A DYING babe. A tearful mother. A stricken father. These baited the trap for the evangelist!
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But those who desired to catch an evangelist, used a suffer ing child and a penitent woman. Knowing how the first would appeal to the mother heart and the second to the heart of a Christian worker.
The entire grotesque episode seemed it, utterly impossible.
Here, surrounded by thousands of loyal friends and members, dwelling in the shadow of the Temple walls with the massive, concrete columns and arches rising high to support a great dome and rear aloft the slender, silvered radio tower, it seemed doubly impossible.
Looking down from my windows upon the thc as I looked back upon nds of happy children trooping to Sunday School, the thousands and thousands of members swarming up the streets for the morning sermon;
Looking over the peaceful greens of Echo Park where slender, graceful eucalyptus and lacy willows trail fresh, green fingers down to the crystal surface of the lake;
Looking down upon the street cars unloading their quota of passengers at our door, the automobiles parked as far as eye can see in every direction, the serene worshippers, Bible in hand, making their way to the house of God, it seemed not
18 only impossible, but as totally incongruous with my life of nineteeen years in the ministry as would be a page, torn from a dime novel, staring up from my open Bible.
But at night! At night when the mind slows down from the tension of the exacting days, then I know that it is true!
It is then I live again those anguished hours. Lying upon
_ my pillow when the roar of the city is hushed, I am again, for the moment, that selfsame frightened pilgrim, The impressions of those awful weeks are still burning welts across my memory, and I review the catastrophe which befell me, and the events leading up to it.
OF course, a church like Angelus Temple would naturally have its enemies.
In the drawer of my desk there had long reposed lists of addresses where the laws against bootlegging and narcotics were constantly violated in that “world” which is ruled completely and unquestionably by the powers of Satan—a world which is scarcely known or recognized by those of the upper strata of society, yet a world which is very real to a minister whose privilege and duty it has been to open the gates of hope to those bound by dope, liquor or the white slave traffic.
The “underworld” is no myth to one who has knelt beside penitents at the altar and heard the sobbed-out stories of crushed hearts and broken lives which have been ground down by the ruthless wheels of this giant evil force. Being a woman evangelist, I have held in my arms scores of trembling little forms and listened to stories which it is doubtful a masculine evangelist would ever hear. To me this kingdom which exists just beneath the thinly veneered surface is a grim reality. It is a definite foe with a definite leadership, a real force with which to reckon,
Time after time, those converted and delivered from the shackling chains of dope, drink and the devil at the Temple altar, had risen to their feet with shining faces and sent their testimonies ringing out over the heads of the great assemblage, and incidentally, over our powerful radio. In recounting their experiences they had named people and places where they had obtained narcotics or liquor, or where they had gambled away homes and fortunes.
Frequently there had lain in my desk letters and notes of dire warning that kidnapping and death would result if we did not “lay off” such exposés.
The thing had gone so far that one of our large Los Angeles newspapers had published, the year previous, a headline article claiming to have uncovered a plot to kidnap me
Kidnap? Impossible! Such things did not happen to an igelist, the pastor of a large church who lived her life with people and her children, I had dismissed the thought with an incredulous smile and had laid the threats aside as “crank’ notes and promptly forgotten them. We had dealt telling blows at the underworld, but the thought of anybody striking back with a telling blow at the church had not been deemed of serious consideration.
evar I worthy
I had been back in Angelus Temple just a little over a week uut a week into which a month’s services had been packed, for, having been away I felt as though the audiences were en. titled to a renewed effort on my part now that I had returned to the pulpit. Sunday, May 16 (1926) had seen the Temple packed to capacity for three public preaching services. At night I had delivered a God-inspired message on “The Scarlet Th and had rejoiced with the many who sought Christ at the altars.
Ever since the work at the Temple grew so exacting, I had made a practice, on Mondays and Tuesdays following the three Sunday meetings which climaxed a full week, of leaving the services in care of an assista id on these days I would recuperate from the s ne previous week before E into the demands of another week, But immediately after my vacation in Palestine I set aside Monday night, May 17, for the narrative of my journey illustrating the talk with lantern slides of scenes which we had taken,
This lecture proved so popular that on the Monday before hat eventful Tuesday, the Temple was overtaxed as soon as the doors opened and a great throng was unable to get in. I rave the lecture to those inside and then, not wishing to disappoint those in the streets, dismissed the first audie peatec not I evange ingin, nce and rethe same lecture to the second. Still the Temple would old all who wanted to gain admittance, and so I promised to repeat the journeylog on the following night.
‘The next afternoon, taking my secretary with me, I went to the beach for a swim. Swimming, horseback riding and other physical exercises have always sustained my strength in my work, and but for these I doubt whether I should have been able to consistently and so long withstand the tremendous pressure which the number and magnitude of my meetings has laid upon me.
Oftentimes while I was riding or driving, a car would draw up alongside my horse, or my machine, and I would be whisked away to some hospital or other, to the scene of an accident or to some one’s bedside, to give them what comfort I could, in the name of the Christ Who careth for all.
On this particular Tuesday, as I drove to Ocean Park, my heart was filled with the very gladness of being alive, and, as even for a few hours on holiday bent, my thoughts ran to the Temple, of how gloriously God had blessed the ministry and had permitted such achievements as had already come to pass.
Soon, first of all a far-away sheen on the horizon and then a broad expanse of sparkling silver as we topped the last rise, the ocean came into view. Little I dreamed, on that day, that before evening fell the world would believe those friendly waves to have swallowed me up; and that, with the passage of yet a few more days, waves of obloquy would seek to swallow me in falsehood and ruin.
I changed into my bathing suit at the same nearby hotel as on many previous occasions. My secretary, who did not swim, remained in her street clothes.
Even when out of my pulpit, my mind is frequently occupied with the messages which are to be spoken when in it, and so, my Bible invariably accompanies me wherever I go. I carried it when I left the hotel for the beach, my thoughts intent upon the three sermons which must be prepared for Sunday, as well as some special meetings which had been planned throughout the week. We rented a little beach tent to shelter us from the sun as I worked on these and, as we sat there, we bethought ourselves of a number of pictures which had been taken in the Holy Land and which had not so far been used, but which could be used at the lecture that night.
There was a picture at my feet, too—a picture which, sitting there that afternoon and permitting myself to dream for an instant, fascinated me strangely. The wavelets came in so lazily, sparkling in the sun, and broke so gently upon the beach. Then, swirling a little in the backeddy, they receded again to sea.
Between every one of these little crests there was a little hollow, and in the hollow a little shadow. It had been that way since the beginning; the glint of the sun, gleaming light, on the tops, and shadow, darkness, in the troughs. Ah, light and darkness all over the earth, everywhere. From the dawn of Genesis to the end of Revelation—there was a sermon, brought even in reverie.
I began to write. My Bible, a pencil, and a scrap of paper. I drew the sun, a round orb, surrounded with scintillating beams; wrote down the key phrases of the message as they came to me. And then I went into the water and swam. I swam away out, leaving the heads of the others I saw bobbing like black dots between myself and the shoreline. It was, indeed, glorious to be alive that day. I swam out until almost even with the end of the pier, jutting out to sea.
When tired of that I came out of the water and sat down in the tent. Making out a list of those journey pictures which we wanted and of the special music and singers, I asked my secretary to telephone them to the Temple, so that they could be gotten ready.
Then, while she went, I left the tent for another swim.
A man and a woman were standing upon the shore, looking at me and apparently waiting until I came out. The woman was crying, and the man seemed to be greatly agitated. They came toward me as I left the water, both talking at once, almost incoherently, pleading with me to come with them.
They said they had gone first to the Temple and that Mother had told them where we were. There was then no reason to suspect this to be untrue, for that was exactly how such things frequently happened. And their baby was dying—the doctor had given the child up, so they had driven clear from their home in Altadena, some twenty miles beyond Los Angeles to the beach, to bring the little one for prayer.
The child was lying in their car only a short distance away. Wouldn't I come, and pray before it was too late?
I told them I would dress quickly and come immediately. But they were fearful that even those few minutes would be too many. The woman had a coat folded over her arm, ‘This she put around my shoulders with trembling fingers and bade me hurry. She ran on ahead while I followed with the man, and when I came to the car to which she led me, the woman was already inside, sitting on the back seat and holding a bundle which she clasped tightly to her breast.
I was in a wet bathing suit, and walking in my bare feet. A few moments before, I had been looking forward to a cool drink of orange juice, had intended to put the finishing touches to the outline of that sermon, eat the dinner which would be prepared and for which I was already beginning to feel the desire, and enter the Temple for the evening service.
Instead, I put my foot on the running board of that car to get inside and pray for the baby which I believed to be in that bundle of blankets, In so doing, I noticed a second man seated behind the steering wheel, noticed him vaguely, unconsciously; but paid no attention to him. My thoughts were centered upon that little child in its mother’s arms, and of Him Who said:
“And whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me.”
Suddenly, standing there upon the running board, leaning forward about to touch the babe, there was a push from behind that threw me forward upon the floor of the car, and the woman upon the seat dropped that bundle of suffocating, all-enveloping blankets over my head. A strong hand held my head and thrust against my face a substance which felt wet and sticky against my skin and which smelled pungently sweet. I struggled as best I could, but the sweetness and that strong hand were too much for my strength. Semi-consciously, in a heavy twilight it seemed, I heard a motor running. And then heard nothing at all!
*
When I returned to consciousness the woman who had held the bundle in that automobile was leaning over me, holding a basin in her hand; and I was very, very sick. At a call from her, two men came in from somewhere outside and stood looking down at me.
I was in a darkened room, lying upon a cheap, iron bed. A dresser, table and a cot were the chief furnishings. Boards were nailed horizontally across the window, covering it almost to the top. The cot was disarranged as though someone had been lying upon it, and the room was very hot.
When the full realization came that I had been forcibly brought from the beach to that room obviously for some sinister purpose, I sat upright and began to plead with my captors to let me go, telling them that I was needed at the Temple and that my loved ones and congregation would be frantically wondering what had happened to me.
They let me talk for quite a long while; but at length one of the men, with an impatient gesture, told me to be still. Then he began to talk, in a quietly brutal voice, telling me that they had carefully planned my capture for a long period of time and that, after waiting for the opportunity as long as they had, they intended to keep me where I was until “my people” should pay a ransom for me.
During my confinement in that first house, negotiations were carried on between my captors and a certain blind lawyer, who acted as a “go-between” with the federal authorities and the Temple. A day or two before we left the first house, the woman cut from my head two locks of hair. These, I gathered, were still further to convince those at home that I was indeed not drowned, as they had first supposed, but being held captive for a substantial reward. One of the men told the woman that if the locks of hair failed to convince those at the Temple, he would send one of my fingers, which bears a peculiar mark where it had been cut with a corn sickle in my childhood on the farm. It was on the day when he returned from taking my two locks of hair that I was told they had decided to move me.
I was in the second place only a couple of days—it was only a shack, unfurnished, and far inferior to the first—when the opportunity presented itself which enabled me to get away. Both men had gone somewhere, leaving the woman and myself alone. The men had been away for a few days, when the woman told me that she was going to get food; she tied me hand and foot and left me lying on the cot.
As soon as I was sure she had gone I managed to roll off the bed and over to a tin can standing in the corner of the room. It was a large can which had been hacked open, leaving jagged edges. edges. I dragged myself to a sitting position with my back against the can, and sawed the strap binding my wrists back and forth upon the sharp edge until my hands were loosed, then untied the thong from my feet. Scarcely able to stand at first but strength coming back to me in a God-given flood, I made my way to the little window and climbed out.
I was free once more—free in what was apparently a limitless desert!
A drooping, forlorn, cotton-clad figure, I began to trudge falteringly into the swelling gloom. I wavered, staggered over the wasteland, scarcely able to lift one foot after the other. The heavy shoes, which the woman had given me along with a cotton dress in place of my bathing suit, were far too large for me and chafed burning blisters.
How many times I sank to my knees, cupped the sand with my hands, rounding it into a pillow and tried to lie down and await the coming dawn I do not know. But each time, no sooner would I close my eyes, than the desert life would stir; strange, eerie, crawling sounds under the cactus and sagebrush, and I would rise again and, fear prodding leaden feet, move on.
Alone, there amidst the vast beauty which is the Southwestern desert, I prayed to God that I might reach some place of habitation soon, before I would collapse from exhaustion and before my captors would find me missing and come in search of me. * Heavy steps. A sputtering match. Gray forms leaping against the wire fence; and a man’s voice silencing the dogs. Holding a lantern high, the man emerged from the house and demanded in foreign accent: “What you want?”
In response to my plea for “the police, and a telephone,” he pointed vaguely in the direction I had been going. I gained the information that I had stumbled upon a slaughterhouse on the Mexican side of the international border line and near the village of Agua Prieta, I went on, only a short distance—but oh, what an endless stretch!
Dancing dimly before my eyes was a light on the piazza of a large house which was surrounded by a fence and hedge. I rattled the gate and more dogs barked.
“Help me!” I called, and a man appeared and said in broken English, “What is it? Come it “I want—police, Please—help. Have you tel-phone?” My tongue wouldn't quite form the syllables. "No, Senora, telephone across street, one block.”
Turning, I went down the steps saying to myself dully, “One block—just—one—more—block.” Reaching the gate, I partly opened it, then crumpled. They tell me that I was unconscious for two hours, and the people who lifted me and laid me on the piazza under blankets thought I was dead,
What kindly folk they were. Though they did not understand much English, they grasped my first request and pressed a glass of water to my lips, How good it was! I called for a second glass. Water and the police were the two words uppermost in my mind just then.
Learning that the American city of Douglas, Arizona, was just over the border I requested that they procure some means of transportation for me, and they quickly summoned an American taxicab driver who took me across the border to an American hospital in Douglas and called an American policeman.
At the hospital I had difficulty in persuading any one that I was Aimee Semple McPherson; but at last they believed me and a nurse hurried out to telephone my home in Los Angeles. Almost hysterical with weariness and excitement I lay there waiting. Would they never get the call through?
Then Los Angeles was on the line. The nurse came running into the room. What would I have her say for me that would prove to those far away who I was? I quickly repeated little things about my girlhood that no one but my immediate family would remember—about the scar on my finger, about Pingston, the man who cut me in that accident, about my pet pigeon, Jennie, and the cat named Whitetail.
But there had been so many rumors, so many sensational reports of which I knew nothing—so many times the word had come, “She is here—she is there.”
At last I was asked, “Can you manage to come to the telephone yourself?”
If that telephone had been a mile away, I would have struggled to it.
I could scarcely hold the receiver or control my voice in that first eager greeting. And back over those miles of wires came the voices of those whom I loved.
In that Douglas hospital, clinging to the telephone with the nurses smiling around me, I breathed this prayer of joy:
“Thank God! Oh, thank God!”