“Seven Dimensions of the Soul“
Seven Dimensions of the Soul
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
June 14, 1959
Now we have sung and quoted scripture and prayed and heard a testimony from an outgoing missionary and we’ve had a good meeting up to now and suppose we suppose we turn together to the 11th chapter of Revelation and read them read the first 15 verses responsibly and reading together the 15th and closing there, the 15th verse of the 11th chapter of the book of Revelation.
And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court, which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
And after three days and an half the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past; and behold, the third woe cometh quickly. And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.
Now, this is one of the most difficult of all the chapters in the book of Revelation. Difficult, but not impossible. There is a predictive element in it, as you know there is in this entire book, a predictive element, and it is said to cover a period of three and a half years. Twelve hundred and sixty days, forty-two months, three and a half years.
Now, in as much as it states it in three different ways, I am inclined to believe that it is trying to tell us that it is literal and that we are not to look around for a fanciful interpretation. If it had said forty-two months, maybe we could have found some reason to spiritualize it. If it had said three and a half years, we might have, but since it said it three different ways and all adds up to three and a half years, I believe that it is a period that yet lies ahead of us.
And in that period, there shall occur these items. The temple will be rebuilt, if not in that period, before that time. Jerusalem will be overrun by the Gentiles. Then there will be the appearance of the two witnesses. These two witnesses, of course, are the two personalities hard to identify.
I am usually cautious, but I am going to go out on a limb and tell you who I think they are. I think they are Moses and Elijah. I will tell you why I think so. It says that if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth them, and they have power to shut heaven that it rained not in the days of their prophecy.
Now, there was only one man in the Old Testament times that was able to call down fire. It didn’t proceed exactly out of his mouth, but he spoke, and fire came down. That was Elijah, and he certainly had power to shut heaven that it didn’t rain. That would seem to identify a man as Elijah. Then they have power over waters to turn them to blood and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will. Only one man in the Old Testament ever had such power, and that was Moses.
Now, I have another reason for believing that these two were Moses and Elijah. They were the only two men in the Old Bible that I can think of that either didn’t die or didn’t die like other people. Remember that Moses, when he was 120 years old and still never had had an overhaul job, nothing wrong with him, not a rattle, his eyes were as good as ever, and his strength was not abated, and everything was as it had been. Suddenly, about the time he was expecting to go on for another term, God said, Moses, it’s time you come on up and die.
And I think Moses must have been very greatly surprised, if not downright astonished. Why he said, I don’t feel like dying, there’s nothing wrong with me. And God said, that’s all right, I have to take you out of here, you come on up. And he went up and died. And he is the only man that I ever heard of in the Scriptures that died completely well. You’re going to get something wrong, but not Moses, he was perfectly well.
So, since he simply quit breathing at the command of God, that would seem to leave something to be desired there yet. If it was appointed unto all men to die, and Moses didn’t die like other men, he just quit breathing because God told him to, and there was even a quarrel over his body. And God took away his body, nobody knew where it was, as though God were preserving it in a special way.
And of course, we all know that Elijah didn’t die, Elijah went up in a whirlwind into heaven, threw back his mantle, which Elisha picked up. We all know that story well. So, that would leave me to believe that the representative, the supreme representative of the law and the supreme representative of the prophets should now be testifying in the world. And they testified for a while until; and there are their pests, of course, and nuisances. A good man in the bad world is always a nuisance. Now, keep that in mind.
There’s an awful lot of romantic back-patting and cooing over men of God, but the simple fact is, if he’s a man of God enough, he’ll be a nuisance to the people who aren’t men of God. If he’s just a nice, soft, kindly, old stuffed grandpappy of a fellow, why, we can all love him. But if he’s living with God to such an extent that he frowns on our worldly ways and our carnal habits, then, of course, he’s a nuisance.
And these men certainly were. They were witnessing in a critical and extremely sinful hour, witnessing of heaven, and of course, nobody likes it. But they couldn’t do anything about it for a while, and then the beast had them killed.
Now, that seems to be the way it goes. After they’d been killed, God spoke to them again, and they rose up, and there was an earthquake, and there were many men slain, and there was a voice saying, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ. And we’re going to let that rest there, because we’ve heard that taught so much, and I can’t add anything to it much.
But once more, I’m going to do what I’ve been doing in this book of Revelation, in the series I’ve been giving. I’m going to pick out a verse or a passage from the chapter which has meaning bigger than its prophetic meaning, and bigger than the period that it touches. It has meaning applicable to all worshipers everywhere, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, to the Jew, to the Church, and to that temple which shall be in the days out ahead.
Now, the text would be then this one, rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. Now, a great crisis time had come upon them, and there was a semblance of worship. A temple had been built. And don’t imagine that temple is going to grow there suddenly without an architect, and without builders, and without money, and without sacrifice. It’s not.
It’s not going to grow up like a mushroom. It’s going to have to be built. Somebody’s going to have to have zeal. Somebody’s going to have to have generosity to give to make it possible. Somebody’s going to have to work hard, and they will, and they have a temple there. And there is worship going on there, and will be worship, I mean, going on there. But something was wanting, obviously.
So, a mysterious hand was stretched out and gave John a rod, and said, John, take this rod, this reed, this yardstick, take it, John. And John took it. And he said, now go measure the temple, measure the altar, and measure the worshipers.
Now, I’ve checked this out very carefully to see whether this is actually what was said. One or two versions says, count them. But the major versions have it, measure them, and I’m going to stand with the large majority of translations, measure them, he said, measure them.
So, these worshipers that are here in this temple are going to have to have the apostolic test. They’re going to be measured. The apostle must measure them, John must measure them with a rod, not that he had concocted, but that God had given him. And all the worshipers have to have this apostolic test. And the result of the test is not published. There’s nowhere that I can find that any answer is given, but somewhere it was recorded. And there were consequences that followed the recording of the measuring of the temple and the worshipers therein.
Now, we live in a critical period. We do not live in that period. It would be extremely foolish to try to equate what will happen in that period of three and a half years with what’s happening now. They are not identical, although the Spirit is the same. They are not identical historically. They’re not identical.
So, we’ll not say that we live in that time, but we will say that we live in a critical period too. And there is great zeal and activity and even generosity. And there’s a great deal of building, and more churches are going up than you can imagine. And more people are going to church than ever were since the beginning of our country. A great deal of money is being given, more probably than ever was given before.
And this we must not forget that God is not looking at us as we look at ourselves. God never checks statistics. He sends an apostle to measure things and says, you’ve got to pass the apostolic test.
The church is founded upon the Rock, Christ Jesus, and the foundation of the holy apostles. And we got to measure up to the apostolic test. And we are being measured by the apostles. The New Testament is our measure. You can’t tell by how much money is given. You can’t tell by how big a building is. You can’t tell by how many people are present. You can’t tell that way because that’s the way human beings measure things. But there’s an apostolic test, a measurement of an apostle.
Here, John, take a reed, go lay it along the soles of the men that are worshiping there, and the women that are kneeling there, and then come back and record it. And John went, and John measured, and John came back.
Now, it’s relatively easy to measure the temple and the altar. It’s a very extremely easy thing to do. You can tell how many were in your Sunday school, and how much money you took in, and how much money went to missions, and how many went to school, Bible school or seminary from your church. That’s measuring the temple. That’s quite easy to do.
And then whether you have had or have not had, if you go to the altar or make a testimony of faith, that’s measuring the altar, and I suppose that’s relatively easy too. These are our specifications, you know, they’re ours. They have to do with size and cost and membership and the treasurer’s report. And that’s the external thing.
But then there is this terrible thing. I don’t know how these things affect you, but I’m affected by the Scriptures. I wince under it. And I wince under this: and measure them that worship therein. Now I wince under that, because the measuring of them that are there, the apostle lays a rod, you see, across our souls. And that becomes then tremendously important. If I don’t get it straight about the three and a half years, or if somebody else differs with me a bit about it, that isn’t important. But what is tremendously important to me is that if God measures me by the apostolic test that I measure up.
Now I’m going to ask you in a very quick close here tonight, how you measure up. Now there will always be, said one man, a real and a conventional, a true and a formal. There will always be the real and the conventional. There will always be the true and the formal. There will always be everywhere those who have a name to live but are dead.
But the apostolic test is there, and then the results of the test are recorded somewhere, and there are consequences that follow. And I’m interested in that, deeply concerned with that. I believe that our Father in heaven knows the times and the seasons, and He knows, and not even an angel knows, when our Lord shall return. I believe it will be soon, and I hope it will be soon.
But I also know that there’s a lot we can’t know, but there’s a good deal that we can. I can’t escape the words of the old devotional saint who said that he would rather know compunction and feel it in his heart than to know the definition of it.
And I say that I would rather be measured by the apostles and measure up than to know all the meaning of the revelation, though I am trying to place this before us, and I’m a believer in prophetic truth. But I want now to talk just a little about some of these measurements. You see, there are different dimensions.
We have several different dimensions. I’m going to mention seven of them. The dimensions of your soul, of your Christian life. May the Holy Ghost take this home to my heart and yours.
Now, first of all, there’s the dimension we call faith. And I wonder if it’s real or conventional. What difference has your faith made to you? Now, there was a time when you didn’t have faith, and now you say you have faith.
Now, I’m not challenging your having faith, but I’m asking you, what difference has the coming of this faith had? What are you now doing that you didn’t do before? What are you now not doing that you did do before? Has the coming of this faith made a specific change in your life? Is this faith dimension such that when the apostle lays the rod upon it, it will measure up?
Now, that to me is vastly more important to my eternal future than to be sure who the true witnesses are. I’m quite sure who they are. That’s one thing I’m dogmatic on. I’m quite sure I know who they are. I think they will come back and that they will stand as witnesses to the law and the prophets declaring God’s righteousness among men.
But if I should have missed the mark on that, if I have faith, and that faith is real, and the dimension when the Lord lays his rod upon my soul and finds that faith is there, real faith is there, I can afford to be wrong on the explanation of the text, but I can’t afford to be wrong when it comes to the apostolic test.
And then there’s a dimension that we call love. That’s another way God measures you. Just as a doctor will take a half a dozen different tests and then add them up and see how you are, how healthy you are, so there are these tests, these dimensions, there’s love. Now, we Christians say that we have love, but do you know I wonder how real our love is? John says, if a man says he loves and doesn’t love his neighbor, how could the love of God be in that man, if he doesn’t love his brother.
And Jesus said that after the love of God, the love of the neighbor was next. And that those two, the love of God and the love of our fellow man, they added up to all that a man had to be, to be pleasing to God.
Now, a love that lies supine is not biblical love and it will never stand the apostolic test. James wrote caustically about any kind of faith that did not do anything. And John wrote caustically about love that didn’t do anything. So, these two men are measuring us.
When you sit down to a great bulging, steaming Sunday dinner, did you ever stop to think of the not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of people who haven’t had enough to eat today?
One of the most shocking things that our superintendent, Mr. Thomas, brought back to us was in telling about walking through the streets of one of the Eastern cities early in the morning and having to walk gingerly, picking his way to keep from tramping on little arms and legs and feet and faces and hands and bodies of little boys and girls and babies sleeping on the sidewalk because they had no place else to sleep. To wake, to wake like grass growing up suddenly. There there were whole mobs of them when the sun woke them, not a bite to eat.
Now I believe that love that doesn’t do something to alleviate this is not love at all. And I believe that faith that doesn’t bind my heart to my fellow man is not faith at all. But I’m not saying that we don’t have it. I’m only saying, oh God, the apostolic test is here. The man of God is laying the reed like a rod, rod like a reed upon our hearts. And what does that dimension say, that faith dimension? Remember the Jews believed they had faith all during hundreds of years of their history, but found they had not faith at all, but were rejected because they had creed without true faith.
There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah the prophet, but to not one of them did Elijah go, but to a pagan woman of Sarepta. And she had the faith that the Jewish woman did not have.
The Sarah and the Rebecca and the rest of them named after the celebrated grandmothers and mothers of Israel. They were there by the hundreds, but they had not faith. And when God wanted to support a prophet, he had to send him out of the country and find a pagan woman.
And the Sarahs and the Rebeccas and the Hannahs looked down their nose at that pagan woman, but she had faith, and a miracle came to her home. So, it’s possible to think we have faith and not have faith, to think we have love and not have love.
Then there’s humility. That’s another dimension. Religion can be a source of pride. I was talking to a man who came to see me last week. He was here last Sunday night and asked for an interview, and he talked with me. He had been saved seven years, a wonderful Christian brother. I got a lot of help from him, and I hope he got some from me.
And as we were talking, he was telling me of his great yearning after God and his dissatisfaction with the Church he was in. He wasn’t criticizing, he was very kindly about it. But he told me that he said, just God isn’t there. And he said, in effect, I grieve because of all the foolishness and worldliness and nonsense and carnality that I see everywhere moving in and out of the Church, and I don’t like it. And I yearn that the Church should move toward God.
And I warned him, I said, watch one thing. You’ve only been converted seven years, and I believe that I can say that you’re among those whose hearts cry out after the living God but look out that Satan doesn’t slip around and remind you that you’re a superior Christian, that you’re crying out after God and these carnal church members around you aren’t. The further we go up into God, the more terrible the temptation toward pride. Spiritual pride is probably the most awful pride.
Suppose I put it like this. Spiritual pride is at the top as being the most damaging, injurious, and offensive of all kinds of pride, for that was the pride of the Pharisee. Next is intellectual pride, which is pride of intellect. There is only one other kind of pride that’s as nasty as the pride of intellect, the man who says, I am an intellect.
A man came to me before I preached somewhere one time not too long ago. I had preached Saturday, and then I had preached Sunday, and then I was preaching Monday at another place, and he was there. He came and said, Mr. Tozer, I heard you preach Saturday night, and I thought you lost a friend. I didn’t know what he meant. But he said, you recovered yourself nicely Sunday night.
And I still didn’t know what he meant. He said, you know, you spoke rather slightingly of the intelligentsia. But he said, Sunday night, you said something in favor of the intelligentsia. He said, I thought that you’d lost me as your friend. He said, you know, I’m an intellectual. He was an intellectual, a self-conscious intellectual. That’s the second worst kind of pride.
The third is pride of race. I’m a Swede, I’m a Dutchman, I’m an Irishman, I’m an Englishman, or I’m a mongrel. I am whatever I am, and the terrible part about that is the only thing we have to be proud of is all underground. They say that the man whose pride lies in his ancestors has got more underground than he has on top of the ground. That’s an offensive kind of pride.
And then there’s the pride, of course, that’s pride of our looks. Men, as a rule, aren’t bothered with that, but women are. Men are inclined to be more bothered by their biceps and their chest and the women by their looks; pride of person, that is. And then there’s, of course, pride of accomplishment. But the Holy Ghost lays a rod on our dimension we call humility.
I just wonder how humble we are. Stratton, after you’ve sung a good solo, do you ever catch yourself cupping your ear to listen, to wait for somebody to come and say, I enjoyed that?
Now, I’m not asking you, don’t raise your hand. That wouldn’t be fair. But that bothers me a lot. I hate it, too. I’ve done it, too. And after I’ve preached, particularly, you know, I’m used to it here, but if I preach somewhere where there are a lot of people present that I have reason to want to appear well before.
Do you know how I’ve settled that, brethren and sisters? You know how I’ve settled that? I go to God before I go into the pulpit. I did it twice in Buffalo in May when I preached there at our international council. And I say, God, let’s have an understanding. I’m willing to fail and disgrace myself publicly as a poor preacher if you’ll get more glory out of it. But if you can get glory out of my giving a good sermon, all right. But if not, then let me fail. And I know God knows I mean that, too. And I think that that’s one way to keep yourself down.
The preacher that preached the famous sermon on humility and how I attained it, is to be pitied because the man who thinks he’s humble isn’t. Humility is an unconscious thing, and it never knows it’s around. It’s transparent, and it has no smell, and you can’t see it, and you can’t hear it.
Humility cannot be detected. If it’s in a man, he doesn’t know it. And when you see a man do what I said I did, have to go and rub his nose in the dirt, he’s not too humble a man. God is measuring my humility to see how actually humble I am.
And then there is courage. Maybe somebody would say, but I don’t believe that courage is a dimension. Courage is such a dimension, so certainly one that the opposite of it consigns men to hell, for the fearful and the unbelieving shall have their part that burns in the lake of fire. Courage is that which gives you power to stand, and to be different and to be unpopular.
If you could just get a lot of people who are willing to be unpopular, who are willing to stand and be what they feel God wants them to be, and say what he wants them to say, and do what he wants them to do, whether the world likes it or not, you’d have a pretty good Christian. But if you had those who are willing to stand and do and be and say as God wants them to, whether the church likes it or not, then you have a better Christian.
You know, in fundamental circles there’s a hierarchy. They can’t put you in jail, they can’t excommunicate you, but they can frown on you and scare you. And the average young fellow who has gone through a school somewhere is so anxious to please his professors, and so anxious to please whoever happens to be the big evangelical raja in that neighborhood, that he’d shiver and scared stiff if he thought he’d uttered a word or made an interpretation that couldn’t be approved by the evangelical hierarchy. You’ve got to have courage to look into the face of God and do what God wants you to do if it means your neck.
How is your courage, my friend? Do you have the courage to be different? Do you have the courage to be unpopular? I hope so.
Then there is the carrying of the cross, we would call that self-sacrifice. it abideth alone, and there we have self-sacrifice. We’re here not to grow fat and to have much, we’re here to immolate ourselves. We’re here to offer ourselves.
Dr. Ironside wrote a devotional book called “A Continual Burnt Offering.” That’s what I mean. A continual burnt offering. It must be going up night and day on the altar of God.
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. Two different figures, but it adds up to the same thing. We’re not to have our way, not self-aggrandizement, but self-sacrifice. Not self-praise, but self-sacrifice. Not self-love, but self-sacrifice.
And then purity of life, deliverance from sin, perfection, deliverance, likeness to God in Christ, habits and tempers, sharp tongue, and just how far have they gone? Are we delivered from them? Are we free? You say, I heard the voice of Jesus say, rise and I rose, I’m alive.
But Lazarus heard that, but he was bound all around with grave clothes. And if we could get the grave clothes off of the people that had been called awake by the voice of God in the new birth, if we could get the grave clothes off, we’d have a revival on our hands that would spread around the world and threaten the iron curtain. But God’s children are satisfied to stand up all wrapped around with their yesterdays; habits and all the rest that they should be free from.
Then I would give you the seventh dimension, and that is integrity. How transparent are we? How candid, how completely honest. You know Bacon, Francis Lord Bacon, in one of his essays, draws a distinction between simulation and dissimulation.
Simulation is pretending to be what you’re not. Dissimulation is pretending not to be what you are. And it’s everywhere, everywhere. In fact, we’ve made a creed out of it in America. We’ve made a creed out of it. We cover things up, paint them over, smooth them over, put chrome on them, put grease paint on them. God wants a simple-hearted people.
Could I tell you again, in closing, a story I told you, I guess, maybe, oh, 10 or 12 years ago when it happened. I was walking around with a man who’s since gone to heaven, dear brother Robert Kilgore, of Seattle.
And we were talking, and I said to Brother Kilgore, I long after God, I long to be simple-hearted, I long to be humble, I long to be Christlike, and I don’t see much example around me in the churches, and I long to be candid and direct and honest and transparent. And I said, if I could find a people that were like that, I think I’d go join them. He said, no, you wouldn’t.
Well, I didn’t know what he meant, but he went on to tell me, he said, you know, I got among the people like that over in the state of Pennsylvania here last summer. He said, I took three weeks off to go and meet God in a cabin, he said.
Now, this very brilliant thinking brother, teacher in a school, he said, I took three weeks off to go up country, and he said, I got up close to a camp meeting or Bible conference. He didn’t tell me the name of the people; it sounds like they might have been Mennonites or something. But he said, you know, they were just like you’re talking about, just what you’re talking about. He said, simple, candid, honest, transparent, through and through.
And he said, Mr. Tozer, Brother Tozer, I met God up there. He said, it was a crisis in my life. I met God among those people. He said an illustration. He said, I slept in a room with an old bearded German fellow who was one of them. He said, I woke up in the night and had gotten suddenly chilly in the night, it was real cold. He said, I slept up on a good bed and my roommate, an old gentleman, slept down on a cot. And he said, the moonlight was streaming into the room, and I looked and I saw that the covers had slipped off of the old man. But he was still sleeping away. He said, I thought, oh, I’ll cover him up.
So, he got out of his warm bed and went over and got the blankets back on the old man. I don’t know whether he put the beard under or on top of the covers, but that isn’t important.
But he got him fixed up and he slipped back to bed. And he was congratulating himself that he had not wakened the old gentleman. Then he said he heard a man in a very thick German accent praying. And he said, O Jesus, he said, you’ve been so good to me. And he listened. He said, you’ve given me a nice farm and some cows and a good wife. And he went on enumerating. And then he ended by saying, and a nice man stuck me in when I get cold. He said, there he was.
He said, Brother Tozer, that’s the way they lived and that’s the way they thought. You know, no, no, none of this jive stuff, none that far out, you know, and it’s the most, none of that. Simplicity.
God is going to judge us by our frankness, our candor, our moral and spiritual integrity. That measuring is going on and the whole New Testament declares that it’s going on, but it isn’t published yet. And I don’t know where I belong in this thing. Do you know where you belong? I know in some measure, but it isn’t published. It wasn’t published there. He just had to measure it and then God kept the record.
And you know, soon everybody will know I can stand up here and look dignified as I am able and pass and get away with murder because I’m a minister and I’m called Reverend. And I can walk down the street looking stern and stuffed and everybody will say, good morning, Reverend. But I can’t get away with a thing before the apostolic measuring rod. And neither can you. Not one thing.
Friends, can write you and tell you you’re wonderful, you’ve helped them, but it doesn’t mean a thing when the apostle lays his rod on your soul. It isn’t published yet. Soon everybody will know. There’s nothing secret that shall not be revealed and there’s nothing done in secret that shall not be shouted from the housetop.
Soon everybody will know, but there’s only one thing that can silence that shouting voice. And do you know what it is? I believe it’s the voice of Jesus’ blood that speaketh better things than that of Abel. I believe that the blood of the Lamb speaks louder in my defense than my own sins can speak against me.
And the only thing that can silence the voice of the prophet or the apostle is if the blood is on my soul. To repent, to tell God we’re sorry, to seek His face, to get out from under this two-facedness, this simulation and dissimulation, to have our love and our humility and our faith tested and tried before God. This we can do, and we can in sorrow repent before our God and our Father.
And as we do, the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. And I said a while ago that we could not know. Now I wonder if I was quite accurate. I wonder if the teaching of the New Testament isn’t rather that God gives a witness, and you can know in your heart.
Other people won’t, but you can know in your heart. The proud man can know when he’s humbled himself till God smiles. The deceiver can know when he’s repented until God smiles. The loveless, hard man can break his own heart before God until God smiles.
And so, with all the other dimensions of the soul, shan’t we tonight, shan’t we ask God to search us? Search me, O God. Do you know that brother? We sang it, didn’t we? All right, could we sing it again? Search me, O God, search me and know my heart. Let’s do it now for just a moment while the brother leads us. It is not in the book, dear friends, but I’m sure it’s familiar to many. And we’ll sing it thoughtfully together.
Dear friends, don’t close your eyes and sleep tonight until you have settled it before God. We won’t press an invitation this evening but ask God to lay the rod of the apostolic test upon your life and measure you. And then meet whatever requirements, make any changes, any restitution, any amendment of life, and do it in faith and love, and you’ll be better for it.
O God, now we thank Thee for this evening. We thank Thee for the fellowship of the Christians. We thank Thee for the presence of the missionary. We thank thee for our friend, Shufelt.
We thank Thee and praise Thee for the Word and ask that as we go out tonight, we’ll go with a solemnity upon us, a cheerful solemnity and a seriousness, knowing that the results are not yet published before the world, but they will be.
So, help us to get to them before they’re published, bury them forever in the blood, and be clean to stand before God and man. Now be gracious unto us, lift Thy face upon us, and smile upon us through this week ahead.
In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and all the people said, amen.