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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.

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Tozer Talks

“The Unequal Contest Between God and Man”

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The Unequal Contest Between God and Man

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 29, 1956

I want to read first a passage from the Old Testament. Well, both will be from the Old Testament, but a long passage and then take a text from the book of Job. In the book of Numbers, the 22nd chapter and the 22nd verse. Not that I’m going to speak from this chapter, but that I want to lay a sort of background for truth that will follow. God’s anger was kindled because Balaam went. And the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And the ass turned aside out of the way and went into the field. And Balaam smote the ass to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in the path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself onto the wall and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall and he smote her again. The angel of the Lord went further and stood in the narrow place where it was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.

And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass and she said unto Balaam, what have I done unto thee that thou hath smitten me these three times? Balaam said unto the ass, because thou hast mocked me. I would there were a sword in my hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, am not I’m thine ass upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day. Was I ever want to do so unto thee? And he said, no. And the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And he bowed down his head and fell flat on his face. And the angel of Lord said unto him, wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times. Behold, I went out to withstand thee because thy way is perverse before me. And the ass saw me and turned from me these three times. Unless he had turned from me, surely, now, also I would have slain thee and saved her alive. Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned. For I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me. Now, therefore, if it please thee, I will get me back again.

Now, the text for tonight, is found in Job 14:20. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. I read the text again, Thou prevailest for ever against him. It is job talking to God and says, Thou God prevailest forever against the unbelieving and rebellious man, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.

Now, in the Bible, there is never any twilight zone. There is never any soft and gentle purring on the part of heaven over earth. You find it in pulpits and in literature, but you never find it in the Scriptures. The Scriptures take the sharp, bold attitude that God and sinful men are opposed to each other. And that God has a controversy with every man until that man surrenders, repents, and begins to obey God. Now, that’s the attitude that God of the Bible takes, and that God and man are in opposition. And Job takes it too when he says, Thou will prevailest forever against him. If I were giving a name to this sermon tonight, I would call it, the unequal contest because the contest between man and God is unequal.

Now, I like to make myself perfectly clear that if you’re not obeying God, then you’re fighting God. Just as the man Balaam was going in opposition to God’s will and God stood in the way. The angel of the Lord, which scholars believe is God, stood in the narrow way by the vineyard. And Balaam was too blind to see it. So, God stands to oppose every man who was going in the wrong direction, a direction of sinfulness, selfishness, or ungodliness, or all three. And God and that man are as the angel and Jacob were by the bank of the river. They’re wrestling against each other.

But the contest between God and man must ever, ever be an unequal contest, because power is with God and weakness is with man. Wisdom is with God and ignorance is with man, because the right is always on God’s side. Always remember this, if you don’t know what the right thing to do is in a given situation, always take God’s side and you’ll have the right side. And if you take any other side but God’s, you’ll have the wrong side no matter how fine the argument may have polished it up for you. No matter how beautiful the veil may be that covers the sin, if it’s not on God’s side, the sin is there, nevertheless.

So, the right is always on God’s side. And the length of years are always with God. How can we who live for a little day hope to win in contest with the great God who liveth forever. God has seen generation rise and go down again and rise and go down and rise and fall and pass away. And God has remained because God is eternal. God had no origin and God will have no end. God is moving on, always moving on and man is only moving on until the last heartbeat and then he drops down into the arms of mother earth again and God prevails. Thou will prevailest says the Holy Ghost. Thou prevailest forever. And all His length of years are on the side of God and man is only the ephemera.

When I was very young boy, I learned what an ephemera is. An ephemera is a fly that is hatched in the morning, lives a day, and dies in the evening. Now, it’s called an ephemera, I suppose because it’s ephemoral, it passes away. And man is an ephemeral creature. He’s here today, but he is not here tomorrow, and the place where he is will know him no more.

And then there is God’s side. He’s the creator and the provider and the right of the proprietor. Always remember this, my brother and sister, that you and I are God’s poor relation, and that we’re living off of God whether we believe it or not. And the proudest and richest man in the city of Chicago, who would scorn such a sermon as mine tonight, nevertheless, he lives off of God and God looks after him and feeds him even though he bites the hand that feeds him and hates the heart that provides for him and opposes the God who gives him his daily bread. Yet, nevertheless, he’s living on God’s property and God lets him have a house on His estate, rent free, and looks after him and takes care of him, but always, always, he’s opposed to God.

And the opposition is the opposition of the one who has accepted the good gifts of God for a lifetime and yet has opposed the very God that has fed him. You can’t win that way, you know. The person who is not with God, Jesus said, He that is not with me is against me. And he that gathers not with me scattereth abroad. And no man can hope. It’s not in the nature of things. It’s not in philosophy. It’s not in reason. It’s not in theology. It’s not in nature that a man can oppose God and win. Always, always God prevails.

Now, prevails forever against him. And thus, we find man fighting God. And the fight is always against right. Somebody says I am not against right. But I don’t believe in the church, and I don’t believe in accepting Christ and going through all of that. Let me tell you, that you’re fighting the right if you’re fighting the gospel of Christ. If you’re opposed to the will of God anywhere, you’re opposed to the will of God everywhere. The outlaw is not the man who breaks all the laws of his land. The outlaw is the one who selects the laws he wants to break and keeps the rest. An outlaw will steal from a grocer in order that he might have money to pay somebody else. He’s keeping some laws, but he’s breaking others. So, the man that God is opposed to and has a controversy with God, is not the man who’s breaking all the laws of God, but the man who’s selecting the laws that he wants to keep and breaking the rest. I will prevail, is forever against him.

Now such a man is this and I feel this very deeply tonight. I don’t know whether I can get it across to you; you can’t always do it. It takes the Holy Ghost and a lot of other combinations in order to get an idea across to an audience or even to another person in private conversation. But I feel it very deeply tonight that I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to oppose God. I simply can’t afford it. Because the man that is an opposition to God can’t win and he can’t succeed. The two things that always men want to do. And the man who is on the other side from God cannot win and he cannot succeed. He can succeed as writers say, but he can’t succeed as a man. He can win as an athlete, but he can’t win as a human being. He can win as a politician and get the most votes and take office, but he’s not half a man. He can’t win as a man. He isn’t what God meant him to be. He’s not fulfilling the potentials of his nature.

The man that is opposing God anywhere, that has any controversy with God, is a man that can’t win. If he’s a farmer, he can have crops. And the tall corn may wave, and the yellow wheat and oats may wave on the field, but he’s still not winning. He’s only raising corn and wheat. He must win as a man. You must succeed as a human being, my listening friends. You must succeed as a human being. You must fulfill that which God puts you in the world for. The Bible teaches us that we’re not born by accident into the world. That we come here in the will of a sovereign God. And that God gave us our nature and gave us the blueprint for our lives and gave us possibilities and powers and potentials and gifts and faculties that lie within us.

And I can win as a farmer, but if I oppose God, I am not winning as a man. I might win as an athlete and lose as a man. And no man can afford thus to divide himself. The man who wins in an election and takes office and does it crookedly and violates the laws of his own nature and the laws of God. That man hasn’t won. He’s lost, tragically, terribly, lost.

Emerson said way back yonder nearly 100 years ago, young man, you want to be President, do you? Alright young man, let me tell you this. If you knew how much of his manhood a man has to sell out to be elected to office these days, you wouldn’t want to be President. No, I didn’t say that, Emerson said that way back there nearly 100 years gone. So, a man can win in one thing and lose in another.

I’ve known young women who went out to get a man just as certainly as a duck hunter goes out to shoot a duck. They had that in mind. They intended to do it. They didn’t fall accidentally into the company of the young man. They are after him, or at least somebody of the masculine gender and they got him. And so, they were written off. They weren’t failures. They won. They said, I do. I will. But in the act of getting that man, they lost everything that was dear to them for time and eternity. I’ve seen this horrible thing, and dear God, I don’t know why it has to happen.

And I’ve seen sweet-faced, innocent looking young ladies, Christians, converted to Christ, walking with him carrying their Bibles. And I have seen that strange phenomenon that nobody understands grab them. And their eyes fell upon some alley cat of a man reeking to God Almighty, blue imperium with tobacco smoke, no culture, no education, no ambition, no polish, no gentlemanliness, no anything. And a refined, beautiful and delicate young woman marries that tomcat. And from there on, God Almighty knows what happens. Does she pull him up? Never. It’s always the other way around. No matter how good a swimmer you are, if you jump into the lake with an anvil around your neck, you won’t pull the anvil up. It’ll pull you down.

And I have seen young men, fine looking fellows with a clear light in their eyes. And I knew that the voice of God was whispering to them. And they could have sung the simple colored song, I know the Lord laid His hand on me and meant it. And I have seen them become enamored of these–you know that type. And I’ve seen them follow them away from God and the church out into the world. And they won, but lost in the winning, tragic, terrible loss. You can’t win and oppose God. You can’t do it. God has the power and God has the glory and God has the might and God has the kingdom and God has the dominion and God has the years and God has the experience. You have nothing, nothing. You must turn unto God in Christ and get over on the winning side.

Now, that rich sense of relaxation and rest that comes when the fight is over and the worry is gone and you cease to oppose and stop fighting, and the contest is over and it’s all right. And you know when a nation is at war with another nation and one nation wins and the other nation formally surrenders, there’s always a sense of relaxation and peace comes to that nation. You can’t escape it. During my lifetime, I’ve known twice that Germany surrendered and once that Japan surrendered and once that Italy surrendered. And always the pictures that come from those countries show a sense of rest. It’s over. The fight is over now, and I won’t have to fight anymore.

Well, the man that’s fighting God is fighting a war, a battle that he never, never can win while the world stands. He can never have peace and happiness. What little he gets is only a passing thing, because God is always right and you’re always wrong. People call me up or write me and they want me to approve their lives. I get lots of letters wanting me to approve a wrong that they’re doing. They’re hoping to be able to get a little help from me saying chuck up, keep your chin up. You’re fighting God, but maybe one of these times God will drop asleep, and you can win. But they never do it, never.

When I was 17 years old, I formally took God’s side of every question. And I have not lived perfectly down these years. Don’t look at me and think I have. I haven’t. But at this moment, by the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb, I am on God’s side on everything. And I will not give any approval to anybody that are not on God’s side. I’ll never tell anybody they have a chance in the wide world if they’re not on God’s side. They have no more chance than you would have walking into a tornado hoping to turn it back. The Great God Almighty prevaileth forever against him and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away. I don’t think Shakespeare ever thought of anything more brilliantly imaginative than that. And yet, how simply true it all is. God changes His countenance.

There’s the pink-cheeked boy. And you never see a homely boy never. If nothing else, the very look out of their eyes is good to look at. And their round cheeks devoid of all this dope that you put on, the round cheek boy, the red cheek boy. Come back again in a few years, you’ll see a strong-faced man were a pink-cheeked boy has been. God’s busy changing his countenance. Come back again in a few years, you’ll find the sagging face of middle life. God has changed his countenance again. He doesn’t change it by snapping buttons. He changed it so slowly. People don’t notice it. And we come up to each other and lie like thieves and say, you haven’t changed a bit. God Almighty knows, He’s changing his countenance.

And then there’s the wrinkled, dry face, the flaky face of the old man. And then there’s the pale, cold face of the dead man. Thou changest his countenance. And if I didn’t believe in God for any other reason, I’d believe in God by looking at my own pictures over the years. Somebody’s changing my face. Somebody’s changing yours too. Don’t you think they are not.

Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Sendest him away from where? Well, away from his comfortable little nest. You know, we are all old dogs at heart. We love our homes, and we love our bedrooms, and we love our chairs and we love the presence of familiar things, the pictures we’ve known for so many years. And even things that are not so nice, they’re precious to us because we’ve had them a while. We all like to go in there like good old hound on a winter night and turn around three times and lie down and breathe deep and say it’s good to be under a roof. And we have our little nest, don’t we?

Well, it’d be sweet if the kind smile of God was on that home. Beautiful, if the kind smile of God was looking down like a moon that never changed and a sun that never set. But so many haven’t God in their homes at all. And God changes their countenances and sends them away from their little nest. Away from the familiar things that they love. Away from the people they knew and away from the reassuring landmarks. Thou sendest him away. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go from his familiar haunts. He doesn’t want to leave the world.

Take a boy that has lived in a neighborhood; and he said lots of unpleasant, unkind things about the neighborhood and wished he could move out of it. And then, Uncle Sam grabs him and ships him off to Germany or Japan or Korea. And he isn’t there very long until he begins to paint a picture, a sweet picture on memory’s canvass of that back home, that little, dumpy corner where he used to get a soda with his girlfriend. It begins to shine like a palace of a king. And that crooked street with holes in it that trucks bumped in as they went along and waked him at night. And he turned over and grumbled, oh, the sound like the sound of the chariot that took Elijah home. He’s homesick now. He wants to come back where it’s familiar again.

And when he gets off the boat, nothing looks good except that little section where he comes from, where home is, where Ma is, and maybe his old, awkward father, who’s so glad to see him but wouldn’t let on, and maybe he is half-grown, freckled sister. Brother, does it look good to him back home there. He wants to come back home, and everything looks good to him. And when he walks up carrying that telltale canvas bag over his shoulder that says he’s Uncle Sam’s boy. When he walks up the street, he doesn’t see the holes anymore, and he doesn’t see how dumpy the corner delicatessen, or the corner candy store is. Wonderful as he comes home.

Am I describing to some of you fellows that went out and came back? Come on, fellows, isn’t it so? That’s the way we think about it when we go away. They’ve become familiar to us. And when we’re pulling away from them, torn out like a plant out of the soil, how darling, how sweet, how wonderful to come back and get our roots back down in again for a while and rest.

But Job says, Thou changest his countenance and sends him away. He’s fought God these years. He’s heard the gospel. He’s resisted it. He knows what’s right and he won’t know it. And he knows whose side he ought to be on, but he won’t take it. And one day God says to him, all right, boy, get going. Get going, Depart from me and God sends him away and he passes. Thou sendest him away and he passeth. I tell you, Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away and he passes.

There’s the biography of the human race. There is the biography of that old uncle of yours that fought God until he died. There is the biography of that old aunt of yours that never went to church and laughed at you and your family for going. There’s the biography of that smart aleck young fellow who had all the answers down the road there a few years back. Where is he now?

Where’s Voltaire? Where is Hitler? Where is Lenin? Where is Stalin? Where is Tom Paine? Where’s Bob Ingersoll? Where’s the man who founded the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism? Where’s the gangster? Where’s the fellow who had the north side under his thumb and carried a gun under his arm? Thou sendest him away and he passes. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. And they’re all gone. Where’s the big, bloated woman who used to come in at nine o’clock in the morning bleared-eyed drunk, and then cursed when you tried to talk to her about the Lord Jesus. God changed her countenance and drove her away and she’s gone.

Where are the multitudes that used to meet in Rome in the amphitheaters and watch the Christians being killed, and shout and scream like a breakfast club or a Bob Hope audience now and laugh as the Christians went in to die? They gained strength from the sound of their own voices. And the very volume gave them the idea that they could live forever and couldn’t perish. But God changed their countenances one after the other. The pink-cheeked lad was changed to the stern-face man, to the tired, middle-aged man, to the drooping old man, to the dead man. One by one they went and not a one of them lives now.

Where are they? Gathered on a Sunday night in the rain to watch the prize fights out here when John L. Sullivan fought bare-fisted 75 rounds? They thought they could get away with anything and everything, but where are they now? Where are the boys that get in the cars? Where will they be a few years from now and drive away in a roar of smoke and egotism, and whistle up the girls down the street? Where will they be a few years from now? God will change their countenances and drive them off. Send them away. God prevails forever against them and stands in the way. And always God is there. Always He’s there. The boy that steals the car, Gods there. The girl that goes out into questionable company, God is there. The man that lies soaked in nicotine and alcohol and looks blear-eyed at the TV set till one o’clock in the morning and neglects the church and God. God is there. Thou prevailest.

There it is Jacob. There it is Balaam. There He is Paul, on the Damascus Road, there’s God. God surrounding him like the air, going before him, following up, on the right of him and the left of him, above him, beneath him, all around him, there is God. The most awful thing about him is that he doesn’t know the jackass inspired by God could see the angel and the Prophet couldn’t.

McAfee, it’s an awful thought, a prophet of God with two men with him. A prophet of God and two men with him going on their way to get an offering, make a little money and bring in a little change. And the angel of God was opposed to their program, and they didn’t know it, but only the donkey knew it. But God was there, and they were turned back.

Now what is the answer to all this? You can’t win. You can’t know enough to win. You say, I want to get my M.A., then I’ll be all right. Your M.A. will only push back the frontiers of your ignorance and show you areas that you will never know that you didn’t know that were there. That’s all the M.A. will do for you. Somebody else says, I’m writing my thesis now and I’ll have my PhD. PhDs are a dime a dozen. I’ve got a seventh-grade education and PhDs write me and ask me questions, and I’m just an ordinary dumb fellow. I’m only telling you that because PhDs, they just have Doctor of Philosophies, that’s all.

That’s all a fellow that got a PhD told me this. He said, you know, Brother Tozer, what they do to you when they take in to examine you? He said, they examine you in fields where you’re not familiar in order to make a fool out of you. And he said, after they have reduced you to groveling idiocy so that it’s obvious that you don’t have the IQ of a half-grown tabby cat, then they give you your degree. So, they just want to show you how little you know and then they make you a doctor of philosophy.

Now, I worded that after my own method, a PhD couldn’t word it like that. But I worded that myself. But that’s what he told me. He told me that they just reduced him to a palpitating protoplasm and then give him and say, here’s your PhD, Brother. When you know you don’t know anything, then you’re smart enough to get a PhD. So don’t think a PhD is going to help you, son. It won’t help you at all. It’ll just make you proud, proud of your ignorance.

But what to do? What is there to do, change your religion? Somebody says, I’m going to change to be Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness or something else. It’s just like an enemy of God changing his clothes, that’s all. Just like Al Capone putting on a gray suit when he’d been wearing a blue. You’re just changing the externals, but you haven’t changed one thing; that you and God don’t get along. You and God have a controversy.

You never, never get any help by changing your religion. You never get any help by reading Aristotle. You say, I’ve heard the name Aristotle. He was a wise Greek. I can read him. I was just reading his categories this afternoon. But he didn’t say anything to help me. He’s just defining things, that’s all. Just helping me to know how to rot when I die. It’s helping me to know the laws of nature that reduce me to dust. But he never in any wise ran up a white flag and brought me and God together and he can’t. Nobody can.

What do we do then? Well, there’s only one thing to do. Quit the fight. Put up the white flag. Throw in the towel and say, O Great God, what a fool I’ve been that I have tried to run my life. Live my life and go my way and neglect the Savior and neglect the cross, oppose Thee and live an unrighteous life. O God, I can’t do it and I won’t continue to do it. Cease the fight.

You know, part of the joy of conversion is, the fight’s over. The fight’s over. You’re not fighting God anymore. That’s over. Amen? No more fight. Say, O God, I fought until it was awful. You know, it’s nice to get knocked out in the ring when you’ve really fought, until you’re exhausted. Some of those follows that are lugged off on the shutter are the happiest fellas in the world. It’s over now. They’ve quit. They’re done. Well, God won’t knock you out. But God will reduce you as he did Jacob. Jacob wasn’t happy one second all night long as long as he wrestled against God. But when he threw in the sponge and quit wrestling, then the sun rose upon his forehead.

I have a picture. If I had the ability of an artist, I’d paint the picture of old Jacob with the sun reflecting off his old bald head there by the river Jabbok. And I’d put an old Jewish smile on his face and mix it in with his old beard. And I’d show a happy man completely relaxed from head to foot. For the first time in his life, he’s relaxed. He wasn’t fighting anymore. God was on his side and he was on God’s side and he was on the winning side, and there was nobody opposed to him that amounted to anything. If you’ve got all the world on your side and God is opposed to you, you haven’t got anything on your side. But if you’ve got God on your side and the world is against you, you haven’t anything against you that amounts to anything. For John tells us that if God is for us, who can be against us.

So, give up the fight and kneel before your Maker. Kneel before your Maker. It would be a great thing for some of you if you would kneel down on your knees before your Maker. Get down on your knees, bend those knees of yours. Get down on your knees. Say here I am, God. It’s strange for me. I haven’t been on my knees except to work for a long time. Here I am on my knees. What a change.

I heard a Methodist preacher many years ago preach a sermon on the text: behold, he prayeth. It was about Saul when Saul of Tarsus was fighting Jesus Christ, you know, fighting him all the way along breathing, threatening slaughter, fire coming out of his nostrils like a dragon. And the Lord met him on the Damascus Road. He knocked him flat and blinded his eyes. And God said to Ananias, go down to such and such a street and find Saul. Behold, he prays. And the Methodist preacher made a great deal of it, that God is even a bit taken aback. He’s praying. This hard, vicious man, this heresy, this self-righteous enemy of the church was like a little lamb on his knees bleating up to God in his blindness.

It will be a great day for you, Brother, the day you will drop to your knees and not be ashamed and say, I’m quitting. I’m throwing it in. I can’t fight eternity. I can’t fight time. I can’t fight nature. I can’t fight God. Now give up and quit. What do you want me to do, God? What do you want me to do? And I know what God will say. God will say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He will say as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name. That’s what he’ll say. He’ll say, you believe in my Son now. Obey Me for now on and your troubles, the main problems are over. You will have little troubles, but your main troubles are over.

And then take refuge from God’s anger in God’s love. I read that again. Dear old, what’s his name, the great medieval poet. It said he wanted to take refuge from the wrath of God in the mercy of God. The wrath of God blazed out of one side and he ran around on the mercy side and took refuge. There is a wrathful side of God and don’t you think there isn’t. But there’s a mercy side of God to that side of the cross. So, if you will get over on the side of the cross, you will meet God in peace at the cross of His love.

For Job said just above, Thou hast the desire to the work of Thine hands. Thank God. He has a desire to the work of His hands. A mother, yea, a mother may forget her second child. Do you know any mother would forget her child? Occasionally they do. Occasionally, the police find them in doorways or alleys. Occasionally, they’ll find a little foundling at the door of a hospital, but not very often. God selected the most wonderful thing He knew and said, can a mother forsake her baby? No. Not if she’s human. Not unless there’s some awful tragedy that’s taken her that makes her heart hard for a moment. She has a desire to the child of her love. And God has a desire to the work of His hands. I’m glad I can preach that tonight too. He has a desire to the work of His hands.

Well, what about you now? You. Don’t make excuses and don’t put up reasons and don’t try to make terms and don’t try to bargain and don’t try to make a deal with God. Come just as you are. Believe just where you are. Trust God just where you are. Throw up the hands of the inside your heart and say, Lord, I surrender all. I give up. I quit. No more fight. I take Thee Lord Jesus as my Savior forever. Would you do that, and will you do that? Have you done that? I wonder how many have done that? Good. Would you learn if you haven’t? I don’t want to embarrass. I don’t want to press you.

But if the blessed Holy Spirit has talked to your heart tonight and told you that God has a desire over you, that He hasn’t forgotten you. If you go, you’re away, he’ll stand against you though He’ll follow you and follow you as the angel did Balaam the renegade prophet. He’ll follow you on and on and on and on. But there will be a day when He’ll send you from Him and you will pass with a changed countenance and a broken heart. That’s a fact. But it’s also a fact that He has a desire to you. And He sent His only Son to die. And mercy’s door is open, and the grace of God can be yours. Let us pray.