The Uttermost Part of the Earth

The Uttermost Part of the Earth “THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH”
By C. M. Pullias

Inasmuch as I shall have nothing to say at the con-clusion of this talk tonight I want to take occasion now to thank Brother Baxter for the invitation to come to Abilene and participate in this week’s services. I want to thank everybody in connection with this school. I want to just state that I appreciate it, and I go away from this place with a feeling in my heart for Abilene, and for Abilene Christian College, for its President, and for its faculty, by reason of this association, and for its people that I hadn’t known before.

These have been very pleasant days. We have realized that we are here just for a special occasion and for a limited time, and we have tried to crowd our service just as full of things helpful and elevating as possible. In the first place we selected services that were purely Biblical and that mean something. Basing our entire night course upon one verse in the Bible—Beginning at Jerusalem was the first subject, and taken from Acts 1:8, in which Jesus said, “You shall testify of me in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts pf the world.”

We have called your attention to every one of these, until we have now come to the uttermost parts of the world. This brings us to the first verse of the 13th chapter of Acts, when Paul leaves Antioch of Seleucia, upon his first Missionary Tour. Those who are acquainted with the Bible will recognize the towns. We have built too large a subject for one subject, and for that reason we are to pick up, so to speak, just a few crumbs on the way, or just a few crumbs of the Geography of the Bible to the north. To get our setting we may say now that Paul becomes the central figure of that remarkable Book of 28 chapters, known to us as Acts of Apostles, having been converted in about A. D. 86, and this chapter begins with about A. D. 45, he being a member of the church then for nine years. The first three years of that time he was in Arabia somewhere, buried to civilization, going out of that to Jerusalem, and then was sent to Tarsus, his old home, where he remained until A. D. 42, when Barnabas had gone to Antioch at the instance of Paul. Jerusalem offered encouragement and when he bade them cleave to the Lord, many people were added to the Lord. Seeing .the possibilities of the church there, he went to Tarsus to seek Saul (Paul). When he had found him and they had come to Antioch they labored there for a while. During this time the Prophet, Agabus, came to Antioch and told of a famine which should be all over the world, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. It came unto the saints of Antioch to send relief to suffering Judea, and the Bible tells us they were able to send that relief. Would not that, brethren, be a fine lesson, for us to just stop a minute? If every member of this great church of Abilene would determine to do everything he was able to do, whether he was a boy, or girl, or man, or. woman’, or father, or mother, or son, or daughter, we could turn the world upside down in less time than it would take to make this speech. And the Bible tells us they sent that at the hands of Barnabas and Saul unto the elders of the church in Jerusalem.

I believe, brethren, it would be a fine lesson, for churches today to do just as that tells us. There is your divine pattern, your beaten path of inspiration—that when the church of Jesus, or Lord Jesus Christ, wants to relieve the suffering- of a storm stricken district, let it come at the hands of the brethren of this church, out of the fruits and toils of the. ground, but let them apply it in the name of the. Lord Jesus Christ. It is not enough for us, in other words, to raise money for suffering humanity, but God wants us to come in contact with the sufferer, and there is not anything that does us more good than to go to the sick bed. You can hire the nurse and send her there, and she can take care of him and administer all his wants, but that doesn’t do you the good God wants you to receive from it. And hence, in the language of the Bible, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”—the reflex action, that which comes back. And when you go in a room and sit down by the side of the bed of the sufferer there it is that you have your tender feeling and come in contact with him. You listen to his groans and you look upon the struggling man, in pain and anguish, burning with fever. It does you good. That is what God means by that.. And he wants us to take our means, raise our money, and with our hands to carry it over there. Your brother,' your sister, is sufferings—your unfortunate neighbor. Do it with your own hand and therefore receive the greatest good possible to come to people. This was about the year A. D. 44, when Paul and Barnabas came into Jerusalem. James had been killed by Herod; Peter had been thrown into prison—they were going to kill him when the passover is past, and God miraculously delivers him. Old Herod made a speech and the people gave to him the glory that be-longs to God, and he fell down and the worms ate him. And about that time Paul came back to Antioch and they went out on their Missionary Tour. And I tell you that the most stupendous undertaking in history was when John and Paul and Barnabas left Antioch and went down by Seleucia across the Mediterranean sea to Salamis on the Island of Cyprus, where they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews; and when they went through that, island into Paphos, where they encountered the Roman Governor—the first experience there; they crossed the Sea from Paphos to Perga, in Pamphylia, and John Mark turned back home.

I want to tell you now that there are lots of people who will leave us when the work becomes dangerous and hard; there were the wild Pisidian passes and rough mountains and they must pass through them, where there were wild beasts and murderers hiding there, and John’s heart seemingly failed him and he went home to his mother in the city of Jerusalem; and I tell you there are lots of Johns and Marks in the world.

I read where the Bible said “That Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and departed unto Thessalonica....... ” And there are lots of Demases in the world—you could not count them in the church—forsaking the Lord—turning back to Egypt for the cucumbers and for the garlic and onions and various things they had to eat, and the amusements to be had. The Bible tells us that Paul had passed through those mountains into Pisidia. I call your attention then to a writing in after years: The apostle talked about being in peril of leopards and other wild beasts. I have no doubt but what he refers to this very experience. Those deep gorges, ravines, and those climbing peaks, and those woods, are inhabited thickly alike, through which they must pass, in order that they may reach their objective, Antioch in the Pisidias. It was there they began to preach, and the Synagogue was full, and they called him out, on the Sabbath day, as the Jews began to speak against those things that were spoken by Paul. But a persecution arose, and it made it necessary for him to go away.

You know it is success, in the main, that causes persecution. When a man succeeds, perhaps, somebody will oppose him. I remember that little Joseph had the animosity and envy of his own brothers, not because he had ever injured them, but because he was succeeding and because he was favored by Jehovah. But from Antioch, in Pisidia, he went to Iconium, and there he went to preaching the word of God again. And there the people were stirred up likewise; and he left there and went to Lystra, and the persecuting Jews followed him and persecuted him, they hounded him and stirred up the people of Lystra, until that great and good man was stoned in the streets of the city, and dragged out and left for dead.

I will say it looks to me like that is a terrible experience for a man on his undertaking. Nothing but the expression of God’s word—the church of Christ is his only support—God above heard then—and his word to teach them the law. And the very people he would feed are those that would bite the hand that feeds them. It is hardly believable, but it is so, and that is the statement, and if you will read what is said to Timothy, about the af-flictions and persecutions that came to him at Antioch, and Lystra, we may be able to get the lesson. That is, Paul was dealt with as an animal, as a dog, as a vicious something that would be destructive to humanity, and dragged out of the city and left for dead. In writing of it in after years, he said, “I knew a man about fourteen years ago, whether in the body or out of the body, I can’t tell: God knoweth. How that he was caught up to Paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to. utter. In reading the Bible I have been impressed with this: Men have had the inklings of things beyond—glimpses of heaven, they have had God to put in his appearance, and yet every time, as I remember it was in deepest distress. If Paul had not been stoned and persecuted and dragged out of that city and left for dead he never would have been caught up in Paradise up yonder, the Third Heaven: he never would have heard those words that were uttered on this earth. And to enlarge and embellish on that point—Old Abra- hame left that Syrian district and went to Canaan in' the north, and through Egypt and back into Canaan, and in his late age of about seventy-five years of faithfulness and service to his God, and the climax of his suffering came one day: He must take Isaac, the promised child, the boy that he loved and carry Him to the top of that mountain and burn him as a sacrifice on the altar. You notice Abraham never fal-tered-—he even cut the wood to carry it out, and we can’t see him for three days, and finally he came to the place arid he looked and saw it, and he said to the two servants who were with him, “Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you: and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac, his son,' and took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and they proceeded to the place of execution. That boy knew nothing of what would happen, and on the way he said, “My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering”: but Old Abraham, whose courage and fidelity to God never faltered, said, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” When God tells you what to do, when you are keeping his commandments, when you are following as Jesus led, God will take care of you. I have no doubt—but I can’t say so much of the man that won’t do what God commands. Listen: “God will provide for that offering.” Just look at that little boy bearing the wood bn his shoulder and one thousand years after that Jesus was nailed to the cross for the sins of the world. And when Abraham reached the top of that mountain he bound that boy, put him on the altar, and raised to knife to drive the steel to the heart of his child. Because God needed him, God stopped him, and he looked and said, “Abraham, rejoiced to see my day, and his heart was glad.” He saw the light raise from the ashes there, and saw the vision there of the resurrection of the dead, and was glad. The amount of suffering in that sacrifice, And I tell you that Paul suffered persecution to the end, that they stoned him and dragged him out of the city and left him for dead. It was then that he went up yonder to that third heaven and heard the words not lawful to utter down here. May I call your attention to another fact—that when little Daniel, a captive in Babylon, had been carried away and was nothing but a child. He had been a victim of a cruel conspiracy, and his enemies wanted to destroy him, and hence they had a decree passed that they knew he would not regard, and knew there was no mercy and there was no clemency in the case of the law of the Medes and Persians—that when he violated it he knew they would consign him to the lions’ den when the sun went down; and he went to his room—he never pulled a shade or closed a blind, and never tried to hide himself in some closet, and there pray to God, but he went to that window, as always, and when he was shown the order that night, he fell down upon his knees and prayed, and offered his supplications to God, as always; and when the night came on, as a result, he must go into the den of lions, and old King Darius was very much discouraged over it, and could not sleep, and the next morning the King went to that den in person, and he said: “0 Daniel, servant of the Living God, Is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee jl(rom tho lions?” And he cried from the den and said, “0 King, live forever, My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me, because I have been always innocent in his sight and your own; and he was merciful to me,” and there was not a rent in his clothes nor hurt on his body.

I tell you when a man is in dire distress and lifts his voice to the Great Beyond, God will come closer to us—closer in that hour than any other. I don’t believe we can ever get so close to him, or he to us, but that he will come to us when we are suffering.. But he said, “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God rest- eth upon you; on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busy-body in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.”

Some people suffer because they do wrong, others because they do right, and the greatest sufferers that the world has ever known are those sufferings for somebody else—and the Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest sufferer in the history of our unfortunate world, because it was right to suffer, because he cared for us. And, remember, just to illustrate to you that that gives God an opportunity; that when the storm was on the sea of Galilee, and the disciples were out there all night; the first watch passed and they are alone; the second watch passed and Jesus is not there; he was back yonder somewhere in prayer; and the third watch came and he wasn’t there; and the fourth watch came and the heavens were as dark as they ever got to be; the thunder and lightning is splitting the dusk of the dark clouds; the waves are higher than they ever were, white-capping all about; and they saw something that seemed to be a ghost—and Jesus cried to them above the din of the thunder and the roar of the storm:.“My.children, be not afraid, it is I.” I tell you I believe he will come to us in hours like that, for his name’s sake, for his Kingdom’s sake. I know some one-eyed men but they didn’t lose their eyes for His sake. The Bible tells us, “That if a man lose his life for my sake, he shall find it.” Of course, Jesus wanted us to love God, to serve God. And he was stoned near to death. That was his undertaking, to carry the gospel to the uttermost parts of the world. Do you remember the old disciple, John, the only one that was put naturally to death, who lived to be nearly one hundred years of age? That in his old age he was on an island in the sea. Do you know, I fancy his hair was as white as snow, his form bent,’ his forehead wrinkled with deep furrows, and worried. I know all that; but he was out yonder on the Lord’s day, climbing to the highest mountain and looking away to the shore, where his friends were yonder; and then it was God came to his relief and permitted him to see all those things about which he wrote in the Book of Revelations—in the deepest language that I know anything about, and the greatest contribution'to literature is that Book, and the most wonderful and most marvelous things that he heard1 and saw that day: He heard them sing, “Beyond Redeem,” and the song of “Moses and the Lamb,” and he saw the tree of life that day. And we don’t want to suffer, to do anything wrong, and yet we will not come to Christ. Don’t you know what Jesus mdant when ' he said that “All things are possible to him that believeth.” And little Timothy, about sixteen years of age, one of Paul’s converts, was standing there weeping, and he rose up and went over there to Derbe, and then he came back to Lystra. And then to Iconium, and then to Antioch, and then to Perga. And then to At- talia, and then took ship and went back up the river unto Antioch of Syria, from which he had formerly sailed, And when he reached there he called the church to-gether, and he recited those things that had been done. But, listen, friends, I want you to see what God has done among the Gentiles. Here we are today. What do we do? We are treading down. We look at the side of it that those men did it, and God is out of it. I have been impressed with that until it stirs my heart and almost moves me to tears to think that I had read the Bible so long—I would' I could preach so that nobody could even say that I lived, but that God was doing that, and that I could so perform that work of God and do this will and perform his work, until everybody would say God was doing that, and I would disappear as a star disappears when the sun rises. Do you remember Peter, in that third chapter of Acts, when he was at the Temple and caused the lame man to rise and walk, and who immediately began to praise God. Suppose we were afflicted, how many of us would think to praise God?

You hear people talking about, “He is a most won-derful preacher, most wonderful man. Yet, after all, that is God’s doing this preaching. Anything living this life, that is God’s work. Let him, therefore, have the glory,” is the way the Bible talks about it. But when the apostle goes back on his second missionary tour he did the same thing—called them together and recited the great things God had done. And would it not be fine for the church here, or the community, or for any body of disciples engaged in that work, if when that work is done, everybody that knows about it and hears it, only saw God in it.

I believe we ought to study how to live like that. I pray that that would be the case—that God would stand out so people would understand that was God, and no puny man, who is no more than a worm, or dust or ashes. He remained there a few days and he went to Je-rusalem to consider certain matters of circumcision that had gotten into the church. About five years his first missionary tour lasted, and now he must go to Jerusalem about the question of circumcision. Some-body had been there teaching something they ought not to have taught.

I tell you this, look at your teachers, what they teach, and whenever a man doesn’t teach everything that is told in the Holy Scriptures, tell him to stop. So he went there—Barnabas went away—and they had told them things they hadn’t ought to have told them. Then they went to Jerusalem about it. And a letter was written—it was dictated to John Mark, and it was satisfactory to that bunch of elders in particular, and they brought it back and went on a second tour. Barnabas wanted to carry John Mark and Paul didn’t want to, because he had left hem in Perga, and a dispute arose. And sometimes brethren cannot agree, but that is not the thing. Paul and Barnabas were wonderfully good men. They disagreed over taking a certain man, who was not a good seaman. Barnabas wanted to carry him but Paul didn’t.. You know how kinsfolk are, mine or yours or anybody else’s—they must get just what they need, though they may be lost, and will be no doubt. But this letter was dictated to John Mark, and he drops out of the record. And then Paul takes Silas, and instead of going across the sea this time, he goes by land through Mysia and Troas, and then wanted to go into various places, and the Spirit would not allow him to do that. Now, let’s get a lesson: That is the spirit of a man we want to repel. But the Bible says: “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end of the way is death,” and says, “You shall not do all the things..... ” And then the Bible said: “Oh, Lord, It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” And therefore I want to ask you why a man should undertake it? It was this very man that in after years wrote these words: “They are the Sons of God.” And you must know that any man that is lead by his think’so’s, or dreams, or by what he understands, or anything like that, wasn’t led by the spirit of God ” And when the spirit.said, “No, you can’t preach in Bithynia. No, you must go straightforward to Macedonia,” and when the spirit said, “No,” that is the end of it. So therefore they go along and in just a day or two they were standing at the Aegean Sea. He had picked up Timothy at a school in Lystra, and the Bible students and commentators tell us that the most educated man in all history was Doctor Luke. They picked him up at Tarsus. When Paul was at Troas he had a vision, and that vision was, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” We understand that the Lord called them over there to preach the gospel.

I have known a few preachers who claimed to preach the Lord, but the Book says: We understand by that that the lord called us to preach the gospel. And then another statement is made: "Immediately they sought to go.” Get that, my friends, you know some-times we do it and carry it in stock. Somebody said: “On the plains of Neglect bleached the bones of countless millions, who at the point of victory, sat down to wait and died.”

Yes, God’s business requires immediate action. And I have been so wonderfully impressed in reading the s(tory of these men. The same day they were baptized, the same hour of the night.

“Straightway”—they never delayed .a minute, so far as I know. , Just as quick as it could be attended to, and they made it possible.

Sometimes we are going to obey God and do better, but we put it off; but the good Book says, “Do it im-mediately.” God calls and we want to go—we want to get there right now, and we can’t delay—God has called us. To do what? To preach the gospel.

I have heard a few illustrations made on the question of preaching the gospel.

I want to stop to tell you this—and we overlook our illustrations sometipies. If we can get illustrations from the Bible, I think we should take them from there, so that illustration is that preachers- of the gospel are like salesmen. Did you ever know a salesman in your life that had an article that any competitors were handling to compete it? Why, the gospel has no competition. If a man came out with seed.wheat, and another with dust or chaff, you would not pay any attention to that. One has the grain and the other the chaff. Gpd tells us that the true word is the wheat and the other is the chaff. It ought noc to be hard to get people to see that point. To make the gospel a competitive business, and he is going to sell jnine and I am going to sell his. Why, it is just chaff, always. “The Prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord."Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord: and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” And, “Therefore, behold, I am against the Prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbor.” And therefore he calls us over to preach the gospel, not to give our experiences or to preach anything else. The Bible said they took ship that day, and the next day they were on the Island of Neapolis, the first time that anybody had ever ventured to cross there, from the Hellespont and over to Neapolis. Did you notice the story, when, at other times, it required five days to make the same trip? What is the lesson from it ? It is this: That when you go im-mediately to do what God tells you to do; and you nev-er delay, he will help' you. I saw the Israelites standing over yonder on the banks of the Red Sea—They could go no 'further; They were entangled in the wilderness, and I saw the great Army of Pharaoh coming to take them back;’ and'a great cloud arose, and a pillar of fire, And I saw the Lord' look out of that cloud, that was darkness to the Egyptians, and light to the Israelites, and they could seb under the dark sea, under that cloud, and passed through, and the Egyptians passed around. I heard him say, ....... but to as many as received him he gave them the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name...... ”

Whatever a man tries to do, God will help him, and favorable winds will catch his sails, and he will be borne away. In two days they were in a little village, or colony, Philippi was -the name of it, and the Sabbath Day came. . .. You know that every once in a while, there is a day that stands out as holy in a man’s life, when an op-portunity comes knocking at the door—it does not come every day, but only occasionally. On the Sabbath Day they went out of the city to the river side, to worship God. They are in the Roman Colony. There are rich folk here and educated people, and here are some Jewish women over here trying to make a living, and one of them from Thyatira, with a company of saleswomen with her: but when the Sabbath day came she closed up her trunks. And she never attempted to sell a thing—and here we are in this good day, 1928, and we can’t even close up a little old dime business and come to his children where they drink the cup and eat the bread with him: but this woman, a Jewess, “Lydia” was her name, and she was earnest and religiously inclined, and when the Sabbath day came she turns from her business and goes out yonder to the weeping willows, and it was there that day, at that little prayer meeting, that God came and opened her heart, and she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. “And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us.”

I don’t know how many members attend your prayer meetings. In my opinion it would not take me long to pick out those that come to prayer meeting. Folks will more often go to dance halls, and even to the bathing beaches, and things like that, where they have no business—more often than they go to prayer meeting. This woman, not a Christian—she is. I tell you, away from home, with a great company of salesladies out yonder—and they are all out there in devotion, in prayer. There are some people God wants, and he will put himself to trouble, so to speak, in order that he might enlist them in tbs service. Did you notice about the man last night that left his business to go one thousand miles, and God intercepted him? The man who will go one thousand miles and worship God, so imbued with the spirit of worship, that when he has gone back forty or fifty miles, he is still pouring over the Scriptures, vastly interested, concentrated and endeavoiing to drink of those things. God would rather have one man like that than to have the whole City of Samaria. He would rather have one woman like Lydia over yonder on the bank of that stream, than to have one thousand of these indifferent, careless members of the church, that bring spots and wrinkles and disgrace upon the institution for which the Lord Jesus Christ died.

He wants that kind of people. The Book says there wrere a number of those women. But did you notice there was just one that stood out. I.noticed that long ago, when trying to preach the Bible—there would not be many folks paying attention: but when I looked back and found there was just one woman in that company whose name stands out, and that she had heard Paul and the Lord opened her heart, and she “attended unto the things spoken by Paul”—I wonder if there is not another thing, that the Book opened her heart. Now, the Book says of the Gentiles to open their eyes. And then. I read in the first chapter of Ephesians of having the eyes of your heart opened. I never would have known that the heart had any eyes if it hadn’t been for that'.

I once preached to a number of soldiers of the Grand Army, about “Having your loins girded about with truth,” and then I lived a number of years and kept reading the Bible: and one day I stumbled over this passage, (I had walked over all these things), in which it.said, “Wherefore, gird up the loins of your minds” (1 Peter 1:13): then I discovered that the mind had loms, and the truth is the loins, of your mind. The Bible tells us the heart has eyes, and that those eyes are to be opened: and the Book says, “thar the Lord opened Lydia’s heart.” Well, here’s Paul—you know how he went back yonder on the first tour and told them what God was doing: and .here’s God’s Word, through Paul, preaching and teaching that wom-an; and. she is enlightened and her eyes are opened; and the Book says that “She attended to the things spoken of Paul.” Paul says, we were “Buried with him >n baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of (tod, who hath raised him from the dead”; and the Book tells you, “She attended to the things of Paul,” and when she was baptized, Well, what did she do? Well, “She besought us and persuaded us,” saying, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there.” A woman that far from home, in rented quarters, and a bunch of sales ladies—and here’s Paul and Silas, and Luke, and Timothy. at' least four preachers, and this woman trying to make a living over there: “You come into my house and abide there.”

You know I went to a church once, and there was no home in that town to take care of a preacher, no facilities: “No, no, we are not fixed to take care of him.” But you think about that, that the Book says': “She saw us and persuaded us and prevailed upon us” —“If you judge me faithful, come into my house and abide there.”

I read later about a woman that built a room, and every time the Prophet came by, there was the room, and nobody else occupied it, and she had a son, and one day, when the bright sun came out, she laid the body on the Prophet’s bed in that'room, and the boy ! was dead, and she ran away—and the Prophet went into that same room and there breathed into him again the breath of life and he lived once more (2 Kings 4:32-37).

You hear people say, “Excuse me, I am too busy, I just haven’t time.” Do you know that is not the kind of people God wants? He wouldn’t give a dime a thousand for that kind of people. A woman that is idle, with nothing to do, the Lord doesn’t want her; he wants busy men and women .that' have something to do. And therefore, when he enlists people with that energy to do things—;that is why I take it he was so anxious to enlist Paul, because of his determination and tenacity and his courage, and because of his way, and spirit of just going on, and just doing things that he thought ought to be done, and yet I know when you can get that energy and that interested and turn it into the proper channel, why, then it will do as much for God.

I have thought of the woman and the man-power— just call it that, that is ourselves—of the mighty streams and cataracts and waterfalls in this county that they have been doing no good to anybody, washing out fences, and running over land, and the devastation up and down this land of ours, those streams throughout the years: but in these latter days I have seen them harness those waters and turn that wasted energy into channels of industry, until our whole coun-try is illuminated with the light and cars are drawn with that wonderful power, and it is felt in every home, in every town throughout this remarkable country. Before it' did nobody any good.

Here’s a man left alone, with nothing to eat and drink, why, just harness that energy and turn it, with the brawn and muscle and bone, into the service of God. God wants busy people, energetic people. If they are lazy he is not1 much interested in them. He wants men that will sacrifice, that will make a way to go if he wants them. And therefore, along here, we can pick up some of the richest and finest lessons in the world, in the city of Philippi. There is another lesson, and it is this: That there was a damsel there, a soothsayer and fortune teller and if you have never read the Bible on that question, before you have your fortune told, you had better read it; because that is so interesting, and may be classed as the works of the flesh—witchcraft—a sort of female term—a generic term, and said, “They that do such things cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.” But you say, “I am not a fortune teller, a soothsayer”—but what is the difference? What is the difference in a bootlegger and the man that buys it? I want to tell you that there would not be a bootlegger in the world if there were not someone to buy his or her wares. Yes, she was a soothsayer—she was mightily afflicted; she was held by a lot of crooked men for what she could do for them—like a cow— they held her in captivity, so to speak. So when Paul and Silas were in that city, and that girl followed them that day and said, “These men are the servants of God and show us the way”—Do you know she knew more about that than some college president's know of how the way of salvation came, and that Silas and Paul were God’s servants, that showed the way of salvation.

There are some people in the world yet ihat think you cannot show them the way of salvation, but must accept their disposition and walk in it. But that evil spirit aid come out of her, and she could not tell any more fortunes, and her owners were just all out of sorts about it; and they had Paul and Silas arrested and charged them with sedition and that they were disturbers of the peace, and they beat' them and stoned them with rocks, and later in the. day put them in stocks, and then at midnight Paul and Silas were singing and praying to God. I don't know whether I could have prayed or not. I can see where prayer came in, but not singing, in those old Roman stocks, with their ankles twisted and thrust through those, there in excruciating pain—they prayed and sang, and God heard them, and then the earthquake came and the bands were loosened. But we will have to pass over that for this time. The next day the man who had Paul and Silas put in prison sent word down there, “You, tell those men to depart in peace,” and Paul said, “No, tiiey put us in here, and we being Romano, and without a cause, let them come down and fetch us out.” Put them in there lor what? Why, they might cure every afflicted person, No, the preachers, if permitted in any community, will break up every pool hall and every hell-sink in all the country; and therefore we have to drive them out. Why, the whole world will worship this idol, and they cried him down. In the 19th chapter of Acts you may read the story. Do you remember when Jesus Christ has crossed the sea and gone into the land of the Gadarenes, he encountered a man whose name he said was “Legion,” “who had his dwelling among the tombs,” and was possessed of an unclean spirit, “and no man could bind him, no, not with chains, and always night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself wTith stones; but when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? L adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. And he asked him, What is thy name, and he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country,” and near the mountains there was a great herd of swine feeding; “And all the devils besought him, saying, send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand), and were choked in the sea” (Mark 5; Matthew 8; Luke 8). And those keepers came and told what had happened, and they begged him to leave that country. Well, why? Well, they might lose every hog they had. That is the reason Jesus Christ is not in this church tonight, not' in many homes and places, because when he comes in you must clear the way, and you don’t want to. We wTould rather go to a dance, or go to the bathing beach, or picture show, than to go into the gate that stands ajar, or into Heaven after awhile. It looks like we need to give our attention to this very point; that if you would rather trace a carpet than to have Jesus Christ, .then you can have it at your pleasure; but you must reap the consequences.

We observed, when we left this place, Paul made a tour to Athens, across the sea and told the church what God had done; and then went on the missionary tour, and when they howled him down that night, in Ephesus, and when God was impressed by his teach-ings, when he had taught in the synagogue, and they brought their bags of silver and turned them and counted fifty thousand pieces of silver—No, just burn it. up—God doesn’t want that kind of money, and therefore they did burn it up. When he left there he went over to Macedonia and preached about six months, and stopped at the town of Ephesus, and in that he said: “Wherefore, I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God”, and “I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from house, to house.” Also, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock.......For I know this, that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in . among you, nqt sparing the flock. Also, of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me (Acts 20:26-34).
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My friends, whenever God’s word is taken from his works—and the effort today, in the schools of our country and the Universities throughout the land is to take it away from us—and, I am afraid, even among homes of Christians, and in schools, that the word is not treated with that seriousness and concern that it merits.

I commend you to the word of God and his grace. If we succeed we must rise higher, and they do nothing, “if’s”. When they had acknowledged Jesus before the close of that little meeting that day, they prayed. The last thing they did was to pray; and when the Savior was on the Cross he prayed. When he was baptized he prayed; he prayed in the multitude, he prayed in solitude—he prayed on the doorstep; he prayed on the Mount of Olives, and when he went to his death there was a prayer on his lips. They were in prayer from the start to their destination, and at the hour of prayer Peter and John went to the Temple, and when Dorcas died, they sent for Peter and he went t’o the death chamber.......and in the silence of it all he prayed, and then said, Tabitha, arise, and then when Peter went to his house they prayed all the night long. And when Paul and Silas were with their feet in the stocks they prayed unto God; and therefore I might say to you in their parting words, “they prayed”—the last thing they prayed. And so tonight, my friends, let prayer feed and clothe us, and let’s never let the sun go down without prayer. If I didn’t know there was somebody back yonder who, before lying down to sleep, would offer a prayer for me—I know there are those tonight that will kneel by the bedside and send a petition up yonder to God’s merciful throne for me, that he might keep me and bring me home without bodily harm. What would I do without that? Suppose you were to know that nobody cared for you, or prayed for you. And when Stephen was being stoned to death, and as he knelt in the midst of it all: “I saw Jesus at the right hand of God; Lord, Jesus, receive my spirit,” and the last things he ever did was to pray as his spirit was waft'ed on high and upward. Just briefly speaking of these three Missionary tours—Paul left Athens, then and went to Syria, and when he left there he went to Jerusalem; but when he left Syria they begged him not' to go—the whole church begged him, and he said, “Why do you weep and break my heart—I am not only ready to be bound in Jerusalem, but I am ready to die there for Jesus Christ.” Would to God we could increase his kind on earth, that they might finish their course with joy, and testify to the gospel, to the Grace of God. And tonight, aren’t there some who would like to come under the shadow of his wing? He will let you live in the hollow of his hand, on the highest ground, until you are on the peak of the highest mountain.