The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  With that, I pushed the car to the side of the road and pulled up the hood. Then I took out my organ and began to play at the side of the road.

  The hours went by. I thought some cars that passed would drive right off the mountain, they were so busy staring at me. I couldn’t blame them.

  By noon I was hot and thirsty, and there was no sign of help. I just kept praising the Lord, though, repeating over and over again to myself, “In everything give thanks.”

  My faith grew by the hour, but my body grew more hot and weary. Shortly after 2:00 in the afternoon a car pulled up in front of my car and a white man in a shirt and tie got out. He said he’d help me.

  He said I looked awful tired and hungry, and he insisted I get in his car and go with him to get something to eat. I got in his car and we went to a restaurant down the mountain. I didn’t want to eat, but I drank a large glass of water and some soda. The man told me I’d have to have a mechanic go up and fix my car.

  “Oh no, I can’t do that,” I told him. “I don’t have money to pay a mechanic.”

  “Well, if you’re going to get the car fixed, you’ll need a mechanic.”

  The man took me back to my car and then was gone, and I never saw him again. I didn’t even find out his name. In about a half an hour two mechanics pulled up in a service truck. They didn’t even say hello to me; they just began to work on the car. I thought to myself, “Lord, I can’t afford to pay one mechanic—and you send two!” They towed the car over the mountain to the station to get parts. Then another mechanic came and helped them. They put in a new fuel pump. When I saw those three men working on the car, I grew even more nervous. “Now you’ve sent another one, Lord!”

  Finally, twelve hours after the car broke down, it was in working condition again. Gulping and trying to act casual, I asked the men how much I owed them. They thought for a moment, and then one of them said, “Give us two dollars.”

  Two dollars!

  The Lord is my stronghold in time of need . . .

  It was in June of 1963, and I had just turned fifty-two years old. I was holding some meetings in Vicksburg, Michigan. I overheard a woman telling another woman that her son was coming from Vietnam with his fiancée, and she wished she could paint her upstairs but just couldn’t do it.

  “I’ll paint your upstairs,” I told her. “No need to pay me.” She couldn’t believe it. The next morning I showed up bright and early at her front door with my painting clothes and paintbrushes, ready for work. I painted her three bedrooms and hallway in two days and had a wonderful time of it, singing and praising the Lord as I worked.

  The woman’s husband wasn’t a Christian. When he came home from work, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You mean to tell me that you’re the preacher?”

  He was amazed. He told me that other preachers had stayed in his house and hadn’t even made their beds after themselves. “And here you are, painting the place!”

  That night he came to the meeting with his wife. The next night he came back again. The third night he gave his heart to the Lord. He had been a hardened and embittered man, and the Lord wanted to wash it out of him. His voice was humble as he told everybody in the congregation, “I know that the good Lord is real. I know it now.”

  About a month later in the heat of the summer, the Lord put it on my heart to go to Detroit. I was near New Toledo when the Holy Spirit told me, “Don’t go the expressway. Go through the business section of the city.” I wondered why the Lord wanted me to go through all that traffic, but I obeyed Him. In a few minutes I saw a man hitchhiking. The Lord said, “Pick him up.”

  I opened the door and invited him to get in. He got into the car, and I felt a cold chill go through me. Then I heard the Holy Spirit tell me, “This man has murder in his heart.” I gave him a quick glance and said as brave as I could, “Mister, you have murder in your heart.”

  “Yeah? So what?” He didn’t even blink. “I’ll kill him! And nobody’s gonna stop me! I’ll kill him!” He pulled a gun out of his shirt and pointed it at me.

  “You hear me? I’ll kill him!”

  His gun didn’t scare me. I just kept on driving. “Thank you, Jesus,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I was just thanking Jesus you got into my car,” I said.

  “You was—what?”

  “Thanking Jesus. Do you know who He is?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Well, He knows who you are, and that’s what counts.”

  I got it out of him that his wife had taken a lover, and that’s what he was so mad about. He was on his way to kill them both.

  “Do you mind if I pray for you first?” I asked quietly.

  The man was stunned. I began to pray, and before I knew it the man was crying and pounding his hand against the seat. “What are you doing to me?” he gulped.

  “I’m not doing anything, son. Jesus is doing it.” I tell you, God worked a miracle in that man, and he gave his heart to Jesus right there in my car. I prayed for his wife and for the lover, too. I prayed they’d see the light and come to their senses. Adultery is an ugly toy of the devil. It wasn’t an easy thing for him to do, but he let me pray. When I finished praying, he gave me a hug and thanked me. “Tomorrow at this time I could have been behind bars—or dead,” he said. “Thank you.”

  He was a changed man by the time we said good-bye. He felt relief and peace. He confessed he hadn’t been a very good husband and that he wanted to make a new start.

  When I left him a couple of hours later, I turned the car around and went back home to Bucyrus. I knew God had completed what He had wanted to do on that trip.

  ———

  One evening in late autumn of 1963, Jackie and I were sitting in our living room in Bucyrus reading the newspaper together. It was quiet except for the purring of cars as they passed by the house and the ticking of the old Seth Thomas eight-day clock on the mantel.

  “Look at this!” Jackie pointed. Holding out the section of the paper in her hands, she showed me a short article about a small Baptist church that had been dynamited by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.

  We prayed for the people there, and then I was quiet. I saw a look in Jackie’s eyes, the look that said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Yes, honey,” I said. “Those people will be needing help building a new church. I better get my things together.”

  The next day I left for the little town in Mississippi, taking with me boxes of used clothing, canned food, and my tools and work clothes. As soon as I got there I started in to work. I hauled debris, unloaded wood, drove nails, laid concrete, painted, varnished, cleaned, hauled, and did whatever else was needed.

  I worked hard, but the people were closed off to me. I realized they were scared. NAACP leader Medgar Evers had just been murdered in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. No one had been killed in the blast of this church, not like the Sixteenth Baptist Church in Birmingham, where four girls were killed attending Sunday school. The people were afraid of strangers and didn’t know what would happen next.

  I discovered another little church not far from the one I was helping to rebuild, and I felt led to go and visit the people there. What a difference! They welcomed me with open arms and bubbled over with the joy of the Lord. They just weren’t worried about the Kluxes or about what the white man could do to them.

  One old man named Jack had joined the March on Washington with Dr. King and he told me, “I believe in standing up, yes I do, I believe in being a man. I believe I has a right to be a man. But if I fill my body and my mind with hate, then I ain’t a man no more. I know good and I know bad, and one thing I knows for certain—God is good. I knows it. And I know He loves me and my black skin. Ole devil try to beat the faith outa the colored Christians, and it jes make us tougher.

  “I done see’d hate, Robert, and I knows what killing is. Ain’t nobody who can tell me what I don’t already know about hate. The young folks say it’s just begun, but
I say I’s see’d enough. Hate don’t make nothin better nohow. It makes a man sick and despiseful.”

  I stayed there for a couple of weeks in Jack’s shanty with him as I worked on helping to rebuild the church down the road. I was with him when I heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. “The only answer for America is Jesus,” Jack cried. “Young folk think religion is jes for the old folks; they think we’s foolish. They never tasted of how the Lord can change a man’s whole life—how He can bind the hurts with love.”

  The whole country cried when President Kennedy was shot, and we wondered what would happen now that all the land was covered in tears.

  The church held an ordination service for me. Old Jack said to me, “Just remember, Brother, at ordination we see how small we are—not how big.”

  In the sermon the preacher said, “When a man remember he not a god, then he can see God.” He was direct and plain. “Black folks standin around preaching at one another. First one preach and then the next one preach. Nobody gets nothin from nobody cept pride and bluster. That’s why God calls and sends certain ones—certain ones to lead His people right, certain ones who knows Him. Is you one of them, Robert Sadler?”

  I was five years old again with no words in me.

  The preacher went on. “They’s too much talk about hell and damnation and not enough about love and salvation. If folk cain’t see the love of the Lord in us, then we’s got no right to be preachin about Him. Anybody can preach! Why, we’ve heard men preachin mighty fine sermons raisin’ the rooftop with their fine voices, and they ain’t preachin about no God we know of. They’s jes talkin. I’d rather hear the truth through the mouth of a mule than hear a lie through some ole fine orator, brothers.

  “Show them Jesus. Show them bout His love, bout how He care. Bout how He died for the black man and every man. Show them bout how He makes strength out of weakness and bout how He makes beauty out of filth. Show em how He turns it all around inside a man and makes a new man where there was nothin but evil before. Oh, great God A’mighty! Show ’em bout Jesus!” Then he began to sing, and the congregation responded right along with him.

  He took my feet from the miry clay,

  “Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

  And placed them on the Rock to stay,

  “Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

  I can tell the world about this,

  “You shure can, Revrund!”

  I can tell the nations I’m blest,

  “Amen, Lord!”

  Tell them that Jesus made me whole,

  “Well!”

  And He brought joy, joy to my soul.

  Oh, my Lord, did just what He said,

  “Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

  He healed the sick and raised the dead,

  “Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

  It would be hard not to dance or clap in the enthusiastic and spontaneous joy that filled that little church. It was like heaven came down and partied with us that night.

  ———

  People have come from all over the country to stay in our home in Bucyrus. Our doors have always been open to any traveler. There is enough room for at least twenty people comfortably, and often there have been more than that staying with us. Ministers began coming from all over the country to stay and take part in the meetings and to accompany me on my travels.

  It would be close to impossible to put in a book the many miracles that God has done during my ministry. I have traveled to dozens of cities and towns, hundreds of churches and fellowships, and the Lord has done so many wonderful things that there wouldn’t be space to tell it all. In fact, it’s not easy to choose which things to tell and which to leave out, but I’ll do my best to tell what I can.

  I took a white minister from Aurora, Illinois, with me on one of my trips to Anderson, South Carolina, in a good used car Jackie and I were finally able to buy. As we drove along, the Holy Spirit told me to take the next exit on the highway. I did as the Lord said, and the man with me got all excited. “Hey! You took the wrong turn! This isn’t the right way!”

  I told him, “The Lord told me to turn off the highway here.”

  “Brother, you must be mistaken. This isn’t the way to Anderson!”

  His protests didn’t bother me much because I was used to hearing the voice of the Lord, and when I knew the Lord was speaking to me, I tried to obey immediately. I just drove along quietly, listening for the Lord to give me further instructions.

  “Brother Bob! I’m telling you this is the wrong way! We won’t make it on the gas—”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, smiled, and said, “There’s no cause for you to get all flustrated. The Lord knows what He’s doing.”

  We came to the end of the road then. It was a dead end. Before us was swamp and thick, dark woods. Then the Lord said to me, “Get out of the car, and take those clothes in the back with you.”

  I did as the Lord said and began unloading the boxes of used clothing. The minister with me was so disturbed I thought he was going to have a fit!

  I saw a run-down shack of a house about 200 feet from the road and made my way through the weeds and brush to it. An old man, dirty and sickly, was sitting on a chair. I greeted him and said, “Would you be needing any clothing?” His eyes grew wide. He was so thin and sick-looking, I wondered how long it had been since he had eaten anything. I soon realized that he was not alone in the house. A woman came out of another room with about six small children, all thin, dirty, and sickly looking.

  My minister friend was still down the road by the car fussing to himself. When I didn’t return, he came looking for me and found me sitting in the dim, filthy shanty with this poor and sickly family, telling them about Jesus.

  “We’ll be staying here for a while,” I announced.

  The minister friend was all flustrated and upset, but he set himself down and we stayed with those backwoods people for a couple of weeks. They needed to be nursed and nourished back to health. Besides that, their shack was almost falling down. We cleaned up the tiny shack and then made a clearing to get a car through to it. We fixed the roof, bathed the children, gave haircuts, clipped toenails, cooked, sewed, plastered, painted, and did some rebuilding. Each day as we worked, their health seemed to improve. They were astonished to receive the boxes of clothing and household goods. The children owned no toys, and we were able to give them three boxes of toys. It was something.

  After one of the first days with them, my minister friend went walking in the woods. When he came back, his face was swollen and red, and I knew he had been crying. He hugged me and broke down in sobs.

  “Oh, forgive me, brother,” he cried. “Forgive me. I have never been so touched and so blessed in all my life.” We were able to lead the entire family to Jesus. They were also a sight better appearing when it was time for us to leave. The Lord spoke to me and told me to give them my car.

  “Your car? You’re giving us your nice car?”

  “And she run good, too,” I said, smiling.

  The man was so thankful, he couldn’t get over it. Now he could get work in town and they’d get back on their feet again. Thank you, Jesus!

  My friend and I took a bus back to Bucyrus. He didn’t complain once.

  We were at a meeting in a church outside of Minneapolis, and a young man came up to me and said, “The Lord told me to offer you my camper.” He said I could have it for very little. After speaking at some churches in the area, I had one hundred dollars, which I now offered to the young man. “I’ll sell it to you for one hundred dollars,” he said. So I left Minnesota driving a fancy, homemade pickup camper. It was like driving a little house around with me. I thanked God with all my heart.

  38

  For a long time I had a deep burden in my heart for Native Americans. I had been on a reservation a couple of times, and I never forgot the faces and the hungry hearts. When a black brother by the name of Jesse from Minneapolis invited me to go to Canada to an India
n reservation there, I jumped at the chance. We planned to hold tent meetings and teaching sessions, and I could hardly wait.

  We stopped in Detroit on the way to Canada and I visited my sister Janey. She was hard and bitter and had little to say to me.

  In Detroit someone broke into my camper. When I discovered it, there wasn’t a spec left in it. My organ, clothing, money, Bible, and even my dirty laundry were all stolen.

  I didn’t dare complain to the Lord, so I began to praise Him for it. “If you allowed all my belongins to be stolen, then that’s your business. So I thank you for it, Lord.”

  The pastor of the church where I spoke that evening asked me to stay and minister for a couple of days. I didn’t have enough clothes to wear, but Jesse and I talked it over and we decided to stay anyhow. During the meeting a woman prophesied over me, saying that the Lord was going to replace my loss and double my portion. She didn’t even know about the camper being robbed.

  That night an offering was taken for me, and then the next afternoon a brother handed me a check and said, “The Lord wants you to have this.” We ministered in other towns on our way to Manitoba, and by the time we reached the border I had enough money to buy a much better organ than I had before, and some brand new clothes.

  Finally Brother Jesse and I made it to Winnipeg, driving through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. We had to leave the camper in Riverton, Manitoba, and take a small boat with an outboard motor across Lake Winnipeg to Bloodvein. By the time we got our things in the boat, the water was nearly at the top edge of the boat. I climbed in and thought for sure we’d sink. I fixed my eyes on the other side of the lake and prayed us across. Jesse saw me staring at the other side. “Brother Bob,” he laughed, “we aren’t going across the lake, we’re going about 15 miles up the lake. . . .” My heart jumped into my throat.

  The waves were high and water splashed into the boat and all over us and our equipment. I seemed to be the only one worried. I never swam a lick in my life. Were we going to land on the shore or the bottom of the lake? I prayed, reminding the Lord that I had lots more work to do before I came home.