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“How We Can Have a Personal Revival”

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How We Can Have a Personal Revival

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 11, 1955

Now, I want to do, and relax because we’ll not be late. I want to do what I promised I would do. I’ve been speaking on revival though I hesitate to use the word. It’s fallen into bad use and has been wounded in the house of its friends. But I want to talk about how we can have a personal revival. You know that I have already said that revival can occur on one of three levels. It can occur on a personal level when the individual is revived. It can occur on a church level where a whole church comes under the new spiritual impulse. It can occur on a community level where the church overflows and the impulse within the church goes out to the community.

Now, a solitary person can enter in and have a revivification of his spiritual life and have an upsurge of power and a down-coming of grace and can enter into an experience that’s as wonderful, so wonderful that his words won’t be able to describe it, and yet not affect the church very much where he is. That has happened. Individuals within pretty cold churches, have been greatly revived. And yet that did not extend to the church because the church resisted or opposed or neglected or considered this person a fanatic or an extremist. And rather, it throws him out.

Now, a church may experience an awakening. On the other hand, other members of the church may catch fire from this individual or increasing numbers of individuals. And the whole church is lifted up and refreshed and the frost gets out of the stream, and the ice breaks, and the waters begin to flow. And yet, that can fail to reach the community. Often, it does fail to extend beyond the local church. Many, many local churches have wakenings and refreshings and times of great grace. But it does not get beyond the church to the community.

But then, there’s such as a community revival where it does get out into the community and goes from one church to another, and the whole city, the whole neighborhood is revived. Now, it can occur in that order, the individual, extending to the church, and the church extending out to the community. But it can never reverse itself. It can never come to a community unless there has been a church that has been revived. And no church has ever been revived until individuals in that church have been revived.

Now, by personal revival, what do I mean? Well, it’s best taught by analogy I suppose. It’s like a sick man returning to abounding health. It is like a man whose blood count is low and who is hardly able to get out of bed; can sit up only an hour at a time, and getting to a place where he’s now able to go out and play on the tee and do a hard day’s work and do anything he has to do–abounding in health. For it is like a low battery that will barely turn the engine over, being taken in for a recharge, and get to a place where it’s simply sizzling with power, and where a flash of power will fly out from it on the least occasion. Now, that’s what it is to be a Christian that has been revived, that has had a new uprush of power from God. We had some around here, and I run into them occasionally here and again, and you know what I mean.

Now this can only happen to the individual. This can’t happen to a church. It can’t happen to a mass. It can only happen to the individual. My brethren, there are some things that can only happen to an individual. For instance, birth can only happen alone to each single individual as if there had been no other individual in the world. The statistics may say, well, 150 babies were born in this town, this little town last year. But remember, that you cannot and dare not fall a victim to statistics and think of 150 babies being born en masse as though it were one act. No, no, there were 150 of them. Each birth was as unique and single and peculiar and alone as if there never had been anybody born before or ever would be again. And even though there are multiple births, twins or triplets, it is still the same. Each individual comes into the world himself alone, an individual cut out from all the universe, alone.

And so, it is with death. You can only die by yourself. A train wreck comes and fifty people are killed in a train wreck, fifty people are killed in a train wreck and all of it happens at once. And yet while they die at once, they die, alone. And while they’re all written off on the newspapers as having occurred within one minute’s time. They did not die together, they died apart separately, each individual went out alone to meet his God.

And so, at Pentecost, there were 120 in the upper room, and suddenly the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. That sounds as if it was a mass thing, but the Scripture says that there appeared unto them cloven tongues as of fire and it sat upon each of them. They could only be filled with the Holy Ghost separately. Ten men can’t be filled with the Holy Ghost as one act of God. They can be filled simultaneously. As there might be ten babies born while I’ve been talking here, but each birth was alone, there might have been 100 People die while I’m talking to you, but each death was alone. And so, the Holy Spirit falls upon 75 people as it did in Dusseldorf in 1727 for the Moravians, yet each one received by himself.

Now, I want to make this very clear, because it’s important we think right about this, that there is no abstract church. We pray, O Lord, fall on Thy church. And we imagine there’s an abstract church somewhere, the kind of woozy extract of the church, and the Spirit can come on that without individuals being helped. No, no, my brother. The Holy Spirit can only fall on individuals, on people, that’s all. There is no such thing as a mystic church that can be blessed, with the members of the church not touched. No, no. We pray, Lord, bless Thy mystic church and we imagine, we project a church out of, among the individuals, an ideal church for which Christ died. And nobody gets help and we say, well, God is pouring His spirit out on His church. God can’t pour His Spirit out on His church, except as He pours it on individuals within the church.

The Holy Ghost sat upon each of them. And so, He’ll sit upon each of us, if He ever comes to the church. This church is only what the individual members are, not one bit better. If God had some IQ tests or spiritual tests, whereby He could test us, or He had some way of taking our spiritual pulse, then we might add up all and divide by our membership and get the average. But the church would be what the average is. Always remember, the average of the many individuals will make what the church is, for the church is composed of the individual.

Now the lone soul can be revived. I’m so glad to be able to tell you that. God can send waves of glory and power and life, a new quickening to the lone individual, that solitary individual as one man wrote, whether anyone else does, receives or not. Don’t you wait around and say, I’d like to see our church blessed, and then hope that when the church is blessed, you will be blessed. My friend, the church can never be blessed until you or other individuals are blessed. And whether the church ever gets any further on or not out, whether we peter out and backslide and turn liberal, you can be blessed as an individual. And not all the rest of us put together can prevent you from being blessed. And you can be blessed whether or not. A man can be blessed alone, whether or not his pastor or his church approves. I personally know that.

When I was a young fellow about 18 years of age, God came on me in a wonderful way and did wonderful things for me and my church did not approve it. It was not an Alliance church, but another, and they did not approve it. In fact, they as good as told me that they thought I was a bit extreme and maybe that my room was better than my company. I wasn’t thrown out, but I was invited not to be around so frequently. And I left and went into the Alliance and I’ve never been thrown out of the Alliance yet, though that could happen.

But the point is, my brethren, that no matter whether your church believes or not, you can have all that God has for you as an individual. And whether your wife will go along with you or not, or whether your husband or father or mother or friend, whether they will agree or not, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. God always is ready to help the lone individual. And the story of the Old Testament was the story of lone individuals meeting God, lone men, lone women meeting God. The story of revival down the years has been the story of lone men meeting God; going out and finding God all alone. Sometimes they went to their bedrooms, sometimes to the church basements, sometimes to the caves, sometimes out under trees, and sometimes in haystacks. But one or two or three, or one alone, met God, and then it went on from there.

I say you can be blessed and yet not have revival in your church if the rest resist. But you can be blessed nevertheless. Don’t you ever give up to the general, dead level of spirituality in any church, whether it’s this one or any other church. You say, by the grace of God, I’m going to be what I should be regardless.

Now, how, that’s the big question, how. How can I have a personal revival. Well, you want to take some notes on this, any of you? Let me, let me give you, I’ll try to make it brief, but I’ll give it as much time as I feel I must.

First of all, set your face like a flint that you might have a transformation of your whole life. Weak experimenters are already tagged with defeat. They already have the label of defeat upon them, the taster, the experimenter, the weak fellow that tries it out, like Mr. Pliable who says, I’ll go, and then the first trouble he runs into says, I won’t go. You set your face like a flint. A plowshare that is going to cut the sod has to have a sharp nose. And a Christian, if he is to go against all the streams and drifts of the world, he has to have our hard nose too. He’s got to set his face like a flint and say, regardless of what others do, by the grace of God, I want all the New Testament has for me.

Then second, set your heart on Jesus Christ, and go to Him wherever it takes you. Go to Jesus wherever it takes you. Wherever it takes you, go to Jesus. Wherever it takes you away from, go straight, go to Jesus, not up in heaven but down here on earth. Go to Jesus. And whoever you must ignore and whatever the cost may be, set your face like a flint to be all God wants you to, and then go straight to Jesus. And whoever gets in your way, pay no attention of them. I will always thank God that he put that passage in the Bible where the blind man said, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And His proper disciples in their longtail deacon’s coats, they went and said, shoosh, this is not done in churches. Keep still, shoosh, be quiet. And the Scripture says, he cried all the more because of this. Instead of this discouraging him, it fired him up to yell louder. And the Lord heard him and turned around said, what do you want? He said, I want to be healed. He said okay, here, you get it. And he went out a healed man with his eyesight because he had the boldness to pay no attention to the timekeepers and referees that kept people away from Jesus Christ the Lord.

I opened again and read a page or two, just more or less for the style than anything else, but you can’t read Bunyan long just for the style. It was the story of Christian and how he read that book that got him in trouble, you know. He said, oh, I find by this book that I am living in the city of Destruction and that fire is going to fall on us, and that there’s a heavenly home. And he started out. And he was in such terrible distress before he started, that he finally broke the news to his wife and children. And he said, oh, my dear wife and thou the children of my bowels, the old-fashioned English way of putting it, he said, I’m in an awful condition, awful. Well, they said Papa, we know what’s wrong with you. You’re just tired out. So, they put him to bed, there, there in Bunyan. They put him to bed and the next morning he got up and they said, how are you feeling Papa? Oh, he said, worse than ever. I never slept a wink. He said, I couldn’t forget that we live in the city of Destruction. Well then, Bunyan says that when they found they couldn’t just get him quiet and console him, you know, and pat his back and say, now go to bed and sleep it off. Why they started being harsh toward him and surly. When that wouldn’t work, they started to deride him. And then when he wouldn’t give up to their scorn, they ignored him.

I thought as I read it, I wrote this down. That’s the way they do. First, they sooth you, pat your back and tell you you’re excited. And then after that they use harsh words to you and tell you you think you’re better than other people. And then, when that won’t work, they deride you and start making fun. And when that won’t work, they ignore you. That’s exactly how it happens, Brother. And if you decide in your heart that you’re going to go through with God and meet Him and yourself alone, and have a new and refreshing from God, and get rid of the old barnacles and the old weights and hindrances and get back new spiritual health you’ve never had before, you will find some people that will say, well, you’re excited. You allowed that man Tozer to stir you up. Then when you won’t stop, they will start being harsh toward you. Then when that won’t do, they’ll make fun of you. And when that won’t do, they’ll ignore you. Bunyan said, when they treated the Christian like that, he went off by himself and had long season of prayer. You know, that’s the way to handle it, Brother.

Well, third now, take this third. Expose your life to His examination. The trouble with us is, we keep ourselves all covered up. We cover our hearts. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper. He that covereth his leprosy, shall not have it healed. He then covereth his diseases shall not be delivered. But we habitually cover ourselves. I say, expose your whole life to Jesus Christ. Expose in prayer. Expose yourself in Scriptures. Expose your heart in obedience. Expose it by confession. Expose it by restitution. Restitution, a forgotten word, a word that nobody uses anymore. It’s gone the way of all the earth. Why can’t we think of another? But it’s in the Bible still, restitution. Get straightened out with people, brothers and sisters, and it’ll be amazing how it will work out with you.

And then, fourth, take some holy vows. Let me give them. I preached some sermons on this some years ago, but let me just catch them. Take some holy vows before God today. Vow never to own anything. That is, vow to get rid of that infernal bunch of trash you call, your goods. That infernal bunch of trash. Why, there are pack rats out in the West, so I learned, and they gather everything. They go out and bring in everything, little shiny bits. And now, you read in English literature about the magpie, doing the same thing. They find a magpie’s nest, they’ll find a mirror and a coat hanger and a shoe buttoner, in the days when they used them, and a shoe horn and a piece of glass and a dime. They can’t use them, they just collect them. It’s just trash they’ve collected. And people have that same thing. It’s the covetous spirit.

So, they collect around them all of this like the magpie, all of this useless material. I don’t mean you’re to get rid of it if you can use it. It wouldn’t be useless if you could use it, would it? Remember this, that if you feel you own it, it’s dragging you down. Get free from the ownership of it, and then God will let you have it. Get cut loose from it inside and God let you have it outside. I’ve said it’s all right for you to get in your automobile, and the Lord will bless you. But if the automobiles get in you, you’re ruined. And so with your property and so with everything you have. Take a vow to never own anything. See that God has it, not only a skinny tenth. Don’t you imagine for a minute that you keep books with God that way. You’ve got ninety percent and God’s got ten. God’s got 100% and he lets you keep a certain percent to look after your family. But, it’s all God’s and God has a right to command it the moment he wants it.

And if there’s anything you own that God can’t have, you never can have a revival, sir. If there’s anything that you own that God can’t have, you can’t have God. But the moment that God knows that He can have anything you have, and you, anytime he wants it, then the Lord will let you keep it probably, but it’ll be blessed now instead of cursed. It will be a balloon to lift you instead of an anchor to weigh you down.

Then, take a vow never to defend yourself. That’s a tough one for us Americans, but if you don’t do it, oh, I’ve taken more people to the 23rd chapter of Exodus and taught them how to trust God and never worry about your enemies, nor worry about the opposers nor the enemies. If you try to fight people, you will be bloody and bruised and miserable and you’ll stay little and you’ll never have a revival. But if you will let God do your fighting for you, you pray, you’ll be alright.

And then, vow never to defame a fellow Christian. Never defame a fellow Christian. Never defame him by believing evil about him. Never defame him by spreading an evil report about him. And never defame him in any way, remembering your own past and remembering your own proneness to temptation. So, let’s not defame our fellow Christians. I think that sometimes the Spirit of God shuts Himself uptight and cannot fall upon us, because we’ve defamed our brethren, we’ve defamed some Christians.

Now, as a pastor, as a member of an executive committee, I am forced under God. If I know that a man has serious charges against his life, I am forced to protect the church of God from that man. But I am not to defame that man or any other man by believing gossip or spreading it.

And then, vow never to seek or accept any glory. Oh, how we love the glory. If we could take just a little of it for ourselves. May God deliver us from it brethren. He shall have all the glory, we sing. Thou shalt have all the glory for He sets me free. And when that comes to us, that all the glory is God’s, it will be a new flow of power in our lives.

And then, vow, we will not wait for tragedy to drive us to God. You know, tragedy may never come. There are some maybe listening to me now that started to get cold in your heart and then some tragedy struck you though your family. And out of that terrible tragedy and the stony grief, you raised your Bethel and said, forgive me God and started over. But must it always be like that? Must we always wait for God to chastise us? Must we always come to God with bleeding back? Vow that you won’t wait for tragedy to drive you to God, indeed if ever comes. Take your cross voluntarily. Let me give this simple illustration and I’m through.

Many years ago when I was very young preacher, I preached in a town named Despard, West Virginia. Despard, West Virginia was commonly called “tinplate” because the great tinplate factories were there. It was also a coal mining area. We went into a little old wooden structure and had our meetings. And it was quite a meeting, although it wasn’t what some people thought it should have been. So some people got burdened. And in that meeting, there was a coal miner. A great, tall, handsome blonde, good looking, smiling young fellow as I recall him now after these thirty years, he was. And after it was all over, I learned what had happened. He went home after a meeting one night and said to his wife, he said, you know, our people need God. They need God. This thing isn’t going well and we need God. We need His help. And he said, Honey, if it’s alright with you, I’m going to take tomorrow off and wait on God and pray all day long, and I think “fast,” though I would put that in with only a question mark. But he said, I want to pray all day long and wait on God for revival for this town. So, it’s all right. So, instead of going to work, that great big fellow got down on his knees and waited on God with his open Bible all the day long.

The next morning, he went to his work. He worked on the tipple. Now, the tipple is a word not many know. He worked on the tipple where little cars brought the coal down. The heaviest pulled the light empties up you know. And he was working on that tipple, and suddenly something went wrong and a car, a number of cars jumped the track and crashed and splintered. They were wooden cars, old fashioned wooden cars and they splintered. And a great, ragged chunk of splinters, sharp as a dagger on the end, ripped through his thigh and cut one of the great veins there. And there he lay on the slag and coal and dirt, this great big, gorgeous fellow, about twenty-seven years old, and bled to death.

The day before, he had spent all day with God. And that struck me as a message from heaven above. And I thought ever since, dear God, how wonderful it would be, to spend your last day with Thee alone in prayer. Now he couldn’t continue. He had to work and support his family of course. But wasn’t it wonderful that he was near enough to God that he could carry a burden? And the day before he died, he spent all day with God. You can’t spend all day with God, brother, and not be ready to go to heaven the next day. He was all ready to go. Now don’t ask me why God took this dear man away. I don’t know that. God has never allowed me to look over his shoulder at his secret plan. I only know that in the course of things, easily, he could have died anyway. But suppose that that day, say Wednesday, suppose when the Spirit of God urged him to spend a day in prayer for his own soul and for His church, suppose he had been too greedy for money to listen. Suppose he’d been too cold to hear or too far away. Suppose he had been like some of us, running on routine and couldn’t hear from God. He’d have died on the tipple the next day alright, but, oh, what a difference.

Maybe God’s calling some of you to do something extraordinary, something that’s out of the usual, something that doesn’t appear on a calendar or a clock, something to revive your own soul. God may be calling you to do something radical and extreme for your own soul. I hope you’re not so far away that you don’t hear Him. I hope that the love of money and that the pleasures of the world are not so great that you don’t hear Him.

Oh, brother, the biggest thing in the world isn’t whether you die tomorrow or live a hundred years. The biggest thing in the world is, can I hear God speaking to me now? That’s what counts. Do you hear God saying anything to you, my friends. You can have a revival, whether the rest of us ever get it or not, whether you accept it or not, in this or any other church. There’s no reason why you can’t set your face like a flint and start toward Jesus Christ wherever it takes you. And when you find Him, you’ll find floodgates of mercy. You’ll find oil poured from the throne above. You will find a wonderfully new revived life for yourself, just yourself. And after that, it’s up to God and you what you shall do with what you have, but wonderfully, it can be yours now. I hope you can hear Him speak.

Let’s pray. O God, O God, Thou knowest, the world is spinning on. Time is getting less and running out. Children are becoming youth, and youth becoming middle-aged, and middle-aged are getting old and dying. And Thou hast said redeem the time for the days are evil. Lord, please don’t let us fail here. Lord, Thou dost want us to be revived again. Thou dost want to revive Thy people, Lord, individual people. And then, if numbers of individual people can band together, then the church has been revived. God, revive Thy people. Grant, Lord, to help.

Now, as we have our heads bowed, dear people, just for a minute more of prayer. Who will say, Mr. Tozer, please pray for me, that I might have in my lonely soul, alone, apart for my relation to others, if I might have a new inflow of God’s power and purity and grace that I might be a revived soul. Pray for me. Would you raise your hand? God bless you. God bless you.

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“Revival-The Glory is Gone”

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Revival, the Glory is Gone

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 4, 1955

This is the first of two talks. The one this morning and one next Sunday morning, following and completing it, though each talk will be complete in itself. If you miss one you would still have received the advantages or benefits of a complete sermon. The 85th Psalm, the prayer of the man of God for revival among his people. Now, and tonight incidentally, I want to give the second of two sermons on how to cultivate the Spirit’s companionship. And we’re expecting a fine crowd. We hope that you can be present. The 85th Psalm describes conditions, verses one, two, and three. Lord, Thou hast been favorable unto our land. Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of Thy people. Thou hast covered all their sin. Thou hast taken away all Thy wrath and Thou hast turned Thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.

Now, that apparently is a description of a time which has been, when God has been favorable and the people had been removed because of God’s displeasure, but brought back again because of His mercy. And some historic period gone by, under Judges or Ezra or Nehemiah is described here, when God was favorable to his people. But verse four says quite bluntly that the need has arrived again. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. It seems that they had gotten into a place where they needed again this same resurgence of spiritual life which they had had under Moses or the judges or under Nehemiah. And they knew that God was going to have to use strong measures to bring them where they should be.

And the next verse draws hope. Verse four draws hope from the past. And that is the habit, the way the mind works, that we draw hope from the past. Actually, we ought to draw hope from the Word. That is, if God made a promise, we ought to believe the promise if we had no historic proof that He had ever fulfilled it in the past. That would be faith in God without any confirmatory historic proofs, but apparently, we don’t work like that. And our minds need the collateral help that historic proof brings. So, we remember the past; Thou hast been favorable in times gone by to Thy people. Thou hast turned our captivity. Thou hast blessed Thy people in Thy land. And now Lord, we need help again. And we draw mercies from the fact, or draw hope from the fact of Thy mercies of the past and believe that Thou who didst turn our people in days gone by, will turn Thy people again. That seems to be the logic of the prayer. And in verse five, they’re living under a shadow. Wilt Thou be angry with us forever? Wilt Thou draw out thine anger to all generations? So, there seems to be an admission that there has been a long displeasure of God upon the people. And then in verse seven, or verse six he says, wilt Thou not revive us again?

You know, I’ve been hearing everywhere I go that word “revival.” I just got a letter yesterday saying we’re going to have a meeting at such and such a lunch hour and we want to discuss how we can have revival in the city of Chicago. And wherever you go, you’ll run into men who are talking about revival. There is a feeling I believe that revival is a sort of a fragrant wind that blows in over us and marvelously quickens us and helps us like an oxygen tent to a sick man, and leaves us about where it found us. There is no moral change. There is no cross-bearing and no separation from the world and no death to our evil natures and no restitution and no straightening out with people with whom we’ve quarreled. No getting right with God anywhere, but simply a revival. And we want that benign, fragrant breeze to blow so bad that we’re willing to spend hours on our knees in gatherings praying for revival.

Well, I don’t know whether I can go along with this at all or not. I can’t see how it can possibly be scriptural because I remember a man who once lay on his face, because the armies of Israel were being defeated. And he was praying, O God, what’s happened that we have been sent in headlong flight and our people have been defeated. And God said, don’t lie there on your face Joshua and pray for revival. Get up, there’s a cursed thing in the camp. And if you will get up and find that cursed thing and get rid of it, why I’ll go before your armies as I did before, and there will be no difficulty. And you can cut down your time in prayer, if you will get up and get rid of the accursed thing. So they got up, brought the tribes before them and they found Achan and his golden wedge and goodish Babylonish garment. And they grabbed up some stones under Mose’s direction and they wrought capital punishment upon Achan and his tribe. And then the next day they went out to the battle and won. God is not to be coaxed into doing that which is in violation of His laws. And when we are in accord with His laws, we can get on with a great deal less coaxing and spend a lot more time thanking and praising.

Well, there’s a lot of revival praying that isn’t going to do any good, and I, for my part, don’t like to waste anything. I’ve wasted so much money and I’ve wasted so many years, and I’ve wasted so much nerve energy in my day. And I’ve wasted so much time and so much of everything that I don’t want to waste anything more. I don’t even want to waste a prayer. So there is no new reason in the world, no use, for us to get on our knees and pray for God to send or blow a divine breath over us and quickened us when it’s obvious that we’re not going to go along with God in the thing. We’re living so that His shadow lies upon us and there’s a coldness upon our hearts. So therefore, we think to break that down and literally storm heaven by violence and get God to do which God has sworn He would never do, and avoid doing the thing that we have been commanded to do.

Well, the man says, show us Thy mercy, O God, show us Thy mercy. And my brethren, if ever there was a time when we needed to be constantly saying, O God, be merciful unto us, be merciful unto us. In these modern times we’re taught to, we believe in Christ and that settles it, and after that we’re not to pray for mercy at all. I think that the old Catholic Church and some of the old brethren of days gone by may have carried it too far in other direction, but we’re certainly going too far in our direction. They were always begging for mercy, but apparently never quite sure whether they got it or not. But nowadays, they say ask for mercy and then believe you have it and get up and go on from there. Well, that’s good and it’s true, but it isn’t true enough and it doesn’t go far enough. The fact is, I need the mercy of God on me every day I live.

When I get up in the morning and begin to say in my heart, Let Jesus Christ be praised, I need the mercy of God to make that prayer acceptable. And when I get on my knees to ask God for anything, I need to be bathed in mercy and supported with mercy and upheld with mercy and, and, and that I need to roll and turn in mercy like a gear in oil. I need to have mercy underneath me as the hard earth upon which I can walk and is the atmosphere that I can breathe and the sun to shine on me to give me light and warmth, and all the help I need. I need the mercy of God. Show us Thy mercy is verse seven, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. And every church ought to be thus praying, God, show us Thy mercy. Have mercy upon us, O God. David said in one place, have mercy upon me and hear my prayer. Why even his prayers had to be bathed in mercy. And the holiest thing a man can do has to have the mercy of God underneath it or it will amount to nothing at all.

And he said in verse nine, that glory may dwell in our land. Now, woe and alas for you and me, for we have not seen the glory in our land. We know only one kind of glory, the vulgar glory of the world, its coarse tastes and its low amusements and its sights and its noises. And God’s people always ignore it and tolerate it. The glory is not in our land.

And I heard the other day on an interview or somewhere that, or read it that there are a thousand juvenile gangs in Brooklyn alone. One thousand gangs that do everything from mugging people, that is, grabbing them and beating them up and stealing their money–to murder. And you heard, you read yesterday of the two-hour siege that was laid to the, by young people to the prison, or to the palace at Atlanta where the governor lived? Well, those are only samples. Thank God for all the fine young people there are. Thank God for all these young people that sit along here; will never we’ll never know these things. Thank God for all of them.

But nevertheless, our country knows little of the glory that our fathers knew, the glory that our fathers knew. There is a preacher of the gospel, so I understand, who either has given or is going to give a talk–and what do you suppose the subject of his talk is? The theology of jazz! He is the man who won $32,000 on “Ask Me an Easy Question” for $64,000 here the other day. And he knew more about jazz, I would be willing to wager a plug nickel, than he did about the Holy Ghost, or that he did about his Bible. And he is going to give a talk on the theology of jazz.

Well, sir, I know a good teacher to teach the theology of jazz, Brother. If you would rather have somebody teach the theology of jazz and teach that tough when you got Wednesday night on the teleological and ontological arguments for the existence of God? I’ll tell you where you can get a teacher. There are artists of the past who have painted him with a long tail and horns and spiked feet. The devil is the best teacher for the theology of jazz. And yet there are those who are so intimately stupid and so spiritually blind, that they have accepted all of this and nervous, sexually inspired communists, fostered business that’s going on in our country as being the very way of God itself; as been geared to the times and as being a part of the total picture of the gospel of Christ.

Well, my brethren, the glory is not in our land, of that, I’m sure. The coarse amusements and sights and noises that are heard everywhere; the pipings and peepings and rattlings and gutturals and the grinding and, and jumping that is said to be music. My brethren, the Holy Ghost isn’t in it. Such things as that are not heard in heaven. You will hear them in hell, certainly, a lot of that’ll be heard in hell. And those who go to that place of fire and everlasting remorse, may be able in the midst of self-accusation and self-hatred and everlasting sorrow, to beat to their hot hands together, and grind and roll. They wouldn’t be doing it for Jesus. There’s no jumping for Jesus nor grinding for the gospel. My brethren, that is hell taking over and coming in, smelling of brimstone into the house of God, and saying, now, let us, let us be religious for the time being. And so, we’ll get the support and the applause of these blind saint-lets, half in and half out of the Kingdom, afraid to get all the way in for fear of what it will cost them and afraid to stay out through fear they will perish in hell. And so, hanging halfway in the ropes between yes and no, between the gospel and the world, between heaven and hell? They grin and applaud while Satan claps his bony hands and grinds and rolls the gospel.

Oh, my brother, the glory is not in our land. The glory has departed, and it’s not in our land. O God, in mercy let the glory come back again. The Christians are pushed around and their conveniences are never sought. Always they’re ignored and tolerated, except for their votes, of course, and for what they can do by way of a financial lift. Everybody comes to them that wants a little financial help, because they’re supposed to be a generous people, and God bless them, they are. But they’re helping to support an infinite number of things that were never inspired by God. They’re helping to fumigate trees that were never planted by our Father in heaven. And the axe lies now at the root of those same trees, and there’ll be a mighty crash in the forest when they go down, never to arise again.

Well, the poor church is forced to get along and beg nickels. The people of God, the church of God, will always have to take second best; always, or third or tenth best. What we do is always bound to be amateurism, always, because we can’t do, we don’t have the money. The money goes to the world. And the church of Jesus Christ struggles along the best that it can.

O God, where is the glory? Where is the glory? The glory is absent. Times have been when Christians were so zealous that they changed the life of communities, the whole life of communities. There was a missionary who went into a certain Island or set of islands, and they said about him when he went in, there wasn’t a Christian, and when he left there wasn’t a pagan. It was John Payton, the great Englishman.

My brethren, there have been evangelists in days gone by who have gone into cities, and when they went in, there was hardly a crowd in any church. And when they left there wasn’t a man in any saloon. When the gambling dens closed up, and their chagrined and frustrated leaders left town. And the gospel of Christ came and overflowed and purified like Ezekiel’s river, even the little towns. But that day seems to be over now. Meetings come and sweep over and get the headlines and leave the town right where it found them before. There isn’t one less man in a theater, not one less woman in the saloon, not one less young man in a gambling den, not one fewer person at the racetrack, not one fewer divorce, not one change for the best, or the better. But they’ve had a huge time. My brethren, the glory is not in the land and oh, that God might bring it back to us again, again.

When our habits, when habits and moral standards and the things that we’re amused by are elevated habits when habits and moral standards, and the things that we’re amused by are elevated and changed and some say, there goes Tozer. He’s against amusements and entertainment. I am not. I think that there are some things you can’t always be under strain. The old philosopher said that if you don’t unstring your bow, it’ll soon weaken. They used to pull that bow and bend it. And then of course, tie it. And if they kept it like that all the time, it would slowly change its structure so that it had no more zing in it. But when they weren’t using their bow, they took the cord off of it and let it go straight. So said the philosophers of old. The bow that is always bent will soon lose its power. And we human beings have to have some diversions. We’ve got to have them. You can’t always be thinking on holy thoughts and you can’t always be straining after highest things and you can’t always be carrying upon your heart the thoughts of the glory leaving the land and the woe entering. You can’t always be deadly serious. If you are, you’ll die. There has to be diversion.

One fella said sarcastically about me, he said, Tozer believes in amusements. He’s a marvelous checker player. He meant that to be sarcastic, and I think I’ve played one game in the last year. But my brethren, diversion is one thing. But the whole country has gone wild for diversion. Instead of having 95% serious talks of God and life and death and heaven and hell and our work and our serious obligations and 5% diversion, we’ve changed it until it’s 95% diversion and five stingy percent to think about serious things. I believe that if God revives His people as we’d like to see it, that we’ll have it changed. We’ll have a changed percentage, as they say percentage-wise, an expression I thoroughly detest, but at least know you know what I mean? I believe it’ll change us percentage-wise.

Well, you say, now Brother Tozer, here you go again. What do you want us to be? What do you want us to be? What kind of people do you think we should be? And if this church should be revived again, if there should come a rejuvenation, a resurgence of spiritual life, an upper rushing of spiritual power, what would we be like? What would we be like? Well, I want to describe it. I want to describe this church, if we could have what I’m talking about and praying about and hoping for. I would I would want such an act and work of God among us as would make us a clean people, a people that are pure and holy.

Now, is anybody here going to get up and object to that? Is there anybody here that is ready to say, I can’t go along with the pastor that our people ought to be a holy people, a truer people, so good that nobody can make an accusation stick. Anybody here that will get up and say, Mr. Tozer, I don’t believe in that? That’s fanaticism. That’s extremism. Surely, you don’t expect us to be a people so morally clean and pure and holy and so good that nobody can charge us honestly and make an accusation stick, that we can get up and say about our present and future lives as Jesus did? Which one of you charges me with sin, our past? God knows. We like to talk about that only with hushed voices, because the blood of Christ had to cleanse us from that.

But our present and our future, anybody going to get up and say, I object, sir, Mr. Chairman, I stand to object to this motion, that the people of this church ought to be a clean people, a pure a holy people, capable of good works again. My concept for us is that we’d be a loving, kind, charitable people, forgiving and big-hearted and tight-mouthed about each other’s faults, mine and yours. Anybody going to get up and say, Mr. Chairman, I beg permission to make a speech against that. I don’t want to see our people as forgiving, big-hearted, kind, charitable people ready to overlook people’s faults and tight-mouthed about things they hear. I don’t want a church like that.

Well, there’s no church like that in hell, brother. There is no church like that, I think anywhere but where the blood flows and the Spirit of God has unhindered right of way. That’s my concept of what a church ought to be. Do you think it’s extreme if I say that I want our people to be a glad, joyous people, filled with heavenly joy? Not mere pleasantry, not mere, not mere hand shaking, not mere cordiality. Why, cordiality is something you can learn from books. You can go to any library. These ushers of ours can go to any library and take down a book on how to be an usher. Just how to stand and how to smile and how to comb their hair, if any, and just how to do it.

Why, you can learn that. And they teach that to kids when they’re selling in the stores, and they teach that to girls behind the counters in 10-cent stores. They teach that to Fuller Brush salesman, and radio announcers learn that. Cordiality, congeniality, the magnetic handshake and the flashing smile and the toothy grin; all that my brother can be right along, and go along with a church that has no power and no purity and no presence of God and no worship. The church that is headed not for heaven but for hell, And yet they can be a social crowd, learning to be jovial and friendly. And yet if you want real joviality and real back slapping congeniality, don’t go to any church, go to a lodge, or go to some group, where men meet in smoke-filled rooms and tell off-colored stories. There’s a place to find real congeniality brother. They’ll make you feel that you’re a part of the outfit and you belong.

That isn’t what I’m talking about at all. The man who wrote “How to win friends and influence people died the other day. He left behind him that book, and if that’s what we wanted, why we could afford to put on the campaign and you would pay for it. You’d pay for anything I suggest, I found that out. That’s the reason I wanted to be most prayerful and cautious before I ever commit to anything because you’re so fine and generous. But you’d pay for books so that all might read how we might be jovial, congenial, affable, amiable, and all those long words ending in el. And when you had it, you wouldn’t have anything at all.

But I believe that the people of God are to be a glad people. A joyous people, glad with a heavenly joy. Not mere pleasantries, but glad with a heavenly joy. I think of that man {Paris} Reidhead that preached here for us. Why, maybe most of you, I think very few of you know him personally. You only heard him preach and you enjoyed him a lot; hearing him last Spring. But you ought to know the man in person. You ought to go around with the man. He’s one of the happiest men I ever met my life. He’s joyful to the point of tears; happy and yet he can say a witticism and, and turn a funny remark that will bring you the house down with laughter. And yet he’s no clown, no comedian, no humorist, but a serious-minded man, full of the Holy Ghost, and one of the happiest men I’ve ever met.

The happiness that man has is not the happiness of this world at all. It isn’t the happiness of conviviality nor congeniality. It is the happiness that God brought out of the tomb when He raised His Son from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. It is the joy of the new creation living in a man’s heart who belongs to that new creation, down here in the old creation. That’s what I mean, a happy people, people that you don’t have to grind and roll in order to get them worked up to joy, but whose hearts are alive with the joy of God. Oh, brother, that’s something else altogether.

Are you’re voting against that if we were to take a vote this morning and I were to put the question and say, would we have all those in favor of our people being a glad people, joyous with heavenly joy and radiant with the Holy Ghost? All in favor say aye. Would we get a unanimous vote or would there be some who say that’s fanatism? All right, then I can see this people to be an eager and enthusiastic people. Excuse us for having my conference here. But an eager, enthusiastic people; now that’s what I like. Not a worked-up people, but an eager, enthusiastic people.

Against that, my brother? If you’re against that, I don’t know where to put you. I believe God’s people ought to be enthusiastic. And I believe that if we were as spiritually enthusiastic as we ought to be, that we could send out one, two dollars for every one we’re sending to missions, and we could send out two missionaries for every one we’ve sent out. And we could win two souls forever to one we’re winning. And we could hit the city just twice as hard as we are hitting it.

And then, hungry Bible devouring people. That’s five. Anybody here going to get up and vote against that? Did you read your chapter? You say, all right, very good, sir. But a hungry, Bible-devouring people that delights in the law of the Lord. I might pass on this little word to you and keep it anonymous, so not to embarrass anybody. But I’ve had a lot of conferences over the past weeks with people who come to see me. And I regret to say that almost all of them are persons that are either in very great spiritual trouble, or else are actually mentally and nervously going to pieces, or in danger of it.

But the other day, I had another kind of visitor.  A lady asked whether she might come to see me a few minutes before the prayer meeting, and I said, Sure, run upstairs and we’ll have a word together. So, she came up. And she told me a wonderful, heart-engaging story, the story of her spiritual life, being brought up in a home where everybody was strait-laced and careful; and where she ran with only religious and the best people, and never committed wrongs or did anything at all that she shouldn’t be ashamed of. But that all this time, out in the eastern city, even in the Alliance, and all this time did not know what it was to have the Holy Ghost inside her bosom. It was all external, right and good and scriptural and according to the law of Moses and the prophets and the New Testament. But now she said, and the tears ran down her face. Now, the Holy Ghost has come. There’s new light inside. This Bible has become a new book and she held it in her two hands. This Bible has become a new book to me now. It’s wonderful. Now, that woman is modest and she’d hesitate to get up and say it herself, but I’m giving her testimony for her. Now, I want to ask you, can anybody can hug this Bible and say the Holy Ghost has made this for the first time, a new living book to me. Does anybody object to that? Would anybody rise and say, I don’t believe in that. I object, sir, and I vote against it. I don’t believe there is.

Then, I believe that we could become a generous people. Great grace should be upon us all and that we could give freely, more freely than ever, all of our wealth to the Lord. Anybody object to that? I think not. And then a reproducing people, the people who will win people to God, that can win souls. Anybody object? I think not. Now, that’s what I mean. O God, if glory should return to our land?

Well, I don’t know that glory will ever return to America. I don’t know. There are two sinister forces of work tearing America to pieces, two sinister forces. I don’t say much about them in public. I do not want to get a reputation any more than I have for being a radical or extremist. And these are partly political, so I do not discuss them. But there are two sinister forces that are working to tear America to pieces: brainwashing a whole population. Brainwashing, by midst of books and magazine, by the use of books and magazines and television and radio and all this. Brainwashing and conditioning psychologically a generation for the coming of communism, or Catholicism or the Antichrist.

So, I don’t know whether America can ever raise her head again. She’s bleeding to death. And whether she’ll survive as a Christian nation, another generation, I do not know. But revival can come on three levels. It can come on the community level, which would be our land. It can come on the church level, which would be our church. It can come on the individual personal level, which would be you or me or you and me.

So next Sunday, in the morning, I want to forget America, and I even want to forget this church. And I want to talk as one man to another one. How can you have a personal revival? How can you have a resurgence of Pentecostal life surging up within you and show you how you can have, not next year, not next week, but now. I hope you’ll be here and that you’ll pray for me in the meantime.