The weather was forbidding as Lay Preacher Thomas Rankin arrived this Sunday at White's Chapel southwest of Petersburg, Virginia. He had planned to hold an open-air meeting, with shade trees shielding the congregation from the blazing southern sun. But it was raining, so he had to pack the worshipers into the chapel, while about 400 more clustered in the rain at the doors and windows. Then, as Rankin orated on Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, the mixed crowd of whites and blacks began moaning and crying to God for mercy, some...
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