Messages given at the North Florida Camps Farthest Out
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Gertrude Dekock Keehn opens Revelation’s warning to the church that has “left thy first love.” She tells how she quietly coached her own daughter back into closeness with her husband after a new baby had come between them, without either one learning she was the one who prompted it. She warns campers at the 1966 North Florida CFO that the same drift into “broad road” distractions, from psychic messages to claims of past lives, can pull any Christian from that first love just as easily.
Words spoken aloud carry power to bless or curse, Cliff Richmond tells the North Florida CFO in 1963. He follows Elijah to the brook of Cherith as it dried, and he asks campers what they say when their own supply runs out.
At the 1963 North Florida CFO, Cliff Richmond compares the Holy Spirit to the “open sesame” of the old tale. He calls the Spirit the neglected treasure that unlocks guidance, love and power, once believers want him, ask for him, and yield control of their lives to him.
Gertrude Dekock Keehn tells of an airman whose downed plane left him in the jungle overnight. A leopard rested its head on his knee after he told it, “the life in you is God, the life in me is God.” She calls the campers at the North Florida CFO in 1964 to the same practiced stillness.
On Communion night, Gertrude Dekock Keehn tells of a Russian blood scientist whose photographs showed that fear and faith leave their mark in the bloodstream. That discovery finally answered her childhood question about being washed in the blood of the Lamb. Her talk closes the North Florida CFO week in 1964.
Cliff Richmond confesses that his own years of eczema turned out to be an inner irritation, and it healed only once he named it as sin. He preaches that lesson to the North Florida CFO in 1963 through Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok and through Nathan’s parable to David.
Campers are here not to be happy but to grow, Cliff Richmond tells the North Florida CFO in 1963. He compares them to a crab that has to break one shell after another to get bigger. He then follows Joseph from a pit to the throne of Egypt to show that God turns human evil into good.
Cliff Richmond takes a stretched rubber band as his text. A soul kept close to Christ, he shows, can absorb fear, grief and anger and snap back instead of breaking. His examples at the 1963 North Florida CFO run from a widow who would not let go of life to Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus.
A spinning amusement-park disc from his boyhood is Cliff Richmond’s picture for the North Florida CFO. Riders near the center withstood any speed, while those on the rim were flung off. Jesus alone, he preaches, is Lord over sin, sickness and death.
Glenn Ellis opens with his own teenage conversion story from a YMCA meeting. He then teaches on emptying the self of every idol so only Jesus fills it, a principle he calls “the vacuum, a technique of answered prayer.” The session comes from the North Florida CFO in 1967.