For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15)
76 If there’s one thing in my life that’s helped me to understand that the Holy Spirit came into me down there that day, has been that. I was hotheaded, fiery, Irish on both sides. And I always could never eat hardly at all, my mouth was always mashed where somebody mashed it, jumping up where I shouldn’t jump up. I’ve got some of my teeth broke out now and filled where I—I spoke where I oughtn’t to have spoke (you see?) and said things…Always in trouble. And I said…Somebody said to me, my teacher at school, she said…I said, “Lady, I—I—I can’t help it.” See, I’d get in trouble all the time. And I said, “I can’t help it.” Poor old Mother Temple, she just went to Glory the other day.
And she said, “Well, look Honey.” She got me upon her lap, and she pulled me up in her arms and started crying. First time I had ever had love like that from somebody, an old woman. She just cried over the top of me. She said, “Billy, I am going to do something for you, Honey; I’m going to give you a little piece of string.” And said, “If any of the boys jumps on you…”
77 Called me “corn-cracker,” ’cause I was from Kentucky, you know, and—and…I was—I really was terribly dressed. And they’d make fun of my hair, hanging pretty near as long as it is now, and all down over my face. And I was just having an awful time, you know. And—and they would beat me around and slap me. Anytime anybody gets their temper up, they’d walk around, and just get ahold of me, and slap me down. And here I’d come. See? And a—so then—and a fight. And we got—we got even, I even had knife fights and everything else.
78 And took a Winchester rifle and tried to shoot it, pump it right into four or five boys, from beat me till I couldn’t hardly stand up. Would’ve killed every one of them if it hadn’t been for God. Picked up the shells off of the ground, put them back in the gun; they was just shooting as good as they ever did. See? I’d been a murderer of five man, probably, or five boys.
79 Was only about twelve years old, high tempered! And teacher said, “You take this little string, Billy, and whenever you get mad, you just stop and tie nine knots in that string.” Said, “When you do that, then you bring the string to me. I’ll bet your temper will be over.”
80 I said, “Mrs. Whalen, I sure think you’re so nice.” I said, “I—I’m going to try it.” See? (Or Mrs. Temple; I’m saying Mrs. Whalen. I said Mrs…Mr. Whalen was a teacher up here once.) So I—I put the string in my pocket. And I hadn’t been out in the yard five minutes till somebody popped me one. Well, I went—started on them, you know. I reached down and grabbed my string; and I started to tie one knot; I throwed the string down, and away I went. See? I just couldn’t do it. See?
81 And I said, “I could never be a Christian.” But let me tell you, that night down yonder on Ohio Avenue when the Holy Spirit came into me, that settled the temper. That was over. I said, “I could never do it. I could never be a Christian, ’cause I’d never get over that,” I said, “something that’s borned in me.” I said, “Boy, my daddy was hotheaded; and—and my mother, half Indian, enough temper to fight a buzz saw.” I said, “Me? Oh, I…Boy, anybody that jumps on me is going to get it; that’s all.” I said, “If I have to climb up on a step ladder to hit them,” I said, “I’ll sure do it.” See?
59-1223 - "Questions And Answers"
Rev. William Marrion Branham
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