CHAPTER FIVE
As I have traveled life's path, I have been made to realize what each thing in my vision has meant and where I was on my path. I do not know just when the end will come, but I do know I am just before the wall, near to where the light came from that shone on my path. God is just on the other side.
The little thing that I stumbled over was the way someone did, but I did not fall. The larger one, I met in a National Holiness Camp Meeting.
A little while before my son James was born, my wife had the flu. It was the year so many people were dying with it, and especially expectant mothers. I was not saved at the time. I did all I knew to do for my wife. We called the doctor, but he was so busy he did not come until five days later. I used lemons and baking soda and gave Epsom salts each night. When the doctor did come, she was over the worst part. The doctor asked what I had used and I told him. He said, "Go ahead. You have done better than the most of us doctors." The flu left wife feeling so tired and run down.
We had both been saved in January before this camp in June. It was our first camp meeting and I thought nothing could be greater. I was working on the railroad then and could attend only the nights and Sundays.
On Sunday morning wife said, "I want you to stay all day, but I don't feel able to stay so long. I will have to rest." We agreed and I took a sandwich for my dinner. As she was getting ready to go home after the morning service, I walked with her to the car. She was to ride with someone from the Mission.
A certain woman came up and said, "Oh, Sister Poe, aren't you going to stay for the rest of the day?" Wife said, "No." The other woman said, "Uncle Buddy Robinson is going to speak." We had not come prepared for her to stay, so wife said, "Oh, I haven't a change of clothing for the children and did not fix dinner. I had better go home." She bade me good-bye, and wished me a pleasant day. Old Satan is always on the job to put his interpretation on a partly said statement. That woman began to tell how awful it was that Sister Poe had to go home because she didn't have a change of clothing for her children. It soon spread to others.
That night after the preaching, a number of people were at the altar. As was my custom, I went to help pray for the seekers. As I prayed, a man began to crowd in between me and the seeker. I kept on praying and he crowded back against me. I turned to the steps that went to the platform and kept on praying. Soon I was ordered by a minister to shut up, and not in a very nice way. Just "Shut up; shut up, I say!" But I continued to pray until folk with whom I was praying got through. On arriving home, I found a note on the table, "Dad came up and wanted me to go home with him. Will be seeing you Wednesday or Thursday."
The next morning when I arose, I thought I would read a chapter and pray before I went to work. As I did so I got so blest that I did not have time to get my breakfast. I only had 15 minutes to go a little over a mile to work. I hurried across the street, bought a lunch for noon, and was so blest that tears flowed freely. Every few rods, I said, "Praise the Lord," as I hurried on to work.
When I arrived at work, I was told that my buddy and I were to put a deck in a coal car. Usually, that took two men a day and three-quarters. My buddy was to bring me the material; I was to put the boards on. Every few minutes, I would feel the power and glory of God until I would shed tears and shout, "O glory!" As I worked on, the blessing increased. I thought, No one can be blest like this and live. If it comes again I will go to heaven, and about that time another wave of God's glory would hit me and sweep over my soul.
At noon I sat down on the new "decked" part to eat my lunch. I started to ask the blessing and could not stop until I heard the whistle blow for work. I placed my lunch aside and started working and praising the Lord. By the middle of the afternoon it had been noised around over the shops where I worked that I had had a mental slip. The men would come and peep through the cracks of the car and I would hear them say, "Poor fellow. Now what will his wife and children do?" About that time another wave of glory would come. I laughed and cried and said, "Glory, glory, glory!" The next I heard, "Sure enough, boys. Now we will have to watch him. He doesn't know his strength," and that much was true. I was supposed to be the strongest man there. They said, "If he starts to do anything, we will have to hog-tie him." If I had gotten out of that car and started toward them and hollered "Boo!" they would have run like scared jack rabbits. Just a little while before quitting time I placed the last board, drove the last nail, lifted my tool box to my shoulder, and climbed out of that car, leaving behind me one of the biggest days work any one man had done in that line and had shouted half the time. As I went home that night, I had a wide way all to myself. I knew why, but I was blest. "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it."
Upon arriving home, I read a few chapters in the Bible and had a good season of prayer. I did not feel hungry, so prepared and went to camp meeting. As soon as I reached the camp, that great blessing I had had was gone, like darkness comes at night when the lights are put out. I could feel a coldness toward me. I could see some talking and nodding and looking at me. I did not know what was wrong, but I knew there was something. I went back of the Tabernacle to the timber and knelt down to pray. After praying a few moments, asking God what I had done and why this awful feeling, I received no answer only, "Go to service."
There was no altar service that night. A person came to me and said, "Brother Poe, we are so glad you are saved and called to preach, but your wife and children come first." I said, "No, Jesus comes first, and my family next." Another person walked up and said, "Brother Poe, where is your wife?" I said, "Her father came up Sunday and she went home with him." Another unfinished statement and Satan took advantage of it.
Following are the two statements, not fully explained -- the one by my wife, the other by myself -- as they were interpreted by Satan and those whom he helped to talk. "Do you know that preacher, that railroad man, Poe? His wife was here Sunday; had to go home because he won't support her. She didn't have a change of clothes for her children. He said her father came up and she has left him. Isn't it too bad?" So more wood was added to the fire. There were over 5,000 people at that camp, but it was not blessed of God in the last part as it was in the first.
The next night as I came to the camp -- more coldness and whispering A sermon was preached to hit me, but I was innocent and didn't know then that it was for me. I amen-ed the preacher all the way through. After service a man came to me and said, "Brother Poe, what is all the talk I hear?" I said "I don't know. I haven't heard anything, but I surely can feel that something is wrong." He then told me. I had two keys for our house. I said, "You take three people and go to our house and if you don't find more clothing than my children will ever wear out, I will pay for it. Then go across the street and ask the grocer if my bill for groceries isn't $70 for two weeks, and if I have kept it paid up." They did.
The next night wife was back home when I returned from meeting, but that had been a hard day. I tried to reason it out. I could not see how such could possibly be in a Holiness camp meeting.
Everett Allen, the colored boy, came home with me that night from work. He saw that I was troubled. He said, "Brother Poe, what is the matter?" I told him. He said, "Get your Bible." "Now open it and read the first verse you see." My eyes fell on John 15:18, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you." I said, "Yes, but Everett, these are not people of the world." He said, "Close it and open it again," and I read these words, "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you" (Matt. 5:11-12).
By this time the Lord had begun to lift me, and He lifted me above the whole thing. But it stands out as a great lesson to me. Be careful in repeating a report about someone. It may not be any more true than that was about me. But I have suffered from that until now, for they never cleared the matter before those thousands of people. It also taught me not to believe every report. Some folk are used of Satan to put the wrong construction on a thing and others are anxious to carry the story
I heard Joseph H. Smith, the great Bible preacher in the Holiness camp meeting, preach a great sermon from James, on the tongue as an unruly member. One thing he said has stayed with me -- "A half truth, when wrongly used, is worse than a whole lie."
Brother Smith illustrated the truth by an incident that happened when he was a young fellow in his teens. One day in the early fall a few big boys about his age had gone to school. It Had rained the night before. The boys had their shoes off, their breeches legs rolled up, and were wading in the grader ditch that had not drained. A girl, also in her early teens, came down the road to school. Her hair was in braids, with pretty pink ribbons tied on her hair that came to her waist line. She wore a neat, clean dress. She spoke politely, "Good morning, boys." They all spoke gentlemanly by saying, "Good morning," and called the girl by name. She had been in the schoolhouse only a few moments when she came running out. The boys ran and caught her and threw her in that old muddy water in the grader ditch. He left the story there. You could hear "Oh-h-h" going over the congregation.
In order to let Satan have time to magnify what he had said about the girl, Brother Smith continued preaching from his text for about fifteen minutes. Then he said, "Hark! What I told you about that girl was true -- every word of it, but it was only half the truth. The girl was helping the teacher clean the room. She was burning the scrap paper in the stove and caught her dress on fire. She came running out of the schoolhouse with her clothing on fire and we ran and grabbed her and threw her in the muddy water to save her life. That is the whole truth." A sigh of relief was heard. It was a great lesson to me. I have had to suffer many half-truths told on me. If what we are telling is going to injure the one of whom we are speaking, we are guilty of slander, and hurt our own soul, the one of whom we speak, and the one spoken about. If the thing is true, we should go to the person and help to restore him.
I continued to preach in the Mission, Salvation Army, and other Missions in town until in October.
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