CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The summer following, I came to my big stumbling block. I had just closed a good meeting and had a few hours I could spend at home before going to my next in meeting. (I speak this in carefulness. Old Satan had been tormenting my wife and she was under hard trial.) I arrived home on a hot morning. I sat down on the porch in the shade to rest a few moments. My wife came to the door and said, "Are you going to go hold that meeting?" I said, "I will have to. Then I can be home for a while." With tears in her eyes, she said, "I can't keep saved and you be gone from home." It was hard, I know, but God had called me. She then said, "If you have to preach and be gone, I will take the children's lives and mine and then you will be free to preach. If you go to that meeting, that is what I am going to do." At that moment, I literally said, "Lord, I told You I would go through, but I can't."
The vision of my path through life appeared before my eyes: the big object before which I had stopped in my vision and where Satan stuck his pick in my path and I began to fall backwards, and I said, "Oh, Lord, I will take this leap." I felt I was falling, and leaped from the porch, and said aloud, "Lord, I will take this leap." It was the saddest moment I had ever witnessed in our married life up to then. This song came to my mind, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." I sang it and when I came to the last verse, "Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?" He blessed my soul beyond words. It was the first time I had ever rejoiced when I had fallen under test.
I had to pack my suitcase to be ready to go. After dinner I kissed my children good-bye, feeling that they were all dying because I was obeying God to keep out of hell. When I went to kiss my wife good-bye, she refused, saying, "You can kiss me when I am in my coffin." It seemed my heart lost its strength yet I must go. But no one will ever know the agony of those days.
During the time of that meeting, I stayed in my room by the hour and wept and prayed. Every time the phone would ring I was afraid it was for me. If I would see the telegraph boy coming, a faint feeling would come over me. As I was closing that meeting the Lord spoke to me and said, "I want to use you at home."
In the meantime, just the day before I arrived back home, a neighbor woman was talking to my wife, and knowing that she was going through a trial, said, "Sister Poe, do you think your husband has the Lord?" She said, "I know he has or he would not be out preaching now."
When I arrived in Oskaloosa, where I could catch the street car to University Park where we lived, the superintendent of the Mission where I was saved saw me at a distance. She caught the next street car and came to see if they could get me to hold a meeting in the Mission. I said, "I will have to pray." I went upstairs. As I prayed the Lord said, "This is the place I want you." I came downstairs and arranged for the meeting to start that night. The next night my wife was reclaimed. The next morning when we were having family prayer, wife was thanking God that I had stood true to Him and stood the test. God was flooding our souls. We heard shouting in the yard. Some preachers had come to see me and when they heard wife say those words, they got blessed and shouted.
I had now crossed the seemingly impossible object in my path to heaven.
In the fall following that experience, I was to go to California and my brother Albert was to go with me. But a few days before time for us to leave, he sent me word that he could not go. I felt he should go and sent word to that effect, but he said he could not. Four years before that I had had a dream of seeing him hurt in the mine and saw him dying. I wrote to him at once, told him my dream. and asked him to quit the mine at once and never go back inside one. While I was in California, he said to his wife, "If Pearl had come by, I would have gone with him." He went to my home and told my wife to tell me to come up as soon as I returned. I regret that I didn't, but when I returned home, another meeting was waiting for me and they desired that it be held before Christmas. I told my wife to write to Albert and tell him that as soon as the meeting closed, I would be up to see him.
A man that owned a coal mine asked Albert to return to the mine and help them. He told them that as soon as his brother Pearl returned, he was going to go preach with him. He was persuaded to help them for a few days, and there he met with a fatal accident.
I was in Missouri in the meeting. I had an uneasy feeling for two days. On the second night I told the people at the church how I felt, and that if they were going to get right with God in that meeting, they had better be doing it, for I felt something was wrong back home. We had a number of seekers that night. I walked home with some people who had asked me to stay all night with them. They lived a distance from the church.
About 1:00 a.m. I heard the phone ringing. I called to the man of the home, "Answer that; it is for me." I began dressing at once. I heard him say, "Yes, he is here." Then I heard him say, "I will tell him." He then said, "Your mother or brother is not expected to live until morning." My car was about three miles from there, frozen in what had been mud. We walked to the car and dug it out of the frozen ground. My luggage was about four miles from there. I got in the old Dodge car and drove over rough roads where the mud had rolled up, dropped off the wagon wheels and had frozen. After getting my clothes, I had ten miles to go over that same kind of roads. When I came to the highway, the Lord said "Drive carefully."
I had been praying much, asking God to spare whichever it might be until I could get there to see them. It seemed that my arms from within me reached the throne of God and took hold of the altar. When I reached mother's home, I was told that it was my brother Albert, and that he was in Des Moines, Iowa, in the Methodist hospital. I drove on to Des Moines. When I arrived, all my brothers, my sister, and mother were at the hospital. I went to see my brother, but the doctor refused to let me in, saying, "He is normal and has a chance to live." When the doctor went out, my brother sent for me to come in, telling the nurse that I was his preacher brother. She refused him, but he said to his wife, "Go get Pearl. I want to see him." I went in. He said, "God bless you, old boy. I have confidence in you. Pray." I knelt and prayed and he praised the Lord. When I finished praying, he wanted to get up. He felt that whatever I would ask of God, He would do it. But they had two needles in his chest and a tube fastened to him. I said, "I will keep on praying."
That evening, I was out in the hospital yard, still holding on to God. So clearly God spoke to me, "Pearl, are you willing for Me to have My way?" I said, "Yes, Lord, I am, but I am not willing that the devil kill my brother." The Lord said, "I can do nothing as long as you hold on like this. It is My will to take him, but if you hold on like this, I will spare him." It seemed my hands that had been holding on to the altar of God let loose as I said, "Lord, if it is Your will to take him, Thy will be done, not mine." I want to tell you here, it took the grace of God to say that, but I am so glad His grace was sufficient. Oh, it pays, it pays to obey Jesus at any cost.
At Albert's funeral, I was asked to dismiss, and to have the closing prayer at the graveyard. As I prayed the power of God came in torrents of glory. Strong men wept aloud. One hardened sinner told me that he never felt so near being converted in his life. Another hard sinner came and put his arms around my brother Vern, my mother, and myself, and said, "Oh, my God, I would give everything in the world if I had what you folk have." I said, "God is no respecter of persons. That is just what you will have to do -- give up the world and seek Him with your whole heart."
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