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H. Richard Hall, April 6, 1920 - January 14, 2002 |
My father in the Lord.
I had wonderful father, Lloyd Strain, whom I looked up to and gave me the values that I aspire to follow. He passed away in 1969 at the age of 49. I had a wonderful step father, Pete, to come into my mother's life that brought to her great joy and companionship and times together that our whole family enjoyed.
When I became a "Born Again" Christian in 1972, the Lord directed my steps to work with a man named H. Richard Hall. Bro Hall, as we called him, was unique. Some words that describe his character are not even in the dictionary. Tenacious would be in there, stick-to-it-ism would not, but after you worked with Bro Hall, you would see that it should be added to the dictionary.
He took in a number of us young Christians into his ministry. Many of his friends told him it would be a mistake. They told him "it would ruin his ministry" But he took us in from all walks of life and taught us that the Bible is true. Mark 9:23 "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
We were encouraged, by example, to believe that the Bible was the same to a thousand generations. That the same God that Peter, James and John served, was the same God that we serve. From this "inner circle" of people that he worked with, many of us have gone into our own ministries that the Lord had for us. The effects of H. Richard Hall's outreach continue to effect so many people.
We can look at King David in the Bible and see the great things that David did in his time and how he served the Lord. But there are scriptures that also showed the weakness of David. And in David's time of weakness, it showed the mercy and greatness of God's forgiveness. It showed that God was greater than man's weakness.
Over the 12 years that I worked with Bro Hall in his ministry, I saw him encourage people that Churches and denominations would reject. Encourage those that had "fallen" to get up again. Many of those people went on to "sin no more", They are the silent people who know in their heart and remember God's mercy that was shown to them through Bro Hall's message and ministry.
During the three years that I was the presbyter of the Ministeral Association, we had grown from 3,500 to 10,000 ministers world wide. I began to plan a way to lessen the size of the number of ministers. Just find the truly dedicated ministers and build on these few people as Gidion had done in the Bible. When I presented the plan to Bro Hall, he would have no part of it. He knew that each of these people, with the Call that God had on their lives, would do something for Jesus. If they pastored a Church with 7 people or 700 people, he wanted them to be ordained. If all they could do was "touch God" by putting a prayer through, he wanted to stand with them.
I knew a side of Bro Hall that only a few of us knew. It was the side of him that enjoyed life. We finished a Revival in Dallas Texas. It was now 11:00 o'clock in the evening central time. Bro Hall had to be in Melborne Florida, 1,200 miles away, for service with Mike Shreve in 19 hours.
Don Warren had to leave out and return to the Headquarters in Cleveland Tennessee. So that left Bro Hall and myself to make the 24 hour trip in 19 hours to make services the next night. This was back when the speed limits on the interstate were limited to 55 mph to save gas.
We took turns driving through the night. Before sunrise, I was taking a shortcut through a road in north Florida. Few people new this road. I had lived up in that area so I knew I could shave off 1 hour and also drive through this long road of nothing but pine trees at a high rate of speed without fear of getting a ticket.
Bro Hall was fast asleep on the passenger side of the car. I was now in familiar country with the speedometer setting on 115 mph. It was a very desolate road and we were making very good time! (I wonder this is what they meant by the phrase "fly by night" preachers?) Bro Hall woke up, stretched a little, watched the road for a while, looked over at the speedometer and said very casually, "Son, let's keep it under 90 mph!" He then turned over and went back to sleep.
We arrived at 4:00 in the afternoon, had church service at 6:00. The service concluded about 10:00 that evening, and we needed to be in Mt Airy NC for services the next night. We had to carry several 5 gal. cans full of gasoline in the trunk because all gas stations closed on Sunday nights. A friend named Steve Greene rode with us that night. As I drove through the night, Bro Hall would wake up screaming, telling me to watch out. It really rubbed me the wrong way. I was tired too, but I was watching what I was doing and doing the best that I could. He did this serval times through the night. All of the sudden, I saw in the darkness of the headlights, a herd of cows all over the highway. As I slid to a halt, Bro Hall woke up again and yelled, "See. see, I told you, I told you!!!" He turned over and went back to sleep for the rest of the night. He had been told.
There is the personal character of a person, and then there is the spiritual, anointed side of a person. The part that God has his perfect will in. Some of you will not understand the next few paragraphs, others of you will understand.
Before I met Brother Hall, I became a Christian in 1972 at the age of 23 years old, I had a dream. In the dream, I saw myself in a foreign land. I felt as if I was 29 years old in the dream. I came into an open field and was threatened by a man in a military uniform. It was a very "real" dream that I had in my sleep, but in fact, I knew that it was something that foretold me of what was to happen.
Over the process of time, I meet Bro Hall in one of his services and I resigned from my job and joined up with his ministry. Several years later, when I was 29 years old, I had an opportunity to go to the Bahamas to do some missionary work. I remembered the dream and wondered if this might be the chance to see if it was to be full filled. Two of us were going, a friend name Danny Emerson and myself. I told him of the dream the night before we boarded our separate planes. Danny and I laughed about the dream and just "what it all meant".
We boarded our separate fights. His flight arriving some 30 minutes before mine. When I arrived at customs at the Bahamas airport, I saw Danny and started to walk over to greet him. Just then a man yelled for me to halt. There was such a "wrong attitude" about his voice, one not of authority but one of domination and control. I looked over my shoulder and saw the man in the uniform that I saw in the dream years before. Rather than turning toward the man, I turned to Danny and told him "that's the man". People in the terminal froze in a "spirit of fear". We had never felt that way before. We were Americans. We had never had a rifle aimed at us before.
I ignored the man and continued to talk to Danny. I had learned from Bro Hall that God is incontrol and to resist the devil and he would flee. On the officers second request to halt, I turned to the officer. His tone had now changed, instead of being the controlling person that the officer had first been, he now was in a tone and "spirit" of one in correct authority. The look on everyone's face was amazing. You could see victory in the eyes of the people gathered around. "God has not given us a spirit of fear".
Later on in the week, I really wondered if God would fulfill the "dream" as I had originally seen it. So I went about to find a field that looked like the one in the dream. I found a field the size of a football field behind the docks where the cargo ships come into port. So I walked out into the field. In about 5 minutes, a car entered the field and was slowly driving towards me. My heart was racing. The driver was in uniform, he stopped about 100 feet away and sat there. He didn't get out or anything, so I walked on up to the car.
The fellow was wearing a uniform of a customs agent and he was eating his box lunch. So I started a conversation with him. I told him that I was a Christian and that we were having services over in the park that evening.
After listening to what I told him, he began to tell me about something that happened to him when he was a child. He said that a hillbilly preacher from America preached on this cricket field where we were standing. He said the preacher had black hair that he would comb straight back. He said the preacher's wife was real short and blond. A little girl that that had died, was brought to the meeting. He said that he remembered that a light shown down out of the clouds onto the platform. He said that the preacher prayed and this little girl came back to life.
I believe that the Lord led me to meet this stranger so that I would hear a true story about the Lord moving miraculously through Bro Hall's prayer. This man never forgot what he saw. Each of us will remember how H. Richard Hall effected our lives. Each of us who ever attended a service with Bro Hall will remember how in some way, our lives were changed, encouraged or determined to serve the Lord.
"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
In giving praise to some one that you know, it is so easy to misunderstand the praise that is given to that person. I have seen people exalted, after their death, to an almost God like stature. Religions have been established after the person and many times the organizations become a mear shadow of the true nature of the founder of the organization. But with Bro Hall's determination that he exuded in each of us, only Jesus Christ will be lifted up; in the work that he established in the United Christian Church and in each of our hearts.
Thank you Bro Hall.
Craig Emerson Strain, "Extra Long"
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