Witness in the Wilderness

When I first laid eyes on Richard Brown, I thought he was a pre-beard Abraham Lincoln walking among us. He was lean, his skin was like leather, and he had a look of intensity. I first met the Brown family on a snowy day in 1980. I was on a deep woods deer hunt and happened across their log cabin. They invited me to warm at their fireplace and fed me ham from their smokehouse, homemade bread with freshly churned butter and wild honey, and a jar of warm milk straight from the cow. It was the beginning of a life-changing relationship. Richard Brown was a hell-raisin' South Texas boy born in 1944. His half-Comanche Indian mother gave him up as a toddler to foster care, and he was adopted by an old man and his wife. The old man had been a cowboy and a trail boss driving cattle in his younger days. Young Richard was a restless child and developed wild ways. As a young man, his reputation was such that nobody would dare provoke him. He eventually married Dorothy, a Christian girl, and they started a family. Dorothy had her church praying for Richard's salvation. She kept after him to come to church. His brother kept after him also. To shut them up, one night in 1969 he was at the local bar and told his drinking buddies, "Boys, I won't see you tomorrow, I'm goin’ to church." They looked astonished and said, "YOU in CHURCH?!" They started to laugh, but one fierce look from Richard Brown and immediately they were silenced. This is the way Richard tells what happened next:

"I was drivin’ home when suddenly there was a ' presence ' beside me in the car. I just stiffened up and wouldn't even look over at it. Instead, I said, Wh-who are you?" A voice said, "You know who I am." I said, "What do you want of me Lord?" The voice said, "You are headed for Great Destruction!" I said, "Lord, if you'll let me live, I'll serve you like I served the devil!" When he got home, he was so under the power of the holy presence of God that he FELL out of the car into the ditch and began crawling toward the house shouting for his wife. "Dorothy! Dorothy!!" She came out and thought he was drunk and said, "Oh no! I'm leavin' for Mama's house!" He said, "It's not what you think-the LORD appeared to me and said I was headed for great destruction! Where's brother Fox? I've got to get saved!" Dorothy was incredulous, "The Lord appeared to you?!" Richard, "Yes! Let's go find Brother Fox so I can get saved!" Dorothy went inside to tend to the baby and get ready to go but Richard couldn't wait. He took off without her. He went to find Brother Fox, who was just coming home from a coon hunt with a church member. They kneeled right there on the ground and Richard committed himself totally to Jesus Christ.

Richard was an all-or-nothing Christian. With Dorothy's help, he read the Bible through 4 times that first year as a new believer. He meditated on it, prayed about it, and determined to practice it. When he heard things preached that did not line up with the Word, he would ask the preacher why the discrepancy. The answers he got did not satisfy him, so he and Dorothy got in their white panel wagon work truck and began to travel to jails, churches, and wherever the Lord provided a place to speak. They had a tent for a while and conducted evangelistic services. The Hispanic men he helped began to call him "Padre" but Richard told them, "No--It's just Brown!" The Browns helped the poor, prayed for healing and deliverance for people, and spoke with authority.

One day Richard was praying and suddenly before him he saw in an open vision people running and screaming with their hair and clothing on fire, and they were trying to beat it out. The soles of their shoes were melting on the pavement. He saw the tires of parked cars melting and catching fire on the pavement. He was frightened and cried out, "Lord! What is this?

The Lord answered, "This is the cities of America burning." Richard asked, "WHY Lord?" The answer was, "Because of their great sin and iniquity against me." God gave him other visions and dreams like that. As he shared with people, the message was received with hesitancy or not at all. Finally, in 1974, Richard was told by the Lord that he was to move his family to the Arkansas Ozarks. He was given a vision of their destination. When he asked how they would find this place, the Lord said, "A man will show you."

At this time the Browns were living in East Texas. They sold their vehicle and bought 2 covered wagons. One was pulled by a team of horses, the other by donkeys. Like Abraham, they obeyed even though they knew not where they were going. They began their month-long journey to the Ozarks from Texas in March 1974 through South Arkansas witnessing to people as they went and at their campsites and were even in the newspapers and on radio. They told of God's warnings that America would be destroyed and that they were told to travel to the mountains of Arkansas. When they arrived in a valley where the Lord directed them, they made camp. Richard and his oldest son Randy struck out on foot to find the mountaintop that the Lord had showed him would be their new home. Three days and three mountains later, they still had not found it. On the 4th day, a man named James drove his pickup down the dirt road to their camp and asked the Browns why they were traveling in covered wagons. Richard and Dorothy told him it was by the Lord's direction and then they described the mountaintop God had shown them. James said, "Well, that sounds like the old place at the top of THIS mountain!" He nodded toward the very mountain they had camped beneath. Richard then remembered that God had said, "A man will show you." James took Richard in his pickup, and they wound around on the dirt road up the mountainside until they came to an old washed-out logging trail at the top. During the rough ride, Richard began to feel God's presence and described a rock-lined well, old outbuildings, and overgrown fields from a long-abandoned rocky top farm. James was listening intently, but balked when Richard said his vision showed what looked like a patch of snow in an old garden. James said, "Now I know you're crazy, mister--this is April and there ain't no snow!" But as he rounded the final bend, there was the dug well, the overgrown fields and ramshackle outbuildings, and a garden in which strawberries had continued growing voluntarily. They were in full bloom and the garden was covered in white blossoms! James looked bug-eyed at Richard and said, "Maybe I ought to get saved too!"

The Brown family built a log house, farmed, hunted, sold timber, traded produce, and worked for neighbors (the nearest was almost 5 miles away). That snowy day in 1980 when I made their acquaintance, I had been looking for the most remote place possible to deer hunt. And it was indeed remote and rugged. At times I was unable to get my truck closer than a mile to their cabin due to the washed-out trail. They were troubled by bears and at least twice by mountain lions, but they kept a pack of good hunting dogs which usually kept the wild beasts a distance from the house. However, one unfortunate bear wandered into their mountain top clearing and was treed by all the dogs right next to the kitchen window, and one dog which had bitten into its rump did not let go until the bear was halfway up the tree!

The Browns raised a family of fourteen children and spoke to all about coming judgment upon America AND THE CHURCHES. Mr. and Mrs. Brown were very disillusioned with churches. They said because of the rampant worldliness inside the churches, the people were blind to the real truth of a Holy God. Mr. Brown continued to get words from the Lord which they shared with whoever would receive them. Before I was spirit filled, I once asked them why they would run to a mountaintop instead of staying where the people were so they could be warned. "Who can you reach way out here?" I asked in somewhat of an accusing tone. They countered with, "It wasn't us wanting to come and be hermits--Remember, God TOLD us to come here, and besides, we reached YOU, didn't we?" Hunters, hikers, loggers, and any who wandered back that far heard the message. Plus, as Mr. Brown was fond of saying, God was proving that he can take care of anybody even in the wilderness with no phones, running water, or electricity. The Browns had to live on faith many times when supplies were totally gone, and wild game seemingly had abandoned the woods. But they would pray, and God always provided. After eating only hickory nuts for 3 days one hard, frozen winter, Mrs. Brown prayed, "Lord I'll do this until my kids start crying from hunger, then I can't do it anymore." On the 4th day the Lord spoke to her and said, "Build a fire in your cook stove. You'll be cooking a meal at noon!" Before noon people in a truck drove in with groceries and Mrs. Brown cooked a big meal.

Because of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, I heard (and saw lived out) a critical message in a context that made a profound impression on me. That message was not being spoken in the churches. The Browns had never heard of David Wilkerson, who I had just begun to read at that time, yet their message was the same as his. Wilkerson and the Browns were courageous Christians who caused me to seek the Lord with my whole heart. And God was true to his word in Jeremiah 29:13--when I sought him with the whole heart, I found him!

Thus, the Lord established a witness for truth in the Arkansas Ozarks for over 30 years. Making a living was very hard for the Browns, but God carried them through, and their greatest joy was telling the Lord's message and the great things he had done for them. Mr. Brown died in 2006 and the children are now grown and married. Mrs. Brown continues to pray and witness in a house closer to the state highway, now about 10 miles from where God first established them. Pray for her and agree with her for the family members that are not walking with God. And as the Browns did, let us obey the Lord with courage and determination in whatever he commands us, and be a living witness for Him in these evil final days.