Eleanor Wilcox

It is good to be a Christian. I thank God for this wonderful way of salvation. I knew about the Gospel from the time I was just a girl, and I believed that the Bible was the Holy Word of God. As a child, my mother read the Bible stories to me and my siblings as she gathered us around her, some of us only reaching to her knees.

For thirty years I turned the Gospel aside for the things of the world and went my own stubborn way. For many years, I was out in sin, condemned every day for my life because I knew the right way to go.

I had to suffer before I had any thought of turning to God. I had to lose my little girl who was only eight years old.

Tragedy came when she was taken to the hospital with a ruptured appendix; in three days she was gone. While my little girl was dying, I wanted to pray, but I didn’t know how. I had forgotten the God that my mother had worshiped, and I didn’t know what to do. When my baby passed away, I wanted to go too. It was the end of everything to me. I didn’t want to live any longer. For days after the funeral, I wept and mourned as I sat alone making plans to take my own life. I wanted to get out of this world that had brought me so much grief.

Then God’s still small Voice spoke so gently to me out of Heaven saying, “Mother would look in the Bible.” It came again, “Mother would look in the Bible.” I thought perhaps I had better do that before I did the “other.” My oldest brother had given me a Bible. I had never read it, but had kept it tucked away in a cabinet, hidden between a lot of other books.

I got the Bible out and let it fall open in my lap. When I looked down, I saw childish scrawls around one of the verses. I could almost see her sitting on the floor marking in my Bible a few weeks before she was taken ill. I had completely forgotten all about it. She had been outside laughing and playing with her friends in our back yard while I was working in the kitchen when I heard our patio door open and close very softly. After several minutes, she hadn’t said anything or asked for anything and she was so quiet that I wondered what she was doing while the children were still laughing and playing outside. I walked into the room and saw her sitting on the floor with my Bible in front of her and a pencil in her hand. She was marking on the pages. I wondered how and why she happened to pick out this particular book because it had no pictures in it. She didn’t care for books without pictures. She was a poor reader and was being held back in school because she struggled with words. Also, she hadn’t known anything about that Bible. She had never seen me read the Bible or put any markings in it. I had such an odd feeling as if someone were watching me. When her pencil tore the fine paper, I said, “Don’t tear Mama’s Bible.” However, as I went back into the kitchen, I thought, “I never read it anyway, so what does it matter?” When I returned to the room to see if she was still there, I saw that just as quietly as she had come in, she had put the pencil and the Bible away and gone out again.

Looking at the circled verse, I read, “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation and weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted, because they are not.” Matthew 2:18. Oh, my little girl had to die to make me look in the Bible. Like thunder out of Heaven I knew it was God talking to me. My sinful life suddenly rose before me; all those wasted years and my neglect to teach my little girl about Jesus and God’s Word. I knew what I must do.

I wanted to find a church where they had a mourners’ bench like they had in the little Mission hall where my mother and brother had attended. I felt I needed more than just a handshake at the door; I wanted my sins forgiven.

I forgot about the plans I had been making for my destruction; I only wanted to get right with God.

I couldn’t think of a church nearby where a sinner could pray at an altar of prayer, so I traveled 400 miles to San Francisco, California, where I knew my brother attended a branch of the Apostolic Faith.

At that altar, I knelt and prayed. When I stood up, I felt that I had been forgiven, but I was distressed because I didn’t have that joyous feeling. I went back home and thought, “I don’t have to have all those experiences that they talk about. I can be just as good a Christian without them.”

I had that wonderful light and I turned against it. I joined a modern church. For five years I worked hard in that church. I taught Sunday school and I tried in my own strength to be a good Christian, but something seemed to be lacking. God was so faithful to me, though. Every time I knelt and prayed by my bedside, that still, small Voice would speak to me again, saying, “Go to Portland.” Night after night it came. I thought, “I can’t even pray. All I can do is think about Portland.” Finally I said, “If this is You talking to me, Lord, I will go to Portland if You will open the way.” I did not tell anyone about this, not even my brother.

I came home from work one evening in 1947 and my daughter-in-law said, “Your brother called today. He is going to Portland in July for camp meeting and will have room for you if you want to go.” A current went through me from my head to the floor as if I had connected with a live wire. This was my answer and I knew it!

That first week at camp meeting, I battled. I thought I could go my own way. I was going to leave, but was told that a music program was coming up. I stayed, waiting to hear the music and God spoke to me. He said, “This is the way. Walk ye in it.” I went to the altar. I went there fast. I prayed and wept my way through to an experience of salvation, to a calmness in my soul that I can’t explain with words.

I was so afraid I was going to have to leave without all my experiences. I wanted the whole armor. At ten the next morning during the prayer meeting, the Lord sanctified my soul. I received a second, definite work of grace. Then on July 19, the anniversary of my daughter’s death, I went to the altar and on that Sunday morning I got my baptism. Heaven came down and Glory filled my soul! It became the most glorious day of my life. God gave me the oil of joy for mourning.

Oh, how I love the Lord. He loved me when I needed Him most. I am thankful for this mighty Gospel.