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This service is intended for Wheaton College students, faculty and staff; people who live in convenient driving range to campus; or people who will be visiting Wheaton's campus. Every month, this Bulletin Board will announce a new document or set of documents that are available for viewing and study in the Archives Reading Room on the 3rd floor of the Graham Center. Come on over and have a look!

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"God is in the Restoration Business": The Interviews and Papers of William A. Drury

 

Photo of Billy Drury with a zip (homemade) gun and other items used in teenage gang wars in Philadelphia, ca. 1965.

Bill Drury was a racetrack tout as a boy, a con\mbat infantryman in Europe as a young man, and then a trouble shooter for a safe and vault company. But a few weeks after he gave his life to Christ in the late 1940s, he was preaching on street corners. Here is a sample of the kind of sermon he would give: "You, here, tonight, you can come to know Jesus Christ? How do I know? I did it! I was a dirty, filthy, vulgar, profane, immoral degenerate! A high school dropout. I flunked...flunked everything but lunch and recess! And if God can take a life like this and change it and transform it, He can do it for you! But you have to confess the crud in your life. And you don't want to do that, because you're a pretty nice guy. And there are people out there that do a lot worse things than you do. I've heard that a thousand times. But God loves you. He really does. He wants to save you, He wants to cleanse you, He wants to forgive you. He wants to restore you! Restoration. He's in the restoring business. And He wants to give you peace, which you don't find in Manhattan, midtown Manhattan. There is no peace. Listen to the cars, listen to the cabbies, listen to the foul language. But you can know that peace. How do I know? I've accepted Him. He works for me. He works for me."

Eventually Drury founded Teen haven, which worked among kids in the inner cities of America's northeast, providing a chance for games, love and the Gospel. Collection 492 contains many documents, including several hours of oral history interviews, about rev. drury's life and ministry. Click to learn more about him.


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Last Revised: 10/1/98
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