I want to announce once again: please turn off your phones, if you would. Is it okay if they put them on airplane mode? Best to turn off your phones because, you know, they’re using the local internet here to translate. And with me, the folks who are translating need a lot of help. So please, if you would, turn off your phone for this brief period of time.
Well, David Peng got me in a little trouble here. You got to talking about the camel train. You guys know the camel train?
You know, I don’t know if you know this, but I came to every conference for the last fifty-one years. But probably for more than twenty of them, I was in exile. That is to say, they put me up in a closed-off shelter with the young people, closed the door, and at the end of an hour they’d peer through the window to see if I was still alive.
And when they’d seen that the Lord had stopped the mouths of the lions, they made me do it every year. So we learned some songs during that time. This is one of those songs. So I hope there’s one or two of you who still remember from those young people days.
You see some gray-haired people? They were my young people. Can you believe it?
You got the words up there? The camel train’s going real slow today. Somebody put it up there. There we go. It took Rebecca to jump off the train to get this thing working.
Back in the early days, back in the ’70s when I first started dealing with the teenagers, they were kind of a rough lot—not at all like these saints who are almost ready to be raptured. Boy, we had some tough ones, I’m telling you.
’Twas a day in early springtime, by an ancient wayside well,
Eliezer paused and rested his camel train.
He had found the bride for Isaac, ere the evening shadows fell;
His weary journey had not been in vain.Oh, get ready, evening shadows fall;
Don’t you hear the Eliezer call?
There’s going to be a wedding, and our joy will soon begin,
In the evening when the camel train comes in.
So he took the fair Rebekah, trusting jewels rich and rare,
Took her to a home far away,
Where Rebekah loved her Isaac, and he loved Rebekah fair.
Oh, it must have been a