Music
Music
You know, every now and again you see a tremendous miracle of the grace of God
which emphasizes to us that the new birth is in fact the greatest miracle of all
and I'm not going to try to tell you the story of Johnny Lee Clary
I'm not even going to spend a whole lot of time introducing him
because he's going to be doing that as he talks to us this morning
but I want you to welcome him this morning a trophy of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
Let's welcome Johnny Lee Clary
Only an American could dress like that
Yeah and I left my pickup truck in America too you know
How are y'all doing?
I know I sound like my president Bill Clinton but I don't live like him, praise God
Well someone's applauding now, praise God
I am so excited to be here and thank you pastors for having me here at this wonderful church
I've heard nothing but great stories about this church
My good friend Danny Guglielmucci bought me into Australia last year
and began to, God spoke to him about helping to open up doors
He introduced me to Ian Woods and Hawkesbury
and we began to work on sharing this testimony throughout Australia
and I've heard about this church right when I first came over here
so I want to tell you I'm really excited to see that God has got so many people
in one place this morning worshiping him, hallelujah
So anyway one thing I love about Australia is how everybody seems to be wanting to make fun of my heritage
because I'm from the south you know I don't mind it at all
Most people say that the Americans that they see come over here all from California and New York City
They don't represent my part of America
In my part of America we're down home southern folks
Is Lenny Firth here this morning?
There he is, Lenny
I heard him on the radio this week and he was saying
John Lee Clary's in town, he's going to bring us some fried chicken over here and all that stuff
He's just dawning on you know and I'm sitting there and I'm going man
So when I walked in his office I said good day mate
Lenny I tell you what you were one of the funniest guys I've ever met in my life you know
It's something, one thing I love is the music of the praise and worship here in Australia
And so what I thought I'd do when I heard how the music was I learned quite a bit from it last year
And I thought what might be nice this year is to bring some of my culture's music over here
The way that we sing and this is a song that's off my tape that you can get in the foyer
Afterwards called it's off the tape the worshipper
And this is a song and it fits this morning with this being resurrection morning amen
And but this is the way that we praise and worship down home where I'm from
Now see if y'all can relate to this, do anybody like country music here?
A few of you, yeah listen to Lenny, yeehaw
I ought to get you up here to sing the ballad of the Beverly Hillbillies again
Go ahead and roll that or go ahead and roll the tape wherever you're at
I don't know
So we wouldn't have to live in sin
Sickness and disease he took for you and me
If we would just put our trust in him
And let Jesus heal your heart your achy breaky heart
He's the one that really understands
Let Jesus heal your heart your achy breaky heart
Cause he's the only man I know who can
Can you say yeehaw
I know Lenny Firth
They laid him in the grave for three days he laid
With a promise he would rise again
On the third day the stone was rolled away
Then Jesus rose cry-hump and overseen
So fall down on your knees and ask the Lord to please
Help you find a better way
And you'll be just fine
Leave Satan far behind
And tell him you're walking down on him today
And let Jesus heal your heart your achy breaky heart
He's the one that really understands
Let Jesus heal your heart your achy breaky heart
Cause He's the only man I know who can
your achy, breaky heart,
cause he's the only man I know who can.
Whoo!
Yeah!
All right, let's sing this last verse together.
Y'all think you know it?
Let's do it together.
Let Jesus heal your heart,
your achy, breaky heart.
He's the one that really understands.
Let Jesus heal your heart,
your achy, breaky heart,
cause he's the only man I know who can.
And if you believe that this morning,
give the Lord a big yeehaw.
Yeah!
Whoo!
Ha-ha-ha.
Well...
Oh, hallelujah.
I tell you what, you Australians know how to make
a southern boy feel real welcome.
Ha-ha-ha.
You know what, and that's so neat,
because you know that y'all can accept the fact
that when Jesus comes back,
he's gonna plant his feet on Wolverton Mountain
down near Nashville, Tennessee.
Ha-ha-ha.
Oh, praise God.
I am so excited that I can serve Jesus this morning.
I'm so excited that I could come here and testify to you
and just tell you about the love of Jesus
that he's placed in my heart.
And, you know, I wasn't always that way.
I was full of a lot of hate and animosity.
And praise God that God got ahold of me
and delivered me from that.
And that's what I want to tell you about today.
You know, I never dreamed I'd come to Australia.
When last year my website,
which is johnnyleeklerry.com,
those of you on the Internet,
the Today Show in Sydney,
found my website and got in touch with me,
and they said,
we're going to have the Australia leader
of the Ku Klux Klan on the Today Show.
And we wanted to see if you would please come on
and be a rebuttal to what he says.
And I said, Australian leader of the KKK?
I said, oh, okay,
so the Klan's now organized in Australia.
I thought it didn't surprise me.
And I listened to what this man had to say.
And as I listened to what he had to say,
it reminded me of some of that same old garbage
that I used to say
before the Lord got ahold of me.
But when I was on the Today Show,
they asked me, they said, what changed you?
What took the...
You was the top man in the Ku Klux Klan.
What made you change and turn against the Ku Klux Klan?
And I said, nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ changed me.
applause
It wasn't Oprah Winfrey who changed me.
It wasn't some genuine Indian guru
who's teaching me a better way that changed me.
It wasn't looking into some crystals,
and it wasn't dialing up one of those
one-nine-hundred-sacacot or dial-of-witch hotlines,
you know, that changed me.
It was an encounter with Jesus Christ,
and I want to tell you something.
If I could testify to anything else to you today,
I would testify to you that he is real.
He is real.
See, I had religion.
You know what I believe religion is?
Religion is man-made rules and man-made ideas and doctrines
that keep people thinking that they could never, ever please God.
They wouldn't be good enough to follow God.
That's why Paul says to watch out for that in Colossians 2.
It says man-made rules and regulations.
The more rules you make, the more sin you're going to have.
But let me tell you something.
I don't have religion.
I have a relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
He is real.
I can go to him anytime I want to.
I don't have to go through channels to go talk to Jesus.
When I got a problem, I go to the rock,
and I put my feet upon the rock.
And I want to tell you something.
Jesus' word stands clear today when he says,
cast your cares upon me because I care for you.
That's what his word says.
And I want to tell you something.
I am pleased to be able to bring that to you today.
Now, when I see the dangers of these hate groups today,
they are cults that are operating throughout the world,
and they are taking advantage of people at their lowest point in their life.
They're twisting their minds around, and they're getting them off track,
and they're doing...
Satan is using these cults to keep people from coming to the rock,
to keep people from understanding what Jesus was all about,
because that's exactly what happened with me.
I didn't even understand why I was that way
until years later when it became revealed to me.
You see, in order to fight something,
you've got to understand what it's all about.
First of all, hatred is a learned response.
You're not born with hate. Someone has to teach you hatred.
If you're going to take a stand against a clan,
and I encourage every Australian to take a stand against the clan here in this country,
the clan thinks they can come here and put up walls of division.
The clan wants to create their own little world.
The leader of the KKK says, Australia is for white people.
We want all the Asians out, and we want the Aborigines done away with,
and we want this to be nothing but an all-white land.
And this man is getting away with saying these horrible things,
and he's getting away with brainwashing these little children.
But I want to testify to you today that I don't care how big the clan grows.
First of all, they are a very small minority in this country, thank God.
But we can't ignore that fact, because you've got to remember,
even if there's only 15 clansmen in the whole country of Australia,
remember this, Hitler started out with just 14 men and women
when he started the Nazi party.
14 people followed Adolf Hitler, and people ignored him.
When Adolf Hitler first came to power over in Germany
and tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and he was put in jail,
Time Magazine in America described Hitler's forces at no more than 2,000,
described them as boy scouts playing at war, having an outing, and said,
just ignore him.
So the people chose to ignore Hitler, and look what happened.
A few years later, Hitler had the last laugh when he almost destroyed this world.
So I want to encourage Australians today, say no to the Ku Klux Klan,
say no to hate or any political party or any type of organization that says,
we've got to get the Asians out, we've got to get the Aborigines out,
we've got to keep this country white, because I want to tell you something.
In Acts 17 26, it says, from one blood, God made all nations of people
to dwell on the face of this earth.
The word nations comes from the Greek word ethnos, meaning ethnic, meaning race.
From one blood, God made all races of people.
When Jesus went to that cross and shed his blood for people on that cross,
he didn't say, I'm dying for white people only, he shed his blood for all people.
And this, and let me tell you something, any organization that says,
there's them and there's us, they are going against what the Word of God says.
1 John 4, 20 through 21 says, if a man says he loves God and hates his brother,
he is a liar.
For how could he love God who he has never seen and hate his brother who he has seen?
This commandment we have from him that whoever loves God must also love his brother.
We're given that commandment.
We've got to follow orders from headquarters.
And that means whether we like it or not, that person sitting next to you
is your brother and sister in the Lord.
And we've got to take a stand for Jesus Christ.
That's the only hope.
You see, I didn't have much hope as a child because I was taught hatred.
At five years old, growing up in Dell City, Oklahoma, I thought that everybody was white.
I thought that every human being on this earth was white
till I seen a black person for my very first time.
And I was amazed.
And I looked at my father and I seen this black man coming out of the store
and I said, look daddy, there's a chocolate covered man.
I go, that man's made out of chocolate.
Chocolate man, daddy, chocolate man.
And my dad looked at me and he said, son, that's not a chocolate covered man.
That is a nigger.
When my dad said that word, he planted the seed of hate inside that little five-year-old boy's heart.
From that point on, every time I seen black people, I didn't think of them as black people.
I thought of that word niggers.
And I thought of myself as being superior.
And I thought of them as being inferior.
Because my dad taught me some other things that all black people steal,
that all black people are on dope,
that all black people want to just sponge off the government,
that all black people want a free handout and want everything given to them.
These are the type of things that my dad taught me.
So I began to develop a fear of black people.
And I began to think that they were all against white people, that they all hated white people.
So I had this in me, but I didn't know it was called prejudice and racism.
I just thought it was a way of life.
And that's the way that I thought.
Now my father, he spent time with me.
He used to take me fishing and hunting.
He always told me how much he loved me.
And I wanted to be just like him when I got older because my dad was so good to me.
But my dad was wrong.
I still say to this day I had the best daddy in the world.
But my daddy was wrong to teach me racism and hatred.
He was wrong.
I didn't have the love of a mother.
My mother just thought I was in the way.
My mother never gave me time except to call me names.
Said I reminded her too much of my father.
My mother cheated on my father and was an alcoholic.
And got drunk all the time.
And when I was 11 years old, my whole life changed forever.
See, two years before I turned 11, my dad always made me go to church.
And when I was 9 years old, I went to the altar when I learned about Jesus.
And I gave my heart to Jesus.
But two years later, I decided I didn't want to go to church anymore.
Because when I was 11 years old, my mother left my father for another man.
Drove him into bankruptcy.
And my father faced with losing everything that he had worked all of his life to get.
I watched my daddy take a.45 caliber pistol.
And he put it to his head and pulled the trigger and blew the whole top of his head off in front of me.
And when I seen my dad do those things, I want to tell you something.
I didn't even know what to think because I didn't have much time for grieving.
Because just a few days later, my mother moved her new boyfriend into my father's house.
And started bad mouthing me and everything else.
And when I protested, my mother said, I don't care where you go or what you do, but you get out of my house.
And she sent me out to California, 1500 miles away to go live with my sister and her abusive drunken boyfriend.
And this guy used to hit me and knock me around.
He was 20 years older than my sister.
He was an ex-convict that just got out of jail.
He was filthy, foul-mouthed.
He called me all these four-letter words.
His whole vocabulary consisted of nasty four-letter words.
The only two four-letter words he didn't know was S-O-A-P-W-O-R-K.
But this man thought that he could use me for a punching bag.
And decided that he hated me and just constantly told me I was in the way.
My sister let me run wild and I would hang out on the streets until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
Hanging out with older kids trying to fit in because I wanted acceptance as a child.
And I was trying to find out where I could find acceptance.
And when I would try to win friends in school by being the class clown, it alienated the kids in school.
The teachers told me I was a hoodlum.
I was smoking cigarettes and getting drunk and smoking dope at 13 and 14 years old.
And the teachers at school said, you're a hoodlum.
You're going to end up in prison.
You will end up in jail someday.
We are wasting our time giving you an education.
Get out of this class.
Go see the principal.
And I was always getting kicked out of class and sent to see the principal.
I spent more time in the principal's office than any kid in that school.
And I spent more time in the principal's office than I did in the classrooms.
And the principal, instead of trying to get to the root of the matter and trying to find out what was making me so rebellious,
the principal used to look at me and he used to say, he used to say to me,
you know what, you're just a troublemaker.
I'm washing my hands of you.
And the best thing for you, you know, I'm going to give you detention or I'm going to kick you out of school.
And so I was always getting kicked out of school.
So I would hang out on the streets of getting gang fights.
And I was always trying to win friends by getting involved in that mess.
Pretty soon I became very withdrawn.
I was a very angry individual.
At 14 years old I liked to go to watch baseball or football games and I'd see fathers out there cheering their sons on.
That a boy. That's my son that just got a base hit.
That's my son that just ran a touchdown.
And I would see these things and I would say, how come I don't have a dad that loves me?
How come I don't have a dad anymore that could be out there cheering me on?
And I just began to just hate society and hate myself.
And at 14 years old, my friends, I was thinking about taking my own life and committing suicide.
Now I'm not up here trying to sing such a big sad song and say, oh, I had such a deprived childhood, you know,
because I'll tell you what, I had to make choices.
And there's a lot of kids that had a lot worse childhood than I ever had.
And I realized that.
But I just kept thinking I was so angry to myself and I wanted acceptance.
All I really wanted was a family that loved me, but I didn't have that.
I had a little grandmother that loved me, but she lived a long ways away.
And I couldn't go live with her because my grandpa didn't want me living with him.
And they was raising my little brother. My mom gave him up, too.
But they thought that my grandpa thought that I was a bad influence on my little brother.
And so he didn't want us apart. He didn't want us around each other.
I mean, he kept wanted to keep us apart.
So I had no relative that would let me stay there except my sister.
And my sister, she only allowed me to live with her because I would get a monthly check every month from my dad dying.
And she wanted that money so her boyfriend could take it and buy drugs with it.
So to keep from getting beaten by this guy that she was living with,
I would stay out on the streets and I would get very little sleep.
And pretty soon at 14 years old, I'm thinking about committing suicide
when I met a man from the Ku Klux Klan.
Now, the Ku Klux Klan is a very violent, hateful, racist organization.
I don't need to give you an education on what that's all about.
But they are after children such as I.
They were after... Today they go for the children that come from the broken home
where a single parent is trying to make ends meet,
where a child is not doing very well in school.
And they go after children like that and they begin to encourage them in the ways of Satan.
Because that's what this hate group is all about.
Now, they didn't come to me in the name of Satan.
They came to me in the name of Jesus.
And tried to claim that they were a Christian organization.
But Jesus... The word... I want to tell you something.
The Holy Bible says many will come as wolves in sheep's clothing.
There are many false doctrines and false prophets out there.
That's why you've got to test the word for yourself.
And I didn't realize that at the time.
See, the Klan says, oh yeah, we're a Christian organization.
And they began to talk to me.
I wrote them for information because I watched them on TV
and an older man came around and he said, son.
He said, tell me about your life, son.
He goes, what's your favorite movies?
What's your favorite books?
What's your favorite subjects at school?
He said, how do you feel about all these blacks being forced to go to school with white people?
How do you feel about how when blacks don't get their way, they riot in our streets?
How do you feel about all these border jumping Mexicans coming over the border
and taking jobs away from decent, hardworking white Americans?
And as I began to listen to these type of things, I thought, you mean,
this guy really wants my opinion?
Up until then, it was shut up, get out of my class,
go to the principal's office, get out of this house.
Kids should be seated, not heard.
You're only 14 years old.
These are the type of things that I heard as a child, see.
That is why today I have a heart for the youth
because no one was there to encourage me.
But all of a sudden, this guy from the cult was there encouraging me,
but he wasn't encouraging me in the right ways.
But I thought I found a friend because I thought he really cares about what my opinion is.
So I thought I could open up to him and I said, you know,
I seen my daddy kill himself when I was 11 and my mama said she didn't want me
and sent me out here and he said, my gosh, son, you've had a horrible life.
What you need is a family, son.
If you'll come join the Ku Klux Klan, we'll be a family to you.
You're smart. You're intelligent.
Don't you listen to those kids at school where they tell you you're dumb, stupid, and ignorant.
They're the ignorant ones.
He said, son, you could be a future leader of tomorrow.
He said, what you need is a family.
He said, the word Ku Klux Klan is taken from the Greek word kouklos, which means circle.
And Klan from Scotland, which means family.
It stands for circle of family.
Son, if you'll join the Klan, you'll have that family you always needed.
And son, I'll tell you something else, too.
Nobody will ever mess with you again.
So, man, when he pulled out that Ku Klux Klan youth corps application at 14 years old, I joined the KKK.
And I want to tell you something.
This same scenario is being used today by cults all over this world.
And it's being used by the Klan.
It's being used by Satanists.
It's being used by drug pushers and by pimps and people like that.
So what I would tell the church today is this.
When we walk out those church doors, that is the real mission field.
And there are children in every community in Australia.
There are children in every community in America and throughout the whole world that needs encouragement.
And if we as the body of Christ don't get out there and encourage these young people,
then these cults, these Satanists, these drug dealers, these Ku Klux Klan members will be more than happy
to get out there and encourage the young people for us.
That is why it is the church's responsibility to go out there and be a friend to the young people
and to encourage them in the ways of the Lord.
As I have read the Holy Bible in 1 Thessalonians 4.18, it says,
Therefore, brethren, encourage one another.
I have never found a scripture that says, Therefore, brethren, discourage one another.
We have got to train up the youth today in the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ
and let them know that Jesus is real.
But see, nobody was there to tell me these things.
And so I joined this cult and I gave my life to that organization.
I eventually left California and I went back to Oklahoma, finished school and began to recruit for the KKK.
And I thought, you know what? I'm not going to hide behind a sheet.
I wore the robes and stuff. I wore the hoods, but I never covered my face.
I had told everybody that I was in the Klan. I was the only one stupid enough to do that.
I found myself on TV every night. I found myself on the front page of the newspapers.
And now I felt like I had power because they promoted me to public relations, man,
by the time I was 19 years old and by the time I was 20 years old,
I was the state grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma,
which meant that I was the overall state leader.
I had 50 and 60 year old men calling me sir.
I recruited police officers into the KKK.
I recruited, I set up high school chapters and recruited youth
that I had people joining the Klan left and right.
Crosses were burning all over Oklahoma as a message that the Klan was now taking charge.
And people began, all the media began to report about the KKK.
And I thought of myself as a very powerful individual.
And all I could keep thinking about was how all them teachers at school told me I'd never amount to anything
and that I was going to end up in jail and I'd never be anybody.
And now I had power. Now I had all these people underneath me
and I thought I wish these teachers could see me now.
And that's the things that went on in my mind.
And I started getting an ego a mile big.
And I started thinking, I was strutting my stuff thinking, man, I've got it all now.
And I was watching a television character.
Now TV can be a horrible influence.
And that's why you got to watch what you watch off that idiot box.
I mean, where I was as a child, I'm watching a guy at 19 years old, 20 years old,
I'm watching this guy on TV off of this show called Dallas.
And I was watching this guy called J.R. Ewing.
Y'all remember that guy?
And I began to watch him and I thought, you know, what a great role model.
So I started patterning myself after old J.R.
I went and got me a big old cowboy hat, started smoking a cigar a mile long,
started drinking that scotch and soda and all that stuff, you know,
and thinking, man, I'm really something, you know.
And I started, whenever I'd watch J.R. on TV do something,
I would use it for the KKK.
And I became ruthless and powerful like this guy did.
And I began to build that organization.
And I thought of myself and I thought, you know what, power is what it takes.
Now through all this, I had a little grandmother that reminded me of another TV character.
She reminded me of Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies.
And she would get up in the morning and she would read her Bible and read the newspaper.
And it would break her little heart when she would, I called her Nan-Nan,
and it would break her little heart when she would open up the newspaper
and see her grandson in the paper recruiting for the KKK.
And she'd say, Johnny, it's not right to belong to that mess.
It's not right to hate people like that because of the color of their skin.
And I'd say, oh, you just don't understand. You don't understand.
I said, I'm going to be governor of Oklahoma someday, Nan-Nan.
And she'd look at me and she'd say,
you wouldn't make a pimple on a governor's behind, boy.
But she said, if you're going to continue to follow this mess in the Ku Klux Klan,
I'll go pray for you.
Let me tell you something.
You cannot discount the prayers of them little grandmothers.
They are the best prayer warriors that you could ever possibly want on your side
because they will bombard the gates of heaven until they get an answer.
If you got a praying grandmother, be thankful for that.
And my grandmother went off to pray and I said, that's fine.
You know, I'm going to continue to do it.
She just, you know, she'll learn one of these days.
And I started thinking to myself, it's really so powerful.
Nobody could bring me down.
And then one day I got an invitation to appear on a national radio talk show.
And I wanted to impress my imperial wizard.
He said, maybe I ought to go on this show instead.
I said, no, no, I can handle it.
You watch. I'll get us all kinds of recruit.
You watch it. Just give me this chance.
I could do it. He goes, all right, Johnny.
And I'm sitting there thinking, man, I can't wait.
Now, see, I was known in Oklahoma, but I wasn't known in the other states across the nation.
And now here's my big chance to address the nation on a two-hour radio show.
But what they did, they turned around and they invited somebody else to be on the show.
And that was a protege of Dr. Martin Luther King's named Reverend Wade Watts.
Some of you might recognize that name.
He was one of the nation's most famous civil rights leaders in America.
This man was a black man that pastored a black Baptist church in Oklahoma.
He was the president of the National Advancement for the Association of Colored People.
And he helped Dr. Martin Luther King pioneer the civil rights movement.
And they invited him to be on to debate me.
And they said, this is the first time in history we're going to have a leader of the clan come face to face with a black civil rights leader.
Now, I started thinking to myself, I thought, what would Reverend Watts look like?
Now, Martin Luther King was once asked by someone, why do men hate one another?
Martin Luther King said, men hate one another because they fear one another.
And they fear one another because they do not know one another.
And they do not know one another because they are separated.
My friends, if we continue to separate ourselves from people who appear to be different, we'll always have a fear in our heart.
And you know what? The word says God has not given us the spirit of fear, but one of power and of love and of a sound mind.
So because God didn't give us fear, if God didn't give it to us, that means Satan gave it to us.
And we don't need anything in our life that Satan wants to deal to us.
Second Timothy 1, 7 says, God has not given us the spirit of fear, so we don't need to receive it if it didn't come from God.
But my friends, I received that spirit of fear and my ignorance came.
I started fearing black people and I thought that this Reverend Wade Watts, I had never met the man,
and I thought that he would come into the studio with an afro this big.
And I figured he'd have a pair of black sunglasses on and a sarcastic look on his face.
And he'd have a big old African dashiki on with a big button on that said, I hate honkies.
And he'd have bones hanging around his neck.
And he'd come in there, you know, he'd come bopping in there with a big old boom box on his shoulder playing the theme from Shaft.
And then he'd pull out a switch blade and flash it at me and go, black is beautiful, white boy.
I hate whitey. Burn baby, burn. Kill whitey, kill whitey.
Now that's what I thought I was going to see.
I'll cut you up, white boy, if you say something smart to me.
And I thought, that's what, you know, I'll tell you what.
If this old boy starts a problem with me and he pulls that switch blade out on me and starts that black power stuff,
we're going to have a good old fashioned Oklahoma slobberknocker.
Y'all know what a slobberknocker is?
Have you ever heard that expression? I hit somebody so hard I knocked the slobber out of them.
That's a slobberknocker.
So I said, all right, we're going to have a good old fashioned slobberknocker, you know.
I said, I'm going to hit that boy so hard he'll wish he was on the moon, you know.
So I'm sitting there and I'm ready and they go, here comes Reverend Watts now.
And I'm going, oh, and the door opens up.
And man was I in for a shock when a nicely dressed black man come walking in wearing a suit and a tie.
And he was carrying a sword. All right.
He was carrying the two edged sword of God called the Holy Bible.
And he comes walking up to me and he goes, hello there, Mr. Clary.
I'm Reverend Wade Watts and I just want to tell you that I loves you and Jesus loves you.
Now, now I, you know, I'm just sitting there going, uh, you know, and I'm shaking his hand.
I'm not knowing what to think, you know.
And then I realized I broke a Klan rule. The Klan rules say never touch a black person.
The physical touch of a Negro means pollution.
And I had shaken this black man's hand for the first time I touched a black person.
I stopped it. I looked at my hand and he goes, don't worry Johnny, it don't come off.
And I go, you communist agitator, you no good commie black bleep, bleep, bleep, blank, blank, blank.
You mother blank. You bleep this. You bleep that.
And he looks at me and he goes, God bless you, Johnny.
Jesus loves you.
And I mean, this stuff is going on and on, you know, in the debate.
And I finally, I get the debate around and I said, you know what, I'm going to tell you something.
I said, God did never intended, God never intended for our races to be together.
He separated the races. He made all you colored people and he put you over in Africa where you belong.
And he made all of us good, decent white folks and he put us here in the United States of America where we belong.
And I said, he never intended for the two races to come together.
And I said, so, I said, the next thing you know, if we continue to live together on the same continent,
the kids will intermarry with one another and God will never forgive a white woman for having a colored baby.
I said, because he doesn't want mixed marriages.
And Reverend Watts says, Johnny, you seem to be speaking an awful lot for God.
He goes, you know, I've read that Bible from Genesis to Revelation so many times I can't count.
Would you please enlighten me and give me an education because I guess I missed it somewhere down the line.
I never read what God said those things.
So would you please give me an education to tell me where God said all those things.
The Negroes and whites are supposed to stay away from one another and God doesn't want blacks and whites intermarrying.
And I said, I didn't bring a Bible down here with me tonight, Watts.
And he goes, well, here son, you're so welcome to use mine.
And I said, that's the black Bible. I'm not going to use that, you know.
And he said, now look, Johnny, he said, just tell me what I said.
All right, I'll tell you what I said.
I don't know where the scriptures at, but I could quote it for you were God tells blacks and whites to stay away from one another.
He goes, well, please do, Johnny.
I said, the scripture where God tells blacks and whites to stay away from one another is the one that says,
What fellowship hath light with darkness come out from among them and remain separate, saith the Lord.
And he looked at me like many of you are looking at me right now.
And he says, Johnny, that's the trouble with this world today.
People misquote that Bible. They'll quote out of that Bible. They don't even know what it is.
There's a quote. He says, first of all, he says, the second Corinthians six, 14, it says,
What fellowship hath the believer with the nonbeliever?
What fellowship hath Jesus with the devil?
What fellowship hath sin with righteousness?
What fellowship hath light with darkness come out from among them and remain separate, saith the Lord.
He's not talking about Negroes and whites.
And you don't think that God wants interracial marriages. I said, that's right.
He goes, have you ever heard of a man by the name of Moses, Johnny?
And I said, of course I've heard of Moses. I'm not stupid.
And he goes, well, Johnny, what color would you say an Ethiopian is?
And I said, now they're from Africa and they're black as the ace of spades.
But don't you dare try to tell me Moses was an Ethiopian
because every picture I've ever seen of Moses, he was white.
And he said, Johnny, I'm going to agree with you.
I'm going to believe that Moses was white with you. Okay? Does that satisfy you?
I said, yeah, it sure does. We finally agree on something.
He goes, all right, Johnny, in Numbers 12, Moses married an Ethiopian, black as the ace of spades woman.
And Moses had a sister that reminds me of you. Her name was Miriam.
And she didn't think the races ought to intermingle either.
So Miriam spoke out against it. And when Miriam spoke out against it,
God put a leprosy on her and that was for speaking against it.
Put a disease on her body.
So you can imagine what God's going to do to you if you don't stop this nonsense.
I jumped up and I said, that's it.
You know, after the debate was over, I walked out to the lobby and he follows me out there.
He goes, now, Johnny, wait a minute.
And he takes me by the arm and I go, hey, you ain't supposed to touch a white person's clothes with a white person in them.
And he says, Johnny, he says, before you go, I just want to show you something.
And his wife, Betty, was sitting there holding this little baby.
He says, honey, give me that baby.
And she hands him this little baby girl.
And I go, uh-huh, that's one of them half white and half black children, isn't it?
That's one of them little cocoa colored kids.
I said, you see, they're half ape and half human being.
They're genetic freaks because of an interracial marriage.
Look at that genetic freak.
He goes, Johnny, yes, this baby is half white and half black.
Both of her parents were 16.
When this baby was born, they couldn't take care of this baby.
And the boy's parents said, we don't want to raise no white baby in our home.
And the girl's parents said, we don't want to raise no black baby in our home.
He said, Johnny, hate comes in all colors.
And this little baby was being punished and being rejected because of the color of her skin, something that she had no say so about whatsoever.
She could not pick her parents.
She could not pick who her parents would be.
She could not choose the color of her skin.
She had to go with what was given to her.
And Johnny, this baby was being punished and rejected because of the color of her skin.
And that isn't right.
And they gave her up for adoption.
So Johnny, when I went and seen this baby, he says, I didn't see a black baby.
And you know what, Johnny, I looked at the baby and I didn't see a white baby either.
What I seen was one of God's children, a baby that needed a father to love her.
So Johnny, I adopted this baby.
This is my baby now and I think she's beautiful, Johnny.
Johnny, would you look at this baby?
Johnny, how could you hate this baby?
This baby don't hate you.
She don't even know what hate is.
And I looked at the baby and it began to make sense what he said to me.
And I was staring at the baby and the baby was staring back at me.
And then the baby looks at me while I'm thinking, wow, what am I doing?
This baby can't help what color she is.
And then I look at the baby and the baby smiles at me.
And all of a sudden I felt something choking up inside of me.
And then I, oh, wait a minute, I said, I can't talk to you anymore.
Get away from me.
And I started walking away.
He goes, well, Johnny, no matter what you say to me, no matter what you do to me,
you can't do enough to me to make me hate you.
I'm going to love you and I'm going to pray for you whether you likes it or not.
I said, fine, you do that.
You do that.
We'll see about that.
And I called the boys together and I said, he embarrassed your leader.
What are you going to do about it?
They said, we'll take care of it.
So the Ku Klux Klan set Reverend Watts's church on fire.
And then we started driving by his house all hours of the night calling him names,
parading out there in front of his house with our sheets on.
Come on out here, boy.
We got something for you.
He called the sheriff.
The sheriff, Ku Klux is right out here in front of my house.
The sheriff said, have they done anything?
They've got just as much right to walk on the streets as you have.
Don't wake me up in the middle of the night no more.
Click.
The sheriff was one of us.
So we got away with whatever we wanted to.
And then I'd call him up in the middle of the night and I'd say, hey, boy.
And I disguised my voice so he couldn't recognize it.
Hey, boy, we're watching you.
Be afraid.
Be real afraid.
Because when you least expect it, we're coming to get you.
And he'd go, hello, Johnny.
I am so honored a man like you would take the time to call me.
Because dear Lord Jesus, I want you to touch this boy's heart.
I want you to take that hate out of his heart.
And I go, click.
I hung up the phone, you know.
The Klan would say, why did you hang up?
I go, he's calling on Jesus again.
I hate to stand that.
He needs to leave Jesus out of this.
And then one day we thought we had him.
We caught him going into a restaurant.
And we got all the boys together and followed him into the restaurant.
About 30 of us and one of him.
Boy, that's real brave, isn't it, you know?
And we walk up there and he's sitting there at this table and he's got a plate of chicken there in front of him.
Walked up to him and I said, hey, boy.
You know, we decided that this restaurant is for white people only.
We don't want you in here.
So I'm going to tell you something.
I'm going to make you a promise.
I promise you and I give you my word of honor, whatever you do to that chicken, we are going to do to you.
So he looked at the Klan and he looked at me and he looked down at the chicken.
Then he picked up the chicken and he kissed it.
After that, I realized that day that I was an official member of the Promise Breakers.
I said, I am not going to kiss a black man.
We're out of here, you know.
You know, the Bible tells us Proverbs 10, 12, hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs.
Reverend Wade Watts chose to react, not to respond.
Instead of react to my action, he chose to respond to my action according to the character of Jesus Christ that lay within him.
Because he chose the most powerful weapon to overcome hatred.
And that weapon, my friends, is love.
And I went on, you know, after that and we didn't bother that man anymore.
And I kept on with my exploits in the Klan.
And I finally rose the ranks.
I sacrificed a lot in my climb to the top.
I became a professional wrestler.
Is there any wrestling fans in the building today?
WCW, WWF.
Anybody who liked The Rock, holler for The Rock.
Alright, there we go.
Got a few wrestling fans.
This whole auditorium, we got three wrestling fans over here.
And anyway, I'm sitting there, you know, and I ended up becoming a pro wrestler.
Captured the Arkansas Heavyweight Championship.
Bleached my hair blonde.
Started wrestling on TV.
And became known as Johnny Angel, the women's pet and the men's regret.
And then I stood...
That wasn't meant to be funny.
Anyway, I sat there and I started wrestling, you know,
and I started forgetting about the KKK.
Because I was so busy with my new career in wrestling.
But the Klan didn't forget about me.
And the Ku Klux Klan, they said, hey, you know what?
We could use this to our advantage.
And they said, you know, since you're becoming a celebrity now,
we've got a job for you.
And I go, what's that?
They go, we booked you to be on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
So you can't tell the Klan, no.
I go on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
I run off at the mouth and tell everybody I'm a member of the Klan.
And that show had 22 million viewers back then.
Seen all over the world.
I got home, it aired the same day that I appeared on the show.
It just had a two hour delay.
It took me all day to get back to Oklahoma.
When I got back home that night, I walked up to the door,
and I was married at the time,
and my soon to be ex-wife met me at the door with divorce papers.
She had had over 30 bomb threats to the house within one hour
after that show had aired.
And her boyfriend got worried about her and encouraged her to get a divorce.
And so I thought, well, that's good, you know.
I mean, she's got a boyfriend.
I want her to divorce anyway.
And I thought, that's fine.
I don't want to be married to her anymore, you know.
I was all excited, and I said, good.
All I got is my career in wrestling,
and I still got my position in the Klan.
That's all that matters.
Then I got a telephone call from the president of the wrestling federation
that told me that they could no longer use me in wrestling
because they didn't know that I was the white supremist,
and they put the word out that I shouldn't be allowed to wrestle
in any other federations.
I tried to get on with the WWF and the NWA and all that stuff.
I couldn't even get to first base with them.
So all of a sudden they went my career right out the window.
And they was fixing to sign me to a major contract too,
and they said, forget that contract.
But the Klan, I thought, that's all right.
I still got the Klan, and I continued on in the Ku Klux Klan,
and I appeared on more talk shows.
I appeared on the Morton Downey show.
Most of you hadn't heard of that show over here,
but he was the Jerry Springer of the 1980s,
and he kicked me off of the show.
I was the only person to ever be kicked off of that show.
And I appeared at more talks, and I began to appear at more rallies.
And pretty soon they decided they wanted me to be their Imperial Wizard.
So they voted me in as the number one man,
and now I became the top man in the Ku Klux Klan.
And I decided once I had the power,
and once I had the reins of that organization, that's all I needed.
And I was going to change the face of the Klan.
And I said, we're going to quit doing stupid things,
and we're going to start doing things that's going to give us credibility.
Now, I must have been living in Never Never Land
to think that I could change the organization that much.
And I called a national meeting, and I called in the Ku Klux Klan,
the neo-Nazis, the Aryan nations, the skinheads,
and all of these organizations to come together.
And I said, look, if we're fighting for white unity, we all need to unify.
We all need to stand together.
If we could all unite, then we could take the power of the United States of America.
But we've got to unite as one organization.
And when I got all these major leaders to Pulaski, Tennessee, fights broke out.
Two Klansmen are chasing each other around the table saying,
you stole my mailing list, you took my members, I'm going to get my gun and shoot you.
So I'm trying to get in between the two of them and break that up.
And then some skinhead mouthed off to a Klansman,
and I looked over there, and this Klansman had a skinhead by the nap of the neck
and was kicking him in the rear end.
So everybody ran over there and tried to break that up.
And there was a big fight.
The skinheads wanted to fight with the Klan,
and they're all out there arguing and fussing with one another.
Next thing I know, I turn around, and these two neo-Nazis walk up to these Klansmen,
click their heels together and go, Heil Hitler, brothers!
And the Klan hit the Nazis.
Next thing you know, here's these Nazis and Klansmen
rolling around on the ground punching each other.
So there went my unity meeting right out the window.
And through all of this, I'm thinking, how stupid can I be?
And I started getting very disenfranchised with the whole mess,
and everybody was just arguing and fussing,
and I was spending all of this time refereeing fights
and fighting with other organizations and stuff,
and I'm going, man, is this what I gave up my career in wrestling for?
Is this what I gave up my family members for?
Is this what I've worked all my life for?
And I started really getting sick with the whole thing
when finally the skinheads decided that they were going to gas a bunch of Jews to death
down in Dallas, Texas.
They took some cyanide gas poisoning,
and they decided to go to a Jewish synagogue
and pump gas poisoning into the Jewish synagogue
to kill a bunch of Jews while they were having their worship service.
But thank God one of the skinheads was an informant for the police department.
The police moved in and arrested everybody.
And then word came down from the Justice Department
to start arresting white supremacist leaders all over the country
to make examples out of them.
A policeman that I was friends with that was in the Klan said,
Johnny, the word came down from the Justice Department,
be sure and arrest the imperial wizard of the Klan too.
I said, now wait a minute, I'm telling people not to break any laws.
He goes, I know that, Johnny, but they want to make an example out of you.
They just think you're too dangerous.
Too many people are starting to listen to you.
And I said, now wait a minute.
They said, no, no, Johnny, listen, what's going to happen
if some cop's going to pull you over for a routine traffic stop some night?
They'll throw some cocaine in your car and say, ooh, look what I found.
It'll be your word against the policeman's word,
and no one's going to believe you, and you'll be in prison.
Now, so far I've given up my family and my career and everything,
but I started thinking, do I want to give up my freedom too?
And I started thinking, would the federal prison be the best place
for the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
seeing how 80% of our prison population was black?
Now, I wondered how welcome I would be when I walked into prison
and about four or five great big hulking black guys walk up and say, come here.
Tell us about white power now.
Call us monkeys now, boy, you know.
And I started thinking, this wouldn't be too funny.
So finally I said, well, if they're going to arrest me just because I'm the leader,
I'll tell you what, no one's listening to me anyway.
I don't care what the government thinks.
They're not listening to me.
So I resigned.
I didn't resign from the Klan.
I just decided I didn't want to be the leader.
When I resigned from being the leader,
they all started turning on me and calling me race traitor.
They used part of my story for that movie American History X,
some of you might have seen,
and when the guy decides he doesn't want in the organization anymore,
all of his friends turn on him and they recreated that scene,
and that's exactly what they did to me.
They all started turning on me and telling me I was a race traitor.
Now, these were the people who said they would always be my family
and they would be there for me no matter what when I was 14 years old.
These are the people I went fishing with, I went hunting with,
I had them in my home, and I did everything for them.
Whenever they would be without money,
if they'd lose a job or something and hit on hard times,
I'd take them around bags of groceries.
I'd go help them get their car in the middle of the night if their car broke down,
but now they started hanging up the phone on me saying, you're a traitor.
So now I didn't have any family left, I didn't have any friends left,
didn't have nothing left, no job, no nothing.
And all of a sudden I had bills piling up that I had to pay,
and I tried to get a job and nobody would give me a job.
And finally I was faced with a decision.
Did I want to be a hobo, sleeping on a park bench and being a homeless person,
asking people for money on the street?
No, I wasn't going to let that happen because I had too much pride.
I said, I know what I'll do, I'll do what my daddy did,
and I don't have to worry about where my next meal comes from.
So I took a gun and I put a bullet in the gun and said,
one bullet is all it takes, and decided to just blow my head off.
Because I figured I'd lost my life anyway,
and I didn't have any chance at anything anymore.
I had sunk to rock bottom and hit my lowest.
But something, as I was sitting there that night reflecting on my life,
I kept thinking about my dad.
And I had all these memories of my dad,
and I kept thinking about how he killed himself,
but I also thought about how my dad sent me to church.
And it was real eerie because I began to think about my dad
telling me to go to church and things, and I looked over,
and there sat the Holy Bible.
It had dust all over it, and I hardly ever opened it.
And I sat down in the gun, and for some reason,
I just reached down and picked up the Bible and opened up the Bible.
And my friends, nobody could tell me to this day that it was just a coincidence
that when I opened up the Bible, it fell open to Luke chapter 15,
the story of the prodigal son.
And as I began to read this story about a young man who thought it was boring,
working for his dad, and he demanded his inheritance and said,
I'm going to go out and see the world.
His dad would never violate the free will of his son,
and although it broke his dad's heart,
he gave his son what he asked, and his son left the family,
forsook his family and went out to chase the women
and to seek his power and his glory with all of his friends.
And I thought, yeah, I know.
As I began to read that, I could really relate to that.
And then I thought of something.
I thought of something how I used to think,
yeah, I always thought it was boring going to church anyway when I was a kid
and things like that, you know, and I started thinking.
I turned my back.
There was a few times as a teenager I went into church,
but I used to think it was boring.
I used to think, man, church has got to be one of the most boringest places.
There's a whole world to see out there.
I want to live for partying, and I want to have a good time and do things my way.
And that's the type of things that I thought in my mind.
But as I was reading about this young man, he tried to do things his way too.
And a great famine hit the land.
There was no money for him, finally, because he opened up his wallet
and all of his inheritance.
He had spent all of his inheritance and his money was gone.
And when his money was gone, his girlfriends were gone.
When his money was gone, his friends were gone.
And then everybody was trying to fend for themselves.
When this great famine hit the land, he goes out and he tries to find a job.
And nobody would give him a job either until one guy finally said,
yeah, you can have a job slopping my pigs,
and your pay will be to eat the garbage that you give to the pigs.
And this guy found himself dirty and ragged and filthy
in the middle of the pig pen up to his knees in pig slop.
And he began to think about how nice he had it in his father's home.
He began to think about things like, wow, you know,
if only I could go home again, I know I couldn't be my father's son anymore.
I gave up that right.
I've disgraced my family.
But maybe they would let me be as a hired hand,
because even the guys who work on my father's farm,
they live like kings compared to what I'm living like now.
So he began his long journey back home, this time ragged, filthy, and dirty.
And I want to tell you something, as a pastor, my friends,
I have counseled families where a child has run away from home
and tried to come back and they were rejected by the family.
That's no kind of a father or mother that would reject that child.
Well, I want to tell you something, the type of father that that boy had,
he was not a father full of rejection.
He was a father full of acceptance.
Because when that son came back, the father threw his arms around him
and welcomed him back.
And he looked at his father and he said,
father, I've sinned against you and I've sinned against heaven.
I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
And the father looks at him and didn't even acknowledge what he said.
He turns around and tells his hired help, he said,
put some shoes on this boy's feet.
He ain't got shoes.
Put a robe around him.
Put a ring on his finger.
Kill the fattened calf.
Throw another calf on the barbie.
We're having a party tonight.
He said, because this son of mine who was lost is now found again.
Because, my friends, this father believed in restoration,
because God is in the restoration business.
He's not in the demolition business.
And I realized when I read that story
and I began to read about the love of Jesus
and how he reached out to the underdog and stuff,
I realized, could Jesus finally save me?
And I got on my knees and I began to cry out.
I said, God, I don't want to kill myself.
I don't want to pull this trigger.
But, God, I have nowhere else to turn to.
I need help, God.
Please help me.
I said, if you'll help me, I'll go to church.
I'll straighten up, God.
Please help me.
And as I said these prayers and stuff, and I began to pray out,
I said, God, I just, please.
And I mean, yeah, yeah, this big tough ex-wrestler,
this big tough Ku Klux Klan leader,
this big tough person who was a gang leader
and was so filthy and ragged and all this kind of stuff,
now all of a sudden I was humbled.
I was on my knees and I was crying out.
And I was asking God to help me.
I said, God, I got nowhere else to go.
I got nowhere else to turn to.
Help me, Jesus, please.
Please.
I'll go to church.
I'll do whatever.
Help me.
The very next day, now listen, I was fixing to be evicted from my place
because I couldn't pay the rent.
I was fixing to lose everything.
The repo man was looking for my car.
I was having to hide it and everything else.
They was fixing to shut off my phone.
It was a miracle that my phone had not been shut off.
The next day I heard my phone ringing.
I picked up the phone and it was a guy I knew in the automobile business.
He said, Johnny, I just became manager over at this new dealership.
He goes, someone said you're looking for a job.
Would you like to come to work for me?
I said, I'll be there in an hour.
I showed up and I was there one hour, less than an hour,
and these people come up and looked at this car and said,
we want to buy this car right here.
I sold them this car and they drove off in it.
And the boss walked up and slapped me on the back and said,
you just made $500 on that sale.
Then I looked up and I said, God, you got my attention now.
And then I remembered what I promised God, that I would go to church.
So I said, all right.
I said, God, I don't know where to go to church at.
So what I'm going to do, I'm just going to open up the newspaper
and the very first ad that I see for a church,
that will be the church that I think you want me to go to.
Now you know what's coming here.
I open up the newspaper and there's this big ad that says,
Oral Roberts University's Victory Christian Center
with pastors Billy Joe and Sharon Dardy,
a church for all races and denominations.
I go, oh no, you know.
Because listen, just because I said a prayer,
that didn't mean all that prejudice and hate went away.
You know how I got rid of that prejudice and hate?
Romans 12, 2 says,
Do not conform to the patterns of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
I had to get my mind renewed, man.
And I started going to that church and something attracted me to it.
I seen red and yellow, black and white and brown,
standing side by side, worshiping the same Lord.
And I'll tell you what, I wasn't used to that.
But then as I began to read the Bible, I seen how John saw heaven.
In Revelation 7, 9, God let John see heaven
so John could come back and write to us and tell us what heaven would be like.
And John said, there I saw a great multitude that no one could count.
So the next time the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door,
knocking on it,
and tell you only 144,000 people will get into heaven,
you tell them that's not true because John saw a great multitude in heaven
that no one could count.
From every nation, the word nation comes from the Greek word ethnos,
meaning ethnic and race,
from every race, every tribe, every language, every people.
Standing before the throne, in front of the lamb,
lifting palm leaves up in their hands saying,
salvation belongs to our God.
And once I got a glimpse of what the Bible said, Galatians 3.28,
there's neither Jew nor Greek, nor male nor female, nor slave nor free,
but we are all one in Christ Jesus.
That's when I realized that this Savior,
this Savior called Jesus, accepted people from all nationalities.
And I was more than happy to go to church with other races
because the longer I went there, it started,
I finally realized that it didn't matter anymore.
All that mattered to me was Jesus as I got rid of that old stuff.
I left all that old stuff behind and I took on the new.
I took on the word and I began to put the word in my mind
and got my mind renewed.
And that, my friends, is how I overcame racism.
Now all of a sudden, I start making all kinds of money.
I got a nice job. I got a nice home. I got a nice car.
And I remember saying, God, I sure am in my comfort zone now.
This is great, God. You've helped me, God.
You gave me new friends. You gave me a new church.
I want to forget the Klan.
I don't ever want to think about the past again
because I'm comfortable.
Don't you ever tell God that you're in a comfort zone
because he will move you right out of it
because that's exactly what he did to me.
When my pastor walks out there onto the stage and he goes,
ladies and gentlemen, a big tide comes in
and it washes all these starfish up onto the beach.
A little boy came out to play on the beach
and he's seen these starfish and he goes,
oh, my gosh, I got to get these starfish back into the water
or they're going to die.
So the little boy starts picking up all these starfish
and frantically throwing them into the water.
Finally, after doing this for two hours, for two hours,
an old man finally appears on the beach
and came walking down the beach, even stepping on a few of them.
And this little boy goes, oh, sir, thank God someone else is here.
Come help me, sir.
We got to get these starfish back into the water
or they're going to die.
Help me, sir.
They need water to live.
That old man says, little boy, do you realize
that you and I are the only ones on this beach?
We're the only two people on this beach.
I've been walking down this beach for two miles today.
There's probably a million starfish.
That was a huge tide that came in last night.
There's too many for you and I to get back into the water.
We would be wasting our time, son.
We could never get them all back in the water.
So forget it, son.
I'm not going to help you because it doesn't matter.
That little boy reached down to the ground
and he picked up one lone starfish.
And he held it up in front of that man and he said,
well, sir, it matters to this one.
And he threw that starfish into the water.
Right then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said,
you know what you've got to do.
I went forward with tears straight down my face.
I stood at the altar and I said, God,
if you want me to give up my comfortable job,
if you want me to give up my comfortable home,
if you want me to go on the mission field,
I will do it, God, if it means I can help one young child
from saving them from getting involved in a cult,
if I can help one young teenager from getting involved in Satanism,
if I can help one young teenager from getting involved in drugs
or teenage pregnancy or any adult use or alcohol use
or any of that, God, I said, I will do it, God,
if you want me to, I'll go on the mission field,
but you tell me, God, you tell me.
And I opened up my eyes and my pastor's wife, Sharon Darty,
was standing there looking at me and she goes,
sir, God did not save you out of what he saved you out of
for you to sit in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
You go tell the whole world what he did for you.
My friends, that's all I needed to hear.
That's all I needed to hear.
And I said, I'm going, God, I'm going.
And I was sitting in my office a couple weeks later
and I was crying and I was praying and I said,
God, you tell me how to get started.
Tell me what to do, God.
I don't know where to go.
And I said, if you want me on the mission field, you tell me.
And he goes, are you ready, son?
I said, yeah.
And he goes, call Reverend Watts.
And I go, no.
He says, call Reverend Watts.
And I did a flipper on him.
I go, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, you know.
I said, call him.
Finally, I gave in and I called Reverend Watts up.
That was in 1991.
We did not have caller ID.
And I picked up the telephone, you know.
And I called his house and his wife answered the phone.
And I said, ma'am, is this where Reverend Wade Watts still lives?
She says, yes.
I said, may I speak to him a moment, please, if he's there?
And she goes, just a minute.
And she says, Wade, come into the phone.
This is that old Ku Klux Klansman that used to call here.
And he comes to the phone and he goes, hello.
And I go, hello, brother.
He turned around and he goes, honey, you wrong.
If it was him, it'd be hello something else, you know.
I said, no, Wade.
I said, it's me, Johnny Lee.
I said, you mean you remember me?
And he goes, remember you?
Boy, I've been praying for you for years.
What you been doing with yourself?
I said, well, in 1989, I got out of the Klan.
He goes, that's good.
And I go, I started attending a multiracial church in 1990
and gave my heart to the Lord and been serving God, you know.
And ever since, he goes, that's good.
And I said, and now God's told me to go on the mission field
and to help tear down the walls of racism.
And he goes, well, Johnny, have you preached anywhere yet, son?
And I said, no.
And he goes, how about giving me the honor of you
preaching your very first time in my all-black church?
You do remember my church, don't you, Johnny?
And I said, how do I get there?
And he goes, you ought to know.
You burned it down.
And I showed up.
I showed up that day.
And let me tell you something.
Now, that was in 1991.
I had no record, OK?
Today, in the year 2000, last year, 1999,
Johnny Lee Clary Ministries was voted as the number one
racial reconciliation ministry in America.
And I want to tell you something, I'm very proud of that, OK?
And thank you.
But that was, that's because I've got 10 years
of civil rights work underneath my belt.
That was, this is 19, or year 2000, OK?
But in 1991, all I had was my work that I had changed.
And I walked into that church, and today,
I could go in almost any black church, and they'll say,
hey, man, hallelujah, brother, we so glad to see you here.
Let's dance, you know?
And they'll be all excited and things, you know?
But back then, they didn't do that.
I walked into that church, and the black people just came in
and said, give me this look.
And I stand up, and I go, I'm a changed man.
God changed me, and I no longer hate people.
Instead of amen, I heard, mm-hmm.
So I'm thinking, oh, man, you know,
I might as well just forget it.
But I decided to go for broke.
And I said, would anybody here like to receive Jesus
as their Lord and Savior?
And off the third row, a young girl ran up,
threw her arms around me that was 15 years old.
She was half white and half black.
She threw her arms around me, and she said,
I want to know this same Jesus that you know.
And I hugged her.
And I said, God, that's truly a miracle when you could take
the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, change his heart,
have him go preach in his old arch enemy's church,
a black man's church that we had burned down.
And the very first salvation that would take place
would be one of those genetic freak kids
that I used to call all these names to
and said they weren't even human.
And the very first child that would come to know
the Lord under this ministry was an interracial child.
I said, God, only you can do a miracle like that.
But I didn't realize what miracle I was looking at
till Reverend Watts rose to his feet
and he said, John, I'm going to do this.
Reverend Watts rose to his feet and he said,
Johnny, you remember 13 years ago
when we debated, I held up a baby in front of you
and asked you how you could hate that baby.
And when that baby smiled at you, you couldn't take it.
You couldn't look at that baby.
Well, Johnny, I want you to look at that baby now
because that baby's looking at you.
That same little baby that had gotten through to me
13 years before, that day I got through to her.
She came to see the former imperial wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan,
but instead she met someone called Jesus.
And she said, John,
instead she met someone called Jesus.
And her whole life changed.
In 1994, she graduated
from her high school as class valedictorian
of her high school
and said she gave all praise and honor
and glory to Jesus Christ
for her straight A average across the board.
Her whole life took on a great meaning.
And Reverend Wade Watts and I
became best of friends and we began to travel
up and down the highways together.
And I remember I looked at him and I said,
Reverend Watts, I said, what made you so sure
that your life would change? He goes, Johnny,
you ever went rabbit hunting?
And I said, rabbit hunting? He goes, yeah.
He said, you know, a hunter will shoot a rabbit,
but you never see the hunter go chasing after that rabbit.
The rabbit, after he's shot, he'll keep on going
bing, bing, bing, and he'll go on around a tree.
But the hunter never runs after the rabbit.
He says, because he knows
that that's just a nervous reaction.
He knows that when he comes around that tree,
that rabbit's gonna be there.
He said, well, it's the same way with God's word.
God's word never returns void. It is written.
He said, so I hit you with God's word
and I knew someday I'd come around that tree
and you'd be there.
You'd be there.
I said, I'll tell you one thing.
I said, I never heard anybody
compare the gospel to shooting rabbits before,
you know.
But he said, Johnny, always remember
one thing. Hatred is a sickness.
And if a man hates you, you wouldn't
want to hate a sick person, would you?
You want to help sick people get better.
He said, that's what Jesus was all about.
Jesus said it wasn't the healthy who needed a doctor,
it's the sick who needs a doctor.
He said, Johnny, he says,
Dr. Jesus is the best doctor you could get.
He says, and the best way to overcome
an enemy is to make a friend out of him.
That man discipled me
and became my mentor.
And we traveled up and down the highways
and the byways and he taught me
that good friends come in all colors.
In 1998, though,
my life began to change again.
Because in 1998,
I began to travel so much
and Reverend Wade Watts, he quit traveling with me
because they amputated one of his legs.
He had gotten cancer.
And they had diagnosed him
with bone marrow cancer, prostate cancer.
They also diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease.
And diabetes.
And this man was
fighting all these diseases. I had a secretary
by the name of Rosie Stammen.
And Rosie Stammen helped me.
She joined my board. She dated my younger
brother and her and I were best of friends.
She became like a sister to me.
And her and I were very close
and she helped this ministry.
And she believed in what this ministry stood for.
But Rosie had
had a hard life herself. She had watched her mother
die a horrible death of cancer and took
care of her mom up until the last minute
in 1982. And right before her
mama died, her brother killed himself.
And she had to deal with that. Then she went to work
for Jim and Tammy Faye Baker for the
PTL club and became a
top executive. And we all know the tragedy
of what happened at PTL in the 80s.
And when Jim and Tammy Faye fell
from grace, Rosie had no job.
She got in her car and ended up in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. And she started
working for the ministry in any which way
she could help. And then she met me
in the 90s and decided that she wanted to help
all she could to help tear down
the walls of racism.
But as I got to travel, I wasn't paying
attention to what was going on in Rosie's life.
And in 1998, Rosie
went and had braces put on her teeth.
She was a very beautiful girl. She was a homecoming
queen at her school and things. But she
always had a low self-esteem and never seen herself
that way. She went and had braces
put on her teeth and it caused a chemical, poisonous
reaction. She became anorexic,
became withdrawn, and
started thinking that she had
cancer.
And she didn't think that there was
any hope for her. And she didn't want to die
the same death that her mom died.
So Rosie, with her mind being affected
because of this chemical imbalance that it caused
in her brain, Rosie goes out and buys
a.38 caliber pistol.
And she drove to the outskirts of Tulsa and I
had to deal with suicide all over again.
She blew the whole top of her head off
and I didn't find out about it until the next day.
And I began to get mad. I couldn't
find the answers and I was mad.
And I started blaming God and I started blaming
everything. I said, how could this happen to somebody like
this? And I was
to the point to where I said, I'm going to quit preaching.
I'm going to throw in the towel. I'm going to quit
the ministry. I'm finished. I'm done.
When an old familiar voice called me on the phone
and said, Johnny!
I need to see you, son.
I couldn't tell that man no.
I got in my car and drove down to see him.
His family had put Reverend Watson in a nursing
home. And I walked in there
and he was laying there shaking like Muhammad Ali.
Shaking with his hands
like this. And
his leg was gone and they were fixing to amputate
his other one. His body was deteriorating.
And he looked at me and he said,
Johnny, I'm sorry about Rosie.
She was a lovely person.
And he says, and I know what you must be going through.
He said, but Johnny, I got something to
say to you. You can't quit now.
I go, what?
What do you mean quit? I mean, I
hadn't told anybody I was going to quit the ministry.
He said, Johnny, I didn't
take all that hell off of you all my life.
And have you put me through hell
on earth and go through all that
and then pray for you and then finally see God do a
miracle and deliver you to see you
throw in the towel now. You've got to remember,
Johnny, I'm sorry about Rosie.
I'm sorry about her. Johnny says,
sometimes we don't always have the answers. We're going
to have to wait and ask God. But Johnny,
he said, always remember this, son.
Always remember this.
He who began a good work in you
shall be faithful to complete it.
He said, there's too much time
and too much energy invested in you.
Too many years invested in you. And Johnny,
there's a world out there that needs to overcome
hatred, needs to overcome racism.
And Jesus is the only answer.
He said, Johnny,
you listen to me
and you listen good.
My
body tells me it's
done. We're finished. My mind
says to keep going. But my body says,
we're done, Wade. We can't do it.
Johnny, I'm going to give you something.
He said, I'm giving you something that
Elijah gave to Elisha.
When Elijah got ready to go
up into heaven, he gave something to Elisha.
And that was called his anointing and a
double portion of it.
He said, Johnny, I want you to take this
ministry. You take this anointing
and you go forth, Johnny.
And you preach on and you preach against
racism. And you preach against
hate. And you be an encouragement
to those young people out there. There's a lot of them
that's looking for an answer. And Jesus
is counting on you, Johnny.
He says, I'm counting on you too.
And he took that old
black hand, shaken as
it could be, and he put it in this white hand and
squeezed it.
And he looked at me and he says, Johnny,
I loved you
like you was my own
son.
And I looked at him and I squeezed
his hand back and I said,
Wade, I loved you
like you was my own father.
He said, don't let me
down, Johnny.
And I knew I would never see him
again. I walked
out of that room crying.
And a couple of nights later, two of his daughters
were with him and they heard him say, thank you.
Oh, thank you, sir.
Thank you. They said, Dad,
who you talking to? He goes, I'm talking to
Jesus, girls. Jesus
just told me that he's coming to get
me. That my race is over.
I fought a good fight. I ran
a good race, but he's got a crown ready for
me. And he's coming to get me and I get to go
to heaven to be with him.
I gotta go, girls. He's
coming to get me tonight.
And the nurse walked in and said, Reverend
Watts, what would you like for breakfast in the morning?
He goes, oh, hon, it don't
matter what you bring in here for breakfast.
I won't be here to eat.
I'm gonna be having breakfast with Jesus
in the morning.
And that night,
that old man that was so full of
love and peace and joy,
closed his eyes and with
a peaceful smile on his face,
the angels came and got him and took
him home to be with Jesus.
The next morning I got up
and I seen it on CNN News,
world headline news,
longtime civil rights activist,
Wade Watts passes away in Oklahoma
at the age of 79.
I went to his funeral and
I felt about this tall
amongst all the dignitaries from around
the world that was there, one of the hugest funerals
I'd ever seen. The governor
of Oklahoma was there, Frank Keating,
and a legend in Oklahoma,
Senator Gene Stipe,
senators, congressmen, J.C.
Watts, congressman J.C. Watts, a famous
congressman in the United States,
a relative of Reverend Wade.
All these people were there. And I felt
about this tall. The governor stood
up and said, this man left a mantle
that somebody needs to take up his mantle
and they need to run with that mantle.
A Christian man
said this over Wade Watts as
his body lay there in the casket.
I never said nothing, I just sat there and
looked at him. When the legend of
Oklahoma, Senator Gene Stipe, a man
that reminds you of John Wayne, he stands
up tall and proud and he walks up
there and he goes, you know, I guess
my favorite memory of Wade,
one time we went into a restaurant and the
waitress stopped us at the door and said, I'm
sorry, we don't serve Negroes
here. Now most people would get
mad, but Wade didn't. Wade looked
at her and said, ma'am, I don't eat
Negroes, I just came in here to get me some
ham and some eggs and some bacon.
He said,
well, we wasn't seated at that restaurant.
But as we drove down the
road, I looked at him and I said,
Reverend Watts, if
the big cowboy in the sky, the good Lord
himself, was to say to you,
I'm going to grant you one wish, what would that wish
be? He goes, I'll never forget his
answer. When he looked at
me and it shocked me when he said,
if I could only have one wish on this earth,
Senator, I believe
that I'd like that wish to be, I'd like to meet
the leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
He said, well,
he got his wish
and he goes, sir, would you stand up?
And he looked at me and I stood up
and I'll never forget all those
dignitaries from around the world that
rose up and applauded the work that Wade did.
I knew it was out of order, but I walked
up onto the stage and they handed me the microphone.
And the Senator just
slapped me on the back, he handed me the microphone, slapped
me on the back and winked at me.
And I looked out at the crowd and I said,
ladies and gentlemen, Reverend
Watts passed me his mantle just
a few days ago. Told me
to take his ministry and to continue this
fight against racism. And I'm here
to tell you, I'm not even worthy
to shine the shoes of this great man.
But if he thought that much of
me all my life,
if he thought that much of me
to look beyond all that hate that he's seen
in me, and he prayed for me
and then he helped me, and he thought
that I could carry on this
work. I said, well then, I'm not going to
let him down. I'm going to continue
this work and I will fight against
racism until Jesus comes and calls
me home.
And I walked down off of that stage
and everybody walked by
to say goodbye to my old partner.
He always called me old partner and he was laying
there in the casket.
And I seen that old body laying there.
And as everybody
walked by and said goodbye, people were
crying and things. And I looked
at his body and I walked up.
And right before they shut the lid on that
casket, I remembered something. I said, you know,
I made this man a promise
many, many, many years ago.
Before I came to know the
Lord, I promised him something and I never
kept that promise. I
promised him one day when I caught him in a restaurant
with some chicken that whatever he did
to that chicken, I was going to do
to him. And
I'm not ashamed to tell you that God has
changed my heart so much
that I walked up
to that casket
and I looked at my old friend's body
as it lay there, that casket with that peaceful
look. I walked
up and I brushed back that old white hair on
that old black forehead.
And I reached down and I kissed him.
And I said, paid in full.
And I patted him on the shoulder and I said, so
long for now, old partner.
This isn't goodbye forever.
This is so long for right now because
the next time I see you,
you'll be in your glorified body
with both of your legs and you'll come
running across that River Jordan and
we are going to have a celebration to all
the souls that we got into heaven
together. This ministry
will live on.
I kept my promise to him.
My friends
with every head bowed and every eye closed.
The Holy Spirit has spoken to me today and I do know that there are people here in this building today.
You've made a similar promise but you made a promise to Jesus Christ.
At one point in your life you made a promise to Jesus that
you would give your heart to him
and that you would live your life for Jesus.
But things began to happen in your life.
And you wasn't able to keep that promise up.
You didn't continue that promise with Jesus.
You've gotten bogged down and other cares have overtaken
and you're not living for God like you should.
You're not reading your Bible every day.
You're not going to church and
fellowshipping with Christians all the time anymore.
And I do know that
sometimes when you pray
the only time you seem to pray anymore
is when you want something.
Well Jesus wants something from you today.
As to you Christians who once walked with him.
Jesus wants you to fulfill your promise to him.
He fulfilled something for you.
He went to that cross 2000 years ago
and suffered on that cross.
Suffered the most horrible death ever imagined
in the annals of history.
And he did all this for you.
Some of you are here today and you would say,
you know, I've got to be honest with you.
I'm not sure that if I was to die today
that I would go to heaven.
As a matter of fact, I've not accepted Jesus
and I've not been living my life for Jesus.
But I want to tell you something.
Maybe you're here today and you would say,
but I've done too many bad things.
I've taken drugs.
I've been involved in things and I've done too many horrible things.
I've hated people and I've been mean to people.
Maybe you've been involved in hurting other people.
Maybe you've done so many bad things in your life
you would think, God could never forgive me.
Well, let me tell you something.
This man standing before you today,
there is nobody in this room that could have committed
more sin than me.
I don't believe that because I was wretched.
I was a horrible individual.
But if God could save somebody like me,
someone who was the biggest scumbag
that you could ever possibly imagine,
if God could take somebody like me and change me
and give me a heart to love people and to encourage people
instead of hate them and discourage them,
and God could give me a second chance at life,
he could do the same thing for you.
There isn't anything that you can't get forgiven for today.
Because if he forgave me, I know he can forgive you.
My friends, the time is ticking away.
We're not sure that we have any moments left after today.
This could be your last day on earth.
You could find yourself standing before Jesus.
Would Jesus look at you and say,
well done, good and faithful servant.
I am so pleased with the way that you lived your life on earth.
Come on in and live with me forever.
Or would he look at you and say, I'm sorry.
You're going to have to depart from me because I never knew you.
You never knew me.
You didn't live for me.
You lived for your own ways.
My God, I don't want to see that happen to anybody.
My friends, when I come to church,
I don't ask them how much money will you give me.
I don't ask them, I want all these first class accommodations
and start acting like a lot of the American evangelists do.
That makes me sick.
I don't ask how many people you got in your church.
I'll go to a huge church like this one,
one of the largest in Australia.
Or I'll go the other night, I went and I preached to 60 people.
It doesn't bother me.
If five people want to hear me, I'll go and talk to them
because I care about those souls.
We don't have that much time left.
Friends, there is no guarantee here.
This being Easter Sunday, the year 2000,
won't you fulfill your promise to Jesus?
If you're here today, every head in here is bowed,
every eye is closed.
I'm going to ask for a show of hands.
If you're here today and you would say,
I'm not living for God,
I went back on my promise and I haven't fulfilled my promise.
At one time I prayed that prayer,
but I need to get things right.
I need to get back on track.
If that's you, would you slip up your hand?
Just say, remember me in your prayers.
Just slip up your hand.
Thank you. God bless you. Yes. Yes.
Thank you. God bless you. Yes. You, you. You too.