Almost every fundamentalist evangelist has a fish story that goes something like this…

Back in the summer of ’76 I was preaching a week of revival services up in a little town in rural Ohio. The pastor invited me to go with him to visit a man named Bob (or Jim, or Hank, or Bubba) who everyone in town knew as “Killer.”

Now Bob was a real sinner. He had been in the Hell’s Angels and he had been in Prison. He had tattoos and a leather jacket made out of the skins of his enemies. He hated preachers and he hated God and he hated Jesus and he hated apple pie and and he hated everything. He’d kick puppies and curse at small children and drink and do drugs and kill people. He was a honest-to-goodness sinner.

And nobody could ever witness to Bob…until I went to see him that day.

I looked him in the eye and I said “Bob, you’re going to burn if you don’t quit all that boozing and kicking puppies.”

And he looked at me and said “Preacher, I’ve just never heard anyone talk the way you do. I reckon I’ll get saved.”

And Bob got gloriously saved and joined the church and got baptized. He cut off all his long hair and stopped doing drugs and married a beautiful woman and had fourteen kids and became a missionary to the Congo where he is still serving today.

And I’d like to see anybody try to top that story about how I saved Bob.

Almost every fundy evangelist has got one of these stories but the details may vary. Sometimes it’s an old guy with a shotgun or perhaps a dying man in the hospital. One thing remains the same though, it always includes a rousing narrative about how the evangelist did what nobody else had managed to do. They’re a real wonderment.