# Over the years

Date: June 7, 2024

I was a millionaire. I’d give you money for him. I’d give you lots of money. When Paul was looking for him a while ago, I was out there trying to find a preacher who was going to preach this evening in, or maybe this evening in. He said, now he wasn’t going to preach then. And I said, well, I’m going to preach. I said, help me. I need some thoughts and something on paper I can use notes to maybe say something when I get to preach. I don’t have anybody else.

Anyway, the young man came out and went up to preach. This is the preacher’s meeting thing. I should have said that first. The one that was back there in the back was the pastor of the church. Brother Paul was the pastor. This is another church that I’m trying to refer to. If you get tired, you go ahead and leave it. It’ll be all right. I’ll get the story out.

Anyway, the young man came out and he preached, and the pastor of that church came out and was listening to him. The young man got down and left the corporate and stood down. The pastor says, “You know what you did?” He said, “What did I do?” He said, “You took my notes off my desk. Now what am I going to preach?” He said, “You did this what you told me?” He told me to trust the Lord. He said, “Just trust the Lord.”

I tried to think, what in the world am I going to say when I get up here this evening? I was talking about this other fellow that had—don’t let me scare you, okay, what I’m going to do here, so don’t get frightened. I’m going to step down here for maybe a minute, can pull a little bit, and I’ll tell you a story about it. Well, let me do it like this.

This preacher did that one time. He was sitting out there and they called him to preach. He got up there and he walked up there like that, and he had a lot of life in him. Then when he got on preaching, he went down like this. There was an older lady out here in his presence where he was trying to go back to sit down. She said, “Young man, if you’d have went up the way you came down, then you could have come down the way he went up.”

See Brother Paul up here, I want to mock him a little bit—not mocking, but copy him. I’m hoping you get the right word, copy a little bit. What I like to see a preacher do is move around. I don’t like to see a preacher stand in one spot, and after a while I get tired and go to sleep. I don’t want everybody to sleep, so. Anyway, go up and step up there and preach away. The thing is, you’ve got to have something to say when you get up there.

I’m going to share with y’all this evening. How much time I got, Brother Paul? Two hours? Let me honestly say, one of the best places that I like being is right here in this church. Every service I come: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, every service. And then on top of that, I’m glad I’ve got the pastor of that, Brother Paul.

When I go out and talk to people, and I do, I talk to people quite a bit. I said, “Come over to Georgia County Baptist Church. You like that church. It’s a very friendly church. People are very friendly, very kind, and gracious. Come over there and visit with us. And the pastor, he’s a wonderful man.” And I’m not trying to just try to make myself look good and send him about that. I say it behind the pastor’s back when I’m talking to people. I say the pastor is a good man. He’s a solid man. He’s a good preacher. He’s a good gospel preacher, a good Bible preacher, and he loves people, and he’s friendly and kind. You’d love to come over there. That’s what I’m trying to say about this pastor myself. I told Brother Paul several times, “I’m glad you’re my pastor.” I’m glad to be here this evening.

Now, I may have to say, well, there’s two boys, you know, when they were young, and went to church together—one was Catholic, one was Baptist. Anybody hear that story? Don’t hear that story? I’ll tell you that story, okay?

Well, Frankie glasses. Okay, so, he said, “Which church are we going to go to first?” And he said, “Let’s go to your church.” He said, “Let’s go to your church.” He went to his church, and the Baptist boy was asking the Catholic boy about different things. He went on, and he explained it to him. They left there after a while, and then they went to the Baptist church.

And the Catholic boy was asking the Baptist boy about what the pastor was doing, saying. He asked, “Pretty soon the pastor got up there and took a watch later in front of him,” and he said—asked the Baptist boy—“What is he going to do with that watch?” He said, “I don’t know what he’s going to do with it.” He said, “It doesn’t mean anything because y’all didn’t get that, did you?” Nobody laughed. He said, “What does that watch mean?” He doesn’t mean anything. He said, “I don’t know what it means.” The pastor said, “Watch me,” so he told him what time to leave.

Anybody here tonight? I said to myself earlier today, I said, “You’re going to go tonight and you don’t have—don’t you ever say something negative, especially when you don’t have a message.” I got a message in my life. I want to share my life with you a little bit tonight, okay?

In Toledo, Ohio, I’m going to take this long story and cut it down a little bit. Two men came to my house, and my wife and I had bought a house. First house we’d ever bought, never had. And I wanted to fix some things around because I was a fix-it man. I was a picture where I sawed. I came, and I sawed, and I fixed it. Am I in America? Am I in some other country somewhere? Okay. Well, it’s like I’m going to use you to laugh by it. Okay, let me try to say again.

In 1962, I was working on my house, 1034 Karen Street, Cleod, Ohio, and putting on a new porch, new door, and all that. Two men came down on the other side to go to church with them. I said, “Fellas, I don’t have time to go to church, and I don’t have no interest going to church.” I wasn’t real mean to them, but they left after that a little bit. That same man lived up the street about 10 houses up on…

He had three or four children, just like we had three or four children. The children all knew one another; they went to the same school. They were having vacation Bible school at the church that he was asked—those two fathers asked me to go to—vacation Bible school every evening: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. He came home about 8 o’clock. I’m on a bus at 8 o’clock. And the next evening they went and came to do the same thing. Friday evening, 8 o’clock, they didn’t come. I got a little concerned, but after about 30 minutes, I called the church and found out what was wrong. They said that they had a longer service that evening and they would be coming pretty soon.

So after about 30 minutes, they came and dropped our children off the bus there in front of the house, and they ran in. Especially one of them, one of them came running in the house. “Dad, that was Janet, the sergeant.” “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, guess what? Guess what?” I said, “What?” She said, “I got saved.” I said, “You got saved? What are you talking about? You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s saved.”

Well, it didn’t shock her. She still was in a good mood. After a few days, the pastor of that church came out and wanted to have the authority to baptize my daughter who had gotten saved at the vacation Bible school when they had services there and taught about children getting saved, young people getting saved, and knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior. So Janet gave her heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ in one of the services there.

And then he came home and told about it. And the pastor came out and wanted to know if it would be all right to baptize her. I said, “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. You don’t know what you’re doing.” I was debating the pastor about whatever he was talking about. And folks, I’m serious when I said, I debated him just like I knew something about the Bible. I knew nothing about the Bible. I was 25 years old, thought I was safe to do anything. Anyway, after a while, the pastor—he got—whatever called him, said he needed to leave. And so he said, “I need to say, normally I have a word of prayer with someone when I visit them at home. So this evening, we’ve had a little hard conversation, so I’m just going to ask you to do one thing.” So the pastor of that church, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Toledo, Ohio, he looked at me face to face, eyeball to eyeball. I said, “I want to ask you to do one thing. Can you do one thing?”

I took the child and said, “Yeah, I can do one thing.” “What are you going to do?” He said, “I want you to come to church Sunday.” I said, “Okay, I’ll come.” And he left. We went out the door. Deb, my wife, she said, “Why did you lie to that preacher? You won’t go to church. You’ll never go to church.” I said, “I’ll be going Sunday morning. I’ll be going through with that. I’ll be there.” Sunday morning came. Normally I was sleeping in late because it was a drinking night, a bar room night with different couples, different groups.

Friends of ours, we’d all get together on Friday evening and go to bars and dancing and drinking and all that kind of thing. I left all that off that Sunday morning. I got up and got dressed up the best I could to go to church. My wife, Deb, says, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting ready to go to church.” She said, “You’re really going to church?” She said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “I’m going to go with you.” So all of us went—all of us went. Children and Deb and I went to church that day.

Got to church, and we were about 10 miles out of town. The building was a rented building. They were getting ready to build them a building, buying the land, bought the land, going to build a building. And I looked around in the building, I thought, “He’s a Christian, and his floor looks like it needs cleaning—paint drops all over it, the ceiling’s falling down, things like that.” They didn’t say anything about that. I kept it to myself. They say they’re Christians, why don’t you fix this building? I was very negative. Everything went on in there. I was very negative about all of it. Then the pastor got up to preach. After the sermon, I started talking about people who were sinners. What they did was wrong, going by the Bible.

I began to listen to what he was saying. I got to identifying with it myself. And yes, that’s true. I’ve done that. I’ve done that. I’ve done that. All the things he mentioned that people do were wrong. And then I thought, I’ll answer to God one day. I’ll trust the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior. His message was what I’m trying to say right now. And so I said, “Well, you know, I don’t need to think about that.” So I started thinking about it.

I worked in a factory there in Toledo, a big factory. Had a ramp that went down in the basement. We had a lot of storage down there. And I occasionally would go down there to get things, take things down, pick things, go back and forth up and down that ramp on a tow motor. Anyway, going to church up there caused me to be concerned about this thing about eternity and hell. And I thought, well, I want to find out if I can. So I took my Bible and went down in the basement of that building. There was a little room down there, still room before—I shut the door and go down there and pray, and try to pray anyway. I didn’t know how to pray, but I tried to pray, listen to the preacher pray, listen to the preacher talk about prayer, listen to the preacher talk about the Bible. I tried to put that together as best I could and get on a bench down there and ask God to help me. I did that for about three weeks.

Went to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and listened to the preacher. More and more, I got concerned that I was a lost person who needed to be saved. Conviction came to my heart and mind so strongly that I had to do something about it. I asked God to help me. The last time I was down in that room—it was close to about three weeks. It was in the fall of the year, around September, October. And I said, “Lord, I don’t know how to pray that well. I know very little Bible. As best I understand, if I die and go to hell, I’m going to go there to trust you as my Savior.”

The power of God came into my mind and my heart. Something beyond my ability to explain happened to me right then. I knew that God was in that presence. I knew that he was in that room. I knew the power of God was there to talk to me and help me to get saved. So I trusted Jesus myself. I went up that ramp, and I knew I’m saved. I knew I’m saved. I knew I’m saved. So I went to church and told the pastor what happened.

And I lined it all up, but they didn’t have a Babastery there, so they had to borrow another Baptist church there in town. One of them was baptized and going to church. The pastor of that church was a good man. When I first met him, I thought he talked too much about religion, and I didn’t want to talk about religion; I didn’t know about it, and I didn’t want to talk about it. But after I found out and got to know him, he was a wonderful man, and I really appreciate him very much.

So anyway, what I’m trying to say is I got saved, I got baptized, I joined the church, and anything the pastor asked me to do—just like Brother Paul when I go and say, “You know, I want to be that way. I don’t know what I can do, but anything I can do.” If he says we’re going to go out here and drop off a river, I’m going to follow him. I want to follow him because I know he’s got God in his life. I know that he loves the Lord. I know he loves the Word of God. I know he knows the Bible. I know he knows the Bible. I know he knows the Bible. I know the Word of God. I’m not trying to elevate him above where he needs to be elevated, but I just wanted to say that. I love what he was doing, and I’m doing anything I can to help him. And so now I’m doing my memory. Where I was going there for now—I forget where I was going. Anybody know where I was going?

I joined the church—that’s right, joined the church. And he asked me to be a song leader; I was a song leader. My wife told me, he said, “Did you see how you led that song?” Well, I would give us this opener, the songbook, and tell them where I do like this when I was leading the singing.

The pastor asked me to teach Sunday school class. Can you imagine me teaching a Sunday class? I didn’t know anything about the Bible. What I knew about the Bible was John 3:16—that was about all I knew about the Bible. There were kids in there that knew a lot about the Bible, and I was the teacher. How am I going to do that? Anyway, I said, “I’ll do it.” So I started digging in the Word of God. I started reading the Bible, studying the Bible.

They were studying in the book of John. In that Bible, it’s in the book of John in the first chapter. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, the word was God.” The same thing in the beginning of wood. It got all things made through Him; without Him nothing was made that was made. I’m trying that too fast because I said it so many times again. And so He came into His own, and His own did not receive Him, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God. I believe on His name.

I studied that and said, I wore the Bible out right there in the book of John. It says, “war leaves out” over and over and over and over and over and read it and read it and read it and read it and read it and reread it and reread and reread it and reread and reread and reread. I got what I could understand it a little bit. I started going out on Thursday night and go to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and then Thursday night would be some men would go in, and a couple would go, and I joined with them on Thursday night and go out and talk to people about the Lord.

So I did that for whatever the church wanted me to do. I did—clean the building, do whatever was there to be done. I would volunteer and do it. The pastor would ask me to do things, and I would do it, be glad to do it. I did it for seven years. In that period of time, I felt God was asking me to preach, and I said, “Lord, I don’t know how to preach. How in the world could I ever preach? I don’t even know how to spell preacher. How could I preach?” They kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

When I left the scene, the church was closing; it had come time for the church to close. The pastor said, “Well, Dillon, says, you know, the song leader, would you close in prayer?” I said, “Sure.” So I got done with the songs, I started to close it out in prayer, and I tried to bow my head and pray, and after everybody had prayed, I said—the words I couldn’t say anymore, I hadn’t stopped. I said, “Pastor, I can’t close it in prayer until I say something.” He said, “What do you want to say?” I want to say, “I want to say, I’ve been called to preach.” He said, “Go ahead and say it.” I said to the folks there, “I don’t know how to say this, but I feel God’s calling me to preach, and I don’t know what to do about it except to say, I will do it.”

What I’m trying to say, folks, is my life is no better than anybody else’s life. Now, as good as a lot of people, I know I’m saved. God can save anybody that will trust Him. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. Whoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. There are three parts to a gift. We think about Christmas. And we could talk, all of us could talk a lot about Christmas and how the world goes on with Christmas, but three parts about a gift. How do you know three parts? Anyone know three parts about a gift? No? Well, let me say it like this. And I—I myself—I didn’t create this, or, anyway, I read it. That’s good. Number one, three parts of the gift. Number one is the giver, that’s God. Number two is the gift, that’s Jesus. Number three is the receiver, God’s saved. Three parts to the gift, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And then it says, “By grace you are saved through faith, and that is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” So the gift takes three parts: the giver, that’s God Almighty, or God so loved the world. Then there’s the gift, that’s Jesus. He gave His son, Jesus. And then He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him, but as many as received Him—the receiver, the sinful person that receives the Lord Jesus Christ—three parts of that gift. You’ve got to have those three parts of Him to be saved.

Someone asked me, says, “Well, I want to baptize my baby.” I said, “Well, I don’t know why you want to baptize my baby. And I don’t know if we need to talk to you or not, but I said, go talk to Brother Paul. She lives down the street here.” I said, “Go and talk to Brother Paul at the church and see what he’d tell you about it.” She said, “Will he help you?” I knew what he would tell her. If he talked to them, he would be talking about how to be saved and to trust the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved through Him. Can I walk down here again, Brother Paul? I have a preacher in all kind of situations.

I’m trying to say this because I want you to know that, though I don’t have a real good Bible message this evening, I have taken the Bible, held it up in front of people, stood out in the public. Long story short again, we moved back to my apartment. My wife doesn’t know where we live in Tennessee, but we moved to Tennessee in '70. For me being back to Tennessee, I took off with another boy. A young boy, I hitched a ride on my thumb. Called a ride in Murfreesboro because the police were after me. I thought I had done some things that I shouldn’t have done. Put me in jail. My dad went and talked to the judge. The judge let me out. He said, “You’re going to have a trial Wednesday.” You know, come to be in the trial Wednesday. Before Wednesday came, I took off. I wound up in Toledo, Ohio. I didn’t know where to hear of him. The guy that gave us the ride—that’s where he was going, so that’s where we went.

My love in Cleod, Ohio. My cousin, my cousin went with him. My cousin liked to drink a lot. I didn’t like to drink. My dad was a drinker. I’m not saying that being me and this. My dad—I love my dad today—but he drank a lot. Anyway, my cousin liked to drink. I didn’t like to drink. I drank a little bit. And anyway, we got up there. We got us a job with the railroad place and went to work, and then we got some place to live. He and another guy went out and robbed a man. My jacket. He said, “Frank”—my name is Frank William Franklin Dillon. He called me Frank, you know, man, young boy—“Frank, can I have, can I wear your jacket?” I said, “Yeah, you can wear it.” And you’re going to go this? I know I don’t want to go. I stayed in the motel or a hotel room. And the police came down at that bar the next night; we were there. And I had on that jacket—I had on my jacket, had a white top, a black jacket with a white top to it. The police came over and said, “Where did you get that jacket?” I told him where I got it; I bought it. They said, “Well, you’ve been wearing it every day?” “No, I don’t wear it once in a while.” He put me in jail right then. I got down in jail, “Why did you put me in jail?” Because you robbed a man before we understood. They started to ask me a question. I answered every question I could, the best I could, honestly as I could know how to answer it. Pretty simply, they let me go and put my cousin Charlie in the deal. He’s the one who robbed the man. What I’m trying to say is that…

I’m trying to think again. Anybody here 80 years old tonight? Anybody here 80? Anybody 80? Well, Frank, you’re at 79, aren’t you? Pretty soon you’re going to get like me. You’re going to stand up in front of people. Then when I ask you to give a testimony, I’m going to say, “I forgot.”

Thank you for being kind to me and for the smile on your face. I like your smile on your face. That man, Melrose, I want to copy him. He plays a guitar like I want to play a guitar. He does a wonderful job playing a guitar. Amen.

What I’m trying to say, folks, is I’m glad I’m a child of God. I may not be able to remember the scripture like I used to. I used to kind of brag on myself; I could memorize a lot of scripture, and I didn’t preach, I could use those scriptures. My wife said, “Boy, you use a lot of scriptures.” I said, “I do.” She said, “Yes, you used a lot of scripts today. You didn’t read them?” “No, you read it right off the top of your brain.” And anyway, I’m just trying to say that. Thanks the Lord for what He’s done in my life. Took an old boy that didn’t know anything about anything.

Put him on a trail to Toledo, Ohio. Got in Toledo, Ohio, got a family after a while. And people came down wanting their family to go to church, wanting me to go to church. Found out about church, found out about church, heard the Word of God. You know, this—let me say this about all this: I believe a person gets saved when they trust the Lord Jesus Christ. However they trust the Lord is for it, if they are sincere about it—how it moves them, I can’t judge, I don’t judge that—but I don’t like easy-believism. You know what I’m talking about? Easy-believism. People say, “Oh yeah, I believe in Jesus,” but nothing ever happens in their life. Nothing ever changes in their life. That’s the alcohol easy-believism. Well, God didn’t give me easy-belief; He knocked me down. Thank God I got back up, trusted the Lord Jesus, my Savior, and I was born again, a child of God.

I worked, and one day I was working on this big building, and guys were out there, and they were cursing and talking real bad. And I went in the car and got my Bible out in front of a crowd of God and preached the Word of God to them. After lunch—that was at lunchtime—they were sitting over at our table. And then after all that happened, the boss man came around and said, “Don’t do that again.” That’s why I’m preaching the Word of God. We moved over to Cleveland, Tennessee. I started a church over there. I got me a break in the band. I pulled me inside of that van, “Wheels for Jesus.” “Wheels for Jesus.”

Wherever I went, I had a P.A. system put on it. Big speakers right up on the back of the bumper. They’d go up in the air. I’d raise them up. I’d go to a housing project, on a square, in different places. I’d raise them up in the air. I had a microphone in my hand, and I’d preach the Word of God. Well, no great preacher, but I preached about Jesus being saved. I knew the scriptures about being saved. I preached about being saved. Some people came by and threw money at me. Some people got saved.

What am I saying that for? I’m saying that what God did for me, He can do for anybody. What I’m saying is that old boy didn’t know much about anything, but God sent him to college. I studied at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There were 3,000 people in that school. And Brother Paul talked about Dr. Lee Robertson. I have Dr. Lee Robert hanging in my—going up the steps at the house. You know what? When I go by there, you know, I sometimes shoot him a smile on his face. I feel he’s there. And I want to be careful what I say and what I do. Don’t you always? I mean, I feel the presence there. He said, “I remember him up by preaching, like Brother Paul, he preached the Word of God.” He said, “Now what I want you to do, folks? I want to go straight down the line. I’m going to the left and go to the right, and the Word of God. Go straight down the line.”

And it’s another thing, he said, “I don’t want to see no wood on these—on these fuse.” “No wood. I want to see no wood.” Big church building, three or four thousand people went to that church. There’s a church building and lots of fused in there. He said, “I don’t want to see no wood on these—on these fumes.” “What do you want to see?” “People on these fumes.” He had three to thrive. I’ve got them. He’s a little bit up there. We got a banner that goes across and says, “Three to thrive.” “Free to trial.” I got them, Dr. Lee Robertson, three to five. And how much more time I got? Not time to go.

I don’t know. I’m a little bit shallow, I guess, in doing what I do. But what in the world can I do tonight? Because I don’t have a message of what I’m going to say. I want to say something. I’m glad to be here. And I’m glad to know the people in here, Brother Frank and Brother Kevin and different ones. I don’t know. One of the hardest things when you get 80-something years old is always hard to remember names. I’ll go up and shake someone’s hands. I’m so sorry I forgot your name. But I’m glad to be here, folks. I’m glad to be here this evening, even though I don’t have a message. I just get up and rattle, I guess, and hopefully people just understand what I’m trying to say. I like being here. I like being in this congregation. I like being with these people. I like being under this pastor. I like being in this church. I think it’s going to be a fantastic one over here. We all need to get together and follow this dear man that is up here. As God leads him, he can lead us. He’ll lead us to the honest person. He’ll lead us the way he needs to lead us. He’ll lead us according to the Word of God and will of God in his life. And we can follow that and have comfort in knowing that God is going to do something great where he leads Brother Paul.

Well, Paul, God bless you, brother. I want to be quiet because I could ramble on, but I might run out of things to say you’re not worth me for saying. I’m glad to be here, folks. I’ve tried to study something, but I just couldn’t come up with a message tonight. I knew I couldn’t get up there and preach real hard because I haven’t been living that kind of life myself. I haven’t been going out sobering like I should. I haven’t been doing some other things like I should. I don’t pray as much as I should. Discouraged. My wife died. I got offered to discourage—I got knocked down and it’s hard to get back up. Amen. Very hard to get up. One of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. I’m not complaining about it. I’m not judging God or trying to complain to God. It’s just hard for me to take that and knock me out. But I’m starting to get back up. I think Sunday morning I got it out here, and my son brought me there again. I could spend some time on that. Mike came in here. Mike doesn’t want to go to church, but he likes coming here. He likes this congregation. He likes people here. He says the people are very friendly and very kind. He says the pastor is a good pastor, a good man, a good preacher. He said, “I like it.” But he said, “Dad,” he said, “I’m just going because I want you to go. I want to be sure you go, and I want you to get discouraged and not go to church.” Mike used to be my song leader in the church. He used to be very—he went to Tennessee Temple for a while, and it was after I went to the military school. I got about eight years in the Marines.

So anyway, thank you for letting me get up and talk tonight. I believe the Lord is answering my prayer: Lord, help me to get started again and get up and preach. And not just get up and read along, but get up and preach the Word of God and preach something that I’ve been doing myself. You know, anybody can be a preacher. Really interesting, anybody can be a preacher. Anybody can get up and say they’re a preacher. Anybody can do that. But only those who are called of God, or the Spirit of God is in them, are going to accomplish anything for the Lord of God. Noise, words won’t do anybody to save anybody. You can know every kind of word there is to know, but it’s not going to save anybody. Only when God is involved in it, the preacher, like Brother Paul, gives his heart and life to the Lord, and the Spirit of God comes and works in his life, it leads others to see some results from the good results. Well, Paul, I’m sorry. I’ve taken too much time, so you have it right now.

Original File: Over the Years - Pastor William - Bill - Dillon Wednesday 121819