The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  “You’d think old man Beal would drive me to the devil, but he drive me straight to Jesus, Robert. I jes knowed it had to be Jesus watching over us and helping us escape that place.”

  John Henry told me his mama, Ceily, had passed on to be with the Lord just the year before. At the mention of her name, I could see her face so clearly before me that I could have reached out and touched it. I remembered that day in her cabin in the slave quarter when I asked Jesus into my heart. “John Henry,” I said, “your mama done took me through many a fearsome storm. . . .”

  “She never forgot yoll, Robert. She often spoke of ye and prayed for ye, too.”

  “I never forgot her, either,” I said. “She brought me to Jesus.”

  John Henry told me that many of Beal’s slaves lived in the vicinity, and we went to visit some of them. Many I didn’t know by name, but they knew me. They remembered me as the dumb little old house boy. They didn’t speak of my turning Mitt and Waxy over to the lash, and they didn’t talk about those who died in the quarter. I visited their houses with their chairs and beds and bedspreads and dishes and china cabinets and radios and pictures on the wall, their refrigerators and stoves and embroidered towels and food in the cupboards and I became so overwhelmed I couldn’t help crying.

  “Yoll go ahead and weep, Robert, them’s tears of joy.”

  “Thas right,” John Henry said. “When one black man weeps for joy, we all sing hallelujah!”

  Soon we were laughing. And crying.

  We remembered the dirt floor shanties and what we came from, our lives that we didn’t share with others, with outsiders. We were ashamed.

  “John Henry, where did Harriet settle at after she got off the plantation?”

  “Harriet? She done live in Anderson till she passed about ten years ago. Her chillren still livin there. And Mary Webb, she be livin in Anderson. You oughter go see her! She still the same mean ole thing!”

  Mary Webb in Anderson? I wondered if she’d throw something at me if I went to visit her. I chuckled to myself. I was surprised at the tender feeling I suddenly felt for her and I hoped she would never witness the sorry mess her kitchen became at the Beal house.

  The reunion with Tennessee and John Henry and the others was like heaven. We were free and living in the world, and God had heard our prayers. When we had sung our songs in the clearing by the woods on the plantation—“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin for to carry me home”—we were singing about freedom. One of the old slaves now living in an apartment with an air-conditioner in the window told me, “Robert, you was nothin but a lil ole dumb chile and you never knowd nothing about the Underground Railroad, about white folks up north carin for the Negroes, and we never told you nothin. You was Massuh’s pet chile.”

  Pet chile. He left out the word puppy. But even as he said those words, I felt an old familiar jab in the belly, the everlasting pain from wanting so much to believe Master Beal cared for me.

  I could have stayed with John Henry and Tennessee in their pleasant little home indefinitely, but the Lord told me it was time to be moving on to Anderson. I left some boxes of clothing for them to distribute and was on my way.

  I got to Anderson tired and wanting to sleep. Margie hugged me and kissed me til I thought I’d bruise. “I been missin yoll,” she cried.

  “Me, too, girl.”

  “Set yourself down and I’ll put on the coffee.”

  I never got the coffee because I fell dead asleep on her sofa and didn’t wake up until the next morning. It was the Lord who woke me up. I sat up on the sofa looking around and trying to remember how I got here when the Lord told me to put on my shoes and drive to Railroad Street. “Yessuh,” I said.

  I drove to Railroad Street, got out of the car, and began walking, not knowing where the Lord wanted me to go. All at once a woman across the road pointed at me and hollered, “Preacher! Preacher!”

  I thought maybe she knew me from one of my street meetings and I waved back. At once she came hightailing it across the road. She was a short, heavy colored lady wearing a shawl and carrying a Bible. Puffing and out of breath, without barely saying hello, she explained all excited that she had seen me in a dream she had the night before.

  “Me? You saw me?”

  “It was you!” In the dream I had prayed for her, and after I prayed, she was healed.

  “Do you need a healing, sister?” I asked.

  She told me that she had been suffering with a sore on her head, and it was getting worse.

  “I’m on my way to a prayer meeting on Railroad Street. Will you come?” she asked. We got into my car and drove to a wooden shanty where a group of women had gathered for prayer. The sister with the sore on her head took off her hat and wig and showed me the sore, big and festering. I prayed for her and commanded the infection to leave her.

  Three days later I saw the woman, and she told me that it was healing and closing over. I saw her again in seven days, and it was completely healed. She came to Margie’s house, knocked on the door, and handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “This is for you, Preacher. God sent you here so I could be healed. I been savin this, and I want you to have it.”

  A few weeks later, the Lord had me drive to Lowndesville, South Carolina, to hold some meetings. We met in the home of a woman named Myra, whose father was unable to walk and in a wheelchair. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and told me to tell the man to get out of his chair. I could feel the anointing of the Lord in the room. The man sat staring at me, not moving. I got up and walked over to him. “In the name of the Lord Jesus, get up and walk,” I told him. He rose from the wheelchair and walked across the room. Then he turned around and walked back again.

  Everybody in the room started whooping and praising the Lord. When the old man rested, he got up and tried it again. He didn’t need any help, didn’t need a stick to hold him up, either.

  The next day he was still walking. He went up and down in the yard and on the road. His daughter said she couldn’t get him to sit down. “He’s so glad to be walking, I can’t keep him down!”

  The Lord Jesus never offers us anything bad. He hears us and he heals us and helps us through life with goodness and love on our side. The old man’s sons and daughters gave their hearts to Jesus when they saw what had happened to their father. Then his grandchildren gave their hearts to the Lord, too. I saw over a dozen people come to the Lord because of the miracle God did in that man.

  37

  When I arrived home Jackie told me Wilfred had taken a turn for the worse.

  That night the Lord awoke me from my sleep and told me Wilfred was going to die. I jumped out of bed and pleaded with the Lord. “Lord, don’t take him yet! Please don’t take him yet.” I knew Wilfred’s soul wasn’t ready. I began to fast and pray for him.

  After six days of fasting and prayer for Wilfred, I realized he’d have to be put in the hospital. “Give me a sign, Lord, that he has opened his heart to you and that he’s going to heaven. Please, Lord,” I prayed.

  On the day he was to go to the hospital, the doctor came prepared to drug him in order to get him out of the house. Wilfred hated hospitals and thought all doctors were after him and trying to kill him. I refused to let them drug him. “Don’t you put a needle to him,” I insisted. “He’s going to go to the hospital nice, and he’s going to behave himself.” I dressed Wilfred and prayed for a miracle. To everyone’s amazement Wilfred went to the hospital without a single protest. Usually, if he had to leave the house, he would scream and kick and act crazy, breaking things and terrifying everybody. This time he was like a lamb. I knew the Lord had touched him.

  When Wilfred died two weeks later, I had peace in my heart that when I got to heaven, Wilfred would be there, too.

  The Pickings family asked us to remain on in the big house that had been his.

  We missed Wilfred, though. We had gotten very attached to him, and it was lonely and quiet without him.

  We started a little church right there in the house. We called our
ministry Faith Mission, and we had meetings on Sunday and prayer meetings every morning of the week.

  One morning Jackie and I felt especially impressed to pray for someone who felt lost and hopeless. The burden was so heavy upon us we continued long after our usual hour of prayer was over. We were praying for someone in particular, someone we didn’t know. Around noon I went outside to trim a little peach tree I had planted in the backyard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bum stagger by on the sidewalk.

  The Lord spoke to me and said, “I’m going to save that man.”

  “Praise you, Lord,” I said.

  A few minutes later Jackie called me from the porch. “Robert! There’s a man here and he’s asking for prayer!” The bum I had seen on the sidewalk was sitting on the couch.

  “I don’t know why I’m in this place,” he said.

  “I know why you’re here,” Jackie said. “You’re here because we been praying for you.”

  “Hunh?”

  “All morning long we been praying for you without knowing your name or who you are, and the Lord sent you to us.”

  The man’s name was Don. We prayed over him, and he asked Jesus into his heart. He had never felt the power of God before. I took him to the place he was living and he cleaned up and came back with me that night for a fellowship meeting. He became faithful attending every meeting, and the change in him was nothing short of miraculous. His days of bumming were long gone.

  ———

  That winter I felt the Lord leading me to a large convention in Minnesota. Christians were coming from all over the country to it. Jackie couldn’t come with me because she was working and couldn’t get time off. I packed my grip, kissed her good-bye, and left for St. Paul, Minnesota.

  I noticed a rattle in the engine of the car, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. The meetings in St. Paul were wonderful, and I experienced beautiful fellowship and a great move of God. When I was leaving, I heard a man telling someone, “I hitchhiked to this convention. I don’t know how I’ll get home.”

  I said, “I’ll be glad to drive you home.”

  “Are you sure? I live over two hundred miles from here!”

  “That don’t matter. I’ll drive you home.”

  The man’s name was Joe, and he was happy with my offer. We climbed into my car, along with a blind brother who also wanted to ride with me, and started on our way. As we drove along it started to snow and the car began to pop and backfire. I had to stop every few miles to pour gas into the gas tank because it was leaking. It began snowing really hard, and we just laughed and praised the Lord.

  The snow came down harder and harder and the winds were blowing stronger every minute. It was turning into a blizzard, and the temperatures had plunged to 45 degrees below zero. After we had gone about 150 miles, the clutch gave out. I knew the transmission was gone, but the car kept moving so I didn’t stop. We drove until we saw a gas station, and I headed for it and pulled in. The man in the station said, “I’m afraid your transmission is gone.”

  Not knowing what else to say, I said simply, “Well, fill it up with oil.” He filled it up; I started the car up, and away we went.

  The snow was deep, and the roads were very bad. The snowplows hadn’t come out yet. I was a little concerned about getting stuck.

  We made it to Bemidji, Minnesota, but I made a wrong turn. I tried backing up to turn around, but the car wouldn’t move. I tried again and again. It was useless. We were hopelessly stuck in the snow.

  I looked at the face of the blind brother. He was calm and happy and trusting God. It was getting dark out, the heat in the car was poor, the storm was raging, and the sub-zero temperature was already numbing our bodies. What were we to do? Quietly, we began to pray.

  The three of us were staring at the storm when we felt the car moving. I sat behind the wheel with my hands on my lap, my feet on the floor. The car was turning around!

  The car made a complete turnaround, then rolled up onto the road again and faced the direction we had come. It was so incredible we began to shout and weep in amazement. God had worked a miracle!

  When I started the car up, it ran perfectly, and I drove on to Joe’s house in Bemidji.

  I left Bemidji with the blind brother and the snow flying and the temperature 40 degrees below zero. The car sputtered and popped, but we were trusting the Lord to get us back to Bucyrus. I stopped at the same gas station where we had stopped on our way to Bemidji, and I told the attendant the miracles the Lord had worked. He drained the oil out of the car, and the pieces of gears began to fall out. “Oh, don’t throw those away,” I told him. “I want to keep them as souvenirs.”

  I drove that car all the way back to Bucyrus. Then I was home for just a couple of days when my sister Margie called to tell me that Corrie Moore was real sick, and I’d better come down to Anderson. The car still wasn’t fixed, but we left the blind brother staying in the house, and Jackie and I drove all the way to Anderson, South Carolina, without one single incident.

  Corrie was in the hospital when we arrived. “How is she?” we asked Buck. With a flicker of agony, he said, “She just had both legs taken off.”

  We went to her room and waited until she gained consciousness. She saw me and said with a smile, “I done come a long way—to this, Robert.”

  “Jesus know, Corrie, Jesus know.”

  “Robert . . . sing for me.” And I sang:

  I say amen to Jesus

  Amen all the time . . .

  Margie came to me for a favor that week. She was shy about asking me at first, but then she came out with it. “Robert, can you do something for my pastor? He just has to get to Pompano, Florida, for a funeral and has no way to get there. Will you drive him?”

  “Margie, my car’s transmission is out.”

  “Please, Robert?”

  “But, Sister, the car need repair. The transmission doesn’t work.”

  “Won’t you please do it, Robert? Please?”

  Finally I agreed. I had already driven the car almost 2,000 miles with the transmission gone. How much more grace was the Lord going to extend to me?

  The car made it another 1400 miles without that transmission. Margie’s pastor marveled. “I reckon there’s a whole lot I don’t know about the Lord. But, brother, now I aim to get right and find out!”

  Back in Anderson, Jackie and I prayed about getting home to Bucyrus. We didn’t have any money to have the car fixed. The Lord blessed us again and allowed the car to go another 800 miles back to Bucyrus. I still have the pieces of those gears as a remembrance of the miracle the Lord did with that car.

  ———

  In 1960 I was in Leesville, Virginia, in the mountains driving another old used car, a station wagon. It was a warm Sunday morning, and the air was thick with the sweet smell of the forest surrounding the highway. I was looking for a church to attend. I stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and as I waited for the attendant, I saw about twelve men standing around there. I didn’t pay much attention because I was so intent on getting to church. I went on a ways, and the Lord spoke to me.

  “Where are you going, Robert?”

  “Why, I’m going to church, Lord.”

  “Did I tell you to go to church?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Did you see those men back there?”

  “Men?”

  “Those men back there at the gas station aren’t going to church. Nobody will be preaching to them this morning, Robert.”

  “Lord, forgive me,” I said, and I turned around and went back to the gas station.

  “I’m a minister,” I told the owner. “Do you mind if I minister here this morning?”

  “Why, go right ahead.”

  Right there in the gas station we had a church service. I brought in my pump organ, and we sang and I preached. My congregation was those twelve men. Every one of them gave their lives to Jesus that morning. It was one of the best experiences of my life as a minister.

  I stayed
there for three days and nights, holding meetings every night. Word got around the mountains about the meetings, and the gas station was packed at night. Men and women stood outside to hear because there was no room inside, so we held the last meeting outside. The owner didn’t even try to wait on customers. The presence of the Lord was so powerful, he didn’t care about gasoline or oil or washing windshields. There was nobody who went away from those gas station meetings untouched by almighty God.

  I laid hands on a rebellious young man who had been running away from God all his life. He began to quiver and shake when I touched him. Then he fell to the floor sobbing and asking God to forgive him of his sins and save him. Another man, who had been an alcoholic for almost thirty years, came forward crying and asking for prayer. I laid hands on him and began to pray for him. He fell on his knees and asked Jesus to come into his heart and save him. I believe God also delivered him from alcoholism that day.

  If you’re wondering what I mean by “laying hands” it’s something you do when you pray for a person. You place your hand lightly on their head or their shoulder or arm and then you pray. You don’t always touch the person you pray for, but when a person comes up to you when you’re ministering at a meeting and they want you to pray for them, usually they expect you to impart a touch.

  The Lord surely touched the folks at that Leesville gas station, a place I almost missed entirely. How very important it is to listen to the voice of the Lord. I can’t thank Him enough for turning me around that day.

  I’ve had a lot of experience with car trouble—especially in the mountains, where my old cars would often break down. One time in particular, I was coming from Roanoke, Virginia, where I had held some meetings, and I was driving up a big mountain early in the morning. I got a few miles up the mountain and the car, the station wagon, stopped dead. I got out and said, “Lord, I’m not flagging anybody down. Thank you, Jesus. You know I’m here halfway up this mountain, and you know the car has stopped dead. Now I’m on a mission for you, so I’m counting on you to help me.”