EXPERIENCE - JOHN CROWLEY

302 E. Lawson St.

Hahira, Georgia 31632

July 15, 1974

Dear Brethren of the Signs, Having noted that my subscription to the SIGNS OF TIIE TIMES expires next month, I herein enclose a check for $4.00 to cover another year's subscription.

I must say a word concerning the enjoyment I have derived from the magazine. I first encountered mention of it in Hassell's history of the Church and other works of equal or greater age. I supposed the publication to have been extinct or to have fallen into unsound hands unworthy of its founder and original supporters. To my great surprise and pleasure, I found from the Pastor of my church that it was still being published and still stood on its original platform to the letter. I consider any human effort that has maintained one belief or system of beliefs uncorrupted for nearly a century and a half, to have labored in the cause of truth, to have been blessed in that labor by a God in whom there is "neither variance nor shadow of turning."

I greatly delight in reading the experiences and views of those whom I am compelled to believe are God's people both of today and of years past, as they appear in the pages of the Signs. I seem to spend much of my time in a depressed state and I am comforted to read accounts by others who also share my doubts and fears concerning practically everything. To read of those who have already been through what I now experience and now praise God for the wisdom learned under the shadow of death is a great encouragement to me. Unfortunately, as soon as the sting of one of God's loving strokes departs, I am beset by an indifference to the things of religion wherein I totally disregard whatever lessons I learned while under the faithful affliction of God. Of all the experiences I have seen recorded on the pages of the magazine during this year's subscription, the one which I delighted in most was the piece that happened in last March's issue by Miss Joyce Williams. I was greatly heartened by it since I am also a young person. I will be nineteen tomorrow. It seems that (in this section at least) the Lord has not seen fit in his great wisdom to add many young people to his visible kingdom. I use the term "Young people" in a purely chronological sense since every child of Grace is just that, a child. At any rate, I greatly enjoy hearing of young Primitive Baptists since, as I often look about the meeting houses at the aged faces of old Fathers and Mothers in Israel, Satan suggests to me that I have only been added to the Church to watch its final dissolution as the old people pass on to their reward. Of course, this observation has been made time and again by all those kind and generous people who have been doing us the favor of composing our funeral address for the last century and a half. Thank God we have the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Israel of God.

Yours in hope,

John Crowley