Recounts the establishment of a church in Burlington, North Carolina, emphasizing the importance of godly determination in overcoming obstacles. The narrative details the challenges faced, including opposition from critics, difficulties in securing resources during wartime, and navigating bureaucratic hurdles like the War Labor Board. Through prayer and persistent effort, The passage and the community successfully acquired land, obtained materials, and constructed a chapel, illustrating how God removes barriers when His people are determined to fulfill His will. The message concludes by highlighting the enduring legacy of the church and the continued work of God in the community.
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Over in Nehemiah, and I want you to read a verse in chapter two and verse four. Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make requests? So I prayed to the Lord of heaven. Now notice verse eighteen. Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me, as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hand for this good work. But when Sandelot, the Thornite, and Tobiah the servant, the Yemenite, and Gisham, the Arabian, heard of it, they laughed us to scorn and despise us, and said, What is this thing that ye do?
Will ye rebel against the king? Then answered I then, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us. Therefore we his servants will arise and build, but ye have no portion nor right nor memorial in Israel. Twelve years ago I had a series of meetings on Wednesday nights talking about how we opened up the work in the Carolinas. And I said when I left that July to go up to Canada, that when I returned, I would take up further cities in the Carolinas, showing how the Lord led in the opening up of those cities, and twelve years has passed.
I came back from Canada, and I didn't take them up. So twelve years has passed since then. There were eight messages, and I didn't know they were on tape until one day I found out over Brother Mark's face that he had taped them. I said, I want to listen to them, and I'm grateful to him and will be for the rest of my life that he takes those messages. He brought everything back to me and I thought, well, someday I'm going to continue them. So have something a little on the light side. Sometimes people say, well, you get into some books, it's a little heavy. Well, this is going to be very light. No hard doctrine, but just something simple about the Lord's leading.
Now you take the Apostle's writing. Some of them are very deep. You get into Hebrews or get into some portions. or the Peasants or Colossians, you can get over your head. But then often the Apostle Paul gets into something very simple. It's very thrilling to go through the Acts of the Apostles and see how he went from place to place here in his partners, opening up those places and the opposition that they had, beating opposition everywhere. And so when you come through the Second Corinthians, the last two of the chapters of Second Corinthians, he goes exclusively into some of his experiences to convince his critics that what he was doing, God had called them to do exactly that work.
And it's very interesting to read the last few chapters of Second Corinthians. So I thought tonight we'd take up some of the things that we enjoyed and experienced in Burlington, North Carolina. You know when you stop to think of starting new churches, C.B. Gilbert, some of you have possibly seen the book that he wrote, and the title is, He Loved to Plant. Well, I knew Brother Gilbert, and we were close friends for many years. He loved to plant, and he did. He planted a lot of assemblies. But you know there are certain things that I believe one needs to have. Every Christian should have this, and that is determination.
Now some people think stubbornness and determination are the same thing. They're not. Determination, godly determination, is a wonderful thing. It's an excellent thing if you keep it within the bounds of God's precious word. While you read concerning God's feelings with Israel, he says seventy years are determined of thy people talking to Daniel. Seventy years I determined. In other words, I have a plan. I've got a purpose. I've got a result. And God worked out that plan. And so it's a good thing to be determined in certain matters.
And you read, And truly the Son of Man grew up as it was determined. And Paul says, I determined this with myself. In other words, I planned something. I purpose something. I determine something. I wonder if you've ever gotten a real determination, or rather a determination, possessed you. After I was saved, one of the things that I desired and determined was to read that Bible. I was determined I was going to learn that Bible, and I set my heart to it. that I knew not that it's my habit at all when I was turning on for the news, I saw a hockey game being played, a little part of it at the end.
And I thought to myself, going back over the many years, in playing hockey, it's determination. In every athletic field, you take these Olympic athletes, it's determination coupled with discipline. They're determined. I read in the paper the other day about a young girl. in her teens, and she's determined to make the Olympics. But along with that determination that are hours and hours and hours and weeks of discipline, they do that a lot of things. They apply themselves. They develop themselves. They are determined.
They are determined. I know I've got a determined disposition, but I'm not going to apologize for it. When I did play hockey, When I got a hold of that puck, I had one determination, that is to get it in the ghoul at the other end, get that piece of rubber into that net. That was my determination. And I'll tell you this, I never told you before, I did lead the team in scoring ghouls, and yet I was the right defensive. The forward line is certainly the ones that scored the ghouls, but I was just determined I was going to get that piece of rubber into that net. Whether I stumble my way through or fought my way through, I'm going to get there.
That's determination. Determination. And God wants you to have a fierce determination to obey His Word, to learn His Word, and spend your life for Him. It's a wonderful thing to have determination. And God expects every one of us to have a measure of that. If you don't, you're not going to get very far. So going back to Burlington, North Carolina in nineteen forty-two, I was burdened about this town. It's about twenty miles from Greensboro. And I was burdened about that city. And then I found in the paper that Blake A.I.
Ham, the man that led Billy Graham to the Lord, was going to have a series of meetings over in Burlington in the Big Banner Warehouse. Well, I followed Mr. Hamm years before in Winston-Salem, and I had a wonderful campaign after following his ten weeks in Winston-Salem. He told me when I had a talk with him, I said, Mr. Hamm, I was going to put up my tent, but I see you're going to have a campaign. Yes, brother, he said, I tell you, you wait a line through, put up your tent, you'll have one of the best campaigns you had in Winston-Salem, and he was right. I waited ten weeks, After he left, I put up my tent, and he tasked me the last night of his ten-week campaign to get up before about five thousand people.
He says, tell them about your object. Tell them about your plan of putting up your tent. I did. I had the privilege of telling those people that I was going to put my tent up on Patterson Avenue, urge them to come. And it was the best campaign I'd had in Winston-Salem. I'd been there five years. So here he was in Burlington. I thought, this is wonderful. I went over, and he had seats that would accommodate about a thousand people in the Banner warehouse. I attended night after night, night after night. But it wasn't the same, Mordecai, I have. For some reason, he just didn't have them.
He's the one, as I say, that led Billy Graham to Christ in Charlotte a number of years before. But I could just see that this wasn't the same, Mordecai, I have. He struggled on through a month, and he said he was going to close. All that month, all I thought about was that equipment. Go and ask them what he wants with that equipment, whether he can buy it or rent it. The last night, he had his meeting, and I'll tell you, if someone was inside me begging me to go and speak to Mr. Hamm about that equipment, and I didn't. I went home, and I was convicted. I thought I should have gone and got that equipment.
Why, it's all that I needed. Start right in. The next day, where Mr. Hamm came on every day on the Burlington station, WBBB, and automatically I went over and turned my radio on. I thought, well, that's a foolish thing. You heard him say last night. He was closing his meeting. Then I turned the radio on. It was right on that station. And to my surprise, A man came on with the name of Nall. He's still in Burlington. Friends, he says, we're going to continue. Mr. Hamm's revival. I've got the equipment, and we're going to continue. And I want you to come and pray. The Lord says you've got another chance.
I went over again to his meeting, and it was critical. Only about thirty, forty a night sitting in that big warehouse. This man went on for three weeks. and he didn't go any longer. So before he did, I approached him about this equipment, and I was able to rent it. So we started on the book of Revelation. It was on this station, WBBB, and we announced we were going to start meeting on this remarkable book. Right from the beginning, the Lord began to bless. The crowds came. We had remarkable crowds at that time, and quite a number were led to Christ.
Not only so, we contacted a lot of hungry Christians. So we had our stock in Burlington. One case you might mention, you can mention quite a number who were reached in that first campaign, but when I was going over one night, when I was living in Greensburg, driving over to Burlington, a lot of tracks right across the main street in Burlington. As I was going over those tracks one night, going over to the warehouse about two blocks away, I saw... This young lady, possibly about twenty-three, and she was taking two little girls. She had them each by the hand going over the railroad tracks, and she looked as I passed.
And I looked at that young lady. I said, Lord, bring her to the meeting and savor. She looked despondent. So I went on, parked my car, went in to start opening things up to get ready for preaching. And the first to walk in that night was this very lady with her two little girls, Virginia Hicks. And she was the first one to get saved. She turned out to be our pianist. Her two little girls and another little girl grew up. Virginia went home to be with the Lord suddenly about two years ago. But she left three lovely girls behind today. They've got families, two of them of their own, and they're traveling right in their mother's footsteps.
They have pianists and organists. So I was the first one we had in Burlington. There are many more, but I'm not going to mention them. At that time, we were able to get Brother Gross, Ernie Gross and his wife. They were leading the singing for us, and stayed in Burlington about a year. So we started after we were through the warehouse meeting. We built the little place across the tabernacle about the size of the recreational building. We built this across the street on an empty lot. We couldn't keep up the big tabernacle, the big warehouse. It was too cold in the winter. You couldn't heat it. Too hot in the summer. So we built this tabernacle right across the street.
And we carried on. We had another campaign, another campaign. We had four campaigns, some running to six and seven weeks each. So finally, we thought it's time to build. We had a nice group of Christians by this time. I suppose a fifty or sixty or more had for best to be saved. A nice group of Christians, hungry Christians. So we were looking around for a place to build. And I was asking the Lord for some guidance. There was an old gentleman there by the name of Malone, Uncle Tom Malone. He had built more houses in Burlington than any other contractor. And he attended the meetings. We had in the warehouse, also in the little cabinet.
Now, and again, there'd be a twenty-dollar bill in the box, and they were rare in those days, and we found out afterwards that Mr. Malone was the one who was dropping in his money. And Sarah Ross, one of the Christians we'd contacted, she said, you know, Mr. Malone, that just lives up the street from me, said the other night as we were going home from the meeting, If that man would build a church in town, he said, I'd give five hundred dollars to stock with. Back in those days, that's like twenty-five hundred today. Well, I thanked her for what she said. But now when the times came and talking about buildings, the same thing was where are we going to get a lot?
I went over one day the rain was coming down, and Mrs. Miles, by this time I had moved over, staying with Mrs. Miles in a rooming house. and I was telling her I wished I could find a place to build. She said, well, Brother Wilson, you know there's a house right up there on this side of the school. I understand those people who want to sell that house. And I went up and looked down. I thought, well, it looks like it would be a good place to buy because at the back you had about ten feet from the main floor down. The dirt went right down so you could have really built up the walls and had a nice basement for Sunday schools and had the top floor for an auditorium.
At that time it was difficult to get material. The war labor board was clamping down. You couldn't get anything more than a permit to build something to it through a hundred and fifty dollars. If it was something that was absolutely essential, an emergency, you might get a permit for one thousand. So I drove up to that house. hoping the Lord had bled. The rain was coming down, melting down. I didn't have an umbrella. My head was aching about the slip. But anyway, I opened the door and ran in. Knocked at the door, the lady opened. I said, do you want to sell this house? No. Are you sure?
No. Why, I wouldn't even think of it. Well, that's that. So I went back to the car. I bowed my head on the steering wheel. I said, Lord, if you want us to build here in Burlington, we've got to have a lot. Where is it? Just as if someone was sitting beside me and said audibly, on the other side of the school. I thought, the other side of the school, I've never seen a lot over there. I cracked up my car. I went right around the block. And sure enough, on the other side of the school, it was just as lovely a lot. as you could expect.
We went in about forty feet to the level of the sidewalk, and then down, an ideal natural basis. Why, I thought, that is, I don't know why, that's I on the Great Chapel, where it is today. So over this time, the rail leased up, and I walked over on the lot, and I walked around, the policeman lived right adjoining the lot, he came over, well, he said, you're thinking of buying? I said, yeah, sir, who owns this property? He said, I think the lady that is over and gave me the name of the street. And wait a minute, I was waiting to see if I can get her name. So he went in and looked up the phone directly and came out and he gave me the name. By the way, he said, weren't you the preacher and had both meetings in the warehouse?
I said, yes. You're thinking of building here? I said, maybe you can get the property. Hope you do. Be glad to attend your service. So I was over feeling certainly the Lord had led. And when I got over to this house, I walked in and knocked at the door. The lady answered. I said, calling a name, do you have a piece of property over on Ireland Street? On the other side of the school, grammar school? Yes. Do you want to sell it? No. No. Well, lady, you really don't want to sell it? No, and I kind of felt provoked.
I felt the Lord certainly had lived. Why don't you want to sell it? She says, I got a boy overseas. And I promised him that lot. The boy went overseas. I said, I was going to give it to him because he had thoughts of being married when he came back. So he said, I wouldn't sell it for any money. It belongs to my son. Well, I didn't know that a boy had given up, given out his papers. He parked his bicycle against the curb right in front of my car. I was so upset when I left that house and around got in my car and started up, bang, crash, right over the bicycle. So I stopped, and boy, he took one look at me, and I said, all right, boy, be in this car.
Now I'll put this bicycle, what's left of it, I'm running board there, and you hold it alongside the car, and I'll take you over to the bike shop. So I took him over to the bicycle shop, and I'll fix it up, and I'll pay the bill. I went back to Greensboro and I couldn't understand it. That night I went to bed and I tumbled around. Lord, why did you make it so plain that that was the lock? And yet the lady didn't want to sell. And I just laid there and tossed and fussed. All of a sudden there are two locks there. Two locks.
I said, I believe there are two. Well, I went to sleep then. Next day, I went over to Burlington. I went to the same policeman. I said, are there two lots here? He says, come to think of it. I believe there are. He said, I said, who owns the other one then? Now, he said, the last I heard, the lady who owns that other lot is out in California, but she has a niece that works down in a real estate office. what real estate office is. What's her name? And after a while, he thought of her name, and I went down and met this young lady. I said, do you have an auntie out on the West Coast that owns that lot over on Ireland Street?
Yes, she said. She's out on the West Coast. She owns that piece of property. I said, do you want to sell it? She said, I don't know, but I can let you know. I'll write her a meeting there, ma'am. I said, I wish she would. So she did. She sent the letter off. About four or five days later, the answer came back. Yes, she would have said. So we bought the law. Now we're ready to get struck. By the way, when that soldier came back from overseas and saw a church alongside his lot, he sold it to us for practically nothing. He said, I'm not going to live beside the church. So the Lord has ways to get around, doesn't he?
So now we're up against the war labor board. We took down the old tabernacle and going to use what lumber we could, but that was only a small amount compared to what we needed. At that time, the War Labor Board didn't have its controls on masonry. So we were able to put up the foundation. We got that much done. I'll tell you it was a lovely foundation, all the walls around, but the cement floor wasn't in, and we come to find out because of the sewerage pipes. We had to go another twelve inches down. That meant twelve inches of dirt had to be taken out of that building or the ground in the middle of those walls.
Those walls were standing up there about ten feet. All we had was the windows and over the wall. Three or four got out there with shovels. I tell you, you should have seen the dirt going over the top of those walls. I worked all day. Next morning, I didn't think I could move a muscle. I was in the stiff as a boat. I thought, no, I'm going to get up and go out there. And so we got the dirt out and got the floor in. Now we need the lumber. Well, you couldn't buy any lumber. Brother Malone or John Malone, I should call him Uncle John. He said, I don't know where you're going to get any lumber.
He said, well, good lumber's a premium. You can't get lumber. I thought, well, I think I know a man who has a lumber yard. You used to be in Silo City. We started to work there. And I went over to Bernie's Hancock. I said, Bernie, don't you have a brother down in Bear Creek that has a lumber yard? Yeah. I said, do you think we could buy some lumber? I don't know. Pretty hard to get. So I went down to see him. Well, he said, to get it to you. He said, a war labor board man is right here at my office and checks every load of lumber that goes up.
The amount, where it's going, what's it for? He said, that's the big problem. I couldn't get this lumber out of my yard. Listen, we want that lumber. You put down the truck, let me know what day you're going to put it on. And you start loading up that lumber that day, and we're going to start praying that we'll get that lumber. The afternoon, about two o'clock that day, I was hanging around the lot. Sure enough, here this great big flat-top truck pulled up. You never saw it, said lovely lumber.
When Mr. Malone saw that, he said, I haven't seen lumber like that since the war started. Other carpenters seemed fine. They looked at it. Big two by ten. Hardly a knot in. Well, the man unloaded it. I didn't know whether we'd have to stand guard over that pile of lumber. It was a lovely pile of lumber. But anyway, we went to work. I just slip over four or five days later to Mr. Hancock. I said, well, we got the lumber. How much do we owe you? He said, you know, Mr. Wilson, that's the first time in two years I've ever known a load of lumber to get by this office without it being stopped.
He said, wherever that war lumber man was, when that load of lumber went through, I'll never know. He said, he came back for about a half an hour after the load went out. He said, I never dreamed that I'd get it at it. I said, okay, you just leave that with the law. Now, that's as true as I'm standing here. That's exactly what happened. So we went to work. We were just a employment. We could hardly get any man that could work a good eight hours for the poor labor board with any choir. So there was a man, Hancock by name, and he was a school teacher. So he had his summer holidays. Then there was old Mr.
Malone, man about sixty-five, seventy. Then there was a fellow of the name of Warren Miles, who... I'd have elected bits, men myself. And the four of us worked thirteen weeks building that chapel. On Saturdays, a number of the men would help, those who had gotten saved. Finally, we got that thing up, and it was open, I think, on the forty-fifth of, let me see, March the thirteen, nineteen-forty-five. when that was over. After thirteen weeks, I'm going to tell you we were a happy bunch to see that lovely chapel up and how God came in and he blessed souls were saved on Sunday nights.
We couldn't use the auditorium because it only sat three hundred. See, three hundred. We had to use the auditorium of the high school across the street. Their crowds were so large. So these are some of the ways in which God blessed in Burlington. Father Smith came back to reside in Burlington. He took care of the work while I went to Canada to see my folks. So he came back after being there for a little while. He came back to stay. And he's there to this day. He's ninety-one years of age, a godly old man. But here are just some of the ways in which God removed obstacles in doing his work. I reflect upon them. I think at times, how did it all happen?
We were building trees. chapels that same year. The one in Durham was going up, the one in Silo City was going up, and the one in Burlington. We had to do business with the War Labor Board office in Charlotte, North Carolina, because Silo City came under their jurisdiction. We had to do business with War Labor Board in Raleigh, for they had jurisdiction over Burlington and Durham. Durham went out and bought a old schoolhouse, and the fellas went out after night after their days' work. They tore that down. Brother Depp was a wonderful carpenter, a construction man, and they took all that screw material down. I went out myself and helped get it down, and they just about got their superstructure up, the woodwork, by that lumber alone.
Of course, outside they had to get that. They also got brick. They got a brick. So these are the ways the Lord led in those days. One of the things that saw us through That amazes me why we weren't investigated to see that chapel go up. And when I did go over to the war labor board, old Uncle John said, you know, my boy told me that his boy had a lumber yard in Burlington. That's where he got all the windows and doors from. And he said, oh, he said, one of these days I'm going to have to visit you and the preacher in jail. He said, you're putting up this building and he said it's costing more or way over a thousand dollars you know that yeah but he's going over the war labor war and the only way I think that we were able to carry on I had heard that through politicians who had pulled string there were several buildings going up there were way over one thousand dollars community centers and so on And that's all I would use when I'd go to see the world every old man.
Well, if you can give them the money, I'll let them go ahead and build and get the material. Why can't we? They're carrying down walls. We're trying to build up more. Anyway, these three chapels went up. They're open. They're timing today, just because we use a little godly determination. There's opposition. You see that in the passage you read, Nehemiah was up against these three men. who were opposed to the building of the city. But I think times like these, godly determination, a refusal to back down. If you're in the mind of God and the will of God, you can go ahead and God will remove the obstacles.
That he has done and that he will still do. Or maybe sometime in the future we'll take you over to Durham and tell you how the work scotter and how it's continuing on to the day shall we pray our father in heaven in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we come into thy presence we thank thee we bless thee we praise thee for thy loving kindness that reflect upon the past how faithful thou hast been we thank thee for the way thou hast led and encouraged our heart Praise thee, Father, for the testimonies that are thriving in the Carolina.
As a result, all the leading of the Lord in days gone by, how we thank thee. Thou art us saying, God, today, we adore thee, Father, for the testimony here. We ask thy blessing upon the chapel, and all the Christians in the chapel. There remaineth much more work to be done. May we have the fish that they hold upon thee, the living, and the true gods who can move now.