Minister to Minister Part 1 – Gene’s testimony

Brothers, my world may be small, but my world’s got integrity. We may be only 30,000, but most of us out there have got a clear conscience. That’s the only reason in this world I told that story. I want to ask you a question. How can you know and do things like that and just keep on going? Do you know you’re going to have to meet God?

Okay, Howard Hughes did something that made what Dr. … did look little. Kennedy has just taken office, and I don’t know, maybe the Bay of Pigs had just happened, I don’t know what’s happened. Howard Hughes and his great place of influence decide to call together America’s national leaders, and he calls them together in Philadelphia. He asks Jerry to be there, and Jerry says there’s a young man, Gene Edwards, the world’s smallest peasant. We walked into the Union League in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is a men’s club. I don’t know how rich you got to be in that thing. It’s one of those: if you have to ask how much the membership is, you can’t afford it. They had cathedral-like rooms in it with these leather chairs and little men sitting in them, just like you see in the cartoon. Sitting around all with servants walking around and all dressed up, just like you saw in the cartoon, going around there with little trays serving these men things, while they all looked like they were about to die, and we walked into this conference room. It was the biggest table I have ever seen in my life. And here I am, a Texas rebel, and at the end of it is this huge statue of Lincoln, and I am told that the Union League was founded by a group of Christian Philadelphia people for the sole purpose of making sure the South did not win that war.

We sat down in that room, and it was who’s who in America. On this side of me was Billy Graham’s father-in-law, who came in Billy Graham’s place. On this side of me sat the man who founded the National Association of Evangelicals. Over here, I’m sorry, I don’t remember all these people. Over here was the man who was the National Lutheran Hour, Dr. … was there. I’m sure you’ve heard of Dr. …, the Mr. Evangelical, I believe. And that’s how the whole room was, and Howard Hughes asked that each man, we were there for the whole day, each man to stand and take 15 minutes and tell us what Christians could do to save America. And this was the Christian voice, and Dr. Bell spoke first, and it started that way, which meant I was going to be the last person to speak.

I was already at the very end of my being in the organized church; I didn’t know that. But I’ve often said when Dr. Bell started, I was in, and when it got to me, I was out. I’ve sat there all day long listening to men say things that I heard when I was 18 years old. Do you know what the main point made that day was? It was that we needed to read our Bibles more. That was what came out of that meeting.

Number one, forgive me, but until I stood up, there wasn’t a bright idea in that room. And then the young kid stood up, and I got up, and I did what I guess I’m getting known for again. I gave them an entire plan of how to save America. I mean, from top to bottom. And I’m not even going to go into it, but I’ll tell you, while I delivered it, I gave it up because at that moment, I didn’t think it was worth saving. And when I got through, now you’re not going to believe that. The only thing that those men were was offended. And yet Howard Hughes had called us into that room to do this very thing. Howard Hughes thought it was great.

Just previous to that or just after that, I was sitting in the, I had been to Washington DC so many times and talked to so many congressmen and so many senators, Christian gentlemen, every born-again believer on the hill. I even got my picture in Time magazine with John Kennedy. Can you believe that? But I was sitting in the office of the governor of Nebraska, and I was in there to talk to him about Christians doing something to save America. Have you ever been to the governor’s office? This thing was gigantic. Their whole thing, their whole government, is in one, is that one building they’ve got there? Anyway, he has one. Have you been to Nebraska? Lincoln, Nebraska. Huge room. I think his office was one entire floor. We looked like a couple of little ants sitting there at his desk, and I started talking to him. He said, “Young man, excuse me, but he said, “You’re trying to get Christians involved in politics?” He was a Christian. He said, “Sir, I want to tell you something. I think that’s the worst thing that ever happened. I don’t know anybody worse than Christians are. I’d hate to think what would happen to America if Christians got into politics. And I almost said to him, “Yeah, you and me both.”

When I walked out of the Union League, that’s how I felt. You want to really ruin America? Get Christians in government. A few weeks later, I was speaking at the National Association of Evangelicals. I had two experiences that all happened very close to one another.

I was meeting in a home studying Romans 6, 7, and 8. What a way to go, brother. What a way to go. What a glorious, wonderful way to go. I was meeting in a home and fellowshipping with Christians, and experiencing more light, more life, and more fellowship than I had since I was 17 as a college kid when we had no Baptist director and I was doing something else.

I reached a point where I decided to take no more meetings, and God in His mercy allowed about five, three, five, six, or seven of them to cancel just like that. Something that never happened to me, and for no particular reason. And I took that time to sequester myself in my study, and I began doing two things. I would read Nee’s books and read Nee’s books. I picked every book I could find in the English language on the history of the first-century church and began to write out in longhand the entire story as it was made, putting in dates and places and seasons and sometimes even times of day and rebuilding that thing inch by inch. I had books, I had maps, I had everything I could find in the English language.

Since that time, I have never stopped doing that until this day. I still work on that. I have brought in literature from all over the Middle East. Literature that’s not even available in America to find the most microscopic, little details about the world in that day, the race of people, the languages, their temperature and of what they planted in those days, what they wore, how they lived, their homes, what the towns looked like, the religions in each town, how far those towns were apart. Just the most miniature things, and when and where and how Paul and Barnabas got there, the route they took, what that route looked like, and I could keep you up all evening, just that’s what I started doing, rebuilding the first century, just stand back and look at it because I had to know what it was, I was obsessed with knowing.

Well, there were some meetings I couldn’t cancel, and there were some meetings I had to go to, and one of them was to speak at the National Association of Evangelicals. And while I was there, I got a call from a young man whose name I had never heard of, and neither had you or anyone else on Earth. He was running a rescue mission on Clinton Street in Brooklyn, New York. And he had read my books, and he wanted to talk to me, and he asked me to come spend a week with him, and he took me into Dante’s Inferno.

He took me into a world I was later to become very, very, very acquainted with. He took me into the drug world before there was a drug world, except there in New York. And I went into the halls of New York. I felt like I passed up Sodom and Gomorrah in the first hour. I saw things that absolutely caused me to stand in horror. He had just received a box of a book he wrote, he hadn’t even opened it yet. The name of the book was “The Cross and the Switchblade.” By the way, just for kicks, he told me that day he had not spoken in tongues in five years, and that he had talked to Oral Roberts recently, who had also not spoken in tongues in about five years.