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Ben Haden Transcription

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The transcription to our Ben Haden archive, available here in the archive.

Our speaker, Reverend Ben Hayden, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Reverend Hayden will be speaking at Keswick Bible Conference, beginning tomorrow night. Right straight through Friday, each night at 7:30. And now, Reverend Hayden. 

At the University of Texas, the main building is 27 stories high. And every day, at noon, the chimes at the top of that building ring out with the local hit parade. I used to make book on whether my team would make the hit parade. And every day, at noon, 1,000s of young and hopeful eyes turn toward that main building. Chiseled across the front of it are these words, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. The students had no idea where those words came from, and could have cared less, but like them, I was sincerely interested in seeking and in finding the truth. And like them, I expected to find it in a classroom or a library or a professor, and it was quite shocking to me some years later to find that those words were from the Bible, and that there had lived a man who made the flat statement: I am the truth. Who claimed that the truth was not a Philosophy, not a theory, not an idea or an ideal, but a person, and that he was that person. 

Like many of you, I was born in a Christian home, and I don’t use that term loosely. I mean by that, that in the life of both my father and my mother, Jesus Christ was the most important person alive. My father died of a heart condition that he’d had from the age of eight. He died in his 40s, and I can remember at the time, having a concept of hatred toward whomever took him, though that was vague. I remember now things I didn’t remember then, but I remember that my mother took roughly 18 months to write a personal letter to everyone who had sent a wire or sent flowers or who’d done any kindness at that time, some of those letters ran 35 pages. I came from a prolific letter writer, and all of those letters were designed to share her confidence, though I thought she was a fool to have written all those letters. 

1,500 miles is an awful long way to drive, particularly when you do it straight and and yet, I remember driving to the bedside of my mother from Texas. The leading physician in Houston had missed his diagnosis. She had cancer of the breast that had now come to center in the area of her throat. We had drawn very far apart, not because she’d changed, but because I’d changed. My sister was there, who was at the time, attending school at Bryn Mawr, right outside of Philadelphia. She loved our mother, but she is of a different makeup, and did not want to be physically present. So I was alone with my mother when she died, and in what turned out to be the last 30 seconds of her life, she looked at me with complete clarity of eye and mind. And she said, “Man, I don’t know why the Lord is permitting me to undergo the agonies of hell, but if it serves his purpose anywhere on the face of the earth, it’s worth it”. I never despised a statement as much, and I don’t think despised quite captures it. The word should be stronger. To me, it was ridiculous, it was unreasonable, it was illogical. Yet the one thing that I could not deny was that with one foot in, wherever one foot was at that point, she meant, and I didn’t know anybody who meant anything, very much, everyone I knew, if they had a position and it became unpopular enough, they would abandon it. If they had a philosophy and you pressed them hard enough, they’d judge it. If they had a friend who moved in the same circle and he became unpopular enough, they would forsake it.

I didn’t know anybody who meant anything. Very much she meant it. She was beyond the point of histrionics. She wasn’t that kind of woman anyway. You wonder sometimes about a germ, the germ of faith or the germ of doubt that you may have planted. How long does it take? Well, actually, her choking to death was the first step in my conversion. Though, at the time, I had not voluntarily darkened a church door for three years, and I was not to do so for eight more years. You hear great confidence about the home, and sometimes we’re pretty loose. You know, we always overestimate our homes and the atmosphere we create and what have you. And I think we put far too much confidence in the atmosphere of the home, and far too little confidence in the requirement of conversion. In any event, Ben and Ann Haden left two pagans. I did not believe there was a God, and in the years that followed, I walked as I had walked for many years, alone. I think Harry Truman comes closest to expressing the philosophy I had of life. 

When I lived in Missouri, every politician in Jefferson City had Harry Truman on the wall. They weren’t intent on the governor or on the senators, but Harry Truman. They admired the fact that he went to Pendergast funeral. They admired the fact that he always rewarded friendship and always paid off. That was my concept of life. I’d go the second, third, 30th mile. I thought it was good business. I found it was good business, just as you found. That’s why many of the Christian ethics have been adopted in business, because they’re good business, they work. Meanwhile, I met a girl. I met a girl after graduating from the University of Texas in political science, completing there a year of law and then transferring to Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, and completing my last two years of law there. I was not exactly what you would call a visionary planner. Two weeks before I finished law school, I bought an oil business, a distributorship, and I remember that that decision was made in a manner that would tell you much about my life.

My brother in law happens to be a gasoline distributor, and I had learned to guess the gallonage of stations, and I had gotten in on some of his advice and some of his problems, and had gotten fascinated with the business. And one day he said, “Would you like to buy a gasoline distributorship?” It was in a different city, some miles away. He said, “10 men have organized a syndicate to buy it, includes bankers and men who’ve been in the business. But if you want it, I can get it.” I said, “How?” He said, “The Hooker that they don’t know about is that unless the Socony Vacuum, which is now Mobil, unless the Soconey Vacuum Oil Company approves the buyer, nobody can buy. I can get them to approve you over there, you think about it”, so I did all night. I wore a wet towel around so that I’d stay awake and thought about it. And definitely concluded that, since I have a very un-mechanical turn of mind, very much like my father, the moment that a light did not turn on, he would put on his hat and coat and say, “I’m going to get see Roy Bolton”, who was a local electrician. My mother would go plug it in. 

But in any event, knowing that I was not mechanical, and that this is an area in which a mechanical turn of mind does help, I definitely decided I would not go to buy the gasoline business. So the next morning, I opened my mouth fully, forming the words no, and somehow they came out yes, and I just let it stand. That’s what you call planning. It was the same way I decided on a major in college. I lined up in an auditorium and she said, “What’s your major?” And I, under wartime conditions, had entered the university rather hurriedly. And I said, What’s a major? She says, You got to have a major. And I said, Well, name them. She said, Mr. Hayden, there’s 750 H’s behind you, and we’ve got a catalog full of majors. I said, Well, if you don’t name them, I can’t choose one. So she took her at the catalog and started reading them. I said, Good, I’ll take that one, and that’s what you call planning. In any event, I bought this gasoline distributorship on my own money, plus borrowed money. I can’t say the Lord watched it over me, though he must have though I didn’t think there was one. Did well at it. Did not like it, but did very well at it.

Then I ran into a girl at a wedding, the first wedding I’d gone to in 13 years. I preferred funerals, and I didn’t go to many of those. And I saw this girl, and at first sight, I wanted to know her name. She was with another man, and the next day, I had the worst hangover I had ever had in my life. And I got 13 different calls to come play a fourth at bridge from the boy who’d been dating that girl. And finally, I said, which would embarrass you least for me to come or not to come, you’re running me crazy. He said come. So I got a cab to this place and walked in and played a fourth at bridge. And they thought I was a whiz, until they found me playing the dummy. I can see how few of you play bridge. In any event, she said that there was a party the following week. She hoped we’d come back everywhere from another state. And so I waited the whole next week, and then finally, on Friday, very casually, called that man and said, “Are you going to the party?” He said, “what party?” I said, “the party that you know, the girl down there in Tennessee invited us to”. He says no. He says, “you know, I’m engaged?” Said, “Are you going?” I said, “don’t really know, thinking about it.” I was off in less than 30 minutes. And the third time I saw her, we were engaged. The sixth time I saw her, we were married. 

Well, the reason for that was she was out of state on a trip to Texas for half of that time. Otherwise we’d have done it quickly. But in a little less than a year, we had a marriage just a little better than him, not quite bad enough for divorce, certainly not good enough for marriage. The weekend we had become engaged, the Korean war had started. I was now classed One A, and I had a business that you could not dispose of in 30 days, which was what they were allowing. So I sought a buyer, found one, got my price, volunteered for Central Intelligence Agency, which does not exempt you from the war, from the draft, with the idea of doing something that I would prefer to do and possibly continue me if I were drafted. That took us to Washington, and the CIA is not really good on a marriage, because my wife never knew where I worked, she never knew with whom I worked. She never knew where I parked my car and when I went to work in the morning. She did not know whether I would come back that day or a week later, and if it were a week later where I’d been during the week. Now that’s not too conducive to happiness in a new marriage, but since I was in security work, that was the nature of the business.

One morning in Washington, my wife said, we’re going for a drive. I said, great. There were two other couples we knew that lived in the same area of Washington, and we went for this drive. Usually we thought it was a big thing to end up at Howard Johnson’s, and we’d drive around for an hour or so, just killing time. And as it turned out, they had all ganged up on me. They were going to church, and not a one of them was a believer. But at any event, we went to this great big cathedral. And the thing that I remember about it was, I couldn’t tell you the name of the church, but I saw Estes Kefauvers wife coming out, and she was a very good looking redhead, and that struck me. And the two couples and my wife in unison as they came out, said, “Ben, wasn’t that the most marvelous sermon you’ve ever heard?” And I said, “name one single thing he said”, nobody could name a thing. I said, “name one single thought he expressed.” Nobody can name a thought. So I said, Charlyne, my wife. I said, “Charlyne, if you think he’s good, maybe we ought to go hear Billy Graham. At least he advertises, and he’s bound to be a great showman.” 

Now you wonder why a pagan would suggest Billy Graham, because he was in a coliseum and not in a church. See the idea, many people go to a Coliseum who will not go to a church. So we went to hear a great showman, and I fully expected to be escorted up front, and instead I was escorted up back, and I was shocked at how many other people had come to see a great showman. And we went four times seeing a great showman, and the fourth time we were in the very back row of the top balcony. And it’s awfully hard to know when Billy has finished his invitation, particularly hard in those days, but I knew he finished it because he resumed his seat. Then he got back up, and he said, “you may be sitting in the last row of the balcony. You come, be awake.” At that point, Charlyne got up, and I naturally assumed that she was going to the ladies room, and when I saw this peculiar look about her eye and realized that she intended to go forward, I pulled her by the skirt, and I said, “Don’t make a fool out of yourself. Sit down.” And she looked at me as only a wife can and she said, “Ben, I don’t know what you’re going to do with your life. I know what I’m going to do with mine. I hope you come, whether you do or not, I’m going forward.” She went, I didn’t. You wonder what happens to them. She was the happiest woman I’ve ever seen. She didn’t go to church. Why? Because she came from a culture where, if you were married, you were married, you went to church with your husband. If you wouldn’t go to church, you didn’t go to church. And I wasn’t about to go to church. 

And when she would read me a verse of Scripture, or try to read me a verse of Scripture from the Bible, not trying to convert me, just share something with the only other person under the same roof, I would turn on the TV or leave the apartment. Meanwhile, I resumed a career that I had begun some years earlier in Texas, on daily newspaper, which is something you despise or you adore. I adored. I went to Mansfield, Ohio to work for a Jewish man. Who has the highest integrity of any newspaper man I’ve ever known. In sight unseen, he permitted me to train for newspaper management, holding full time jobs in every department except the mechanical which were unionized. From there to Missouri, and from Missouri to Kingsport, Tennessee. Which is a city that many of you have never heard of, but what you should have heard of, it’s the only pre-planned, pre-zoned city in the south. It has the largest industry in Tennessee, which is larger than any industry that I know of in Florida, and that is Eastman Kodak, they employ 13,000.

It was a town founded by a Christian who taught a people to say yes, rather than no. And whose spirit is as alive in that town as though he just left the barbershop. It was the first home we’d ever owned, first mortgage we’d ever owned. We loved the town instantly. She was from there. I wasn’t. And after being there for about five or six weeks, for reasons I cannot explain, I got up one Sunday morning and I said, Charlyne, we’re going to church. Now you’d think that a pagan who says he’s going to church would mean the worship service. But childhood came in. I didn’t mean the worship service, I meant Sunday school. So I went to a men’s class, and there I heard a man who was a merchant. 

The whole church today is off on the kick that you have to meet people on their intellectual level. Well, you know, we’ve got different intellectual levels. You go out here and speak to your closest friend about spiritual things. Is he on your level? I mention this because in the hope you won’t misunderstand it. He’d had 10 years of school. I’d have 10 years of college. If he had spoken to me on the level that I might have in one area, if he’d have spoken to me about spiritual things on that level, I would not have understood a single thing he said as it was. He talked on a pre-nursery level, and I barely understood it. He read from notes that size and never got away from them. The one thing that hit me was he believed it, and instantly my mind flashed back to a woman choking with cancer. He means it too. And again, I didn’t know anybody who meant anything very much. 

I went back a second week right in the middle of the class. My heart was flooded with the conviction, God loves me. I realized I had so hated him, and right in that moment, I where I was, I said silently to myself, Lord Jesus, if you want me, you got me. I didn’t know you’re supposed to tell anybody. I didn’t. I didn’t know you’re supposed to read the Bible. I didn’t. Didn’t know you’re supposed to pray. I didn’t. I didn’t know a verse of Scripture. The only thing I did right by instinct was that I volunteered to teach Sunday school, which I’d never taught, and that made us even because they’d never had a volunteer. This was a downtown church with over 1000 members, and out of 14 major industries in the town, 12 industry heads were in this single congregation. Out of 150 congregations, 12 of them were in this single congregation. So you realize the leadership involved. No one else in the history of that church had claimed to be converted in 20 years that I’ve ever been able to find. 

I don’t mean by that there were no converted people in it, but it was a highly nominal church, and the way they reason was, Ben says he’s converted, you know, that’s fine, but they didn’t know about that for some else. The way I got the Sunday school class that I volunteered for, and I found out something about Christians at that point, they didn’t know what to do with this volunteer. And four months later, on a Saturday afternoon, late, I got a call, and this man said, “Are you that volunteer?” He’s never identified himself, yet. I said, Yeah. He says, “You got yourself a class.” I said, when he said, “Tomorrow.” I said, “What’s it on?” He said, the commandment. Well, by then, I knew there were 10. And I said, “which one?” He says, you’ll find out. And hung up and he left it at the switchboard. And of course, it was a mixed class of juniors and seniors in high school, and the commandment was on adultery. So all the con-artists are not outside the church. But in any event, some eight months later, I was introduced as a lifelong Christian on a Wednesday night. And as this woman gave this introduction, I was perfectly charmed with it as everyone else was, and wondered who this man was. And I looked to my right, because she never used a name, and there was no one to my right. I thought he was going first, and then I stood up. Finally when she stared at me and I said, everything you’ve said is a lie, though I know you’re not a liar. I said, “I never knew Jesus Christ until I came to a Sunday school class in this church that was my first profession of Christ.” Then I dropped the subject and talked about whatever that was supposed to talk about. 

The man who’d been teaching that class two weeks out of the month for 34 years, was there that night. He cut his eyes rather peculiarly at me, said he enjoyed it, whatever it was about, and left. The next day, he was at my office, bloodshot eyes, as though he were a drunk. He was one of about five people in that church that I knew did not drink. He came to my office with tears, bloodshot eyes. His name is Sam Anderson. I said, Mr. Anderson, what’s the matter? I thought something tragic had happened in the family. He said, “Ben, I gotta ask you something. Is it possible that last night you were referring to me?” I said, “Sure, didn’t you know?” No way in the world I could’ve known. He said, “Mary, his wife, Mary and I went home last night, we prayed and we cried until 3:30 this morning in the hope that you might have been referring to me.” He said, “I’ve taught that class 34 years, and I’ve never led a man to the Lord.” I said, “well you led me.”

I’m gonna bury and I want to take you back to that church, and at the risk of being misunderstood, you got to be a fool to go back to your home church. You know that. Right after a very bad hurricane in ’65 in which a barge had broken loose in Miami and had broken the causeway to the island of Key Biscayne, and we got marooned on the main land, if you can beat that. We then finally got across with a temporary bridge with Army water supply, no telephone, no lights for about four or five days. Physically depleted, therefore I went to this engagement in my home church, also spiritually depleted. I preached cleverly on Sunday morning, it seats 535, they had 700 and some. I’d forgotten they were good promoters. They don’t have Sunday night service, but they had 500 and some on Sunday night.

And on Sunday night, I made the statement, I know you and I love you. I haven’t come to embarrass you, but if you have never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, would you please hold your hand up? And at that point, five hands went up, and the one thing I observed, they were all officers of the church, and not a single hand were shoulder high. And I said, later in the week, I’ll get with you and counsel with you. I went back to the motel that night. The Lord has never dealt with me since, nor before in the manner he dealt with me that night. It might explain something of me to you, and he made me understand, “Ben, if you haven’t come to be bold, shut up and go home.” The next night, and Monday night is always a horrible night, as you know, even Billy Graham doesn’t hold crusades on Monday night, they had 455 in a church that had never had never had its lights on on Monday night.

And that night, I preached on the anatomy of a coward, and I was the coward. And I said, when I said, I don’t seek to embarrass you, I said, How contrary that is to Scripture. I said, The Lord says, “If you come to him, you’re going to pick up a cross.” And I said, “Not a one of you raised your hand shoulder high last night, and if you can’t lift your hand, you’d never lift a cross. So I’m not going to beg you, I’m simply going to pray, and if you want to come, you’ll come as a midget, you’ll come up to the front, you’ll kneel right here on the floor.” And with that I knelt. There was no music, no stringing out of the appeal. And I prayed as I’ve never prayed, and I listened as I’ve never listened, and I heard not one foot move. And then I looked up, and there were 115 people on the floor beside me.

I was as divorced from that scene as though I had been at the opposite end of the stadium. As though I were watching it on television. And so that you won’t misunderstand me, I’ve preached my heart out for an entire week, morning and evening, and given an invitation every time, and had people only lean away from the aisle, so I know how much I had to do it. There was the only neurosurgeon in the town. The two granddaughters of the man who lived the Christ, perhaps the leading Christian layman in the town. That would have been his reputation, another man who was on his knees. No one said a word. I said, “we’ll go with the pastor of this church into the chapel.” And then I prayed. We walked out. There wasn’t a whisper. The Holy Spirit that night brought, broke a log jam in my life and in my ministry, and I realized, until that night, I had never preached the gospel, though I’d wanted to, I had meant to, I would, I…..