Striking Memories and Spiritual Truths

STRIKING MEMORIES OF P. F. ELLIOTT
From "Out of the Night Into The Light"

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 01—A number of years ago I was preaching in a Baptist Church. A young schoolteacher got mightily stirred as he listened to me night after night. I asked him one day, "Are you saved, brother?" He said, "Yes, sir. Wait a minute and I will get you my certificate of baptism." He went up stairs to get it but found that the rats had chewed it up. Thank God, we can get something that is too hot for the rats to eat. Poor fellow, a deceived heart had turned him aside. He had nothing but ashes.

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 02—People are deceived concerning "time," especially concerning what time they are going to die. Many of them think they are going to live for many years when the chances are many will die this very year. I was preaching one night and the Spirit of God was upon the people. I urged a man to come to the altar, but he looked at me and said, "I have twenty-five years to live. What's the hurry?" He died that night and I preached his funeral sermon that same week. He was deceived about time.

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 03—A friend of mine, riding on a train, talked to a man about his soul. The man got angry and said, "I must go and smoke." But before he got to the smoker, he dropped dead in the aisle. He was deceived about time.

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 04—Brother, how much time do you spend in secret prayer alone with God? I was in a holiness convention once when a preacher put the test, "How many spend thirty minutes alone with God a day?" Only six stood up. Again he asked, "How many spend fifteen minutes alone with God a day?" and nine more stood up. There were, perhaps two hundred and fifty present. They got no revival and neither will we unless we do more knee-work than that.

       John Wesley said he couldn't keep the unction on his soul and pray less than one hour a day. I think there must have been something to what he said, for he was a soul-winner and they found his knees calloused when he died.

       I have found lots of folks who wanted to pray on their deathbed; but usually it was too late. I went to pray with one man who fell off a house and broke his hip. After praying we urged him to pray, but he said to us, "I am not ready to make a speech today." That was his dying vision of prayer.

       I urged a man to pray who was hurt by a roadside. He said, "Oh, God, this is hell." That was his dying vision of prayer. A woman riding on a train was counting her beads. When asked what she was doing she said she was praying to Saint Peter. She said Saint Peter would pray for her, but I would rather do my own praying. I want an answer from the other end of the line.

       We need a revival of prayer in the Pilgrim Holiness Church. Our discipline is getting fat, but our people are getting lean. It is said by the most spiritual leaders of our church that our greatest need is prayer. "As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth."

"Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father's throne
Make all my wants and wishes known."

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 05—One morning when we were getting ready to leave our home for the Springfield Camp it seemed like the Spirit held us at our family altar longer than usual. We made our train on time, and had to change trains at Cleveland, Ohio. When we were getting on the train, I said to Mrs. Elliott, "Let's take the chair car." "She said no, let's go into the coach that will be cheaper." I had stepped into the chair car and heard two women quarreling over a chair, but one beat the other out to a sad end, for we had not gone over thirty miles from Toledo, till our train left the track, running at about seventy miles an hour.

       I had just gone down at the end of the coach to get a drink of water, I brought my wife a drink, she was reading a book called, "The First Night in Eternity." She looked up at me and said, "How many do you think would be ready to meet God if this train would be wrecked?" The sound of her words had not died away, till we WERE wrecked. Many were killed and bruised.

       I remember a man who was a drummer, and a woman who were playing cards, she had a good deal of fun about my reading the Bible, told her friend in an undertone, I was a preacher, and had laughed over it. She had on a diamond necklace, diamond rings, and no doubt was well blest with this world's goods, but she was fatally hurt in the wreck and began to call for the preacher and prayer. Her laughing was all over now. No one was laughing, they were dying now. She lost her diamonds, and worst of all she lost her soul. She said, "My God, preacher, pray for me I'm going to hell." Went out into the night without the light.

       Mrs. Elliott and I were sitting not far from where they were on the opposite side of the train. We were jarred and shook up, but not seriously hurt in any way. The woman that had her way about the chair, was the only one killed in the chair car. I saw them when they dug her out from under the wreck.

       It's a dangerous way to have your own way. God's ways are the best. When I got off and looked at the wreck I seemed to see an Angel standing on the coach we were riding in, and over His head was written in letters of gold, "The Angel of God encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them."

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 06—Holiness is no more popular now than it was in the days of Paul. Sham holiness wants to flirt with the world, come on dress parade with gold and feathers, pride, and worldly strut, and then say, "Saved and sanctified." They make me think of the baldheaded barber that went to sell hair tonic to restore hair. It worked nicely till he took off his hat, and his bald head appeared. Just so with a lot of folks in religious circles. Their manifestation of worldliness gives them away, and reveals the hypocrisy of their profession.

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 07—Lean men are continually looking for better methods. God is looking for better men. God does not bless machinery. He blesses humanity when they are wholly surrendered to the will of God.

       I love to read the life of Martin Wells Knapp. He was a man of strong convictions, a mighty leader, as bold as a lion, as humble as a lamb, his convictions were born of Holy fire and he was willing to die by them. One man said of him, "He was only on one side of the fence and that was the right side."

 His early writings were the first things to grip my soul. I found one of his old papers when I was away among the wilds in an old house in the north of Michigan. I was sick and somewhat discouraged; but I read his writing. It fanned me into new zeal and made me a better man. It was a plain, simple, holy people twenty years ago that gripped my heart by their power of prayer and plainness of living. My coming in contact with them changed the whole channel of my life, and no doubt of my ministry.

       The love of God shed abroad in my heart made me love those people, and I felt they loved me. I believe God has raised the Pilgrim Holiness church to do a great work in this big world. I am a member of the Pilgrim Holiness church, and am not ashamed of it. Let us be true to Christ, the church, and to the Bible, and God will not be ashamed of us.

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 IN CONCLUSION, these words from P. F. Elliott:—If we had more FIRE, we would have less need of DISCIPLINE. If we could get hot enough to melt, we would all be one in the Spirit of God. If we could get fire enough to boil, we would have more steam and would gather momentum as we go. We would produce a holiness that would love the unholy.