Sumner Wemp and PCW
Moody was an evangelistic firehouse. There was always somebody laying down inspirational kindling that would burst into flame and send us flying out of every orifice of the Institute like pressed goo looking for fresh souls. Prayer Bands did it. Founders Week did it. Missionary Conferences did it. Assemblies in Torrey-Gray, Harry Bollback, Hyman Appleman and an endless parade of evangelists, missionaries, Saturday night YFC rallies at Moody Church, guilt, and PCW reports did it. The poor souls who surrounded Moody and Pacific Garden Mission did it.
But THE man who owned the firehouse, the sirens, the alarm bell, the gasoline, the matches, the spotted dog, and the smoke-fans all rolled into one was none other than the Bible-pounding, tract-throwing, hell-fire-and-damnation-accentuated-with-brimstone-and-molten-lava-comedian-entertainer-and-tear-tearing-Southern-Baptist-revivalist-and-former-used-car-salesman-and-author-of-the “What To Do To Go To Hell” tract was none other than C. Sumner Wemp himself. Wemp was obsessed like a crack addict with one thing in the Bible – and only one thing. Evangelism. Pure faith and repentance salvation. Nothing else. It was almost the only thought he could think. If you went to his office on the sixth floor and told him that you just took someone down the Romans Road and that soul sprang from hell as if he flew off the surface of a trampoline, he would leap up from behind his desk – nearly lifting it from the floor - and start shouting Amen and FM and laughing like a Kenyan hyena while jumping up and down hollering “Praise the Lord’. The whole floor ignited, and Wemp could be heard from the belly of the Torrey-Gray auditorium going on about souls saved from Hell. People would go up there to tell him about some bum on Chicago Avenue being saved just to see what he would do. He seemed to live in the state of perpetual revival and Crusade euphoria as if Cliff Barrows was firing up the Just As I Am salvation stroll.
However, no matter how womped Wemp got over the salvation of a soul leaping off the floor of Hell as the flames shot up his pants, he LIVED for the one venue that drove him like no other – those Monday night meetings when he would gather the first semester neophytes into the Alumni Auditorium so he could stir up a fresh army each week in the bowl of a white hot, soul-winning Mt. St. Helens evangelistic blast that would discharge a tidal wave of Moody students out of the Institute doors and into the streets. For students just out of high school who came to Moody with their dull edge of fervor, to sit before Wemp on a week night in the first semester was like flint being sand-blasted. He began his weekly crusade in this tightly-packed, stadium-seating hall with rousing, these-will-get-results hymns. Like “Make Me a Blessing.” With Wemp leading clay-willing-to-be-molded in “Make Me a Blessing”, accompanied by some John Innes crusade type of pianist playing as if he were Rudy Atwood in Phantom of the Opera, this was the same thing as carrying a lit match into a house where there was an open gas pipe. I saw and heard Steven Nielson accompany a soloist not long ago, and I thought I was going to come up out of the church as if I had on a jet pack. Wemp pumped inspired gas into everyone of us until he was ready to hit the gas pedal. Into this soul-seeking mix, he shot the liquid hydrogen of all the usual revivalist theology stuff that had been used by the most talented evangelists of all time to lift the most lethargic Moody student off his backside and into the stratosphere of evangelistic zeal – sinners on the oil-slick road to hell, standing in the gap type of stuff, etc. After the gospel tunes, Wemp started in on us with his gift as a preacher. Like a one-man rancher, he could drive the whole freshmen apprentice herd down the salvation Chisolm Trail, through the chute like lightning was behind them, and out into the world. He threw in bizarre stories, like the one about throwing a tract out his car window as he shot at 90 mph past some guy with a suitcase and his thumb out. Wemp was late for another revival and couldn’t stop to drive the lost soul down the Romans Road. But, lo and behold, somehow this guy got the tract, signed off on the back with the sinner’s prayer, and was mysteriously led to the church where Wemp was preaching. He got there just in the nick of time for the “Just As I Am” shuffle forward.
Wemp was a hell-man. He talked about hell left and right. Campus Crusade was into how God loved us and had devised all kinds of wonderful plans, but Wemp was into hell and God’s other not-so-wonderful plans. He didn’t care about a chair or a circle or the order of dots around your chair or whether the cross was in or out of the circle. He was not a madras shirt and weejuns man. He was not into reading a little book of laws to any body because there was no time to read anything when hell was coming down the track. No, Wemp hammered on hell like a religious carpenter. Saccharine love was not Wemp’s style either. It was intense passion with tears. Urgency. Time was fleeting. Eternity and hell were a breath away. Stay red hot and on fire. Think of the souls who were going to hell. The capstone and summary of Wemp’s hell-binge cattle-drive was the tract that he wrote where the words “What To Do To Go To Hell” were stamped on the front of a pamphlet size piece of paper over red and orange flames. The unwary prospect who curiously opened the leaflet to discover the answer to that statement faced a completely white and blank page that slapped him hard across the face and mind with the reality that there was nothing to do to go to hell. Each person began his life born and strapped into the front seat of the roller coaster that was coming over the crest of the first dip and building momentum on the way to hell’s basement onto the devil’s doorstep and into his red hot arms. It was this that seized Wemp like a vise, and it was his calling to hammer that same conviction into the head of every one he knew.
Like many other students, I was an exhaust pipe through which Wemp blasted the combustion of his gospel hell-fire. One night I was with the rest of the Freshman class in the Alumni Auditorium being tempered by Wemp’s gale of soul-winning heat. All I could think was that there were souls that very night down on Chicago Avenue that were on the express elevator to hell’s furnace, and I had to get out there now and hit the stop button. In the middle of Wemp’s missionary caldron, when I couldn’t take any more, I vaulted from my chair and nearly knocked down the auditorium doors to get out of there. I knew that soon behind me would be an army of soul-winners racing for the streets as I. So I shot for the elevator on Crowell 6 and put the elevator on hold while I loaded up my pockets with handfuls of “What To Do To Go You Know Where” tracts and then dropped down the elevator shaft like a missile. I emptied out on to the dark, frigid, wind-swept streets of Chicago toward all the bums on Skid Row. It was bitter that night, and not even one soul could be seen on Chicago Avenue from LaSalle St. all the way down to Clark, Dearborn, or State Streets. But I knew that someone would eventually come weaving down the street on his way to hell. I was past Clark Street and searching for someone, anyone who was on the highway to hell. I looked back at Moody, and, lo and behold, the first wave of freshman students had just been released from Wemp’s mesmerizing grip in Alumni Auditorium and were fighting to get out the doors and onto the highways and byways of life and on the hunt like me for people who were on the bus to hell. About 25 of them stood on the corner with black trench coats flapping around them like sails around a mast while waiting for the light to turn. Hell would not wait, and they were willing to sacrifice themselves, if need be, and run the gauntlet of six lanes of traffic if that light didn’t change soon.
They ran as a pack toward Clark Street with 50 eyes scouring the dirty streets for the army of bums that usually hung out there, all of them zealous and on fire for souls going to hell. But not a soul was visible. I took another look toward the lake, and suddenly I spotted somewhere past the YMCA what looked like one lonely dot staggering back and forth across the wide sidewalk. Recognizing the familiar silhouette, I knew it had to be someone headed for hell. I looked back, and apparently the band of soul-seekers behind me had also seen the unsteady speck coming up Chicago Avenue because they were now spread across the sidewalk and running full out in a race to be the first to reach him so they could unload this burden Wemp had saddled on them. I turned and charged toward the man because as far as I was concerned, he was mine.
Within a matter of seconds, the intoxicated bum began to get clarity and took stock of his deteriorating situation. With widening eyes, he began to straighten and look behind him for help since he saw 26 young men in black coats - like mafia soldiers - and wing tips charging toward him with hell in their eyes focused intently on him and preparing to deliver some sort of evil. As we all slowed our momentum and started to surround him in our approach, we all reached into our black trench coats for either a Bible or a tract - as if going for a gun - and in unison said the same thing, “Are you ready to die and go to hell?”
The next day there were 26 PCW reports filled out, and each of them recorded that during the previous night one person was saved. That is, 26 men helped one bum escape hell. But Wemp read 26 went to heaven.
But THE man who owned the firehouse, the sirens, the alarm bell, the gasoline, the matches, the spotted dog, and the smoke-fans all rolled into one was none other than the Bible-pounding, tract-throwing, hell-fire-and-damnation-accentuated-with-brimstone-and-molten-lava-comedian-entertainer-and-tear-tearing-Southern-Baptist-revivalist-and-former-used-car-salesman-and-author-of-the “What To Do To Go To Hell” tract was none other than C. Sumner Wemp himself. Wemp was obsessed like a crack addict with one thing in the Bible – and only one thing. Evangelism. Pure faith and repentance salvation. Nothing else. It was almost the only thought he could think. If you went to his office on the sixth floor and told him that you just took someone down the Romans Road and that soul sprang from hell as if he flew off the surface of a trampoline, he would leap up from behind his desk – nearly lifting it from the floor - and start shouting Amen and FM and laughing like a Kenyan hyena while jumping up and down hollering “Praise the Lord’. The whole floor ignited, and Wemp could be heard from the belly of the Torrey-Gray auditorium going on about souls saved from Hell. People would go up there to tell him about some bum on Chicago Avenue being saved just to see what he would do. He seemed to live in the state of perpetual revival and Crusade euphoria as if Cliff Barrows was firing up the Just As I Am salvation stroll.
However, no matter how womped Wemp got over the salvation of a soul leaping off the floor of Hell as the flames shot up his pants, he LIVED for the one venue that drove him like no other – those Monday night meetings when he would gather the first semester neophytes into the Alumni Auditorium so he could stir up a fresh army each week in the bowl of a white hot, soul-winning Mt. St. Helens evangelistic blast that would discharge a tidal wave of Moody students out of the Institute doors and into the streets. For students just out of high school who came to Moody with their dull edge of fervor, to sit before Wemp on a week night in the first semester was like flint being sand-blasted. He began his weekly crusade in this tightly-packed, stadium-seating hall with rousing, these-will-get-results hymns. Like “Make Me a Blessing.” With Wemp leading clay-willing-to-be-molded in “Make Me a Blessing”, accompanied by some John Innes crusade type of pianist playing as if he were Rudy Atwood in Phantom of the Opera, this was the same thing as carrying a lit match into a house where there was an open gas pipe. I saw and heard Steven Nielson accompany a soloist not long ago, and I thought I was going to come up out of the church as if I had on a jet pack. Wemp pumped inspired gas into everyone of us until he was ready to hit the gas pedal. Into this soul-seeking mix, he shot the liquid hydrogen of all the usual revivalist theology stuff that had been used by the most talented evangelists of all time to lift the most lethargic Moody student off his backside and into the stratosphere of evangelistic zeal – sinners on the oil-slick road to hell, standing in the gap type of stuff, etc. After the gospel tunes, Wemp started in on us with his gift as a preacher. Like a one-man rancher, he could drive the whole freshmen apprentice herd down the salvation Chisolm Trail, through the chute like lightning was behind them, and out into the world. He threw in bizarre stories, like the one about throwing a tract out his car window as he shot at 90 mph past some guy with a suitcase and his thumb out. Wemp was late for another revival and couldn’t stop to drive the lost soul down the Romans Road. But, lo and behold, somehow this guy got the tract, signed off on the back with the sinner’s prayer, and was mysteriously led to the church where Wemp was preaching. He got there just in the nick of time for the “Just As I Am” shuffle forward.
Wemp was a hell-man. He talked about hell left and right. Campus Crusade was into how God loved us and had devised all kinds of wonderful plans, but Wemp was into hell and God’s other not-so-wonderful plans. He didn’t care about a chair or a circle or the order of dots around your chair or whether the cross was in or out of the circle. He was not a madras shirt and weejuns man. He was not into reading a little book of laws to any body because there was no time to read anything when hell was coming down the track. No, Wemp hammered on hell like a religious carpenter. Saccharine love was not Wemp’s style either. It was intense passion with tears. Urgency. Time was fleeting. Eternity and hell were a breath away. Stay red hot and on fire. Think of the souls who were going to hell. The capstone and summary of Wemp’s hell-binge cattle-drive was the tract that he wrote where the words “What To Do To Go To Hell” were stamped on the front of a pamphlet size piece of paper over red and orange flames. The unwary prospect who curiously opened the leaflet to discover the answer to that statement faced a completely white and blank page that slapped him hard across the face and mind with the reality that there was nothing to do to go to hell. Each person began his life born and strapped into the front seat of the roller coaster that was coming over the crest of the first dip and building momentum on the way to hell’s basement onto the devil’s doorstep and into his red hot arms. It was this that seized Wemp like a vise, and it was his calling to hammer that same conviction into the head of every one he knew.
Like many other students, I was an exhaust pipe through which Wemp blasted the combustion of his gospel hell-fire. One night I was with the rest of the Freshman class in the Alumni Auditorium being tempered by Wemp’s gale of soul-winning heat. All I could think was that there were souls that very night down on Chicago Avenue that were on the express elevator to hell’s furnace, and I had to get out there now and hit the stop button. In the middle of Wemp’s missionary caldron, when I couldn’t take any more, I vaulted from my chair and nearly knocked down the auditorium doors to get out of there. I knew that soon behind me would be an army of soul-winners racing for the streets as I. So I shot for the elevator on Crowell 6 and put the elevator on hold while I loaded up my pockets with handfuls of “What To Do To Go You Know Where” tracts and then dropped down the elevator shaft like a missile. I emptied out on to the dark, frigid, wind-swept streets of Chicago toward all the bums on Skid Row. It was bitter that night, and not even one soul could be seen on Chicago Avenue from LaSalle St. all the way down to Clark, Dearborn, or State Streets. But I knew that someone would eventually come weaving down the street on his way to hell. I was past Clark Street and searching for someone, anyone who was on the highway to hell. I looked back at Moody, and, lo and behold, the first wave of freshman students had just been released from Wemp’s mesmerizing grip in Alumni Auditorium and were fighting to get out the doors and onto the highways and byways of life and on the hunt like me for people who were on the bus to hell. About 25 of them stood on the corner with black trench coats flapping around them like sails around a mast while waiting for the light to turn. Hell would not wait, and they were willing to sacrifice themselves, if need be, and run the gauntlet of six lanes of traffic if that light didn’t change soon.
They ran as a pack toward Clark Street with 50 eyes scouring the dirty streets for the army of bums that usually hung out there, all of them zealous and on fire for souls going to hell. But not a soul was visible. I took another look toward the lake, and suddenly I spotted somewhere past the YMCA what looked like one lonely dot staggering back and forth across the wide sidewalk. Recognizing the familiar silhouette, I knew it had to be someone headed for hell. I looked back, and apparently the band of soul-seekers behind me had also seen the unsteady speck coming up Chicago Avenue because they were now spread across the sidewalk and running full out in a race to be the first to reach him so they could unload this burden Wemp had saddled on them. I turned and charged toward the man because as far as I was concerned, he was mine.
Within a matter of seconds, the intoxicated bum began to get clarity and took stock of his deteriorating situation. With widening eyes, he began to straighten and look behind him for help since he saw 26 young men in black coats - like mafia soldiers - and wing tips charging toward him with hell in their eyes focused intently on him and preparing to deliver some sort of evil. As we all slowed our momentum and started to surround him in our approach, we all reached into our black trench coats for either a Bible or a tract - as if going for a gun - and in unison said the same thing, “Are you ready to die and go to hell?”
The next day there were 26 PCW reports filled out, and each of them recorded that during the previous night one person was saved. That is, 26 men helped one bum escape hell. But Wemp read 26 went to heaven.