The Man Who Moved a Mountain

Here's the quick story, quick context.

This takes place in Buffalo Mountain, Virginia, the early 1900s.

This place is not like, you know, small town America, you know, Mayberry, Christian values, Christian morals.

This is a place where liquor stills ran in every hollow.

where blood feuds between families lasted generations, and where most of the time disagreements were settled with a fist, with a knife, or with a gun.

There are all kinds of crazy stories in here about people being murdered and people being killed and people being broken out of jail.

And just violence was rampant in this part of the country.

Well, Bob Childress grew up right in the middle of it.

And he grew up drinking too much, fighting too much, doing exactly what everybody else did around him.

Because that's just, that's how they were raised.

And that's what you had to do to survive, right, in that area.

But then, and this is important, Bob Childress, in his 30s, all right, he's already married.

He's pretty poor.

He's barely able to read.

He's got kids.

Well, God gets a hold of him.

God gets a hold of him through this Presbyterian minister named Roy Smith, who just kept showing up on the mountain when nobody really wanted him to.

He just kept showing up, kept sharing the gospel.

And eventually, Bob comes to faith.

God puts his faith in Jesus Christ.

And then Bob gets baptized and his wife get baptized.

His kids get baptized.

And in that moment, something that was dead inside of Bob came to life.

And we call this conversion, right? We call this regeneration.

We call this being born again, that God put his spirit inside Bob and Bob woke up, literally.