From the Hogpen to the Pulpit

By Hal Taylor

This book is about me being saved, and God called me to preach. When I was in school, I was note able to speak in front of a crowd. This is my testimony about God calling me to preach. I have been pastoring for 50 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662446634

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From the Hogpen to the Pulpit

Hal Taylor

Copyright © 2021 Hal Taylor

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-4662-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-4663-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away

The Struggle for Life

Growing Up

Death Strikes a Double Blow

Revival Meeting Time

Journey to the Far Country

My God Why

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Way of the Transgressor Is Hard

God’s Love Is So Good

I Believe

Trust and Obey

God Calling

Wherever He Leads, I’ll Go

Looking Back

To my mother who has lived her life very simply and humbly. Even though she has never been recognized for any accomplishment in the society in which she lives, I have learned many valuable lessons from her simple lifestyle. She has a heart of gold. Her honesty toward all men, high moral standards, and faith in God have remained unchanged through many years of hardship and trouble. I will never be able to repay her for what she has done for me.

Introduction

Many times, a person is misled by the title of a book or story. At first glance, you may ask, "Why the peculiar title From the Hogpen to the Pulpit?" When I refer to the hogpen in this book, I do not mean a place where hogs are kept, but I am speaking in terms of a person’s life without Christ. In Luke chapter 15, we are told a story of a young man who grew tired of the father’s house where he lived very comfortably. He decided that life would be much better if he could leave home and go into the far country. He wanted to get as far from the father’s house as possible. He persuaded his father to give him his share of the inheritance that would one day be his, and he left home to seek the pleasures that the world had to offer.

As the story goes, he spent all the money that he had and was actually hired out to feed swine to survive. Although I never fed swine for a living, I believe that any life without Jesus Christ will finally end up in the hogpen of sin and despair. Satan has many things to offer, but all these things lead to the hogpen. All the dreams that the world offers have only heartache, grief, and despair as their end. Thousands of people have squandered their lives on the pleasures of the world, only to find that these things do not satisfy.

I would like to share with you my story. I want to share how I was caught in Satan’s web of sin and only by God’s grace was I able to escape his powerful grip. I would like to give honor and glory to Jesus Christ for watching over me through the many years of rebellion and disobedience to him. This story will make each reader aware of God’s power as well as his boundless love. If it had not been for him, I would not be alive today. As you read this story, I hope that you can get a glimpse of divine love. I hope you can see the long-suffering and patience of Christ as he deals with his children through his divine love. As you read this story I hope that above all, you will let Christ speak to your heart. If this book can be used to change the life of just one person, it will have accomplished its purpose.

Chapter 1

The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, naked came I out of my mother’s womb and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

—Job 1:20–21

Mama and Daddy met for the first time at the little country church next door to the house where Daddy was raised. Daddy was born in that very house. He was the baby of a big family, but all the rest of them had married and moved out. Now all that was left was Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa. They lived in a little four-room house about a stone’s throw from the one-room Baptist church. Mama was very easily embarrassed, and Daddy embarrassed her that first day by asking her to stand up so everybody could get a good look at her. Everybody thought that was really funny—that is, everybody except Mama.

Not very long after Mama and Daddy met, they decided to get married. They were married in 1924 by an old country preacher by the name of Brother Tims. I remember Mama telling me how they went to the preacher’s house and he came out to the car and married them while they sat in the car. Daddy had an old Ford Model T car when they got married. Daddy was twenty-three, and Mama was twenty when they married. Shortly after they married, Grandma Taylor died. After she died, Grandpa Nick came down with cancer of the throat. I never got to see any of my grandparents on my mother or daddy’s side. They all died before I was born. But from all accounts, Grandpa Nick was some character. He made his own coffin and kept it at the back of the church. One of his greatest delights was to show off his homemade casket to everybody that came by. He acted as if he had the only casket in the world.

After a prolonged illness, Grandpa died. He had been quite a burden to Mama for many years. In the end, he had to be waited on hand and foot, and I know it wasn’t easy for Mama. After Grandpa died, it seemed pretty lonesome with just Mama and Daddy in the house. Times were hard in those days. Daddy had about twenty acres of land. He farmed about eighteen acres with a mule, and the other two had a pasture for the one cow that we seemed to always manage to keep for milk. I remember Daddy telling me that he worked a lot of days from sunup to sundown for 50¢ a day. Mama and Daddy had been married for over seventeen years and still did not have any children. They both wanted children, but it didn’t seem that they would ever have any of their own.

The March wind was blowing as Daddy hooked the mule to the wagon that morning. Very few people had a car. The Depression of the ’30s had left most people walking. It was a real luxury to have a mule and wagon in those days. Mama pulled her sweater around her, and Daddy stopped the wagon in front of the house. It was only three miles from the house to Quitman, Mississippi, the little town where I was born; but it would take about an hour to get there. The wind was blowing hard. Quitman was directly north of our house.

Daddy let Mama off at the doctor’s office and went downtown to buy a few things that he needed for the house. He was worried about Mama because she had been sick for the last few days. The doctor’s office was crowded as Mama opened the door of the little office next to the hospital. She waited her turn, and finally, the doctor said he could see her. It did not take old Dr. Watkins (that’s what we always called him) long to find out what the trouble was. She was going to be a mother. Daddy was so happy when he found out that he was going to be a father. He told everybody he met. He was acting like nobody else had ever had a baby before. After all, it had been almost eighteen years. He had a reason to be excited about it. The months seemed to go by slowly, and Mama and Daddy worked hard during the hot summer, trying to work the land and have a little money by the time the baby got here. It wasn’t due until December, but Daddy knew he needed to get everything in good shape before winter. After all, there never had been a baby in the house since he could remember. It was going to be a lot different from now on.

The summer had finally passed, and the leaves were beginning to turn. Some were reddish brown, and others were like gold as they fell softly to the ground. The north wind was beginning to stir; it looked like a hard winter was ahead. On October 13, when Daddy came home from work, Mama told him she had been having some unusual pains. It was two months before the baby was due, but Daddy went straight to the barn to hitch up the wagon. He had the wagon in front of the house in record time, and soon they were at the hospital. The doctor had her admitted to the hospital and told Daddy to go on back home and get a good night’s sleep. He didn’t think anything was going to happen this early anyway, but he would keep her overnight just to be on the safe side. The next morning, when Daddy got to the hospital, the nurse told him that Mama was already in the delivery room. Even though she had only been carrying the baby for seven months, it seemed to insist on being born anyway.

About an hour later (which seemed like an eternity), the nurse came to the waiting room and told Daddy that it wouldn’t be very long now. Daddy walked the floor and waited. He pretended not to really care if it was a boy or a girl as long as everything was all right, but everybody knew that he really wanted a boy. In those days, there was a lot of hard work to be done, and Daddy surely hoped it was a boy. A few minutes later, the nurse came to the waiting room again. Her face was beaming with surprise. Guess what? She told Daddy, You’ve got twins! Twin boys! For a minute, it seemed too good to be true. Twin boys—how could one man be so lucky! After eighteen years with no children, now there were two at one time. It didn’t take Daddy long to spread the word. Before that day was over, everybody knew that Daddy was the father of twin boys.

After all those years without children and amid all the excitement, they forgot to give us a name. The next morning, when Dr. Watkins came in, he wanted to know what Daddy was going to name us. They didn’t give us twin names at all. There were two men in town whom Daddy and Dr. Watkins both had much respect for. One of them was named Hal Dabbs, and the other one was Thomas Dabbs. That was what they named us—Hal and Thomas.

The next morning, Daddy was up at daylight. The sun seemed brighter than ever before. It was a beautiful October morning, the birds were singing their early morning songs, and all creation seemed to rejoice as the sun made each dewdrop sparkles like freshly cut diamonds. Daddy didn’t hitch up the wagon this time; he decided to walk the three miles to town today. After all, Mama wouldn’t be coming home for another day or two, and the walk would do him good. He was in a hurry to get to the hospital to see how his two new sons were doing, and because of the excitement of the occasion, it seemed like no time until he was there.

When he arrived at the hospital, one look at Dr. Watkin’s face told him that all was not well. Ed, said Dr. Watkins, I must be honest with you. As you know, the boys came almost two months prematurely, and both of them are small. Thomas weighed three pounds, four ounces. Hal weighed three pounds, two ounces. Thomas looks pretty good, but I’m worried about Hal. He just doesn’t look good at all.

Daddy knew the doctor wouldn’t be telling him this unless he was pretty sure of himself. He told Daddy to go home and get some rest and that he would do the best he could for the boys. I never asked Daddy, but I’m sure he prayed for me and my brother that night. After all these years, now he might not have a son after all. I’m sure God knew how much he wanted us. He would do what he knew to be best.

I guess no one will ever know why God chose to do what he did. I don’t think anyone knew what happened to Thomas. He had gotten worse during the night. He died in the early part of the morning of the fifth day. He did look like the healthiest of the two. Dr. Watkins and the hospital staff had done all they could for him, but for some reason, it was not to be. Thomas, the one who looked the healthiest of the two, went back to the God who gave him.

It’s not easy for a grown man to cry sometimes, but as Daddy left the hospital that morning, he was crying—crying for the son he had for a brief moment. He had already begun making plans for so many things that they would do together when they got bigger, but now nothing seemed to matter.

The autumn leaves fell silently on the freshly dug grave. Daddy had made the little casket out of some lumber that he had bought to make a corn sheller box. The man at the funeral home had given him a pretty white blanket to go inside the pine box. Thomas looked so peaceful in his new bed; he surely would have made a fine son. I guess we will understand the reason why when we see Jesus one day, but this didn’t ease the pain in Daddy’s heart. The question was still in his mind—the reason why how much we don’t understand in life.

As Daddy looked at his son for the last time, he folded the blanket neatly around him and lowered the box into the small grave. Soon the casket was covered, and the job was done. All his dreams and much of himself seemed to be in that little mound of earth. Now the plans seemed unimportant. Life seemed so cruel and hard sometimes. Why did God take Thomas? Maybe he needed a little boy to brighten up heaven, just maybe. As Job said, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be