God's leading in establishing churches is illustrated through the story of founding 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 a location, and wartime restrictions on building materials, all of which were surmounted through prayer and perseverance. The core lesson is that with divine guidance and a determined spirit, Christians can effectively advance God's work despite adversity. The sermon concludes by highlighting how these foundational efforts led to thriving churches that continue to impact communities today.
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over in Nehemiah and I want 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 Ammonite, 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 he 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, But 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. And 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 place 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 take those messages. 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 and 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 of or be 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. He has his partners opening up those places and the opposition that they had, beating opposition everywhere. And so when you come to 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 are 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 are 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 purposed something. I determined 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. This afternoon, after this my habit of call, when I looked, 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, if determination, in every athletic field. You take these Olympic athletes. It's a determination coupled with discipline. They're determined. I read in the paper the other day about a young girl in her team, and she's determined to make the Olympics. But along with that determination there are hours and hours and hours and weeks of discipline. They do not 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. Now, it's to get it in the groove of the other end. Get that piece of rubber into that neck. That was my determination. And I'll tell you this, I've never told you before, I did lead. the team in schooling and scoring good. And yet I was the right defensive. The forward line is certainly the ones that score the good. But I was just determined I was going to get that piece of rubber into that net. Whether I stumbled 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. learn his word and spend your life for him. It's a wonderful day 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. But I was burdened about that city. Then I found in the papers that Mordecai 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. Ham 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. Ham, 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 asked me the last night of his ten-week campaign to get up before about five thousand people. He says, tell him about your object. Tell him 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 it. 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 he crippled. Go and ask them what he wants for that equipment, whether he can buy it or rent it. And 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.
Han 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. Han survived. 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 pitiful.
Only about thirty, forty a night sitting in that big warehouse. This man went on for three weeks, and he didn't go on 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. We were on this station, WBBB, and we announced we were going to start meetings on this remarkable book. Right from the beginning, the Lord began to bless. The crowds came. We had remarkable crowds at that time. Quite a number were led to Christ. Not only so, we contacted a lot of hungry Christians.
So we had our start. 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, where I was living in Greensboro, driving over to Burlington, a lot of tracks right across the main street in Burlington. And 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 the meets 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 Kicks was an 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. Jenny 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're pianists of organists.
So that was the first one we had in Burlington. There were many more, but I'm not going to mention them. At that time, we were able to get the 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. You couldn't keep up the big tabernacle or 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 professed to be saved on 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 John 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 this 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 if we were going home from the meeting if that man would build a church in town he said I'd give five hundred dollars the Stargrip. Back in those days, that's like twenty-five hundred today. Well, I thank her for what she said. But now when the time came of talking about buildings, the main 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 looked as though 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 have the top floor for another tour.
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 through 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 led. The rain was coming down, pelting down. I didn't have an umbrella. My head was aching about the split. But anyway, I opened my door and ran in. Knocked at the door, the lady opened it. 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 Arlington, 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 cranked 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.
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 street, Chapel, where it is today. So over this time the raid had eased up and I walked over on the lot and walked around. The policeman lived right of joining the lot. He came over. Well, he said, are you thinking of buying? I said, yes. Who owns this property? He said, I think the lady lives over and gave me the name of the street. And wait a minute, I'll go in and see if I can get our name. So he went in and looked up the phone directory and came out and he gave me the name. By the way, he said, weren't you the preacher and had those meetings in the warehouse?
I said, yes. You think in a building here? I said, maybe you can get the property. Hope you do. Be glad to attend your service. So I went over feeling certainly the Lord had led. And when I got over to this house, I drove in, whilst walked in and knocked at the door. The lady answered, I said, calling her name, do you have a piece of property over on Ireland, speak, on the other side of the school, the 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, and 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 the boy took one look at me and I said, all right, boy, be in this car.
And I'll put this bicycle, what's left of it, I'm running aboard 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 told the man, 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 thought, I believe there are two. Or I went to sleep then. Next day I went over to Burlington. I went to the same policeman. I said, are there two locks 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 lock 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. When 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 says. 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 immediately, air mail. I said, I wish you would. So she did. She sent the letter off. About four or five days later, the answer came back. Yes, she was settled. So he bought the lock. Now we're ready to get struck. By the way, when that soldier came back from overseas and saw a church alongside his lock, he sold it to us for practically nothing. He said, I'm not going to live beside the church. So the Lord has ways of getting 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 as 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 before him. Now we need the lumber. Well, you couldn't buy the lumber. Brother Malone or John Malone, I should call him Uncle John. He said, I don't know where you're going to get me lumber.
He said, well, I have good numbers or premium. You can't get lumber. I thought, well, I think I know a man who has a lumber yard. He used to be in Silo City. We started to work there. And I went over to Bernays Hancock. I said, Bernays, 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? He said, I don't know. Pretty hard they did. So I went down to see him. Well, he said, how 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. He said, I couldn't get this lumber out of my yard. Listen, we want that lumber. You put on 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, it's lovely lumber.
When Mr. Malone saw that, he said, I haven't seen lumber like that since the war started. Other carpenters came by and they looked at. Big two by ten. Hardly enough. 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, do 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 about a half an hour after the load went out. He said, I never dreamed that I'd get it at him. I said, okay, we just leave that with the Lord. 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 War Labor Board of the inquire. 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, a man of about sixty-five, seventy. Then there was a fellow with him, a Warren Miles, who... I'd have elected Fitz, and then 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 only sat at three hundred. We had to use the auditorium of the high school across the street. The 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 the War Labor Board in Raleigh, for they had jurisdiction over Burlington and Durham. Durham went out and bought an old schoolhouse, and the fellows went out after night, after their day's work, They tore that down. Brother Detwana was a wonderful carpenter, a construction man, and they took all that school 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 I saw us through, And that's 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'd cost them 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 strings, 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 more laborable man. Well, if you give them the money, I'll let them go ahead and build and get the material. Why can't we? They're carrying down more. We're trying to build up more. Anyway, these three chapels went up. They're open.
They're climbing 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 he will take you over to Durham and tell you how the work was started and how it's continued onto 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 reflects upon the past how faithful thou hast been. We thank thee for the way thou hast led us 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. Now at the same 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 remain much more work to be done. May we have the faith that they hold upon thee, the living, and the true God who can move mountains. May those mountains stand in the way of thy purpose and plan in this day in which we live. We ask thy blessing, then, upon thy word, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.