Walter Janeway

My home was among the dope fiends, saloon gambling dens and behind the prison walls. Sorrow and sin drove me from my home when only a boy of thirteen. I walked the alleys and slept in old stairways, and wished I were back home. I went deeper and deeper into sin and committed crime after crime; my heart became as hard as stone.

Through it all, back in Middlesboro, Kentucky, up on the side of a hill, in an old log cabin by a peach orchard, my mother was praying for me. Mother would come behind the prison walls and eat her holiday dinner with me, and sit and talk with me. The railroad was never too long, nor the prison walls too high, for that dear, old mother to come and see her boy.

I thank God that one day He answered that mother’s prayers. Her criminal boy, in a county jail, wept his way through to victory. I said, “O God, don’t let me get up from my knees until You do something for me.” That prayer changed my whole life. I arose to my feet, walked out of my cell, and up and down the aisle, singing, “Oh How I Love Jesus!” He changed my heart and gave me victory in my life. He sent me on my way rejoicing.

I’m glad to be back again to this prison and tell you about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the first thing I ever got into in all my life that I never got tired of and I could hold on to for many years. I’ve got one of the boys from this place working for me, and when I paid him the other day, he walked over to me, and the tears rolled down his cheeks, and said, “After nine years serving over there—and then to have the privilege of getting a payday again, it feels good.” I looked at him, and I could see on his face what he had been through, what those nine years had done for him. But he is out and thanking God for it today.

It is wonderful what God can do!

It’s worth something, after a man has suffered in this old world like I have, in one prison and then another, to then get out and be able to help the other fellow. You know that means a lot.

I got a letter the other day from a boy that sits here in front of me. He told me how God had saved him; and as I read down those lines, he didn’t have to tell you, but you could witness that there was something in the letter you could say amen to—every word of it. He didn’t ask for help or want to get out of here, but he told how he was able to live right in here. It is wonderful what God can do!

I dropped on my knees in one of these places twenty-four years ago and didn’t have a friend on earth, because of the life I lived. I hadn’t written to my sisters nor my brothers in years. My old father had turned me down and had no use for me. I have a sister in my home today. She just opened a little crack in the door when I went to see her the last time, and she said, “You have brought so much disgrace on the home and your people, we don’t want any more to do with you.” I remember how I walked down the street, and I said, “There isn’t much more left for me. I guess I have played my last card. So here goes for nothing—nothing in the future!” I will never forget that night. I never expected to see that sister again.

“If God can save that kind of a man, I believe there’s hope for me, and I am going to pray. You can stay in here or move out, but I am going to see if there is a God.”

Three years rolled on, and I had been back behind bars again, and I had suffered as I went through that life. Up here in the Spokane County Jail one afternoon an Apostolic Faith paper was handed to me. The Apostolic Faith Church prints that paper to give away, and they send it out over the whole world.

I read that paper, and I rolled off that steel bunk that was held by two chains. There were forty-eight in the tank there—and there’s one in here today, doing life, that was in the same jail that day, in the tank below me. I said to the fellow in the cell with me, after I read two testimonies in that paper, “If God can save that kind of a man, I believe there’s hope for me, and I am going to pray. You can stay in here or move out, but I am going to see if there is a God.”

And I left that old bunk and came down and got on my knees and put that paper in front of me, and I prayed, and I never got up until God did something for me. There was a man saved two years later, who was in that tank that day, and he said he never did forget the words that left my mouth. He said that I said, “God, don’t ever let me get up until You do something for me.”

As I prayed I would almost get lockjaw. It just seemed like my jaws would lock, and I couldn’t talk, couldn’t open my mouth, because of the things that rolled up in front of me. I would say, “How can I ever face them?” Then I would take new courage and say, “God, help me.” Then something else would roll up in front of me, and I would say, “God, I never could go back to Chester and to Indianapolis. How could I face it?” But I just looked up to God again, and I said, “God, help me.”

I am a witness that He not only saves you, but He keeps you and provides for you.

Something hit that old heart of mine, and God saved me—a change of heart! I rose to my feet. I didn’t even know what had happened—didn’t know what it meant to be saved. But God did the work.

And let me leave you this word—they can’t put you any place where you can’t get a prayer through to God. I am a witness that He not only saves you, but He keeps you and provides for you. I have never wanted for anything since the day God saved me.

I have never been broke, never asked a man for help, never even asked these people to help me. All I asked them was to pray for me, and they have done that. And God has carried me through; and I am on my way to meet an old mother that went to her grave with a broken heart. There were many a time I had gone into her bedroom and had seen her weeping and praying for her boy. I appreciate this Gospel.