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“The Birth of the Infant Lord“

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Tozer Talks · The Birth of the Infant Lord

The Birth of the Infant Lord

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 23, 1956

We have been hearing, I suppose, very much, and hearing quoted and read and printed, that second chapter of Matthew which we read together earlier in the service, and I shall not read it again. But I do want to talk from it this Sunday.

Now, the second of Matthew gives us the story of the birth of the infant Lord. This story is the wonder story of all lands and all ages, and as told by Luke, it is said to be, and I believe is, the most beautiful story in human language. And as told by Matthew, it is beautiful but terrible as well.

For there are three unexpressed facts that explain the chapter, facts that are not here, but that explain it. They are the setting for the chapter, they are that which go before and goes after, and makes it intelligible to intelligent minds. There are these three things, the total moral and spiritual disaster which had engulfed the human race.

Now, we cannot think of the coming of our Savior to the world apart from this. As well, think of a rescue ship going out to rescue those who had not been shipwrecked, as well send a doctor to a place where there had been no accident and no epidemic. This was a rescue. This is the story of a rescue, not a rescue team, but one who came alone to rescue mankind.

And thus fulfilled, and that’s the second unexpressed fact here, thus fulfilled God’s ancient purpose in sovereign grace, the sending of a Rescuer, a Savior is the word we use, and it means the same thing, to the world to redeem men who had been caught in this disaster and engulfed in this woe.

And the third is the black malice, the cold fury of the one we call Satan the Destroyer. You and I, all we human beings, we’re adepts at the business of presenting one side of a question. And all through this rather happy Christmas season, there is but one side presented. It’s the side of the golden bells and the angels who said, peace on earth, goodwill to men.

But I say these unexpressed facts make all this intelligible to mortal men. The evil, the fury loosed against God and against his son, and through God to humankind, or should I say, loosed against humankind and through humankind against God. For it was not the devil’s fury or anger at mankind that caused him to be the devil he is, but it is his anger with God. And since mankind was made in the image of God and God has expressed and did express his great love for mankind, then it was to get at God that the devil attacked that race of beings which God had loved the most.

And so, we have in this chapter, and I want you to think of the entire chapter and not one text out of it, but here we have in this chapter events that are solemn and fearful and breathtaking. We have a view of life inside and outside, and we have a view of the human race and of the religious world and of the irreligious world of the Jewish world and of the pagan world, of the temple and the armory, of the priest and the soldier, all here. And we have this view of yesterday and an explanation of today and a preview of tomorrow.

Now there are ten persons or groups of persons which I shall sketch very briefly. They are Jesus and Mary and the wise men, and Herod the king and the people of Jerusalem and the chief priests, and the soldiers and Joseph and the slaughtered innocents and Rachel weeping for her children. Here they are either individuals or they are groups.

And we begin, of course, where we should begin, with Jesus, the seed of the woman, the star of Jacob, which had come out of the ancient past, whom Moses and all the prophets did write to fulfill the ancient Scriptures.

And then there was Mary, simple, plain, lovely little Mary. I have combed over my memory, and I cannot remember or recall but three times that Mary ever spoke during her entire life, her entire ministry, her holy ministry here in the New Testament.

There might be one or two added which I have for the moment overlooked. But I can think only where Mary spoke to the angel once and to her son a couple of times, and perhaps one or two times more, but certainly no more, this quiet, simple woman who glorified herself by doing the one thing that women are fitted to do. She obeyed and she bore a son, and thus in her womanhood she became most honored among women. And for this we honor her, and for this we love her, and we remember her, and we shall meet her, and meekly we shall thank her for saying, be it unto me even as thou wilt.

So that we have Mary here, and we talk so much about both Jesus and Mary that I’m not going to this morning to say too much about them. But we have them linked here, Jesus born of Mary, and Mary the mother of Jesus’ flesh, who prepared within her the sacred precincts of her own holy body, that body which God prepared for Jesus as a sacrifice to bleed on a cross.

Well, then we come to the other group, the wise men. Now I don’t know how many there were. Whatever tradition says, usually off little, and the tradition says that there were three, and that they represented the three major races of mankind. That I do not know. I suppose that it is simply an idea which got into somebody’s head. But whether there were three or whether there were a dozen, we know something about these wise men. They were the learned pagan religionists of high position in their country, but humble and meek and childlike.

There is a feeling that people in high religious position cannot be spiritual, and there is another feeling that people of great learning cannot be spiritual. And here were men, however many, and they were learned, I say, and had high position there, and were known as the Magi.

The old man of God Milton called them the star-led wizards, meaning it in its pure and not in its modern evil sense. And they were humble and meek and childlike. And though they had their high position, and though they were learned so that even the Holy Scriptures called them wise, still they were humble enough and meek enough and childlike enough in their spirit to come inquiring where the king of the Jews should be born that they might worship him.

And here is one of the sweet mysteries of the past, one of the riddles of history. There isn’t any reason or use for our looking it up in any of the books, because nobody knows any more about it than is found in the books of the New Testament, particularly Matthew the second chapter.

So, though you may read chapter after chapter about these men in commentaries and books of religious instruction, it is being spun like a spider’s web out of the living stuff of the writer and has no basis at all. But we do know from this chapter that we’re dealing with this morning that their acts revealed a certain inner beauty here about these men. They had great knowledge, certainly, and their human hearts hungered after God.

And ought not this to prove that no matter how wise we may be or how learned or how high in religion we may be, we still have a heart, and if that heart hungers after God, then we do well to follow the wise men. And their frank simplicity and delicate wisdom are revealed here, and their discretion. They outsmarted Herod, but of course we understand that they did not do it of themselves, but they did it by the illumination of God who told them what to do.

Now these wise men from the East are a type of all the humble great who bow before our Lord, and there have been many. Paul in an outburst once said, You see your calling, brethren, that not many wise men and not many noble and not many mighty or great are in the kingdom of God, but God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty.

That’s a familiar passage which I’ll not finish quoting. But while Paul said that, he did not say there are not any noble, nor did he say there are not any wise, nor did he say there are not any mighty. He had an “m”on before “any.” He said not many. He didn’t say there were not any, but simply that there were not many.

There are still a few who managed to get past the obstacle of their own learning. There is, I suppose, nothing quite such a temptation to man or quite as likely to become an idol to him as his own learning. A man feels that he’s intellectual, he will worship that intellect of his, and his very education will prevent him from saying too much about it to the public, because his very culture and training will help him to disguise his egotism and his self-love.

But this wise wisdom of men is a great obstacle, but nevertheless there have been a few that have gotten past it, a few that have gotten through and in great humility bow before the Son of God. They were the wise men who came as samples of all the wise men who should come down the years. They have not been many but thank God there have been some.

And then also here parading across the stage of history and letting us see him operate and letting us look through his transparent skin to the heart of the man, we have Herod, the king of Judea, the ambitious man. Here was another great man. Here were great men, and if these three kings from Orient are, were kings indeed, then they stood on the level with Herod, the king of Judea.

But the king Herod was ambitious and desired to reign and perpetuate his line, and he wanted to be known as the founder of the dynasty, the Herodian dynasty, and thus he feared any rival. And in his fear, he became as cunning as the serpent and as cruel as the grave. Yonder in hell where Herod is, they’ll hiss him, and maybe they’re hissing him now as an infanticide, a murder of babies.

And then there were the people of Jerusalem. That’s my kind. I don’t belong up among the wise men of the East, nor certainly don’t belong in the courts of kings, but here were the people of Jerusalem. And now you’re talking to my kind of people, the simple plain people who lived their lives and married and beget children and saw them grow up and saw some of them die and were disappointed and overtaxed and literally in more ways than one overtaxed and distressed and troubled. These were the plain people of Jerusalem.

They had small knowledge, and they didn’t have too much faith and they were more or less at the mercy of events, and you and I are. We can listen to the broadcast, and we can hear what has been pronounced from Washington or London, and when it’s all over, you and I have to accept it, whether we agree with it or not. We are the people of Jerusalem, the plain people, and we’re troubled somewhat.

And they were afraid of civil war in those days. They were afraid to be too hostile toward the hated occupiers, those who came in, the Romans. They were afraid because they feared civil war that should result in deportation of multitudes and the mass murder of many others. And here were the people of Jerusalem at the mercy of events.

And my friends, the people of Chicago are like them now. The people of Chicago listen to the pronouncements of kings and great men, and then they go their troubled way. Then they go to a show or do something else to try to sort of forget that they’re troubled and in distress and are fearing war, that they haven’t much knowledge and they haven’t much faith and are at the mercy of the dance of circumstance. They try to forget it. And here they were, these people of Jerusalem.

But do you know who it was that Jesus came to save? Those very people of Jerusalem. And they were the ones who in large numbers he did save. Jesus was here and Mary was here, his mother and the wise man and Herod and the people of Jerusalem.

And the king now and again came, but the common people heard him gladly. And then here were the chief priests and scribes, and they were the Jewish religionists of their day. And they knew the letter of the ancient prophecies and no doubt had memorized it so they could quote easily. And yet they were blind to the presence of the fulfillment of the Scriptures, easy tools of scheming politicians.

You know, if you stand for truth in a day when error is in the saddle, you are likely to be considered somewhat odious and even churlish. I suppose the rock that stands there a hundred feet out from the shore and feels the frothy billows beat over it for a hundred years, I suppose it’s one of the most unpopular things on all the shore for a hundred miles around. Because if waves and billows and storms had intelligence and sentiency, no doubt they would hate that rock, for the rock stands solid and the waves break and break and break again.

But still the rock stands, and it’s necessary that certain people have to stand like that and refuse to be in any day the tools of the scheming politicians. And yet they try to use the church, the church of Christ which you purchased with His own blood, that divine organism, that household of God, that temple of the Holy Ghost, that dwelling place of the Deity, that new creation born out of stress and pain.

That church of Christ is being used wherever it can be used by the scheming politicians, men who hate the God that they so gently and silkily and smoothly talk about when they want to get elected. My brethren, let’s remember that the church of Christ stands alone like Peter’s sheet let down, separated from and completely divorced from everything around about her. And it’s tragic when she allows herself to be the tool, the utensil of men who have no higher ambition than to get themselves elected.

So, Herod sent for the chief priests and the scribes. Now if the chief priests and the scribes had had the gift of the Holy Spirit, if they had understood, if they had known, and if they had not wanted to curry favor with the king, they would have met and had a little prayer meeting and said, we’ll never tell that old butcher, we’ll never tell him anything. He hates us, he hates God, he hates the Messiah to come, he hates.

And so, we’re not going to put into the hands of a hateful man any prophecy. And they would never have told him anything. They’d have talked for an hour and said nothing, and they’d have gotten around him somehow, or they’d have flatly refused and taken persecution, even martyrdom, rather than to play into the hand of Herod the butcher.

The chief priests and scribes who know the Bible but don’t know God, they can be expected to turn up on the side of some weird things. When Hitler came to power, some preachers turned up on his side, and now some are on the side of Tito, and others on the side of Khrushchev. It’s amazing, it’s shocking, it’s sickening what preachers and priests and scribes and rabbis will do to curry favor with men in power.

Well, there they are, the people of Jerusalem. God said nothing against them, they were just trouble, that’s all. Poor people who didn’t know much, and were simple and plain, hardworking, and ate their plain fare and slept well, and got up and went to work again. They were the plain people, and nothing said against them. But there were the chief priests and the scribes, and they played into the hand of the ambitious and cruel king. Then there were the soldiers of Herod.

Now, I don’t know how you feel about the soldiers of Herod, but I rather pity them. The soldiers are always present, always there, and they’ve got to be there, at the time when some president or king or prime minister or dictator suddenly decides that he’s angry enough to fight. And then a thousand miles from the front line, he sits in his mahogany table while the boys, they call the soldiers, go out and do the dying.

It’s always been that way, and I suppose it always will be that way. Only five hundred, they said, English died when they sent their soldiers into Egypt. Only five hundred. Five hundred tall English boys who dropped their H’s and slurred their A’s and loved their parents and their sweethearts and their kids back home. They had to go and be butchers, and it’s always so. Evil, ambitious men in the halls of state plan their cunning and cruel plans, and then at a wave of their hand and a crook of their thumb, they send the hired boys out, or the boys who have to go, fellows who don’t want to go, and force them to revolting atrocities which all their Christian teaching and all their civilized humanity revolts against.

And then there was Joseph. He appears here too. Good, honest, dull, faithful, plain, obedient Joseph, the husband of Mary. He had to be a good man to be the husband of Mary for a number of reasons. He had to be much older than she, for he knew her not until she brought forth her firstborn son. He had to be . . . what word should I use to be fair to the facts and yet not be condemned as being unkind? He had to be a dull fellow, and he had to be good enough and obtuse enough that he would marry a girl several months pregnant and accept as the explanation that the Holy Ghost had come upon her and the power of the Most High had overshadowed her, which was, of course, the truth.

But if Joseph hadn’t been simple enough and dull enough and old enough and faithful enough and obedient enough, he’d have hit the ceiling when he discovered the condition. But the good, faithful, honest Joseph, they put a hoop around his head, a luminous hoop, and made him a saint. And I guess he’s as much of a saint as any of the rest, but I thank God for Joseph, the husband of Mary. Not the father of Jesus, but the husband of Mary, who bore the Son of God. And so, we have Joseph here.

I’m not sure, friends, but what the world would be better off if we had more simple, faithful, obedient, plain people and fewer brilliant people. I’m not sure but what in the church of Christ, the Quakers and the Mennonites and the Brethren in Christ and the plain people, and the Brethren of the Friends of God and the Brethren of the Burning Heart and the simple people who dress plain and live plain. I’m not sure but what they came nearer being true followers of Christ than the brilliant and the shining and the incandescent who have come down the years. We thank God for them.

We sing the hymns of all the bright ones. We read the devotional books of the superior ones. We read the sermons and the theology of the great Thomas Aquinas and the Lutherans and the rest. But I’d feel more at home among people like Joseph. Nobody ever was afraid to go into Joseph’s presence, great big rough hands and hairy arms with sawdust in it on his arms until he washed up at night. Who could smile and with a faraway look in his eyes wonder about the boy and yet never question it seriously what this boy was born different from other boys and raise no trou ble about it. Thank God for Joseph.

And then there was the slaughter. There were the slaughtered innocents in this chapter too. For here we have a panoramic view. Here are the slaughtered innocents. It looks as if it had been a popular sport from the days of ancient times to kill Jews, doesn’t it? Here were the babies of Jewish blood, unfortunate enough in the long sweep of the ages to be born here in this tight squeeze of circumstance where the Son of God had been born and where an ambitious and murderous king was on the throne.

And so, the soldiers went out and among the dying, screaming terror, these little ones gave up their lives with no one to help them but binding God to avenge them forever and forever and forever. Herod and Satan, they may well tremble for not all the chanting of the angels, peace on earth, goodwill to men, not all the declaration of the love of God for mankind, and not all the dying and bleeding of the Savior will ever balance the scales to take care of these.

They may well tremble for there is judgment ahead and justice, and the God who is good is also a just God, and the God who gave his Son to die also said that there should be a judgment when the sea should give up its dead in the earth, and they should come from the north and south and east and west and be judged for the deeds done in the body.

So, you may relax, Herod, the day is coming, and the blind chief priests and scribes and the butchers of the king, the day is coming, and these little babes under two years of age that were slaughtered innocently there. And you know what I believe, and I can’t give you the text and I don’t know, but I tell you what I believe.

I believe that every one of these little lambs who died with the bayonets through a tiny baby chest, every one of them is gathered around the throne of God now, and every one of them is there and will be there, all of them, for the Savior for whom, in a sense, they died, afterward died for them. And not having sins that they had committed, not having reached the age of accountability, the broad mantle of Jesus’ atonement covers all those little babes. Whether they were baptized or not, or whether they were born into a Christian home or not, means nothing.

Then there was Rachel, and that’s the last, Rachel weeping for her children. Now, Rachel wasn’t anybody. Rachel was a symbolic name for all Judah’s mothers, all the mothers whose eyes protruded in terror and who stifled in their throat the scream that rose when they saw their innocent baby boy, who had never yet more than said, Mama and Papa, and who had never done an evil, saw him go down in his blood before the butchers of Herod.

And every wail that went up all the region roundabout is all gathered up here, and the great God who gathers tears in his bottles, and who gathers in his great heart the weepings and the wailings of his children, said Rachel was weeping for her children. And this is a symbolic name for all the world’s sorrowing mothers. Mother, God hears your prayers, and God sees your tears, and God knows your grief.

Now, how fantastic, how fantastic that when God would send his Son to die for us and rise and redeem us, that man’s hateful answer should be stealth and deception and flight and escape and tears and sorrow and anguish and death. We’re worse than God said we were, dear friends, and we need a Redeemer. How bad we need a Redeemer. And because this is a picture of the world, this second chapter of Matthew, a picture of the world, how bad we need a Redeemer.

And how penitent we ought to be this time, when we have spent more money than we can afford and when we’ll get presents we don’t need. But one thing Christmas does for us down on our human level, it brings our families together. We can look on the faces of our loved ones, but let us not allow the joys of fellowship and social communion to blind us to the fact that when God sent his Son, man’s response was stealth and deception and flight and tears and sorrow and death.

And it’s still so in this awful age in which we live. They have a tree on the White House lawn, and Ike and his family’s going to lunch or dine together, and I’m glad that it’s so. I’m glad for the four little Eisenhowers that are going to come tumble all over happy-faced old Ike there in Washington.

But good a man as he is, he doesn’t know what to do about all this. Wise men and ambitious kings and stupid, plain people like us and chief priests and scribes and religious men who ought to know better. And the butchers of kings and the dying of babies in Hungary, good honest man, but he doesn’t know what to do.

And they don’t know in London, and they don’t know in Berlin, and they don’t know anywhere. Penitence becomes us this Christmas season, dear friends, penitence becomes us. And the star that shone over Bethlehem has been darkened by a cloud that rises from human breasts, clouds of sorrow and anguish and fear.

And so, while we rejoice together, we ought to rejoice with trembling and kiss the Son lest He be angry and we perish from the earth when His anger is kindled but a little. Amen.

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“Living A Life That Befits Sound Doctrine“

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Tozer Talks · Living A Life That Befits Sound Doctrine

Living A Life That Befits Sound Doctrine

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 30, 1958

To Paul, sound teaching had two parts, foundation and superstructure, or otherwise, the root and tree with its fruit. And he said one became the other, that is, one was inextricably tied up with the other, one was the effect of the cause, the other was the cause, one was the foundation, the other the building, one was the root, the other the fruit and the tree. And he couldn’t think of these apart, and he wouldn’t.

He said, now, there in Crete, that miserable place, you notice how often, and just in the passage I read briefly and imperfectly here, you notice how often he said, be sober. They were a Hollywood bunch, evidently, and sobriety, both in temperament and in practice, didn’t seem to be their characteristics. So, he said, he warned them sharply that they were to be so.

Now, I want you to note here that to Paul, salvation in Jesus Christ carried with it beliefs about certain things, and practice in harmony with those beliefs. Now, Paul knew nothing else but that. That was Paul.

If you want to teach Paul, then you can’t separate certain parts of Ephesians and say, this is Pauline theology. Pauline theology had two sides to it, as I’ve explained. The one side was the theology of belief, and the other was the morality that results from the theology. The one side was the right belief, and the other side was the right living. One side we call the foundation, the other the building.

Or changing it around to Paul, Christian belief, Christian doctrine, sound doctrine consisted of the root and the tree, which grew up out of the root, along with the fruit of the tree. That is, again, we have it, the root was the theology, what you believe about God and Christ. And the tree was the morality, and the fruit was the right living.

So, we have theology and morality, right belief and right living, all bound together, and they can’t be taken apart. Strange that we’ve forgotten that in the day in which we live. Strange. And even to mention it is to have it said of you, you’re a legalist. You’re a legalist. Even to mention it, you’re a legalist. We don’t mind names, so we’ll go on and teach what Paul taught.

Now there’s a great delusion, and anybody’s likely to fall into it, and it is the delusion that you can separate the foundation from the building, the root from the tree, that you can have the one and not the other. One reason why fundamentalism has fallen on hard times in our day, and thousands and multiplied thousands of believers who are true believers are turning away from the Word itself.

It’s not as many of the brethren say that they’re turning away from Christ. They’re turning away from foundations without buildings. They’re turning away from roots without trees. They’re turning away from theology without morality. They’re turning away from right beliefs without right living. And I am turning with them if I must, for I believe that we’re to have a foundation as well as if we’re to have a building we’re to have a foundation. But if we have a foundation, we’re to have a building.

Now, how completely foolish to separate the root from the tree or the tree from the root. Would you consider what value a root is buried deep in the earth if it has no tree and no fruit on the tree? Would you consider how vain it would be to have a tree without a root, just as you can’t have a tree without a root, so you can’t have or shouldn’t expect to have a root without a tree? The two go together. And think about how foolish it is to lay a foundation.

Imagine, if you will, laying a foundation, digging down with a bulldozer, getting rid of all the dirt down there, shoveling it away, then laying the footings in and building the foundation up, and then letting it lie there for a hundred years. What good is a foundation? It’s to lay a building upon. What good is theology unless it eventuates in right living? What good is right doctrine unless it means morality and sound truth and sound living?

So, we try to build a building without a foundation. That’s what our liberalistic friends do. They want to live right, and yet they don’t have any foundation for their buildings. So, they push the building up and keep it inflated with wind. And the result is talk, talk, but there’s no foundation.

But we, on the other hand, tend to lay foundations everywhere and not have any buildings. But Paul said, Titus, see to it that you get both. See to it that your people are well taught in sound theology but see to it that they understand that theology without conduct is vanity.

Charles G. Finney, to my mind, the greatest evangelist that ever lived, greatest evangelist that ever lived, and that’s including Paul. Greater than Paul as an evangelist, not as great as Paul as a theologian, not as great as Paul as an apostle, not as great as Paul in receiving the inspired Scriptures, not great in that way, but greater than Paul in the one job God gave him to do, evangelism.

He taught and taught boldly that to teach Bible classes without making an application was to grieve the Holy Ghost and tempt God. And he said it’s all a mistake to have classes where you teach doctrine, unless when you’ve taught your doctrine, you make the application and say to the people, now, as a result of believing this truth, how are you going to live? Bring your life into conformity with it. Right belief without right living has very little value, very little value. And how are you going to have right living if you don’t have right belief?

Now, Christ gave us a powerful illustration, and I will talk about that a little bit and close. Christ gave us a powerful illustration. I want you to notice. In Matthew, the seventh chapter, and it’s in perfect harmony with Paul here. Our dispensationalizing brethren take in Titus but dismiss Matthew. And here yet we have it on the same thing, the same spirit, the same principle, same beliefs, here in the seventh of Matthew as we have in Titus, the book of Titus.

Jesus said, Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them. You see, hearing these sayings of Mine, that’s theology. Doing them, that’s morality. Hearing these sayings of Mine, that’s the foundation. And doing them, that’s the building. Hearing these sayings of Mine, and doing them, that’s having the tree and the root, or the root and the tree.

And our Lord never separated the two. He expected and meant that the two should go together. I believe that we could have some kind of revival in our land, some kind of a reformation that would last.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so dramatic, but it would last. If every preacher started and for three months insisted that everybody obey what he preached and insists upon it that the Word was given that it might get obedience, and that the foundations were laid they might have buildings, and that the root was there that it might produce the tree and its fruit. But Jesus said, whoever hears and does these, I will liken him unto a wise man.

Here was Jesus with His great oriental love for parables and illustrations. He said, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And naturally, the rain didn’t come, nor the floods didn’t descend, just to be a part of this story. But rains descend, and floods come, winds blow, normally. Normally.

In a little country paper that I used to know, there was a character by the name of Peter Tumbledown, and he kept a very bad farm, and he never fixed the roof. And he gave as his reason for not fixing the roof, that when it was raining, he couldn’t, and when it wasn’t raining, he didn’t need it.

Now, when you build a building, you don’t use Peter Tumbledown’s theology. You build it in good weather, with the knowledge that the good weather won’t last. When you build in July, you build with the knowledge there will be a December and a February. You build with not a breath of air and the sun shining calmly on the meadows, with the knowledge the time will be when the wind may hit 50 miles an hour, and the rain come down in drenching torrents.

And our Lord said, this man built his house on a rock, and he did it by doing. He used exactly the illustration I’ve used before. He heard and did, and the result was that his house was on the rock. When the floods came, and the rain descended, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, it wasn’t there they weren’t mad at the house particularly. They were just being the way winds and floods and rain are. But that house had to stand up there. But it fell not, says Jesus, for it was founded upon a rock.

But he said over against this, everyone that hear these sayings of Mine, there’s theology, and doeth them not, there’s failure to have living in harmony with our teaching. He shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon a rock.

And while I have not used this before, in my sermons on divine wisdom, do you notice here how Christ contrasted between the wise man and the fool? There we have moral wisdom, which is as practical as a slide rule. Moral wisdom, when it builds a house, digs down to the rock and lays a heavy good foundation.

Moral foolishness, when it builds a house, builds on sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the wind blew. The rains and the floods and the wind weren’t mad at the house. It was just, they do those things, that’s weather, and you can expect that. And the beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

The house was just as, I suppose, as carefully built as the other one, except that the foundation was neglected. The man had the theology, but he didn’t have the light. Somebody says, well, but you’re confusing your illustration, maybe so, but I’m getting an idea across, am I not, that there must be practical soundness, the hearing and the doing.

There you have the two of them, the hearing and the doing. They’re a unit, you can’t separate them. And if you separate them, you have no foundation. It goes out from under you, and even your very beliefs cease to have any value to you.  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Everybody that heard that understood it. Everybody knew about that, everybody. I’ve heard of houses that were built, and built in filled-in sections, or sections that were so sandy, that they hadn’t been built long until great cracks began to appear in the bricks. Plaster began to crack. The foundations were poor. They might have meant well, but the foundations were bad. So, my brethren, a foundation and the building they’re one, and so Paul says, speak thou the things that become sound doctrine.

All right, Paul, what do you believe? You believe in the Trinity? Yes, but I’m not talking about that. You believe in the deity of Jesus? Yes, but I’m not talking about that. You believe in baptism by immersion? Well, of course, we’ll have to have Paul say yes, even though some people wouldn’t say he said yes, but we have a baptistry back here, so we’ll say he said yes.

And Paul, what else do you believe in? Do you want us to teach second coming? That’s not what I’m talking about. What do you want us to teach? I want you to teach it all, but what I’m specially asking you to bear down on here in Crete is the things that befit sound doctrine.

Old Haldeman-Julius was an atheist. There’s reason to believe he finally died by his own hand. When I was a boy, this atheist was publishing books called the Little Blue Books, and I got hold of them and began to learn about the great writers, and what little education I got, I got partly out of an atheist who was a great publisher of great books and published them all, good and bad and indifferent.

I believe I knew the difference between them. But anyway, this atheist wrote a sketch one time about religion. He didn’t believe in it. He said he could drive through the landscape and enjoy the scenery without leaning on the God that was supposed to have made the scenery. But when he came to a chapter in his book about the Quakers, he said this significant thing. He said, then came the Quakers and startled the Christian world by living like Christians.

Imagine that. Startled the Christian world by living like Christians. I believe that without any particularly great leaders maybe, but just the common people, the plain Christians, I believe that we could startle the religious world if we’d begin to take seriously Paul’s admonition to live lives that befit sound doctrine.

Not only believe what the Bible says but do what the Bible says. Not only believe the theology but practice the morality of the Bible. Quit our lying. Quit our deceiving. Quit our gorging. Quit our luxurious spending. Quit our quarreling. Quit our nasty treatment of each other. Quit our laziness. Quit our long, unnecessary, and expensive vacations away from God’s house.

I believe in the vacation, all right, even if I don’t take them, but they run to extremes. In England they say when Friday comes, cars are bumper to bumper for the seashore, and they don’t come back till late Sunday night, and the churches are left high and dry for the owls and the janitor. That’s carrying a decent thing to terrible extremes. They can import Billy Graham or any other great preacher they want to. They’ll never have lasting revival until they’ve started obeying God.

Paul Rees, they say, I always claimed one of America’s greatest preachers, in going to England, said in his church in Minneapolis, that if the English people don’t remember that you can’t bring the blessing of God by bringing a good man to your shores. Speak the things which befit sound doctrine, that aged men live this way, aged women live this way, young men live this way, young women live this way. Employers do this, and employees do that, and all of you do this. That’s the way Paul said sound doctrine ought to sound. And I believe that we could startle the world, rock the liberals back on their heels.

A man wrote me a letter and said, you probably won’t like it that you get a fan letter from a liberal. But he said, I just read something you wrote, and I like it. And I wrote back and said, listen, there are two kinds of liberals. There are the smooth talking, hollow fellows with superficial philosophies who don’t mean what they say and live on wind and words. And I have no respect for them.

But there’s another kind of liberal, the kind that’s been driven to liberalism by the hollow lives of the orthodox and the poor living of those who claim to be fundamental in their faith. And I said, I not only respect them, I pity them, and I think you’re among them. Instead of damning the liberal, we ought to remember the liberal hasn’t had a very good example of godliness.

If we lived the way Paul taught us here, I think the liberals would begin to disappear. One after the other, they’d begin to disappear. Captain Henning, how many of you know Cap Henning? He is connected with the Pacific Garden Mission, and has been a Christian for years. When Mrs. Dietz died, we had her funeral here in this church. Cap Henning sent a floral piece. There was a long ribbon and in gold letters, the florist had written this, I watched her life and sought her Savior.

And I saw Cap Henning and ate with him the other day. And Henning said, I was a fresh, smart, young fellow and I stayed at the Dietz home, and I watched Mrs. Dietz. He said, when I was leaving, they said, would you like to pray with us, Cap? And he said, sure. And he got down on his knees and got converted. I watched her live and then I sought her Savior. But there’s many a liberal today that watches us live and turns to liberalism. Not because he’s got anything against Christ, but because he gags on what he sees.

If the holy season, as we call it, means anything, my friends, it means that we ought to take this whole thing practically. If that was God’s Son that rode into Jerusalem there that Palm Sunday, if that was God’s Son who came out of that new tomb on that Sunday morning and stood among men in shining glory, that’s all true and I stake my eternal future on it.

Then we ought to begin to live as if it was true and stop being animals, civilized animals, living according to our glands, chitchat and gossip and all the rest. We ought to begin to live like Christians.

And if we do, immediately our prayers will take on a new power. Immediately our testimony will take on a new sharp edge. Immediately our joy will begin to spring up like wells in the desert. And I believe that we can make an impression on mankind.

Some of my poor orthodox brethren have begun to believe over the last years that if we can get some good polemical writers, that is argumentative writers, who know how to argue with others, and we get some good books arguing for the faith that we can cure liberalism, never, my brethren, you will cure it when we begin to live like Christians, but never before. So, I beg of you, let’s begin to live the life that befits sound doctrine.

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“The Doctrine of the Remnant II”

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The Doctrine of the Remnant II

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 8, 1957

In the Book of Romans, the 9th chapter, verses 27 and 28, Esaias, which is Isaiah, also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved. For he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.

I began last week a two-sermon series, finishing it tonight, on the doctrine of the remnant in the Bible. And it’s not my intention to give an exposition of the ninth chapter of Romans, a very heavy and difficult chapter. But the 27th verse is not difficult. It says simply that regardless of how many there may be, what the population of the nation of Israel may be, only a remnant shall be saved.

So, the doctrine of the remnant is a doctrine not only applying to Israel, but as I said, it applies to all mankind and to the Church. It is simply this, that in our blind, fallen, sinful world of mankind, at any given time, the vast, the overwhelming majority of the people are lost, alienated from God, their sins unshriven, their souls unforgiven, their hearts unrenewed, being without hope and without God in the world.

That’s true of the majority at any given time. But somebody said, Mr. Tozer, what is the percentage? Don’t crowd me because I can’t tell you. And since the Bible does not tell me, I will not try to tell you.

I only know that the word remnant means a small fragment. I only know that the word remnant means a surviving trace, a remnant. You had a hundred dollars in your pocket, but you spent it here and you spent it there and you spent it the other place and you have a dollar thirty cents, a small fragment, a surviving trace of what you originally had. I don’t give that as a percentage.

Now that’s what the doctrine teaches. And that it’s true, it was true, I pointed out, among the nations, it’s true in Israel, it’s true, it was true when Christ came the first time, the Bible teaches it will be true when he comes back the second time. And church history shows that it has been true all down the years. That of the multitudes who named His name, only a remnant, a surviving trace, a small fragment were saved.

Now I make the devil mad by saying this, the devil doesn’t care how religious you sound, and he doesn’t care how many people crowd a church and listen to lovely phrases, phrases about the laughter of little children and on and on toward better things. The devil doesn’t care. I think the old boy likes it. But when we dare to deal with things that disturb him, then he hates it, and he hates this.

And so, here’s the way he works. He works to whisper to the listener, that man is a bigot. A man who would dare say that is a bigot. For a bigot is who imagines that he and his religion is all there is. And that man is a bigot. It’s strange that a bigot like that could have anybody listen to him in this day.

And so they flounce out. But I didn’t originate this doctrine of the remnant, my friends. In fact, I didn’t originate anything that I preach. And if you can discover anything that I originated, please, for God’s sake, reject it out of hand immediately and for good. Because nothing that I ever originated will stand the test of the judgment day. The fires of God will burn anything I have originated in one quick flash of flame and it’s over.

But this doctrine of the remnant, this teaching that at given time in Israel, in the church, among the nations, that is in Christendom, there are large numbers of people who name His name but a surviving trace that actually know his goodness, a small fragment that really know his grace. That’ll make you mad, and not you maybe, but some. And it will turn some people away. They’ll go away in steaming anger and not come back. And I can’t help that, but that’s in the Book, my friend. That’s here.

Now, I told you that I would talk tonight on where is that remnant? Where is the remnant? Elijah didn’t know where it was in his day. There were 7,000 that hadn’t bowed the knee to Baal, which I showed you was about one-tenth of one percent of the people of Israel in that time.

And Elijah didn’t know where they were. He didn’t even know where the preachers were, the prophets, hidden in caves. He didn’t even know they were there. They were. I don’t know what they were doing in caves, or maybe I do know what, and that’s worse still. But they were hiding in caves, and Elijah didn’t know it. So, I don’t know where the remnant is, but dare we inquire where the remnant is.

Now, as soon as we bring this subject up, immediately all of the half-saved and the one percent saved, and the backsliders, and the borderlines, and the church members, and the professors, and those who have not the witness of the Spirit to their redemption, they begin to squirm and quote Scripture.

And one Scripture they quote is, Judge not that ye be not judged. And they say that that man stands up there, the old bigot, and he judges other people’s religion. And he judges me. What right has he to judge me?

Does not Jesus say, judge not that ye be not judged? And does not the Bible say that love thinketh no evil? And if that man had love, he would not think evil about anybody. He would accept these. He would accept everything that is done in the name of the Lord. And he would not dare to say only a remnant shall be saved. He would accept and believe in the good religious people that go and give of their pennies, and he would believe in them. But he’s not a man of love. He’s not a loving man. He’s a severe, harsh man.

Now, my brethren, I wonder if when Jesus said, judge not, and when Paul says, love thinketh no evil, and when Christ said we should love one another and lay down our lives for each other, and all this that’s said in the Scriptures, I wonder if that was intended to end inquiry and silence rebuke.

I wonder if Jesus meant when He said, Judge not, that ye be not judged, that His prophets were not to go forth, His apostles and His preachers, and speak truth to the church. I wonder if He meant that they were to go forth like the three monkeys on the what-not shell, see no evil, think no evil, hear no evil, and get the permanent smile on their faces, which never will rub off till they die, and believe in everybody and everything and everyone who says, Lord, Lord, accept him into the kingdom of God, forgetting that the same Holy Ghost who said, judge not, through the lips of the Savior said, a remnant shall be saved, a small fragment, a surviving trace.

Well, we have in our audience tonight a friend of mine, Dr. Eldred Heisel of Columbus, a fine Christian physician whom I knew when he was a little lad in short pants. And I don’t want him to think I’ve chosen this illustration because he’s here for the simple reason that this is one of my favorites.

But do you know what we need in the church of Christ now? Do you know what we need? We need diagnosis. And do you know what diagnosis is? It comes from two good hard Greek words, meaning to know all the way through. That’s what we need in the church of Jesus Christ. But they quote, Judge not. As soon as a man of God gets up and starts in, they say, Judge not.

Well, now my illustration is this. Suppose that somebody isn’t feeling up to par and goes to see his doctor and says, Doctor, I feel as if I had a mitten in my mouth when I get up in the morning. My head bothers me, and I don’t have the energy, and I just don’t feel good. And the doctor says, all right, stick out your tongue. He said, What? He said, Put out your tongue. He said, What? Put out your tongue. Well, I can’t understand why you should want me to put out my tongue.

Well, the doctor says, I got to know you. I got to know you through. I’ve got to diagnose you, get to know you through. He said, It’s an improper thing to do, and I beg your pardon. And all right, tell me, how is your appetite?

Well, I don’t see why that’s any of your business. Doesn’t the Bible say, don’t ask questions about people, and judge not, and you be not judged. Love everybody and think no evil, and don’t stick your nose in other people’s affairs. What are you asking me about my appetite? Well, how do you sleep? What’s the difference to you how I sleep? I came for help. Don’t you love me? I came for help.

I want you to help me, but don’t you love me? Yes, but I wonder, do you sleep well at night? None of your business, doctor. Absolutely not. You’re a terrible man.

The Scripture says, love everybody, and judge nobody, and love thinketh no evil, and love covereth the multitude of false. Don’t you read your New Testament asking me how I sleep? Well, what do you eat? Well, it’s none of your business. I want you to understand I’m no glutton.

Well, let me take a bit of your blood. My blood? Yes. What do you want of my blood? I want to know you. I want to know you through. What right have you to know me? I came for help to you. I want encouragement and inspiration.

I don’t give no blood. Well, but I can’t know you like it to your blood. Oh, you’re terrible, and you’re a radical bigot. Why should you want to know about my blood? Well, let me at least take your blood pressure. What do you know about my blood pressure? None of your business. Do you not realize that the Bible says, Thou shalt not judge, and if you take my blood pressure, you’ll be judging me.

What kind of a crazy business would that be? Even Satan would hold his belly and laugh in hell, and yet they demand that that’s the way we preachers treat our congregations. They demand that that’s the way the preachers treat the congregations.

I want to tell you something, my friend. We are beating the drum for revival, and we are getting thousands of people to pray into the night for revival. We might as well jump up and down on the altar of Baal and cut ourselves and cry, Baal, hear us, Baal, hear us. We won’t submit to diagnosis. We won’t let God find out what’s wrong with us. We won’t let God know us through and through, and we won’t listen to the man who tries to find out and minister to our needs.

We go to the preacher for inspiration and encouragement and confirmation in our backslidden ways, and as soon as he opens his mouth, if he’s prayed half the night for his congregation and would give his life for it, we shut him up by ramming a text in his mouth and say, don’t you dare judge anybody.

If a man says, I’m a Christian, you’ve got to accept it. Otherwise, you might be grieving the Holy Ghost. And we shut up the mouth of the man who’s trying to find out what’s wrong and how we can cure it.

Well, if this is true, that I am only to stand up and preach love, that I’m only to stand up here and tell you in the book of Ephesians how wonderful you are, if that’s true, then all the prophets who spake since the world began were all wrong. Beginning with Enoch who said, Thus the Lord cometh with all his saints to take judgment on the ungodly for all the ungodly deeds they have ungodly done.

That doesn’t sound very much like inspiration and courage and moving on to better things.

Sounds to me more like a little diagnosis, somebody getting into it to find out what’s wrong. Well, if I don’t dare do it and you won’t listen to it, then all the prophets were wrong. And Christ was the greatest transgressor of all, for there was nobody that could look you through and make you feel like two cents devaluated.

Nobody could do it as well as our Lord Jesus Christ could. And if that’s the way it is and all inquiry must be ended and all rebuke silenced, then the apostles also were great sinners, and also great bigots and Pharisees. For if you don’t believe it, read what Paul wrote to the Corinthians, read what he wrote to the Colossians, read what he wrote to the Galatians, read what Peter wrote to the general, to the Christians scattered abroad, read what Jude wrote about the people that had crept into the church, read what John in his first epistle and all his epistles has said, read what James said.

Had these men not heard the text, judge not that you be not judged? Sure, they’d heard that text, but they knew what it meant, and these others don’t. Had Paul not heard the text, love thinketh no evil, when he wrote to the Galatians and said, you’re circumcising yourselves, I wish you’d cut your throat? You say, he didn’t say that, you just read a little there and dig around a little bit and see whether he didn’t say what amounts to that. He said, I wish you’d cut yourself clear off.

He said, you lovers of Jewish circumcision are always trying to make Christians with a pair of scissors. I wish you’d get clear cut off, he said, and get rid of yourself and get out of the church. He was the man who wrote the text, which said that love thinketh no evil and love, love, love, he said, was the greatest thing in the world. And then he told the Galatian false teachers, get out of here and cut yourself off.

Well, if I’m not supposed ever to diagnose, to inquire, to search, to get at blood and take blood pressure, then I ask you, I tell you that the mystics were all wrong and the reformers were all wrong and Luther should have been in jail and Finney should have spent a term or two in jail and all of the men who have moved the world for God all should have been in jail.

Well, and if that’s true, it’s also, it’s impossible to obey the Scriptures. If I do not, if I cannot, if I dare not exercise moral judgment, if I dare not stand up and look at a thing and decide in the light of God’s Word, whether it’s right and wrong or wrong, then I cannot obey the Scriptures. The Lord has given me commandments which I cannot obey. Beware of wolves, he says, which come in sheep’s clothing.

And the modern pussycat theologians say, don’t you judge anybody but accept everybody at his own face value and be loving as the Savior was. All right then, when the wolf comes along dressed in a sheep fleece, what do I do? I say, good morning, sheepy. And I don’t dare allow myself to believe that he’s a wolf.

Even though I see his slobbering fangs, I’ve got to be loving and not judge him. Why the Lord’s using him, why don’t you keep quiet, dear brother? I would be afraid. There’s nobody you can get quite so effusively lovemaking as these blind men who are afraid to preach the truth.

Be loving, dear brother. And they paw you, you know, and paw you, dear brother, with their white hands. My dear brother, if I am not to be able to tell a wolf when I see him, then how am I going to keep the wolf out of the fold? And I’m supposed to do it. He said, beware of wolves, and if I can’t tell a wolf when I see one, how can I beware of that which I don’t dare identify? Tell me.

Then he says, by their fruit ye shall know them. Now I go out to an old run-down garden or orchard, and I start looking for sheep-nosed apples, the kind we used to raise out in Pennsylvania, sheep-nosed apple. I suppose they’ve changed their name. Sell them now, you housewives.

But they were sheep-nosed apples to us. And I go looking around for sheep-nosed apples, but all I can find is a crab apple and a thorn apple and a sour, dried-up, degenerate apple full of worms. And I go looking for sheep-nosed apples.

Somebody says, what are you doing, Reverend? I’m out here judging fruit. I’m out here looking for fruit. Well, but you’re not supposed to. Why? Well, the Bible says, judge not. And you’re not supposed to judge fruit. You’re not supposed to do it. Why, it isn’t loving. Doesn’t Paul say, love thinketh no evil? And that you should judge not and you shall not be judged. And you love everybody.

Now that poor crab apple’s doing the best it can. And that thornberry there, as big as a small marble, that tries to look like an apple, that’s a sheep-nose on the way up. And if you would only believe it, why, you’d just, you’d find, oh, the Lord loves the dear things. Well, why should you be so hard on them?

So, I got to go sneaking away. I don’t even dare know the difference between a great, big, gorgeous, juicy sheep-nosed apple and a crab. Because if I do, I’m judging people. You can’t obey the Scriptures. The Lord’s given us truth we can’t obey here. By their fruit ye shall know them. And if you can’t exercise moral judgment and criticize and discriminate, then you can’t obey what you’ve been told to do. And John says, try the spirits, whether they are of God. And if I can’t and don’t dare try the spirits.

I’ve had people, you know, I don’t scare easy. That’s one strange thing. I was afraid of everything when I was a kid, afraid of wind, afraid of dogs, and afraid of everything. But in the kingdom of God, I don’t scare easy. And they come to me and say, now, Brother Tozer, I’d just, I’d be afraid to say what you’ve just said.

My sister said, God bless her, she’s a wonderful Christian. My sister Mildred a wonderful Christian. But she sat up at my happy alongside of me on a bench. And she’s like all other Tozers: talks a lot, you know. And she asked me about somebody currently in the public eye, and I gave a little appraisal. And she said, oh, now watch it. Watch what you say. Oh, I’d be afraid to judge.

Afraid to judge when God Almighty sent me to do it? Afraid to distinguish a crab apple from a sheep’s nose when God sent me to do it? Afraid to look at a wolf and say, you’re a wolf, when God said, look out for wolves? Afraid to try the spirits when God said, try the spirits, whether they be of God? God isn’t going to send me out to do something and then damn me for doing it.

He’s not going to send me out and say, now you go out and judge the fruit and then damn me for judging fruit. We’ll prove all things and hold fast to that which is good. And if we can’t exercise moral judgment, I want to know how we can know good from bad.

And if anyone that is called a brother commits fornication or does any of these other deeds, idolatry, and the rest, don’t eat bread with him. That is, don’t have communion with him at the Lord’s house.

Well, we say nowadays we don’t dare do a thing about this. They’re dear, the Lord’s, dear children, they all mean well, and therefore don’t say anything. But Paul said we’d better say something. And all our churches have died the same way. They’ve died by getting infections in them that they couldn’t get rid of and didn’t get rid of, and pretty soon the infection flared up and destroyed the whole body. They all die the same way.

Well, I think I’ve made my case, I’ve convinced myself anyhow, and I trust I have you. Where is that remnant? Somebody says, you don’t dare ask that question, Mr. Tozer. You don’t. There’s a very small remnant that is saved even in this day.

Sixty million Christians are members of churches now, isn’t that it? Sixty million Christians in America members of church. Sixty million Christians alive in the earth today. You know what would happen if there were 60 million Christians in America today? There would be a doxology that would bring the Sputnik down. There would be a doxology that would rise to heaven and send up such a glorious wave of music that the stars would pause to listen.

But nobody can get me to believe that. Though there are children of Israel, should be in number as the sands of the sea. A small fragment shall be saved, a surviving trace that yet remains.

So it was in Noah’s day, so it was in Israel down the years, so it was when Christ came the first time, so it will be when He comes the second time. So has it been in church history and so is it today. And we are where we are because we have silenced the preachers who dare to find out what’s wrong with us, who dare to inquire where is the remnant or is there a remnant.

Well, you say, then what are we to do? And I answer, first, let’s beware of something. Let’s beware of presumption and self-righteousness. For this is the snare of all the cults and the sectarians and the Pharisees. Let us beware of the spirit that says, I am right, judge yourself by me.

The wonderful thing about a right man is that he doesn’t want to talk about it. The wonderful thing about a godly man is he doesn’t know he’s godly. The beautiful thing about a holy man is that he’s the only one that doesn’t know it. See? And as soon as we begin to talk about how holy we are, we’re not holy anymore, if we ever were.

If somebody else says a man is holy, I’ll listen. But if he gets up and says he is, I’ll close my ear right there because I don’t want the decibels to disturb the atoms inside my eardrum, because I know he’s not telling the truth. A good man doesn’t know he’s good, and a holy man isn’t aware of his holiness, and a righteous man thinks he’s miserable. He says, oh, I’m such a poor wretch, I love my Savior so, I’m so happy in God, but when I think of myself, it makes me sick.

So, remember, look out for presumption. Save me, said the holy man, save me from presumptuous sins. Save me from self-righteousness that says, stand apart, I am holier than thou. No, no. We want this church to have a standard as high as the New Testament, but we never want anybody in this church to be so good that he can’t help a drunk man up the stairs and get him seated and sit beside him and do his best to win him.

We want everybody in this church to be pure as the blood of the lamb can make them, but we don’t want a woman in this church that wouldn’t be willing to help a harlot, painted, off the street and help her in here and try to lead her to Christ. Self-righteousness. You don’t have to be self-righteous, brethren, and you don’t have to be bigoted and presumptuous.

What, then, is the right attitude? The right attitude is, refuse to compare yourself with anybody else. Compare yourself with Jesus. I remember hearing dear old William Jennings Bryan, when he had turned preacher, you know what he did in his old age, and was a better preacher than 99 percent of the preachers who were supposed to be preachers.

I heard him preach when he was quite an old man, just a little while before he went to heaven, and he said the difference between an evolutionist and a Christian is this. He said an evolutionist goes out Sunday morning to the zoo, stands in front of the cage of the monkey, and congratulates himself upon how far he has sprung from the days of his fathers. But he said a Christian goes to church Sunday morning and sits reverently and listens to the preacher preach and looks up and bemoans how far he has to go yet before he’s perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect.

And if you could have heard him say it with those golden tones, it was beautiful to hear. But this is the point. The man who belongs to the remnant isn’t asking if he does, and he isn’t inquiring. He is hoping and believing and trusting and seeking and longing, and he’s comparing himself not with somebody else, but with the Savior. Compare yourself with somebody else and you’ll be proud as Lucifer. Compare yourself with Jesus and you’ll be as meek as Moses.

So, the thing to do is not to look for the remnant. The thing to do is to beware of presumption and self-righteousness and to compare yourself only with Jesus. And then when you’ve done that, say, I am an unprofitable servant.

When I was younger, the Scofield Bible was my alma mater, you know, and I got my degree there and my theology, and I still like it and turn to it often, although I don’t think all the notes are inspired. In the same sense the text is quite. That shocks some people, but it’s still true.

But when I was busy with it, I was seriously wondering about, when I became mayor of five cities, and I could preach on the five crowns of the Christians, right out of the notes. Five crowns of the Christians. The crown of life, the crown of righteousness, the crown of rejoicing, a couple other crowns. And I remembered about the five who rule over five cities. Well, I don’t speak lightly. Somebody’s going to rule over five cities.

But now I know not who it’ll be, but I know who it won’t be. It won’t be I. I remember when I actually believed that I would have a starry crown. We used to sing far, far away beyond the starry sky and about the crown we would wear. I hope so, but I don’t know.

That I’m saved, I know. That I live in the heart of God, I know. That I walk with the Savior, I know. That I wake in the night and say, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, and fall back to sleep, I know. That I carry a hymn book and a Bible everywhere I go, that I know. And that the Lord is literally, literally becoming nearer and dearer as the years go by, I know. That I am his child, I know. That my name’s in the Lamb’s Book of Life, I know.

But further than that, don’t push me, because I don’t think that I’m going to have much of a crown. In fact, I’ve had an understanding with God about that. And if he surprises me by giving me a little crown, I’ll be the happiest man on the golden strand, because I don’t expect it. I’ve done, I’ve been too, I’ve been too sinful, wasted too much time, been too lazy, too cowardly, too everything, for a man to have a crown.

So, I’m not expecting it. And I’m not trying to be humble, so you’ll go away and say, I almost cried that dear, humble man.

Brother, there isn’t a humble atom in my body. Old Adam made me as proud as hell, and it’s only the cross of Christ that can save me from the effects of it. I’m only just testifying, and I’ve got a right to do that, and tell you that I don’t expect much of a reward.

You know, I like to, I like to have understandings with God. I go to God and have understandings with him. I go to God and talk it over, and settle things, and say, Now God, I was, where was I, in my, I think on the train. I like to take a roomette, it costs a little, but I, it makes an office for me, and I’ve got to work.

So, I shut the door and get down, get a, carry an old pair of praying pants, get down on my knees, save my suit, and I get down there and ride for hours and hours, my Bible open. And I told God something the other day that I’d just like to pass on to you.

I said, God, I know where I belong. I belong in hell, I know it, I know it. I belong in hell. But God, I want to tell you something. If I go to hell, you’ll have one fan in hell. If I go to hell, you’ll have one man there singing your praises. If I go there, you’ll have one man that won’t keep his mouth shut, but will run all around over that dark place, telling how good God is, and how wonderful is the blood of the Lamb.

And I had another understanding with God. And it is this, that if I have in my life failed so completely as a Christian, that I’ll have no reward for what I’ve done.

There’s one thing not even God can take away from me. The boys that write in and say, Brother Tozer, I went to Moody Bible Institute, I was going to Northern Baptist, I went to this and that seminary, I was there with the government, I went to your church, oh, how God enlightened my heart.

Nobody can take that away. Satan can’t rob me of that. Don’t you suppose that’ll be a reward enough? Won’t it be a reward enough to see somebody there that’s there because you lived? I think that’ll be a crown, and that nobody can take away from you. That, no circumstances can rob you of that.

And I get letters as I do, saying, oh, Brother, I just read something, and oh, how God has blessed me. Nobody can take that away. And if you’ve prayed and God has answered a prayer, if you’ve given a dollar to God’s work and some soul has been saved, if you’ve, if you’ve taken a bowl of soup in His name to some poor widow, nobody can take that from you.

But the point is, you’re going to have to come to Him in meekness and humility and not say, I am holy, stand thou aside. But say, Lord God, I trust that by thy grace and the power of the blood of the everlasting covenant, I may have some little reward there, but I’m an unprofitable servant.

Now, I want to close by telling you this. It is my opinion, and I believe it’s more than an opinion, I believe it’s insight. Evangelical Christianity as we know it today, gospel Christianity as we know it today, is almost as far from God as liberalism. Its nominal creed is biblical, but its orientation is worldly.

The modern evangelicals, the holiness people, the Pentecostal people, the Bible people, the Bible-loving people, the Alliance people, and we who claim to be evangelical and traditionalists in our Christian faith, our orientation, that is, we’ve gathered around, that is what we have circled around, our orientation is toward the big businessmen. You know, Jesus never got along with any big businessmen in his day, and we use them as our models. Our orientation is around the banquet hall.

Where did I hear that a certain church has a 6:30 supper every Wednesday night? Then they hurry through their meal and at 8 o’clock have a prayer meeting. And the 6:30 supper has a mob, and the 8 o’clock prayer meeting has a pitiful handful. People love to eat, and the evangelical church is orientated around showmanship.

Oh, I can always tell them I smile to myself and pray that God will wake them up, but when I hear a young man leap to the platform, as I do in these schools where I go, and camp meetings and places, I know where he’s been. I know where he’s been brought up. He leaps up just vibrating, emoting. And he’s an emcee. He learned that from TV. He knows how to do it.

He smiles that greasy smile that they put on with the paddles, and he drags that damnable thing into the church and leaps up and announces a meeting. Now Jim Smith, Mabel Persnickerty, and Harry Jones will sing a solo. All right, kids, I know where he’s been, I know where he’s been. And I sniff, no myrrh, no aloes, no cashew, no fragrance of heaven’s dewy rose. I smell, I know where he’s been. His orientation is TV and movie.

But he’s got a Bible as big as a cedar chest under his arm. And he carries it down the road and says, I’m preaching a sermon of five blocks long, carrying my Bible five blocks. Then he upsets his sermon as soon as he arrives at church by acting like a worldling.

And we’re orientated to play and to respect of persons–respect of persons, bigwigs, religious bigwigs. I don’t know whether there’s too much difference between the princes of the Roman church, princes, God bless them, old bachelors, princes. I don’t know whether there’s too much difference between those old bachelor princes that wear all that mess of finery and a lot of this big-shot-ism that we got in the church of Christ today.

You know, James said, if anybody comes into your church and he doesn’t have on a nice robe, he said, don’t tuck him under the, behind the pulpit somewhere and get him out of sight. He said, some brother comes sweeping in, going down the aisle, used to, take a letter, calling to an office boy to come and get this, and phoning somebody to go do that. And he carries that same spirit to church with him. And the pastors, the poor little mice, they accept him at his own value.

Could I tell this old one again? Peter Cartwright, you’ve heard this before, but he was preaching and Stonewall Jackson came in, leaned against the tent pole. And the little seminary preacher who was there, whispered, Peter, Peter, brother Peter, watch what you say, Stonewall Jackson’s present. He said in a big booming voice, who’s Stonewall Jackson? If he doesn’t repent, God will damn him just as quick as he would a hottentot. And he went on with his sermon. And after it was over, the little seminary preacher said, oh, brother Peter, you’ll be horse whipped tomorrow morning. He said, that’s an awful man, that man Stonewall Jackson. He’s terrible. He’s a general. He’ll horse whip you.

So the next day, the big old square-shouldered Peter was going down the street and he saw the general. The general said, Reverend, he went over and said, I heard your sermon yesterday. Peter braced himself. He said, put her here. He said, if I had a hundred generals who had your courage, I’d soon win this war.

But we’re mousy and timid. And when a big guy swaggers down the aisle, the little preacher leaps to attention and salutes.  I’ve got a word for you. There isn’t a man in Chicago high enough in society or deep enough in debt or owning enough property or having enough bank account or able to write a big enough check to shut my little old mouth. Not one. And he may be a prince of this or a cardinal of that or a bishop of the other. He may be the uncrowned poohbah of fundamentalism or the self-appointed without portfolio ambassador of modern evangelicalism. But I’ll preach what God wants me to preach. Amen.

Now I’m about done, and I guess it’s about time. But what is our job? Well, it’s to seek to become a part of the remnant. It is not to judge unkindly. It is not to withdraw in self-righteous pride. It is not to be unloving. But it is to seek to become a part of the remnant.

A remnant shall be saved. It’s to seek to become by returning to New Testament living. You see, a Christian is one who lives according to the New Testament. It’s to return to New Testament living. Revivals don’t come like waves of wind. They come because some certain people return to New Testament living and then pray and ask God to do the same for others.

That’s how it comes. But we can pray a hundred years and never have revival unless we return to New Testament living. Our compelling cross is to seek to become part of the remnant by denying self, forsaking the world, and centering around Jesus Christ.

And if I might be allowed a grotesque modern expression, become Christ-oriented, and resisting the magnetism of the majority, the magnetism of the majority, and the contagion of example.

Oh, you dear young people, there’s a contagion about example. It spreads like Asian flu. You get it and you don’t know where you got it. You get it from the radio. You get it from the advertising. You get it from the car, you see, going down the street. You get it everywhere. It’s the contagion of example. It’s breathing into your soul the germs from other people’s example.

And the Christian’s got to fight that. He’s got to stand and fight that. And kneel and fight that, and say, I don’t care what the world says, I’m fighting that. The Christian’s got to be a fighter. We want a Christian to be a tabby cat with his teeth filed and his claws pulled, soft and fluffy.

The Christian has got to be a fighter. And he stands in the name of the Lord to fight the contagion of example and the magnetism of the majority and refuse to go along with it. And if his whole church goes, he won’t go. And if his whole denomination goes, he won’t go. And in doing that, he’ll make enemies. And in doing that, he’ll no doubt get many a scar.

But it’s his compelling cross in this day of terror that we seek to be like Jesus Christ and become part of the remnant. And owning the lordship of Jesus and throwing our lot in with those who are as near as we can tell of the remnant.

Maybe some of you expected me to say the Alliance Church at 70th and Union is an integral part of the remnant. I think we have some here who are. I’ve known them a good many years and I don’t know one that’s perfect. I don’t know anybody in this church that I couldn’t put my finger on the flaw in their life. I don’t mean a sin; I mean a flaw. But also, I know a great many that with deep reverence and appreciation, I believe belong to the remnant that speak often one to another.

And the Lord hears it and writes it down in a book. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord, in the day that I come to make up my jewels. When Jesus drew near on Emmaus Road to the two disciples, oh, what a difference if they’d been discussing hockey. What a difference. If they had been talking about the Olympic Games and who the great decathlon champion was for that year. Or if they’d been discussing crops. Oh, what a difference.

What a different story the 24th chapter of Luke would have told, or it never would have told it. It would have left it in cold silence. But two Christians, as they walked, were talking about Jesus and that he’d been crucified. And that they’d seen a vision of angels who said he was risen. And that the women also had come and said he was risen. I wonder if it could be true.

This wonderful Jesus, is He risen indeed? They were saying. Back and forth they tossed it as they walked along. And something about their conversation pleased Jesus and drew Him like a magnet. And He walked with them and finally caught up with them, walking a little faster than they. He had nobody to talk to. They were talking and so He slowed down.

So He walked faster and caught them. And He said, excuse me, what’s the conversation? Oh, they said, we’ve been just talking about that strange, wonderful prophet, wonderful in deeds and words that appeared recently. They crucified Him, but they tell me He’s alive again.

But we don’t know. They said it’s the third day and we’re puzzled. Christ smiled deep in His heart and said, oh, you foolish people, why don’t you believe what the prophets have told you? He said, now here, and opening the Scriptures out of His memory, no doubt, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He preached. And as He talked to them, their hearts got flaming and flaming and flaming and flaming.

But He wasn’t going to push Himself on. And when they came nearly to the house, He said, well, it’s been nice. Goodbye. Oh, they said, don’t go, don’t go. Come on in. Well, He said, it’s late. Oh, they said, but we come on in. That’s why we want you to come.

He went in and they had a little meal. And they didn’t know who He was. They said, we’ve never heard anything like this. And while they were eating, Jesus raised His hand to bless it. And they recognized it was a simple little idiosyncrasy of the Savior. He did it a certain way.

And they looked at His hands and they saw the nail prints and immediately He was gone. And it was a five mile walk or a seven-mile walk. One of the two, I’ve tried to check it to find out, at least a seven-mile walk. They had just come from Jerusalem, seven miles, walking on their feet. And they hadn’t had any rest except the few minutes they’d sat at the table. Do you know what they did? They got up, the Scripture says, and returned immediately to Jerusalem, ablaze with what they’d seen and heard. Did not our hearts burn within us when He walked with us, talked with us on the way?

Ah, there are some people, when they meet, they don’t discuss worldly things, or if they do, it’s only casually. And the magnetic attraction is Jesus and God and prayer and the Bible and the church and missions and evangelism and prayer meetings and good things. You’ll always find Jesus along with a crowd like that.

Brethren, I want to belong to that remnant more than I want to live one more minute. Do you? The remnant, the blood-bought, Spirit-inspired remnant, I want to belong to it. This isn’t a matter now of whether you’re accepted Jesus or not. This is another thing I’m talking about. Shall we pray?

O Lamb of God, I love Thee so, I would with Thee life journeys go. And O Lord Jesus, we would resist the world and spurn the flesh and put our pride on the cross and die with Thee that we might live with Thee.

O Lord Jesus, we pray for these who’ve heard. Some of them we don’t know, some of them we do, some of them we believe are real Christians, some are on the way. But O God, Thou knowest every one of us deeply, deeply. We want to be ready. We want to be ready, Lord, when Thou comest.

We pray, help us that we might be willing to inconvenience ourselves, to upset our neat plans, to stir up our fur-lined nests, and to carry a cross, to go where we’re sent, to give up what’s wrong and to begin what’s right, and cease to do evil and learn to do good.

O Lord, the Church has been betrayed by easy-believism. We’ve been told, just believe and you’re all right. And that’s true, but not true as they teach it.

So help us to believe truly, Lord, believe in faith, believe with a cross on our shoulder, believe, but believe with our back to the world, believe with our faces toward the light, believe with our sword and our hammer in our hands, believe, Lord God, doing something. Bless thou this congregation, Father. Help them, we pray, each and every one, not to lose what they’ve heard tonight in song and sermon, but to go home and think it over, pray about it, and earnestly seek to be in that number.

We sing, I want to be in that number, but Lord, we’re just imitating colored people when we sing that song. We don’t half mean it. We smile and laugh and giggle and go on. We really want to mean it, Lord. We want to be in the number when the Saints come marching in. Bless us now as we bring our service to a close, in Christ’s name. Amen.

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“The Doctrine of the Remnant I“

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The Doctrine of the Remnant I

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 1, 1957

I want to talk about a doctrine in the Bible that is very alarming. And I am afraid, I am very much afraid, that the Bible is a more alarming book than we know. I love this little number we sang tonight, but I’m afraid of it. That is, I’m afraid of what we’ll do with it. Thy word is like a garden, Lord, with flowers bright and fair, and everyone who seeks may pluck a lovely cluster there. Thy word is like a mine, for there are hidden jewels for searchers. Thy word is like a starry host, with a thousand rays of light.

All that is true. I like the song, I recommend it, I enjoy singing it, I enjoy hearing it sung. But I’m a little bit afraid that that is the attitude we take toward the Scriptures, that it is a beautiful jewel to wear around our neck or on our finger, or a corsage to wear to dress up occasions, that it is a star to shine on us, that it is fragrance, it’s all that. But it is something more than that. And in our sinful arrogance, I am afraid we’re not letting the word of God mean to us what it ought to mean.

Now listen to what Esaias said. That was the way Paul said it. Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved, for he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness. Because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved.

Now here is the doctrine, and whatever the educators may be saying and whatever the current religious vogue may be, here is the doctrine clearly taught in the Scriptures, a doctrine which cultists and false teachers have misread and rested to their own destruction. For every cultist says that I’m the remnant, and every group that meets says we are the people.

But I refuse to reject a doctrine because somebody else has rested the doctrine. And I have no starry host tonight for you to admire, nor any posies for you to smell, but a terrible doctrine that hurts me and that bothers me and that makes me weak and be disturbed. It is the doctrine of the remnant.

And what is that doctrine? It is simply this, and it’s all through the Scriptures taught, that our blind, fallen, sinful world of mankind at any given time, that, I repeat, in our fallen world of mankind at any given time, the vast majority, the overwhelming majority, is lost. And by lost we mean not that they’ve missed their way or come short of the mark or been less than they wanted to be or failed to fulfill their dreams or any of that. By lost we mean alienated from God and enemy to Him. We mean by lost without pardon, without life, and without hope.

Now hear me because I am not repeating words but telling you seriously that the Bible teaches this, that at any given time the vast majority of mankind is lost, alienated from God without pardon, without forgiveness, and without hope. Yet a remnant shall be saved. That’s the other half of the doctrine. Yet a remnant shall be saved.

Now what does a remnant mean? It means a small fragment. It means a surviving trace. It means something that yet remains when the larger body is somewhere else. So that this is the alarming doctrine taught in the Scriptures, that in this hour, 1957, the closing weeks of the year, that the vast majority of mankind is lost, but that there is a remnant saved. The Romans text deals with Israel, but I take it because it sets forth clearly the doctrine as taught as applying to all the human race and to the Church too.

Now this was true among the nations before Abraham, that only a few were saved. It was true of Israel after Abraham, and it’s true of the Church since Pentecost. You see, we believe what we want to believe, and we don’t want to believe anything that disturbs us. When someone blows a fuse, we say he’s disturbed. Now that’s our word, he’s disturbed.

But the old Lutherans said faith is a disturbing thing, perturbing they called it. And to believe the Bible is not to wear a flower on your buttonhole, on your coat, but it is to be disturbed and alarmed. And I am alarmed, my friends, because it’s been true since Pentecost that of the vast number of people who call themselves Christians, the overwhelming majority are nominal and a remnant is saved. That of all the Jews who were born of the seed of Abraham, the vast majority is lost and a remnant is saved.

Now look at the examples in the Bible. Jesus said, in the days of Noah, and the flood was upon the world of ungodly. Now look, according to the Scripture, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And there were seven members of his family, and Peter said that Noah, the eighth person, there were seven other members of his family, and they were saved out of that whole population. I do not know what the population was, but I know that at the time of the flood, there were eight persons saved out of a whole population. And I know that it is written as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.

And then frequently we find in the Scriptures where Israel is referred to, though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved. But somebody says, don’t you remember, Mr. Tozer, you’re taking it too seriously. Don’t you remember when Elijah felt the way you feel? And Elijah crawled off and said, O Lord, I alone am left. And God said, cheer up, Elijah, I have news for you. Seven thousand there are in Israel that have not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed his image. And that sounds like an awful lot. That would fill the biggest church. That would twice fill nearly Moody Church, one of the largest, if not the largest church in the city.

So, isn’t that encouraging to know that there were in Israel seven thousand true Jews who had not bowed the knee to Baal? Well, suppose the population of Israel at that time was seven million, and I think that’s a very, very conservative count. Suppose that the population of Israel was seven million. That would mean one-tenth of one percent had not bowed the knee to Baal, and all the rest had. It would mean one in a thousand. If you were to take at that time a thousand Jews, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them were weekly bowing the knee to Baal to keep out of trouble, and only one man stood bold in the one thousand.

But suppose for the sake of absolute fairness we cut the population of Israel in half and say there were only three million, five hundred thousand, half of that. Well, it then only means one in five hundred. It means that every time you saw a synagogue or a building with five hundred Jews reading the Torah or listening to the chant of the priest, that you had four hundred and ninety-nine of them that were secretly following Baal and one that was saved.

Now I’m not saying this. This is written the Book. One in a thousand or at most one in five hundred. And at Christ’s first coming, remember my friends, at Christ’s first coming there were only a few that recognized him. We take it for granted just as Israel did. Israel believed that when Messiah came, they wouldn’t know it.

They believed just what Samson believed when he went to sleep with his head in the lap of Delilah. He believed that he was well set for life and that he had had some experience in religion and therefore there was nothing to worry about. But when he woke up he found that he had been captured and his eyes were soon put out and he was grinding at the mill and was making sport for, in the name of Dagon, the false god. He took himself for granted, which always is a bad and dangerous thing to do.

We either take ourselves for granted and are at peace or we get disturbed and then pray through and find the peace. Most believers today take themselves for granted and have a false peace. Where if they did what the Bible, this doctrine alone would teach them to do, they would be bothered and alarmed about themselves, and then they would go to God with an open Bible and let the Bible cut them to pieces and put them together again. Then give them peace. And the peace they have when they have been chopped to pieces by the Holy Ghost and by the sword of the Spirit, that peace then is a legitimate peace.

There are two kinds of tranquility, don’t forget it. Well, maybe there are three kinds now. There’s the kind you buy in bottles, and then there’s the kind that you get from taking yourself for granted and believing good things about yourself that are not true. That brings a certain tranquility to the mind.

Then there is the tranquility that comes following a disturbance of the soul that shakes it to its foundation, that shakes it to its very foundation and drives the man or the woman to God with an open Bible to cry, O God, search me and know my heart. Search me and see if there was any wicked way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.

And then when God does that and gets done with it, then we have an experience in God that gives us tranquility that’s grounded upon the Rock. But most of evangelical Christians today, the leaders go out to bring them tranquility. They go out to bring them peace. And the Lord does not at first offer us tranquility at all. The Lord at first offers us deliverance and forgiveness and renewal and the making of things right.

And following that comes tranquility. But we are purveying tranquility now and selling it like soap and asking our people in the name of John 3:16, to come and get tranquilized. And so we have a tranquilized church that is enjoying herself immensely at her banquets and her times of fun and her coffee clutches and her fellowships. And then she’s singing about the Lord, the Word of the Lord. That’s like a flower garden.

Now I believe it and I hope we sing it every once in a while, but you got to know what it means when you sing it, my brethren, or it leads you astray. So will the Psalms for that in the words of Jesus and Paul. I only call attention to it because there’s danger that we make the Word of God to be something to give us tranquility.

Go into the churches and the little ones that are left open all day in the busy sections, you’ll find people come in and sit down. They do it to, as the poet said, to loaf and invite their souls and call in their thoughts that roam abroad and get still. Well, you know that businessmen do that, and advertising men do that. And mystics do that from India and from Burma. That getting a hold of yourself and getting still in the middle of the day, that’s not necessarily a Christian thing. It’s a good thing, but it isn’t enough. And we gear our services so to tranquilize people and paralyze them.

Well, we ought to be alarmed by this doctrine of the remnant. We ought not to allow ourselves to take ourselves for granted. We ought to be alarmed about it. And I ought to say, Tozer, does this mean you? Are you in this or where are you here? For there were 7,000 who didn’t bow the knee to Baal, which may have been only, I repeat, one-tenth of one percent. It may only have been one in a thousand. And if that’s true, then what about me?

But you say, I think, Brother Tozer, you ought to be satisfied and restful about the whole thing you preach. Paul says, After I have preached the word, I myself, I fear lest I be made a castaway. I’m not talking for the moment about eternal security now. I’m talking about what Paul said. Paul said he was afraid that he could preach and be a castaway. And I have known preachers preach a lifetime and end up dirty, storytelling, filthy old men. And it’s possible for us to teach Bible school, and be on boards, and sing in choirs, and take part in church services, and then find at last we’re castaways, and that we have never been of the remnant at all.

Now, brethren, that’s an alarming thing, and I don’t apologize for alarming you. I’m afraid that we’re not alarmed enough. We ought to be disturbed about this, for it is here, and it is summed up there in the text, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sands by the sea, yet a remnant shall be saved, and a remnant means a small fragment, a surviving trace, shall be saved, just a little bit of the greater number.

Now, when Christ came to the world the first time, He found them taking themselves for granted. They said, we will know the Messiah when He comes. Are we not taught in the Scriptures? Have we not listened to the rabbis? Are we not of the fundamentalistic persuasion? Do we not know the truth? And therefore, when He came, they looked straight at Him and said, thou hast a devil. They looked straight at the One that they’d been reading about in their synagogues and said, this fellow has a devil. Not all of them said it, but a tragically high percentage of them thought things like that about Him.

Well, there were a few old friends of God. I’ve preached here and then on the radio about God’s aged friends. There were a few. But when you think that the population of Jerusalem alone at the time of the Passover was a million, and at Pentecost it was a million people in that city, every place was crammed full, wherever they could bed down and tents around, and 3,000 got converted. We say, what a vast harvest it was.

Well, 3,000 out of one million isn’t a vast harvest, I would say, my friends. And I wonder if there’s ever been a time when there was a really vast harvest.

I know there have been times, I know it was said of John Paton that he went to the New Hebrides and found not a Christian, and when he came away there was not a heathen. But I have always crossed my fingers when I read that statement, because it isn’t according to the doctrine of the remnant. For the doctrine of the remnant is though the number of the religious people should be as the sands of the sea, yet only a remnant shall be saved. It isn’t they couldn’t be. It isn’t that God doesn’t want them to be, but it’s just that they are not.

Well, when Christ came there were the shepherds and there were the wise men, and we’re going to be walking with shepherds and humping along over the desert with wise men now for another six weeks. And it’s all right, we do that once a year, and call it the Advent season. And we’ll hear about these friends of God, and there were a few of them, and we’re glad for them. But the point is they were pitifully small, as the world says, percentagewise.

Well, then, at the second coming of Jesus, listen, he says that because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold. Now, it doesn’t say the love of many only, but every student of the Greek will tell you the same thing. There’s an article, a positive, definite article in there, the, the love of the many shall wax cold.

And Jesus said, sort of flung it off from Him as a, shrugged it out of Himself, so to speak. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, will He find faith on the earth? He didn’t say He won’t find faith, but He said, will He find faith? So that at the second coming of Christ, it’ll be as it was at the days of Noah. And in the days of Noah, Noah the eighth person was saved by water, by the ark, and the rest of the population drowned.

And then, if you want still more support for the doctrine, read church history and see. A small fragment, a surviving trace always kept the faith, while the others took things for granted. You know what’s wrong with us as a church here? We’re taking ourselves for granted, that’s all.

We are assuming that which may not be true at all, which is founded upon wishful hoping and not upon sound biblical experience, in many cases. We have not been disturbed enough. We have not allowed God to plow furrows on our backs. We have not dared to go before God and have the examination made. We’ve been afraid of what God would find, and we’d rather wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. And so we’ve waited and settled down.

And there’s always been a small fragment, a remnant, and they have been in the midst of all the rest. And while the million worshipped with their lips, and there were always millions who worshipped with their lips, always, you don’t need to imagine that it’s any indication of vast spirituality or any high degree of holiness when you see a church door open and spill out multitudes onto the sidewalk. Follow them along, follow them a half a block, and see how they live. That’s the way to tell. For by your fruits you shall know them. Ask them to lead in prayer. Announce a prayer meeting and see where they’ll go. And then announce a banquet and see how they’ll come. You know, come and go, come and go, stop and go. In the church of God the stop-and-go sign is when it says go, it’s banquet. When it says stop, it’s prayer meeting. And the church of God follows it.

We smile about it, but it’s an alarming thing, my friends. And I don’t want to come up to the Lord having soothed and petted. We’ve got a big gray cat at home, and she’ll come and lie down in the middle of the floor and turn up wanting to tickle her tummy. She likes to be played with and have her ears scratched. Well, she just wants pleasure and wants to get fun out of living, and just soothed. And we preachers are sent out to soothe.

Oh, why do I preach like this? It was before I listened to the radio broadcast this afternoon, the religious broadcast this afternoon. I heard one preacher preach, and then I heard the rest. A free Methodist preacher had something to say, and he was talking about John Wesley and Charles. Outside of that, my brethren, I don’t believe it’s worth a while. Just save your wattage, because you don’t hear very much. I know Fuller preaches the Word, and I know Billy Graham preaches the gospel, and there are a few that preach the gospel, but I know for the most part it’s simply back-scratching and ear-tickling.

And we are simply petting the old cat instead of giving her 15 minutes to get out. Well, read Church history and see. Read Church history and see. See the fragment that lived in the midst of it all. Read about the Waldensians and the friends of God and the Brethren of the Common Life and how few there were, but how many went to church. Tread my court, says God.

Well, my brethren, it’s possible to worship God with our lips and not worship God with our lives. But I want to tell you that if your life doesn’t worship God, your lips don’t worship God either. In the most beautiful hymns in all the world.

Ray, do you know what I grieve over? Now, maybe you won’t like this. Ray and I don’t always agree when it comes down to music and things like that. We agree on hymns and church music, but he’s got a broader understanding than I have, and I’ve just got ignorance and a pugnacious disposition.

But do you know what I worry about? I’m worrying about so many people singing the Messiah over the next five weeks that won’t have the remotest notion what it’s about. They won’t know what it’s about. They’ll stand and sing, come unto him, come unto him, until you could cry, and they won’t know what it means.

And I’ve seen them stand great, vague, spangled, overstuffed, hard-voiced, contraltos. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a child. That beautiful passage from Isaiah, while the very tone of the voice indicated she’d never been within shouting distance of the virgin’s Son.

Too bad, my brethren, too bad that we can sing the passion of Matthew and the Messiah in all the grand numbers. When Handel wrote it, I heard the other day, somebody was explaining over the radio about the great man Handel. He said, when I was through me what I saw heaven opened and all the angels of God gathered.

That’s how he felt, but you can sing it and only enjoy its music. We can come and sing hymns here in this church and only enjoy the dignity of the music as a relief from rock and roll.

Brethren, always remember there is a remnant in the earth. I’m just going to give you a little talk about the remnant. Next Sunday night, I’m going to talk about where is the remnant, who is the remnant. But tonight, I want to talk about the remnant just a little more.

Let me read you about the remnant once, back 900 years, 500 years, 600 years before Christ was born. He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand. Behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lies toward the north, and every man had a slaughter weapon in his hand.

One man among them was clothed with linen, and had a writer’s inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood beside the brazen altar, and the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, where he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer’s ink horn by his side.

And the Lord said unto him, go through the midst of the city and through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city and smite, and let not your eyes spare, neither have pity. But come not near any man upon whom is the mark, and then these terrible words begin at my sanctuary.

We say, begin in the Kremlin, O God, begin in the Kremlin, and destroy those godless wretches. God says, begin at my sanctuary. We say, go down to the corner where men in half-lighted rooms sit and slurp beer. Go down there, O ye with the destroying weapon in your hand.

God says, Begin at the steps of My church. Begin at My sanctuary. We say, go to the church where the pastor has nothing to preach but poetry. But God says, begin at My sanctuary. But he says, look out, watch for the mark on the forehead, that indelible mark.

He sent the man, the white-collar man first, the man with the linen. He sent him first with an inkhorn, indelible ink. He said, go mark him, mark him. And he said, which ones will I mark? The ones that stand and pray the longest? The ones that give the most to missions? No, no, he said, that’s not the test. Here is the test in a day, in a day of corruption. Here is the test, them that sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst of Jerusalem.

That’s all they have to do. Not for those that succeeded in stopping it. There are some things that are like a wave of the sea. You can stand and Paul himself couldn’t shout it back. It’ll engulf him. But you don’t have to get the mark of the remnant on your forehead.

You don’t have to succeed and you don’t have to be popular. You only have to sigh and cry for the abominations that are taking place in the earth. I can’t stop people from doing what they’re doing.

I can’t, I can’t get people to stop, but at least I can grieve because they won’t stop. And I’m going to do that. And I’m going to let my tears water the footsteps of those who go astray. And when they will not, they will not, the churches will not come back to New Testament standards and worship the Lord our God in the beauty of holiness. If I can’t make them, do it or persuade them to do it in this awful hour of crisis, at least I can weep because they won’t come. And I can sigh if I can’t weep.

I said Wednesday night, I’m not a weeping man. I wasn’t born that tears are not high up on my inside of me and it takes something to make them rise and overflow. But if I can’t weep, I can sigh. They cry and they sigh for the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

It has become a positive burden to read the Saturday papers anymore and to notice what my brethren are preaching about and what they’re doing to try to persuade a few people to come to hear them preach.

Well, I don’t know what the future holds, but I know one thing, that rather than betray the sheep of God, rather than lie to them and deceive them and keep them agitated and stirred up with all kinds of popular topics, rather than take my material from Time magazine, I’ll preach the word to empty seats and sigh and cry for the abomination that is in the earth. So God says, begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

These young people are the trouble. These young people are filled with lust and wild ideas. Scripture says, begin with the ancient men which are before the house. These old bearded pillars of the church, says the Holy Ghost, begin with them. And they went forth and slew in the city, and I was left. And I fell upon my face and cried, O Lord God, wilt thou destroy the residue, there’s the remnant, wilt thou destroy the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury?

And he said, Iniquity of the house of Israel, and Jacob’s exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city is full of perverseness. And they say, The Lord seeth not. And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity. And behold, a man clothed with linen, which had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.

Some people have the mark, and you say, who are they? I want to preach about who they are next week. I’m only going to tip my hand on one thing. I’m not going to tell you it’s this church. And I’m not going to tell you it’s the Christian and Missionary Alliance. After that, I want you to come because I do want to talk about this terrible doctrine of the remnant, which teaches that in every generation and at any given time, the vast, the overwhelming majority of the population is lost, alienated from God, unshriven, unforgiven, and without hope for God in the world or the world to come. But that there is a remnant according to grace, and that remnant is found with a mark on their forehead. A mark of success, not necessarily. A mark of sighing for the state of affairs.

Would you pray for me? They listen to me. They don’t come in vast numbers to this church, but they listen to me. And I can have entrée to almost any religious magazine published. And will you pray that the Lord will give me wisdom to know what to say and what to write, that there might be a stirring up and a perturbation and a disturbance, and that instead of thinking of the Word of God as a beautiful relaxer to read just before you slip away into slumberland at night, that we should begin to think of it as a disturbing book to drive us to our knees in tears and self-accusation?

If the evangelical church, if the fundamentalist believing church won’t accept this, then I can at least sigh because they won’t and cry to God because they don’t. So let’s pray, and let’s believe God together.

Now we’re going to close. When you go to the hymn sing tonight, don’t sing junk. I know, don’t think you do. But sing only that which warms your heart and makes Jesus Christ glorious. And then slip away home, and don’t waste your time telling jokes and making quips, and lose everything you’ve got today in the house of God.

Have dealings with God, won’t you friends? Have dealings with God before you close your eyes and slumber this night.

Father, we pray. First, we want to thank thee that we have light on this. We want to thank thee that in thine infinite mercy thou hast not let us go like cattle to the slaughter, not knowing where we’re going, and because we’re fat and sleek, imagining that we’re all right when actually we’ve been fattened for the slaughter. We thank thee, Lord, that we’ve got light on this. Now help us to walk in it.

Bless us, everyone. Take away all false hopes and all unscriptural expectations, and pull us back to the Word of the Lord. O Father, out as we go down the steps and onto the sidewalk tonight, mark the forehead of them that sigh and cry.

Great God, have mercy upon our America. Have mercy, we pray, upon our America. With its dozen of gods, at least a dozen gods, have mercy, Father, and help us to turn from idols to serve Thee and to wait for thy Son from heaven.

Dismiss us now, we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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“That We May Know Him“

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That We May Know Him

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 17, 1957

Now, tonight I want to talk about this, that I may know Him. In the first place, I believe that God created the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein. Everybody that believes it, would you risk an amen?

I believe that God made the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein. And I believe that He made all living creatures, and He made each one with a kind of life peculiar to it, with a kind of life which He chose for it. And then He adjusted that kind of life to an environment which He chose for it.

And as long as each living creature stays in its own environment and lives the kind of life God gave it, that creature fulfills the purpose for which it was made. And God being who He is, there can be nothing said of any creature higher than this. He fulfilled that for which God made him.

Now that’s all. You can’t go higher than that. You can put statues in the park. You can write their names on the walls of famous buildings. You can give them prizes of all sorts, Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer Prizes and every kind of prize. Or you can canonize them if you wish.

But when it’s all been said, you cannot say any more of any creature than this. God made him, gave him a certain kind of life, gave him an environment to inhabit. And he has lived in that environment and in relaxed confidence has lived the kind of life God gave him.

Now that’s all. The angels and archangels and seraphim and cherubim and saints and apostles and prophets can’t go any further than that. Now it says here that the angels, which kept not their first estate but left their own habitation, God hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment of the great day.

And here we see a certain order of being, or a certain number of beings of an order that left their first estate. That is, they left the place for which they had been created. And anyone, anybody, any intelligent creature, any moral creature anywhere that leaves its proper sphere and estate will know only endless defeat and pain, because they’re not fulfilling the end for which they were created. Now that I say generally of any living being anywhere.

And incidentally, brothers and sisters, you and I are willingly poverty-stricken because we’re scared stiff. We’re afraid to use our religious imagination and we’re afraid to believe what the Bible teaches us. The Bible talks about angels and archangels, at least one, and seraph and cherubims and watchers and holy ones and principalities and powers. And you and I insist on people, that’s all. We are afraid to rise and let our faith-filled imagination encompass the wonder of the filled universe, filled with beings.

Now, God created man in His own image, and of no other creature is this spoken. I cannot find in the Scriptures where God said He ever created a seraph in His image nor a cherubim with all of his faces and his wings, nor an angel or archangel or principality or power.

But it says that God made man in His image. God said affectionately, let us make man in our own image, so in the image of God created he him. And blew into him the breath of life and man became a living soul. So that man, now hear this, you can take this out, misapply it, misquote it and make a radical out of me if you want to do it, but I’m sure you won’t.

But as originally created, man was more like God than any other creature that ever was created. As originally created, man was more like God because of no other creature did God say that he made them in his own image. And a wise old German Christian said this, there is nothing in the universe so much like God as the human soul.

Now of course he took for granted and meant that man’s soul was sinful and lost. And in that sense, sin is not like God and the soul that sinneth it shall die. But there is something basic in human nature and in the soul of man that can become more like God than anything else in the universe. I wish we could believe that.

I wish that we could accept that as a part of our creed to not be afraid that if we state it and say we believe it, somebody will charge us with believing man’s all right.

Man’s not all right. Man’s a fallen creature. Man went down like an automobile that left the highway at a curve and went over a gully down in among the rocks. And man is not all right. Man is lost.

Man is not damned. I heard a preacher this afternoon talking about my poor lost damned soul. No, no, never call yourself damned, brother. You’re lost if you’re not converted. You’re lost but you’re not damned. That’s another thing altogether.

But God created man to know Him and He created man to know Him in a sense and to a degree which no other creature can know God. The creatures that are in the presence of God may not know God as well as the man soul which God has made in His image. Don’t you see, don’t you see that there has to be a degree of life there which enables a man to know God.

Don’t you see that the cat there under your table or the dog there lying on the rug, you’ll put a record on. You put on something by Mozart or Beethoven, and he’ll never even open a sleepy eye because there’s nothing in that cat nature that can understand Beethoven or Mozart. Put on, as we have at home, some of the fine records of London, the great choir there singing Christmas carols.

Well, no dog will get up and go over and sit down and gaze in spite of that little ad. He knows his master’s voice. No dog ever looked into a phonograph. If he did, it was curiosity. He can’t appreciate it because he hasn’t got the kind of life that can appreciate it. But a two-year-old baby. . .

We thought at first that our grandchildren were unusual because when you’d play the music, they’d sway their little bodies and then we find out all babies do that, that everybody’s like that, that it’s built into them, they’ve got it in them to do it. God put them into the rhythm of the universe. And I’m not afraid of rhythm, I don’t go for Elvis Presley, but I’m not one afraid of rhythm because the beat of God, the up, down, north, south, east, west, it’s God the musician in His universe.

And so, the little babies are born into the stream of it, as a fish is born into the water, into the stream. And when they’re old enough to hear music, they’re old enough to smile and sway to it. Because it’s the dance of life, it’s God gave them that kind of nature.

Now, my brother, God made us to know Him in a way that no other creature can know Him. He made us to know Him to a degree that no other creature can know Him because no other creature has quite the capabilities that man has. Certainly, the angels have capabilities, they’re holy angels and they obey God. And certainly the seraphim around the throne shine in the fire of God and they know God.

But they don’t know God as man will know God when redemption has been completed. For God means that man should be higher than the angels. God made him a little while lower than the angels that he might raise him higher than the angels. And when it’s all over and we know as we are known, we shall rank higher in the hierarchy of God than the very angels themselves.

My brethren, man by his sin lost this knowledge. He lost it. I read about it over here in Romans, the first chapter, because that when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which were not convenient, as one version says, to do disgraceful acts.

So that man by his sin lost this knowledge of God. So that now man, though he has the potentiality to know God in a way no creature in heaven can know God, he still doesn’t know God because his conduct is unworthy of his high origin and his heart is filled with a huge emptiness, if you know what I mean.

And so that’s what’s the matter with us. That’s why we have these crises all the time. That’s why the President was killed in Iraq and the newscasters are worried immediately lest the next man who is elected president will be anti-American and may turn out to be anti-missionary.

Well, what’s the matter with us? They told us that science and philosophy and psychiatry and psychology and sociology and all of this should make the world a better place in which to live, and we could all, men could all be their brothers, each other’s brothers. But we’re hating each other more than ever since the beginning, and there’s more hatred and more suspicion and more treachery and more spying and more espionage and more treachery and more selling out than ever there has been since the beginning of the world.

What’s the matter? It’s because man is filled with a vast emptiness. He was created to know God, but by his sin he chose the gutter and would like not to have God in his knowledge. And so man is like a bird shut in a cage or like a fish taken from the water.

And so, man instinctively craves for the image and misses it, misses the eternal being, misses the life, misses the light, misses the friend. And that’s what’s the matter with us, and we don’t know it. Why do fifteen kids get into an old banged-up car with pipes and hammers and go out on the prowl, looking for anybody, not anybody in particular, but anybody? Because down in the deep soul of them is the knowledge that sometime they’ve got to die, that this world isn’t enough, and there’s a longing they don’t understand. And so, it turns in on them and turns astray and becomes perverted. And like the alcoholic, they choose the gutter and love the gutter.

Now, what does the Bible teach about them not knowing God, the sinners? Well, it teaches that God can be known. It teaches that God has not abandoned the human race as He abandoned the angels that sinned. Why did He abandon the angels that sinned? Because they were never made in the image of God in the first place. They were made moral creatures, capable of moral and spiritual perception, but they were not made in the image of God.

Why did not God abandon man? Because man was made in the image of God. And so God gave man a chance and sent a Redeemer.

How does the Bible teach that man can know God? It teaches that in Christ and through Christ, He is the image of the invisible God, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person. Our old Father said this about Him, I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of Him before all ages. God of God, light of light, very God of very Gods, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. And this is what the Bible teaches. It teaches that everything the Godhead is, Christ is.

Don’t listen to the liberals who say God revealed Himself through Christ. Don’t listen to the liberals who say that Christ reflected more of God than other people did. Don’t listen to the liberals who say that as one piece of metal might be more radioactive than another, so certain individuals are tuned to God in a way that other individuals aren’t, and they are therefore religious geniuses, and that Jesus Christ was the supreme religious genius, catching and reflecting more of God than any other man.

Don’t listen to that, because all that amounts to is to insult Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was not a reflector of deity only, though He was that. He was not a revealer of deity only, though He was that. He was, and is, and always has been, and never can cease to be, God, light of light, God of God, very God of very Gods, begotten, not created. And so that all that the Godhead is, Christ is.

And so to know Jesus Christ is to be back at the ancient fountain again, back at the ancient fountain again. I don’t say this is a result of advancing years, because I felt this way when I was converted at seventeen. I certainly didn’t have it developed as far, but I went back to the roots of my being.

And I tell you, my brethren, that we have pushed our way on into artificiality so far that it’s a wonderful thing by one wonderful swift act of our souls in faith and prayer to go back to the ancient fountain of our being and start over again. And there, know God for ourselves, all over again, back where Adam started, back beyond where Adam started, back beyond where the world began, back beyond where the angels began, back at that ancient, glorious, trembling fountain we call the being of God, the Triune God.

And in Jesus Christ we go back there. In Jesus Christ we leave all the environs and we go back to the ancient source of our being, fixed on this blissful center, rest, old John Newton wrote.

Now rest my long-divided heart, fixed on this blissful center, rest. And so back at the ancient source of our being we find the beginnings and start all over again in Christ. That I may know him, said Paul, that I may know Him.

Now my question tonight is why Christians know Christ so little and know God so little. Now I’d like to say to you this, that not all of the Godhead can be known. If this discourages any of you, it will be a most wonderful thing for you, because a real good shaking down is good for Christians sometimes, a shaking them back to where they belong. And if any of you have the idea that you know pretty well all that can be known about God, you’re just about to burst. Let me warn you, just about two more foot-pound pressure and you’ll blow. And when you blow it will take God a long time to get you back together again.

Brother, not all of the Godhead can ever be known, because that being that was capable of knowing all of the Godhead would have to be equal to the Godhead. Just as you can’t pour a quart of water into a vessel holding less than a quart, so you can’t pour all of the Godhead into an experience of anyone being less than God.

Now, I have quoted before what some of the ancient fathers said in arguing for the Trinity. They said, look at it like this, God the Eternal Father is an infinite God and His name is love and He is love.

And so, the very nature of love is to give itself. And He could not give His love fully to anybody that was not fully equal to Him. And so there we have the Ancient Son who was equal with the Father. And the Eternal Father poured out His love into the Son who could contain it and contain all of it, because the Son is equal with the Father.

And then said these wise reasoning old brethren, they said for the Ancient Father to pour His love out on the Son would mean that a medium of communication had to be there equal to the Father and the Son, and that was the Holy Ghost.

So, there you have the Trinity, the Ancient Father in the fullness of His love pouring Himself through the Holy Ghost who is in being equal to Him and to the Son who is in being equal to the Spirit and the Father. So not all of the Godhead can be known by man. The limitless infinite sea of being we call God, filling and surrounding and enfolding and upholding, but all that can be known of God is revealed in Christ. And when Paul said that I may know Him, that I may know Him, no, no, here’s not intellectual at all. You don’t know God as you know the multiplication table or know the Morse code.

When I was a kid, sixteen or so, I learned the Morse code, and I could send and receive messages or—not too well, but I was working on it for a while, anyhow. We’re over the old telegraph instrument. And like you can know almost anything, there’s practically nothing you can’t learn. But it’s intellectual.

When Paul said that I may know Him, he did not mean intellectually. He meant by experience, personally and consciously. He meant that I may know God personally, myself, spirit touching spirit and heart touching heart and conscious knowledge of God.

You know, the old Henry Suso, when I get to heaven, I’m going to hunt some of these old fellows up. I’ll be satisfied to sit and just gaze for a thousand years, but after that, if I get enough courage, I’ll go hunt up some of these dear old brethren. One of them will be Henry Suso. Henry Suso said this, there is a vast difference between hearing a sweet lute sweetly played and merely hearing that one has been played.

Now, it’s one thing to hear that there’s been a concert, it’s another thing to have heard the concert. It’s one thing to hear that there has been a planet suddenly discovered, but it’s another thing to have gazed on that planet. This describes almost all Christians, not all, certainly, but a great many, a too high percentage of Christians. They’ve heard there’s a sweet lute that’s been sweetly played, but they’ve never heard it themselves. They know God only by hearsay.

And I don’t want to be harsh and hard on people, friends, but it’s my conviction, a growing conviction with me, that that’s what’s the matter with us now, what’s the matter with the Church on earth, the Gospel Church, the believing Church, that we tend to know God only by hearsay. Some have never heard of Him except by hearsay, and others have heard Him and known Him, but only faintly. We’ve heard only faint echoes of God’s voice instead of ever hearing the voice of God.

You can always tell a man or a woman who’s been into the Presence and come out. There is a vibrancy in the testimony that you don’t find anywhere else.

I claim I can know as much about a place by reading about it as most people who go there. But everybody that goes and travels abroad and comes back, they always smile at that. If you’ve actually been there, you’ll know it in a way you can’t know if you’ve only read a book about it.

But most Christians have only read a book about God, that’s all. They’ve heard the faint echo of the voice of God, they’ve seen a reflection of the light of God, they’ve seen a photograph instead of God Himself, and their personal knowledge of God is very slight.

I don’t want to hurt your feelings, though I will if I have to, but I would say that I am afraid that a lot of us here, for all our reputation, we don’t know God for Himself very much.

Church attendance and fellowship and singing, we lean on each other all the time, and we have social fellowship and religious activity and all the various religious props and lean on each other. But that’s one thing, my brethren, that’s one thing. Jesus had that, He had His brethren, He had His work to do, He had His healing and raising from the dead and opening eyes and unstopping ears and answering questions and blessing people, He had that. But He also had a personal knowledge of God that was strong and real and individual, so that when He went into the mountain to pray and waited on God all night, He didn’t feel that He was alone, but God was there.

In our modern Christian service, it’s do this and do that and go here and go there, and the result is we know God only by hearsay, we hear of the sweet lute but we never hear it played for ourselves. We want things instead of God.

You see, God wants to give Himself, God wants to impart Himself with His gifts. Separated from God, every gift is dangerous, any gift is dangerous. If I were to pray for all the seventeen gifts in the epistles of Paul, the gifts of the Spirit, and I got them all, it would be dangerous to me, if in giving them God didn’t give Himself with them. God wants to give you Himself. Didn’t I say a while ago, and isn’t it true in the Scriptures, that when God creates an order of life, He creates an environment for that life?

And when God made man in His image and redeemed Him by the blood of the Lamb back to that image, is not God the environment of the Christian? The great sea we call the ocean is the environment for whales, and the air is the environment for birds, and the earth is the environment for the nightcrawler and the mole. But the heart of God is the environment for the Christian.

And God meant that we should live in that heart of God. And the great grief in heaven is that we want God’s gifts and don’t want God. And even in the Church today, even in the Church it’s the same.

And if God gives you a rose without giving you God, He’s giving you a rose with a thorn. And if He gives you a garden without giving you Himself, He’s given you a garden with a serpent. And if He gives you wine without giving you God, He’s given you that with which you may destroy yourself.

Now, God wants to give you Himself, and you and I, we’ve got to repudiate this modern seeking God for His benefits–what we can get out of God. You write a book—anybody can write a book now and sell it, anybody—all you have to do is write a book on “17 ways to get things from God,” and you’ll have immediate sale, “14 ways to have peace of mind,” and away they go by the ton. “How we can bring God to our service,” and the printers can’t keep up with the books. We want God for what we can get out of Him. And that’s the great blight that rests upon us, brethren, the great blight that rests upon us.

The Sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself, and He wants to be appreciated for Himself. And more than that, that’s only part of it and not even half of it. The other part is that He wants us to know that when we have Him, we have all the rest.

Jesus said it in another way, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness, the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Why does God forgive sin? He forgives sin because sin is the shadow that stands between Him, God, and us. And if God is ever going to know us and we know God, the shadow has to be removed so God forgives sin.

Why does God pour out His Spirit on us when we trust Him and believe that He will? It’s in order that the Spirit, when He comes, will take the things of mine and show them unto you. Why does God answer prayer? In order that in answering prayer He might unveil His own face to us? And why has God given us the Scriptures, that through the Scriptures we might know God?

The Scriptures, my brethren, are not an end in themselves. You hear them talked about as though they were an end in themselves. No man can believe more fully in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given than I do.

But verbal inspiration or any other theory of inspiration, when it makes the Bible an end in itself, is a dangerous thing, because the purpose of the Bible is not to lead you to the Bible. The purpose of the Bible is to lead you to God.

And the Bible is a lattice through which we look and see our beloved gathering lilies with the dew on his hair, as we read in the Song of Solomon. The Bible is the ladder, the Bible is the means of communication, the Bible is the entrance in, and the Bible is never an end in itself.

But the modern vogue is, use God, use God. Oh, that God would raise up somebody that could say this, that could make His church see it, that could make the orthodox church see it, the Bible people, the fundamentalists, the evangelicals, that he’d raise up somebody that could make us see it.

We’ve undergone for so long, indoctrination and brainwashing in a kind of creed that makes God to be our servant instead of our being God’s servant. And we write tracts on how, if we pray, God sends money, and He does. I’d have starved to death the first few years of my ministry if I couldn’t have prayed money in, my wife and I.

So, I believe God sends money, but it’s pretty cheap when we get all excited because God sends money. Somebody over in the Baliem Valley was praying for money to buy an outboard motor, they needed an outboard motor. Of course they were praying for it. Don’t you think they weren’t praying for it? And somebody over here heard them, and so we’re sending $350 to buy them a motor over there. I believe in that.

But that’s what you might say, that’s down on the level of the routine. There’s something grander and higher and finer and richer than that. And if God doesn’t give Himself over there along with the motor, they’ll wreck that motor themselves.

God wants to give gifts, but every gift He gives, He wants to give Himself with His gift. And that’s the wonder of it, my brethren. He wants to give Himself.

But nowadays, use God, use God, use God to get you a job. Use God to give you safety. Use God to give you peace of mind, and heaven at last.

All right, but God is searching for those who will say, God, I don’t know. My heart craves Thee, I want Thee. My heart is, my heart is pained, nor can it be at rest till it finds rest in Thee. And I’d rather have Thee and nothing than to have everything rolling in my way. You can’t be sure God’s making you a prosperous businessman. You can’t be sure at all. You’re prospering, you say, because you tithe. Well, go ahead and tithe, double it, it’s all right with me. I think you should. But your prosperity may not come from God at all. It may be the economic level of the day in which you live. It may be you’re pretty sharp, cutting corners.

It’s better to have God and a dime than have all the riches in the world and not have God with it. God is searching for those who will put beneath the cloud of forgetting. The brother said, all the things that ever God hath made, for he is a jealous lover, and he suffers no rivals. And he don’t want anybody to stand in there and take his place or even remotely take his place. He wants us to seek him, to seek God.

Incidentally, quoting Wesley, somebody asked him about seeking and he said, well, let me tell you something. If anybody comes preaching, telling you to seek any more than more love, don’t listen to them. Don’t listen to them. The only preaching you ought to listen to is that which says, seek more of God. Seek to know the Triune God. You can’t all know all the Godhead. You can know all the Godhead revealed in Christ to your soul infinitely more than you now know.

And if the church of Christ would come back to this and would get sober-minded and serious and stop fooling and would begin to seek for God Himself, then all the gifts of God would come along with God and all the blessings of God would come along with God. We want the fullness of the Spirit. We want clean hearts. We want a principle within. We want love divine, all love excelling. We want all of that.

But if we seek those things apart from God, we’ve only found a rose with a thorn. But if we find God, then we find all of these things too in God. And better I say a thousand times, know God through Jesus Christ intimately. But you say, I have accepted Christ and I’m converted. Oh, very wonderfully good. That’s good. But do you know Him?

The man Paul had been converted to, and he was one of the world’s great Christians when he wrote that, I may know Him. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being made conformable unto His death.

He was plowing on and plowing ahead, and it appeared to be that the knowledge of Jesus Christ, what he called the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.

My friend, this is what you and I are here for. Somebody wants to know what the deeper life is. I almost withdraw from the term anymore. I almost shrink from hearing it because everybody’s talking about the deeper life, but nobody seems to want God. God’s the deeper life, Jesus Christ is the deeper life.

And as I plunge further into the knowledge of the Triune God, my heart moves out into God further, and there’s less of me and more of God, and the life becomes deepened and strengthened in God. So that this is the next step, that I might know Him, and anything that keeps me from knowing Him is my enemy.

If it is a friend that stands between Him and me, that friend is an enemy. If it is a gift that stands between Him and me, that gift is an enemy. If it is an ambition that stands between Him and me, that ambition is an enemy. If it is a defeat I had once, and I allow that defeat to get me down and stand between Him and me, I’m to forget that, forgetting all the things that are past, I plow forward and press on. And if it’s a victory that I had back there, that victory stands between me and the knowledge of God. I’ve got to put that victory behind me.

Oh, I suppose I might as well have stayed in bed. I don’t know whether anybody knows what I mean. Maybe by the grace of God you do, I think some of you do.

Dear friends, do you see what I mean, that all of this cheapening of the gospel by making God our servant, God running around with a basket, giving away presents, or throwing dimes like John D. Rockefeller, and we scramble for the dimes, shiny new dimes, and then write tracts about it. I found a dime that had the image of God on it.

Wonderful, isn’t it, but nothing compared with the deep knowledge of God Himself. To know Him, and you know this knowledge of God, nobody can argue out of you. Nobody can argue out of it. They can come and point a stiff, angry finger at you and call you every name the law permits. And when they’re through, you’ll feel bad about it, but you still know you know God.

They can come and argue with you and give you Scripture to prove you’re all wrong, and when they’re finished, you can say, well, you’re a pretty good expositor, but I happen to know God. You got to me too late. You’ve come to prove I can’t, and I met God before you ever came to prove it. So we can know God for ourselves, that I might know Him.

So, dear friends, some of you are finding Him, I know that. Some of you are plowing through. I’ve gotten letters, I’ve gotten phone calls, I have had personal conversations, and I know that some of you are finding the Lord in a new, rich, deep, and wonderful way over these last weeks, and I’m glad. But how about the rest? Shan’t we seek Him?

Now, let’s pray.

Now, before we do pray, why, we’re going to find out if there are those who would say, I want you to remember me. Your own longing heart is talking back to you, and the yearning within you is bigger than you are, and you’re not clear, maybe, quite about it all, intellectually, but your heart cries for God, and you want to know what Paul knew, and you want to know what God has revealed and given to the experience of his saints down the years, and you say, pray for me, Mr. Tozer, that I might have the spiritual courage and the faith to rise and put behind me and under my feet whatever it is, friendships, or ambitions, or hopes, or plans, or gifts, or victories, or anything that prevents me from knowing the Lord Jesus.

Would you raise your hand, and we’ll pray for you. Anybody here that would say, I do want you, Mr. Tozer, put their hand up, we’re going to pray, and say, yes, God bless you. And who else? You want to know Him, yes, back there I see you. And who else? You want to know Him, yes, yes, yes.

I’m glad for the hands that have gone up, now let’s have a little time of prayer.

Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. We thank thee, Lord Jesus, that when we come to Thee we go back to the beginning. We go back of Paul and back of Moses, back of Abraham, back of Adam. We go back to the beginning, the light that shineth and lighteth every man. And in Thee we see the Father, and through Thee we know the Father.

We pray for these who have requested prayer tonight. In the name of Thy Son, Jesus, we pray, Father, that Thou will take these young people and these older ones, and lead them in deep pastures and green pastures, and through ways that may be rough and hard and even painful and chastening, but lead them, Lord, lead them until all is behind them, everything’s behind them, and they’ve put behind them everything, everything, what they were and what they are and what they’re proud of and what they’re ashamed of and what the victories they’ve had and the defeats they’ve had and the mistakes they’ve made.

Oh, we pray Thee, lead these friends on and teach them how to look forward and not backward and seek Thy face.

We know, Father, that when we talk about these things, some come because they feel that they’ll be given a capsule which they can swallow or a text they can memorize or some one little trick they can do.

O Lord God, it is not thus received, but rather by the cultivation of the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus, by faith and humility and prayer and trust and confidence and obedience, and the pressing onward until at last the mountaintop appears in view, and up out of the mist we come to the sunlight.

Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, come with all thy quickening power. Come, we pray Thee and shed abroad the Savior’s love that it may quicken ours.

We pray for all of these, and then we pray, Lord, for some who didn’t request prayer for anything, but who should have and who perhaps are this night without even salvation. And we pray for all the churches that are bringing their service to close right now or will be within half an hour or so.

Bless them all, Lord, and grant, we pray Thee, that every net may have fishes, and that every shepherd may find lost sheep, and every father see sons come home. Let there be victory in the Church of Jesus Christ this night. We pray Thee throughout all this area.

To Thee we’ll give praise. We ask this thing through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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“The Relationship Between the Shepherd and the Sheep“

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The Relationship Between the Shepherd and the Sheep

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 6, 1955

Now, in that tenth chapter of John, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not in by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers. This parable spake Jesus unto them, but they understood not what things they were which He spake unto them.

Now, here we have it again, this lovely picture of Christ and His followers, the Shepherd and the sheep. And of all the figures used in the Bible to designate our Lord and His people, to me there is none so charming as this of the shepherd and the sheep. It is certainly the most popular and best understood of all the figures. It is understood even among people who have never seen a sheep at all except in a picture. Those who have lived in places where sheep could not grow and do not grow nevertheless somehow manage to get a hold of this beautiful figure and understand it.

Now we deal here with the relation of the shepherd to his sheep, and I point out to you that it is a personal relation. And again, I repeat, that it is not as it is with the Western sheepherders. The Western sheepherder raises the sheep for profit. It’s a commercial proposition altogether. He doesn’t know his sheep. He only knows how many sheep he has, that’s all. He doesn’t know them by name, and there are many of them that will be born and grow up to the age to be sold or butchered, and he’ll never see them at all. Or if he does see them, he’ll stand on some knoll.

You know what a knoll is? Do you know what it is? A knoll? There are no knolls around here. Everything’s flat land, but out home we had knolls. A little bumpy hill, not much of a hill, an apology for a hill.

He might stand on a knoll somewhere and overlook his great flock of sheep and see them as a white undulating surface yonder and know they’re his, and know them, their number, and know their weight, and know their size, and how much wool they’ll produce, and how much meat he can get out of them. But he doesn’t really know them. He doesn’t claim to know them. It’s a commercial proposition. He lives someplace else and his sheep live maybe in another state.

But ah, not so with David and the eastern shepherd and the shepherds that our Lord knew. He hadn’t so many sheep, but what he could take care of them all personally. And he knew them all by name. He went to the trouble of naming all of his sheep, and they stayed by the shepherd. And while they were by him, there was confidence and acquaintance and affection. Confidence and acquaintance and affection.

But no, no western sheepherder, his sheep have no confidence in him. They don’t know he exists. And if he came out and yelled at them, they’d all run. But the eastern shepherd has; he’s brought his sheep up, and he knows them from the time they were born. He helped to get them started in this life, and nursed them, and held them on his shoulder when they went astray and taught them. And so, there’s a warm, personal there.

Now that is the beauty of Christianity. The faith that brings us into personal relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. We said in the song that our brother was teaching us here tonight, I forget how it’s worded exactly, but something that I have found a resting place, not in device nor creed.

Now we all believe in creed, of course, for a creed is what we believe. Otherwise, we couldn’t say I believe if we didn’t, the word creed, credo means I believe, so we do believe in creed. But our resting place is not in what we believe, but who we believe.

And what we believe has meaning only because of who we believe. If we believed a thing but didn’t know who said it, nor where it came from, nor how it got its being, we’d have a very cold and heartless and mechanical religion. But the beauty of Christianity is that it is not a code nor a creed, though it has its code and its creed, but that it is the religion of the Person.

Our brother down here said he was saved from a religion, and I understand, can understand how a man can react from the word religion. And from much that’s called religion, I myself react violently away from it all, because religion without the person is only a chain around the neck. The man who turns from unbelief to religion is exchanging a chain of iron and taking a chain of gold, but it’s a chain nevertheless, and it binds him as surely as the chain of iron bound him.

But the man who has Jesus Christ lays off all the chains, and he has no chain to bind him at all. Here it’s the personal religion, the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. I wish that all of the preachers might begin to preach the Person, the Person and the Presence, these two wonderful truths, the Person and the Presence.

It says here that he leads his sheep. Now, when he leads his sheep out, you know, they must leave their comfortable fold and go forth. Isn’t it a strange thing how we love in the mornings particularly to stay in bed? Back in the First World War, they had a funny little song the men used to sing. I don’t recall exactly all the words verbatim, but it was, Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning. Oh, how I’d rather remain in bed. And they’d sing that mournfully with a wry smile. They loved it. And then one fellow said that the time would come when he would murder the bugler and spend the rest of his life in bed. That was the funny song they sang in the First World War. Well, we love that. We love to bed down.

Now, it’s funny, nobody likes to go to bed, nobody likes to get up. And once you have bedded down, you hate to get out. And sheep are like that. They like to rest and stay in the fold, and it’s not until the shepherd’s voice rouses them that they get up at all and go.

But the Scripture says he leaded them out. It’s almost humorous, and it’s certainly pleasant to contemplate, though certainly it’s not a wise counsel to follow.

You remember those disciples in the early days of the Church when in the Book of Acts, they were all assembled in Jerusalem, all of them. And the Lord had said, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And He had said, Ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

Now, that was God’s formula for the evangelization of the world. But they stayed tight in Jerusalem, right where they had been born, right where the Pentecost had come. And they bedded down in the Jerusalem fold, and then the Lord sent along persecution in that eighth chapter of Acts.

And they were driven everywhere, and they went everywhere. And when they went, they went preaching the Lord. The Lord led them forth, but he actually had to send persecution to get them out of their warm, snug nest, and get them on their feet and get them going where they should go. So, the Scripture here says, The Lord leadeth them out.

Now, he leads them out for a number of reasons. There is no food in the fold. The food’s in the green pastures. And he has to get them up on their feet and lead them out to the green pastures that they may eat their fill and then lie down beside the still waters. Then they’ve got to have some exercise.

I believe that a church like this is likely to be pretty well fed, but I am not so sure about the exercise. We need exercise as well as food. The sheep that lies down in the green pastures and beside the still waters is likely to get very fat and very useless unless he takes some exercise.

So, the Lord leads them out in order they might get their exercise. And then there’s growth also, and experience. The sheep that would stay in the fold would have no experience at all.

Now, Christians also must go forth. They must go forth to work and to travel and to get experience. I said to Brother McAfee yesterday as we were traveling along, I said, Do you suppose… I was thinking about my trip to Virginia and how I hated to go. And I said, Do you think the time will ever come when I’ll not feel bad when I have to go anywhere? And he said, No, I don’t think so. The time will never come because I just don’t like to travel. I’d have made a good tree. Just plant me in the backyard and put a little fence around me and I’d have stayed right there.

But God won’t let it happen. He says, I’ll lead forth my sheep. And he didn’t say we were to be planted like trees in this instance. He certainly called it, said we were to be planted in the house of the Lord, but that’s another figure of another meaning. But we are to go forth and we are to travel about and do things and get exposed to things.

I don’t believe in an isolated and insulated Christianity. I do not believe in sanctification by insulation. I told them down at Urbana, and I repeat it tonight, I don’t believe that God will make us holy by keeping us insulated. And put the thick coating of moral and social insulation around us so we never bump elbows with anybody that doesn’t believe exactly as we do.

How do you know what you’ll do until you’re put into a situation? How do you know what you’ll do out yonder if you never go out yonder? So the Lord leads us forth that we may get tempted and that we may get experienced. And you wonder that I say that we might be tempted? Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost was led by whom? By the Spirit. Where? Into the wilderness. For what? To be tempted by whom? The devil. You didn’t follow me, but you should. Being full of the Holy Ghost, he was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And the same Lord says that as he is in the world, so are we in the world.

So, he takes us out of that snug place and takes us out into the world not to mingle with its pleasures, certainly, and not to do as it does. We are to be there as a protest and a conscience to the world, not to obey and follow the world, but to be there anyway. And we Christians, I say, we have to meet our enemies. They’re out there.

And then it says here he goeth before them. Now I want you to get that, that he goeth before them. And I want you to know that Christ is always there first.

I don’t know what your tomorrow may be. If I did know your tomorrow and I had it in my power to have you each pass by me and write a hasty prescription or a future for you, lay out your little horoscope, I wouldn’t give it to you, because it’s better to be in the dark and trust God from day to day than to know all the details down the years. That’s why I don’t ever recommend that any Christian ever go to a fortune teller or a necromancer or a seer or any of the rest of these madams. I wonder why it’s always women.

You never hear of a man telling any fortune. Have you? I wonder why it’s always the women that tell fortunes. It used to be back in the days of the Depression they had these phrenologists and dark-looking women, I don’t know what they were, Syrian or whatever it might be, but these dark women and they had the human head all blocked off into sections and you went in there and you sat down and for a dollar or whatever it was she told you all about your character and predicted your future.

I don’t want to know my future. One step’s enough for me. I ask not to see the distant scene. One step’s enough for me. You may be coming into a critical period in your life. Some crisis may be out yonder only a few days or weeks or months away and if you knew it was there you’d have weeks or months to worry. But if you don’t know it’s coming you’ll have your Lord and you’ll get through it all right.

So, I don’t want to know my tomorrows and I don’t want you to know your tomorrows. Only remember one thing, Christ is always there first. He does not sit back like a general in a comfortable tent and tell his soldiers to charge into the mouth of the cannon, but wherever he sends them he’s there before them. He’s not only there before them but he’s there with them.

Lo, I am with you always, and remember, He never asks you to go where He will not go and where He is not going. And He never asks you to do what He has not done and is not doing. And He never asks you to suffer what He has not suffered and will not suffer. We’re in this together, He and we.

And we are not alone even though we may think we are. We’re not alone, we’re in this together. When we threw our lot in with the Shepherd and we were his found sheep, we went in with Him so that it is now with Him.

There is that unity, that intimacy, that close connection, that close tie, closer than the tie of husband and wife, closer than the tie of mother and child, closer than the tie of patriotism or love of family, is this tie of the shepherd and his sheep. Now our Shepherd is present.

Oh, I don’t know what we can do to make people see this. Our Shepherd is present. He’s here in the place. And this is the most significant thing about this church, the most significant possible thing. Not that I’m here or that either one of these brethren are here. That’s not significant really. What is significant is that we are all sheep gathered around a shepherd and that that Shepherd is actually here in the midst.

Do you believe in what the Anglicans call the real presence? Of course they use it of the Eucharist. They use it of the Lord’s Supper. They talk about the real presence. But is anybody going to arrest me if I borrow their phrase and may give an application to it they didn’t intend? I believe in the real presence too. But I believe that real presence is not only in the bread and wine. I believe that real presence is in the fellowship, in the hearts of His people.

That is the most important thing here tonight, that our Lord, our Shepherd is here and we’re sheep of His pasture gathered around the Shepherd. That, you know, is the explanation. That’s the philosophy back of my bigoted narrow views of things that I’m supposed to hold. Tozer has missed the boat and he is living in another generation, they say, and that kind of thing. But I have good logical grounds for my position that when you’re in the presence of the Shepherd, you don’t perform and show off to the Shepherd.

Our little 18-month-old grandson, why, his father has taught him the cutest little trick you ever heard. He can get a job in some youth organization if he just gets a little older because he’s got the spirit of it. He’ll do some cute thing and then applaud to beat the band, applaud himself.

Well, applauding ourselves, I don’t think, I don’t think the Lord wants us to perform for Him and applaud ourselves and applaud each other. He wants us to lie quiet and like Mary, listen to His voice and hear what He has to say. And if there’s any applause, let it come from somewhere else, but certainly not from, from each other. And, and certainly we don’t expect the Lord to applaud us.

We’re in the presence of the Lord. Churches are not, they ought not to give performances at all. I never liked to hear anybody say our choir will give a performance. Trained monkeys give performances, but Christians, they, they minister to the Lord. There’s the expression, they minister to the Lord. But in our day, we give performances.

And then they say, this artist will be there in person. And he will be there in person tonight at the such-and-such Loggerhead Baptist Church. Is that so, brother? Were you expecting to be there in spirit or there by proxy? Of course, he’ll be there in person or else he won’t be there. This artist will be there. Why, he couldn’t sweep off the stage in Grand Opera. He couldn’t, he couldn’t sing at the funeral of the leading lady’s pet poodle. And yet he’s called an artist. And they say, our brother will be here in present, in, in person. This artist will be here in person. And he gets up and saws himself off a solo with a, with a steel saw. And everybody says, wasn’t it wonderful? Brethren, that’s not church to me at all. That’s not church to me.

Church to me is, is to get where the Shepherd is and all put our pride under our feet and, and get all our heads empty of what we know and forget our family background and who we descended from. I know who you descended from. You can’t fool me. That old scoundrel that you descended from, I know what he did. He sinned and fell and tumbled into the muck. And you and I are here because we descended from him. But I don’t, I don’t like that. I don’t like to throw this spotlight on men and on people.

The Shepherd is here. That’s the most significant thing that I know of. Jesus Christ our Lord is in the midst.

Here in the 13th of Acts, here was Paul and a lot of the others of them. It tells who they were. They were the big fellows of the church. Barnabas and Simeon and Lucius and Mannan and Barnabas, I didn’t name him, and Saul and the rest of them. And, but what do you suppose? Had they come to hear these men perform? No. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.

And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. And they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost departed under Seleucia and from thence to Cyprus and so on. Now that was it. They met and ministered to the Lord. They didn’t gather to Paul, they gathered to the Lord. And the only true church is a church that’s gathered to a Presence. The church, a group that is gathered to a man is a religious group. But a group that is gathered to the Presence is a church.

And so, our Shepherd is here. How can He be here and yet be at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? Ah, the mystery of the Godhead I cannot understand. The indivisible substance that you cannot divide the substance that He said, I will be with you. And He said, I will, the Father will send the Comforter unto you.

And so, we have the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the midst. And yet we have the Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the right hand of the Father. We have the, we have the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Africa and in South America and all wherever people are the indivisible substance, omnipresent and imminent.

Oh, the great doctrines of the attributes. I still owe you six sermons on the attributes. Remember a few years ago, I preached 14 sermons on the attributes of God. And I told you that I had six left to preach on, making 20. They say there are seven and I preached on 14 and have six more to go. So I believe that God has more than seven attributes.

I believe that the attributes of God are innumerable. And at least I can tell you of 20. And one of these attributes is the omnipresence, that He is everywhere. Another is imminence, that He dwells in everything.

Now that’s not Buddhism, that is Christianity. Buddhism says God is everything and everything is God. Christianity says no, God is separated in His essence, infinitely removed from everything, including the highest angel that exists. But that in His condescension, He deigns to make the universe His robe and dwells in it. As the bride dwells in her wedding garment, so the Father dwells in His universe as in a royal robe. And that’s His imminence.

I quote sometimes the old archbishop’s marvelous formula that God is above all things, beneath all things, outside of all things and inside of all things. He is above but not pushed up, He’s beneath but not pressed down, He is outside of but not excluded, He is inside but not confined. He is above presiding, He is beneath upholding, He is outside embracing and He’s inside filling. Our Father is everywhere, and this is God.

Ah, that’s Christianity, brothers and sisters, not belonging to the Christian and Missionary Alliance. That’s not Christianity. You can belong to the Christian and Missionary Alliance and be a lost man. You can be a Baptist and be a lost man and they’d be the first ones to say so. You can be a Presbyterian and be lost, but you can’t be a Christian and be lost. You can’t be a sheep of the fold and not be known by your shepherd.

So, the Shepherd is here, omnipresent and imminent meaning that He’s present everywhere and imminent meaning that He’s filling everything and dwelling in it.

Now David said the Lord is my shepherd. Can’t get away from David because our Lord Jesus Christ took David’s 23rd Psalm and carried it on and wove it into his 10th chapter of John here, how much follows as a consequence that the Lord is my shepherd. And have you ever noticed the difference?

I wrote in one of the chapters in the Divine Conquest about this and I don’t suppose very many people got it. I didn’t try to explain it. I only used italics which a writer, if he aspires to be a good writer, never uses except most rarely.

But I used italics there and I said we say the Lord is my shepherd instead of “the Lord” is my shepherd. I wonder if people understood what I meant when I said that. When we say the Lord is my shepherd, why we reduce the Lord to being our servant to lead us around. David never said the Lord is my shepherd. In other words, come on shepherd, lead me around here. I am the big guy and you’re my servant.

But in wonder he breathlessly exclaimed, look, “the Lord” is my shepherd. “The Lord” is my shepherd. And the emphasis was upon who was his shepherd, not what the shepherd was, but that who He was. The Lord, he said, well I’m the shepherd of this flock and Reuben over here is the shepherd of another flock and Levi over there the shepherd of another flock, but the Lord is my shepherd. Those wonderful words and what a difference it is. The Lord is my shepherd. Instead of flippantly saying the Lord’s my shepherd.

A Methodist preacher out in the East who has a habit of delivering himself of some pretty cryptic and marvelously wise remarks, said recently that in our time we have gotten to using the Bible to gain our own ends and having the Lord serve us instead of our serving the Lord. I think that came out in Time magazine, but wiser things have seldom been said than those things. That we tend to want to make the Lord our servant instead of being the servant of the Lord.

And the marvel of it is that if we’ll humble ourselves to become a servant of the Lord, the Lord in turn will take a towel and gird himself and become our servant. Good old Peter. Good old downright salty, frank, Peter.

When the Lord girded Himself with His towel and took the basin and started to wash Peter’s feet, Peter got up aghast and said, What? You wash my feet? Why I ought to be washing yours. Who am I that you should wash my feet? I’m on Peter’s side on that, aren’t you? He was a humble man and a reverent man, and it was too much for him to believe that what the great Lord should wash my feet. Jesus didn’t argue.

He said, that’s all right, Peter, except I wash thee, thou hast no part with Me. Oh, how wisely He didn’t say except I wash thy feet, but except I wash thee, you have no part with me. Then Peter understood and he humbled himself and he allowed his Lord to wash his feet, knowing that he wasn’t worthy of such a high honor. And here the Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, and He takes all the care and the responsibility.

Did you ever look at somebody that you had reason to believe? Now, I was going to read that, but I dropped it three times and I’m not going to read it now at all. I’m not superstitious, but anything that doesn’t want to get read that bad, you can have it.

What was I saying? Yes. Did you ever look at a person that was comfortably dumb and wish that you were like them? I have. I have met people, nobody here now, of course, but I have met people just so comfortably dumb. They’re just so happy and restful and relaxed, and here I am so tense I could bite ten penny nails any time in the morning. And these restful, comfortable fellows, just so friendly and easygoing, and their laugh is so restful, and they don’t know anything, and they aren’t much, and they’re just comfortably dumb.

And I’ve wished and said to myself, and I’ve never prayed that I’d be like that, but I at least have been guilty of a fleeting wish that I could be as restful and dumb as some of my good friends.

Well, I also have been guilty of wishing that I wasn’t really a sheep. It must be wonderful to not have a care in all the wide world. Not a care.

Mr. Chase, years ago, when Stanley was a little fellow, just a wee little tyke, six or seven months old, he used to come out the house and usually drive me home, and then he’d go in where Stanley was, and he’d pick him, pick up his hand and drop it, and then pick up his foot and drop it, call attention to how completely relaxed he was. He said, he’s not going to bone his body, just, just pick him up and he’d just drop. Perfectly relaxed.

If you try to pick me up, I’ll be clear out on the floor wide awake. But a little old Stan, he was just as relaxed as he could be, and you say, isn’t that wonderful to be relaxed like that? Well, a sheep could, if he only had sense enough, could be as relaxed as possible. Just relaxed because there isn’t a care, he doesn’t have a care in the world.

A shepherd charges himself with every care. If it is food, he’s responsible to find it. If it’s water, he’s responsible to find it. If it’s oil for a bruised head, he’s responsible to use that oil. If it’s the foal, he’s supposed to know where the foal is. If it’s an enemy, he’s supposed to know what to do with that enemy. And if the sheep only knew it. He hasn’t, doesn’t need to have a care in all the world.

Oh, I ought to preach this, that I could learn it and you could learn it with me. That we could stop this everlasting living two years in advance, living two months in advance, living way down the years. I said, we sometimes discuss this habit of mine of living so long ahead of time.

I argue, Brother McAfee, that sometimes I lie in bed and get things all figured out and then I won’t have anything to do the next day when I do them. And I guess I have a little Scripture for it. The Scripture says commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still. But I don’t think that scripture means lie there and worry. I don’t think it means that because if we’re the sheep of the Lord’s pasture, we haven’t got a single worry in the whole wide world. The Shepherd takes the responsibility.

And it says here, and this is the sheep’s own testimony. He restores my soul, of course, without which all else is useless. And he leaded me in paths of righteousness, three little words, four little syllables. He leadeth me. He and me with leadeth in the middle. The little ring that binds two souls together is the little word leadeth, He and me. He leadeth me.

Why, in my shelves I have the complete works of Plato, translated by Jowett, the finest in the English language. You couldn’t get anything as good anywhere else. And yet Plato never said anything in all of those eight volumes; He never said as much as David said in three words, He leadeth me.

And on another shelf, I have most of the major works of Aristotle. And yet Aristotle, for all of his wisdom, never said in all of his works as much as David the shepherd said, He leadeth me.

Ah, my friends, they call Christians dumb. And they say, I’ve just been reading a book recently on the cults and sects in America. And they call the Christian and Missionary Alliance a sect. But they admit in that book that it’s one of the broadest of the sects, and one of the most charitable, with a broader outlook toward all other Christians. That’s very nice of them.

But we know what we are anyhow. And the sectarian spirit, no, no, my brethren, we daren’t have it. We know what we believe, and we know that instead of being stupid, we’re wise, because we have found Him, and He’s found us, and we’re joined together by, leadeth. He leadeth me. David said that he leadeth me, and he leads me in the paths of righteousness. And this He will do for is own name’s sake.

You see, every shepherd was proud of his sheep, and he had a reputation. It’s funny how we get reputation for things. We once knew a woman in another city who was proud of the fact that her brother was the best-known junk man in the whole town.

And there are plenty of women who are proud of their cherry pies, and there are men who are proud of their low golf score, and others who are proud of other things. We all have pride in our handiwork. There’s something we can do.

An old fellow out home, he cut down oak, not oak, but ash trees, and hickory, and would make axe handles out of them. When the snow came and the streams were ice-locked and heavy snow lay on the ground, there was nothing to do. They’d make axe handles and hoe handles. They didn’t turn them out with a lathe as they do now, but made them by hand, and were proud of them. Oh, how proud they were. Every man is proud that he can do something better than somebody else.

The farmers out that way were proud of their horses. They were proud of their match teams. A farmer who really was proud of his farm, he wouldn’t have two horses hitched up together, one of them with a white nose to the right and the other with a white nose to the right, one of them with one, say, left rear foot white and the other one with the left rear foot. No, no. They had to be perfectly matched. They were proud of that, very proud.

The shepherd is proud of the fact that his is the best flock that roams anywhere over the hillsides. And the finer the sheep, the more honor to the shepherd. The shepherd had a stake in his sheep. And they, by being fat and relaxed and comfortable and well fed and obedient, reflected honor to the shepherd.

And so, Jesus Christ takes pride in His people. And if He has an obedient, good living, happy people, it reflects honor to His holy name. And it’s for His own namesake that He leads them out in paths of righteousness.

So, remember that He not only leads His flock for their sake, He leads His flock for His own namesake.

And that’s what the Scripture means when over and over it talks about His namesake. He does it for His own honor. He wants everybody to know what a fine shepherd He is and how glorious He is. And so, He keeps His flock, and He keeps His sheep.

Every mother knows that she will be judged by the kind of children she turns out onto the sidewalk of a morning. You see coming down the sidewalk or riding on the bus, a poor little pale face, thin, little girl with her hair obviously not combed that morning or maybe not for several mornings before. Her dress dirty, her stockings torn. You don’t blame the little girl. You pity the little girl.

But you say to yourself, I wonder about that mother. If that mother only knew it, her innocent little lamb is telling an awful lot about her, telling maybe that she drinks and lies around and smokes and watches television and reads love stories and lets her little girl go out dirty.

You say it’s poverty, Mr. Tozer. You shouldn’t speak against poverty. I grew up in poverty. And no man has any tenderer regard for the poor than I. Poverty is one thing, dirt is another. And the poorest mother with a ten-cent comb can comb her little lamb’s hair back and tie it with a cheap ribbon. And people are saying she’s a lovely little girl, not very well-dressed, but she’s been taken care of.

And I see other kids get on the bus, one little round-faced doll, about that high. I don’t think she was too young to go to school, but obviously she did. I think she went to a Dutch school over here, a day school, because she got off where that’s the only thing, I could figure she could be going to that Dutch school.

And she got on, she was lord of the little manor, she was in charge. She had her little suitcase along; I suppose she had some peanut butter sandwiches in there. Her mother led her out carefully, put her on the bus, waved goodbye, and the little girl went to school. Oh, she was taken care of.

Now, she might not have been rich, probably wasn’t. Where she got on, rich people don’t live. But her mother took care of her, and she did it for her own name’s sake. She said, I don’t want my pretty little girl to go with stringy hair, and unmatched socks, and dirty, unpressed clothes. At least she took care of her. I never saw the woman before, and I suppose I’ll never see her again, but I have a good regard for that woman. I say to myself, why, for her name’s sake, she took care of her little lamb.

So he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, and looketh after me for his own name’s sake. For his own name’s sake. So for that reason I will fear no evil, enemies, snakes, bears, lions, robbers, even the shadow of death itself, and why, because thou art with me.

Did you know, the shepherd could have sent word to the sheep and said, hold the fort, for I am coming. And the sheep would all have fled in terror into the wilderness and been eaten by the lions. But he didn’t say, I’ll be there after a while. He said, I’m there now. Thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. Goodness and mercy, these flow out of the shepherd’s heart, of course. And he says, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Now, I just want to say a word about that forever, and I’m finished. You know, he’s the only person that could put that word forever on there.

We can laugh; Emerson in one of his ragged poems, for he never wrote a very finished one, but he certainly wrote some profound ones. And one of his beautiful but unfinished poems, he tells about the farmer and the landowner, and he quotes from the deed, you know, and the articles of possession that are filed in the courts. He quotes how it says to so-and-so and his heirs, forever and last. Forever, no, no, no.

When a couple gets up to get married, we don’t say in want or in wealth, in sickness or in health, from this time forth and forever. No, no. We say until death shall separate you. You don’t put forever in their wedding vows, marriage vows. Forever isn’t in the hand of a man.

And if you know what forever means, you don’t put forever in a deed. And you don’t write forever into your contracts. And when you get a job, you don’t sign a contract forever.

The boy who’s in Florida and signed his contract to play for the Cubs or the Soxies didn’t sign forever. When you go into the Army or Navy, it may seem forever, but it isn’t forever. There’s no forever in Uncle Sam’s contracts.

Jesus, Christ alone, can put forever in. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He puts forever in there, the only Person who can do it. Moses couldn’t do it. Moses went up on Mount Moriah and Mount Pisgah and died. David couldn’t do it. David served a generation and slept with his fathers. Oh, how they loved to sleep with their fathers in those days.

God bless the dear old patriarchs, it says, and he gave up the ghost and slept with his fathers. Ah, we laugh at the quaintness and simplicity of it, and we reduce it now to a few lines in the paper that nobody reads. But in those days, God knew where His sheep were when they died. They were sleeping with their fathers. In the cave of Machpelah, maybe, or in the new tomb of Joseph. He knew where every sacred blob of clay rested, and He knows to this hour and this day.

Though the winds of heaven have dried up the clay that was once a temple of the Holy Ghost and have blown it to the four points of the compass, in the day when the Shepherd gathers all of His flock into the presence of the Father, He’ll have every one of them, because He puts forever in their hearts.

That’s why I can’t join lodges and mix, link myself up with temporary organizations and get all heated up about something that hasn’t got forever in it.

God put forever in their hearts, the Scripture says, eternity in their hearts. And if God puts eternity in my heart, then I demand something that’s got eternity in it. Scripture says that God made Adam and then he looked around him all the beasts of the field and couldn’t find a help meat for him worthy of him.

And so, He put him in this deep sleep and took out a rib and made a woman equal to him that she might be worthy of him, because not a beast was worthy of him. They named them every one and he named them according to their nature, but not a bit of their nature corresponded with his nature.

And he looked at the highest of them all, the anthropoids, and shook his head and said, no, nothing inside of me responds. This is not my kind. And God said, all right, I’ll get you one that’s your kind. So, he got him Eve.

And Eve was worthy of him because she was his kind. And what He had in him, God put in her the same nature and they knew each other and responded and became the father and mother of the race. So God has put eternity in the heart of every man.

And we look out on all the world. Radio parades its programs. Television parades its programs. Magazines pour out their stories. Politics pours out its talk. Business and art and professions and all the rest, all of them begging for our attention.

Something in my heart says what Adam said about the beast. No, they’re all right and we’ll use them and nice to have them around and they’re useful. But nothing in me leaps up and says, that’s my kind. That’s it. Because you’ve got eternity in your heart and the radio has time only. Business, time. School, time. And your heart says eternity, eternity. Something inside of me longs for eternity.

Forever is in me. Three months is a long time for a radio program. A man holds a job 40 years, why, he gets his name in the paper. 40 years is a long time for a man to hold a job. And yet that same man has forever in his heart. And he looks at his job and says, well, I’ll work, and I’ll be honest and I’ll make my living. But this isn’t it. Another man looks at fame, he writes, he paints, he’s a musician, he has, he has ability and he’s known. But that isn’t it because that’s got time.

A man said to Napoleon one time, Napoleon said to his secretary, he said, you ought to be a very proud man. He said, why sir? He said, you ought to be proud. You’re my secretary. You’ll go down famous in history as my secretary. And the secretary said, tell me, sir, who was Alexander’s secretary? Napoleon had no word to say. Not a word.

No, no, fame won’t do it. Fame won’t do it. And neither all the honor of all the wide world can rouse the sleeping dust. There’s something in me that demands it forever. And until I get forever, I’m a hungry vagabond and wander on the face of the earth, looking under every rock and searching behind every star, climbing every tree and plunging into every pool and looking, always looking, looking for that forever. Nobody else has it.

But God raised His Son from the dead and set Him at His own right hand and gave Him to be the author and fountain of immortality. So, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Listen to this. When I can read my titles clear to mansions in the sky, I bid farewell to every fear and wipe my weeping eye. There shall I hide my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest and not a wave of trouble roll across my peaceful breast. Old John Newton. God bless the old Calvinist. He knew what he was talking about.

So now I wonder, have you got a shepherd? Is he yours? Has he put forever in your toil and forever in your thoughts? Has he put forever in your hopes? If he hasn’t, then I recommend you take Jesus Christ now as your Shepherd. Let’s bow our heads in prayer.

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“The Church’s Greatest Need: Spirit-Filled Members“

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The Church’s Greatest Need: Spirit-Filled Members

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 4, 1956

This will be, tonight, the third and last in a series of three talks which I have been giving on the gifts of the Spirit. And I want to read some from the Scriptures, and if you will be so kind as to allow me to read the same scriptures again, because I want to keep refreshing your minds with the Scriptures.

You can turn to chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, where the man of God says, there are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are differences of administration, the same Lord, and there are diversities of operations but the same God which worketh all in all. The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge with the same Spirit, to another faith with the same Spirit, to another the gifts of healing with the same Spirit, to another the workings of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another diverse kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one in this self, same Spirit, dividing to every man several as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many, are one body, so also is Christ.

Now I think I’ll read another passage. Ephesians 4. There is one body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, the Father of all, who is above all and through all in you all. And unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore, he saith, when he ascended upon high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.

Then he shows that it’s Jesus in verses 9 and 10. And he says He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the Saints through the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive, but speak the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

Then I want to read this also, just two verses, 1 Corinthians 12:31 and 14:1. 1 Corinthians 12:31 and 14:1 says, But covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet show I unto you a more excellent way. I realize that verse 31 has been a hiding place for a lot of carnel Christians. They say gifts, gifts, talk about gifts, love is better, but they don’t have love either. And then 14:1, follow after love and desire spiritual gifts.

Now, my method of dealing with any subject has been to tear right into it and say what has to be said. And so, I have been talking about the great need of the gifts of the Spirit back in the church. And what I have been saying is being echoed, not my voice, but it’s being echoed and re-echoed all over the world. I do not mean that they’re hearing me, but I mean that God is saying the same thing to many thousands of people around the world, every denomination. So that it seems to be that when God wants to do a thing, He doesn’t start only in one local place, but he says the same thing to various people in various parts of the world. And they find they know each other and harmonize.

When I was in Canada with the IFES, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is part of InterVarsity, I there met a man that I had known of and corresponded with for some time, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who is the pastor of the great cathedral, or chapel they call it, I think, Westminster Chapel. It’s a vast church right under the shadow of Westminster Abbey. They have there a very large church, and I’d heard of this man.

And when I heard him preach, and he heard me preach, it was an astonishing thing how we harmonized. He had been a great reader, has been down the years, of the Puritan divines. Now, of course, he’s, first of all, a great Bible student. He couldn’t be anything else and be in the church that Campbell Morgan founded. But he had been a great reader of the Puritan divines, and he had arrived at certain conclusions regarding the Holy Spirit as a result of his reading the Puritan divines.

Well, he’s in London and I’m in Chicago, and we had never met before. And I had not read the Puritan divines. I know who they are, Bunyan and Owen and the rest, but I had never taken to them very much. But I had taken very strongly to the mystical divines, the mystical theologians, Augustine and Julian and Eckhart and the great number that have come from Spain, Scopoli and Molinus and Fenelon and Towler, and many others, and the great Scotch divine who is the only mystical Calvinist that I know about, Samuel Rutherford.

And I had read those books and he had read over on the other side, but we had arrived from two different paths at exactly the same conclusions, so that when I heard him, I thought I was listening to myself preach, only he did it better. And when he heard me, he felt he was listening to himself preach.

Now this is unusual, but it is God saying the same thing to men who will have their hearts open. And so, what I have said about the gifts of the Spirit, and shall say tonight, is not a private view of a little man who doesn’t know his way home after midnight. But it is the conviction arrived at by vast numbers of persons of the evangelical persuasion in many parts of the world in many denominations.

I have said also, and want to say very carefully, that what I’m saying to you is not a result of any contact that I have had with those good people who are called the tongues people. I have told you at great length why I could not go in with that group of people. There are many, many of them, the Church of God this, and the Church of God that, and the Church of God this, all over the country.

And they’re losing their testimony. The holiness people have long ago lost theirs, and the tongues people have lost theirs because they’re keeping quiet on the one thing that made them stand out. And the fundamentalists are losing theirs and are looking around for something better. And God, I want to say, is not leading in any direction. I have not changed my mind, and this is not a fine way of saying it was nice to know you. I’m going among the tongues people. I couldn’t possibly do it for the five reasons I gave you two weeks ago. Or maybe it was only a week ago. Two weeks ago, I guess.

Now, having said that, I want to tell you why the gifts of the Spirit in the church of Christ are not only desirable, but they’re absolutely imperative. Let me, in my usual fashion, begin a way back and move up.

Now, let me show you why it is absolutely necessary that we should have the gifts of the Spirit in the Church, and in this church. Because one of the results of the fall is a twofold blight, which we call temporality and mortality. Now, man, however brilliant he may be, and however wise, all men everywhere, has written across their hearts these two sentences: You must go, and you must die.

Now, those two sentences are written by the great God Almighty. Temporality and mortality. Temporality says, you must go, you can’t stay. And mortality says, you must die, you can’t live. Now, because this is true, then all the works that man does partakes of what man is. And the same blight that rests upon sinful, fallen man, namely temporality and mortality, rests upon every work that he does.

All the work of a man’s hand, however noble it may be, however inspired by genius, however beautiful, however wonderful, and however useful, and however inspiring, all the work of fallen man has these two sentences written across it. You can’t stay, and you can’t live. You came to go, and you came to die.

So that everything from a sonnet to an oratorio, to a great bridge, to a great canal, to a great painting, to a great poem, to a great novel, everything has on it this temporality and mortality. It’s got to die, and it’s got to go. Perpetuity and eternity are not in men, and they cannot impart it to what they do.

But God is bringing into being a new order. God is bringing into being a new order, and a new order which shall have exactly the opposite of temporality and mortality. That new order is to be of eternal duration and to be infused with eternal life. And this new order, it’ll finally show itself in the new heaven and the new earth. It shall show itself in the city that comes down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. And all this has in it eternal duration. It does not come to go, it comes to stay. It does not come to die, it comes to live.

Now, my brethren, of this new creation, Christ Jesus is the head, and the Church is the body. And individual believers are the body’s members. Now there’s a simple picture, anybody can see it, but there it is. The old Adam fell down and all of which he was the head fell down with him, and God wrote across it, mortality and temporality, you must die and you must go.

But the new man came and died and went and rose and lives in order that he might be the head of a new creation which has not upon it temporality but perpetuity, which has not upon it the mark of death but the mark of life forevermore.

Now, these believers are yet in their unredeemed body. I want you to hear me. Every believer, I don’t care whether it be the sweetest saint that kneels in prayer tonight, redolent of sweet perfume and incense, or whether it be the newest convert that blundered into some mission somewhere tonight and was saved, every believer has an unredeemed body.

Now, it’s potentially redeemed, but it’s not actually redeemed. And in case any of you might worry about my orthodoxy, let me read it to you. It says, for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to it. What? The redemption of our body, so that the saints of God live in an unredeemed temple. They live in an old body, and upon their brain is written two words, it came to die, and it came to go.

And upon their mind, the mind of the saints, is written, it came to die, and it came to go. And upon their nerves and faculties and powers, even redeemed men and women, they have within them the seed of God and eternal life, but they dwell and express themselves through this unredeemed fallen body. And the result is that upon their brain and mind and nerves and faculties and powers and talents and gifts, there God is saying, it’s got to die and it’s got to go.

Therefore, God can’t use them to do a permanent and eternal work. God can’t use a man who is impermanent to do a permanent work, and He can’t use a man who’s got to die to do a deathless work. The Eternal Spirit alone can do an eternal work. I wish you could write this across your heart. The Eternal Spirit alone can do an eternal work.

Now let’s look at the illustration for just a little bit. You know, we think our eyes do a work. The artist thinks his hand and his eyes do the work. And the musician thinks his fingers do the work. And the singer thinks his throat does the work. And gifted people everywhere think that their feet do the work, or their hands or their ears or their tongue or their nose. They think that the members do the work.

Well, there could be a greater mistake made anywhere than to think that your hands ever did any work, my brother. Your brain does the work through your hands. And if the brain should suddenly be cut off or die, your hands would lie helpless. It is the brain of a man that does the work. It is the brain of a man that plays that piano and the brain of a man that paints a picture. It’s the brain of a man that smells a rose. It’s the brain of a man that hears musical sounds. It’s the brain of a man or woman. It’s the brain that does the work, not the hands. They are simply the instruments through which the brain works.

Now that’s common physiology. You’ll learn that in high school. Any doctor knows that. Any common person knows it. You and I know that it is not the man’s members that do the work. Nothing originates with your hand. You crochet or you paint or you cut or trim or glue up or fasten your work; nothing originates with your hand. It originates with your brain. And your hand is the organ through which it works. The eye doesn’t see anything. The brain sees the eye. You might as well say when you put a pair of binoculars to your eyes and look across on the other side of the hill, you might as well say the binoculars are seeing.

No, they’re not seeing. You’re seeing through the binoculars. Your intelligence is using the binoculars as an organ through which you can see.

And so your eyes never originate anything. It originates in your brain. Your ears never originate anything. It originates in your brain. And your ears bring the sound in mechanically and your brain says that’s flat, that’s sharp, that’s beautiful, that’s raucous, that’s sweet. Your ear, your brain tells you that.

Now that’s the illustration Paul gave. I didn’t give it. I’m only expatiating a little, as the brother would say, on what Paul said. That the brain works through the organs. And that if the brain is not there, or if it stops functioning, then all the organs stop functioning too.

And the Eternal Spirit alone can do an eternal work because the Holy Spirit must do the work through the members. He must himself do it. There is a sense in which you and I can’t do work at all. There is a sense in which we are unable to do any spiritual work of any kind. The Bible says, it is God that worketh in you to will and to do. So that instead of my doing it, God is doing it and using me as the organ. Instead of my eye doing the seeing, my brain is doing the seeing through two binoculars called eyes.

And so, the Holy Spirit takes men and uses them as organs through which He can express Himself in the body of Christ. It is Jesus that does it through the Holy Ghost operating through the members.

Now, my brother, He can’t operate through ungifted members. For instance, here I have a pair of hands. They’re about average and a little large for my size. I figure I got that working on a farm when I was a kid.

But there is something about these hands that I must tell you. I can’t play a violin. They’re ungifted hands. I can’t paint a picture. They’re ungifted hands. I can’t play that organ. They’re ungifted hands. I can barely hold a screwdriver and I’m getting worse as I get older if I have to screw a screw in somewhere at home to keep the place from falling apart. So, I have not any gifted hands.

And no matter how much genius might lie in that brain, there doesn’t, but supposing just a wild shot in the dark that there did, these two ungifted hands lie helpless. They can’t do anything. The brain can’t call them up, can’t call them up. The brain says, Tozer, go down and play something on the organ. I say, brain, I’d love to do it, but I have ungifted hands. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.

The brain says, Tozer, go paint a picture. And I say, I’d love to do it, but I haven’t a gift. There’s nothing in me that responds. Color, I don’t quite get it. Form and outline and perspective and all the artists talk, I can’t do it. I have a pair of ungifted hands.

All right, my brethren. Now, if we allow that in the body of Christ, there is such a thing as living members who are yet ungifted members, then you can see how we slow God down in His working for to bring into being this everlasting new thing that must stay and that must live. There must be the gifts of the Spirit present. They are the organs through which the Holy Ghost works to do His work.

Now, religious work can be done by ungifted man. Religious work, I repeat, can be done by ungifted man. But it is only the human mind doing a human work. It is only a mortal mind doing a mortal work.

And every work that a man does, whether he builds a church or writes a hymn or a book or promotes a movement or plays or sings or prays or organizes, no matter what he does, how early in the morning he may be or how late he may be up at night working on religious subjects, doing religious things, it is only a mortal brain doing a mortal job. And across all of it, God will write, it came to die and it came to go.

Mortality and temporality are written all over the church of Christ today because men are trying to do in the power of the flesh, that is the power of their own genius, what only the Holy Ghost can do. Genius cannot do an immortal work. Genius can only do a mortal work. And don’t be fooled by the loose use of the word immortal.

We say Michelangelo painted his immortal paintings. That’s only a careless use of the word. There are no immortal paintings. There are no immortal sonnets. There are no immortal musical compositions. There’s nothing immortal but what is in God and what God is in.

So, we can do work. And I would guess if you were to ask me, this would be maybe a rash guess, but since I’m in the mood, I’ll tell you that I think about 90% of the religious work in evangelical circles is done by ungifted men. That is, men who know how to do things but have not the gift of the Spirit. And they’re operating through the gifts of nature. And it is not grace operating but nature operating. It is not the eternal workings of the Eternal Spirit but the mortal workings of man’s mortal mind.

Now we are thrown back upon psychology and aesthetics. And that’s what we have. And this makes the gifts absolutely indispensable. In order that God might do His mighty and mysterious work with permanence and eternity in His heart, I would rather do one little work and have it live forever than to be the Pope and have what I’m doing die.

The Bible says in a rather cynical smile, better a living dog than a dead lion. And I’d rather work the littlest poodle that ever waddled along the sidewalk and have it alive than to have the biggest stuffed lion there is in the zoo. And I would rather do a tiny little bit of religious work and be unknown and live and die unheralded and unsung and yet have God Almighty right across my little bit of work, this came to live and last; than to have some great big work going on and have God right across it, this too shall pass.

Brother, when the Holy Spirit working through a man does a work, as the brain working through an eye or a hand does a work, when the Holy Spirit working through a gifted member does a work, then God will say of that work what the Psalmist said of God, thou remainest. Thou remainest. The heavens shall be folded up like a garment and as a mantle thou shalt change them, but thou remainest and thy years fail not.

Now, that man can’t do anything is a great shock, comes a great shock to a lot of carnal Christians, to a lot of saintlets. The saintlings, you know, if a gosling is a young goose, I suppose a saintling is a young saint and a very young saint.

And so these saintlings that believe in Jesus Christ and have their New Testament with them but have never discovered that you can’t do God’s work in man’s strength, that have never found out that an eternal work can’t be done by a mortal man, and that a lasting thing cannot be done by a man who can’t last, that somebody else has to do it, and that somebody else is the Holy Ghost. And when we get to this, it glorifies God and humbles man. We like to think we can do something.

There’s many a mother-in-law who’s praying that her handsome son-in-law might be called to preach because he has such a marvelous pulpit presence. This brother, the fact that the Holy Ghost has to do work or it can’t last, rules out all men’s boasted gifts.

For instance, charm. This is the day of charm, and there’s a lot of charm in religion, but I’ve been tough enough and cynical enough to see it and recognize it and had enough of the gift of the Holy Ghost to know this charm stuff, this Liberace business with its candelabras and its beautiful stage presence. Dear friends, I love you all. And brother, this charm stuff, and then this pulpit presence. They say, oh, he has such a charming pulpit presence. The greatest man that ever lived, the man that God Almighty works through.

Now, I say, He works through it, had this said about him, his letters are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. The learned Corinthians said that man Paul, they said, you don’t want to listen to him. He writes tremendous letters. All right. They’d been reading first Corinthians, and they said, say, that’s got stuff.

They said that he writes tremendous letters, but they said he’s a disappointment. They said, when the people come in back to place to see the man that wrote that letter, here’s a man whose bodily presence is weak and whose speech is contemptible. And here was the Holy Ghost doing an everlasting work through a man that had no pulpit presence at all and had no golden qualities in his voice. He would have flunked out if he’d have tested out for a radio announcer, nobody would have had him because he didn’t have the golden seductive and delectable qualities that should be in a voice to get the ladies to buy what he wants them to buy.

Now a personality is another quality. They say, well the man, the man’s personality simply sparkles. Down the years I have watched those sparklers. Do you ever notice what a sparkler does? How it excites every kid for four blocks around for one minute, and then you hold a hot stick in your hand that soon cools off and that’s your sparkler. And these fellows with the sparkling personalities that have come up and gone. Here I am an old codger, and I have lived to see a positive, Gorgeous George parade of lover boyniks who have come up and sparkled and gone down and sparkled and gone down.

Well, the Holy Ghost, my brother, is going to rule out all this sparkle and charm and pulpit presence and magnetism. That’s another word, magnetism and dynamism. Those are lovely words. And talent, but they don’t mean anything because the man that God worked through was the man who had contemptible speech and a weak look. Now I don’t say that God couldn’t take a handsome man and work through him, but he would not work through his handsomeness.

I do not say God could not take a man with a dynamic personality and work through him, but he’d never use his dynamic personality. He would work through that, beneath that, and beyond that, but he’d never use that. The Holy Ghost doesn’t need it.

What does the mighty Holy Ghost, whose breath brought the world into being, what does He need of your bright eyes and curly hair? What does He need of your vibrant voice or mind? He doesn’t need it. This is awful humbling, and we’d like to be able, we’d like, when we retire, to have people come around and say, look at all this that this man did. If he did it, it’ll die. If he did it, it’ll pass.

But if he was a humble organ through which the Holy Ghost did it, it’ll live and it’ll last, and hell can’t burn it up, nor time can wear it out, because it’ll have the qualities of Deity in it. Thou remainest, O God, thou remainest.

And you’ll get a lot of religious people well-fed and coffeed up, and get them in a warm room with a lot of good-looking women and bald-headed men and a good musical instrument, and you get them to going, and brother, they can move into the flesh fast. You’d think to hear and look and see and behold and all the rest, that as a mouse eats his way into a cheese and thinks it’s heaven, so a lot of us Christians are eating our way into the kingdom of God. Come and believe on Christ and let’s go eat.

And so, we’re busy eating ourselves, eating ourselves into the work of God. My brother, we all have to eat. Some of us ought to eat more than we do, I suppose, and get a little flesh on, but the work of God is something else altogether.

The work of God doesn’t depend on good social spirits. It’s another thing. It is the Eternal Spirit working through gifts which He has imparted, which are also eternal, to do an eternal work. And anything that falls short of it is simply religion and nothing more.

So, God gets all the honor and man stands reverently with his head bowed and says, thine be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Now I repeat the critical need in the church is the church should have these gifts, these organs through which the Spirit can do His work. Because the gifts are so rare, now don’t think the gifts are not present in the church. They are.

There’s never been a time when there weren’t a few of the gifts present somewhere in the church, or the church could not have clung together. The fact that there is a consecutive link upon link and link upon link in a chain of spiritual Christianity down the years shows that the Spirit’s gifts have always been present in the church, even sometimes among those who didn’t understand or didn’t believe.

Now what does the Scripture say? The Scripture says, ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And it says, be filled with the Spirit. And it says, covet earnestly the best gifts. And it says, seek after love, but desire spiritual gifts.

Paul never meant to say to the Corinthians what a lot of fundamentalists have made him say. He never meant to say to the Corinthians that they were to choose between love and the gifts of the Spirit. He said, follow after love, but desire spiritual gifts.

And then he said, in case you want to know what gift I think is the most important, why rather that you might prophesy. And by prophesy he did not mean foretell events. He meant that God would put in the heart and the body and mind and throat and nerves of a man a strange, beautiful ability that would enable that man or perhaps that woman to speak with a strange quality of conviction and everlastingness.

Maybe it’s a housewife. Maybe it’s a man who sweeps the street. Maybe it’s a bishop. Maybe it’s an evangelist. Maybe it’s a humble pastor in a country parish unknown. Whoever it may be, he has a strange quality to speak with conviction and inspiration and lift that is not human, but divine. And the results, while they may not be best, for grace and size have a lot to do with it, they’ll be eternal and permanent.

So, it is not an either-or, either take Chapter 13, which is love, or 4:12, which is gifts. But the man of God said, both, both, covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way, not another way to take in contradistinction to the way of gifts, but the way to make your gifts matter and mean something. That is love.

Now, somebody says, but what about, isn’t everybody, doesn’t everybody have the Spirit? Yes. And every Christian has. And in 1 Corinthians 12, we are told that. We’re all baptized into one body by one Spirit. And Paul says in Romans 8, that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And Christ dwells in you, except ye be reprobate, so that every Christian does have a measure of the Spirit.

But the same chapter in which Paul explained this, he said, I don’t want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts and covet earnestly the best gifts. So if the fact that we have a measure of the Spirit when we’re converted was all Paul wanted to us to know, he’d have said that and quit. But he went on to explain at great length.

And all this is the Christian’s birthright. It’s not alone for the great. It’s the birthright of the humblest Saint. 1 Corinthians 1:18-29 tells us that the people that were Christians in those early days were simple people. He said, where’s the wise, where’s the scribe, where’s the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? But after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God for the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.

We were talking, and when we were having our prayer yesterday, we prayed three times a week here, we preachers. That is our times of prayer, along with all the other prayer meetings that are here and there in the church and on Sundays.

But we were discussing that little girl, that 16-year-old girl in Wales, during the revival with Evan Roberts. She would sing solos, and they weren’t much for singing solos. They were more choral people, those Welsh, as you know. And they sang the Metrical Psalter, which didn’t lend itself to solo work very much.

But this girl, and I’ve forgotten her name, she was 16 at the time, she would rise and sing. And as she sang, it was not the lyrical beauty of her voice. No doubt there are singers today, a Lily Pond, or a Toboli, or whoever it might be, maybe better singers. But she was a gifted soul, and the Holy Ghost was singing through that girl.

And the result was that audience would melt, melt. And Evan Roberts would rise to preach, and there was not much to do but quote the Scriptures and add a little. She had melted them, and wherever she would go, it was the same.

Thank God they didn’t know enough over there to put her on the radio and spoil her. Thank God they didn’t start writing her life history. Thank God she didn’t write a tract, My Life, from the nursery to the pulpit. She didn’t know to do that. She was a simple spirit-possessed girl.

And when she sang, the Welsh people were melted like snow before the rising sun. And then it was an easy job for the preacher to preach. And not a music critic anywhere ever said she had a good voice. But she had something better than a good voice. God took the despised and weak things of the world to confound the mighty.

Now what shall we do about all this? Shall we freeze up and hide and say, I’m not going to go fanatical? Let me say to you, as far as I know you, brethren, you could move in the direction of fanaticism at sixty miles an hour for twenty-four hours and still be a hundred miles short of it. You hear me? There’s not much chance of anybody being fanatical around here. We’re stone cold, that’s our problem. We’re stone cold. It isn’t fanaticism we need to be afraid of, it’s frost.

What shall we do then? Now if you were in danger, I’d warn you. If there was anybody around here that would start back there and do handsprings down the aisle, I’d warn you and I’d say, watch that, that’s not God. Danger of fanaticism. But there is no danger of fanaticism here. I get a grunt now and then from McAfee and nothing from the rest of you. So there’s no danger of fanaticism around here.

What shall we do? We sang it, bring your empty earthen vessels. Now remember, you can’t all rush up here and stand around and look embarrassed and sing bring your empty earthen vessels and go out and say it wasn’t that wonderful. You might just as well have stayed at home.

To be filled with the Spirit is a most solemn and most searching and most sometimes at first painful experience to go through. The actual Holy Ghost is not painful, He’s the Gentle Dove of God. But getting ourselves ready, getting cleaned up, getting poured out, getting confessed out, getting forgiven out, getting straightened out with people, getting restitution made, that can be pretty painful.

So, I’m going to give you three D’s. I’m not an alliterative preacher, but I’m going to give you three D’s. And I’m going to tell you that the first two D’s won’t do you any good, except as the first two steps will take you to the third, so these two first steps will take you to the third. They are desire, determination, and desperation. Now you put those down back of your mind. Now you sleek, well-ordered, well-taught toters of big Bibles, you’ll never be filled with the Holy Ghost until you desire to be.

Second, you’ll never be filled with the Holy Ghost even if you do desire to be, until you become determined to be. And though you should be determined that you are going to go through, you will not be filled until in desperation you throw yourselves into the arms of God.

I wrote something and I preached something here a few weeks ago, in which I said, around the shining light which is God, there’s a zone of obscurity, and we can’t think our way into it. We have to close our eyes and make the leap of faith into the arms of Jesus. After they’ve been through instructing you, after the last verse you can remember hasn’t done their work, after every trick and every thing you know to move toward God has failed, and yet your desperate heart cries, fill me now, fill me now. And then you move into that zone of obscurity where the human reason has to be suspended for a moment and the human heart leaps across into the arms of God.

Then I say, man’s talents and man’s glory and man’s honor and man’s beauty and man’s favor all goes out into the darkness of yesterday and everything is God’s honor and God’s glory and God’s beauty and God’s favor from here on. We have been broken and melted. It will not do us any good to come down here and stand. It will not do us any good even to come down here and kneel.

I got a letter from old brother Nicholson. Remember the Irish evangelist that God used as he’s used probably no man in the last 200 years? I got a letter from him the other day. He said I had a good laugh when I read your editorial about the danger of personal workers coming down and using a text to try to get the seeker through, patting his back and saying amen and another convert’s been made.

He says it’s a trick of the devil, Brother Tozer. And he said, I’ve got to the place where I’ll scarcely even give an altar call anymore because that’s the way they handle the converts. He said they pat them on the back and give them a text and say, now tell it and the fellow gets up bewildered and confused and befuddled and goes out, and says, I’m a Christian because I wasn’t cast out and that’s that.

Brethren, we ought to have such holy conviction upon us that we’d leap into God’s arms past all personal workers and past all so-called helpers. Sometimes I think they’re Job’s comforters and find God and be filled with His mighty Spirit to such a degree that no man can change our minds.

When I was 19 years old kneeling in the front room of my mother-in-law’s home before I was married, I was baptized with a mighty infusion of the Holy Ghost and I’ve been up against everything: Jesus only, tongues-ism and holiness-ism and Calvinism and all the isms that there are. They’ve all tried to beat me down and some say I went too far and some say didn’t go far enough. But brother, I know what God did and any tiny work God ever did through me dates back to the hour when I was filled with His Spirit. And it’s for you.

Now it’s past the time to close and I’m simply going to pray and then we’ll close.

O Dear Lord, time is short, and the hour is late and we have such little time to go. And religion has gotten organized now, Thy religion, Lord Jesus, so that anybody can do it, anybody. We don’t have to have Thy gifts anymore, the tragedy and the terror of it all. But Lord, still men build their Babylon’s, call them by Thy name, but they go down and perish.

Oh, we want our work to last for soon we shall be where the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest and only what the Holy Ghost does will last. We would yield our earthly vessels, we would bring our empty vessels, we would, if need be, come and ask Thee to begin to scrub the rust and the filth until our hearts are shiny clean, repositories for the Blessed Spirit. God bless everybody that listened tonight.

Now make us all see this, make us all understand it Lord how tragic it is to peter out at last and be cobblers in the kingdom of God and fool around and put patches on the roof and prop up the temple with sticks.

O God, and it’s everywhere men are doing it. We confess Lord God that we feel like being sick when we read the pages of the Sunday papers and some of those religious magazines. Adam’s brain is busy trying to do God’s work. We wonder Lord if it isn’t offering strange fire on the altar of God. We wonder if it won’t bring judgment in that day.

O Lord, save us from offering strange fire. Any fire we offer we want to be off the altar, Thy fire. Bless us now as we separate. Please don’t let us eat our way through a yard of pizza tonight and forget all about this. Great God, we pray Thee, give us gravity. That boy in his early teens here tonight with exuberance and nervous energy make him brave and serious.

When we think of thy 16 year old handmaid who yielded herself to the Holy Ghost and was the instrument in some places of the revival. We don’t excuse our 16 year olds. We don’t excuse the parents who think that their children ought to be permitted to just play when actually Lord God the crisis is on, the world is on fire and the judgment is drawing near and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. My God, will Thou send us out brave and thoughtful to meditate on Thy Word.

Give us, we pray Thee, desire and determination and then push us on till we’re pushed over the cliff in desperation. And then, as a mother eagle stirs up her nest and then dives down and catches her young, Thou will catch us and fill us and get this and the work we do though it may not be vast will have eternity in its heart. Let us stand please.

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“Gifts That Build the Church“

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Gifts That Build the Church

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 28, 1956

In line with a series of truths which I have been bringing, I want today to speak on the gifts of the Spirit. And many of the things that I say will be repetition. That is, I will have said them at some time in my life, and maybe at some time in your hearing, the hearing of some of you.

But I will sum it up and bring it all together in one place this morning. In 1 Corinthians 12, once more let me read, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

Diversities of operations, but the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another diverse kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

But all of these worketh that one and the self, same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. Further on in that chapter, verse 27, Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Those questions are what is known as rhetorical questions, and the answer, of course, is no.

Now, in the book of Romans, the twelfth chapter, we read this. After that famous, I beseech you therefore, brethren passage, which everybody quotes, then we come to this passage which scarcely anybody quotes.

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ. And every one member is one of another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

And in the book of Ephesians, the fourth chapter, verse 8, wherefore, he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same that ascended, that is Christ, far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, and to a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Now let’s sketch something here that is known to us all, but in order to arrive at where we’re going, when you’re going into a new area, you always have to drive over familiar streets, the ones you know best to get where you’re going, if nothing else, just to get away from your house.

So, the doctrine of the body of Christ here, that the Church is the body of Christ, with Christ the head, and the true Christians are parts of that body. And that the Holy Spirit is to the body what our soul is to our body, the life, the union, that is what unites it, and the consciousness. Let the soul leave the body and all the parts of the body cease to function. The Spirit in the body gives to it life, cohesion, and consciousness.

And each member recapitulates the local Church, that is, every Christian, every human body, is an illustration. Paul uses it in three of his epistles and asserts it three different times in his epistles, not simply as an illustration to pass by, but something very carefully worked out and at great length. And each local church recapitulates the entire Church.

Now always illustrations break down, and parallels break down, particularly when we come to the sacred and infinite things of God. For a man’s body to function, it all has to be in one place. If you separate him and scatter him around, he’s dead.

But the body of Christ doesn’t all have to be in one place, because its unity is the unity of the Spirit. And therefore, the church is never all in one place. Some are in heaven.

I was wondering this morning what proportion of the members of the body of Christ are in heaven. I would suppose that ninety-eight percent of them might be in heaven, having two thousand years gone to die and go to heaven. But whatever the percentage, the largest number are in heaven and the remainder are on earth.

And not all are on earth at the same time, nor in the same place. And yet the body is not torn nor divided, because it is held together by the Holy Spirit, who is the life of the body. And each local group has all the functions of the whole group and recapitulates, that is, gathers up in itself and sums up all of the offices and gifts and workings of the entire church of Christ.

Now the members, according to Paul, we’re still on our familiar streets. The members, according to Paul, are designed for a function. He says the eye is designed to see, and we all know that. That’s what it’s there for. And the ear is designed to hear, that’s its function. The hand is designed for very, very many purposes, the foot for another purpose, the lungs for another, the heart for another.

And so all the parts of the body have their particular function. And they’re designed to cooperate and act in concert with each other. And in the body of Christ, the motto might be a good boy scout motto.

I thought when I was thinking of it here that somebody might say, well, this is a pep talk, because actually it can be summed up like this, all for each and each for all, for that is what Paul says. He says that the whole body exists for its members, and the members exist for the whole body, and that therefore God gives gifts that the body might profit with all.

And remember one final thing, and it is that all take direction from the head. Cut a head off of a man’s body and there’s no direction anymore. We’ve all seen the familiar country scene of a chicken having its head cut off and still imagining that it was called upon to fly away. So it fluttered all over the barnyard, but it wasn’t going anyplace, it had no direction. Its direction was taken away from it and it soon died. So, the body has its direction from the head, and the body of Christ, the church of Christ, gets its direction from its Head, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now I’ve talked about the functions, or Paul has, and what are these various functions? Well, they’re abilities which are called gifts in the Bible, gifts according to the measure of faith, and gifts according to grace.mThey’re gifts, they’re grace, some variously called, and it says, having then gifts, differing according to the grace, that’s in Romans 12.6. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, 12:1, covet earnestly the best gifts, 12:31, and when He ascended up on high, He gave gifts unto men, 4:8, and then in Romans it says, let nobody think of himself more highly, but everybody judge himself according as God has given him gifts.

Now I find that there are more than nine gifts in the Scriptures. I find that there are about nineteen, and I’ve marked down seventeen of them here, but in reading over Ephesians you come to two more, evangelist and pastor. But because in this Corinthian passage Paul develops it by saying that there are diversities of gifts, and then names nine of them, we say those are the gifts.

But brethren, if you will read the rest of the Scripture, and read what Paul says in the passages I read today, and then read what Peter says, you will find that there are more gifts than nine. And it could be that in saying there are nineteen, that I have made too many because it’s possible some of them are synonymous with each other.

So that if that’s the case, then of course, if you were naming your family and you had one named Billy, and you also called him Willie, and you were counting them and you said Willie and Billy, you’d get one too many, because he’s the same one. You’d give him a synonymous name. So that if you, we are counting the gifts of the Spirit as revealed in the New Testament, if we should by accident find, or we should find that the Spirit had designated one gift by two names, then we’d have to cut it down that much and say, well, that’s, I’m sorry, that’s just using a synonym for the same thing.

But now here are the gifts as are found in the passages I read. The gift of an apostle, which means an ambassador or a messenger or one commissioned to go. And it’s generally believed, I think, by all sound Christians everywhere, that the twelve apostles, as we knew them, had a particular office which has not been perpetuated. Because it talks in Revelation of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Judas by apostasy fell away and Paul was added to make up the number of the twelve. And yet the word apostle is only a name. It’s a designation. It means an ambassador.

And here sitting back in our congregation this morning are two who have gone as ambassadors for Christ, there may be others, two missionaries who have gone as ambassadors for Christ and as messengers for Christ, as those commissioned to go.

So that I am not at all sure that while the twelve apostles certainly were a group in themselves and their offices have not been perpetuated, still I am not sure that it’s not proper and permissible, if we know how we mean it, to call a missionary of an apostle. Because we often hear people call the apostle to the Jews, the apostles to this or that. Maybe we might call one of our missionaries that went into the Baliem Valley the apostle to the Doni, meaning simply an ambassador or a messenger as someone commissioned to go.

The second is the gift of the prophet. Now the gift of the prophet in the New Testament was only secondarily a gift of foretelling events. In the Old Testament the gift of the prophet was to foretell events mainly and to warn and to plead and to call back erring men to God. But in the New Testament the gift of the prophet is not so much to foretell events inasmuch as the Bible has been written and the prophecy stands, and all events have been foretold that God wants to foretell. But the gift of the prophet in the New Testament is to tell forth and to see with an anointed eye and to give meat in due season, and not simply to be a mimicker, but to tell out what God has to say for a given time.

Then there is the gift of the teacher. Not everybody can teach, we might just as well admit it, and even of those that teach, not many can teach. There is a gift of the teacher. It is both a natural gift and it is a gift of the Spirit.

Then there is the gift of the exhorter. Let him exhort, says the apostle. Now an exhorter is not known in our day, but the old Methodists were wise enough that they had an office of an exhorter. They commissioned him, called him a lay preacher. He had a license, he couldn’t marry people, and he couldn’t give the Lord supper, but he could get up and burn up sin and tell how wonderful God was, better than most preachers can do.

It might be interesting to remember that it was a lay preacher, an exhorter, that won Spurgeon to the Lord. Spurgeon came in out of a snowstorm into a Methodist church and got up in the balcony and sat and listened, a young Spurgeon and an exhorter who wasn’t much of a preacher at all, but he had the gift of exhorting. He was exhorting the people. Spurgeon said he said, I believed in Jesus Christ right there and I could have stood up with the best and the oldest saint and sung, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” He was converted.

Then there is the ruler. Now a ruler is used in the same sense as a ruler of the synagogue. He’s not a legal ruler, he’s simply somebody that takes some direction and reads the Scripture and teaches, and I don’t know whether he might be synonymous with a pastor or not.

Then there’s the gift of wisdom also, and the gift of knowledge, and the gift of faith, and the gift of healing, which a few people have had, and the gift of miracles, and the gift of tongues, and the gift of interpretation of tongues, the gift of discernment, the gift of helps. Whatever that is, I do not know, but I sometimes think some people are gifted just to be helpers.

Then there’s the mercy shower, which I’ve called for want of a better name, and this mercy shower appears to be someone who’s particularly gifted by the Holy Ghost to go about helping people that are discouraged, and helping the poor, and otherwise going about doing good, as it was said of Jesus.

Then there’s the gift of government, and that might be the same as the gift of ruling.

Then there’s the gift of giving. Somebody says, aren’t we not all to give? Yes, we’re all to give, just as we are all to have some wisdom. But there’s such a thing as a gift of wisdom.

We’re all to have some discernment, but there’s such a thing as a gift of discernment. We’re all to show mercy and be helpful, but there’s such a thing as a gift of helping and showing mercy.

And so, we’re all to give, but there’s such a thing as a gift of giving. And I believe that God enables some men, if they will allow him by the Holy Spirit, to sow, control, and run business, that they’ll be able to support the Church, and the cause of missions, and the cause of Christ on earth, and to help the poor in a way that we, the average people, can’t possibly do. Then there’s the gift also of the evangelist, and everybody knows that there’s a gift of an evangelist. We admit that today. Then there’s the gift of the pastor.

Now, I’ve named nineteen. Now, my brethren, these are gifts given by the Holy Spirit to individual persons, just as the gift of sight is given to my eye, the gift of hearing is given to my ear, the gift of smelling is given to my nose, the gift of taste is given to my tongue, and the gift of manipulation is given to my hand, and particular gifts are given to every member of the body, so God gives to his Church, of which Christ is the head, these gifts.

Now, the work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members. Now, you hear me. The work of the Church is to be done by the Spirit working through these gifted members.

Now, I’ll go further than that. I will say this, that in the judgment, when we all receive the gifts for the deeds we’ve done, the rewards for the deeds we’ve done, and we know as we’re known, and that which is chaff and wheat and straw and stubble is separated from that which is gold and silver and diamonds, and all that that is of the flesh perishes and passes away, and that which is of the Spirit alone stands, you will find that not only does God design to do all his work through gifted men, but He does do all His work through gifted men.

Now, He doesn’t carry on all religious activity through gifted men.You don’t have to have a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a preacher. You don’t have to be a gift of the Holy Ghost to be a Bible expositor. We can be Bible expositors by reading commentaries and going to Bible school and learning what men say is true of the Scripture. And a man can get up and preach. A politician can get up and preach, turn from politics if he’s talking to a religious group and preach like a house on fire. You only have to be able to talk and know how to use religious phrases to be a preacher.

But if you’re going to preach so that it’ll stand in the day of the fire, then you’re going to have to speak by a gift of the Spirit. And any preaching that is not done by a gift of the Spirit is not the true preaching of God. For it’s written that Jesus Christ was anointed of by the Holy Ghost and went about doing good. And He said that He was, the Holy Spirit is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, and He opened the eyes of the blind, and so on. Even our Lord Jesus Christ worked by a gift of the Spirit on His human nature.

And so if you’re giving and serving and working and it’s not by a gift of the Spirit, you may lose everything you’ve done, and everything that you’ve put into it may go down the drain in that day. And if we don’t have the gifts of the Spirit, then where these gifts are not present, then the Church is thrown back upon four or five things which I want to name. All of them should be talked about at length, but of course I can’t talk for two hours here. You wouldn’t stay, and I wouldn’t blame you.

But we fall now upon talent. We use the word talent. That is, some fellow can whistle through his teeth, or somebody else has a marvelous gift for impromptu composition of poetry. Somebody else is marvelously gifted in mathematics. You can give him a whole handful of numbers, toss them up, and by the time they’ve been said, he’ll tell you the sum of them. Now those are talents.

Some people are talented composers, some are talented musicians, and some are talented singers, and some are talented talkers, we might as well admit it. Some of you dear, honest, good, godly people haven’t opened your mouths in public because you just don’t have any gift for it, and it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb or ungifted, it just means that isn’t your gift. But some of the hollowest, most hopeless people in the world can run off at the mouth and talk like everything. So, talent. That’s the next thing. Talent.

And the talent runs the church, not the gifts of the Spirit, as God intended, but talents run the Church. Just as you can keep a body alive by a little while, or keep it functioning by, you know how Colonel Lindbergh and his name did? The man who wrote the great book about man? I’ve forgotten his name and doesn’t matter. But they took a chicken’s heart and kept it alive for a month. But it was being done by artificial stimulus from the outside, so the church can be run like that.

And then another method religion can carry on with is psychology. And a great many people are skilled master psychologists. They know how to handle people, really. They’re amazing how they know how to handle people. So, the church can be run, a new man comes in and the crowds come, and first thing you know you have what looks like an amazingly successful church. But that man is simply a shrewd psychologist who knows how to say Jesus in the right place and say tender things.

Then others, other religious work can be done by business methods. And a lot of it is being done by business methods today. And then some use political techniques and some use plain sales methods.

And so, with Christianity now, the church, this church, any church, can be carried on by the exercise of human talents without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by sharp use of psychology without a touch of the Holy Ghost, by business methods, by political techniques and by sales techniques that have not one trace of the Holy Ghost in it.

But I’m telling you and warning you, my dear friends, that when this takes place, we may not know it until the great and terrible day when our deeds are burned with fire and only that which was wrought of the Holy Ghost stands. Jesus said even now the axe lies at the root of the tree and whatever isn’t of God and wasn’t planted by my Father and doesn’t bring forth fruit shall be cast down. And much of the religious activity during the centuries has been an activity wrought by talent and psychology and business methods, political techniques and sales methods.

All right, you say, now Mr. Tozer, let’s be honest about this. If you say that the gifts of the Spirit ought to be in the Church, and I emphatically do, and that the people of God could have these gifts of the Church and could labor in these gifts, then why don’t we simply throw in our lot with the tongues people, the Pentecostal people, by various names. There are, I guess, seventeen or eighteen different splits and divisions of them. Why don’t we throw our lot in with them?

Well now, what I’m going to say now is going to hurt some of my friends. And God Almighty made me do it. He made me do it. And He makes me draw blood and hurt my friends. I don’t want to do it. I’d rather love them and have them love me and go around telling what a nice boy I am. But I must tell the truth, and so I have studied those who are of what we call the tongues persuasion since 1918. That’s about forty-one years, isn’t it? And in all love and charity, I tell you my findings. Not forty-one years, no, but whatever it is, my mathematics always leads me.

In all love and charity, and with complete Christian kindness, I want to say this. First, that there are some good, sweet Christians among our tongues friends. No question about that. I’ve met some of them. I’ve prayed with some of them. And some pretty nice songs, and no great songs, but say, Oh Sweet Wonder, for instance, came out of the Pentecostalism.

And there have been a few lovely songs, never any great songs, but a few good little sweet songs have come out of it, and some good people, and I have friends among them. And I’m not condemning, but I’m going to tell you this, that before I will become a part of a movement, or a school of thought, or a theological school of thought, or a church group, or a denomination, I am going to have to test them and see what have been the characteristics and the marks and earmarks of that group down the years.

Now, with the full understanding that there are many individual churches of which what I say is not true, and with a full understanding that there are individual Christians that are excellent, wonderful, godly, sweet people, then I say this, that the marks that have characterized the various splits and divisions of Pentecostalism since the turn of the century have been, A, a magnification of one single gift above all others, and that, the one that Paul says was of least value.

B, the unscriptural exhibition of that gift before the people like a boy with a toy on Christmas.

C, a tendency to place personal feeling above the Scriptures, which is always an insult to God.

D, an almost total lack of discernment, revealing itself in a predominance of women in their leadership, and sometimes women of questionable character. A credulity beyond belief, allowing them to be taught by little boy preachers, little girl preachers, religious racketeers, people back from the dead, they say, and allow them to adopt rock and roll music long before Elvis Presley, and that led them to splits and divisions.

E, free love, divorce and remarriage among their preachers to a shameful degree. E or E or whatever it is, unbecoming public conduct, not justified in the New Testament.

Now brethren, when a group of people say, we have the gifts of the Spirit, come and join us, then I want to see what cloud hovers over them. Is it a cloud of purity? Is it a cloud of sanity? Is it a cloud of sharp discernment that knows the flesh from the Spirit? Is it a cloud of moral living? Is it a cloud of cohesion and unity? Or is it a cloud of noisy flesh, and sex extravagance, and careless moral living? And if it is the latter, and it is, then I want nothing to do with it.

Realizing that there are among these brethren some good people, and some sweet people, and if they’re mad at me, I’ll grieve about it, because I don’t want them to be. I’m only saying what can be proved and would be agreed to by everybody that knows the facts. Well, so therefore we cannot help ourselves by going somewhere else.

Now I say we ought to have the gifts of the Spirit in the church. Every church ought to have. Well then somebody says, I believe what Tozer says, I’m going to go somewhere else. No brethren, I don’t know of a group or denomination or fellowship or communion anywhere in the world that realizes the Pauline apostolic doctrine of the body of Christ, with each member recapitulating the local church and the local church recapitulating the entire church, and that work as a team, and each one having a proper gift as God gave them to do, and work thus in the Holy Ghost.

Now I know denominations and churches where there are a few like that among them, but I don’t know denominations or groups or churches where that is the regular and general and common thing. So I’ll tell you this, you won’t help yourself by going somewhere else. We here now, in this present moment, this 1956, the 28th of October I think it is, we here and now can receive, this day before the sun sets tonight, we can receive an enduement of the Holy Ghost.

If we will pay the price, each one of us, any one of us, all of us, can receive a downcoming, an enduement of the Holy Spirit. And when he comes, he invariably brings these functional graces, which will enable some to have a sharp discernment.

Now you say, what gifts do you think that we ought to expect? And it says, covet earnestly the best gifts, and we have a right to pray for these gifts and covet them before our God that we might use them to bless His church and glorify His name.

You say then, what are the gifts that you would say would be the most needed in the Church today? I believe the gift of discernment is one of them. We have in fundamentalism ruled the Holy Ghost out, and because we’ve ruled him out, we have gone blindfolded down these decades, with the result that the church has traveled way over into entertainmentism, way over into rationalism, way over into worldlinessism, and the true church of Christ is scarcely to be found anywhere on the face of the earth. It’s not because men were bad, but because men had fearfully ruled out the Spirit, and so the gift of discernment was not there.

The mighty gift that can discern. Let me, I don’t think he’s here now but let me point out a man that I believe has the gift of discernment. Now I don’t think he knows he has, but I think your old praying brother Tom has a gift of discernment. It’s amazing how he can look at you and see through you and tell you all about yourself, and yet he doesn’t make anything out of it at all except to pray and help you a little.

And if this gift of discernment had been in our leadership, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We wouldn’t be locked up behind dispensationalism over here and entertainmentism over there and something else over here, but we’d be in the middle of the way going along. Pray that the leaders of the Church might be endued with the gift of discernment.

Second, I believe the gift of prophecy. That is, the gift of the prophet that can see his generation, know what’s going on, and tell it abroad and make folks listen in one way or another, and find the church in the middle of things and help the church through. I believe we need that gift. I believe we need the gift of faith. Everybody has to have some faith or he wouldn’t be saved, but there are those who have a peculiar gift of faith. And they come around when this church was being built, and we were trying to pay off the old one in the middle of things. There were a few people, I don’t know who they were all, but there were a few that had the gift of faith.

Twenty-eight years ago, when this Church, then the old building, meeting the old building, called me here as pastor. I wrote them back and said, thank you, very much, thank you, thank you, but I’m not coming. And they reported it properly to the church and to the board, that I was not coming, but there was a little woman in this church, still living, very old now, and she was a member of the prayer band. When she got up and said in her broken Dutch English, she said the Lord had shown her and answered her prayer and I was coming.

I said, don’t worry about it, that’s it. She said, this is all settled. I said, here’s the letter saying thank you, but I don’t feel it’s right, it’s not the will of God. She said, that’s okay. She said, the Lord showed me. I hadn’t heard it yet, but God had shown her. She didn’t write to me, that would have been a mistake for her to try to be a messenger boy to me. She just kept still and talked to God. Then shortly after that I began to feel it and sense it.

And that’s what I mean, that gift of discernment and faith that can get through to God when everybody else is excited, or everybody else is jumping up making speeches, let’s do it this way, let’s do it this way.

When the Bible school gets into difficulty, then the members of the board, and here’s one of them, not this one, he wouldn’t do it, he knows better. But members of school boards, and we’ve got another one back here, chairman of a school board or Bible college, and the members jump up and say, well, let’s call in a money-getting concern that for 29% of the proceeds they’ll raise the money for us.

Or let’s make a film of our church work, suppose we do that. Let’s photograph Brother Ruben Eglund in action, and let’s photograph Brother Chase in action, and wave your arms and hold your Bible high, and we’ll take that around among the churches and show that, and thus we’ll get the money. Oh, brethren, that isn’t the way it’s done.

Somebody sitting by will say, God has told me, He’ll look after us, and we don’t have to astute to that. And usually he’s voted down, but if he isn’t voted down and can have his way, God will honor that faith and bless that school. And somebody said recently that in all the Bible colleges and Bible schools, a great number, maybe not all in America, but vast numbers of them were examined, and there were only six of them that were going anyplace and increasing in numbers and making progress, and they were the ones that don’t use any business methods to get their money. They just pray. They have men on their boards that say to God, now here, God, you either do this or else the whole thing will blow up in our faces. And God does it.

I think I mentioned this briefly, that over in Highland Lake, last July, I spoke for a week there, and incidentally, out of that week, six young people went to the Bible school to become preachers and missionaries, out of that week. But anyway, this young man, Merrill Fuller is his name, forty years old, just when I got there, he had his birthday, and they sang Happy Birthday in the dining hall.

Well, this Merrill Fuller owns I don’t know how many hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property right around there, and over across the Pennsylvania state line, he owns another vast holding, which is going to make a Christian high school. He had no more idea how to run a Christian high school than I know how to run a B47. But he said, Mr. Tozer, a whole faculty came to me without my ever soliciting anybody, and said, I want a job, I want to teach. A whole faculty of Christian teachers, a whole high school faculty came.

He said, we were just praying, that’s all. They had me up at five o’clock in the morning praying. Boy, I never felt so old in my life. But I went up there and prayed, and we had a great time. Five o’clock in the morning, and then he said this. Every time he’d get up, he’d say,

Now, friends, we have put this whole business on a platform where it’s either God or total collapse. If God doesn’t hear our prayers and send in the money, we’ll all finish, and that’s the end of it, and we’ll close this place up and write Ichabod over it. He said, I am not going to pray and then do something in such a carnal manner that I won’t know whether God answered or whether my carnal methods worked. So he said, we’re going to walk out and say, Now, God, here I go. You either hold me up or I perish. Now, I ask him, do you think he’s going to fail? No, he’ll never fail. The man who trusts on God will never fail.

Well, the man of faith, we need some faith. Then I think we could use some people with the gift of showing mercy. We’re all so starry-eyed and long-distance in our piety, and we tremble about the Baleen Valley, but there are people within the neighborhood that could use a little help.

You say, why don’t you go do it? Brother, I’m already staggered to bed at night without what I have to do, and I’m not gifted anyhow. I’m not gifted to go to anybody and help them much, but certainly some of you could be, and maybe I could be, but we all ought to be gifted. I think a mercy shower would be a great help around here.

And then I think that God should bless some businessmen and give them a gift so that honestly and without cheating or without preying against a competitor, they could have money enough that they could keep God’s work humming along like a diesel engine.

All right, brethren, we don’t have to go somewhere else. God will not do anything for any church that He won’t do for this church. And He won’t do anything for any people that He won’t do for this people. And He won’t do anything for anybody that He won’t do for you. We here now can receive. Ye shall receive power, says the Holy Spirit, said Jesus about the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, remember this, that he will bring not only the gifts, but the graces and the fruits of the Spirit.

So, it is my earnest hope and my earnest prayers, that we God’s children here, with the dignity and self-control that belongs to Christianity, with the calmness and sweetness that belong to Jesus Christ, but with the abandonment that belong to the Apostles and the early Christian church, might throw ourselves out on him with an expectation that He should come and endue us. Come Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all thy quickening power, come shed abroad a Savior’s love in these cold hearts of ours. I believe he’ll do it.

And He may easily come in great fullness to some people that you and I are kind of overlooking. And He may pass over some that we think are pretty bigshots. And some big shots may even look askance and wonder if it’s God. But I believe that the Spirit of God wants to do a new thing. I believe He wants to do a new thing.

Just about, I don’t know, maybe about the time my daughter was born, that’ll be seventeen years back. No, it was more recently than that. 1944, how long was that ago? Twelve years ago. God and I had something out. We had something out and settled. And God began to fulfill in my poor, ragged ministry what He had promised me so long that He would. And I believe He’s ready to do this for us all.

It wasn’t in 1944 that I was baptized with the Holy Ghost. That was when I was nineteen years old, I know that. But twelve years ago. And I have lived to see God do things He said he would do. I’ve lived to watch Him work and do the things He said He would do. Until out of this poor, humble, uneducated, and worthless preacher, God has influenced, and influenced in the right direction, men whose shoelaces I’m unworthy to loose around this world.

Brethren, we don’t have to go somewhere else. We can now and here have all the mighty outpourings of the Spirit. And wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if to us in this Church would come that which came to the Moravians? And they could only explain it by saying, it was a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

Now that’s what we want. A sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed. And then will come along with it, Scriptualness, purity, cohesion, dignity, usefulness, high moral living, purity of life. Because that’s the only kind of nearness the Holy Ghost ever brings. And the only kind of life He ever motivates.

So shan’t we now, brethren, as we sing a song of our brother’s choosing. I won’t choose. He does such an almost uncanny job of choosing the right song that I won’t choose one. I’ll let him choose it. We’ll sing it reverently. And as we do, shall we not be expecting something from God this day? All right.

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“The Spirit’s Gifts and the Church’s Duty“

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The Spirit’s Gifts and the Church’s Duty

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 7, 1956

Over the next few Sunday mornings, the Lord willing, I want to talk on a chain of topics or ideas which the church of God needs very badly. And I’m going to read this morning, or rather, I’m going to let Paul talk to us and give us the Scripture, out of which later, over the next few Sundays, I expect to draw some truths.

Now I’m not going to tell you from where I’m reading, because I’m reading from Weymouth’s translation, a very old and honored translation, deliberately this morning. I rarely do it, but I want to today.

The man of God is talking to us. He says, Now, about spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. We can go astray as easily by being uninformed as we can by being wrongly informed. We have no right to be either.

You know that when you were heathens, pagans, that is, Americans, you went astray after dumb idols. By dumb he means idols that couldn’t talk. Paul wanted his God to talk. And what disgusted him was that the gods of the heathen couldn’t talk. Jeremiah and Isaiah had something to say about that too. A dumb idol is no good. Dumb gods, no gods at all.

And he said, for this reason I inform you, that no one speaking under the influence of the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed. That is, it’s quoted. Nobody says, and the quotation is, Jesus is accursed. And that no one is able to say, in quotes, Jesus is the Lord, except under the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is, I assume, he means, no one is able really to say. You can mouth anything. But nobody can actually say and believe that Jesus is the Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, he says, there are various kinds of gifts, but there is the same Spirit. Various kinds of official service, and yet the same Lord. Various kinds of effects, and yet the same God. Notice you have the Trinity here, the Spirit, the Lord, and God. The same God who produces all the effects in each person, but to each a manifestation of the Spirit has been granted for the common good.

God never gives a gift to anybody except for the common good. To one, he says, the word of wisdom has been granted through the Spirit. And we can use a little of that now.

And to another, the word of knowledge by the will of the same Spirit. And to another, in the same Spirit, special faith. And to another, various gifts of healing in the same Spirit. And to another, the exercise of miraculous powers. And to another, the gift of prophecy. To another, the power of discernment between Spirits. To one, varieties of the gift of tongues. To another, the interpretation of tongues. But all these results are brought about by one and the same Spirit allotting to them each individually as He pleases. For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all its parts, many as they are, constitute one body, so it is with Christ. In fact, in one Spirit all of us, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men, were baptized to form one body. And we all are imbued, or were imbued, with one Spirit.

Now, he writes to a different group and says this. To each of us individually, His grace was given, measured out with the munificence of Christ. For this reason, Scripture says, He ascended on high, He led a host of captives and gave gifts to man. And he puts in parentheses this explanation. Now this ascended, what does it mean but that he had first descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same who ascended again far above all the heavens in order to fill the universe.

And He Himself, which is Jesus of course, appointed some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, in order to fully to equip His people for the work of serving, for the building up of Christ’s body, till all of us arrive at oneness in faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and at mature manhood and the stature of full grown men in Christ.

So, we shall no longer be babes, nor shall we resemble mariners tossed on the waves and carried about with every changing wind of doctrine; according to men’s cleverness and unscrupulous cunning, it makes use of every shifting device to mislead. But we shall lovingly hold to the truth and shall in all respects grow up into union with Him who is our head, even Christ. Dependent, he says, on Him, the whole body, its various parts closely fitting and firmly adhering to one another, grows by the aid of every contributory ligament with power proportioned to the need of each individual part, so as to build itself up in the Spirit of love.

And he wrote to another, not a group this time, but to one of his boys. He wasn’t going to be around too long, and he wanted to get everything straightened out, so he said, now, begins now, doesn’t he, about every time, says, Now the Spirit speaketh, or expressly declares, that in later times some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons.

Paul, obviously, had not been taught not to offend. This is offensive language, that some people are listening to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons, and this through the hypocrisy of men who teach falsely and have their own consciences seared as with a hot iron, forbidding people to marry and insisting on abstinence from foods which God has created to be partaken of with thankfulness by those who believe and know the truth.

Paul wasn’t married, but he was determined that nobody was going to lay the yoke of celibacy upon anybody. They could marry if they wanted to, as far as he was concerned. He told them that they would have double trouble, but he said, If you want to get married, it’s natural. He told them that somewhere else.

And then he was a man who wasn’t a great eater. He was a frugal, careful man, practicing fasting in long cryings and tears, but he was determined that nobody was going to lay compulsory fasting on anybody. So, he says, these false teachers are forbidding people to marry and insisting on abstinence from foods which God has created to be partaken of with thankfulness by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything that God has created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if only it is received with thanksgiving. It is made holy by the Word of God and prayer.

Now he said, If you put this to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ, nourished on the lessons of the faith and of the good teaching which you have faithfully followed. But profane stories, fit only for old women, have nothing to do with them. Train yourself for godliness. Exercise for the body is not useless, but godliness is useful in every respect. Physical exercise helps you, a little, but godliness helps you in every way, possessing the promise of the present and the future life.

Faithful is this saying and deserving of universal acceptance, and this is the motive of our toiling and wrestling that we have our hopes fixed on the living God who is the Savior of all mankind and especially of believers. Command this and teach this. Let no one think slightingly of you because you are a young man. I don’t need that. But in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, be an example to your fellow Christians. Until I come, pay attention to public reading.

Now what do you suppose he wanted them to publicly read? Scriptures. Exhortation and teaching. Whether that says public reading or not, I don’t know. We’d have to look it up in the Greek, and mostly it simply says reading. But he says public reading in this translation.

Do not neglect the gifts with which you are endowed, which were conferred on you by prophetic indication when the hands of the elders were placed upon you. Practice these duties and be absorbed in them, so that your progress in them may be evident to all. Take pains with yourself and your teaching. Persevere in these things, for by doing this you will secure your own and your hearer’s salvation. Well, now, of course, I read from 1 Corinthians 12, from Ephesians 4, and from 1 Timothy 4.

Now, it is my duty and my high Christian privilege first to pray for this church. No man has any right to talk to a crowd he hasn’t prayed for. No man. So, it is my duty, if you want to allow the word “duty” in your Christian thinking, most people don’t. I think the old word duty might well come back again.

A colt out in the pasture field knows no such word as duty. But his well-trained, hard-working mother in the harness, pulling the wagon of the plow, she knows duty. The colt only knows freedom, but the mother knows duty.

And I wonder if our inordinate desire for freedom and our strange fear of duty, may not be one thing that’s wrong with us now. But it is a duty nevertheless, but a privilege, certainly a high privilege, to pray for this church. And it is another, though perhaps not such a high duty and privilege, to preach to the people who foregather here. And by church I do not mean this organization. Strictly speaking, you cannot organize a church, and the church is not a church by organization.

We live in society and we live under laws, and therefore, being what we are, it is necessary for us to organize. I believe in organization, a free, loose organization. I think it’s necessary. Paul told Titus to set things in order and to appoint men. That meant organization. It could have meant nothing else.

But I say you can’t organize a church, the same as you can’t organize a ball club. You can have a ball club which has a captain and so many pitchers and so many catchers and so many outfielders and so many infielders and so many basemen, but that doesn’t make a club as a certain Chicago club proves. It’s just an organization. And so, you can’t organize a church.

You can have your pastor, elders, deacons, deaconesses, and all the rest, and under law, a constitution, but you don’t have a church. The church is something else altogether. The church is within that organization, maybe, but that organization is not the church. The church is the assembly of the saints. And wherever the saints meet, you have the church. And wherever they habitually meet, then you come to name the church, maybe, and thus you have a church, such as this one or some other church.

And so, it’s a joy to preach to those who have over the past years and who do now and who will preach or foregather in this place, and it’s a privilege to preach to them and to guide and to plan for the future.

Now I try to see the church whole. I want to see you as a part of something vastly bigger. I’d like you to think of yourself as part of something bigger than you are. You know, the sociologists and psychologists talk about the need for belonging. They say that a rejected child is, maybe, developed dangerous mental or nervous traits because he has no sense of belonging.

And they explain the clubs of youngsters, the wolf packs that tramp our streets, as those who in the main come from homes where they have been rejected, where the father drinks, the mother too, and where they’re out nights, and where they’re not loved after they’re five years old or six, and where they feel they don’t belong to anything, and they want to join something in order to feel that they belong. There’s strength, there’s human strength in a sense of belonging to something. That’s why we have secret orders.

Men who are pushed around by their wives and pulled off by their bosses until they get the feeling, they have no soul they can call their own, not a tattered shred of self-respect is left, they go join a lodge. And as the cartoon had it, the wife is speaking to her husband, and she says, the high exalted potentate can’t go tonight because I won’t let him.

And they become high exalted potentates and name themselves big names, but the point is, little men want to belong to something. And that is not a bad thing, that’s a good thing, because we’re gregarious by nature. We’re not wolves to go alone or travel in narrow packs which break up immediately, but we’re sheep to travel in flocks that stay together a lifetime.

So, when I talk about the church, I talk about the whole church. Unless I say this church, because I want you to know that this church is a part of a great church. I can imagine how lonely, now I’m talking in the presence of a young soldier who’s just back, and he may contradict me for this good-naturedly afterward, but I don’t think he will. I can imagine how lonely a soldier would feel in a foreign land among a people whose language he can’t speak except for his uniform, that identifies him with a vast crowd of such fellows all over the world, and particularly with his homeland and his flag.

The sense of belonging is necessary. The young fellow somewhere in some remote corner of the earth wearing an American uniform received a cable or word somewhere from the commander-in-chief that he’d received a dishonorable discharge and was no longer a part of the army. I can imagine what an utter collapse it would be to him, psychologically he’d break down, and half his manhood would leak away from his broken heart.

Belonging to something is what matters, my brethren. Belonging to something that’s going to last, and something that’s worthy, something that’s valuable. I couldn’t belong to a man-made society; I couldn’t possibly do it.

Imagine me getting on my knees and swearing to follow the order of this and that lodge. God made my knees hard to bend, and my American upbringing has made them impossible to bend, unless God bends them. Now imagine that I could ever do that, I never could, but I want to belong to something.

No man is ever individualistic enough to go it alone, no man. The man who does is sick, the hermit is sick. A man who lives alone in his attic, and who refuses even to answer the door, and who sneaks out in the dark, and buys something at a delicatessen, and sneaks back, that man’s sick.

He’s not a normal man. A normal man, good or bad, sinner or saint, wants to walk out and look around at others of his kind and say, I belong. This is my race. These are my people. This is my language I hear spoken there. That’s my flag flying there on top of that school building. I belong here.

That is necessary to our welfare, necessary to our health, our mental health. And that is why rejection, unwanted children, and persons who feel themselves rejected, can sometimes develop very serious and dangerous trends. I want to think of this church then as its relation to the whole church of Christ.

That’s why I like to sing songs about the church, the church of Jesus Christ, which He purchased with His own blood, part in heaven and part on earth, and of every color and tribe and nation and tongue around the world, as the Bible says. And we’re a part of that.

We didn’t begin when Dr. A. B. Simpson organized the Society for Christian Missions back in New York in 1884. If I thought that for a second. I’d never finish this sentence. I’d break off with a semicolon, and I’d close this Bible and leave and resign, and find the church that went back to Pentecost.

But I believe that we’re a part of that which does go back to Pentecost. I believe in the apostolic succession. And I believe that it’s not a succession of bishops and men with names and organizations. I believe it’s a group, it’s a living organism. Just as I believe that my organism goes back to my great-great grandfather Adam, and that I’m a part that the living stream floated down the centuries, and ties me organically and racially and vitally with the first man.

So, I believe that this church is organically and vitally a part of the true church of Christ that began when the Holy Ghost fell on a body of believers and made them one, and baptized them into one body and made them God’s people in a way that no people ever had been before. And therefore, every Christian is a part of us, and we’re a part of every Christian group around the world.

When I hear a good thing or read a good thing that’s said or done by some great man or good man or good woman anywhere in the world for Christ’s sake, I have a good feeling in my heart that’s part of me. That’s part of me. That belongs to me, and I belong to that. And whether I ever meet that person on earth or not doesn’t matter. The church of our Lord Jesus Christ is one. She’s one around the whole earth.

So, I want to think of her that way, and I want to think of you as belonging to the great Church of our Lord Jesus around the earth.  And I want to think of you and your relation to God first of all. Your relation to God first of all. A man got into the papers here the other day by starting a little campaign to get all of his people to vote. Whether you vote or not is your business. I expect to. If you do or don’t, I’m not going to needle you about that.

I’m only going to tell you that every country has the kind of leaders it deserves. But I’m not concerned so much with whether you’re a Democrat or for a Republican, or I’m not concerned so much for whom you’re going to vote. But I’m deeply concerned about your relation to God. That’s first. That’s first.

Before there were any Tories or Whigs or Democrats or Socialists or Republicans or what have you around the world, there was God. Before man ever knew the privilege of the ballot, there was God. And your relation to God is absolutely first.

And then your relation to others is very important too. And your habits and your tastes and your service, all this is very important. And so, we’re going to think about what a church must do and what it’s our privilege to do and what God will give us power to do, and the gifts of the Spirit and all this over the next weeks. And to do all this requires itself a gift of the Spirit.

Now, back in the book of Isaiah, if I can find it without keeping you waiting too long, in the book of Isaiah there’s a passage which I love very much. There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Now that, of course, is Jesus.

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make him a quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.

Now, that’s said about Jesus, but that’s true, or ought to be true of the members of the body of Christ. For just as the oil was put upon the high priest’s head, and it ran down to the skirts of his garment, and cleared down to his feet, and gave fragrance and sweetness to his whole body, so the mighty power that was poured upon the head of Jesus must trickle down and flow down to every member of the body. And so what was true of him can be true of his ministers. The Spirit of wisdom shall rest upon him, and the Spirit of understanding, and the Spirit of counsel and might, and the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah and shall make him a quick understanding.

And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes. The curse of modern leadership is looking around and getting your bearings from what you see. Neither shall he reprove after the hearing of his ears, listening carefully to see which way things are moving, and then judging accordingly. No, he’ll never make that mistake.

But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and with equity the meek of the earth. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And he’ll always be right in his spirit, and right in his wisdom, and right in his judgment. And he’ll not be judged, nor allow himself to be judged by what’s going on round about.

Now, my dear friends, I’m going to break this off here within five minutes. This is Communion Sunday, and I’ve got lots more to say developing this thesis, perhaps until Brother Reidhead comes. But it takes a lot of patience and a lot of persistence and a lot of courage in this day in which we live to find the will of God and to take it.

And I believe that God wants to help us. I believe that He wants to do something new for us here in this church, in our fellowship, I believe it. He’s doing something new for me, and I can’t see why it should not flow out and down and over and up and around until we’re all swimming in it. And I can’t see why God should omit any of us in the breaking of the bread nor in the pouring of the oil.

You and I stand here and mingle together here and foregather here as an assembly of the saints, with all of the obligation resting upon us that rested upon them at Pentecost. It has not diminished one little bit, and there is not anywhere one sentence of Scripture to be found, nowhere is there any proof or a line that could be twisted nor tortured into teaching that the organic, living, vibrating church of Jesus Christ, just before He comes, won’t have every obligation and every privilege and every right and every power at her disposal that she had when she first was born in the early part of the book of Acts.

You know, there is such a thing as being tough about this, my brethren. There is such a thing as saying to God and to yourself, and at times maybe over your shoulder, to the devil, that you’re not going to give up to the times. And that you’re not going to give up to the ways of the world, or even to the common ways of religion round about you. And that you’re not going to judge yourself by others, and you’re not going to allow your Church to be judged by others. And if it looks a little better or a little worse, then worry about it or be glad.

But you’re going to take the New Testament’s standards as your standard. And just as sure as God sits in His high heaven, unless Christ comes within the next twenty-five years, unless He comes within the next twenty-five years, the Christian Missionary Alliance and all such groups as we are, fundamentalists generally, are going to have to recall and have back upon us a revival that will eventuate in a new moral power, and a new separation, and a new cleanness, and a new bestowment of the mighty enablings of the Spirit, or God will have to raise up from somewhere a new group to carry the torch.

Now, I prophesied twelve years ago about something, and it came to pass that my only mistake was I didn’t go far enough in what I said. I’ll tell you about that next Sunday, if you honor me by appearing here, or honor your own soul by coming to the house of the Lord. And I’m prophesying this without fear.

If we do not do something, if the church doesn’t do something, if we don’t make a hard swing back to the roots of Christianity and beginning over again to seek the face of God, God is going to pass us up, as a farmer passes up, eggshells that are empty, throws them out and buries them. As you throw away tin cans that have been emptied and their contents taken, and they’re thrown out to be carried away in the refuse. As we bury dead men whose spirit has left them, and who can no longer stand up or talk or hear.

We reverently lay away the shell where they were. There was a day when Israel, believing in the perpetuity of her place in the sun, said to Jesus, we be not born of fornication, we be the seed of Abraham, and this temple is the temple of God. And Jesus said, they are the children of Abraham who do the works of Abraham, and as for this temple, there’ll be a day when not one stone will be upon another.

And that came to pass literally, and the Roman emperor sent his plows and plowed the foundation with plows. To fulfill, he’d never heard it said, and he didn’t know Jesus had ever said it. But Jesus said, not one stone will stand on another. And they plowed up the foundations after knocking every stone down level with the ground. The very sacred temple, God will leave it when it ceases to fulfill His purpose and do His will. There isn’t an organization in the world God won’t desert.

The Salvation Army, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the Nazarenes, the Mariners, Christian Businessmen’s Committee, any group anywhere, God will desert them in the hour that they cease to fulfill His will. There isn’t a denomination on this wide earth anywhere, you can’t make your robes long enough, nor your chains heavy enough, nor your titles long enough to say the church, when once she ceases to fulfill the will of God. There isn’t a group anywhere, God will raise them up in 1884 and desert them in 1964, unless they continue to fulfill the will of God.

There isn’t a group like this anywhere, my brethren, unless we follow on to know the Lord and humbly and meekly follow Jesus Christ in fear and godly reverence and in faith and in love and charity. There isn’t a church, I say, anywhere that God won’t turn away from and go to some colored mission or some group somewhere of simple-hearted people that don’t know too much and don’t have too much, but that do love God and want to obey him. I say, God will desert a crowd anywhere.

It doesn’t mean the individual members of that group who are Christian people will be deserted, but it does mean that the cloud will lift from that assembly. Dear God, I pray that if it ever lifts from this church, God will tell me twenty-four hours before the tragedy occurs, for I want time to get out of town. I want time to get away where I don’t have to stand and look at the despoiling of a church.

Only when the cloud is there and the fire, only when the Holy Ghost is present, and the Shekinah glows is a church a true church. And then if you lack everything else, you still have a true church. Now I’ve read from Paul about the possibilities, the privileges, the obligation, the commission that is ours, the job we’ve got to do, our future, what we’ve got to do right here and to the ends of the earth.

I’ve read to you about the power that God gives to enable us to do it. Then I have read of the strange teachings that come in from everywhere to spoil that holy oil. So, over the next weeks we’re going to talk about it, God willing. But that will be all for now.

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“A Call for a Return to God”

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A Call for a Return to God

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 29, 1956

Now I hold in my hand a book, and it says Holy Bible on it. And this book has so many virtues, that no one can ever say, this is the virtue of the Scriptures. It has so many crowns on its head, that no one can point to one and say, this is the crown. It has so many functions, that no one can say, this is the function of the Scripture. You can never say this, that, always it’s they, because there are so many.

So, I would say tonight and using for the subject matter that 30th chapter of Isaiah which we read, that one mission of the Holy Scriptures, is to find us. It’s to find us. When the Bible says a man is lost, it is exquisitely accurate in what it says. We’re lost. People are lost. The world is lost. And we don’t know where we are.

Once in the city of Pittsburgh, I was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel, and if you’ve ever been in the Golden Triangle, it’s a golden labyrinth to me. I got lost. And I couldn’t find my hotel. And I told them afterward about it, that I wasn’t lost, the hotel was lost. But somebody was lost there that day, all right. And it’s easy to get lost in the world and not know where you are. Not know what times you’re living in. Not know what events mean. Not know the mood of the hour or the spiritual temperature of the hour.

Now, the one mission of the Word of God is to find us. It is to locate us and to identify us and identify our times. And it’s to show us what’s wrong with us and also to show us what’s right with us. And I’d like to stop there and accent that, that mostly in our eagerness to make things better, we’re inclined to overlook what is right with us. And this is never good. Always we should acknowledge anything that is right with us, that God says is right with us.  And whereunto we have attained, there abide, when cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.

There is no virtue in digging at yourself all the time with a pick. There is no virtue in always condemning yourself, because the Word of God shows us what is right with us as well as what is wrong with us. Now, I say us, meaning Christians, because it is well known that there is nothing right about a sinner. There is nothing right about a lost man. There is nothing right about a rebel.

And I think it’s safe to say that there is nothing right about popular religion as we know it today. But the Word of God is very quick to say, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

And I saw His eyes shining as He pointed to that man and said, well, look at this man. And when the woman, the woman of Sarepta came to Him, He said there were many, many lepers in Israel in the days of Elijah, and yet to none, to none did faith come. This woman, this foreign woman had faith.

The Lord always approves whatever He sees that He can approve. But, of course, the technique of the evangelist who is not led by the Spirit is to go into a church assuming that everybody, from the pastor to the janitor, is a thoroughgoing scoundrel, and then begin there with that presumption. But that’s not the way the Word of God does it. The Word of God always finds you.

The business of a good doctor is not only to tell you what’s wrong, but to slap you back and tell you when you’re all right. And so, the business of the Word of God is not only to tell me when I’m wrong, but the business of the Scripture also is to tell me when I’m right, and say, well done, and go ahead, you’re My child.

Now it finds us, it locates us, and it brings our time into focus, so that we can, or God can, pronounce upon us either judgment or a proof. And there is a unique felicity in the Word of God, a wonderful ability to find parallels, moral parallels, and spiritual parallels. I am somewhat delighted as I get around a bit, and read the mail, and meet and talk with people, that the old ironclad, rigid, dispensationalism that put every verse in one pigeonhole, another verse in another pigeonhole, and said do not disturb until Christmas, is pretty well passing away.

While we all believe in the dispensations of the Scripture, there is coming from everywhere onto the church of Christ, the fundamental element, the evangelical element of the church of Christ, a feeling that while we recognize the dispensations, we do not allow them to draw iron curtains around us, but that the Holy Spirit, through the Scriptures, draws parallel, moral and spiritual parallels, between different dispensations, between peoples, and times, and situations, and dangers, and opportunities.

For instance, the New Testament parallels the Old, so that when you read the Old, and then read the New, you begin to find yourself. And then, when you look at your own times, you will find they parallel the Old Testament and the New Testament. So that regardless of, and going across, the dispensational lines, there are the moral and spiritual parallels, the deep principles that underlie all dispensations, and all the works of God, so that we can locate ourselves, and know where we are.

And brethren, I’d like to say to this little congregation tonight, that you could do yourself a wonderful world of good, if you would take some time out, just as you take a week or two weeks out for a vacation, to sort of get hold of yourself physically, and get off the strain. If you’d take a little time out, and it wouldn’t hurt you if you missed a meal, some of you are worried about calories.

I ate breakfast with a man this morning, a very handsome young man, and he said, I’ll take the 400-calorie breakfast, please. And he worried, the people worry about their calories, and worry about their weight. And that’s good, I suppose, but brethren, there’s something that’s more profounder than that, something profounder than our health. And that is our relation to God, where we are in God’s will for us, where we are at this moment, in the overall purpose of God for our lives in this day.

And I say it wouldn’t hurt you at all, if you were to take a day off, and perhaps miss a good dinner, and get a little lean once, and let the things of this world kind of fade out on you and get a little empty. You’ll feel bad, and your stomach will protest, but it won’t kill you. Nobody died from missing a meal. I’m not a faster, and I’m not pushing that on the people, but it might be a good idea sometimes, take a day or so, and examine yourself in the light of God.

Now introspection, if it’s carried too far, becomes a hindrance to the very thing we’re trying to do. Everlastingly digging up the corn to see if it is growing, is one way to be sure we’ll have no corn. And everlastingly digging at our own spiritual life, to see if we’re making progress, is one way of arresting all progress, and bringing it to a dead stop. So that I do not recommend a continual digging at ourselves, but I do recommend that since one mission of the Holy Scriptures is to find us, locate us, take our pulse, settle on our spiritual health and a pronounce on it, and prove or condemn or command or warn or encourage.

I recommend that between now and, say, the next ten days, or between now and the next two weeks, take a little time out before God, not just the hasty morning devotions, but take a longer time out, and search the Scriptures and read them, and get on your knees and put all commentaries aside, and all these, what do you call them, marginal notes, and get a plain text Bible, and get on your knees and let the Holy Ghost talk to you.

You know, brethren, it’s possible even to have too many translations around, possible I got so many that sometimes I get bored with them, and they bother me. Just get a good one, it doesn’t make too much difference which one, but the King James is always a good, safe one, and with plain text, just read the Word of God and let it talk to you. And it’s wonderful how it’ll find you. 

Now, the New Testament, I say, parallels the Old, and the Old and the New find a parallel in the day in which we live. Israel’s condition in 700 B.C., as sketched here in Isaiah 31 to 33. Notice the condition they were in. Now, we read all this, so it’ll be familiar and fresh in your mind. They were in a state of rebellion. They rebelled against God, and rebelling against God is like walking against a cold, fierce wind. Always walking against a cold, fierce wind. Going ahead against the will of God is like flying a little, light, one-motored plane against a tempest, hardly making any headway at all, barely staying up and getting nowhere. Rebelling against the will of God, going one way and God wanting you to go another.

Now, search yourself tonight and think this over. Is there any rebellion in your heart? Do you want something which you’re afraid, if you sought the will of God, you’d find He wouldn’t let you have? Or do you want to avoid something which you know and have reason to believe God wants you to have or do? Well, now that’s rebellion, and rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. Let’s not take it lightly. Let’s take it seriously.

The will of God is the health of the universe. The will of God is the harmony of heaven. It is the peace of paradise. The will of God is salvation itself. The will of God is life. The will of God is everything a moral being can want, and bucking the will of God even on anything, even on any little thing, and in trying so hard.

I heard today about a man. I personally know that that man has gone against the will of God, tragically and shamefully. He has flouted and violated the will of God, not and repented of it, no, but is living in it and has crystallized it and hardened it so he’ll never get out of it. And yet they say, I heard only today, that that man is present at the pre-Sunday school Bible class. He’s present at the Sunday school. He’s present at the morning service. He’s present at the evening service. He’s trying desperately by being present and searching the Scriptures and being pious to make up for the fact that he has violated the will of God against his own life and that he’s bucking the cold, tempestuous wind of the will of God.

My brethren, the will of God is the health of your life. It’s your safety, and we’re not safe any other place. And if you are anywhere in a controversy with God, on any line, holding anything against God, then remember this, that all your Bible reading and all your prayers and all your faithful attendance at church won’t mean a thing. It won’t mean a thing. It’s simply whistling by the cemetery. It is simply talking big to hide our shameful fears.

Get right with God, and you can sleep another hour. Get right with God, and you can relax. Get right with God, and peace will come to your heart.

But they were rebellious in that day. It says they were rebellious people, and they were self-confident people. They trusted in themselves, and they were a people who misplaced their confidence, and put their confidence somewhere else. And they were seeking advisors and counselors and having conferences, and they had their princes and ambassadors running all around but finding no help. And God said tartly that they were ashamed. They found no help at all.

Now, I don’t want to enter even close to that deep, dismal swamp of politics, but it sounds a little like a parallel with the United States of America here, all of this self-confidence and rebellion against the will of God, and this, seeking advisors and counselors and Secretaries of State and plenipotentiaries and having conferences and princes and ambassadors traveling about.

If everybody would ground himself for exactly ten days and think and get straightened out and give his soul a chance to settle and the dust a chance to settle and the fumes of burning gasoline a chance to settle, we’d find the air would begin to clear and we’d find the will of God.

But conferences, Will Rogers used to say that peace conferences were the direct cause of war, and if we could stop all peace conferences, we’d end wars. Of course, he said it with tongue-in-cheek as Will would, but there was more to it, you know, more than there was a certain amount of sly truth in his humor that peace conferences, people are conferring too much, and there you can’t flip your dial anymore on the radio, but there’ll be somebody on their asking somebody else questions.

Questions reminds me of the Irishman’s definition of metaphysics. He said it’s a blind man in a dark basement looking for a black cat that isn’t there. And metaphysics has its parallel in the modern effort to find peace of mind. If a man can hit a home run, we promptly interview him and ask him what he thinks of the international situation. And if he can sing and so, as to bring the teenagers to their knees with rapture, why, we ask him what he thinks of the atom bomb.

And we’re interviewing and conferring. There are too many conferences, brethren. When God Almighty made the heaven and the earth, it didn’t come out of a conference. And when Jesus Christ died on the cross, it wasn’t by any action of a council.

Now I know that a certain number of conferences have to be held, I suppose, just the same as there have to be certain visits to the dentist and certain banquets and after-dinner speakers. I know that. We have to shave, and nobody likes it. There are certain things that have to be.

Oh, my district superintendent is here. I forgot. But I must go on anyhow and say that these things are necessary. Board meetings are necessary, I know.

But brethren, after all, if we get to God first, we could cut down the length of time it takes to find that we don’t know anything about it anyhow. A committee, you know, is a group of people which singly can do nothing. But when met as a committee, can officially vote that they know not how to do it. That’s the difference.

Now, brethren, I believe in committees and conferences and boards, and we never fail here to have our board meeting and I go to all conferences except I miss one once in a while. But remember this, dear friends, that if the members of the conferences and board meetings and young people’s groups and all the rest who decide on how things go would get to God first, we’d have some light when we get to talking with one another. But we meet without light and pool our darkness and then go away again. That’s often the way it is in these conferences, these political conferences.

These political conferences, if Secretary of State would stay at home, we could push war years into the distance, into the future. But if he continues to run around, he’ll get his in it yet. He’s a Republican too, God help him. But if he continues running around and shooting off, we’ll get into it, somebody will get mad and assassinate somebody and then hell will break out on the earth.

God says, you’ll find no help wherever you go. You’re looking for help and you’re holding your political conferences and you’re running about and you’re asking questions of people who don’t know and then they ask you and you don’t know.

A Episcopalian rector that I spoke of this morning came to me over to Highland Lake. He said, there are some questions I want to ask you, Brother Tozer, or two of them. So, he asked me the first one. He said, how do you resolve that problem? Well, I said, Brother, I don’t know how to resolve the problem and to answer the question, I don’t even have the problem. I haven’t yet got far enough along. I don’t even have the problem, not let alone the answer. Well, that was a dry well. He came to a dry well that time.

Then he asked me a second question and he was on my territory, and I had the answer, but not the first one. The first one had to do with the relation of time and eternity, how Christ could step out of eternity into time and the historic, all that old neo-Orthodox stuff. And Brother, I don’t even have the problem, let alone the answer. But there are answers, and God has the answers and we’ll not find them running about asking questions because bpeople don’t know.

And so, God says now here, put this in the Book. Put this in the Book. Think of the irony there. Write this down, He says. Put this in a Book. Put this in a Book that my people are rebellious people, that they want My protection, but they don’t want My will. They want My blessing, but they don’t want to obey Me. They want My heaven, but they don’t want My walk on earth.

And put this in a book that they’re an untruthful people, that they’re a lying people, an untruthful people. You know that there must be an awful lot of liars among evangelicals. I don’t know any. Now remember that. I’m not accusing anybody and I can’t think of any except those who say they have 1,000 when the church seats 208. But outside of that I don’t know where the liars are but there must be because I hear things about myself. Never happened in the wide world.

I heard at Highland Park that I had done something that was all right and I don’t know nothing wrong but something that I was supposed to have done, Billy Graham, and I hadn’t seen Billy Graham in five years so what couldn’t have happened, yet somebody started that it had happened. Somebody told a lie to their brother. I don’t know who it was but somebody. My people are untruthful people, My people, and unbelieving as well. And they insist on hearing religious talk.

I have a note which I want to write on sometime. I learn more from myself by the grace of God than I do from anybody else. And when I get an idea it pops into my head when I pray or when I read about it I take a note on it and then later on I develop. Maybe it will lie three years.

And I have a little note that says this. Why is it that some Christian people are always at the church, always at the prayer meeting, always asking prayer requests, always carrying their Bible, always eager for orthodoxy, always ready to defend the truth, and yet they’re the sourest, grouchiest, and meanest, and nastiest, and hardest to live with people in the world. Now I haven’t settled that question yet. Can you help me, Brother Thomas? I don’t know why.

I asked old brother M.A. Dean. Do you remember old M.A. Dean? Ma Dean they called him. M.A. Dean. I asked Brother Dean about that. And Brother Dean said, young fellow, and I was a young fellow then, he said, young brother, it’s like this. He said, some people are spiritually cross-eyed. And he said, they look two directions and they’re looking one way and going another.

Now he said, that’s the way I’ve resolved it. I doubt whether that would be accepted out in Fuller Seminary among the great brains there or in any other of the great seminaries where great minds are. But it seems to us simple people to be the truth that people are just spiritually cross-eyed. And they’re untruthful and they’re unbelieving and yet they’re some of the most pious people in the wide world. And they insist on hearing religious talk all the time. And yet there’s no humility there. Humility is a beautiful thing. Simplicity is a beautiful thing.

I told Brother McAfee about a Latvian woman. Now my brother Bill is here, Petlov. He’ll know about Latvia. I don’t know where Latvia is exactly. I know it’s one of those middle European arrangements there that’s always a kinder box. But there was a woman at Highland Lake, maybe 35, though I would have not told her that, but she’s probably 35, a blondish, high cheekbone, the typical Slav type, you know, square-faced.

And she came so modestly and said, Mr. Tozer, there is something I would like to ask you. And I said, all right. She said, I am a Latvian refugee. I was a teacher in my own land and I fled before the Russians and I’m here in the United States and I am a Christian. I have been born again and I’d like to ask you a question. And I said, all right.

She said, you talk about a spirit-filled life and the question I want to ask you, she said, is the spirit-filled life for plain people like me? Isn’t the spirit-filled life for apostles and great evangelists and great people like that that need it? She said, do you think that a simple woman like me, she was not a simple woman, she was a brilliant woman, had been a teacher in her own land and spoke English except for she couldn’t get the diphthong, beautifully.

Well, here she was, humble and meek and so humble that she was willing to forego the full walk in the Holy Spirit because she just thought it wasn’t for her. God looks on people like that and loves them, don’t you think? The Lord may surprise her by giving her a Christmas present and giving her that which she feels she’s not worthy to receive.

Ah, brother, humility’s a beautiful thing wherever it is found, and pride is just as heinous wherever it is found. And yet there’s the religious talk all the time. People are wanting to hear religious talk and more religious talk and more religious talk and yet never hear the real voice of God. Isn’t this an ironic thing here? Sometimes I get blamed for being a bit sarcastic but, brother, the Word of God is so sarcastic sometimes you can shave with it. It’s so sharp.

Listen to this. He says, if I can find it here now, he says, they say, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. He says, don’t tell the truth to us, prophesy unto us smooth things and prophesy deceits. Do you know what I would do if I were a layman, if I delivered milk or dug ditches or ran a streetcar or was in any other profession and wasn’t a preacher? Do you know what I’d do when I entered a church and I sensed the pastor was giving me smooth things? I would get up, scoop up my hat and leave the building. And as I went, I’d scrape both feet and get out of there. I’d never want to stay in that church where men speak smooth things.

If I go to a doctor, I don’t want that doctor to lie to me. I want to know the worst that I can prepare for. And I don’t want to be cheered up. I want to be told the truth. Speak unto us smooth things. Men make reputations of being old smoothies. You can ask them a question and you don’t know. It says about Paul, thou hast fully known my doctrine. But there are a lot of people that you ask them a question and you don’t know when they’re finished, whether they believe or don’t believe.

They start in and talk all around and when they come back you still have your question but you don’t have the answer. And you can’t say whether they’re for it or against it. Paul says, you’ve fully known my doctrine. He delivered his soul. He wasn’t afraid of people. He told everybody what he believed.

Now what was the sentence on all this smooth deceit? This religious talk. This rebellion. This lying. This unbelieving business. This running to Egypt and trying to get help there. Running to psychiatry and getting help there and running to somewhere else for help.

Well, God says, the sentence is that you’re going to go down like a wall. You’re going down like a wall. And being a farmer, I’ve seen walls. And I know what it is for a great wall to go down. And as it goes down, rodents run every direction that have been hiding in it. And the dust begins to rise. But your wall is down. He says, you’re going down like a bowing wall. You’re going down like a potter’s vessel that will be smashed on the cobblestones.

Now what about we and our times? I wish, I wish that I could tell you the truth and tell you that I believe that we are in times of great revival. I wish that I could tell you that I thought things were looking up. I wish. But I cannot. Not for a moment can I.

A brother who runs Highland Lake Conference in his mighty praying reminded me of Leonard Ravenhill in his intensity of prayer. And as he prayed, he said, O God, the evangelicals have a God that is no God. And they don’t know the true God much anymore. And the young people have been cheated and sold downriver. We must see again the glory of God for this generation. And the burden of his prayer was, O God, this poor generation deserves to see Thy glory. Show us Thy glory once more.

Now, there is a remnant that according to the election of grace, and if we parallel the rebellion and the self-confidence and the misplaced confidence and the seeking of counselors and princes and ambassadors and dashing about and looking for things and not listening to God, then how are we to escape this sentence, ye shall go down as a bowing wall and fall as a potter’s vessel? I don’t think we can.

Remember that it’s not good exegesis to go through the Bible taking all the blessings and giving all the curses to Israel. Remember that it’s not good exegesis to underline all the promises and ignore all the warnings. Remember it, and yet it’s been done. A whole generation has grown up on that kind of thing. A whole generation that never put a line under the warnings but tenderly underlined all the promises.

If you’d take the average fellow’s Bible and reprint only the underlying passages, you’d think that God was a soft, spongy, spineless, moral Santa Claus who was just as full of self-pity and had no justice or judgment in his nature at all. That’s because we choose the passages that please us.

A heretic, as you know, is a man who selects That’s what the word means. He selects. He selects the passages that he wants. And if you go through your Bible selecting the passages that cheer you up, why, you’re a heretic in that measure. Not you’re teaching false doctrine, but you’re not giving the whole Word of God a chance at you. It’s like living all the time on upside-down cake. You’ve got to have some other things or there’s something going wrong with you.

Now, I want you to notice over here, though, that the goodness of God came in and saved Israel and pushed judgment away 100 years. The good grace of God, even though they deserved all this. The good grace of God came, and in verse 18 he says, The Lord will wait that He may be gracious unto you, and He will be exalted that He may have mercy upon you.

For the Lord is a God of judgment, and blessed are they that wait for Him. And he says, you shall hear a voice, and He will be very gracious unto you at the voice of thy cry, and your teachers will not be removed into a corner anymore. And you will hear a voice saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.

I wonder now if we can’t parallel this. I wonder if evangelicalism, and we, starting in this church, can’t parallel this. Can’t we listen for a voice? Do you notice that it doesn’t say you’ll hear a voice ahead of you? Why? All these other times it says He goes before his people and leads them. When He putteth forth His own He goeth before them, and the voice of the Shepherd is ahead.

Why is it? Can anybody tell me? Answer me back. Why does he say you shall hear a voice behind you? Why? When you turn to the right hand or when you turn to the left, you’ll hear that voice. Why? Because the Lord never leaves the path.

And as long as you’re behind Him and He’s ahead and you’re following Him, His voice is ahead of you. Calling you along, come on sheep, come on. But as soon as you turn away from the path, then the Voice is behind you. No matter which way you turn, the Voice is behind you. You shall hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, come back here, you’re off the way, this is the way, come on back here.

And I pray that to fundamentalism and to all others there may come a willingness to listen, for God is waiting. We’ve deserved. What have we deserved? We’ve deserved judgment. We’ve deserved it. We’ve deserved to go down in a welter of dust and rubble. But God said, I won’t do it now, I’ll wait, I’ll be gracious. I’ll exalt myself and show mercy upon you.

This church has done enough. We’ve committed enough sins here to bring the building down on us. And our society has committed enough sins. Evangelicalism has committed enough. But God says, I’ll wait, that I might be gracious. I’m going to judge you, but I’ll wait and give you a chance and you’ll hear my voice saying, this is the way, walk ye in it.

Then he says these encouraging things, that in these days there shall be upon every high mountain and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter when the towers fall. Isn’t this the day of the great slaughter? And did we not go just now through, a few years ago, one of the most disastrous and bloody and deadly wars in history? And have we ever had an hour when the guns weren’t shooting?

They celebrated the end of the Korean War, but there’s never been a moment the echo of a gun hasn’t been heard somewhere around the world. And we’re still hearing it in this terrible day when everything that is good and all that we’ve stood for has gone down and the nobility of manhood and the purity of womanhood and the dignity of childhood and the desirability of integrity in government and patriotism.

The patriot used to stand beside the flag and preach God and country and the people wept, but now a man doesn’t dare have a flag. They call it flag-waving. And patriotism has become a corny thing for young people to laugh at.

And young people in, I think, Brooklyn the other day, girls, mind you, girls, girls, a group of girls fell on other girls and beat them until they had to be taken into the hospital and when a policeman came to rescue the girls that were being beaten up, they beat him until he was wounded. We have produced a generation like that, a smart aleck, fresh, self-assured, rebellious, sarcastic generation. Everything good is corny or square.

My friends, the only hope we have is that God says I’ll exalt myself, I’ll lift myself up, not to throw a thunderbolt but to show mercy on a poor, miserable people. And I wonder if we can’t begin to listen. It’s happening. It’s coming. I hear it. It’s coming.

I talk to this one and that one, Reformed church man, Episcopal man, Baptist people. I hear them all around and they are saying pretty much the same thing. They’re saying we’ve been sold downriver and over the last few years Christianity has become a show, and we want God back again. We’re sorry we went along with it and we want God back again. And you’ll hear it everywhere. And people that used to be so sure of themselves come tenderly.

I remember one time hearing Dr. Jatterquist. He said, Dr. Jatterquist, he said, now I recommend this book, this so-and-so’s book. He said, now I don’t believe every degree with everything in it. He said, if I agreed with everything in it, I’d have to have written it. And he said, furthermore, by the time I wrote the last page I might not be so sure of something I’d written on the first.

Well, I know how he meant it and everybody else did, but one young preacher present, he rushed up to me and he said, did you hear that? And he was positively, he was steaming hot. He said, did you hear that? What kind of talk is that? What kind of talk is that? Why, he said, Mr. Tozer, I haven’t changed my mind on a thing in ten years. He probably hasn’t yet and that’s been ten years ago. He’s static. He’s probably frozen. He’s frozen. But I don’t mean change your mind about Bible doctrine, but I mean go ahead.

But you know that spirit, that spirit of surefire dogmatism is pretty well lifting. And I find, and I don’t say it because this brother’s a Baptist. I would have said this and did say it in Highland Lake and I’ve said to my friends, I find probably the hungriest people now in the North American continent are Baptists. They’re eager, tender people. I find them, all sorts of Baptists too. And they’re eager, they’ve got that sound, solid, fundamental doctrine.

But please don’t all even go to the Baptists. Maybe I don’t mean to lose my church here. But I am saying that I find that that happened to be a Baptist pastor that told me that. I haven’t changed my mind in anything in ten years, he said.

But his kind is sort of fading away. And people find that their doctrine isn’t enough, that their doctrine’s got to lead them to God. And if it doesn’t lead you to God, it might as well be Mohammedanism. If the doctrines you hold don’t lead you to God, then they are no doctrine to you. And I find a tenderness coming on people.

I find Bible church brethren calling me up, coming to see me, asking me if I’d seen such and such an old book. Eager, hungry people all over. And if we can get together, Dr. Maxwell calls it, the order of the burning heart. You know that? I thought you and I invented that. We called it the fellowship of the burning heart. And we don’t care your denomination, but the fellowship of the burning heart.

Those who love the Lord speak often one to another. And God says that in that terrible day when out in the great world the towers are falling and it’s the day of slaughter, there shall be upon every high mountain and hill, rivers and streams of water. Rivers on high mountains? They don’t belong up there. They belong in the valleys.

Well, God said if they muddy the streams in the valleys and my people pray and hear my voice, I’ll put rivers up on the mountains for them. And I’ll put streams up on high hills for them where they don’t belong. I’ll do a miracle for my people. And my dear friends, it is yet to be known what God will do with us here and thus in our society and with evangelicalism if we’ll only believe God.

And he says in verse 26, Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun seven times. And the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people and healeth the stroke of their wounds. In that day, God will make our light brighter than it ever was before. We have been, this society, this missionary society, fifth largest now, I think, in the world with three million dollars and over for missions in a year’s time, going in where nobody else goes and all of that.

And we’ve criticized each other a lot, but I wonder, I wonder, Brother Thomas, if we listen for the voice, we won’t yet hear a voice saying, come on, you’ve slipped a little, but this is the way and I’m waiting. And I’ll give you rivers and high places and I’ll give you streams on high hilltops where you didn’t know they could be. And I’ll make you brighter in the world of religion seven times brighter than you were. And I’ll make your day seven times as bright, and I will multiply seven days on one. I’m hearing, I’m waiting, wondering if we won’t hear this from God. And I wonder for our own church.

Not more than about a month ago, I came back from the East. In fact, I even talked seriously about a home in Mount Vernon, New York, and thought maybe that it might be in the will of God that I should leave here and leave the pastor and go to writing and editing. And I said, God, if you’ll show me over the next weeks a sign, a fleece, a light, a bit of light in the darkness in my church, I’ll take it that that isn’t Thy will for me yet. And we’ve never had better meetings, and we’ve never had warmer, warmer meetings and better times, even in this hot summer of vacationing.

And I wonder if God isn’t saying to this church, all right, church, dear Brother Jones, I don’t know whether he’s here this evening or not, but he wrote me, oh, on vacation, he wrote me a letter and marked it personal. I’m almost done, marked it personal.

And he said, you were talking about the ministry of this church, and I just sat down and went over the records and he said, I wrote up, and then here it was. He said, now here are the old people that have gone. And he mentioned them. Many of them, Brother Snapp and Mrs. Snapp used to know. The Gramlichs and the Moors and oh, he named a great many of them. He said, they’ve gone by reason of age.

And then he said, there are others. And then he named a whole list and they’ve gone because they’ve moved. And he said about 40 families have left this church in the last few years.

I think he’s low on count, about 40 families to move to all parts of the country, east and west, west and south and north. And a great many have gone out as preachers and gone to the far parts of the earth. Missionaries from here and preachers from here probably running up to 50, all told 29 missionaries.

Well, brethren, a few weeks back, I wondered maybe if the old, if the light wasn’t moving, but I’ve heard the Lord say, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be seven times as the light of seven days in the day when the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people and healeth the stroke of their wounds.

Now, there’s only this question, two of them I want to ask briefly. One of them is, on whose side are we in this day? Are we on the side of take it easy, easy believism, or are we on the side of those who have been found and located and prophetically situated so we know where we are? We found ourselves and we’re looking away from the poor dead churches and poor dead entertainmentism, away to God and expecting that we shall see, this church shall see, rivers where they hadn’t been and streams where they hadn’t been before and the light multiplied seven times.

I don’t know for you, my friends, but I’m not dead yet and for myself, I want God to multiply me seven times to His church, not only to this church, not even only to the Alliance, but to His church throughout the whole earth seven times yet before I die. I want God to let something happen that He can use me seven times. If it’s a book or whatever it is, I have a prayer in my little prayer book that I carry, Oh God, I have been the worst of men, therefore let grace triumph to the chief of sinners and make me the most useful of men.

And I said once across the table, I think at a Chinese restaurant, to Brother Thomas, Brother Thomas, I want to love God more than any man in my generation. And Brother Thomas said, all right, but if you do, prepare yourself for a lot of suffering. And he’s dead, right? I don’t know that it’ll be suffering that we hear so much about.

The house burns down, or somebody gets killed. I don’t know. God never has been able to do much with me that way. He wounds my heart. That’s the way I suffer. He wounds my heart. He wounds my heart and I grieve and bleed over things, over things maybe that are none of my business, His business and so mine.

And so, I want God to wound me, wound me. The man in the East who said, Brother, I walk around with a wound. I’m happy in Jesus, but I walk around with a wound. I want that wound and thus the multiplication of the ministry.

What about you? What about you? This church, it’s not the biggest church by any means, but I think it’s an important one. And what about you? Can’t we yet ask God and expect God to come on us with a new wave of power? Those rivers will begin to trickle down from the high places where we didn’t think they were and that light that we thought was getting dim will begin to blaze up like a beacon and maybe the 29 missionaries we have out now will be multiplied twice and maybe the over 40,000 we gave to missions last year can be 75,000 in a couple more years. Do you believe that? Are you ready for that kind of thing? Or do you want to take it easy? Do you want to take it easy? Are you ready for that thing?

Well, it’s time to quit and I want everybody present here tonight that says, Mr. Tozer, I’m willing two things. I’m willing to take on me the judgment of God. I have been rebellious. I haven’t been all I should have been, and I have been cold, and I have kind of muddled along and been careless, but oh, I want to admit it. I do admit it tonight.

And then I’m willing to believe with you that God will be gracious to me and hear my voice and that he will be willing to multiply my testimony and my spiritual abilities yet seven times before the end, before the Lord returns. And I’m going to ask Brother Thomas to come up to pray and we’ll have a closing prayer. Are there such who will say, I take both the judgment and claim the promise for a new thing in my life? Will you stand where you are? Come on up, Brother Thomas, please.

Well, everybody stood. Maybe I’m not clear or else maybe you’re better people than I thought you were. But anyway, oh, may God make this real to you while our brother leads us in prayer.

Now, Lord, if we know our hearts tonight, we do want thee. We want God. We want to walk in thy way. We want not only Thy blessing, but we want Thee more than anything in this life. And as the man of God was exhorting us tonight, Lord, this thought came to me.

Here we are bound with the mechanics of running the church and the work of God. Here we are in the straitjacket of laws and bylaws and rules and regulations and methods and traditions until, Lord, we stand stiffly bound and with no power to reach out and spread our wings because we are in the straitjacket of all of these things. We would, O Lord, that thou wouldst unwrap us even as Lazarus of old was able to cast aside the grave clothes. He was loosed and let go.

Lord, help us to know how that we may be loosed from all of the things that are holding us, whatever those things may be. And let us once more know a gracious visitation of the Holy Spirit’s presence and the very God Himself, not only upon us, but within us. And give us a new sense of the heartfelt love and compassion and urgency and all that accompanies the coming of God upon His people.

Let us experience Thee once more in this age before Jesus doth return. Lord, we’re thinking of these places of the ends of the earth, especially the places where we so recently have been, out there where the need is so great and where the message must be given. Lord, here we are, handcuffed, as it were, with our feet in chains, our spirits locked up because of the many things that we’ve already mentioned.

O God, deliver thy people and visit us again with thyself. Visit us even, Lord, as we have never been visited before. And come upon us and move within us. As has been mentioned, there’s a ministry that the church here may have. There’s a ministry this great District across the vast expanses of seven states may have. There’s a new ministry that the society can have. Lord, let us have that ministry. We don’t want to be selfish, but we want God. And we feel that we’re bound.

Lord, loose us, we pray, and let us go. This we call upon thee for in earnestness tonight, Lord, in all sincerity, in heart hunger, in our soul, and in sincere desire.

O God, like the locust that comes out of its shell, spreads its wings and lifts itself and goes, Lord, let us, let us, let us in the sunshine, under the sunshine, the evaporating and the drying out of the sunshine of thy very self and the penetrating power of the Holy Spirit, just dry off all of these things with which we’re bound, Lord, and let there come about a new sense of liberation and joy and freedom in the Holy Spirit and new love to God and new sense of thy Spirit upon us.

O God, don’t allow us to get any farther complicated with the complexities of life. Deliver us, we pray, in Jesus’ name, Amen.