Chapters:

             Pulling  the front door shut of the lovely home which  Jesus 
        had  provided us, I started to turn toward the car where my  dear 
        wife was waiting to accompany me to a restaurant.  At that moment 
        God spoke within me: "Someone is near death!"
        
             The burden was severe. "Honey," I told my wife, getting into 
        the  car,  "the  Holy Spirit is revealing to me that  one  of  my 
        family is close to death.  I must call out to God for them."   As 
        we  drove  toward  the  highway, I prayed  and  prayed,  but  the 
        revelation  became so intense that I finally said, "We  can't  go 
        any farther.  We will have to go back home and intercede with God 
        for this dear one in peril."
        
             A fine meal now forgotten, I returned to my prayer room  and 
        cried  out  to  God, "Oh, God deliver,  deliver,  deliver!  Lord, 
        undertake! Jesus, we need you badly!"  I pled and prayed for  two 
        or three hours before I began to get relief.
        
             The  following day my parents were called to officiate at  a 
        funeral in Cromwell, Indiana, several miles north; but my  mother 
        awoke  that morning with an unusual feeling upon her.   When  she 
        started to get dressed for the journey she would almost lose  her 
        breath.  The burden was so strong that finally she said,  "Eldon, 
        I am not supposed to go to that funeral."
        
             My father was surprised:  "But Mother, they're expecting us.  
        They're all expecting you."  They had pastored in this  community 
        years before and had many friends there.
        
             "I  can't  help it," she insisted.  "It takes my  breath  to 
        talk about it."  So my father made the trip alone. 
        
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             On the way home, he began to round the bend at Big Lake in a
        1959 two-door Ford, when a man in a large Hudson, outweighing  my 
        father's  car  by about a thousand pounds, swerved over into  the 
        left-hand lane and hit him head-on.  The impact drove the  engine 
        back into the driver's compartment a little, injuring him.
        
             If  Mother had been in the car, it would surely have  killed 
        her; but Dad was always an exceptionally strong man.  He had more 
        power in his arms at the age of seventy than many men have at the 
        age  of  fifty.   This enormous strength spared  him  from  worse 
        injury  or death, because he simply braced his arms  against  the 
        impact  and bent the steering wheel down.  As it was,  the  wheel 
        dealt him an awful blow, and left its impression in his chest for 
        some  time.   A  few ribs were hurt and the  muscles  were  badly 
     
        bruised.  One of our dear friends who saw Dad's car following the 
        accident remarked, "How did he ever get out of there alive?"
        
             I answered him, "God's mercy spared him."
        
             The  doctor prescribed a strong pain medication,  which  Dad 
        took  Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.  By Wednesday the  pain  pills 
        had  lost  their  effectiveness and nothing  would  diminish  his 
        suffering.   He told me, "These pills don't do me any  good  now, 
        Son.  I don't know whether I can stand much more pain."
        
             At  that,  I dropped to my knees beside his chair,  laid  my 
        hand across my father's arm, and began to pray:  "Oh, God, my Dad 
        is hurting so badly, and nothing seems to stop this pain.   Would 
        you, dear Father, in the matchless name of Jesus, now remove this 
        suffering  for your glory and honor?" The power of God came  down 
        into  his body and I sensed it.  "Did you feel that?" I asked  my 
        dad.
        
             "Ohhh,  yes!" he answered.  "That feels so much better!"  He 
        got  up from his chair, took his cane in hand, and began to  move 
        about.  To God's glory, he never again had pain from that injury.
        
             It was the Lord who had heard and answered prayer. He
        
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        had  revealed  the  burden of this accident  the  day  before  it 
        occurred.   His message to me just as I turned to leave our  home 
        was:  "Some of your loved ones are about to leave home  now."   I 
        praise Him for His faithfulness.
        
             I praise the Lord that I was born of parents who feared God, 
        who  loved God and taught me of Jesus.  My earliest  recollection 
        is  of my mother talking and singing to me of Jesus.   She  would 
        hold me in her arms and sing,  "Oh, yes, there is power in Jesus' 
        blood to wash and make me clean."
        
             I came from a line of people who loved God.  On my  father's 
        side of the family, my great, great-grandfather helped build  the 
        little  Methodist church at Windsor about 115 to 120  years  ago.  
        He was a very faithful man, a very humble man.
        
             His son, my great-grandfather, walked to Sunday morning  and 
        evening  services, to prayer meeting and  evangelistic  services, 
        and not a short distance either.  Rev. Eddie Greenwald said to me 
        years ago, "I think perhaps your great-grandfather didn't miss  a 
        service  in  thirty to thirty-five years."  My  mother  remembers 
        going  up the church steps when she was a little girl the age  of 
        eight  to ten hearing her mother say, "Well, we will have a  good 
        meeting  tonight:  Uncle Jerry is here."  He was only  an  humble 
        farmer, but he loved Jesus.
  

             The home of my mother's folks, Loran and Elizabeth  Dickson, 
        had  always been the home of visiting ministers.   Regardless  of 
        their  church affiliation, they were welcome at my  grandfather's 
        table,  and also at his father's table.  Rev. Gilmore, the  first 
        man I recognized as a man of God, had a deep appreciation for  my 
        mother's  parents.  He told me years later when he was  not  well 
        and  I  was  taking  him  to  a  medical  clinic,  "Loran,   your 
        grandmother, Elizabeth Dickson, lived for others.  The epitaph on 
        her tombstone could read: `She lived for others.'"
        
             I  was born in Muncie, Indiana, February 3, 1916, the  first 
        son of Alvin Eldon Helm and Mary Rosetta Helm.  We re-

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        mained  there  only  a  short time  before  moving  a  few  miles 
        southeast to the small village of Windsor, where we lived in what 
        Dad and Mother called "the little red house."
        
             It is in the village of Windsor that I really first remember 
        prayer,  remember church, remember the preaching.  The  Lord  has 
        somehow permitted me to recall definite experiences from an early 
        age.   I can remember well the buildings which stood  across  the 
        street  from our home when I was less than three years old.   You 
        would wonder how a boy could recollect when he was so small,  but 
        I  see  them now just like a picture.  Standing in his  place  of 
        business in one of those old buildings is a man they called "one-
        armed  Dudley." Over to the east I can see Mary West  sitting  on 
        her  porch.   Those  buildings were torn down to  build  the  new 
        Christian Church dedicated in 1920.
        
             Most  vividly  I  recall sitting in church  near  the  front 
        listening  to Rev. Gilmore preach.  Following one Sunday  morning 
        service I remember very well my father coming home and asking  my 
        mother,  "Mary,  why  didn't men and women  obey  God  in  church 
        today?"  And she answered, "I don't know."  Upon another Sunday I 
        can  hear my father again saying, "Mary, why didn't men obey  the 
        Lord  this morning in church?"  And my mother replied, "Eldon,  I 
        just don't know what to say."
        
             Each  time my father asked, "Why didn't men obey  God?",  it 
        was  getting  inside of me until I began to  wonder  myself:  why 
        aren't men obedient?  Why aren't they humbling themselves?   This 
        question pierced my heart.  Somehow God allowed my little four to 
        five-year-old  heart to hear that question deep in  the  interior 
        life and hold on to it.
        
             In  the  last  few years God has revealed  to  me  that  the 
        seriousness  and  the urgency of obeying the Holy Spirit  is  not 
        getting into the hearts of many people, even into those who  have 
        been  in  the church for fifty years.  God has made known  to  me 
      
        that very few in either the ministry or the laity have  perceived 
        the mystery or the absolute necessity of
        
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        truly obeying God.  Few have grasped the message that we must  do 
        what God reveals rather than what we desire, what we arrange,  or 
        what  we  plan.  Surely it is a miracle that the  seriousness  of 
        obeying God took root in my heart at such a young age.
        
             I believe my hearing God's call to obedience as a child  was 
        because  of the Holy Ghost falling upon me as I was born.  It  is 
        of such consequence that I hesitate to speak of it; but my mother 
        tells me that the Holy Spirit fell upon both of us as I came into 
        this world. She did not relate this to me until May 1956, when  I 
        was forty years of age.
        
             I had taken Mother to Rev. L. M.'s church in  Kokomo,  where 
        God had led me for revival services, and after returning home the 
        second night of services we were enjoying the sweet fellowship in 
        the Lord. The presence of Jesus was to be sensed all around,  and 
        Mother  said to me, "Son, I have had the most  wonderful rest  in 
        the last two nights that I have had in two months."
        
             I  replied, "Mother, it is because of the precious  presence 
        of the Holy Spirit."
        
             She  nodded  her agreement, for the Spirit of God  was  then 
        falling  so sweetly upon us.  She then said, "This is the  way  I 
        felt Son, when you were born."
        
             I was stunned. "Mother!"
        
             "Yes,  Loran," she continued, "the Holy Spirit fell upon  me 
        when  you  were born, just as you came from my body.   I  thought 
        that  all mothers experienced this with each child, until  I  had 
        borne five more sons and never felt that Presence again."
        
             "Mother!"  I managed to say again.  "This is so sacred!   It 
        is  so serious!"  This knowledge of God's Spirit falling upon  me 
        at  birth  brought  me, as it were, with my  face  to  the  floor 
        beseeching  God that I would be faithful to Jesus.  I was  crying 
        out  in  my heart not to fail God as men have in  the  past  over 
        women,   over  money;  through   prayerlessness,   faithlessness, 
        trustlessness; by disobedience, resentment, strife, or
        
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        analyzation.   If you read the Bible carefully, you will  observe 
        that  almost all men failed God; they came short of His  will.  I 
        prayed,  "Oh, Lord, deliver me that I may never grieve  Thy  Holy 
        Spirit!"
        
             Through  my mother and father, God taught me the urgency  of 
        obedience, and  made me aware that men seldom  consistently  obey 
        God.  In my early background God was preparing me to see that men 
        should obey the Lord and strive to do His will, for Jesus said in 
        Luke 13: "Strive to enter in at the strait  gate:  for 
        many  I  say unto you, will seek to enter in, and  shall  not  be 
        able." 
        
             So, you see, it isn't by accident that I have been  striving 
        to  obey God.  It isn't by chance that I heard at this early  age 
        the   command:  "Obey God; [ Acts  5:29] 
        obey the Holy Spirit; do what God wants you to do." It is because 
        the Lord has been dealing with me. It is because of my  heritage.  
        It  is  because of the gift God gave us in Jesus Christ  that  He 
        laid  it  deep in my heart--placed it deep in the  interior  life 
        (and  the Holy Spirit operates within me as I tell you  this)--to 
        obey what the Holy Spirit wants me to do.  Praise God!
        
             These  thirty years and more of walking with God seem but  a 
        few   days,  because the delight of all living is to   walk  with 
        God, to trust Him, to wait upon Him (and when I say that, I  feel 
        the power of God coming through my body and up into my arms).  Of 
        course,  my  path  has not always been  easy,  but  it  has  been 
        wonderful and glorious.  I have not looked to the difficulties, I 
        have  looked  to Jesus.  I have not proceeded  according  to  the 
        patterns  of the earth, I have endeavored to  follow  God's  Word 
        and  the revelation of His Spirit.  It is God who has brought  us 
        to  victory.  It is God who has given us daily strength.   He  is 
        the  One  who has 'given all things' [John  3:35  &  John 
        13:3] that we have experienced in this sacred  walk 
        with Jesus Christ.  Praise be unto His name forever.
        
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