Minister to Minister Part 2 – Gene’s testimony

I was so ill, there were times I walked into my classrooms, and I would walk right across the board. I cannot speak, and I couldn’t. I was so weak that my vocal cords did not work. Now, you’ve never been that weak, and I’d write their assignment, and I’d grab hold of that desk. I would sit down, and when those kids left the room, when my conference period came, I turned the lights out, and I lay down on the floor, and I didn’t move. And during lunch hour, I locked my door. I turned those lights out, and I laid down on the floor. And at the end of the day, I literally dragged myself to my car. When I got home, sometimes Helen would come out and help me to the house. Sometimes I had to sit in my car for 30 minutes before I got the strength to pull that handle down and hold my body. I went from that car at 3:30 in the afternoon to my bed and I did not get up from that bed till 7:00 the next morning when I went back to that class again and when I got out of class on Friday, I went straight to that bed, and I laid down and I stayed there until Monday morning without moving. And that’s the way I taught for two years.

Beta came to see me one day; it’s the last time I ever laid eyes on her. She came in, and I was lying on the sofa. I’d come in there to receive her. She was going somewhere. I had an appointment with a doctor, one more doctor, who was going to tell me there was nothing he could do for me. I didn’t know that at the time, I had an appointment. We could only be together for a few minutes, and she sat there, and she looked at me, and she hadn’t seen me in several years. And she said, “Oh, Gene.”

I told her a little bit about what I was going through. She said, “Oh, Gene, I knew it was going to happen to you when I heard you praying, and I was terrified for you. I’ve never been so afraid in my life for anyone because I knew the Lord was going to answer your prayers.” And she said, “Now He had.” And I just sat there and cried. I didn’t know what to say because I knew that no human being, I’d been pastoring long enough to watch people die, no human being could be much longer in the state I was in. I was forcing my wife to get a career because I said, “Honey, you have to face the facts that you’re going to deal with it pretty soon.” Beta left. Beta died. She had been living with someone at the time. It was after her funeral that I found out that I was one of those three people that she had been praying for.

I had known her desperate desire to see Christian workers raised up in America. And I had prayed the same prayer because that prayer had come to me. I am the recipient of what is probably hundreds and hundreds of hours of one of the holiest human beings in the world living before the throne of God. For an hour that came to me soon after that, and for an hour that may yet still be in the womb of time but may not be born yet. A prayer of Beta Sheirich, it was something like this. “Lord, send workers. And Lord, where are the workers?”

I was just so desperately ill. One day, a brother came by to see me and said, “Gene, please try this.” It was a change in my diet, and I didn’t believe that kind of stuff, and I still don’t. But you know, when you get sick enough, you’ll even listen to a fruit nut. In the next 6 weeks, I dropped something like 40 or 50 lbs. of toxicity out of my body. And after about six months of going through these horrendous healings and convulsions and getting rid of all that stuff in me that was just packed in there from all this massive cell killing in my body.

Over about a period of a year, the Lord gave me back a small measure of strength. And the next year, I saw an American expression of church life in a little obscure village in California. And all the years that I lay there in that bed with nothing to do, I got to know Him, who He is. And for the next 10 years, I lived in an experience of the body of Christ while I was a schoolteacher, that is, in my judgment, one of the greatest expressions of the body of Christ this world has ever seen. And I’m not going to talk to you about it this week because I think I should talk to you in generalities, but I’m going to bring it up to the present day. I’m going to bring it right up to now. I’ve left out a whole bunch just now because there are many things that happened to me besides that little village.

In 1978, I began losing my health again. I’m getting old, and all of that stuff in me doesn’t work. All those glands don’t work, and the liver doesn’t work. One day it’s the pancreas that doesn’t work, the next day it’s my adrenals that absolutely refuse to do anything. I have to eat some very, very exotic food. My wife does what is called a lymphatic massage on my body almost every day just to keep my lymph system working. Otherwise, I’d swell up like a toad. And in 1979, it became worse. I was by that time when I spoke, I spoke sitting down, and then by 1980, I was pretty well confined to bed again, and that’s when I began writing. I’m still writing, and I may be sick, buster, but I got the meanest pen you ever saw. And I am fermenting a revolution from my bed.

I got a little better about two years ago, and I promised the Lord if He’d just take away some of the pain, just let me get out of bed some. I promise to not go out and minister anywhere. I wonder what He’s going to do to me. Jack, when I went to feed the Lord’s church, and I got back home, the man, I collapsed, and I was in bed for two weeks. About two weeks later, I had an attack. My liver kicked out on me and stopped working. And I went through some of the most terrible pain I’ve been through since 1964 when I came down with histoplasmosis. I mean, it was exhausting, and you know, something, it’s really strange, I’ve been feeling a lot better since then. You could say amen. I’ll praise the Lord or something.

That’s all right. When spiders bite me, it doesn’t hurt. I mean, see, guess it’s those pigeons you got to watch. Can you imagine why I told you the last part of this that’s just too intimate to be telling? I see my body deteriorating, and you know there’s an operation I can have, and I probably will have it one of these days, but you can’t imagine all the other little things I do to stay on my feet. You just wouldn’t believe what I do to stay on my feet. It was only about three months ago that I started standing up speaking again. I must tell you why I told you that, because I get really ticked off when people start looking at me and say, “I wonder what he’s trying to start or do.” The only thing I’m starting is shopping for a coffin. The only thing I’m doing is getting ready to die, and you better not suggest in my presence what I’m trying to do.

In the last 15 years, I have had at least 150 invitations. I believe that it’s accurate to go out and start churches. I could be easily, I believe, and of course, I may be the wrong head of some huge movement outside the religious system. There is nothing in me that would stoop so low. I do not believe in that, and I do not like to run around with men who do those kinds of things.

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a precious thing, and she demands the life of those who dare raise her up. You can’t go around and start 50 or 100 of those. Paul of Tarsus started 13 in a lifetime, and I don’t figure anybody ought to top that. But I just want you to know something. I’ve got a passion for that girl. She and her fiancé are my life, my breath, and there are depths to Him you don’t know. And there’s glory in her you never dreamed of. She’ll shame the wildest imagination a Baptist mind ever thought. And I still believe the Lord is after the recovery of the headship of Jesus Christ in His meetings of His people.

I believe in church planters, and I believe in churches without elders in the beginning, and then I believe elders ought to come later, and I don’t believe the church ought to ever be organized. And you don’t ever ask me what an elder is because the body of Christ knows what an elder is. And don’t ever ask about the gifts because the body will produce her own gift and produce her own gifted ones, and the body will tell you what they are and what they’re to do. And if we ask these questions, we are but the sons of Aristotle. We are not the sons of Paul, and I think I just want to tell you that I’m here standing barefoot in front of you, wanting you to see her and experience her.