, I would say about a third of his life has spent fighting with the Catholic church.
11:23 --> 11:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Now he did not like church.
11:24 --> 11:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He did not like he never got a proper education ever really got taught at this time in his life as a kid to read and write any of that kind of stuff.
11:31 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Things weren't great for him in Ireland and so around the age of 13 he is sent to New York City to be cared for by his married sister and her husband.
11:40 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: and he worked in the business kind of of his brother-in-law, eventually kind of stole some money, eventually got far enough along that he could move out.
11:48 --> 11:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he gets an apartment with two other guys and I didn't say really how, but at some point they get their hands on a boat.
11:55 --> 12:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And they would take this boat and they immediately, he's the 13-14-year-old guy living on his own, and he's immediately right into what he will be famous for, which is a riverboat thief.
12:04 --> 12:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Now to understand this, you need to know he lived at what would have they would go to a place called Water Street, which was a part of New York City that wasn't right on the river, at least maybe it was, I'm not sure, but the way he described it is it was where people were thirsty to quench their sins, like this is where you'd go get alcohol, this is where you would go drink, this is where you would go party, that kind of a water street.
12:27 --> 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was actually a real water street too, but I'm not so sure and they were in the southern tip of what is today New York City's Manhattan So the big ol island there kind of in the middle.
12:36 --> 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I've never been in New York City I've been in a lot of places.
12:38 --> 12:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
12:38 --> 12:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you about Beijing or can tell you about You know Kyoto I'm gonna tell you about Jakarta But I'm sorry.
12:45 --> 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't been to New York City, okay?
12:47 --> 13:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I know it's not a line I look it up on a map and so the very southern tip of that like where that island meets kind of the bay to see whatever it is that's where he was hanging out and doing stuff and so they get their hand on this boat and they're their job is like pretty simple it sounds so basic that I and as soon as I read this I was like there must have been
13:04 --> 13:06 [SPEAKER_00]: lots of these people throughout history.
13:06 --> 13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But I've never heard of one before.
13:08 --> 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: They would just take their boat up and down the canals and they would kind of wait till they found a boat parked or doing something, and they would just pull their boat up silently to it, get off their boat, grab whatever they could, off the other boat, sneak back onto their boat, and push off.
13:23 --> 13:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And they called themselves Riverthus.
13:26 --> 13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They were, and I, it's such a simple thing.
13:28 --> 13:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine that there haven't been many of those throughout history.
13:30 --> 13:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And you could say, oh, so
13:32 --> 13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, because they're not attacking anybody.
13:34 --> 13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They never fought back.
13:35 --> 13:39 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't thugs that were, you know, give us all your booty or anything like that.
13:39 --> 13:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, this was very much a, uh, uh, just reference to you.
13:44 --> 13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Say we're just sneaking on your boat, stealing stuff.
13:46 --> 13:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was kind of it.
13:47 --> 13:49 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was no error about it with a parrot.
13:50 --> 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They were doing it silently.
13:51 --> 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: If you cut them, they immediately would take off running, get on their boat and get out of there or jump in the water to get to, there was no fighting at all from what I can tell.
13:58 --> 14:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, they're not a well-known profession, and like I said, I had my notes here, number nine on the Google list of like what a river boat thief is.
14:06 --> 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: This guy comes up.
14:07 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, he's one of the famous ones that are not that many.
14:10 --> 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: They're tons of waterways around New York City, tons of them.
14:13 --> 14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So these guys could come in and out all day all night long at night, just kind of secretly sneaking on boats.
14:18 --> 14:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like sometimes they were even willing to risk.
14:21 --> 14:37 [SPEAKER_00]: getting on an active boat like it didn't seem to it didn't seem to me that the fact like there are fairies moving people up and down the canals at all times and I didn't get the impression these guys cared if the boat was moving it seemed like they would paddle up quietly to a boat while it was moving and try to sneak into like the luggage area but anyway
14:38 --> 14:38 [SPEAKER_00]: get ahead of ourselves here.
14:38 --> 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is what they did.
14:40 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever they took, they sold it, they lived it up with the money and they partied.
14:43 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He started, uh, like, just live the life.
14:45 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: You grab a bunch of stuff late into the night.
14:47 --> 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: You get back, you sell it to some people.
14:48 --> 14:56 [SPEAKER_00]: You have your guys that can get, you know, get it for good with the clothes, the hats, the wallets, the jewelry, whatever you took in the night off these, but anything.
14:57 --> 15:19 [SPEAKER_00]: at some nice just boat stuff like oh you you somehow got the boat tanker well that's where some money things like that even and they would sell it and they'd party all day long and he said he started become a really good fighter too like kind of just a boxer back in that era when boxing was more of a thing and he said he slowly was advancing through every seppison and if I quote here right here it says I was only 19 years of age when I was arrested for highway robbery and
15:19 --> 15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: a child in years, but a man in sin.
15:22 --> 15:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I did nothing of the criminal act I was charged to, but the rum sellers and the inhabitants of that word that area that part of town hated me for all my evil ways, and they were just glad to be rid of me.
15:34 --> 15:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So they all swore the robbery on me, and I couldn't help myself.
15:36 --> 15:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I had no friend.
15:37 --> 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I had no advocate in the court.
15:39 --> 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It is a bad thing centers to not have your advocate at the court.
15:42 --> 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And without any just cause, I was sentenced to 15 years
15:48 --> 15:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I was handcuffed and sent in the cars to sing sing.
15:52 --> 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when he says, it's funny because later on, he was like, look, I was guilty of so much more than this one robbery.
15:58 --> 16:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But the one crime he goes to jail for happens to be the one crime.
16:01 --> 16:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He's actually not guilty of.
16:03 --> 16:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But they put it on him because nobody really liked him.
16:04 --> 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, again, he was a bad guy, went up and down rivers and then he would take all the money.
16:08 --> 16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And he would, you know, he was, he was not a good guy.
16:12 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He wouldn't, he wouldn't fight you on the boats, but I do think he might have fought you in the taverns.
16:17 --> 16:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Sing Sing, what a prison.
16:19 --> 16:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I've never heard much about Sing Sing, maybe you know all about Sing Sing, I learned a lot about Sing Sing for this episode, and I gotta tell you, it's a terrible place.
16:26 --> 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when they are really like about this episode, and when they are really like about Jerry's story, is it's full of just people living for God and just little ways, and they transform an area for Christ.
16:40 --> 16:44 [SPEAKER_00]: and they both help Jerry along in his path, but also they help so many countless others.
16:44 --> 16:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, full of people whose names you'll never remember.
16:47 --> 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you an example.
16:48 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing seeing was a prison built in 1824.
16:50 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of officially opened in 1828 when they kind of finished a prison, but they were already taking people in before that.
16:57 --> 16:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And when they first started, they built it 30 miles up north of New York.
16:59 --> 17:01 [SPEAKER_00]: They actually took years to find the location.
17:01 --> 17:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted the best spot.
17:03 --> 17:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and up north of New York was where the best spot was, because it was so far away from everything.
17:06 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And when the first prisoners started showing up, they didn't even have the walls built yet, and but it was so far out of the way, like they really couldn't run away.
17:13 --> 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And when he says they took them up in cars, they took them up on barge boats and dropped them off as they went on their way.
17:17 --> 17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Now in 1828, they built this prison, and it was a for-profit prison.
17:21 --> 17:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it was the first one, but it was definitely the model for-profit prison.
17:25 --> 17:32 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, within a year of building this for-profit prison, there were nine other for-profit, like nine other states, there were opening prisons just like this one.
17:33 --> 17:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what did I mean by for profit?
17:34 --> 17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the prisoners had to work, had to make money, and whoever ran the prison was making money off the system.
17:40 --> 17:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And they were under a new system that had just been invented for seeing a system that also spread to a bunch of others.
17:45 --> 17:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was called the Auburn Prison System.
17:48 --> 17:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, America had been basically trying different prison systems out to kind of create the best model for dealing with prisoners.
17:55 --> 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Pennsylvania system had just been tried before this.
17:57 --> 18:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The Pennsylvania system was where they kept you completely silent and
18:03 --> 18:06 [SPEAKER_00]: an entire prison where, no matter who you were, you got sent there for solitary.
18:07 --> 18:09 [SPEAKER_00]: They said, basically, you never could talk to anybody.
18:09 --> 18:10 [SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't be around anybody.
18:10 --> 18:11 [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted you to learn discipline.
18:11 --> 18:13 [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to break you of your habits.
18:13 --> 18:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to break you of your identity of other people.
18:16 --> 18:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, well, Pennsylvania system was really hated.
18:19 --> 18:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was too much people were going crazy under it.
18:21 --> 18:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So they tried a new system, a little bit of a developed version of the Pennsylvania system.
18:26 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: You weren't allowed to talk when you were in the actual prison.
18:29 --> 18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: They would whip you, they would beat you if you were so much as caught whispering, they'd come at you and attack you.
18:33 --> 18:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Really violently.
18:35 --> 18:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was, well, look, prisoners will form riots.
18:38 --> 18:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Prisoners will create a prisoner, usguards versus them mentality.
18:43 --> 18:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Prisoners will, you know, they're bad people.
18:45 --> 18:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And they need to get away from their old relationships.
18:47 --> 18:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So talking is part of the problem.
18:50 --> 18:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's beat them until they don't talk anymore.
18:54 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and this is for people who've committed robbery, any kind of crime is getting put into the system.
19:00 --> 19:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But they were allowed to talk during the day because during the day, they were shipped off to Cories.
19:03 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: They were shipped off to lumberyards.
19:04 --> 19:09 [SPEAKER_00]: They were shipped off to farms and they worked and they made the prison money that way.
19:09 --> 19:18 [SPEAKER_00]: You could basically pay them nothing, you needed to pay them, and the prison made the money and farmers and courier miners and all those people would pay to have them do this work.
19:19 --> 19:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And Laudidad, you've got yourself free labor, basically slaves, and by the way, slavery, legal in America, and some parts of America at that point.
19:27 --> 19:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go, seeing seeing had figured out a way to make money off of prisons.
19:32 --> 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And they said, quote, we wanted to keep it silent to keep people from developing a sense of self.
19:37 --> 19:42 [SPEAKER_00]: and they wouldn't have any relationship with the prisoners and just work the more them constantly build a discipline in them.
19:42 --> 19:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So when you send them the theory, you send them back into society, they have a sense of discipline, they wouldn't want to be a bad person anymore.
19:50 --> 19:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And they even, in the said 1840s, they started planting silk worm trees to have these guys develop silk.
19:56 --> 19:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Or anything they could to make your job as a prisoner was to make money for the prison all day.
20:00 --> 20:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And they had one more to the two three big features of the Auburn system.
20:03 --> 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: You weren't allowed to talk while you were in the prison.
20:06 --> 20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You could talk while you were at work.
20:07 --> 20:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a little bit of these guys did develop some friendships and they got around and it looked their prisoners.
20:11 --> 20:12 [SPEAKER_00]: They spent all day board.
20:12 --> 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: They would pass notes.
20:13 --> 20:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They had all kinds of ways of communicating around the guards.
20:16 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_00]: This would lead to the guards beating them.
20:18 --> 20:19 [SPEAKER_00]: This would lead to them.
20:19 --> 20:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just one of us.
20:20 --> 20:20 [SPEAKER_00]: What a mess.
20:22 --> 20:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, the third, this is, I think, one of the craziest features, they would have two risks come.
20:26 --> 20:30 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a whole area for two risks to come, visit the prison, the idea was simple.
20:30 --> 20:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, look at the prisoners, not talking to the prisoners, could not talk to the tourists, again, it couldn't talk at all.
20:36 --> 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Look at these prisoners, wow, you know, teacher kids not to be like them, look at the model we're doing, it's a great, and that you get to see a prison, that's something interesting for you.
20:44 --> 20:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was about a quarter, a per adult, and a half of a quarter, I don't know what that is, like, 12 and a half since, I don't know how that even worked.
20:51 --> 20:55 [SPEAKER_00]: for a kid and you could come bring your family and visit the prison.
20:55 --> 21:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Give it a good tour for a dollar and a two and then you know you go home and eat your there you go kids and you would make money of course the prison is charging you to visit the prison so they're making money off the tourism as well.
21:06 --> 21:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's that's the system and I got to be I look I got it look I don't think I'm not an expert in prison I don't make the American system of just having people sit around all day and do very little is great Doesn't I from what I can tell that seems like a lot of prisoners are bored and I think that I believe is Mary Susser in Africa who saw all these guys Report and all they did was fight all day because they did they just didn't have anything to do.
21:29 --> 21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not good But this system is also obviously awful.
21:33 --> 21:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember I read
21:35 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the best he's not notes from the underground, but notes from the house of the dead I believe it is where it talked about his time as Siberian prison, and he said just one of the worst things you can do somebody is not give them a job that matters, well, this working for a prison, not a job that made him feel good.
21:50 --> 21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so this is, by the way, the guy who ran the prison was just, to me, he just came off psychotically.
21:55 --> 21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to psychologically break down prisoners.
21:58 --> 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: He was very mean.
21:59 --> 22:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He made his own cat of nine tails and would beat the prisoners with it.
22:04 --> 22:05 [SPEAKER_00]: They had to pass a law in New York at the time.
22:06 --> 22:10 [SPEAKER_00]: You can't hit a prisoner with a cat of nine tails more than six times because of this guy as some of the other prison wardens.
22:11 --> 22:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He would use intentionally psychological isolation tactics.
22:15 --> 22:20 [SPEAKER_00]: and 1839, a prisoner died from overflogging by this guy, so he was not good.
22:21 --> 22:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And so the local seminary, a seminary nearby, they hated the conditions of the prison.
22:25 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They hated what they was hearing, the stories they were hearing, and about a decade before our guy, Jerry McColley, gets there, a pastor starts to get permission to visit the prison.
22:34 --> 22:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He sees the issues, the warden, their John Lucky's his name.
22:37 --> 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: he sees he starts visiting 1843 and he reports lind the word into the New York governor and says we need to start inspecting these prisons we need to do so this is not good this is very terrible conditions and of course
22:52 --> 23:12 [SPEAKER_00]: The prison warden's mad at the you know chaplain is even one and there what's he doing is going to give you know that is a big fight is happening But this chaplain stands as ground and eventually they create a the new in 1844 they get the New York prison association Uh with prisoner modern monitors to check in and make sure that these four prison you know four profit prisons aren't just
23:13 --> 23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Treating people terribly and that these people have some rights and some of the rights that they get pushed through is the idea of a religious library You know what let's set these prisoners read some godly books father in there and let's Spend time teaching them not just beating them down, but building them up as well And this became like I don't know I don't I don't really history prison reform But I know this was a really big deal all because one
23:38 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: because one seminary heard they didn't like what they were hearing coming out of this prison and then uh... you know some of them got the courage to go to go fulfill Christ's command of visit people in prisons and prison chaplain saw what was happening and called it out and fifteen years later
23:56 --> 24:09 [SPEAKER_00]: this guy, Jerry McColley will enter this prison and I just think if that chocolate hadn't done his job, Jerry McColley's life probably would not have been changed, but because he did, and time had set in long enough for those changes to take place when Jerry gets to this prison.
24:09 --> 24:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the same prison.
24:10 --> 24:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the same scene.
24:11 --> 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It was founded as it was still
24:13 --> 24:17 [SPEAKER_00]: not an easy place to live, but it was a very different place than the one that had been found by.
24:17 --> 24:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's just that little story of a person being faithful, taking a step, most people never know his name, but how many prisoners have had their lives changed by a religious library inside the prison, or moral teaching, inside the, you know, preaching some godly values there, that weren't going to, if nobody had stepped up.
24:37 --> 24:38 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, back to our guy.
24:38 --> 24:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry says, quote, that ride was the saddest hour of my life.
24:41 --> 24:42 [SPEAKER_00]: That was riding to the prison.
24:43 --> 24:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I looked back on my whole past life.
24:45 --> 24:46 [SPEAKER_00]: All my hardships, all my miseries and sins.
24:46 --> 24:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I look gladly, I would have thrown myself out into a advancing train to end my life if I could have.
24:52 --> 24:55 [SPEAKER_00]: It was not sorrow for sin that possessed me, but a heavy weight seemed to press me down.
24:55 --> 25:02 [SPEAKER_00]: When I thought of the punishment, I had got to suffer from my wrongdoings and an indignant, revancheful feeling for the injustice of my sentence.
25:02 --> 25:05 [SPEAKER_00]: 15 years of hard labor and a prison to look forward to.
25:05 --> 25:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And all for a crime I was innocent of, I knew I had done plenty to condemn me if it had been known.
25:11 --> 25:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But the others, people just as bad as myself, were running around free, and I was suffering the penalty for one, who I had not done it.
25:17 --> 25:26 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he's out free, glorying in his lucky escape from a punishment, and carrying nothing for the unhappy dog who now had to go in his stead.
25:26 --> 25:30 [SPEAKER_00]: How my heart swelled with rage and then sank like lead, as I thought of how helpless I
25:35 --> 25:40 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can see he's very upset, but he then began to turn his thoughts to God and like the later him, right?
25:40 --> 25:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So that was his quote as he felt in the moment.
25:43 --> 25:49 [SPEAKER_00]: But then he said, I now see how God put me in prison to save me from my sins, and I'm so grateful he did, but at the time he didn't see it.
25:50 --> 25:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And for a few years he decided I'm going to be the best prisoner they've ever had.
25:53 --> 25:55 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to make every friend of every guard.
25:55 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be the most obedient guy.
25:56 --> 25:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do everything perfectly so they love me.
25:58 --> 26:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they'll let me out early and the very least I won't make my life more difficult.
26:02 --> 26:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And for a few years, he was, he was a very kind, very obedient, yes sir, whatever you want sir, kind of prisoner and everyone liked him.
26:09 --> 26:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He started learning and teaching himself to read and write, he began to improve his life.
26:13 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He kept saying the Lord's prayer to himself every day, he said, it'll do me some good.
26:16 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have, you know, remember, he's kind of raised in a Catholic house, he didn't really know anything, but he kind of had this idea, if I say the Lord's prayer, it's like a magical incantation, something will happen.
26:25 --> 26:26 [SPEAKER_00]: But then he got sick.
26:26 --> 26:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And in a sickness, he couldn't work as hard.
26:29 --> 26:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't do what he wanted.
26:30 --> 26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have the patience to be a mystery, yes, man.
26:32 --> 26:34 [SPEAKER_00]: People started to like unless this made him irritable.
26:35 --> 26:37 [SPEAKER_00]: His irritability got him in trouble with the guards.
26:37 --> 26:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The guards started to punish him.
26:38 --> 26:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The punishments did not make him happier, but made him angry, which made him more irritable.
26:42 --> 26:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And this just began a really bad cycle.
26:45 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: So this first couple years, he was on fire.
26:48 --> 26:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But the, you know, not for God, but he was on fire as a prisoner.
26:51 --> 26:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he just kind of spun out after getting sick.
26:54 --> 27:03 [SPEAKER_00]: One day he says in boredom, he decided to go to the prison like chapel, but it wasn't like, again, I don't think they really had a full chapel yet, but you know, probably maybe he or John lucky me at him in the guy.
27:04 --> 27:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, there is a crazy, or there was a revival preacher that preached to a guy who got a guy say, he started a church who gets the guy say that we're about to talk about here.
27:14 --> 27:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen a direct link between people and my life quite like worked like through five different people to get to this moment.
27:20 --> 27:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, that is that is really interesting.
27:23 --> 27:43 [SPEAKER_00]: that many you could you can only trace back a person salvation to one or two people uh... you know trials forging us hate by an elder who stepped up and preach one day we don't even know who that was right and that's not uncommon thing at all uh... but the in this case i could preach that i could like follow the chain of people who shared christry shared christry like back for people and that was really interesting to me i've never been able to do that before
27:44 --> 27:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so he goes to the E wants to hear a church, he's okay, he's a sport, he just want to kill some time on Sunday.
27:49 --> 28:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So quote, as I took my seat, I raised my eyes carelessly to the platform, and who should I see there besides the chapel, but a man named Orville Gardner, he had been for years a Confederate, a friend and sin, not a Confederate isn't a Southern Confederate, like a rebel and sin.
28:02 --> 28:05 [SPEAKER_00]: awful gardener was the name which we all called him.
28:05 --> 28:05 [SPEAKER_00]: That's funny.
28:05 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_00]: His name is Orville, but we all call him awful.
28:08 --> 28:09 [SPEAKER_00]: We kind of guys as you get it right.
28:10 --> 28:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Since my imprisonment he had become a Christian and we converted.
28:12 --> 28:16 [SPEAKER_00]: It was filled with desire to come to the prison and tell the glad story to the prisoners.
28:17 --> 28:20 [SPEAKER_00]: was coming, it could not have been more surprise if an angel had come down from heaven.
28:20 --> 28:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew him at first glance, although he was greatly changed from his rough dress in appearance.
28:24 --> 28:31 [SPEAKER_00]: After the first look, I began to question my mind, wasn't really him, and though I might must be mistaken, but the moment he spoke, I was sure it's him, and I had tension was held.
28:32 --> 28:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he did not feel he belonged up there.
28:34 --> 28:37 [SPEAKER_00]: where the ministers of God and the good men who preach the gospel to the prisoners with sand.
28:38 --> 28:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So he decided to come down to the floor with us that he might be among them because that's where he was.
28:43 --> 28:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He told them it was only a little while since he had taken out the stripes that that's what they were wearing.
28:47 --> 28:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh the the by idea black and white stripes on prisoners also comes from sing sing to again to take away your independence in case you're wondering.
28:54 --> 29:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so while you was talking with his tears began to fall down, he knocked down and prayed and sobbed and cried and cried until I don't think there was a single dry eye in the crowd.
29:03 --> 29:12 [SPEAKER_00]: My eyes were filled with tears and I raised my hands so little white the way for I was ashamed to have been a companion or to have my companions or regards see me even though we were all weeping.
29:12 --> 29:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I wish to be alone, or it was dark, so I could have had my way with my feelings and no one see me.
29:17 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew this man was not the kind to be a hypocrite.
29:19 --> 29:22 [SPEAKER_00]: We had been associated in many dark deeds and sinful pleasures in the alleys.
29:23 --> 29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I had heard O's and curses violent angry words from his mouth that no man would make up, and I knew he could not talk like he was talking now unless something had really truly changed him.
29:31 --> 29:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So I couldn't understand what he was saying.
29:33 --> 29:36 [SPEAKER_00]: One sentence, however, he impressed upon me, a verse from the Bible.
29:36 --> 29:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The Bible, I had heard of this book that people pretended it was a message from God, but I had never cared for it.
29:41 --> 29:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I had never read a word of it, but now God's time was coming.
29:44 --> 29:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted me to show me the treasures of his great book.
29:47 --> 29:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He always had a book on hand, like ever since he had taught himself to read in the prison he loved reading, but he read like cowboy stories and stuff like, I don't know there were cowboys stories, but like your cheap penny novels that they had back then, just trash basically.
29:58 --> 30:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but when he went back to a cell, every cell had a Bible put in it by that prison chaplain from before, and so he didn't have his one of his little stories to distract him with.
30:07 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So he finally said, okay, I'll look at this Bible, basically.
30:11 --> 30:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I took it down and beat the dust from it and opened it, where to turn to the final, the final words, I knew, I know where to go.
30:17 --> 30:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He's so little knew about the Bible.
30:18 --> 30:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't even know where to begin, which as many works with people like that, it's interesting to hear people look at you and go where do I, where do I even start, you know?
30:26 --> 30:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's, I think, something, it's just an aside note, but we Christians, you older Christians in the faith.
30:31 --> 30:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you guys are, are wonderful and amazing people.
30:34 --> 30:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you kind of forget, you kind of forget what people who don't have an understanding of the Bible are.
30:38 --> 30:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I've had people be like, ah, yeah, you know.
30:41 --> 30:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I just want to read.
30:42 --> 30:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen people, I'm going to teach some young people, I want to teach some people who are new in the faith and they'll pull out the deepest, the deepest, the theological texts.
30:50 --> 30:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say that they're trying to show off their knowledge.
30:52 --> 30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I think they genuinely, they really love that book and they thought this person would too.
30:56 --> 30:59 [SPEAKER_00]: But when you're working on people who don't know the Bible very well, you've got to start simple.
30:59 --> 31:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to start somewhere.
31:00 --> 31:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I always encourage my people, which just start with Mark.
31:03 --> 31:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to read.
31:04 --> 31:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It's Jesus's story, like, let's look there and go to Mark.
31:07 --> 31:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly listening, I say, no, you have a certain Genesis and work through App.
31:10 --> 31:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I have done that before.
31:11 --> 31:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you, once you get to Leviticus a numbers, it is difficult for people who are just brand new to the idea of reading the Bible and you can say, oh, you just aren't doing it right.
31:18 --> 31:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm not skilled enough.
31:19 --> 31:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're right.
31:20 --> 31:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm not doing it right.
31:21 --> 31:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I start with them with Mark.
31:22 --> 31:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I get them to know Jesus and then I work my way out.
31:25 --> 31:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's my suggestion.
31:26 --> 31:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Off to the side.
31:26 --> 31:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If you meet somebody like this, a guy who doesn't even know where to begin, I really encourage you, Mark is a really good one because it's just a straightforward.
31:33 --> 31:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the story of Jesus and the Pharisees and all that.
31:36 --> 31:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And people can really understand those stories.
31:38 --> 31:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
31:39 --> 31:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't want to get on and on.
31:41 --> 31:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I read as you just kind of open the book and be in somewhere at the beginning.
31:44 --> 31:47 [SPEAKER_00]: How interested it seemed rather better than any book I'd ever read.
31:47 --> 31:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I could scarcely let it go.
31:48 --> 31:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Even to go to sleep, I was fascinated from that day on.
31:51 --> 31:52 [SPEAKER_00]: It was my great day.
31:52 --> 31:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I was so glad when I got to leave work and I could go back to my cell and read my Bible night after night.
31:56 --> 31:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Daylight was gone.
31:57 --> 32:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I would stand by the door with a little dim light coming in from the corridor and I would read.
32:01 --> 32:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose it was going to be such a dry and boring dead thing.
32:03 --> 32:06 [SPEAKER_00]: A book only fit for priests and saints and people like that.
32:06 --> 32:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But now, whenever I can get a chance to communicate with my mates in the workshop, they're going to get me worn a lot of talk at the other times.
32:11 --> 32:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I told them, what a splendid thing the Bible has I've been reading.
32:15 --> 32:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I was resting one night from reading, walking up and down, thinking about the change religion had made in gardener when I began to have this burning desire to do the same.
32:21 --> 32:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't get rid of it.
32:22 --> 32:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But what can I do?
32:23 --> 32:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes something with him he said, pray, I couldn't frame a prayer.
32:26 --> 32:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The voice said, don't you remember the prayer, the tax collector, God be merciful to me a sinner.
32:30 --> 32:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought of my own religion.
32:31 --> 32:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The Roman Catholic faith which I had been brought up and I asked, well why can't I just do that?
32:35 --> 32:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But that would not be good.
32:36 --> 32:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The same is what gardener had, I thought.
32:38 --> 32:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It does not keep me from my sins.
32:39 --> 32:42 [SPEAKER_00]: If I send for the priest, he will just tell me, do your penance and say your prayers.
32:42 --> 32:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And that will mortify it.
32:44 --> 32:48 [SPEAKER_00]: But if I ask a chaplain, he will say to be sorry for my sins and cry to God, both can't be right.
32:48 --> 32:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The voice I go to God, and he will tell you which one is right.
32:51 --> 32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: What a struggle I went through.
32:53 --> 32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew I should pray, but if there had been 10 people there, I couldn't have been more ashamed to do it than if I was just sitting there by myself.
32:58 --> 33:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I was blushing even, every sin I knew stared me in the face.
33:02 --> 33:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But then I remembered what the Bible has said.
33:03 --> 33:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Who's so ever?
33:04 --> 33:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I was a who, so ever.
33:06 --> 33:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So the inward voice said, you can do this.
33:08 --> 33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I'm just so wicked.
33:09 --> 33:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't.
33:10 --> 33:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I urged and tried to fight with it.
33:12 --> 33:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything but a murderer.
33:13 --> 33:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And that many at times I might have wanted to be.
33:16 --> 33:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The struggle was so strong.
33:17 --> 33:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It was all as if God was fighting the devil for me in my heart.
33:20 --> 33:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The conflict went on like this for three or four weeks.
33:22 --> 33:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I was afraid.
33:23 --> 33:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered now at how I now wonder how long suffering and patient God was towards me.
33:28 --> 33:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder that the Holy Spirit was not
33:31 --> 33:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But it lasted a lot, tenderly, and softened my soul, and I shed tears, and then I cried to God, and I read my Bible on my knees.
33:38 --> 33:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The Sunday service is now, I seem to do me no good.
33:41 --> 33:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They were dry and dead to me, but once in a while, they had full of the Holy Ghosts to preach and at those times, I got help.
33:46 --> 33:53 [SPEAKER_00]: About that day, a misdee, just a woman, decided to visit the prison, and I was sinned for her one day to meet her in the lady, a library.
33:53 --> 33:56 [SPEAKER_00]: This young lady had learned that I've been seeking God, and then asked to see me.
33:56 --> 33:58 [SPEAKER_00]: She talked with me, and then knelt down the prayer with me.
33:58 --> 34:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's just another person that praises within this in his life.
34:01 --> 34:02 [SPEAKER_00]: She's just a young woman.
34:02 --> 34:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to share it with the gospel with prison, prison, prison.
34:05 --> 34:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I felt ashamed, but I knelt the sighter.
34:08 --> 34:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I looked through my fingers and watched her.
34:09 --> 34:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I saw her tears falling for me.
34:11 --> 34:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot describe the feeling it felt.
34:13 --> 34:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I was, it just seemed dreadful, the pair of such a holy woman.
34:15 --> 34:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It made my sins come up on me and they looked as if derives up and take me from God.
34:19 --> 34:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And it appeared to me as if they were troubling God.
34:21 --> 34:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my sins were so high.
34:22 --> 34:23 [SPEAKER_00]: What could I do?
34:23 --> 34:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what can a poor kid send her to do?
34:25 --> 34:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's nothing between him and God, a life of dark and terrible sin.
34:28 --> 34:29 [SPEAKER_00]: That very night went to myself.
34:30 --> 34:31 [SPEAKER_00]: to pray in the floor of myself.
34:31 --> 34:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I prayed and I stopped and I prayed again.
34:33 --> 34:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I stopped.
34:34 --> 34:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I still continued kneeling.
34:35 --> 34:36 [SPEAKER_00]: My knees were rooted to those stones.
34:36 --> 34:37 [SPEAKER_00]: My eyes were closed.
34:37 --> 34:39 [SPEAKER_00]: My hands were so classed and I was determined.
34:39 --> 34:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I would stay till morning.
34:41 --> 34:42 [SPEAKER_00]: I would do it until the work I said.
34:42 --> 34:45 [SPEAKER_00]: If I do not get released soon, I will never pray again.
34:45 --> 34:46 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't do this forever.
34:46 --> 34:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like I would die and I couldn't do that.
34:49 --> 34:53 [SPEAKER_00]: All at once, as if something supernatural came into the room with me, my eyes were opened.
34:54 --> 34:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I was an agony and a sweat rolled off my face and great drops.
34:57 --> 35:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I just begged for God's mercy, just in the height of all my stress.
35:01 --> 35:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It seemed as if a hand was on my head, and the words came over me, my son, your sins are forgiven.
35:05 --> 35:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I do not know if I heard the voice, or if it was just something I thought of.
35:09 --> 35:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the precious Christ, how plainly I saw and lifted myself to the cross for sins.
35:14 --> 35:26 [SPEAKER_00]: What a thrill went through me, I jumped to my knees, I paced up and down on myself, such a heavenly light filled me such a soft perfume and fragrance of flowers and my heart I just began to shout and clap praise God, praise God.
35:27 --> 35:30 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the guards was passing along the corridor and called out, what's the matter with you?
35:31 --> 35:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And I said to him, I have found a Christ.
35:33 --> 35:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I said, my sins are forgiven, glory to God, glory to God.
35:36 --> 35:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He took out a paper from his pocket and wrote the number of my sounds that he would report me in the morning.
35:40 --> 35:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't even care.
35:41 --> 35:42 [SPEAKER_00]: My soul was so excited.
35:42 --> 35:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't care.
35:43 --> 35:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The joy was so great.
35:44 --> 35:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The next morning I waited for something to happen, but nothing happened to me.
35:46 --> 35:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the Lord made him forget it.
35:48 --> 35:49 [SPEAKER_00]: What a night that was.
35:49 --> 35:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I will never forget the time and the Lord appeared that way to me.
35:51 --> 35:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he delivered me from my son.
35:53 --> 35:55 [SPEAKER_00]: From that time, my life and there was all new.
35:55 --> 35:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Work was nothing.
35:56 --> 35:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Hard it was, I didn't care, scowls and harsh words, I laughed them off.
35:59 --> 36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I was happy for Jesus was my friend.
36:01 --> 36:04 [SPEAKER_00]: My sins were washed away and my heart was full of love and thanksgiving.
36:04 --> 36:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I now hated sin.
36:06 --> 36:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I had formally smoked for something now with him, he said, do not smoke and so I gave it up.
36:10 --> 36:12 [SPEAKER_00]: God began using him in prisoner's lives.
36:12 --> 36:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, a great work was commenced there and spread from cell to cell, the prisoners began to read their bios to call upon God and didn't praise the name of Jesus.
36:19 --> 36:22 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the first guys to begin to show interest was a man named Jack there.
36:22 --> 36:24 [SPEAKER_00]: It'd been like his closest friend there.
36:24 --> 36:27 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a revolt in the prison at time, and he was one of the leaders.
36:27 --> 36:31 [SPEAKER_00]: This revolt occurred sometime before my current conversion, but I was not involved in it.
36:31 --> 36:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Jack was in the same workshop with me and was quite a favorite, the convicts often paired off in friendships, and he and I did everything together we could.
36:37 --> 36:43 [SPEAKER_00]: If either of us had even the slightest luxury, we'd even gotten our hands on anything at all, we would share it, just like kids do when they get something.
36:43 --> 36:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And when I got salvation, oh man, I wanted to share that with him.
36:46 --> 36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I approached him on an over and over again, but he repulsed me.
36:48 --> 36:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He was sneering.
36:49 --> 36:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He found these several times weeping and reading my Bible, once he lifted his hand, mad at me, like he was going to strike me, he even tried to spit at me.
36:55 --> 36:59 [SPEAKER_00]: But when I told him I didn't resent him, and I couldn't, I could take it off for Jesus, I didn't mind.
36:59 --> 37:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He was touched.
37:00 --> 37:01 [SPEAKER_00]: He said it was surprised him.
37:01 --> 37:04 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say anything for a week, and he seemed to be getting worse about everything.
37:04 --> 37:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But I felt sure the spirit of God was actually fighting him too.
37:07 --> 37:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I kept praying, was strong, tears, crying out to God, and I knew God was going to save him.
37:12 --> 37:15 [SPEAKER_00]: One day he told me he'd been praying, but it seemed dreadfully, he didn't really like it.
37:15 --> 37:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew about that for my own experience.
37:17 --> 37:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Not long after this, he came out of a cell one morning to go to work.
37:20 --> 37:23 [SPEAKER_00]: We caught each other, and I saw his face and his face lit up like I'd never seen.
37:24 --> 37:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was at the head of a column, and I was at the foot of my column.
37:26 --> 37:33 [SPEAKER_00]: We could only glance at each other for a moment, but he smiled at me, and he looked up with his eyes to heaven and nodded, and I knew I knew it was right with him.
37:33 --> 37:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I could scarcely keep from shouting in that moment.
37:35 --> 37:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The first one, it told the news, too, was the keeper.
37:38 --> 37:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Jack!
37:39 --> 37:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, the first one I had told the news to was Jack, the keeper, the prison keeper.
37:43 --> 37:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Jack, he said, I'm very glad you've got religion.
37:45 --> 37:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really care about anything about religion, but he had always been scared of Jack, who led prison repolts.
37:50 --> 37:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So he was such a rough guy hearing that he'd become a Christian was good because it meant he wouldn't be rough anymore.
37:56 --> 37:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, after that, I worked hard for Christ.
37:59 --> 38:03 [SPEAKER_00]: About half an hour each day, it was all the time I had, but I would spend it all in prayer and reading my Bible.
38:03 --> 38:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I improved so much.
38:04 --> 38:08 [SPEAKER_00]: This was when the regular keeper was relieved and we were then allowed to begin talking to each other.
38:09 --> 38:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So up until this point, they still were early allowed to talk to each other and their prisons, but once they get rid of one of the words, they could finally talk to each other.
38:15 --> 38:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, I had all the men picked out that I wanted to share Christ with.
38:17 --> 38:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And I would say Ernest Words to them is often as I could.
38:19 --> 38:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Several of these had become converted.
38:21 --> 38:23 [SPEAKER_00]: One or two of them did wander away and left the prison,
38:26 --> 38:29 [SPEAKER_00]: He then says later on in life he reconnected with those guys and they came across too.
38:31 --> 38:32 [SPEAKER_00]: This went on for about two years.
38:32 --> 38:33 [SPEAKER_00]: My faith was simple.
38:33 --> 38:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I felt the Lord would give me anything I might ask.
38:35 --> 38:38 [SPEAKER_00]: After this, I began to feel calm by God to pray for my liberty.
38:38 --> 38:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, he had, by the way, only been in prison for give or take seven years.
38:42 --> 38:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He had 15 years to go, or, you know, overall.
38:44 --> 38:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He was only halfway there.
38:45 --> 38:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I first I felt the desire to be free was actually from the devil.
38:48 --> 38:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He was trying to trick me.
38:49 --> 38:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But I asked God about it, and he felt like it.
38:51 --> 38:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It felt like it was the right thing to pray for, and so he began praying and praying.
38:54 --> 38:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And one day, he received a pardon from the governor having served half his time at seven years and six months.
39:00 --> 39:04 [SPEAKER_00]: quote, when I got out of prison, I was the lonely aside as I had been in my cell.
39:04 --> 39:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't go back to my old ways and my old haunts and my own friends.
39:06 --> 39:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that.
39:07 --> 39:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't know anyone else.
39:09 --> 39:12 [SPEAKER_00]: If I had found a single Christian friend, it might have saved me many years of misery ahead.
39:13 --> 39:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Here I must say that does not seem to me right to turn men out of prison to make no provision for their future.
39:17 --> 39:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Many a poor fellow went right back to crying back to his old cell for a want of any kind of counsel, any direction, any friends, anyone who could help him out.
39:25 --> 39:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Not long, he's looking for places to live, trying to get work and some friends, some new colleagues, people kind of say, hey, why don't you try a new root beer?
39:34 --> 39:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, well, I don't drink anymore, and like, oh, so this is a new root beer, it's fine.
39:37 --> 39:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was a lot less root than root beer.
39:39 --> 39:47 [SPEAKER_00]: It was definitely a very alcoholic, and he began to start picking up the desire to drink, and that kind of just started to spend him back out.
39:48 --> 39:52 [SPEAKER_00]: That night I stopped praying, I will never forget you said I felt this wretched as I did the day I went to prison.
39:52 --> 39:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Now I'll begin a career sin in misery, which I cannot even fully describe to you.
39:55 --> 39:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Satan had gotten the upper hand on me.
39:58 --> 39:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I had obtained work in a large hat shop.
39:59 --> 40:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The workmen decided to have a strike and I was one of the breed leaders.
40:02 --> 40:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We were all dismissed, and so I was thrown out of employment.
40:04 --> 40:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Then it began then, it'd be in wartime.
40:06 --> 40:07 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a civil war time.
40:07 --> 40:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I went into the bounty business.
40:09 --> 40:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a rascally business.
40:10 --> 40:18 [SPEAKER_00]: We would pick me up, get them drunk, convince them to enlist, get them sign on a piece of paper, then bring them to the soldiers, and we would get a bounty on each of one of them that we did.
40:19 --> 40:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I made it great deal of money doing this, which I spent all as much as I want.
40:23 --> 40:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I became a sportsman.
40:23 --> 40:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I would go to the races.
40:24 --> 40:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I would gamble on the tracks.
40:25 --> 40:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I would do anything I wanted.
40:26 --> 40:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I was on a downward course.
40:28 --> 40:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So, literally tricking people into salt to the war, which I mean, smart in terms of making money.
40:35 --> 40:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I got in with another man who is much like me but he has since died of I'm not sure some kind of disease and we decided to boating the rivers.
40:40 --> 40:46 [SPEAKER_00]: We would buy stolen goods of sailors and compelled them to enlist on fears of being arrested and we took the bounty from them.
40:47 --> 40:51 [SPEAKER_00]: We also went on for some time in thieving, racing, speculating the bounty business we did at all.
40:51 --> 40:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Did you even know these businesses existed like bounty business like that?
40:55 --> 40:55 [SPEAKER_00]: That's just wild.
40:56 --> 41:12 [SPEAKER_00]: like this sounds like it well I don't know in my head I don't maybe I just don't know America that well but this sounds like a belongs to another time it sounds like a belong it does belong to another time but to me it kind of comes off like it belongs in another country i mean bounty that sounds like something from a book and here they are selling people into the into the army
41:14 --> 41:17 [SPEAKER_00]: After the war was over, I exclusively stuck with boating.
41:18 --> 41:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And buying is selling smuggly, smuggled goods stolen goods.
41:21 --> 41:28 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a common business among sailors and captains, but the problem was, I gave them counterfeit money for the goods until I became well known for this.
41:29 --> 41:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the thing is, where do you learn to count?
41:30 --> 41:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, dad counterfeited, right?
41:31 --> 41:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And where is dad?
41:32 --> 41:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He's counterfeitering.
41:33 --> 41:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's like, hey, I can steal goods.
41:35 --> 41:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Give them, you can give me stolen goods.
41:37 --> 41:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I can give you fake money, and then I can sell your stolen goods.
41:40 --> 41:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Now I've made twice as much money.
41:44 --> 42:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, anyway, so he became well known for this and nobody wanted to go into business with him anymore because he was counterfeit nobody trusted him They didn't want to lose their entire losing money to him from that time I became a river thief boarding vessels at night and doing the stealing myself and oh how many narrow escapes from death I had while engaged in this wicked business So he had he had given it all up at one point in maintaining went to jail and now he is back about 10 years later He's back at the bad business.
42:08 --> 42:10 [SPEAKER_00]: What what happened Jerry you're living for the Lord?
42:11 --> 42:11 [SPEAKER_00]: What happened to you?
42:13 --> 42:17 [SPEAKER_00]: actually really like the story about Jerry partially because he doesn't have the clean cup.
42:17 --> 42:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are many stories where the guy comes to Christ.
42:19 --> 42:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything turns around for him.
42:21 --> 42:22 [SPEAKER_00]: We're really like about Jerry's stories.
42:22 --> 42:23 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not what happened.
42:23 --> 42:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He is full of ups and downs here.
42:27 --> 42:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So, all right, back to it here.
42:30 --> 42:32 [SPEAKER_00]: There are boats not up on another boat to rob it.
42:32 --> 42:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's a story.
42:32 --> 42:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But it caught on fire.
42:33 --> 42:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So while they were robbing the getting ready to rob this boat, the boat caught on fire is a fairy.
42:37 --> 42:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Several people were trying to get off of it
42:43 --> 42:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Including a Christian boat who didn't even find room on the boat so she's clung to the side and they just kind of held her there They take her back.
42:48 --> 43:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They drop her off and then they go back to the ferry boat But not to save more people They decided to see if they could rob the goods that have fallen in the water from people who had drowned and or who had run away and left their stuff behind But when they get back to the ferry to do that they end up saving about 12 people
43:04 --> 43:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And then they and one of the guys one of the guys he's with Jerry's got crewmates He's like what if we throw these people overboard then we don't have to save them and we can just get their stuff But Jerry was like you know I I was pretty far gone.
43:15 --> 43:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I was a sinner But that wasn't quite drown people to take their stuff far gone And I was like we're not gonna drown these people to steal their jackets But that tells you what kind of people he's hanging out with.
43:23 --> 43:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean this is these are pretty jarred people So you're when you're right and they still snuck on board the boat while it was on fire to see if they could get some last minute stuff from the boat
43:33 --> 43:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you weren't gonna let a little fire and rescue mission keep them from robbing.
43:38 --> 43:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Another one.
43:39 --> 43:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He went on a boat one night and they were stealing rope off the boat.
43:42 --> 43:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The rope was worth only a dollar.
43:44 --> 43:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And yes, a dollar could get you a tour of seeing thing back in the day.
43:48 --> 43:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't a lot of money even back then.
43:50 --> 43:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, while he was robbing at the captain's column, pulled out his gun and started firing at them.
43:54 --> 43:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He said the bullets was past him landing right next to him as they dodged into the boat.
43:57 --> 44:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He could hear them and feel the wind moving.
44:00 --> 44:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And he couldn't shake it as he was leaving as his boat pulled away with the rope.
44:05 --> 44:16 [SPEAKER_00]: He just couldn't shake the feeling the question if that hit me in the head Where would I be right now and he knew over and over again and said I would be in hell I'm living the kind of life that would have gotten me sent to hell if that hit me just now
44:17 --> 44:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to come back to God, but he just felt like he couldn't.
44:19 --> 44:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, all the time I was prosecuting my business and my sober moments, I wanted to be better than this.
44:25 --> 44:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to lead a sober life.
44:26 --> 44:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But I felt that after all the joy and peace I had before, I just shouldn't go back to God.
44:30 --> 44:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Satan kept quoting the text for it as impossible for those who were once enlightened and entased it to the heavenly gifts and made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and they would fall away to renew them again to repentance.
44:38 --> 44:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So to quote those memories and convictions, I just constantly drink.
44:42 --> 44:43 [SPEAKER_00]: never let myself be sober if I could.
44:44 --> 44:48 [SPEAKER_00]: If anyone spoke to me kindly or spoke of Christ to me, I would just ignore them.
44:48 --> 44:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The alcohol would help me forget it.
44:49 --> 44:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But no one could save me.
44:51 --> 44:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He was drunk and one day fell into the water and one of the river boat theevenes, and he thought for sure he would drown.
44:57 --> 45:00 [SPEAKER_00]: He went to the bottom of the river, came back up, went to the bottom of the river, came back.
45:00 --> 45:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He was still drunk, he couldn't swim, it's closed, we're heavy.
45:03 --> 45:06 [SPEAKER_00]: His boat, he said, was no, his boat was on the other side, like there was no way it could reach him.
45:06 --> 45:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He remembered thinking, I'm going,
45:08 --> 45:09 [SPEAKER_00]: to drown.
45:09 --> 45:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And he felt in his heart, God saying, Cry out to me.
45:12 --> 45:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Cry out to me.
45:13 --> 45:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I can save you.
45:14 --> 45:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Cry out to me.
45:15 --> 45:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't want to do it.
45:15 --> 45:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He just said, I'm too far gone.
45:18 --> 45:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Finally in the last moment, he said, Okay, God, save me.
45:21 --> 45:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Save me.
45:21 --> 45:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Please, will you save me?
45:22 --> 45:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And out of nowhere, a hand pulls them back in the boat.
45:25 --> 45:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow his partner got in the boat around, seen him in the water, pulled him out all in an instant.
45:30 --> 45:40 [SPEAKER_00]: and they had to leave the boat because all of this drowning business had distracted them from their work so they went back ashore and he said he started praying and he said, you know, God, maybe maybe I helped me out here.
45:40 --> 45:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I need some help here.
45:42 --> 45:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't get any money on that so they couldn't get alcohol and so he was miserable.
45:45 --> 45:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd cried out to God.
45:46 --> 45:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd almost drowned and they had no alcohol and he just couldn't get it.
45:48 --> 45:51 [SPEAKER_00]: He had no money to get alcohol with.
45:51 --> 45:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he also never really kept money.
45:52 --> 45:55 [SPEAKER_00]: They always just spent it as soon as they got it, but he started to dream
45:59 --> 46:09 [SPEAKER_00]: One day, his land, not long after this incident of the drowning, before they'd really gotten back on their feet at their riverboating, his landlady got sick, and someone came to the door to his house was pretty small.
46:09 --> 46:18 [SPEAKER_00]: He could hear everything his landlady was doing down below, and the landlady had a person come to share the gospel, a missionary to the city, come to share the gospel with her, and he could overhear the conversation.
46:18 --> 46:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And the landlady wasn't being very nice.
46:20 --> 46:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Looks like I don't need this.
46:21 --> 46:21 [SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing here?
46:21 --> 46:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Don't bother me.
46:22 --> 46:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And he went downstairs to talk to the lady, like, how dare you talk to the missionary that way?
46:28 --> 46:46 [SPEAKER_00]: way to wait for him and he said the missionaries I can talk to you the missionaries scared because this guy's tall he's rough looking he's he's been in prison he's got all the tough guy looks you know he's been in fights and stuff like that and the guy was like can you come with me and the and and Jerry here basically tells him like I want to real job like can you help me get a real job I don't want to be like this before
46:47 --> 46:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They said, we can't get you a job unless he signed a pledge not to drink anymore.
46:51 --> 46:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He says, if I've signed these pledges before and didn't do anything, and he said, come on, if you signed this pledge not to drink, we will get it.
46:57 --> 47:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Some people in saving get you a job because, okay, I'll sign the pledge.
47:00 --> 47:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So he signed the pledge.
47:01 --> 47:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He goes back to his house.
47:03 --> 47:04 [SPEAKER_00]: His partner in crime is there.
47:04 --> 47:06 [SPEAKER_00]: His partner in crime is like, hey, you want to drink?
47:06 --> 47:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to pour a cup out for you right now, Jerry.
47:08 --> 47:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jerry's like, no, I don't drink anymore.
47:10 --> 47:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I have signed this pledge.
47:12 --> 47:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And the partner starts laughing and he goes, you sign the pledge, did you?
47:15 --> 47:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That's hilarious.
47:16 --> 47:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna be like, what a good Christian, that's so funny.
47:19 --> 47:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He pours out the cup and he says, come on, you don't have one last cup.
47:22 --> 47:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And so Jerry picks it up and he goes, okay, one last cup, like I can't not have one last cup.
47:27 --> 47:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So he starts to take a drink.
47:28 --> 47:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He's literally pulling it up to his mouth when the door opens.
47:31 --> 47:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And the missionary starts to come in and he puts it behind his back.
47:34 --> 47:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And the missionary goes, hey, Jerry, I know you decided to pledge, I know he's got you back by one to know if you would wanna go for a walk and kind of talk.
47:40 --> 47:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said he was so embarrassed that he said if the missionary asked him where he about the drink he would have said yes, but the missionary didn't see the cup and so he says I'd love to go walk you with you put the cup aside his partners the laughing and laughing and he goes in the walk with the sky he doesn't tell him about that last cup of alcohol he had just interrupted drinking.
47:57 --> 48:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's on the walk with him and the guy's like, hey, you know, what's the deal here?
48:01 --> 48:02 [SPEAKER_00]: What could I do to help you?
48:02 --> 48:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, look, the thing is missionary guy.
48:04 --> 48:07 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have to get on a boat and go steal people tonight.
48:07 --> 48:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you, we don't have any money.
48:08 --> 48:09 [SPEAKER_00]: We're hungry.
48:09 --> 48:09 [SPEAKER_00]: We need alcohol.
48:09 --> 48:11 [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, alcohol is, I don't drink alcohol anymore.
48:11 --> 48:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But we don't have any money.
48:13 --> 48:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So the mission I said, are you serious?
48:15 --> 48:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna go these people tonight because y'all have money and he's like, yeah, and he goes, I will give you my jacket.
48:19 --> 48:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And the mission I rate was poor, had an old, worn, tattered jacket.
48:23 --> 48:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna go sell my jacket, I will give you money for food tonight.
48:26 --> 48:28 [SPEAKER_00]: If you promise me, you won't go rob.
48:29 --> 48:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Will you wait for me?
48:29 --> 48:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So Jerry waits for him.
48:30 --> 48:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He goes, he sells his jackets for 50 cents.
48:33 --> 48:34 [SPEAKER_00]: He gives him the 50 cents.
48:34 --> 48:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He says, please don't go rob anybody tonight.
48:37 --> 48:51 [SPEAKER_00]: and Jerry said that had just such a huge effect on this poor guy has nothing just like him but he gives him what he has and he's like Jerry's like I mean I'm not deserving of this the next day he Jerry was with his girlfriend girlfriend eventually will become his wife but we'll get to her in a little while.
48:52 --> 49:11 [SPEAKER_00]: and he's there is other partner in crime and his girlfriend is there too and the missionary comes up with a few ladies they all kind of hang out together and talk and the missionaries like hey I'd like to hang out with you would you and your girlfriend like to come to my house for tea sometime and he said I got a jacket for you gives him a jacket come to my house so they go to his house like the next day and while they're eating
49:13 --> 49:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The missionary sharing from the word of God he starts praying with him and he prays and he prays And he says yeah, I'd love for you to pray with me Jerry and Jerry says I don't want to pray and then he says he quote I don't know how I can't do this anymore I can't put the words together.
49:25 --> 49:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd forgotten about praying.
49:26 --> 49:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I had been sinning for so long so if you were Literally, I just didn't know what to say
49:30 --> 49:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of this friends there at the table said, why don't you pray the prayer of the public and the tax collector, God be merciful to me a sinner.
49:36 --> 49:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And he remembered praying in the prison, so he prayed it right there.
49:39 --> 49:45 [SPEAKER_00]: His heart was broken, as he said, and over and over again, God be merciful to me a sinner, God be merciful to me a sinner.
49:45 --> 49:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the missionary said, for Jesus's sake, add that to.
49:49 --> 49:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, he's praying and he says, a new calm different feeling came over him.
49:52 --> 49:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The one in the prison was hallelujah, hallelujah, I found God, I can't believe it.
49:56 --> 49:57 [SPEAKER_00]: This one was different.
49:57 --> 49:58 [SPEAKER_00]: This one was just, I am saved.
49:58 --> 50:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I think Jesus is going to save me.
50:01 --> 50:06 [SPEAKER_00]: He was one of the first men the missionary had ever actually saved in all his time of meeting with people and trying to do it.
50:06 --> 50:13 [SPEAKER_00]: This looks like his first success story was this guy, Jerry McColley, and he, Jerry McColley was notoriously pad guy.
50:13 --> 50:16 [SPEAKER_00]: People were shocked when he started to say, and people attacked him.
50:16 --> 50:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They would shout at him on the streets.
50:17 --> 50:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They would sneer at him.
50:18 --> 50:20 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't like the idea.
50:20 --> 50:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry had become a Christian.
50:21 --> 50:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They would make fun of him.
50:22 --> 50:23 [SPEAKER_00]: He was, Jerry is fine.
50:23 --> 50:25 [SPEAKER_00]: When Jerry was a guy, he'd beat you up.
50:25 --> 50:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone loved him alone.
50:26 --> 50:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But when Jerry was now a Christian,
50:28 --> 50:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't.
50:28 --> 50:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So the missionary would often walk with Jerry around town.
50:31 --> 50:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Kind of like, hey, everybody.
50:32 --> 50:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Look, Jerry's a Christian mountain.
50:33 --> 50:34 [SPEAKER_00]: You can change, too.
50:34 --> 50:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jerry would walk at the missionary because everyone respected the missionary who would go to this dangerous started town so much that they wouldn't, you know, attack Jerry while he was with the missionary.
50:43 --> 50:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So this went a lot of time together.
50:46 --> 50:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But before this all came about, I had a long and trying moment of probation.
50:51 --> 50:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I had begun to work in a fairy company.
50:52 --> 50:55 [SPEAKER_00]: There, I was tempted and I began to drink again.
50:55 --> 50:56 [SPEAKER_00]: My good friend, the missionary, had left the city.
50:57 --> 50:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There were nobody there at the meetings, and I was lonely and sad.
50:59 --> 51:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I had no one to connect myself with me and no church is to go to.
51:02 --> 51:08 [SPEAKER_00]: As he fell back in the city, so I could only think of the house, empty and swept and garnished from the story where the unclean spirit had been.
51:08 --> 51:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Then he went out and came back and found it clean and brought seven more spirits wickeder than himself.
51:13 --> 51:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They entered in 12 in the worst.
51:14 --> 51:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The new state was worse than the first.
51:16 --> 51:20 [SPEAKER_00]: The unclean spirit was back in my life and my own only companions were there.
51:20 --> 51:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He went to a nearby church.
51:22 --> 51:23 [SPEAKER_00]: He just felt miserable.
51:24 --> 51:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I went out of the hotel I was staying in straight to a church which was open.
51:26 --> 51:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I sat down.
51:27 --> 51:28 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was drunk.
51:28 --> 51:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I was conscious of what was going on.
51:30 --> 51:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I was so angry with myself and I cursed God.
51:32 --> 51:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to go back to water street.
51:33 --> 51:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to go back into disgrace God.
51:35 --> 51:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone would see that I'd fallen.
51:37 --> 51:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I made up my mind.
51:37 --> 51:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The best thing I could do was to kill myself.
51:39 --> 51:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I
51:40 --> 51:42 [SPEAKER_00]: went out from the church and took the cars for the home.
51:42 --> 51:43 [SPEAKER_00]: What a day I'd spent.
51:43 --> 51:44 [SPEAKER_00]: My brain was on fire.
51:44 --> 51:45 [SPEAKER_00]: My heart was cast down.
51:45 --> 51:46 [SPEAKER_00]: My conscience was sore.
51:47 --> 51:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I thought.
51:47 --> 51:50 [SPEAKER_00]: If I ended all that way, I won't embarrass anybody.
51:50 --> 51:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I made it my design.
51:51 --> 51:53 [SPEAKER_00]: My mind that was going to go to the railroads to do it.
51:53 --> 51:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But when I got there, the conductor was there and he said, oh, hey, you got your ticket.
51:57 --> 51:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Get on any.
51:57 --> 52:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't even have a ticket, but he got pushed into the train anyway.
52:00 --> 52:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And off you went.
52:01 --> 52:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Holy Spirit was protecting him.
52:02 --> 52:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And my heart was softened while I rode the train.
52:04 --> 52:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of that, I went and found a meeting and I confessed my sin and asked the Christians to pray for me, and I prayed myself, God would you just forgive me and save me for what I was about to do.
52:13 --> 52:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I fell once again after that, but then God restored me, you had again.
52:17 --> 52:29 [SPEAKER_00]: All this time, I realized I had kept smoking, even though I'd given up smoking in the prison, I'd brought tobacco back, and every time I was smoking tobacco, it made him thirsty, and the thirsty wanted to fill it with was alcohol, and I didn't belong to a church, and so there was no one there to help me.
52:29 --> 52:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon, I joined a methodist church, and that helped strengthen them, my belly.
52:33 --> 52:41 [SPEAKER_00]: and he gave up at tobacco he said oh you did not realize how many Christians are falling back in alcohol because they didn't give up cigarettes too or whatever they were smoking at the time.
52:42 --> 52:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Now.
52:43 --> 52:46 [SPEAKER_00]: You might be wondering, okay, this is where we're quite a ways into this episode.
52:47 --> 52:48 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a guy's life, get better.
52:48 --> 52:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, Jerry McColley is an important person.
52:51 --> 52:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He does something good.
52:52 --> 52:54 [SPEAKER_00]: But do you see what a what a back and forth it is?
52:54 --> 52:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And I can't help but notice I'm sure you've noticed too.
52:56 --> 52:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The theme is he's alone.
52:58 --> 53:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Every time he's alone, every time the church isn't there, every time he's on his own, trying to fight his sense, he can't do it.
53:03 --> 53:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Christ.
53:05 --> 53:06 [SPEAKER_00]: has made us to be in community.
53:06 --> 53:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And when he has those moments of no community, he's put through a child.
53:10 --> 53:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Now as he's starting to go to a methods church, he gets a job, but the job brought him a first trial.
53:14 --> 53:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I had another trial.
53:15 --> 53:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I was required to work on Sundays.
53:16 --> 53:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I told my employer, I'm trying to be a Christian now.
53:19 --> 53:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry said, you're not better than me.
53:20 --> 53:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Christian, but I go to work on Sunday, so you have to too.
53:23 --> 53:24 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to come tomorrow to work.
53:24 --> 53:25 [SPEAKER_00]: But I knew it was wrong.
53:25 --> 53:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't go when I went to church instead.
53:27 --> 53:28 [SPEAKER_00]: On Monday, I was told I was like,
53:30 --> 53:32 [SPEAKER_00]: because the guy who was did it was a church member too.
53:32 --> 53:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was a poor week beginner in the Christian life.
53:34 --> 53:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't understand it.
53:35 --> 53:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone said, if you just go to work, it'll be fine.
53:37 --> 53:38 [SPEAKER_00]: They'll let you come back.
53:38 --> 53:39 [SPEAKER_00]: You'd be just promised to work on Sundays.
53:39 --> 53:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, no, I promised to trust God.
53:42 --> 53:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But I wouldn't leave until I had seen my employer.
53:43 --> 53:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So that was just like the guy you talked to and said, I'm the least like go.
53:46 --> 53:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But there was the employer above them.
53:47 --> 53:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So he went and found the employer.
53:48 --> 53:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I leaned over the side of the ferry, but I tapped him on the shoulder.
53:50 --> 53:53 [SPEAKER_00]: I said, Captain, did you really just let me go for wishing to keep the Sabbath?
53:53 --> 53:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't answer me.
53:54 --> 53:55 [SPEAKER_00]: But I knew he hurt me.
53:55 --> 53:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So I tapped him on the shoulder again.
53:57 --> 54:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Captain, did you just charge me for trying to do what was right?
54:01 --> 54:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry said, you didn't try to accommodate me, so I'm not going to accommodate you.
54:04 --> 54:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning.
54:05 --> 54:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I said, and walked away.
54:07 --> 54:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can hear that good morning.
54:09 --> 54:11 [SPEAKER_00]: 150 years later, can't you?
54:11 --> 54:12 [SPEAKER_00]: That was not a real good morning.
54:12 --> 54:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That was a good morning.
54:14 --> 54:17 [SPEAKER_00]: His missionary friend came back to town and helped him get a new job.
54:17 --> 54:20 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, a few more slip-ups, yes, even still, and realized it was that tobacco.
54:21 --> 54:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Here, let me say a word about tobacco.
54:22 --> 54:27 [SPEAKER_00]: I considered a great stumbling block in the life of Christians, but when a man is reformed German drinking, the use of tobacco is fatal.
54:27 --> 54:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It was surely bringing him back to his cup.
54:29 --> 54:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'd given it up when I first gave up the rum.
54:31 --> 54:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I would have kept falling nearly as much.
54:33 --> 54:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I was led at last by the grace of God to give up the tobacco.
54:35 --> 54:37 [SPEAKER_00]: To give up all my sinful habits from that time on.
54:38 --> 54:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus kept me.
54:40 --> 54:41 [SPEAKER_00]: his time looking for work was a mess.
54:42 --> 54:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He got down at one point to only five dollars on the bank and prayed God just give me work and save me.
54:46 --> 54:50 [SPEAKER_00]: After a time, I worked cease for the money I had saved lasted me when I was down to five dollars.
54:50 --> 54:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I went to my room and I just prayed God give me work.
54:52 --> 54:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Before I came out I was new God would give me work and a few days a situation was offered at the custom house.
54:56 --> 54:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I could get four dollars a day.
54:58 --> 55:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But I told too many people I was a lover of Jesus and they picked me out.
55:03 --> 55:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, he said the one of the guys working there, we can get along without swearing, said I to him as he swore up and down and he said, oh no, are you a churchman?
55:09 --> 55:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, no, I'm not a churchman, but I am a Christian or we're trying to live as one.
55:13 --> 55:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And so I was spotted by the workman and they said, this guy's a hypocrite.
55:16 --> 55:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But!
55:16 --> 55:20 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the guys working at the custom house, a German, he was able to lead the Christ.
55:20 --> 55:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's cool because he loses his job for sharing Jesus.
55:23 --> 55:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And I know people have been through that situation and I'll say, well, you were just two obnoxious about Jesus in the workhouse.
55:28 --> 55:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet, there's a guy who was a German guy who came to Christ because of this obnoxious guy, right?
55:32 --> 55:33 [SPEAKER_00]: He was doing the right thing.
55:34 --> 55:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He said around this time, I had a vision.
55:35 --> 55:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a crazy one.
55:36 --> 55:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a weird one.
55:37 --> 55:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I was just working along one day and suddenly I had this idea.
55:40 --> 55:44 [SPEAKER_00]: What if I got, let me put down a house, back in the old fourth word, down by water street?
55:44 --> 55:45 [SPEAKER_00]: A house that people could come in.
55:45 --> 55:46 [SPEAKER_00]: There would be a bath.
55:46 --> 55:48 [SPEAKER_00]: A place for people to wash and get clean.
55:48 --> 55:50 [SPEAKER_00]: There would be a place for people to come.
55:50 --> 55:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We'd have hundreds and thousands of them.
55:52 --> 55:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He imagined it.
55:52 --> 55:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't know if it was a vision from God or just his own daydream.
55:55 --> 55:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Then I heard a voice say, would you do this for God?
55:58 --> 55:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Would you do it if I called you to?
55:59 --> 56:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, yes, Lord, open the way and I will go.
56:02 --> 56:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought I could do it.
56:03 --> 56:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I was used to the filth in the misery, the junkiness, the cathalses where my felt no relonged its, oh I could help them.
56:08 --> 56:11 [SPEAKER_00]: A little while after this, my health gave way, and I took a vacation.
56:11 --> 56:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I went with my wife to seek lift, to attend the camp meeting, all the time that thought of that house pressed on me, and I prayed God about it, and finally he gave me an opportunity to tell everyone, and everyone was supportive.
56:21 --> 56:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Then I went to Sing Sing, my old campground, and presented it to the people there.
56:25 --> 56:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards to the ocean grow, many were interested in the work, and they began to gave me money.
56:29 --> 56:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Some large, some small sons until I had $450, then the Lord opened the house for me to go to down at 316 Water Street.
56:37 --> 56:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Next door to where the old meetings were taking place, and it had been held by the old missionary that he knew.
56:41 --> 56:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The house was in the hands of an age missionary, but the evening meetings were so small.
56:45 --> 56:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The city mission and the society, at the citizen and their friends, decided you could have it.
56:49 --> 56:59 [SPEAKER_00]: In October of 1872, we used $450 to clean, repair, and fix up the house, and open it as a place, a resort, for foreign-lorn wayfares, sailors, and anyone who needed help.
56:59 --> 57:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And put up the sign, this is a place for a helping hand for men.
57:02 --> 57:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a guide board for people who were poor, who needed help.
57:07 --> 57:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't know if you know this, but today we have a name for these if you've ever heard of a rescue mission.
57:12 --> 57:17 [SPEAKER_00]: A place for homeless people, for former prisoners, for people to go to, that's what this is.
57:18 --> 57:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He, Jerry McColley, invented the first rescue mission.
57:22 --> 57:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that.
57:23 --> 57:28 [SPEAKER_00]: There are over 300 across the United States and many of them are now secular, but there are still 300 that are under the name of Christian.
57:30 --> 57:31 [SPEAKER_00]: so many people who come out of prison are nowhere to go.
57:32 --> 57:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So many homeless people need to say somewhere.
57:34 --> 57:41 [SPEAKER_00]: So many people who had a hard time they go to the rescue mission, jobs, haircuts, all of this stuff all was started by this guy Jerry McColley.
57:41 --> 57:45 [SPEAKER_00]: In this moment, from this vision he had, this dream he had to help poor people.
57:46 --> 57:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Starting right here with a helping hand for men.
57:50 --> 57:58 [SPEAKER_00]: During this time, he then began to receive persecution for the first time, not from the law, not from his former old friends, but from his own family.
57:58 --> 58:12 [SPEAKER_00]: His old sisters and others were Catholic, and they loved, they didn't like, sorry, they didn't like the fact that their brother had gone Protestant and was opening a Protestant mission house to help poor people.
58:12 --> 58:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Where were they?
58:13 --> 58:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Where were they?
58:14 --> 58:16 [SPEAKER_00]: All this time when he was sinning.
58:16 --> 58:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Where were they when he was getting thrown in jail?
58:18 --> 58:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Where was that Catholic?
58:19 --> 58:20 [SPEAKER_00]: No, we're going to be seen.
58:20 --> 58:24 [SPEAKER_00]: But when he when the brothers started doing ministry for God, suddenly they show up.
58:24 --> 58:28 [SPEAKER_00]: His sister shows up in argues with them, basically, where Catholics were not this kind of guy.
58:28 --> 58:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I'm just living for God.
58:30 --> 58:30 [SPEAKER_00]: God has saved me.
58:30 --> 58:31 [SPEAKER_00]: I got to do it.
58:31 --> 58:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, she says, will we go talk to the priest?
58:34 --> 58:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He says, he can convince you of your errors.
58:36 --> 58:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And you guys, you know what?
58:37 --> 58:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, if you can convince me from the Bible, I will do so.
58:40 --> 58:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And then it can, it records the biggest persecution it gets from them.
58:44 --> 58:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And so he goes and meets with the priest, mainly to show to his sister.
58:47 --> 58:49 [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't afraid, he believed the Bible no matter what.
58:49 --> 58:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So he goes to the priest.
58:51 --> 58:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And the priest says, you've been come to be convinced of your errors.
58:53 --> 58:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, I said, I will, if you can convince me from the Bible.
58:55 --> 58:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I'll excuse me one moment, father.
58:57 --> 58:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe the Bible is an inspired book?
58:59 --> 58:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The priest said certainly.
59:00 --> 59:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe this is the Protestant Bible?
59:02 --> 59:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The price of my willish in the pre-set certainly, and not too big difference, I'm glad you feel that way, so we can start there.
59:07 --> 59:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And the pre-set, you allow the Catholic Church to go first, though, and you said, if you leave the Roman part of this out, I will, and you didn't notice, I ignored me.
59:15 --> 59:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Then he said, Christ said he went on that the gates of hell would not prevail against this church.
59:18 --> 59:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the gates of hell have prevailed, Christ was a liar.
59:21 --> 59:25 [SPEAKER_00]: I said, that was a tough one, but I felt my master was being insulted, and I decided to keep my mouth quiet.
59:26 --> 59:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The priest that I want to show you that the gates of hell have not prevailed.
59:29 --> 59:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The first church was made of 12 apostles, one of them was a traitor, but the gates of hell did not prevailed and did they?
59:34 --> 59:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Have you read the history of the Roman church?
59:35 --> 59:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Well they were fearfully wicked in Luther's time.
59:37 --> 59:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Luther was right there.
59:38 --> 59:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They themselves even acknowledged the church needed a reformation, but the church did not go down.
59:42 --> 59:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe Luther was a good man?
59:44 --> 59:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Well how could he he broke his vows to the church?
59:46 --> 59:50 [SPEAKER_00]: A bad vow is better broken than kept, I said, but he didn't respond.
59:50 --> 59:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe in the mass?
59:51 --> 59:54 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I never read of the mass or confession like you do in the Bible.
59:55 --> 59:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It is degrading to bow down to a fellow man to worship him.
59:57 --> 01:00:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You aren't required to bow down to a man to worship him.
01:00:00 --> 01:00:02 [SPEAKER_00]: We take the sin on us and stand before you, for God.
01:00:03 --> 01:00:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Then you stand in the place of Christ, I said.
01:00:05 --> 01:00:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Now God says, go into your closet and pray and seek your and he will reward this.
01:00:08 --> 01:00:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it prayer the same as confession?
01:00:10 --> 01:00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, command confession pretty much are the same.
01:00:12 --> 01:00:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But does not James say confess your faults to one another?
01:00:15 --> 01:00:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's right, and now said I, while we are on this point, have you.
01:00:19 --> 01:00:25 [SPEAKER_00]: You have as good as right to confess to me as I have to confess to you, confess to one another that Bible says, then what do you do with these verses?
01:00:25 --> 01:00:29 [SPEAKER_00]: There is none other than name, given under heaven, among men, whereby we can be saved.
01:00:29 --> 01:00:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
01:00:32 --> 01:00:33 [SPEAKER_00]: you presume to be the mediator.
01:00:34 --> 01:00:38 [SPEAKER_00]: You take racist or sins, for instance, and on yourself, you say and bear them to God, then I told him my experience.
01:00:38 --> 01:00:41 [SPEAKER_00]: I had been a drunkard of thief, one of the wickedest men that have ever lived.
01:00:41 --> 01:00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I have been a state president, and yet this Jesus, who you despise, has picked me up out of the gutters, washing me, and cleans me, and say to me, but you say the Protestants are going to be damned.
01:00:50 --> 01:00:54 [SPEAKER_00]: No, said he, no, I believe every good Protestant will go to heaven, but the turncoat will be lost.
01:00:55 --> 01:00:57 [SPEAKER_00]: My sister can tell you what a bad man I was and what has been done for me.
01:00:58 --> 01:01:00 [SPEAKER_00]: According to your theory, this is just to get me ready for help.
01:01:00 --> 01:01:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow, this is the work of Satan.
01:01:02 --> 01:01:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Satan was a great angel of light.
01:01:04 --> 01:01:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, he was my friend when I was in sin, but no, that is not so.
01:01:07 --> 01:01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I am not a slave of Satan, now I am a free man.
01:01:09 --> 01:01:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is set me free as the Bible says he will do for everyone that believes in him.
01:01:12 --> 01:01:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't follow the Bible.
01:01:14 --> 01:01:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The priest said, well, what do you follow?
01:01:16 --> 01:01:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The traditions of the church teach us how to run the Bible.
01:01:19 --> 01:01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't come here to argue with you, I came to convince my sister truth and I wanted to show where I wasn't afraid of the priest.
01:01:23 --> 01:01:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord opened my eyes, your people are afraid of you.
01:01:26 --> 01:01:32 [SPEAKER_00]: You will like to benefit the church, but God has said all liars have received their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.
01:01:33 --> 01:01:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, just a reminder, where was this Catholic persecute?
01:01:36 --> 01:01:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Where were the Catholics when he was, you know, in prison?
01:01:39 --> 01:01:43 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have any partner, but when he was running the Protestant mission house, that's when they suddenly showed up and stopped him.
01:01:44 --> 01:01:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he talked furiously and faithfully with him for many hours.
01:01:47 --> 01:01:52 [SPEAKER_00]: His heart was full of peace and joy, and he believed the Lord that night to fill this word, and made a weak and foolish thing, and compound a wise one.
01:01:53 --> 01:01:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't talk about Minion's wife Maria.
01:01:55 --> 01:01:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Maria was a woman raising a thawlessism.
01:01:57 --> 01:02:09 [SPEAKER_00]: She then moved to the city to provide for herself that she began to drink alcohol and she needed money for alcohol and so she became, you know, I know that young people listened to the show but if we can say, Brett, Ray had the prostitute in church then we can say she became a prostitute.
01:02:10 --> 01:02:14 [SPEAKER_00]: She admitted to being a drunk, a drunkard and cherry-street hovel with only a straw for bed.
01:02:14 --> 01:02:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Another time Maria said of herself, there was never a more degraded center than I was, to my shame it be said.
01:02:19 --> 01:02:22 [SPEAKER_00]: My home was a drunk's hovel and the principal thing for me,
01:02:24 --> 01:02:28 [SPEAKER_00]: As a kid, she had gone to Protestant Sunday school, and she began hearing about God.
01:02:28 --> 01:02:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So, this is important, like somebody who read this was like, hey, if you read a Protestant Sunday school and you have that young kid that comes in and never see them again and you think, did my, did it work, did anything happen?
01:02:37 --> 01:02:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Trust, maybe it did, because Maria said, when she started hearing the Christian meetings that were happening in the town, she remembered Protestant Sunday school and liked it so much she wanted to go check them out.
01:02:46 --> 01:02:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Over time, she liked what she was hearing at the meetings and wanted to leave her profession.
01:02:50 --> 01:02:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the missionaries had to work to Jerry to push to get Maria out of the city and away from Jerry.
01:02:55 --> 01:03:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Even though she was a woman of the evening, Jerry and her were together, but they couldn't see the two of them come into Christ as long as they were living together, so they decided to draw them out.
01:03:03 --> 01:03:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And so a Christian family outside the city took her in for nine months.
01:03:08 --> 01:03:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Just think about that.
01:03:09 --> 01:03:13 [SPEAKER_00]: This whole story I've been mentioning people that we small little people doing actions to help these people out.
01:03:13 --> 01:03:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that.
01:03:14 --> 01:03:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that.
01:03:16 --> 01:03:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine taking a prostitute into your house because a former prostitute was drunk who said former drunk or trying to get out of it, not a Christian yet and taking her into your house.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine the scandal.
01:03:24 --> 01:03:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine what people might say.
01:03:26 --> 01:03:27 [SPEAKER_00]: She didn't come to Christ.
01:03:27 --> 01:03:28 [SPEAKER_00]: She sat to family worship.
01:03:28 --> 01:03:30 [SPEAKER_00]: She spent time with them, but she didn't come to Christ.
01:03:31 --> 01:03:34 [SPEAKER_00]: She moved to another house with another family, and shortly thereafter did.
01:03:34 --> 01:03:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why one family had to be, I don't think it was one family as bad as they did.
01:03:38 --> 01:03:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And she said, when that happened, the Lord eyes open her, and she was like a child and love for the Lord.
01:03:42 --> 01:03:46 [SPEAKER_00]: She said that all the lessons she had heard at the Protestant Sunday School came back to her or so much life.
01:03:46 --> 01:03:48 [SPEAKER_00]: She immediately started sharing Jesus with everyone.
01:03:48 --> 01:03:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says she couldn't sleep at night.
01:03:50 --> 01:03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: She was so excited to tell more people about Jesus.
01:03:52 --> 01:03:55 [SPEAKER_00]: She went back to the city to share the gospel and she found everyone opened the way for her.
01:03:56 --> 01:04:00 [SPEAKER_00]: All those, despite being a former alcoholic at a prostitute, she did not have the Jerry story.
01:04:00 --> 01:04:02 [SPEAKER_00]: She did not go back at all to her old ways.
01:04:02 --> 01:04:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Those old liquor stores she used to buy at, she would go in and share the gospel with people and nobody stopped her.
01:04:07 --> 01:04:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The old dens of sin she used to need at, she was share the gospel with everyone there.
01:04:10 --> 01:04:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Many people listened to her and many people became Christians and Jerry said many of them are still living for God to this day.
01:04:16 --> 01:04:26 [SPEAKER_00]: To quote Jerry, we find it sweet to work for him, and though we know we are in ourselves very weak and helpless and prone to mistakes, yet we trust in the Lord and feel that his precious blood is applied every moment to cleanse and save us glory be to Jesus.
01:04:27 --> 01:04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, in Thanksgiving Day, they opened their mission house.
01:04:30 --> 01:04:36 [SPEAKER_00]: By the kind of subscription friends in this city, a dinner was prepared on Thanksgiving and we invited everyone to take to come to the fit mission house.
01:04:37 --> 01:04:39 [SPEAKER_00]: A Bountiful provision was made and the needy and outcast came.
01:04:40 --> 01:04:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The day closed with a religious service and the Holy Spirit was just poured on the company there.
01:04:43 --> 01:04:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a long time to be remembered and under this influence we decided to have a similar meeting the next day and from that time to the present three years over, the humble chapel of the helping hand has been open every night with evening services, hundreds of souls have been converted in that spot.
01:04:57 --> 01:04:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The Lord has been honoring the place in the work.
01:04:59 --> 01:05:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The meetings are led by Christians from denominations all over New York and Brooklyn.
01:05:03 --> 01:05:30 [SPEAKER_00]: wonderful to see how many workers come to work and do good for others and I am on the spot all the time with my wife and our work is by no means confined to the evening service throughout the day people come and seek it by a sea council we point into Jesus the great physician and helper of body and soul many set of ones have it been helped then later on on uh this is not in their book but another spot the mission house is surrounded by rum shops dance halls gambling bins and an area that drunkards thieves and prostitutes hang out so this is literally a light in the darkest part of New York City at that time
01:05:31 --> 01:05:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And the purpose of the McColley mission was to provide shoot, food, shelter, clothing, and hope to those in crisis.
01:05:35 --> 01:05:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It provided cops for sleeping, bread, and coffee, whatever they needed.
01:05:38 --> 01:05:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The mission held daily non-enominational public meetings in 730, and on 230 they would have a special Sunday service.
01:05:44 --> 01:05:51 [SPEAKER_00]: According to a promotional booklet for the mission, the audience included homeless men, women, landsmen, sailors, strangers, friendlets, criminals, anyone interested in Christ.
01:05:52 --> 01:06:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The meanings for last an hour, book readings, Bible readings, singings of him's testimonials of the power of Jesus, Maria McColley would always play the organ, and would shake hands with everybody there.
01:06:01 --> 01:06:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The mission never collected any money, it ran outside of that.
01:06:04 --> 01:06:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The mission is still read to the states called the New York City Rescue Mission.
01:06:07 --> 01:06:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe it's in the same location anymore though.
01:06:09 --> 01:06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: There are 300 Christian run missions across the United States.
01:06:12 --> 01:06:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It all started with Jerry.
01:06:14 --> 01:06:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Like throughout this whole story, we've been talking about all these people who've helped him.
01:06:16 --> 01:06:17 [SPEAKER_00]: There was an old missionary to help them.
01:06:17 --> 01:06:20 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a train conductor that pushed him back on the train.
01:06:20 --> 01:06:22 [SPEAKER_00]: When he was thinking some very dark thoughts, right?
01:06:22 --> 01:06:25 [SPEAKER_00]: We have the prison chaplain who before even got there.
01:06:25 --> 01:06:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He set up the prison so seeing the scene could actually share a gospel, right?
01:06:28 --> 01:06:31 [SPEAKER_00]: All these people have been working throughout this story to help him.
01:06:33 --> 01:06:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They hit none of them.
01:06:34 --> 01:06:35 [SPEAKER_00]: All they saw was a drunkard.
01:06:35 --> 01:06:37 [SPEAKER_00]: All they saw was a criminal that they kept sharing Christ with them.
01:06:37 --> 01:06:38 [SPEAKER_00]: They kept loving them.
01:06:39 --> 01:06:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And none of these people would have known.
01:06:40 --> 01:06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: They were literally working with a guy who would change history.
01:06:44 --> 01:06:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, how many how many Christians are there in the world?
01:06:47 --> 01:06:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I know somebody who run these rescue missions is came to Christ.
01:06:51 --> 01:06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: How many drug addicts?
01:06:52 --> 01:06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: How many drunkards?
01:06:52 --> 01:06:54 [SPEAKER_00]: How many how many people homeless people?
01:06:54 --> 01:06:56 [SPEAKER_00]: How many, you know, criminals?
01:06:56 --> 01:06:58 [SPEAKER_00]: How many people have been helped by rescue missions?
01:06:58 --> 01:06:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And then all started with Jerry.
01:07:00 --> 01:07:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody would have known, like that's the big B1 it was the big surprise, this guy literally sounded something that has changed world history.
01:07:06 --> 01:07:07 [SPEAKER_00]: How many lives have been saved?
01:07:07 --> 01:07:09 [SPEAKER_00]: How many people come to Christ?
01:07:09 --> 01:07:10 [SPEAKER_00]: How many people are in heaven?
01:07:10 --> 01:07:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Because of rescue missions.
01:07:12 --> 01:07:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And the works that they do and hard places.
01:07:14 --> 01:07:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And it all started with Jerry.
01:07:16 --> 01:07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It all started with him and his vision that he said he got from God and doing it again along the way, how many people?
01:07:22 --> 01:07:26 [SPEAKER_00]: would have one of the throw in the towel at some point and say, the hardest done, I'm sure you can get it.
01:07:26 --> 01:07:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But look at how it came together.
01:07:28 --> 01:07:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So many hands brought, it got used so many people to bring Jerry to the Lord and to use them.
01:07:34 --> 01:07:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, look at the life and the impact Jerry has had because of these.
01:07:39 --> 01:07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1882, him and his wife opened up a second.
01:07:41 --> 01:07:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a mission.
01:07:42 --> 01:07:48 [SPEAKER_00]: This one aimed directly at women to bring women, especially prostitutes and other women who are being abused to turn their lives around.
01:07:48 --> 01:07:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, the idea of a women's mission, like if you have a women's shelter,
01:07:51 --> 01:07:55 [SPEAKER_00]: also coming from this exact same group of people at the exact same time.
01:07:56 --> 01:08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: When that family took a prostitute into their house for nine months, people probably people like you can't do that.
01:08:00 --> 01:08:01 [SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing?
01:08:01 --> 01:08:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, that woman then went on to run a woman shelter that probably brought untold numbers of people out of that profession.
01:08:09 --> 01:08:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Jerry died in 1884.
01:08:11 --> 01:08:17 [SPEAKER_00]: He had caught tuberculosis and prison, while he was at scene scene and he passed away and there was not much you could do about it.
01:08:17 --> 01:08:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's more to the story a little bit more of Maria.
01:08:20 --> 01:08:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It was not really that important.
01:08:21 --> 01:08:22 [SPEAKER_00]: I am my opinion.
01:08:23 --> 01:08:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
01:08:25 --> 01:08:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty, and now that Maria has worked, she kept working at the way of shopping.
01:08:27 --> 01:08:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean that wasn't that important.
01:08:28 --> 01:08:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I just mean like there's just not much more here.
01:08:31 --> 01:08:34 [SPEAKER_00]: The book ends, when the book ends, by the way, I think it's 1875.
01:08:34 --> 01:08:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It's about almost a decade before he passes away.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So he doesn't know.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:39 [SPEAKER_00]: He's only been out for three years when he writes the book.
01:08:40 --> 01:08:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But he writes his book in the ends of it this, this short sketch of my life, I now lay as an offering on God's altar.
01:08:44 --> 01:08:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I have told enough of my sin to ennaugnify the riches of divine grace, which reach out the hand of love and gently drew me in from the depths of an equity into his loving favor.
01:08:52 --> 01:08:59 [SPEAKER_00]: My pair is that the story of what Jesus has done for me may encourage other sinners to trust in him for the same glorious free salvation.
01:08:59 --> 01:09:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And now for him who loved us so much just from our sins and his own blood to him be the glory and dominion forever and ever.
01:09:04 --> 01:09:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
01:09:05 --> 01:09:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're as inspired and encouraged by this work.
01:09:07 --> 01:09:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really like to him.
01:09:08 --> 01:09:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it's like to be a river thief.
01:09:10 --> 01:09:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it's like to go to a singing prison.
01:09:12 --> 01:09:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what his life was like at all.
01:09:16 --> 01:09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But I inspire.
01:09:17 --> 01:09:23 [SPEAKER_00]: If God can use a man like him, all those people that helped him along the way that whose names are not remembered, but God saw and used it.
01:09:24 --> 01:09:36 [SPEAKER_00]: and look at how they changed history, look at how him and his wife created something that have saved in how many souls have been saved by these missions all across America, and I would even argue out across the world, right?
01:09:36 --> 01:09:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Crazy, the worth that they did, I told you.
01:09:39 --> 01:09:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I read this book and I didn't even know he was a great guy, just thought it was gonna be like, I love Jesus, the end, I had no idea.
01:09:44 --> 01:09:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Look at our God, what a great savior.
01:09:46 --> 01:09:50 [SPEAKER_00]: No wonder it was such a giant wrestling match over his soul God had some pretty great plans for him.
01:09:51 --> 01:09:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Look at the persecution and suffered from its family, Catholics, all of that, and yet the Lord persevered and used them.
01:09:57 --> 01:09:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope yours inspired by this story.
01:09:59 --> 01:10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I love these stories of people whose lives, I don't even know, I don't know about riverboats, I don't know, but man, I love just how many different ways and how many different people God has used throughout history.
01:10:10 --> 01:10:15 [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed this episode, if you want to send it to somebody who needs encouragement or just needs to hear a great story of God moving, send it to them.
01:10:15 --> 01:10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I would love for that.
01:10:16 --> 01:10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: We'd love to hear from you.
01:10:17 --> 01:10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Here are your thoughts about Jerry McColley.
01:10:19 --> 01:10:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you knew where the story was going.
01:10:20 --> 01:10:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I did not.
01:10:21 --> 01:10:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hope you enjoyed this one.
01:10:23 --> 01:10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: This is Troy and this is Rebecca Thoughts.