These Prayed
Mordecai Ham
1877-1961
Baptist evangelist. There were more than 33,000 conversions during the first
year of the ministry of Mordecai Ham. As a result of his ministry, more than
300,000 new converts joined
Baptist churches in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and
the Carolinas in a space of 30 years. The author of the amendment for Prohibition
stated that Billy Sunday and Mordecai Ham nearly put the saloons out of business.
A close observer wrote concerning him, "He exalts Christ and fights sin with all his might. There is no middle ground in his campaigns. It is impossible to evaluate his ministry. Under his preaching I have seen murderers saved, drunkards converted, homes reunited, and men and women dedicate their lives for special service."
Billy Graham was saved under Mordecai Ham's preaching, in a revival in Charlotte,
North Carolina, in November, 1934.
ARTIST'S NOTE: Fruit is the main theme of Mordecai Ham's life. The purple is
indicative of the passage on the vine, and fruit-bearing found in the 15th
chapter of the Gospel of John.
Ruckman '65
Mordecai Flower Ham
BORN: April 2, 1877 Scottsville, Kentucky
DIED: November 1, 1961 Pewel Valley, Kentucky
LIFE SPAN: 84 years, 6 months, 29 days
MORDECAI HAM'S MOST FAMOUS convert was Billy Graham, one of 303,387 people
brought to Jesus Christ through his crusades. Includes were preachers such
as John Wimbish and Grady Wilson, Judge Jenkins (Truett's father-in-law), plus
scores of the hardened sinner type.
Ham's career in evangelism stretched from 1902 to 1927 and 1929 to 1961. It
was in November, 1934, that a sixteen-year-old boy named Billy Graham went
forward in the Charlotte, North Carolina crusade. Little did Graham realize
at that time that he would be preaching to multitudes one day.
Ham was the son of Tobias and Ollie (McElroy) and was born on a farm in Allen
County near Scottsville. He came from eight generations of Baptist preachers.
In 1886 his family moved to Bowling Green staying till 1888 when they returned
to a second farm near Greenwood in Warren County. His conversion and spiritual
inclinations were attributed to the devotional habits of his boyhood home.
He cannot date his conversion. He stated, "From the time I was eight years old, I never thought of myself as anything but a Christian. At nine I had definite convictions that the Lord wanted me to preach...." At sixteen he was Sunday School superintendent of the family church at Greenwood. From country school, young Ham went to Ogden College (later Western Kentucky State Teacher's College) in Bowling Green, also studying law with a private tutor. Because he was too young for a Bar examination, he took a job as a traveling salesman for a grocery concern. From 1897 to 1900 he was crew manager for a picture-enlarging firm with headquarters in Chicago. His grandfather's death on Feb. 28, 1899 was a renewed call of God to start serving the Lord. He married Bessie Simmons in July, 1900 and in December he quit his business and answered the call to preach. He gave his partner his entire share in the business, borrowing money to get started in the Lord's work.
For the first eight months of 1901 he carefully studied and prayerfully read his Bible. His first sermon was on the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. In September, 1901, he accompanied his father to a meeting of the District Association at Bethlehem, near Scottsville, where his grandfather had pastored for over forty years. There he was put on the spot and asked to preach. When he finished, the congregation was praising God and someone invited him to speak in the First Baptist Church of Scottsville that very night. He was then asked to preach in Kentucky at the Mt. Gilead Baptist Church. At this, his first revival, he established a pattern that was to follow him the rest of his days. He went after the biggest sinners in town and often saw them saved. He believed enough personal evangelism would produce mass results. A typical story is that of Ham seeking out the most notorious sinner in a Southern town. Ham was directed to a certain cornfield. The infidel saw the feared preacher approaching and went into hiding. The evangelist began to hunt his prey and, hearing suspicious sounds under a cornshock, hauled him out. "What are you going to do with me?" the atheist quavered. Ham retorted, "I'm going to ask God to kill you! You don't believe God exists. If there is no God, then my prayers can't hurt you. But if there is a God, you deserve to die because you are making atheists out of your children and grandchildren." As the infidel begged him not to pray that way, Ham said, "Very well then, I shall ask God to save you." He was saved, and before the meeting was over, all of that infidel's family was baptized--forty of them!
At Mount Gilead he encountered two incidents he could never forget. First, a strange power came over him to prepare him for an experience on the next day. It was much like that which Finney and Moody described...an almost unbelievable power from the Holy Spirit. Ham always preached in that power from then on. The next day came the other incident. Ham visited a dying girl named Lulu. As Lulu, who apparently was unsaved, closed her eyes in death he called to her, "Lulu, how is it?" A voice came back, not the voice of one living, but that of one who is in another world. He was never able to forget it..."Lost...lost...Oh...so dark; so dark!..."
His sermon, "And Sudden Death," was heard by thousands in the days ahead. When he closed out this crusade he had sixty-six baptized and received a love offering of $34.00. This was the beginning of his career in evangelism. He was ordained back home at the Drake's Greek Baptist Church in Bowling Green. While Ham was holding a meeting at Mount Zion, Kentucky, he ran into the type of opposition that was to follow him most of his career. On the second night of the meeting the moonshine crowd surrounded the church and threw rocks at the preachers. The leader threatened Ham with a long knife. Ham said, "Put up that knife, you coward...Now I'm going to ask the Lord either to convert you and your crowd or kill you." The bully died the next morning before Ham could get to his bedside. On the same day a neighborhood sawmill blew up and killed three others of the crowd. That night he announced he wanted everything that was stolen to be returned before God killed the rest of the tormentors. Everything was returned. Eighty were saved in his revival. His first year ended with 339 conversions. In 1902, his second year as an evangelist, he had 934 additions. In January, 1903, he took his first meeting outside of Kentucky when he went
to the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, Louisiana. Here one man threatened to kill him if his daughter joined the church. He later came back and was converted after Ham warned him that God was going to kill him. Other great 1903 revivals were in Garland, Texas and Russellville, Kentucky. A large meeting was held in Paducah, Kentucky, in January of 1904. His first revival to produce large results was in Jackson, Tennessee, in April 1905, where he had 1,500 additions. The whole area was shaken and Ham's fame was rising. On December 4, 1905 his wife died, stricken with cerebral meningitis. He was shaken to the depths, losing some fifty pounds and in January, 1906 he sailed abroad to tour the Holy Land, greatly upset by the course of events. The Houston campaign of November 12, 1906 to March 1, 1907 was outstanding. Starting as a Baptist meeting, it soon became a city-wide endeavor with 4,000 attending in a downtown skating rink. Enthusiasm swept throughout the city. Five hundred were converted during the first five weeks. Then came two issues to hurt the crusade--an Apostolic Faith" movement started to infiltrate the revival with their "tongue" participation. Then a controversy concerning the enforcement of Sunday laws (closing of theatres and saloons, which was not enforced) detracted from the meeting and divided some of the sponsoring pastors closing the meeting prematurely. The 1907 Asheville, North Carolina, crusade saw some of the big saloon men converted. Then it was Louisville, Kentucky, and Wilmington, North Carolina, where the liquor crowd fought him hard. One night a drunken desperado rushed into the church and threatened everybody with a gun. Ham jumped off the platform singing, Tell Mother I'll Be There, and by the time he reached the fellow, the Lord had knocked him down, and he was on the floor begging for mercy. He was gloriously saved as he threw down a liquor bottle, a pair of dice and a gun.
In August of 1907 he held a meeting at Pleasureville, Kentucky. His fame reached to the communities all around, including Eminence, seven miles distance. From here, a Dr. and Mrs. W.S. Smith and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Annie Laurie, attended the meetings. Ham had just turned thirty. Visiting in the home, the little girl took the preacher for a ride in the buggy. Before the meeting closed, he mentioned to Mrs. Smith he wanted to take her daughter with him to Europe, as his wife! On June 3, 1908 the thirty-one-year-old evangelist married a beautiful girl of fifteen. Three days later the happy couple sailed for Naples, Italy. She traveled with her husband for the most part during his meetings, playing the piano often in his campaigns. They had three daughters, Martha Elizabeth, on September 16, 1912; Dorothy, December 16, 1915; and Annie Laurie, Jr., born December 11, 1924. The marriage was very successful and her warm and encouraging spirit enabled him to shoulder burdens that few have had. They made their home in Anchorage, Kentucky (1909-1927), then two years in the pastorate at Oklahoma City, and after 1929 in Louisville, Kentucky. The mother-in-law, Mrs. W.S. Smith, lived over forty years of her life in their home, enabling Mrs. Ham to travel frequently with her husband.
In March, 1908 the Mardi Gras of New Orleans proved an exciting time. Ham started his city-wide crusade during the corruption of this celebration. Three thousand were added to the local participating churches before it was all over. It is said this was the first time that New Orleans became Protestant conscious. The Ham revival was the only other important thing happening besides the election of a pope during the year as far as the local townspeople were concerned. Thousands of Gospels of John were distributed, but the Roman Catholics instructed their people to burn them. As a result of that crusade, the state legislature passed two reform bills: one that separated saloons from grocery stores, and another that killed race-track gambling. At one point, a drunken ex-steamboat captain entered Ham's hotel room waving a gun in his face, threatening to kill him. Ham got him down on his knees and prayed (with his eyes open). The man was saved.
In 1908 he was also back in Asheville for another meeting. On to Salisbury, North Carolina, where in May the State Prohibition election was to be held. The night before the election Ham had to be escorted to and from the tabernacle by armed guards and after the service the men paraded through the streets all night shouting, "Hang Ham! Hang Ham!" As he left by train, a U.S. Marshall had to stand outside on the station platform holding two pistols pointed toward the crowd. A railroad detective sat by his berth all the way to Asheville, and got saved.
There's a great fascination in learning how some of the great hymns of all time came to be written. Here's the story of one of them, Saved, Saved:
As Mordecai Ham preached on the "Cities of Refuge" during a July, 1910, meeting in Gonzales, Texas, a murderer was sitting in the audience. He had killed four men and despaired of ever being saved. Midway through the sermon, he jumped up from his seat and shouted, "Saved! Saved! Saved!" Jack Scofield was directing the choir and was so inspired that, on the next afternoon, he sat outside the hotel and composed both the words and music for the hymn, titled, Saved, Saved. That night the tabernacle audience heard the song for the first time.
In April, 1911, Ham held his first meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, sponsored by J. Frank Norris and the First Baptist Church. During the first half of 1912 he held other meetings in Texas. It was at a Waco crusade that his song leader, W.J. Ramsey of Chattanooga, Tennessee, joined him. Texas and Oklahoma continued to dominate these days. In January of 1916 he began a meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, and as usual, hit liquor hard. On this occasion, after preaching hard against liquor, he was assaulted in the lobby of his hotel. Ham deflected the blow with his Bible, and another man rushed up saying, "You are under arrest for fighting." Nothing came of this, but Justice Miles subpoenaed him to appear in court and give the sources of his information
concerning corruption and law violation in Corpus Christi. Word that the evangelist might be arrested, placed under bond, and tried for contempt of court fired up 3,500 followers of the meetings. As a result, the matter was thrown out of court. Then the grand jury took up the attack and ordered him to appear. Three thousand people gathered outside to take the courthouse apart, so the trumped up charges were dismissed. During this time, Mordecai Ham received constant threats that his little daughter would be kidnapped.
Back at Fort Worth, on September 11, 1916, Ham was assaulted as he was leaving the Westbrook Hotel on his way to the tabernacle to preach. He was struck from behind on the back of the head with gashes cut into the side of his face. Leading up to this, the "wet" opposition harassed and crippled the work of the campaign by outrageous nuisance tactics. At the tabernacle where some 12,000 people assembled, the meeting was broken up by a procession of automobiles laden with yelling men, following a squad of policemen who pushed back the ushers and others who attempted to bar their entrance. The meeting ended in a near riot, with Ham's crowd declaring war on the city administration.
In San Benite, Taxas, in January 1918, some military servicemen broke into the Woodman Hall and put on a dance. They were angered because Ham refused to allow his tabernacle to be used for a Red Cross rally when he heard a dance was to be part of the rally. Crazed with liquor, they marched into his tabernacle, seized him and started up the railroad tracks with a rope, a bucket of tar, and a sack of feathers. A detachment of cavalry from the nearest army base came to his rescue as the mayor wired Washington of the predicament. They were three miles down the track before they were overtaken.
In 1920 and 1921 he was back in Kentucky and Tennessee, eight months of 1921 spent in Nashville, Tennessee. From 1922 to 1925 he was in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia. The 1924 Raleigh, North Carolina, meeting had 5,000 decisions for Christ. Then, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, Mordecai Ham was to endure a new wave of persecution and "thorn in the flesh" pain at the hands of one W.O. Saunders, who compiled a viciously slanderous book titled The Book of Ham, and circulated it in the cities where the evangelist undertook to hold meetings.
But Ham continued to minister. There were meetings in Burlington, North Carolina, as well as Greenville, South Carolina, where he had 3,000 additions, in April of 1925. In 1926 and 1927 he had two meetings in Danville, Virginia, resulting in 4,000 additions. His total results since starting to preach up through 1927 included 33,650 souls in Texas, 8,737 in Oklahoma, 12,043 in Kentucky, 10,013 in Tennessee, 26,475 in North Carolina, 9,500 in South Carolina, and 4,385 in Virginia. It was thought that much of the success of Prohibition was attributed to the preaching of Billy Sunday and Mordecai Ham. Ham's team members varied through the years but his closest associate was W.J. Ramsay, who, from May, 1912, through 1945 was his right-hand man. He was an excellent choir director and counterbalanced Ham's sternness with his own sense of humor. Ham turned to pastoring in 1927. It all started with a
crusade in 1926 that won 888. He then went to London in the fall of that year. In the spring, upon returning to his friends in Oklahoma City to give a report, he was met at the train by forty of the leading laymen of the First Baptist Church. Their pastor had resigned and they entreated Ham to accept the pastorate. At first reluctant to be the pastor of a local congregation, Ham said a unanimous vote by the congregation would clinch it. He had always made enemies and never dreamed of total support anywhere--so it was with shock he received the news of a unanimous ballot. He became their pastor on June 19, 1927. His big fight at the time was against the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism. On August 3, as he was crossing the street, he was struck down by an automobile and dragged for half a block. Whether it was an accident or a deliberate plot by the enemies of Christ remained an unanswered question. He was knocked out of commission for six weeks with a skull fracture. Fourteen doctors cared for him. Members of his Bible class guarded his hospital room to keep out curious visitors. Then, back in the harness against atheism and modernism, prayer meeting crowds rose to 2,200. He campaigned hard and fast for Herbert Hoover in the 1928 election, the first and only time he allied himself with politics.
On June 16, 1929 he resigned from the pastorate as the fires of evangelism burned in his soul. The Hams moved to Louisville, and joined the Walnut Street Baptist Church late in 1929. He began campaigning in Jackson, Tennessee; Lubbock, Texas; Danville, Kentucky; and then in November-December of 1929, in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Here a miracle happened. Meeting in a tabernacle on an icy, snowy night, the timbers creaked from the weight of the snow on the roof. During the message, someone suggested they go to the First Baptist Church to finish the meeting. When the last person had left the building, the center section caved in with a roar, cutting down seats like a great knife! A great tragedy was averted as God spared His people.
Six crusades were held in 1931, witnessing 11,400 decisions for Christ. In Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1931, Ham led 2,500 to the Lord in a six-week meeting after the Pastor's Conference had voted not to ask him to come. Three outstanding conversions took place in the next three years to further confirm Mordecai Ham's ministry: The 1932 crusade in Chattanooga saw Wyatt Larimore converted. He was the "king" of the local underworld. He had been
in court for almost everything from minor traffic violations to first-degree murder. He had more than 300 men working under him. In January of 1933 Ham opened a campaign in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a man named Otto Sutton was saved. He was a wild, worldly, wicked and reckless heavyweight fighter at the time. He later became the pastor of the Valence Street Baptist Church of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was in the fall crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Ham was having a trying time, that Billy Graham was saved. The place was a temporary tabernacle on Pecan Avenue on the outskirts of town. A total of 6,400 were saved at this crusade. Young Graham was amazed as he saw more than 5,000 in every meeting, and every seat was filled. People were getting saved all around him. It seemed to the young boy that the only place safe from the evangelist's wrath was the choir--and that's where he and his friend, Grady Wilson, sat the next night. The evangelist's first words were, "There's a great sinner in this place tonight." Billy thought, "Mother's been telling him about me." That night he turned to Grady and said, "Let's go!" Graham was saved and later became the most renown evangelist in history. Ham went on to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he saw 8,500 making decisions for Christ! This was the largest crusade of his life.
The Ham-Ramsay tent revival of 1937 was launched in Louisville, Kentucky, lasting four months. Some 4,000 decisions for Christ were made. In 1939 he led a campaign in Jacksonville, Florida, where 2,000 a night came. In 1940 it was Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. His last campaigns in 1941 were in Decatur, Alabama, Murfreesboro and Nashville, Tennessee, and Denver, Colorado. In 1935 Ham was honored with a D.D. degree from Bob Jones University. In 1936 he was elected president of the International Association of Christian Evangelists. His rugged pace continued until his sixty-fifth year, 1941, when he began his last year in tent and tabernacle campaigns. From 1929 to 1941 he had seen some 168,550 decisions (new converts, backslidden church members reclaimed), in sixty-one crusades in fifteen states. Southern Baptist churches benefited the most. The last twenty years of his life he continued a vigorous schedule highlighted by his radio preaching and appearances in over 600 cities, often preaching three and four times a day. He started a network ministry in 1940 on Mutual Broadcasting Network's southern hookup of some fifty stations. In 1947 he started the publication of a paper bearing the title, The Old Kentucky Home Revivalist.
A close observer said it well: "He exalts Christ and fights with all his might. Under his preaching I have seen murderers saved, drunkards converted, homes reunited, and men and women dedicating their lives for special service." Over 7,000 workers were saved or called into Christian work during his meetings. Ham authored the books, The Second Coming of Christ and Revelation. Booklets bearing his titles are Believing a Lie, Light on the Dance, The Jews, and The Sabbath Question.