11 - The Danger of Being Almost Altogether

How good God has been to me to allow me to have such good friends. They say a friend is one who knows your faults and loves you anyway. When I comb over my memory and think of the good and great men that have adopted me, taken me to their hearts, and allowed me to minister to their churches and schools, I simply do not know how I can thank God enough. It was most gracious for Dr. Edman to think of me here and have me here, along with Brother McAfee. I thank him for inviting me here. I have enjoyed myself and my preaching—I say that with no intention of being funny. I have preached about those things dear to my heart.

    Tonight I want to talk about the danger of being “almost, but not altogether.” Since the twenty-sixth chapter of Acts, in which this occurs, is thirty-two verses long and since I have a limited time, I shall not read the entire chapter. It is the story of Paul’s defense before Agrippa. Let me break in at the twenty-second verse:

Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: That Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people and to the Gentiles. And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. For the king knoweth of these things, before whom I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God that not only thou but also all that hear me this day were both almost, and altogether, as I am, except these bonds. (Acts 26:22-29) I would that you were not only almost, but altogether. The living human scene here is one of almost ideal beauty and power. The witness of Paul before Agrippa is one of the noblest chapters in the entire Bible—and certainly in written literature. Here is a man in chains, a victim of the spite and jealousies of Jews with connections. They had not the brass to charge him with a real crime. There were robbers there, but not a man rose to accuse Paul of robbery. There were murderers there, but no one charged this man with murder. There were traitors to their country, but no one dared say he was a traitor. There were arsonists there, but no one dared say, “This man burns down temples.” Yet with one voice they cried against Paul. Here was a man of heaven among men of earth. With characteristic violence the men of earth reacted against the man of heaven. As it is written in the Bible, the once-born man will persecute the twice-born man. Always it is Cain who will slay Abel. But here stands the man Paul, to make his defense. I like to read this passage quietly and let it soak into my heart. When Daniel Webster was holding audiences spellbound in this country with his amazing oratory, someone said, “I like to sit up close when Webster makes his speech. When I sit under that great brow and listen to the outpouring of his mighty eloquence I always go away feeling that I am a greater man than when I came in.” And I like to read this passage sometimes just to see whether a bit of the wonder of it will not rub off on me—the superiority, the excellence of the man. His whole bearing, his whole manner has no poor language but clean and right and good. It comes to us in this English that is beautiful and musical. His attitude, his diction—everything was sharp and clean and gracious. Here was a superior man. As he stands before the king to tell why he is there and defend himself, his argument is sound and learned and frank and direct. Nothing of the tricks of rhetoric that men employ—no appealing to the feeling of the man, but frankness and an honesty that goes straight through to the heart of the man, Agrippa. The substance of his testimony was such that it was, in itself, a tremendous argument for the message that he preached. Notice he said that he had always been a strict religious Jew. He was no renegade, no man who had been careless about his relationship to God. He had been living in good conscience before God. Although, he admitted, blind on a point or two, he had always been a strict religious Jew, deeply schooled in the Old Testament itself and in the theology of the rabbis. He then said that he had followed this Jewish religion that he had loved so much straight into the arms of Jesus. In embracing Jesus, he was not forsaking the religion of his fathers, but was helping to fulfill it. In coming to Jesus, he was coming to the One in whom all the prophets from the beginning of the world talked about. Instead of apologizing for his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, he said, “I have never believed anything that is not believed by the fathers. I have never taught anything that is not written in the Scriptures of the very Jews who are opposing me and have me up here with chains on my wrists. The very religion my accusers hold and in whose name they have me here is the religion that I followed straight into the arms of Jesus Christ. So instead of apologizing for being a renegade Jew, I am a Jew who has found the Messiah, and the fulfillment of the prophesies of my fathers’ Scriptures, which God has given through Moses and all the prophets.” He admitted frankly that at first, in his blindness, he had persecuted Christ. He had more knowledge than love or faith, so at first, he said, he had persecuted Christ. But he had met the Lord Jesus Christ on Damascus Road, and a flash of heavenly light had come to his soul—so blinding in its intensity he was sightless for three days. “But now,” he said, “I have a commission from God. Since that hour when I met God yonder on the road and stepped out from Judaism right straight on into Christianity and the arms of Christ, I have been preaching everywhere, witnessing only what the prophets have declared: that a Redeemer should suffer, die, and rise again to be the light of the Gentiles and the Jews.” Then dramatically he said, “It is for this reason that I have this chain on my wrist.” The man to whom he addressed these noble remarks was deeply moved. He had come from his busy life doing what kings are supposed to be doing, and now the sudden shock and wonder of it almost overcame him. For you see, Paul had indirectly set forth the powerful proof of the truth of Christianity, and he had also along with it indirectly set forth the reason why Agrippa should turn to Christ. The argument was, “If Jesus Christ is for me, He is also for you, O king. If I found Him by stepping over from Judaism into Christ, then that is an argument as old as Moses and older, so you ought also to be a Christian.” He did not say it quite like that, but the whole implication and inference is there. Agrippa was deeply moved by the preaching of the gospel, and he was not the only one. He said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28). The different translations toss those words around, but they all add up to about the same thing. The man was profoundly touched, and he said, “I am near to believing what you have to say, Paul. Almost thou persuadest me.” Notice then that there was no quip in the mouth of Paul, and no flippant remark. He said, so nobly and so beautifully, “I wish before my God tonight, oh king, that you and all the others who are listening to me were not almost but altogether a Christian.” That is the reply of the man of God, and that is what I want to talk about—I would that thou were not almost but altogether a true Christian. There is a woe in the word “almost.” When Agrippa used the word “almost,” he did not know it at the time, but he had committed the greatest moral blunder of his life. History shows that the man’s blunder was fatal. Shipwrecks, earthquakes, tidal waves, epidemics and all the rest, nothing compares in sheer unrelieved tragedy with the soul that has seen the cross and turned away from it, that has heard the gospel and rejected it—maybe reluctantly and with many tears, maybe promising his own heart that he would not always reject it—but rejected it nevertheless. The moral tragedy of one who has finally decided that Jesus Christ is not for him—not all the great dramatists in the world, not Shakespeare nor Aeschylus nor any or all taken together could ever have packed into a drama all the stark terror and tragedy that is in the single word “almost” when it is not “altogether.” I think how this man had wiped out with this one word “almost.” Kindly and friendly he was; I do not think there was even a sarcasm in his voice. He was deeply moved by the persuasion of the Word set before him. In refusing he wiped out forever all the dreams he ever had of a better world than this. Regardless of our backgrounds I think there is hardly one who breathes with mortal breath that has not somewhere down the years said to himself, “This surely is not all there is to life. Surely these Christians and Jews and all the others who have dreamed about heaven—the American Indian with his “happy hunting ground,” the Greek and his Elysian fields—surely there must be something beyond all this. I cannot feed my soul on automobiles, television, bank accounts and good clothes and forget about it for another month, another year, another ten years.” Then in some moment of darkness or silence or at the graveside of a loved one, this feeling comes back again. “Oh,” we say, “if there be a God, this must not be it. There must be something real”—and then to sell out that feeling! That is what Agrippa did—he sold out. Even that old king must have had his quiet moments there in the garden, when he shooed away his servants and sat in the silence, listening to the night birds and dreaming of another world, of a hope beyond the grave. Perhaps he felt his pulse surging within him and said, “It cannot always be, and when it ends and there is no pulse, then where do I go?” But he swept away all the hopes and the dreams when he said, “almost.” All he had hoped for in the future—the dreams and the longing for permanence—all went out from under him and suspended him in immensity without a foundation or a place to rest or hide. Agrippa sold out before God. I think of others not so noble as Agrippa, maybe simple people and plainer people like you and me. I think of a man being tried for murder. All the evidence is in and the jury retires as he plays with his lead pencil and tries to keep up his spirits by talking to his lawyer. He is waiting, not knowing what to expect. Behind those locked doors twelve men debate his future. You seldom know what they say. Back there they toss the evidence around, one man talking, then another. It looks as if the verdict is going to be “not guilty.” Then they decide, “Oh, it cannot be. The evidence indicates guilt.” Then, like a top that is spinning and slowly running down, at last it all goes one way and the vote is taken. How near that man came to going out into the sunshine again, meeting his family again, sitting on his own lawn, reading the newspaper with his slippers on the floor! If he had only known his heart would have stopped with the excitement of it. He was almost acquitted, but the vote was “guilty,” and after months of waiting he pays the price. He walks into that room and sees the electric chair. I once sat in that terrible chair. I walked up and allowed them to strap me in, and something of the horror of that moment came to my imagination. There he sits for one awful moment, and then it is over. He was almost a free citizen again. I think of Judas Iscariot. I think that we overdo our description of Judas Iscariot. He was not a total devil. He was the son of perdition in the Hebrew sense, but it is an idiomatic expression, and it does not mean that he was a veritable devil. He had a heart, too. I do not believe in taking the heart out of people, not even the other political party, nor the Communists nor anybody. No matter how much the devil may get in and wreck and destroy and damn a man, he is still a human being. He may still love children, and he may still be friendly and have the dreams that Adam’s sons have. Still he may love to hear the birds sing there on the bough and stroke the kitty as she goes by and call his dog and pat his head. He still may be a human being even though he is a Stalin or a Hitler. I think Judas was a human being. We have made him a whipping boy and piled upon him all the evil that we can think about, and yet he was decent enough that nobody knew which one it was that betrayed Jesus with a kiss. If he had been such a devil they certainly would have said, “Oh, Judas did it,” but nobody thought of Judas. Judas was secretly a bad man. Certainly, no doubt, he had his good moments. We know this is so because after he betrayed Jesus with a kiss for thirty pieces of silver, and he found that Jesus had not escaped as he may have figured He would, but that his friend was actually going to die, he was overcome with remorse, not repentance. He rushed back and dramatically hurled down the $18 at the feet of the cynical priest and said, “I have betrayed innocent blood.” And in a paroxysm of self-accusation he rushed out and hanged himself. But he almost became St. Judas. He was almost a believer in Jesus, that is obvious. He loved that quiet tender man who did and said such wonderfully strange and beautiful things, and though Judas did allow the devil to tempt him, that poor son of perdition did allow the perdition in his heart to damn him at last. He was not a damned man to start with, and he might have been St. Judas instead of Judas Iscariot. The name whistles out of our mouths like the voice of a serpent. Nobody ever named his son Judas Iscariot Jones—nobody ever put that name upon an innocent brow of a baby, for he is Judas, the accursed, upon whom the ages have placed their stern disapproval. But it would have taken him only one minute to have become Judas, the tender follower of Jesus, and maybe they would have put “Saint” before his name, but it was almost, not altogether. So he died with the curse on his head, so sorry for the way he had lived that he died of suicide. I think of the life-term prisoners. For each one there must have been a time when they were almost all right. I believe in theological total depravity, that we are all bad, hopelessly bad, but I also believe that humanly there is a lot of good in folks. David said, “My goodness extendeth not to Thee, but to the righteous which are in the earth” (Psalms 16:2-3). There are two directions of righteousness. Not everybody is a devil and has horns, though some evangelists try to make us think it so. But everybody is lost, and has to be saved, or they will be lost forever. There are lots of good, decent people that are not Christians, but that righteousness extends not to God, it extends out to people. It is a social righteousness, but that divine righteousness that makes us acceptable before the eyes of God must be given to us by the blood of the Lamb. When He shall come with trumpet sound, Oh may I then in Him be found;

Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. ¹ That is the righteousness that admits me to the presence of God. There is a righteousness that extends to my neighbor, a reputation I may get for being honest, decent, courteous, paying my debts, taking back the lawn mower, and being a nice fellow among men. There is nothing wrong with that. There is a lot of modern preaching that sneers at righteousness and decency and good citizenship as though it were an affront to God to love your wife and pay your debts and bring your children up right. I think that is a tragic misunderstanding of this whole business to place a premium upon sin and penalize righteousness. No, the only problem is that this kind of righteousness is a social righteousness, and it goes out to men but not up to God. There’s many a life-term prisoner with the prison pallor upon his cheek who was once a decent fellow back home. I have never been committed to prisons but I have held meetings in prisons, and I have gone through and seen the men on death row waiting to die, playing ball, trying to keep up their spirits a little. Those fellows were not all born bad. They were good decent fellows around the house, no doubt like some of you, in fact all of us. We loved our mothers, teased our sisters and loved them to death though we would not let them know it. Many of those boys who will die behind the dark prison walls at one time walked out of the house and down the street whistling. It was Sunday evening, and mother said, “Would you go to church with me tonight?” “Oh, maybe, Mother, I will be back.” But he got out there, and a pal called him over with a whistle, and they went somewhere else. Nothing wrong with that. They missed church, but they went somewhere else. However, the next Sunday night they went still somewhere else, and it kept getting worse. Sin always gets worse by degrees. Not all sins are alike. Sin has intensity of guilt, pretty soon delinquency, then stolen cars, and then murder. The life-term prisoner almost became a decent, respected citizen with a house on a lot, a car, family, lawn, a job, friends, vacations, fishing trips, ball games and fun. But tonight he is behind bars. It is not enough to be almost all right. “Oh,” said the man of God, “I would that you might not only be almost but altogether.” I think of the living dead, the zombies and ghosts that walk. They may walk in expensive suits and drive luxury automobiles, but they are living dead men. Way back there yonder somewhere they had an opportunity. The gospel was preached, maybe by some simple man whose language was not too eloquent, but an honest man who loved his Savior and people. He heard it and walked away sober down the street, got in his car, and as he drove, he said to himself, “That man was right. I am a big fool to live the way I am living. He was right.” He was almost, but not altogether. He said, “I will go back next Sunday night, that is what I will do,” but next Sunday night his wife has a date for him someplace else and pretty soon he forgot his little vow. Now, older, he is a walking dead man. He is a disillusioned, embittered, defeated, lost man. Not a damned man yet, but a lost man. It is not enough to be almost. I don’t like to talk about hell. I said before that no man should preach about hell except with tears in his eyes. I trust there is tenderness at least in my heart, but I just want to mention in passing, I believe in hell. I had a very dear friend when I was a lad. He taught me telegraphy, the old international Morse code, and this very dear friend and I went to a meeting together. He lied and said he was a Christian when a personal worker came and asked him if he was, because he did not want them to bother him. Poor, miserable sinner that I was, at least I did not lie. I said, “No, I am not.” Then they talked to me and pushed me around and massaged me and tried to get me to go, and I did not go, but at least I had not lied to the Holy Ghost. Shortly after that my friend, still in his twenties, was sitting, talking to his sister. He looked at his watch when the train whistled (he was a railroad man) and said, “Old Number Six is on time.” Then he stopped talking and she wondered why for he was a friendly, jovial fellow. She walked over, and he had died sitting there. He had evidently had some heart condition, and that was the last thing he ever said. Well, that struck me. You know how fellows in their teens get attached to some older man? Well, he was my hero. He was a railroad man, and I always loved the moan of the trains. Trains and the sound of an old hound dog on the horizon are sweeter to me than symphony music. I would wake up in the night, and I knew the language of the whistle and knew what they were whistling about, and I knew my friend was gone forever. I knew where he had gone, and I myself was an unconverted sinner. I went to my room, got on my knees and prayed the most awful and futile prayer that I think has ever been prayed, to my knowledge. I prayed, “Oh God, please, if it is possible, get my friend Thurman out of hell.” That is a terrible prayer. Of course God did not answer it. But Thurman was a nice fellow, a decent companion, and a good man to be around, and he was almost saved. Thurman is not here anymore. God is going to do something to take the sadness and sting out of those friends and family members that you wept over who died without Christ. In that great day when God wipes tears away, He will wipe those tears away too (Revelation 21:4). I am sure of that. Yet down on the human level, you still grieve for that nice brother whom you loved, who used to baby-sit you before the term “baby-sitting” was heard of, who gave you his clothes when he outgrew them, who let you ride his bicycle—and who died suddenly, and died without Christ. You have grieved ever since. He was a decent fellow and your loved brother, but he is gone; you know where he has gone and not all the kindness of the preacher can ever get him out of there. God handles men when they die. He was a good fellow, and there is many a man like that down there. If we were to go to that terrible place (and I am as near to it as I ever want to get), we would find lots of people who can quote Scripture. We would find people who would astonish us preachers with the number of verses and texts they could quote. If there would be such a thing as singing, though there could not be, I am sure that there are tens of thousands there that could join us in singing “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” though it would not apply to them. The people who are there are not all pagans, Nazis and Communists. People that are there, many of them, are people that almost did not go there. Almost they escaped it. Almost they sought God. They planned, maybe, and promised. They walked around a church two or three times, and started in, and then backed off and did not go in. Maybe they sat through many a revival meeting and promised themselves, but they did not do anything about it. Almost is not enough. Are you a true Christian? Please do not take me wrongly and be hurt by this. I must discharge my soul before God. Are you a true Christian? Some of us, particularly young people, are being badly betrayed these days by our teachers, church people and folks who preach and teach like myself. We do not mean to do it, but we are so eager to make a convert that we sometimes rush people prematurely into a decision which never goes deep enough. We get them to sign a tract, or sign a New Testament. I do not mean that is not a good thing to do, but many times it misfires and does not get the sinner in at all. Sometimes they stand and say, “Yes, I take Him,” but they do not know what they have stood for. They go out unchanged and do not know quite why. My listening friends, if this is the last time you ever hear my voice, hear me say this to you, that unless you have been changed by an inner working of God in your heart, in what we call regeneration, you are still in your sins. No amount of baptizing or going to church or joining religious groups or reading New Testaments—no amount of religious effort can save your soul. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:3). Being born again does not mean signing your name on a card, though if you are born again you can sign your name on a card, thank God. Mail it in and say, “I am born again.” I do not mean to speak against that, I only say that many times that does not go far enough. In our eagerness to count noses and say we had 40 conversions yesterday, we let people through when in honesty to their soul we never should have done it. Come on, you young people, all of you. God bless you! I have watched your faces, you have nodded and said “Hi” to me as I walked around the campus, and I suppose you thought, “What an old fellow that is.” Maybe you did not admire me, but oh, how I have admired you! A lot of you remind me of my kids, my little girl and what she will be four or five years from now when she comes to Wheaton. And I have loved you. Though our campaign has been more of a deeper life conference than an evangelistic campaign, I cannot close without saying to you, please do not ever let the devil fool you. Do not rest with “almost.” Make it “altogether.” Be sure that you are all the way in—that Jesus Christ is yours and you are His. You say, “How can you know, Mr. Tozer?” Well, you meet all the biblical conditions there are and trust Him, and your trust will be its own reward. His work within you will be self-validating and self-witnessing, and you will know you have passed from death unto life. And do not forget, you can know it! Do not let yourself be cheated, please, because the man of God said, “It is not enough to be almost, but you must be altogether.” I thank God my conversion was a real, transforming, amazing conversion that turned me from being a careless sinner to being a Christian and I knew that I was born again. I did not have to be told it—I knew. It was not a conclusion I had drawn from a set of texts. It was partly that, certainly, for faith cometh by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17), but it became to me more than that. It became for me an inner witness—I am His and He is mine. “Amazing love, how can it be?” You can know tonight. Think for a moment about your own heart. Are you a true Christian—an “altogether” Christian? Or are you almost converted? Will you not make this the time when you say, “I do not care what anybody says, I am going to push my way through past all my fears and doubts to Jesus Christ, and I am going to throw myself out on Him like I would throw myself off a diving board into a swimming pool. I will trust Him tonight to save me through and through. May it not be said of me in that terrible day, ‘You were almost in, but not altogether.’” No greater tragedy could visit you—polio, the loss of arms or legs, blindness—nothing could be so starkly frightful as your having been almost but never really born again by faith in Jesus Christ.

[This sermon was delivered at Wheaton College’s Pierce Chapel on the evening of October 5, 1952.]