When I was a minister, a Baptist preacher in my church for twelve years, I never even received one red penny of salary. I never tried to take but one offering in my entire life. And that was when I got up against it once and was going…I had…I just couldn’t make ends meet. And I told the wife I was going to pass the hat in the church for an offering. When I seen some poor little woman, about four or five rows out from me, reach down, get a little pocketbook, and begin to fool around with pennies and nickels in there…Bless her heart, she’d give me everything she had. I told the audience I was just kidding then; I didn’t mean that. See? Because I could not…I would’ve felt guilty of taking that poor old mother’s money. In here of course, there’s large sums of money offered to me. Not long ago in California, some of the Armenian people, who had all sold out of their winery and things, sent me a check—a check that amounted to more than a million dollars. And I wouldn’t even put my hands upon it. I sent them back. I’d rather be poor and live in a shack and have favor with God, and the feeling that I had the satisfaction I love Him, than all the wealth the world owns. And when one of those little cross-eyed children, and their eyes are straightened…That poor old mother done crippled up, for her to be healed, that means more than all the money the world has. And it’s no charges; it’s absolutely free. I have nothing to do with it. I’m just trying to make my body an instrument to help other people.

I Was Not Disobedient to the Heavenly Vision, 1949-07-18, Zion, IL, §12