Advent Talk

Issues & Concerns Category => 3ABN => Topic started by: Bob Pickle on May 23, 2016, 06:19:00 AM

Title: Danny on the Air, Speaking about the Shelton Gang
Post by: Bob Pickle on May 23, 2016, 06:19:00 AM
From "Welcome to Fall Campmeeting" in 2015:

Quote from: http://www.3abn.com/Series/15HC/15HC000001A.html
And so we are on the brink of eternity. But you know what? It's a beautiful world. Amen! It's a beautiful world. Yes it is! And I'm telling everybody we ought to be able to say as Christians: "It is a beautiful world."

Right here in Benton, IL, just 8 miles down the road, if you go around the little town square some of you goin' out to Wal-Mart look to your right you see the old courthouse and you see a hangman's platform and a hangman's noose coming down where I think - I'm not sure when it was - 1929 or whenever the last person that was hung around here that I know of anyway was a guy named Charlie Burger.

And he was a gangster. He and the Shelton gang... Sorry but he and the Shelton... Sorry to inform some of you of that now, but the Shelton gang. There's numbers of books written about the southern Illinois Shelton gang. Brothers that did a lot of armed. They fought against each other, and it was all over... during prohibition days. And so all this fighting.

But Charlie Burger got hung on the Benton square. As he went up, and this is what the people and all the accounts say: a guy's going to his death. He's a young man... I don't know, 30 or whatever... he climbs up the stairs. They're putting the noose around his neck. They say a lot of tough guys go to pieces then, right? Tough guys go to pieces... especially if you've not given your life to Jesus.

But they say to him: "Do you have any last words?" You know what he said? "It's a beautiful world."

And I said: "Now if a guy that's gettin' ready to be hung and in 5 seconds or 10 is going to be dead can say "It's a beautiful world," shame on us if we can't say that, right?

From "A Special Movement" from the same camp meeting:

Quote from: http://www.3abn.com/Series/15HC/15HC000007A.html
And Kenny is a little older. There's 4 boys and a girl in my family so there's... Ronnie's above me and then Kenny. I'm the baby boy and then came along the little girl Tammy about 8 years later. So there's several of us little Shelton gang running around.