In  June  of  1925 Standard Oil  transferred  my  father  to 
        Yorktown,  some  fifteen miles west.  Dad had been  preaching  in 
        Carlos City those three years we were in Parker, and in  Yorktown 
        he  was called to preach in a little church at Reed Station.   It 
        was there, at the age of nine years, that I took part in my first 
        revival, helping my father by leading the singing.
        
             While  in  prayer  one  day, the Lord  spoke  to  my  mother 
        concerning  my father's ministry.  After she had put us  boys  to 
        bed that night she came out and said, "Eldon, God has revealed to 
        me that you will be called by the District Elder of the church to 
        preach in his district."
        
             "Oh,  no!" he remarked.  "That couldn't be!  I have  only  a 
        fifth  grade  education.   I  don't  know  much  about   speaking 
        grammatically  correct.   I haven't had any  training.   I'm  not 
        qualified, Mary."
        
             "Yes," she answered, "but Jesus has told me that you will be 
        called soon into full-time ministry."
        
             "I just hardly think so," Dad insisted.
        
             Some  four  days later we were eating lunch when  the  phone 
        rang.  A voice requested, "Mr. A.E. Helm, please."  When Dad took 
        the phone, it was the District Elder.  "Eldon," he said, "I  want 
        you  to  take Centenary Church (now Trinity) in  New  Castle.   I 
        can't guarantee you much--about sixteen hundred dollars a year at 
        the  most.   I  will need to know your  answer  by  four  o'clock 
        today."
        
             My mother said that my father's face turned as white as
        
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        death.  "Mary!" he managed to say.  He was shocked; but my mother 
        was  expecting the call.  Glory to God!  She knew it was  coming.  
        But  my  father  felt  so unworthy,  so  feeble,  so  limited  in 
        education.  Surely he wouldn't be called. "Do you think I can  do 
        it, Mary?" he asked.
        
             "Of  course you can," my Mother replied.  She knew that  God 
        was  in it.  Here my father had a job with Standard Oil paying  a 
        few thousand dollars a year; and three or four thousand dollars a 
        year  income before the depression was times and times more  than 
        that amount now.  He had a wonderful position.
        
             He was a born salesman and doing well.  What he was sold on, 
        he  could  sell.   He was so talented in  selling  that  when  he 
        started  in  Kimmel Circuit in 1945, many years  after  that,  he 
        decided  to sell a Christian publication to as many as he  could.  
        There  had been seventeen subscriptions the year before  he  came 
        but  five  had cancelled, leaving them with  only  twelve  people 
        subscribing.   The first year, my father went from home  to  home 
        selling  this publication and signed  seventy-seven  subscribers, 
        the highest increase in the entire conference.
        
             Now he had but four hours to decide what he was going to do.  
        He  then  had four little boys and was expecting  another  child, 
        which  turned  out  to be two more boys at one  time.   Would  he 
        remain  with  the  business  which  was  supplying  him  with  an 
        excellent  income  and promised him much more; or would  he  take 
        this  small church which could afford only a limited  salary  way 
        below his present earnings?
        
             With such a short time to decide, my father was praying with 
        Mother, "What will we do, Lord?  Will we give up this job and all 
        its  potential  to go to a precious little church?  What  do  you 
        want us to do?"  They earnestly prayed to know God's will.  A few 
        hours  later  my father called the District Elder and  told  him, 
        "The Lord being my Helper, I will assume this pastorate."
        
             I shall never forget going with my father the next Sunday
        
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        to  that little church.  Do you know how many persons were  there 
        that January morning?--I think there were four women, one man and 
        a few children.  Five adults!  Did that look very promising to  a 
        man who had left a profitable and growing business?
        
             But Dad bought himself a good pair of shoes and began to  go 
        from  house to house working with the people, praying with  them, 
        talking with them, and loving them.  It wasn't long before  there 
        were  twenty in service.  Soon there were forty.  Not long  after 
        there were sixty, then eighty, and one hundred.  God was bringing 
        in the people.
        
             After  several  months, father felt that the  church  needed 
        revival; so he began leading services himself.  For about two  or 
        three weeks he preached his heart out, and although the Lord  was 
        helping  him,  the  folk did not respond.   They  weren't  really 
        listening.   Nobody  would move.  Even today,  the  heartbreaking 
        fact is that a great number of people in the church really aren't 
        obedient.   There are very few people who actually obey God.   We 
        simply  gather together, preach, testify and pray a  little,  and 
        think  that this is ninety percent of Christianity.  But that  is 
        only about ten percent.
        
             Ninety  percent  of Christianity is our  walking  with  God: 
        denying  Self--what we want, what we desire and what we think  is 
        good  or reasonable--to do what God wants; pressing to  obey  the 
        Holy Spirit; assuming the cross joyfully; dying out to the carnal 
        nature  minute  by  minute and second by  second.    Actually 
        living  for  Christ   is true Christianity,  and  it  has 
        seldom been lived consistently in the ages.
        
             Dad  preached  and preached, but the key  individuals,  like  
        keys  on  an organ, wouldn't operate, and the divine  melody  was 
        unable to play.  If the key people would only get right with God, 
        Jesus would be able to save communities by the thousands.
        
             Once  I shared from a pulpit God's revelation to me that  if 
        the  key  people  of that  congregation  would humble themselves,
        confess their faults, and get everything right with God, then
        
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        there would be hundreds of souls brought into the Kingdom  within 
        a short time.  God revealed to me that there were eight  thousand 
        individuals  ready to be saved within a radius of three miles  of 
        the  church at that time, if we could only persuade  everyone  in 
        the church to get right with God.
        
             When  God showed me this that night, I was so surprised.   I 
        shared it from the pulpit, and it witnessed to the pastor's heart 
        strongly.   He scarcely had ever had a burden hit his heart  with 
        such power.  Several of the congregation also said that when this 
        revelation was shared, it struck their hearts like an arrow.
        
             You  see, it is God who brings the sinners in.  We can't  do 
        it.   Preaching doesn't do it.  Singing won't do it.  People  and 
        personalities  can't do it.  It is the power of God  that  brings 
        sinners in and changes them.
        
             Many churches want you to have revival by "Caesarean birth."  
        This is the method whereby the revival services are scheduled  at 
        the  time  the  church  wishes,  with  the  assumption  that  the 
        evangelist  will  bring the sinners in and get  them  saved.   We 
        might manage to get a few saved in this manner, but if the church 
        is not cleansed of its criticism, disobedience, and hidden  sins, 
        before  long  the  lambs  die.  They  die  on  spoiled  milk  and 
        clabbered fellowship.  Lambs feed primarily from the flock.  They 
        can  seldom feed from the shepherd.  Many think that  the  pastor 
        should  take  care of the new converts, but it is the  sheep  who 
        feed and care for the newborn lambs.
        
             The "milk" on which the lambs feed is the "joy of the Lord."
        The new converts  feedon  the  joy which  the congregation has in
        Jesus.  They are fed on the praise flowing from obedient hearts. 
        They are nourished by the thanksgiving of mature saints, the 
        sharing of how Jesus has led and directed. When the church is not
        in glorious victory, however; when God is not able to be leading
        His people and accomplishing His will through them, many times 
        the new converts are discouraged and soon gone.  They are some-
        
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        times in a worse condition than they were prior to a knowledge of 
        salvation.
        
             The  power  of  God will work through  any  church  to  draw 
        sinners  to  Jesus  as soon as that body of  believers  pays  the 
        price.   Isaiah  tells  us:  "...for  as  soon  as  Zion 
        travailed,  she  brought  forth  her  children."  (Isaiah   66:8) 
        Very few people have ever come to soul travail.  I have  preached
        forty years throughout the United States,  and  I have  seen only
        two people in soul travail, let alone  an entire church body able
        to arrive at this  holy  place  of agonizing intercessory prayer.
        
             Why, beloved, it requires a price; it takes yieldedness  and 
        going  with  God  completely before we know much  about  a  "soul 
        burden."   To  come,  then,  to  "intercessory  prayer"  is  some 
        distance beyond this.  But far, far, far beyond "soul burden"  is 
        the  "City of Soul Travail," and I know very few people who  have 
        ever arrived there.
        
             We  make  our way to soul travail by self  denial,  under  a 
        cross,  yielded,  obedient, and faithful to Christ:  letting  God 
        remove from us all carnal characteristics which hinder His Spirit 
        and  wound  others.  Waiting on God is a necessary  requisite  of 
        this pruning process.  But, once God can find a body of believers 
        willing  to  make  the sacrifice--who  will  come  to  brokenness 
        together,  confessing  all hidden resentments and  criticisms--He 
        could  prepare  that body to come to travail in the  Spirit,  and 
        thousands   would  be  brought  into  the  Kingdom,   wonderfully 
        transformed.
        
             The grand impediment to such glorious victory through Christ 
        is  simply  this:  the  church  acknowledges  adultery,   murder, 
        cursing,  stealing, and drunkenness as sin; but very  few  church 
        people are aware that if Satan can manage to inject the slightest 
        tinge of malice or criticism into only one heart, he has  stopped 
        the  spiritual  progress of that body just as surely as  if  that 
        person had committed a more obvious wickedness.
        
             The reason a number of our churches are bearing little
        
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        fruit  for Jesus is because our roots are planted in  the  bitter 
        springs of the carnal mind.  Dear ones harbor a touch of  malice, 
        nurse  a time-worn grudge, linger over resentments, or conceal  a 
        private criticism in their hearts.  These carnal patterns are  of 
        Satan, not of Jesus.

             The  natural mind tends to minimize the intense  seriousness 
        of  these  inner  attitudes  of  the  heart;  but  they  are   as 
        devastating  to  the true spiritual effectiveness of  the  church 
        body as those evils which we commonly recognize as sin.  They are 
        wicked, horrid, vile, abominable unrighteousness, and grievous to 
        God.  Like any other sin, they stop the entire spiritual life  of 
        the church.
        
             When  such carnal attitudes are not confessed and put  under 
        the blood of Jesus, that church body is rendered powerless in the 
        Spirit.  Powerless!  Oh, the program and activities of the church 
        may proceed apparently undisturbed, but the true fire of God will 
        not be operating in its midst.
        
             Paul  tells us in Ephesians that Christ so loved the Church
        and gave Himself for it in order  that  "...He might present 
        it to himself a glorious  church, not having spot or wrinkle or 
        any such thing; but that it should be holy, without spot or 
        blemish."  God wants His purpose to be fulfilled through holy 
        people in His church.
        
             My  father had preached diligently to these precious  people 
        night  after  night with no results.  One night,  Dad  asked  the 
        people  to come up around the altar that they might  pray.   They 
        were  willing  to come, but none would pray.  I was only  ten  or 
        eleven  at the time, but felt so strongly my  father's  situation 
        that I began to pray.  "Jesus," I cried, "come down here and help 
        my daddy!  Come into this church, Lord.  We've got to have help!"
        
             I  don't know what all I prayed, but it seemed to reach  the 
        hearts of these dear people.  They began to weep, and before long 
        the Lord had sent a little awakening.  Jesus used a little boy to 
        break the stony hearts of those good church people.  But the Lord 
        wants to work through adults as well as the
        
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        children.   He wishes to operate in our lives.  He longs to  move 
        in our souls.
        
             My father had relinquished his job and a secure future to go 
        with  God,  and Jesus honored his trust by saving souls  in  that 
        community.   Hearts  were  truly  converted.   Individuals   were 
        transformed by the power of His blood, and God began to raise  up 
        a faithful people.
        
             Dad  preached  there  from January, 1926,  to  April,  1928, 
        although  we  moved back to Parker in  September,  1927.   Father 
        didn't think he could live thirty miles away and still do justice 
        to  his  charge,  but  the congregation said,  "We  want  you  to 
        continue  to pastor the church here."  So he drove  thirty  miles 
        each  way from Parker to the south edge of New Castle to  conduct 
        services throughout the winter.
        
             Mother and Dad owned a Chevrolet, at that time, which had no 
        side windows; but only curtains, which flopped back and forth  in 
        the  wind.   Our  folks  would cover the  six  of  us  boys  with 
        blankets,  and  we would huddle as close  together  as  possible.  
        With the temperature sometimes down to zero and the wind  pouring 
        through  those  curtains  all  the  way home--my,  it  was  cold!  
        Sometimes it was rather late when we started home.  I recall  one 
        night when my father prayed till midnight with one man before  he 
        met Jesus.
        
             On  one  journey I was with my father alone, and it  was  so 
        cold driving home.  Dad said that I would have frozen to death if 
        he  hadn't sheltered me from the wind.  But because he  protected 
        me  with  his own body, he was so frozen by the time  we  arrived 
        home  that Mother thought she would never get him warm.  She  had 
        to heat comforts and blankets to put over him for several  hours, 
        and he was quite sick the following two or three days.
        
             On  another  occasion, returning home  late  one  particular 
        Sunday, it was so cold that the radiator froze.  Dad stopped   by 
        a  stream and told Mother, "I'm going to see if I can find a  can 
        or a pail underneath the bridge here, then go down to that  patch 
        of swift water to fill the radiator."  If you can,
        
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        picture  my  father out in the bitter cold of  this  dark  night, 
        groping through the snow beneath that bridge hoping to discover a 
        can  or  pail.   The chances of him finding even a  tiny  can  in 
        condition  to hold water were mighty slim.  In the meantime,  his 
        family  of seven all sat shivering in blankets, trusting that  he 
        would get them home safely.
        
             Suddenly  his foot clanked on something!  He  reached  down, 
        and  up from the snow rolled a five-gallon pail with a  scoop  on 
        it, and the bottom was still in it!  Praise the Lord.  My  father 
        made  his  way  to the rippling water  where  the  stream  hadn't 
        frozen,  and with that pail carried the water necessary  to  fill 
        the  radiator.   He  wrapped a blanket around it  and  it  didn't 
        freeze again all the way home.
        
             My  parents were striving to be faithful to the purpose  God 
        had for them, and He, in turn, provided for them time after time.
                            
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