Our First Child
In October, 1973, Dixie and I were in Beeville, Texas holding a revival at a Church there. There was a young photographer in the Church who offered to do some publicity photos for us, so we spent an afternoon in the countryside taking some pictures. Dixie commented that it seemed like the dress she wore that day felt too tight on her. That week, she surprised me with the discovery that she was pregnant with our first child.
I was startled at first. I had not seriously contemplated having children, so the very idea was at first frightening. (I had just turned 22 years old.) But after a few hours of intense contemplation, I concluded that it would be wonderful to have our own child. I began to calculate how I could remodel the inside of our travel trailer to make room for a baby bed and accessories.
Having a baby was going to change a lot of things, so I began preparing. I went to work remodeling the kitchen area of our trailer to make room for a baby bed, tearing out the existing dining room area, and part of the kitchen cabinet. I custom-built a fold-away dining room table, and laminated it entirely with Formica. It was a quality piece of furniture. Then, we went to Foleys and purchased a nice sofa with a single hide-a-bed in it. I also re-carpeted the whole trailer with high-quality carpet, and added two handsome custom-built bookcases with fold-down desktops.
The Logistics Of Ministry
Audio cassettes were enormously popular in those days, but most Churches still did not record their services. Many people asked for recordings of our preaching and singing. Since we used our own sound system in almost every Church, I purchased a high-quality cassette recorder and installed it in-line so I could record the singing and preaching in every service. I also purchased a high-speed duplicator so we could make copies of the services available immediately after the service was over. We also had our songs on vinyl records and 8-track tapes.
While traveling in television crusades with Pastor Clendennen, I had learned that there was a great demand for Giant Print Bibles, Study Bibles and Concordances, so I bought cases of all three, and had a display in the foyer at each Church we went to. In 1975, Jimmy Swaggart's music was enormously popular, so I started buying cases of his records to sell on the road. Every time I passed through Baton Rouge, I stopped by Swaggart’s office and purchased several more cases of his albums and tapes. I sold hundreds of Swaggart's records and tapes, and hundreds of Bibles and Concordances, in addition to thousands of our own records and cassette tapes.
Dixie tended the book and tape racks after each service was dismissed. As a rule of thumb, our income from book and record sales was about equal to the offering for the week. Whatever amount we made in the weekly offering, we usually made a similar amount in sales. We did pretty well financially in the early 1970s.
Facing Spiritual Challenges In The Ministry
We held a revival in the western part of North Carolina, at a Church that was different from anything I had been accustomed to. They conducted services in a way that was very dull and dry. It was difficult to get rapport with them. We just endured our time there. But amazingly, the Pastor's daughter and son-in-law wanted us to come and minister in the Church wh ere they pastored in another part of the state. That young pastor was also the Presbyter of that section. They had a small child, and a very modern-thinking, growing congregation. Unfortunately, it was too “modern” for me.
It was the first Assemblies of God Church I had ever attended where the women wore slacks to Church. Several of the young Pastor's liberal views were really out-of-bounds for me. We were scheduled to be there for two weeks. On the second day we took a day trip to a nearby amusement park, and the Pastor's wife wore slacks. I was shocked! I had never seen a Pastor's wife in slacks.
I had always believed that a woman should not wear that which pertaineth to a man. That came from Deuteronomy 22:5.
"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment:
for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God."
Deuteronomy 22:5
Up until the late 1960s, every Pentecostal preacher of every denomination preached against women wearing slacks. Until the turn of the twentieth-century, it was virtually unheard of for a woman to wear slacks at all. In all of Western civilization, slacks were unquestionably a man's apparel, and dresses were a woman's apparel. A man was never seen in a dress, and women were never seen in slacks.
It was not until the first and second World Wars, when women were forced to work in the factories, that they were also required to wear pants, since they were doing men's jobs. Most women had never worn slacks before that time. Immediately, however, Hollywood popularized women in slacks, and it quickly began to eliminate any sense of Biblical instructions on that matter. They boldly broke that taboo. Not surprisingly, that era also spawned a huge surge in homosexuality and bisexuality.
In the simplest assessment, it was the United States government and Hollywood that successfully promoted women wearing men's apparel. That clothing revolution came with a high price-tag. It evolved into the gender-neutral, same-sex apparel, or UNISEX clothing - the result that we now see throughout Western civilization. Although it may be commonplace in society, it is not commonplace in the mind of Almighty God. We have broken His rules for so long that we no longer believe that He cares, but make no mistake about it, He does care.
"Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged,
yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God,
which fear before him: But it shall not be well with the wicked,
neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow;
because he feareth not before God.
Ecclesiastes 8:11-13
At any rate, I could not feel comfortable trying to preach the Gospel in a Church that so boldly broke the scriptures on that matter. Anyone could plainly see that they were taking a bold stand against a centuries-old Biblical teaching about women's apparel, and I could not ignore that. Dixie had always worn dresses. She did not even own a pair of slacks, and she was just as uncomfortable with the situation as I was.
It is the responsibility of men of God to hold to GOD'S standard, no matter what the WORLD'S standard is. I figured that if they did not have any respect for thousands of years of Biblical teachings and universally-accepted Church standards, then they were not going to take my Gospel preaching seriously either. They were in clear defiance of the beliefs of many generations of saints before them, and showed that they were very determined to ignore the Bible and history to do as they pleased, so I felt that I had no reason to stay and contend with such a mindset.
So after the third night, I spoke to the Pastor, and told him that I felt that he and I were just too far apart on several issues, and that it would be best for both of us if I just moved on down the road. So we did.
Incidentally, during the 1960s, a large number of Assembly of God Churches began to accept the change in women's apparel. In that same period, rebellion and anti-Christian social upheavals, especially among the hippies, began to dramatically affect the youth of that day. From the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco to Greenwich Village in NYC, the epic Woodstock Festival, and ultimately around the world, ancient social and moral values were being dumped recklessly into the gutters. Those were days of world-changing social revolution, and we saw it with our own eyes.
Observing Changes in the Church - Ecumenism
After several more revival meetings, we ended up in Charlotte, NC at Pastor Howard Fortenberry’s Church. It was a strong, old-fashioned Assembly of God Church with about 200 members in an attractive new building. We had a great revival there for two weeks.
Pastor Fortenberry wanted to take us to the studios of a new Christian Television ministry that was based in Charlotte, to meet Jim Bakker, the Director of that ministry. Two years earlier, Jim and his wife, Tammy Faye had launched the Trinity Broadcasting Network in California with Paul and Jan Crouch. But when conflicts arose, the Bakkers departed TBN, and went to Charlotte to pioneer the PTL (Praise The Lord) Network in January of 1974.
Jim had taken over the studios of WRET, Channel 36. I had been in that station a couple of years earlier when Pastor Clendennen and I were holding a crusade in Charlotte. We had been on the air on Channel 36 for more than a year. Already, Jim had a bright red Cadillac El Dorado with a white convertible top sitting in front under the entrance. He was dressed to kill, and wearing an enormous diamond ring on his finger.
Jim invited us to be on the next PTL show. Dixie and I would sing, and Jim would interview me. Dixie was about 8 ½ months pregnant. She wore a bright orange floor-length maternity dress. I played the white grand piano, and she stood at her microphone playing her tambourine as we sang on national television.
After singing a couple of songs, I joined Jim at his desk, and we got into a discussion about the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. When I mentioned speaking in other tongues, he began to back off the subject. I observed first-hand that day that Jim Bakker was being careful not to get crossways with his Baptist, Methodist and Roman Catholic partners. He dropped the subject of speaking in tongues like a hot potato and moved on to another subject.
The truth is that speaking in tongues has ALWAYS been a dividing line between those who literally believe that the Book of Acts is the model for modern Christianity, and those who argue that the supernatural manifestations seen in the Book of Acts have ceased, or are irrelevant to modern Christianity. THAT is also why I have been compelled to stand rock-solid firm on the doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.
That little episode at PTL that day was a pivotal event in my understanding of the direction that Christianity would be taking into the future. That was the very first time I began to observe the effects of the rising ECUMENICAL thinking that would eventually transform not only the Assemblies of God and Pentecostals in general, but also literally all of Christianity. Ecumenism would ultimately wash away virtually all the doctrinal and holiness distinctives that had always defined Pentecostals.
It was also while we were there that I discovered that Vestal Goodman (the famous Gospel singer), who had always been an icon of holiness Pentecostals, had finally cut off her long hair, and began wearing slacks, and lots of makeup and jewelry. I was utterly shocked and deeply disappointed. I had played the piano for her on a few occasions, and never expected to see her abandon her holiness roots.
The sad reality is that Christian Television has done more damage to the Gospel message than it has good. The all-things-equal strategy of men like Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch, Pat Robertson, and other multi-denominational ministries accommodates non-Pentecostal Christianity on an equal par with Pentecostals. That has produced an end result of convincing people that Christianity WITHOUT the Holy Ghost is equal to or better than Christianity WITH the Holy Ghost baptism. The problem with that is that the entire early Church was Pentecostal. The entire Early Church spoke in tongues.
"Lord, I Need You Now, More Than Ever"
After the revival in Charlotte, Dixie was scheduled to fly to Beaumont for her last pre-natal doctor’s appointment. I loaded up her luggage and took her to the Charlotte airport. When she got to Beaumont, her luggage did not arrive. She waited and waited. No luggage. ALL of her maternity clothes were in that luggage, and she was really up a creek. We had planned for her to return to Charlotte, but the loss of her clothes really changed our plans. She stayed in Beaumont, and I drove home by myself with the trailer in tow.
Dixie was almost nine months pregnant and would soon have our first baby. I had a two-week revival scheduled in Corpus Christi, Texas, so we agreed that I should go alone. She would stay with her parents in Beaumont, just in case she went into labor.
It was while I was alone in Corpus Christi that I stayed up all night in the Church one night writing the song, “Lord, I Need You Now More Than Ever.” That song has always been one of my most-requested songs. More importantly, I think it reflected the disturbances in my own spirit caused by the changes that were beginning to take place in Christianity.
I had been there preaching and singing from Sunday morning through Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, the pastor knocked on the door of my trailer to tell me that Dixie had called to let me know that she was having contractions and was on her way to the hospital in Beaumont to have the baby.
I panicked. I ran inside the Church, broke down all the sound equipment, hauled it out and loaded it in the trailer. I packed up all the records, tapes, Bibles and books and loaded them in the car. I broke down the trailer jacks and disconnected the utility hookups. I connected the trailer hitch and load levelers. I threw the car in gear and hit the freeway, driving as hard and fast as I could drive. Normally, it takes about five hours to drive from Corpus to Beaumont, including slow traffic in Houston. I got lost in Houston trying to find a shortcut somewhere along the Old Spanish Trail, yet I STILL made it to Beaumont in less than four hours!
Unfortunately, I was still about 30 minutes too late to see my first child born. Dixie had been in labor all morning, but Dr. Edgar Sarrafian decided that she would not be able to deliver him naturally. So he went ahead and performed a Caesarian section shortly after noon. It was a boy, weighing in at 7 pounds 14 ounces.
Dixie was still unconscious in the recovery room when I arrived. In those days, Daddies were not allowed in surgical suites, so I had to wait outside until they brought my little boy into the hospital nursery.
An Epiphany - The Wonder Of Having Of A Son
I stood alone in the hallway, looking through the nursery window at the first sight of my baby boy. I had an epiphany - "a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something." Tears came to my eyes as I realized that I was a Daddy. Suddenly, I felt like I knew some of the meaning of God creating His own Son. I contemplated how that Jesus Christ was the creation of His Father. Jesus was the human version of God. I wondered if this baby would be a little version of me.
The marvel of having brought a new life into existence left me awestruck. For a moment I trembled as I thought about the new, huge responsibility that had just been thrust upon me. A few minutes later, they allowed me into the recovery room to see Dixie as she began to awaken from the anesthesia. She looked exhausted but absolutely beautiful. I was so proud of my girl and my boy. I felt much regret for arriving late, and not being there when Dixie went into labor, and I apologized to her. She was very understanding and did not have any complaint against me. We were both very happy that Brian was born healthy and strong.
We had considered many names for a boy, but had not yet decided on one. We had seriously considered Brian Keith, which means “Strong Warrior,” so when the nurse finally put me on the spot for a name, I said, "Brian Keith." Brian is now grown and married, with children of his own, active in music and ministry in his home Church, and has shown many, many times the evidence of the meaning of his name - "Strong Warrior."
Dixie and I bought a portable bassinet that folded up like a briefcase. In each Church where we went, she unfolded the portable bassinet and placed it on the floor beside her feet on the front row of pews. Brian was pretty faithful to sleep through our singing and my preaching. It was characteristic of Dixie to keep Brian on a strict schedule. She timed his daily regimen so that he would be ready for sleep at Church time. When Dixie came up to sing, she always enlisted one of the girls in the Church to sit by and watch Brian for us. Dixie sang and played her tambourine while I sang and pounded on the piano. I never thought to put a microphone on the piano, so all our tapes from those days feature lots of vocals with very little piano in the background. But you could always hear Dixie's tambourine.
"There's A Star In The Darkest Night"
Right away, we hit the road again, enroute to North Carolina to preach in several Churches around the state. In Williamston, Pastor Johnny Bryant was a local Gospel radio personality on the Rocky Mount station. I preached on the radio every day and did interviews with him on his Gospel music show. I distinctly remember his IGA grocery store commercials with his HEAVY tar-heel accent, slick hairdo, and flashy sport coats. The services at his Church each night were well-attended. He always featured a lot of special music, including a trio of ladies called the Mizelle Sisters. They were awesome singers. One of their songs, "There’s a Star in the Darkest Night” has stayed with me ever since:
"There's a star in the darkest night, just to give us a ray of light.
It will guide you through the night when hope seems gone.
Soon the darkness fades away, and there breaks a golden day.
Just remember the darkness comes before the dawn.
We held a revival in Havelock, where the Cherry Point Marine Base is. The Church consisted primarily of military families. We had a lot of conversions in that revival. The Marines loved straight-shooting preaching.
For months, we traveled around the state of North Carolina, holding revivals in Morganton, Asheville, Franklin, Highlands, Lexington, Hendersonville, Salisbury, Charlotte, Mount Holley, Jacksonville, Manteo, Wanchese, Avon, Buxton, Cape Hatteras, Colerain, Wilmington, Williamston, Windsor, and several other cities. We also did three state-wide Camp Meetings at the two District Campgrounds.
My First Prophecy Conference
In Wanchese, I preached a 15-minute daily radio broadcast for fourteen consecutive days on the local radio station. On the last night of the revival, the place was packed with standing room only - about 250 people in attendance. I preached on “The Antichrist.” This was 1974, and I named the New World Order, all the Mark of the Beast developments, the Rockefeller/Rothschild connections, the C.F.R./ Illuminati/ Masonic roots, etc. etc. etc. I sold cases of books that night by Gary Allen called, “None Dare Call It Conspiracy.” We sold a large number of records and tapes during that meeting, and had a lot of conversions. I had my cassette duplicator, and every night people eagerly bought copies of those sermons.
Trying To Convert Souls, While Satan Hinders
Then we went to Avon, a fishing village on the north end of Cape Hatteras Island. We parked in a travel trailer park on the Atlantic beach and held a three-week revival there. Attendance was good every night. Some of the old guys there who had been fishermen all their lives loved the straight, hard preaching.
I fought devils in that meeting. I had a bad case of the flu, with high fever for about three days and nights, but I went to the pulpit every night anyway. I spent a long, long time trying to get some teen-age boys into the altar to pray through, but they just resisted to the end. I was very troubled about them when I finally went to bed late that night.
At about 1 AM, I heard sirens screaming up and down the beach highway. I learned in the morning, that the boy I had tried so hard to convert the night before had been killed in a car wreck after Church. It had a profound effect on that revival, and a lot of people prayed through.
One night, I felt strongly impressed to pray for someone who was suffering from kidney disease. I had never felt such an impulse, but I could not resist it. I asked if there was someone there suffering from kidney disease. Immediately, a middle-aged lady stood and said that she had suffered for twelve years. I had the entire congregation reach their hands toward her and pray with me for her healing.
The next night she reported a miracle. She said that her kidney function had dramatically improved. Later tests by her doctor revealed that a kidney which had been totally inactive for many years had suddenly began to function again. To God be the glory.
A Word From God: Forty Weeks
At some point in our travels, I got a feeling that we would be in North Carolina for forty weeks. I don’t know why I felt that, but it seemed to be a spiritual impression - a word from the Lord. I told Dixie that I felt like that God was going to make a big change in the direction of our ministry after we had spent forty weeks ministering in North Carolina.
In March of 1975, we parked our trailer on the District Campgrounds of the Assemblies of God while we held revivals in several Churches in the vicinity of Franklin, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.
The Dream
One night, between three and four o'clock in the morning, I had a dream. In the dream, I was in a morning prayer meeting at the Tabernacle on the Campgrounds, walking up and down the sawdust aisles as I prayed. I stopped to look out a large open window that had a view across the Cullasaja River. I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned to see who it was, Pastor Clendennen was standing there. He asked me to come back to Beaumont and be his Associate Pastor at Victory Temple.
Then I woke up. I roused Dixie from her sleep and told her what I had just dreamed. It was very vivid, and I felt very strongly that it was from God. But at four in the morning, Dixie was understandably more interested in going back to sleep. Still, I could not shake that dream from my thoughts.
The Dream's Fulfillment
Several months later, in July, Pastor Clendennen was in North Carolina preaching their summer Camp Meetings. Dixie and I were the featured singers nightly, and I preached the weekend services.
One morning at 7 AM, I was in the morning prayer meeting with several other ministers and campers, and I was walking up and down the sawdust aisles of the old tabernacle, praying. I stopped near an open window, and was looking out across the Cullasaja River when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Instantly, I knew what was happening. I turned around to see Pastor Clendennen standing there, exactly as I had seen him in that dream, four months earlier!
I looked at him and said, “I already know what you are going to say, because I saw this in a dream months ago!” With no other reaction, he said, “I want you to pray about coming back to Beaumont and being my Associate.” I told him that I didn’t think I needed to pray about it, because it seemed that the Lord had already showed me that it was going to happen.
My big question was, "WHEN?" I had two more revivals scheduled before the next Camp Meeting to be held in Windsor, NC, and then several revivals scheduled afterward. In my mind, I thought that I should at least fulfill my commitment to the next Camp Meeting, before going home.
That night, I got down to pray about it, and something said, “Count the weeks.” I thought about that, then decided to pull out my calendar and count HOW MANY WEEKS Dixie and I had preached in North Carolina alone.
Want to guess? The up-coming Camp Meeting in Windsor would be the FORTIETH WEEK. That satisfied me. I announced to Dixie and to Pastor Clendennen that at the end of the Windsor Camp, we would head back to Beaumont to work at Victory Temple.
Miracles and Signs Confirmed the Dream
I had three weeks to prepare for a radical change in my ministry. For instance, everything we had and did was geared for evangelistic travels. The travel trailer, the sound system, the records, tapes, books, Bibles, concordances, etc. were all tools (and expenses) that I used on the road, but would not need at all when we settled down in the home Church.
I did not know how I would manage to pay for all the overhead I had. I prayed, and on the first day of the Windsor Camp Meeting, a pastor friend of mine came to me and said, “My wife and I have just resigned our Church, and are going on the evangelistic field. Would you be interested in selling your trailer?” I was ecstatic! God sent a buyer for my trailer at the perfect time! When I told him that I would sell it, he then offered to buy my sound system also. We made a deal on the spot. Before the camp was over, he produced cash money for all of it.
Then I had another dilemma. We didn’t have a way to get all our belongings back to Texas, now that our trailer and living quarters was sold. Amazingly, another preacher came to me in one of the night services and wanted to know if I needed a utility trailer. He DONATED that trailer to us!
The third dilemma was the matter of selling out the cases and cases of records, tapes, books, Bibles and Concordances that I carried in my bookstore. All my unsold inventory would just be a financial loss, and I did not want to take all those unsold items back to Texas. But on Friday night, the last night of the Camp Meeting, out of the blue, a man approached me from Virginia Beach, and introduced himself as a Christian bookseller and distributor. He ASKED me if I wanted to sell all my record and book inventory! I was flabbergasted! He made a good offer, and I sold everything I had to him on the spot - several hundred dollars worth.
Dixie and I were totally convinced that this move was the will of God! Brian was one year old, and had hardly seen his grandparents, since we were always on the road. It would be nice to be back home.
It was comforting to believe that we were being miraculously led by the Spirit into a new place of ministry. The word from the Lord and the dream had been confirmed by several amazing miracles.
Continue to:
Long Winding Road - Chapter 7
"The Transition Into Pastoral Ministry"
Return to:
Long Winding Road - Chapter 5
"The Work Of An Evangelist"
