Born in
April of '46, in Nashville, Tennessee, and raised all over the
eastern half of the country, Bill retains a wandering nature, though he is firmly rooted
in the gospel of God's grace. His homeland is heaven, but he serves as a roving ambassador
to many places in the States. Until he was thirty years old, his life was aimless. He grew
wild, like a weed. Married, but having one affair after another; well-employed, but
throwing his money away on drugs and the fast life; Catholic, but unbelieving, Bill had
not time for a God whom he feared. More accurately, whose judgment he feared. Far better
to escape in any and every way possible, which he did religiously.
Late in 1976, he was on the
skids, life a shambles, business wrecked, marriage going nowhere, hope nonexistent. Bill
had hurt his back in the Navy, years before, and would soon become permanently disabled. One night late he awakened
to a strong desire to write. He arose and went downstairs, grabbing a legal pad and pen,
and sat in a comfortable chair beside a window. Snow falling gently. Outside noises muted.
The house utterly quiet. First one line came haltingly. Then another and another each
following the other like waves rolling ceaselessly ashore. Within the space of a few
minutes, Bill had written his first poem. He had no clue as to its meaning, but understood
that it meant something. He titled it Reflections, and set about trying to
determine what it meant, to no avail. For days, the poem gnawed at him, generating a
desperation to understand it.
He began showing it to his
friends in the hope that someone else might be able to shed some light upon it. One of
those friends, an attorney, mentioned that it had a messianic quality. Bill did not know
what that meant exactly, but he knew that it was a religious word. He carried the poem to
an office building on Music Row where a man he knew was employed. This man, Hugh Sherrill,
was a deeply religious man, one who had spent the better part of forty years in serious
Bible study. He made no attempt to explain the poem, but engaged Bill in a conversation
that he never expected.
During the course of this
conversation, philosophical issues kept arising. Bill was terribly troubled over the
problem of crime and punishment. It seemed to him that no man in his right mind would do a
thing that would bring about the sort of punishments that are common under civilized codes
of law. He believed that any man who would commit crimes serious enough to result in long
term incarceration must have some mental aberration that caused him to do whatever the
crime was. Hugh saw his opening. He said, "Well, that's right. Paul said,
'That which I will to do, I do not do, and that which
I will not to do is the very thing that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, it is
no longer I who does it, but sin that dwells in me.' "
Bill was floored. He was stunned.
It was as though a light had suddenly been turned on, illuminating the glory of God's
grace. He understood that men are not sinners because they sin, but simply because they are
sinners. All at once he understood that it was necessary for Christ to die because no man
was capable of keeping God's holy law. He understood what grace really meant -- unmerited
favor from God. He knew that he was himself a sinner, inveterate, incorrigible, incurable,
and that if his salvation depended upon his own good works, there was no way he could be
saved. But he understood as well that Jesus had paid the full penalty for all his sins
when He died on the cross; that was indeed the reason it was necessary for Him to die,
that He might act as our substitute in paying our penalty for us, that we might be saved.
All the weight of all the condemnation of all the years from all the priests and preachers
he had ever heard was suddenly and completely lifted from his overburdened shoulders. He
had no further reason for escape. He finally had learned the truth, and the truth had made
him free. Shocked, he leaned against the doorjamb and said, "I see the Light!"
Now, Bill certainly never planned
to say such a thing. There had been many a morning when he had sat in Hugh's office
ridiculing him for his beliefs. When he came that morning, he was not on a mission to be
saved, but to find out what his strange poem meant. He needed to know what the term messianic
meant. Now, everything had changed. He was a new creation, a new man, born of the Seed of
God, and had an entirely new system of values and priorities. Where he had spent thirty
plus years walking in complete blinding darkness, all of a sudden the world was awash in a
terribly sweet light. While Hugh had never discussed the poem with him, Bill now
understood very well what that poem meant. And he understood that writing would be a large
part of his ministry from that point forward.
Hugh advised him to go
immediately and purchase a Scofield Reference Bible, which he did on his way from Hugh's
office to his home that very day. What an odyssey began then! Bill started studying the
Bible almost around the clock, feeding upon it with a voracious hunger, unable to be
satisfied with enough. Whole books. Subject chain references. Footnote trails. Doctrine,
doctrine, doctrine. Then came the deep study of theologians' writings. Poring over books
about ancient kings and empires. Learning the ancient history of the Jewish people, God's
chosen people, through whom would come the Messiah. Studying until he grasped the arcane
field of Biblical prophecies. As much as he was able to absorb, the Holy Spirit fed his
hungry soul.
For more than twenty years, Bill
has continued to study. He declares that the more one learns, the larger the field
becomes. The more one knows, the more he realizes how little he knows. The inexhaustible
supply of the Bread of life found in the Word of God is ever refreshing, ever fresh, ever
satisfying hunger and producing more hunger. Generating a thirst that is slaked only by
the precious Water of life found between the covers of the Bible.
No sooner saved himself than Bill
began immediately to tell others of the marvels of God's amazing grace. Within a week,
still a babe in Christ himself, he led his first soul to the Lord in the person of his
brother Jim, lately deceased. His life became a life of study and ministry, of spreading the gospel even as he
learned it himself. As he progressed in the Word, counseling and teaching became beloved
duties also. And all the while, Bill continued to write. Prodigiously. Voluminously.
Prolifically.
A stickler for detail, Bill became
a brutal editor of his own work. Cut this, throw that out. Start over on this and give up
on that. slowly the volume of his work grew, yet he did not seek a publisher. His notion
was that he would not have the wisdom to write anything to which he could shamelessly
affix his name before he was sixty or seventy years old. Now, approaching sixty, Bill is
willing to put a small sampling of his work out for public perusal. The reader will find
below a number of links. Many will be to poems, a couple to prose pieces he has written,
several to theological treatises, and one to excerpts from a book-length manuscript. Bill
continues to write and to serve actively in ministry.
In 1995, he was instrumental in
the founding of a local church in Nashville, TN, though more than a dozen years
earlier he had left that fair city for his home rural Georgia. Traveling
back and forth, sleeping on first one couch and then another, the little church
began to grow and prosper. When it was on solid footing, Bill turned that
ministry over to a man whom he had led to the Lord years earlier, who had
enjoyed the same rennaissance after his rebirth that Bill had experienced, and
who had absorbed vast amounts of doctrine and theology himself. That man,
David Dotson, continues to lead many of the original members of the church,
having moved to Fairview, TN, where his church is now situated.
Please
see the poetry menu, up and to the right...
