In this sermon, the speaker shares the story of his father's journey towards salvation. As a young boy, his father had a strong desire to become rich and was willing to do whatever it took to achieve it. However, as he grew older, he realized the emptiness of his pursuit and the impact it had on his family. One day, a woman confronted his father about his lack of faith in God, pointing to the transformation in his sons' lives as evidence of God's power. This encounter led his father to spend hours in prayer, seeking God's forgiveness and guidance. Despite his efforts to build a decent life, the outbreak of World War II shattered his dreams and those of millions of others. The sermon emphasizes the importance of turning to God and finding hope and purpose in Him, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Thank you for the lovely singing and the preciousness of the conscious, the consciousness of His presence and His very sweet singing, these lovely hymns together. Thank you dear brother for leading us and God bless you all for being here. It's very, very wonderful. Can we just bow our hearts before God in silence. Come Lord Jesus in mercy, hold us under Thy blood and by Thy Spirit, minister to our hearts, have mercy on us all Lord, that this meeting may be of God, owned of God, taken up by God and that God will be allowed to have His way. Come keep us Lord, in the hollow of Thy hand, yet tonight, and mould us as clay in the potter's hands, through Thy word, in Jesus Christ's holy name, we ask these things, Amen. God says in His word, honour thy father, honour thy father and thy mother. And I'd like to attempt to honour my father here tonight in sharing with you, sharing with you the things that I remember of his life that I would believe would bring glory to God. When my father was ten years old, his parents divorced. And for many years, from that time onward, he was torn, he was torn between father and mother. It's a horrible word, torn. I suppose one could say, ripped apart. I know some children are affected more badly than others, but the masses of all these homes, where most people who married in this world are divorced now, the masses, the most children alive today, they're torn, ripped apart. And for many years my father was torn between his father and mother, from the age of ten. The scar and the wound and the hurt never healed of what happened there at ten years of age, for the rest of his life, it never healed. I remember when he was an old man, at the very mention of his father and mother separating, when he was ten. After all those years, the mention of that, and tears would well up in his eyes, and flow down his face, and would turn and walk away. He never spoke of it. He never spoke of it. He never, ever recovered. For the rest of his life, the hurt never, ever healed, never, ever healed. No words, there are no words to tell of the damage and the hurt in a child's mind, when his father and mother divorced. And that which is meant by God to be his security, the two people that can be his security in God's eyes, was meant to be his security, his stability, where he sensed love and protection, and became stable and conscious of love and care, and the right atmosphere to grow up in, in God's eyes. Suddenly, that was ripped apart, ripped apart, and all I can say is the damage, the damage and the hurt done in a child's heart and mind, whose parents divorced. There is no words to tell. It is no wonder that God, in the Bible, says that He hateth divorce. God says, I hate, I hate, I hate divorce. And I think, in my human limitations, that the main reason, if not the only reason, that I can cry out now that I believe God says those words as He looks at the hurts, as He looks at the wounds, the repercussions, for the rest of the lives of those children, who should have known stability in a father and mother, but instead found themselves torn apart. I think that's the reason God mainly cries out from His heart, I hate putting away, I hate it, God says, as He looks at the children and the wounds and the hurts. Right to an old man, that child still weeps, a child that was hurt, then at the age of 13, depression, an economical depression came upon the world. The wealth of nations, within days, was gone. It's hard to comprehend, to someone who's never been through that, how suddenly there's no value to money, how suddenly men, in their millions, didn't have a home, when they didn't think they wouldn't be homeless. Suddenly millions, millions across the West, were without a home. Millions and millions without work. Hundreds of thousands, it is said, committed suicide in the first few months of the depression, across the West. Men who couldn't work, who couldn't bring home money to feed their children, who were homeless. Men who had businesses, who suddenly everything was robbed, and one moment from them they were left with nothing. And somehow this is what happens when there's an economic collapse across the world. It's a terrible thing. Suicide was all over the world, as men couldn't face the hardships and the shock of having nothing to be able to provide. Men who were lawyers, men with degrees behind their names, couldn't find work. They had to do menial tasks to bring in some money to survive. Education didn't help. There was no money. There was no money. Homes went into terrible darkness when children all over the world left school, couldn't go on with their schooling, and had to go and try and somehow find money to bring in a few shillings to put another loaf of bread somehow to survive in that home. And my father, at 13 years of age, had to leave school along with many, many children and go onto the streets. And he worked for hours and hours every day as a 13-year-old boy with a spade and a shovel and a pick, and he worked weeping, weeping for hours as the hands formed blisters, and in the blisters suddenly he saw they broke, and it was blood. But he just wept silently as his body hurt for fear of losing his job. He so needed to take that little few shillings back to his mother. But in his heart, in his heart as a little boy with all his hurting and all his confusion and all the wounds inflicted on his whole being already in life, as he stood there battling through the day and weeping silently, he began to cry out words in his heart one day, words that were to turn the course of his life, turn the whole course of his life. He cried out from his heart as a little boy, one day I will get money, one day I will become rich. I don't care what I have to do in this life to get it, but I will get rich. It doesn't matter what I have to do to get it, I will get rich. I will not see my children resort to this to survive as I have to. I will not see my children resort to this to survive. Those words echoed through his heart for the rest of his life, what he said as a little boy in all his hurt. These men that worked with him, rough-hardened men, they began to drink heavily. They didn't have ethical or morals concerning children. They held out drinks to him, and this little fellow at the age of 13 found himself lying drunk. His mother came to search for him late in the night, seeking out her child, and when she saw him lying down drunk, she began to sob uncontrollably. She wasn't able to go near to lift him up. She just realized as she looked at this boy what life had made already of him, the hurts of life. My father looked up in his drunkenness as a little boy, and as he realized his mother was looking, he began to curse and swear language of all the dirty words he'd ever heard in life. In his drunkenness and bitterness and confusion, he began to curse and to swear, and it broke his mother's heart. I don't know if my grandmother ever recovered from what I can gather. Something died in her when she saw what life had done to her eldest son by the age of 13. Something just died in her. Well, a few years went by, and opportunities came more, and my father somehow found a job that was worth putting his heart into. And for fear of losing that job, that opportunity, there was something that he could build up here. He poured himself like a slave to prove himself to the owner of that firm. He slaved, pouring his whole being in to somehow excel above the others who were given opportunities in that same business. So much did he work that as the owner of the firm, loved my father. He loved him. He respected him, and he guided him. And there was a future suddenly held out, a hope for a future, something worthwhile in life to fight for. My father began to see something of this longing in his heart, was in his hands, was in his grasp. It was something he could fight for, to get money, to get position, someone trusted him, someone loved him in the business world. But he still, how the problem that started at the age of 13, I don't know, it still gripped him, this drinking. He couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. He found himself drunk and drunk again and again. Drunk through his teenage years, despite this longing to prove himself in his work. And he was keeping company that was dangerous, bad company, with bad boys, loose morals, the wrong things that they were all doing. And it frightened him in his heart, but he didn't break from these boys. Somehow he was drawn back to them. No matter what, he saw the dangers of good become of life. He was drawn back to them. There was something in him that drew him back. And then he met my mother and he felt so in love. He tried once to tell us of what he felt for my mother. He didn't have to. Oh, he loved my mother. He treasured her. He fought for my mother's love. When he saw my mother and her beauty, she was such a beautiful lady. My father fought for her. He so loved her. And when she loved him back, he held on to this for the first time in his life. He seemed to find something worth fighting for in life, something worth holding on for, something so beautiful that he never knew would be his or would he put into his, into his hands to keep. She wanted his love. Oh, he loved her. He loved her. Because of this love for my mother, he tried to stop drinking. He put aside all the drinking. He tried to stop swearing altogether. He tried to clean his life out because of his love. He wanted her. He didn't want to lose her through things that could have lost her love. He put friends aside, got them out of his life who were wrong friends, wrong influences. And he put his heart, shed his heart on bringing his life to something decent, just to hold this beautiful, beautiful girl. But then something happened the world didn't know would come so swiftly. War broke out. The Second World War came upon the world, and millions, and millions, and millions, and millions, and millions of young people left home, left loved ones, left all their hopes, and the people they held on treasuring for their love, wanting to build a life with, suddenly they left, and their millions and millions never ever to return, never ever to return. Millions and millions were robbed of all life held out for them, all their dreams, all they held on to was taken. War broke out. My father did something that was irrational, an impulse. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of young fellows of the age of 18 who had to go to war took hold of the girl they loved and got married against the parents' consent. My mother's parents were against it. They begged them not to. My grandmother wept for days and days, but against the parents' consent they married. I think it's something to somehow hold on and know I've got something to come back to, something to dream of, something to hold life together, not knowing how long, not knowing if I'll ever come back, something I at least had in a moment of life. And they married impulsively all over the world at 18 years of age. They spent a few days of honeymoon before my father left for war. My brother was born in that year, that first year away, but my father and no one else knew the war would go on for year after year after year after year after year. No one knew that. My father never saw his son come into this world. He never held a baby in his arm, a treasured moment that God could give a father. He never heard his first word. He never taught him to take his first steps, which is the privilege of most fathers, the joy, joy that's worth a billion times more than any other joy on earth, that which a child can give you, the joy watching this child being nurtured. He never saw that, never saw him growing. All he had was letters that took months, sometimes six months to get to him, with little photographs and my mother writing all in detail in her love for him, telling of every little step the child has taken, every little bit of growth, in all of trying to somehow give him something of a glimpse of what he was missing. Oh, men were robbed of the things that are precious in life in the war. Millions and millions never came back to see their own child, never saw them once before they were dead. War is a terrible thing. My father hated the war. I never knew a man in my life that hated war as much as my father. When the war was over, they started these moth clubs in all the British allies, all the countries that stood with England, where men would meet week after week through the rest of their lives, right to this day in their old age. They can't wait to get back together in these moth clubs and talk of the great battles that were forth and all the things that were done, and they experienced and shared, and they get excited to this day about the war, but not my father. He never went near those clubs, not once. And when my uncles would speak about the war, I remember watching my father. I used to learn as a boy, a little baby boy, looking at my father when I heard war was being spoken of. The others, my uncles, would speak excitedly about things, and even laugh. But my father would put his head down, and his eyes would look down at the ground while they spoke. And if they carried on speaking, he always got up and walked out. He walked up. He never ever spoke about war. I said to my mother when I was a little boy, why? Why does daddy never speak about the war? Why does he always get up and walk out? My mother looked at me for a while before she answered, and she thought, she said, no one hated the war as much as your daddy. No one hated the war as much as your daddy. I think it's because he feared losing life. He so feared losing his life and not being able to come back to me and to your brother. When I waved goodbye to your father, and I looked at him, and I was weeping, your father had pitch black hair, Keith. His hair was pitch black. When I saw him the next time coming back from war, his hair was snow white. He had turned gray, totally. In his early twenties, totally gray, he aged in the war. I met a man who I led to Christ many years later, who looked me carefully and said, Keith, I knew your father. I remember him from the war. I was with him in the battles. I remember him so well. The one thing I will never forget, that your father was one day, an airplane was flying over us, unexpectedly, just suddenly appears, and they had machine guns. And somehow the bullets were just riddling all over, and those who made it to the trench were safe. But your father couldn't make it, and many others, and they were being mowed down, just mowed, and we just, screaming as he watched them, screaming to them, come, hoping they'd get it, and they just mowed down, lives just being wiped out in front of us. And your father was there, close to the trench, and they said, try and get, just come. The bullets were riddling already. They singled him out. They saw he was still alive, as his plane just seemed to swoop back. And the bullets were just riddling around him, missing him by fractions of an inch, just throwing up things all around him as they just went on, undetermined to wipe this one moving body out. And your father began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and I just looked at him. I was crying looking at him. And I wondered as he laughed, and then suddenly I realized the tears were just pouring down his face, streaming down his face as he was laughing. He was so scared of death. He must have thought he was about to be taken away, it was the end of life. That moment, oh, war is a terrible thing. Daddy came home after the war, and that first year in 1946, I was born. And my father set out to do something. I don't know if any man set out like him in this world. I would be surprised. My father did something that left us awe-struck, in wonder at what he was doing. Two things were in his heart, only two things. One was that this marriage of his would never end in divorce. He was determined. You never saw a man so working at his marriage as Daddy. He loved my mother. He treasured her. My mother was almost scared to speak of what she was thinking of, because her thoughts, Daddy went enslaved, just knowing what her thoughts were concerning the whole of her life, and he would slave till she got, before he had any money. He did anything to show his mother and mother that he would do anything to prove his love, to keep her happy, to keep her in love, to keep her just wanting him. Oh, it was something just, I wondered sometimes. I looked at him and the things he did, the way he did it, just to show his love to my mother, and to keep that marriage of ever ending in divorce. The other thing my father set his heart to do was to become rich. Right from when the war ended, it was in my Daddy's heart to get money, because he believed this would keep sorrows from his home. And so with these two pure motives in his heart, he worked. He slaved. That's the only word I can use. I tell you, he slaved, that he left people, he left people bewildered in his own work. They stood bewildered at such a man who poured himself out to work his way up to the top of his profession. He took books. After slaving through the day, he would come home, and we knew he was tired, and he ordered books from overseas, and he would study. He had no education, and he had to try and overtake people who had education, in positions and authority through their education. He devoured these books right through the nights. I used to go through in the mornings. He's still awake, there he's making notes, having worked through the day, taking where he thought the business world was heading, hoping that he's taking the right course, that he's ahead of anybody, devouring the business world's magazines and books. And so he fought his way to the top of his profession in a few short years, and suddenly we had money, we had wealth, we had a home, you couldn't believe the home we lived in. Vehicles, all the luxuries, anything we wanted was just there, but there was nothing but sorrow. Do you know why? Because as daddy went up, his health went down, as he slaved. And the responsibility that came on him as the position went higher and higher, the authority went more and more, and the more money came, but the higher the authority, daddy worked it so, and it was his own fault in many ways, he worked that they couldn't do without him. He made things, he set up these businesses, that no one with this couldn't survive without him. And so he was there all the time, the pressures, and through the socializing expected of him, he began to drink, and he found in his drinking somehow it helped him to switch off under all the pressures, until he was drinking very, very heavily. He smoked all day, right through the night, 60 cigarettes a day, for over 20 years, never less than 60 a day. I used to walk through to the bathroom in the night, and look through to his room, and there was a little red glow. Any time of the night, he was smoking through the night. Oh, what responsibility now put upon him, with all the pressure of life, with all the drinking, all the smoking, all the pressures, all the strain. Suddenly his health went with blood pressure, and he was living off pills right through the day. Going to doctors, going to specialists, as all his health began to collapse, but he wouldn't stop. We saw him nights, struggling in his sicknesses. In the morning he got dressed, and I used to say, but daddy, how can daddy go to work? Nothing kept my father from work. He never, it didn't matter how sick he was, as sick as a dog, he would make his way to work, determined not one day would he miss the work. Nothing was in him that could miss a day, no matter how sick he was. He went off to work, but at work he was drinking right through the day. He would get into his office and start drinking. They didn't put him off, they couldn't survive without him, they knew it. He would come home reeking of drink, and the first thing he does, as he walks in the door, he would look for a bottle of drink, and start drinking into the night. And of course there was fighting, there was tensions in the home. Mummy didn't understand why daddy reacted as he did under drink. He, it wasn't, drink makes a man exactly what he shouldn't be. Drink brings out in a good man something that he, he can't believe he was when he gets sober. And everything he didn't want to be, suddenly he was, in his reactions, in his words, and there was fighting, there was arguing. Mummy couldn't bear this anymore, and the way he was carrying on. My brother wouldn't speak to my father. For weeks he never greeted him, because of all the fighting. I think there was once three months that my brother never said one word to my father. When my father came out the door, my brother walked away from him. He wouldn't look at his father. He began to hate his father. He began to hate his father. When he saw the sorrows, and he saw my mother aging, and my mother weeping, and the fights, and the arguments. I used to run away from a little boy. I just couldn't take it, all this tension, all these fightings. I would run, and for days they would search for me, looking, not knowing if I'm dead or alive. When they found me, daddy would put me down, and weep, and weep, and say, boy, I know it's me. It's my fault, Keith. Forgive me. He'd go to my mother. He'd forgive me. I've got to change. I've got to change. This boy's going astray, through all the fighting, through all the insecurity. I didn't want this. I didn't know all this would come on me. I didn't know I'd be like, I'll stop drinking. We all would look. We saw soon, he was back drinking, just swallowed up in the business world. Somehow he survived with drinking, and smoking, and my mother filed for a divorce. She went to the lawyers. She told us she cannot live like this any longer. She's going to die of a broken heart, and she cannot, cannot live like this, seeing her children destroyed. Both my brother and I were wayward, and that's all I'd like to say of that, in my shame, and I am so ashamed. So my father, having worked, I would say, harder than any other man that I have ever met in my life, to not ever let divorce come into his home, to not ever let his children be unhappy or insecure. My father now looked at his life, and the things that he thought would make security that he fought for, and everything he'd aimed at to bring security with all his heart, he looked at his home that was devastated, broken, wayward children, insecure children, his health gone, sickly, very, very sick, and his wife leaving him and filing for divorce. His whole life lay in ruins, but then Jesus came, the Savior, man's soul, the enemy of Satan, the Deliverer, man's dearest friend, this precious, holy Savior of mankind, came to my father in such a way that my father could not fight God. He could not argue with God. All he could do, destroyed of life, was lift himself up and run into the arms of Jesus Christ to save him from all life had made. Oh, he ran into Christ's arms in such a way that staggered the world, that staggered the world. God came through my brother, this boy that wouldn't speak one word to his father for up to three months, that wouldn't greet, that had no love for his father. God came to this boy, three years older than me. Somehow my brother found himself in a church one night. He wasn't there to seek God. He wasn't there to seek God. He was determined to switch off to all the fanaticism. He was somehow in that church, but God brought him. No matter what was in his heart, God brought him, and he knew it from the moment one of the holiest men of God that has ever lived on this earth was standing in that pulpit. God made sure the right man was there for this broken boy, this boy who would have argued against preaching, even the preaching of the truth, but he couldn't argue the way this anointed life, this Christ-like, godly, holy man brought the words of God that penetrated deeper than any human voice that penetrated before. For the first time in his life he heard the gospel of Christ preached in truth with a man who believed it with such a passion and such a compassion for the souls he was preaching to that my brother trembled right through that whole meeting. He trembled at the end of that service when he stood up. He said he was like a drunk man. He fell. He was so drunk in the amazing, amazing grace that was presented to him from the heart of God through this man's preaching. My brother never knew the love of God until that night. He stood up and he staggered out of that building, falling down at one stage, weeping, weeping as people didn't know what to do as they looked at him. That's how God can speak to a person, you know, who comes to a church. He's never once in his life wanted to hear God's voice, never once, and not even then. So when God speaks, a boy can walk out okay with bitterness, hatred of religion, bitterly. That's my brother was. He hated religion. But he walked out there weeping, sobbing, broken, and somehow he turned around and started fighting his way back, no matter how many crowds were streaming out of that building, and he fought right down through the aisles. He was the only one that knelt that night, weeping. This godly, godly man walked down and knelt beside him, and he prayed through to God, weeping with his boy as he saw the brokenness of this boy. And together they cried out to God to save my brother's soul from hell. And my brother stood up. He stood up, and God says, if any man be in Christ, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away, and God says to the world, behold, look, and he starts writing the home. As that boy walks back to the home that night, look, God says to everyone in the home, everyone that knew him, but he starts in the home, behold, God says, all things have become new, if any man be in Christ, God says. My brother was in Christ when he stood. He was saved by God's grace. Oh, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, God says, that's a promise. He will in no wise turn away anyone who comes to him through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Ask, it shall be given you. Seek, ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, findeth, and he that seeketh, findeth. To him that knocketh, it shall be opened. This is a promise from God. Seek ye the Lord while he be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his source, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him. To our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Oh, God pardoned my brother that night. God saved my brother. God made him. He gave him the witness of the Spirit. My brother walked back into the home that night, late that night, and he did something that no one would ever dream would ever happen in his life. He walked in that home and looked at my father, and he loved my father that night. A man with hatred, he utterly forgave in one moment of salvation. Every bitterness he had against my father was gone. He put his arms around my father. Do you know what that did to my daddy, who never believed, he never believed he would ever see love again in that boy's eyes. He never, he had no hope that this boy would ever, ever love him again. All hope was gone. Here was this boy with his arms around me, asking my father to forgive him, asking my father's forgiveness, and showing such compassion and care and love. And my father was so staggered, he was stunned to silence for days, days that he wouldn't speak. He was so staggered by this love he was suddenly receiving by the son who hated him. In one moment, God does that. Oh, there's nothing God can't do, brother. God delights in doing the impossible, what the devil thinks is triumphing over. In one moment, one moment, God delights in showing Satan and the world that the devil cannot keep him from restoring love between a father and a son. And that is a great grief to God, you know, if you just read the book of Malachi. Oh, what grief it is to God. It is such a grief that I believe he weeps and weeps at such a poem as a result of whoever it was that caused it. It stunned my father to silence. My mother looked at my brother that night, embracing my father. My mother, who was going through with a divorce, having seen lawyers for a few weeks, all sorts of documents being signed, my mother sat there looking at my brother and she began to weep. She couldn't believe her eyes what she saw that night. And you know what she did the next day? She went to the lawyer and stopped the divorce. You know why? Because she knew no human could do that in his own strength. She knew God had come to that boy. And if God could do that to that boy, hope flared up in her heart that God could do something for the rest of us. She hadn't heard the gospel. What she saw the gospel could do in a life made her stop the divorce. Oh, God was not too late, you know. A little bit later and it would have been too late. But God wasn't late, not from my home. I looked at my brother's life. I had not heard the gospel, but I was desperate for God to save my soul by just looking at his life. I was thirsting. I was hungering after God, to what I saw in this boy's life. I was longing for God. Within days, I was longing. I was thirsting for God. Let thy God be my God, thy people my people, was the cry of my heart as I looked at his life. Oh, I chose God through the life of my brother. Will your brother do that? I came to Christ one night, stood up, and God in his grace saved my soul in a way beyond I ever believed, even at what I'd seen in my brother's life. Oh, God saved my soul. Together, the two of us found each other. Suddenly, we were sitting there just engulfed with each other. Two boys who had very little to do with each other up to then. That's what sin does, you know. Brothers are not even friends. Can you know that's what sin does? Oh, we found each other. We were excitedly talking about Christ. Everything was just excitement. And Daddy and Mommy had to sit and behold, these two boys transformed. And they sat in silence. Then, one of the godliest women in our nation came to our home, a missionary who had won countless thousands to Christ. He's a household name in the Church of South Africa. Oh, she and many godly people came to her. I don't know why God did that. Some of the greatest men and women of God were suddenly in our home, and they loved our home. Suddenly, through these two boys' salvation, they were godly, godly people. This godly woman was in our eyes. She loved my brother and I. Oh, she loved us. She took joy as she heard our excitement, and she taught us what everyone had known, the times we could corner her and find things of her concerning soul, winning everything. And she came to our house, and she sat there and looked at us one night as we were full of joy, and she turned to my father, and she said something nobody would ever dare to say to my father. If you knew my father, you'd know why. No one spoke to daddy like that. No one in the world spoke to daddy like that woman did. She looked at him and said, Mr. Daniel, are you lost, sir? Are you lost, sir? Mr. Daniel, look at your boys. Look at what God did in their lives. Look what God done to them. How is it that you have not been saved when God did that to your boys? What reason can you give me that you have not fled to this God who did that to those two boys? Why are you not saved, sir? What has kept you from God? What reason can you give me that you haven't come to God that did that to those boys? My father looked at her, you know. Then he turned and he looked at us, and he sat there for a long while just looking at us. Then he got up, and he walked to his bedroom, shut the door. And he spent hours in that room, hours. We've never found out. We never asked him what he'd said to God. But when he got up from his knees in that room and opened the door, from the first step he took, he staggered this world. As a man, I'd never ever known anyone to stagger the world so as my father's salvation did. He walked out of that room and looked at my mother and the family and those there, and he said, I've given my life to Jesus Christ, and I will never take it back. I will never take it back. He took my mother to where all the alcohol was, and he took all the bottles and emptied them out into the drain, some of them, in his anger. He never touched the drink till the day he died, from that night. He took a cigarette, 60 cigarettes a day, enslaved to them, soaking with inflessing already through what that did to him. He threw down those 60 cigarettes a day, threw them down that night, never touched another one till the day he died. He picked up this book, and he read through it 68 times in the nine years he lived, from cover to cover. He took all the commentaries of any note, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, I.V.P. He read from cover to cover, I have them, page after page, summarized notes right through. He took all Andrew Murray's classics, made summaries of every single page, devoured them. He took all the classics of the great godly men of our faith in history. He devoured all those books. Between my brother and I, we share them, all that I've got, every book has been devoured, notes from beginning to end. He devoured the things of God. Nothing kept him from God, you know. From the day he was saved till the day he died, he never neglected his quiet time. Can you say that? His time with God, from the day he was saved, was the greatest priority in his life. I'll never forget becoming conscious of it, when a few nights after his salvation, we had visitors, who sat just a little bit late, just a little bit late. I can't tell you the time, I fear to tell you the time, that my father wouldn't sit past that time, no matter who was in that house till the day he died. He had a time he met with Jesus, and if the guest had sat a little bit late, he would get up. And at times, especially the first time, there were tears, it wasn't easy to say it. He said, you have to excuse me, forgive me, but I have to go to be with Jesus, and I cannot miss the meeting with God. And he walked out. Through his life, he never ever sat with anyone again, past that time. From the night he was saved, he met with God at that time. He worked it out, he told me in his old age. He worked it out, that if he didn't have his quiet time then and get to bed at that time, he wouldn't be able to wake up at four o'clock in the morning and spend two hours with Christ. And he said, without two hours meeting with God, he couldn't walk as he knew he stood with God through the day. So he disciplined himself that he got that time with God and then bed, so he could get up and spend two hours before he said one word to another soul on earth. He poured his soul out to God, and he walked with God as a result. He walked with God as a result, beloved. Nothing, no one was more important than God. You won't miss the meeting where men see you should attend. Oh, what will they say? You're so faithful. But the meeting that God knows, and God alone knows. You can miss it like that. I mean, no one's watching. To be seen as men, you won't miss the meeting, but the meeting that only God sees, that makes the difference between a hypocrite and someone vitally real with God. Oh, you could miss that meeting like that for anything, for anyone. And God waits, and you miss him, because he wasn't as important as others, who you wouldn't miss, even for religion, but not God. He turned his back on the business world, you know. I said last night, and I'll briefly just tell you how he turned his back so on the business world, he forsook it, within days, forsook it. Took mommy, everyone went back to our hometown, away from where all the money flows in South Africa, the big city. And he said he wanted time for God, he wanted time for his wife, he wanted time for his children. He never gave them time by diverting to things that he thought his children, his wife needed, but for that he neglected the things that mattered. Now he wants time especially for God. And my father took that time. He turned his back on everything. They wooed him back, you know. And they said, we'll do anything. They held out all these things to him. My mother said it was amazing what they held out. She could not believe that they would, it was beyond belief what they held out to one single man to get him back. But my father said, no, these things made me poor. And I pity you all, for I know how poverty-stricken you are. I know you all, how miserable you are. I know your homes are broken. I know your health. I know what drinks problems you have. I know your children's state. You're in poverty with all these riches. Get out of it, man. Come to Christ and find the riches I found. Don't die like this, he begged. And they wept. All of them wept, because they knew it was true. Daddy would not go back to the business world. He had time for Christ in those nine years. He wanted time, and he knew his time was not long with his health. His time was not long. Then God did something to my father that shook us in such a profound way. It's hard to tell you how to put it into doctrinal terms, what God did. God took hold of my father and filled him with the Holy Spirit. Now, today that could mean anything, anything. Today there's such confusion. You will go to holiness movements, and they will talk of hearts being cleansed by the blood through and through, resulting in victory, consistent victory. You go to the Baptists. You find being filled with God, the Holy Spirit, that the fruit of the Spirit can be seen in your life, spontaneously reacting in all circumstances. But I like this term, a term most people don't like, but I preach it. I believe a man must have a personal Calvary after he's saved. Even my father needed that. I didn't know that until it happened in his life, but God knew. When I saw the richness of what God brought out of that man when he had a personal Calvary, a moment when he really was crucified with Christ. Oh, not a dead doctrine, sir. Andrew Murray says it's when a person absolutely surrenders. Andrew Murray says unless a child of God comes to a place of absolute surrender, where all the fight is over in life, unless a child comes to a place of absolute surrender, he cannot be filled with the Spirit of Christ. He cannot be filled with the Spirit of God. Being filled with the Spirit, Andrew Murray says, is not a glass. It's half filled. The Holy Spirit is a person. He cannot dwell in you in half a person. So what does it mean? How do you fill the other half, the empty half? It's not anything to do with filling the other half. The word fill doesn't mean fill up what's missing. The Holy Spirit dwells in you in its completeness when you're saved. But when you're filled with the Spirit, when you absolutely surrender to God and the fight is gone, and you yield to God for Him to have His way, and that is a personal crucifixion happens there, then the Holy Spirit takes control of you. He's in you, but He's not in control of you. And you see it. And though you want to please Him as a Christian, you find so much coming out not of God, bringing this grace of the winds taken out of you. Oh, Andrew Murray says when a person is absolutely surrendered and filled with the Holy Spirit of God from that moment onwards, there's a steady growth. It doesn't make you perfect. You're not suddenly perfected. But what does happen here is that God begins. Up till then, it's an up and down experience, he says, with most Christians. More down than up, if we have to be honest. But from then onwards, it's a steady growth, for God now has control. And the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is seen in all circumstances, no matter how trying, spontaneously, he says. Not with our efforts struggling to be Christ-like, but with spontaneous, because He's in control. That's being filled with the Holy Spirit. And that is a message people don't like to hear. It presents Christ-likeness. Do you know what the fruit of the Spirit is? Do you know what the work of the Holy Spirit is? He shall not speak of Himself, Jesus said. His whole work will be to glorify Christ. The fruit of the Spirit is Christ-likeness. You want one word for all those fruits you can talk of? Christ. That's all. If it's anything but Christ, it's heresy that you're preaching. If it's gifts, it's heresy. That's not the evidence of the fullness of the Spirit. It cannot be. Read 1 Corinthians 13 to see how he refutes that. It is not gifts. It's the fruit. Love that suffers long is kind. Love that envies not is not rash. All the longings, all the fulfillment, not by your efforts, but fulfilled through the Holy Spirit in control of you. You're not living under the legalistic law of how to fulfill the law. I've not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, Christ said, in and through you. The law of God is written upon your heart, not by some legalism of the efforts of your own to fulfill the thou and shalt not and thou shalt not. You just find you don't. When you yield it to God, when He's absolutely in control of you, the fruit of the Spirit, Christ has seen. You know, when my daddy got up from his knees in a meeting weeping after that salvation, that mighty salvation, that he came for forgiveness and for the deliverance from the things that were destroying his life, now he came to a place under awful conviction, somehow swiftly, that he needed to yield totally to God. He had a personal calvary. When my mother looked at my father, she began to weep. You know, when my father was saved, my mother was stunned. She was stunned. But when my father was absolutely surrendered to God and filled with the Spirit, my mother began to sob through the days. Has your wife ever sobbed of your life, sir, nothing else but your life? Will she ever? You say you're saved. Has she ever wept? And what she sees, do you know why she wept? I found her weeping one day and said, Mommy, what is this? You've got to speak to me. She said, Oh boy, it's your daddy. Keith, I know this man. I don't know anyone else that I can say I really know, boy, but I know your daddy. He's the only man I ever loved in my life. He was my childhood sweetheart. I never knew another man. I never loved another man but your daddy. I know your daddy. I know everything about him. I know his reactions. I know every thought in his head. But Keith, since he's come to God and especially since this last meeting out there and those meetings you took him to, my boy, I'm living with a total stranger. I can't speak. I don't speak to your daddy. I look at him. I don't know what to say. I haven't got anything to converse. I don't know anything about this man. He's a total stranger in my home. He's so changed. And she's weeping while she's telling me this. She said, I just walked out now and you found me weeping. You know what I said to myself, Keith? I looked at him as he was... I said, Who is this man? Who is this man in my heart? And I turned and fled and I'm just thinking, Who is this man? Who is this man? And I looked at him and said, Mommy, do you know who this man is that you're weeping over? Christ. She looked at me. She wiped her tears. What are you saying, boy? Mommy, listen to this verse. This verse that's written across daddy's life, not coming out his lips. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Through me, literally. Did you know that? Is that written across your life, sir? To such a degree, your wife doesn't even recognize you anymore. She just recognizes Christ. Is Christ so revealed through you? Do you think that's going to take 40 years, sir, before someone sees Jesus in you? No. That's the fruit of the Spirit. And you're made more and more like Christ through the fires and the soaking grease up in the scriptures, in the school of God. But when you yield, oh, God comes. Do you know, I came to God because of my brother. My father came to God because of my brother and I, especially this poor boy, who daddy never could believe would ever be healed from all the harm done to me. My mother came to God through my father, only my father. It wasn't us only. When she looked at my father's life, my mother couldn't argue anymore. She wept her way to Jesus. She wept her way to Jesus through my daddy, his life, his life. And then something happened that staggered our home beyond all belief. Suddenly daddy had a heart attack, a terrible heart attack. We thought we were losing him for days, much weeping, but suddenly he revived a bit, and strong enough to go home, but so weak that he was suffering, terrible suffering. He had emphysema now, bad emphysema through all the smoking, battling to catch his breath. And here was the heart problems, and we thought every time he was choking like this for breath, his heart would just stop. But all these oxygen things now are saved, but not healed physically. It's all caught up with him now. So he was saved. And our home went into darkness as we began to reason, Lord, we've only found him. Don't take him from us now. We've only now found all we wanted him to be. Don't take him now. We looked at mommy and daddy together and the love between them. I looked at my brother and said, Daddy, look at what we could have known all our lives, if only they'd been saved from the beginning. Look at what we could have known. We wept as we saw what God could do now, that God does this, which we've all longed for and didn't even dream could happen. Now God, it seems, is going to take him away. We went into a lot of sorrows and griefs, reasoning with God, weeping on our knees as a family about my daddy's health just being deteriorating, and he's just hanging on to life virtually. I was preaching by this time. I went away, came back. My mother said, Oh Keith, you've got to go speak to your daddy. He's sobbing, he's weeping and sobbing and sobbing. I walked past this room where he prays all day. I walked in there, he is sobbing. I heard him sobbing, his heart out, my boy. I know he's suffering, boy, but I can't even help him when he's sobbing. I can't even go back in that room. I can't go and help. I can't even take him a cup of tea. I went into his room, sat beside him and said, Daddy, mommy said she found you sobbing. I know you're suffering, daddy, but mommy can't see that. She can't even help you, she loves you so much. He looked at me and tears came down his face and he said, My boy, I never knew your mother would find me. I'm so ashamed she walked in that door, Keith, and found me sobbing like that. I would never want her to see that. I was shaken that she opened the door and saw me sobbing like that. But Keith, I was not sobbing because of my suffering. I thought you knew your daddy better than that, boy. He said, Keith, I was sobbing for another reason. Can I tell you, boy, do you want to know why daddy was sobbing like that when your mommy found me? Keith, I'm dying. I'm dying, Keith, and I have not one single soul to show Jesus. That's what's breaking my heart. I know I'm dying. Keith, I have prayed for souls, I've begged souls, but not one thing I've done has brought one person to Christ, Keith. Oh boy, you're young, you can win the world to God, and I pray that you will. But my boy, my time's gone and I'm gonna stand alone with nothing to show God of others, only my own soul. That's all I can show him, nothing I ever brought part of myself to God. That's broken my heart, boy. That's why I'm weeping. He got on his knees right then and put his head down and he started sobbing again. You know what I did? I got on my knees and I put my head down, I sobbed with him. But there was someone else weeping. Don't doubt this. Someone who, when he stood on this earth, he wept. As he could weep then, he can weep now. The Savior of man. Do you know why I know he wept? Because I've become conscious that he has to look past millions and millions of Christians to find one that weeps for souls apart from their own soul. Tell me, sir, have you ever wept for anybody else's soul but your own? Have you ever groaned that you're not a soul when you stand alone without souls to show God? Oh, your own soul is there, your soul. Tell me, can the devil take and make a ring around you, and he can really do it tonight, a circle around you and say, outside of the circle, every prayer, every groan that came from the heart in prayer to God was not for anyone else but himself. And if he did pray for anybody else, it was just because they affected him immediately. That's the only reason he would pray for anyone else. Any tear that ever left his eyes, any groan of compassion that left his heart was for himself, outside of the circle. I've never prayed like that for anybody, but may all God cease tears when you pray and weep for yourself and your problems. But tell me, since you've been saved from hell and entrusted with the gospel and the light and the knowledge of the gospel, how many people's blood is on your hands, sir? How many that you walked past, you didn't even say a prayer for them, let alone a word, you didn't have a compassion, you didn't go to, you went to bed without blinking an eye, without thinking I've done anything wrong, though you could have brought people to Christ, you could have shared, you've never groaned. And here was a person who groaned and wept and sobbed that he had no one to show and he thought he had only moments left to live. I went again away to preach and suddenly a message was sent to me that Daddy's dying and he's calling for me. Oh, I rushed back to that town, begging God not to let him die. I arranged with two men, two godly men, to be at the hospital, two of South Africa's holiest men, let me tell you. They came and there in the hospital beside my father's bed, as he lay with all these things in him, hanging on to life, I gave them a bottle of oil and I said, I want you to anoint my father with oil and I want you to ask God to heal him now. They just looked at me they looked for a few minutes without a word, just stood there looking at me. As I stood there weeping, I didn't shut my eyes. They anointed him with oil, they laid hands on him and they prayed gently and softly, not insisting or demanding, but asking if it's God's mercy and will. Three hours later my father sat up. The next day my father got out of bed. It was God. The doctor said, but this man was dying. He wept. I don't understand. He said, oh, we knew. We knew why God comes. You see, God had to heal my father. I say that carefully. I've become conscious of God's integrity and perfectness and holiness. He is so perfect that he has an obligation. There's some obligation toward people praying. Do you know how obliged God must be when he can't find in millions of Christians, anyone praying, begging, weeping for souls, and he finds one man who's dying? Do you think God had no obligation in his holiness and integrity to answer that man's groaning prayer? Do you think God could have turned his face away and say, it doesn't matter that I finally found a man here weeping about souls, where others only weep for themselves? Oh no, not this God. How do I know that it was God? How do I know that God healed him for this reason, to answer his prayer? Because when my father got out of bed, beloved, when my father got out of his bed, having been dying the day before, he got out of bed for this reason, because he knew why God had healed him. He went to the next bed, and he led that man to Christ, his first soul. And you know, when you taste what it is to lead a man to Christ, it just brings more thirst. You become to realize what it is to lay up treasures in heaven. You believe, you suddenly become conscious of the value of what you've done in God's eyes, of what God has enabled you to do, what God gave you, the grace, and through you, brought light to a soul. He went to the next bed after that man, and led the next man to Christ. He went out of the ward and went into the next ward, and he led every single man in that ward to Christ. Some of them died a few minutes after he led them to Christ, they died. But with Christ, he went through that hospital, he led the nurses to Christ. In the end, one nurse said to me, it was a stunned silence and awareness of God in this whole hospital, through one man, who wanted one thing only, to lead the next soul to God. And that's all he seemed to be living for. As you know, my father won so many souls to Jesus that one of our greatest evangelists in South Africa, probably the most well-known preacher for many, many, many years of our land, he stood up and he said these words that shook my heart. He said, I do not know another man in this country apart from that man there. And he was weeping as he said this, who I can say this on, that it seems every step he takes influences men to seek God. You might think that's an exaggerated term. You should have seen how they came to Christ from that day, till the day he died, streaming to God. You could not believe, as souls in the middle of the night, that all the neighbors were putting their lights, and as souls came running up, people who had beaten their children, smashed their wives in their drunkenness, running up to him, falling on their knees, crying out, all the neighbors thinking things going wrong, you know. Didn't want to come in. Daddy on the street there, outside of the home, leading him to Christ. And that man went through with God, never touched a drink. His wife and child came to God after all that drunkenness. Souls were saved at midnight. Daddy was waiting for the next soul all the time. Just like every step, this man said, influenced men to seek God when they became aware of his life. Oh, it is precious, at his funeral, at his funeral, I sat there with my darling mother. And my mother, I don't know, she leaned hard on my daddy. She didn't find that easy. But I was trying to console her. And I looked across that church. There was no room. It was a very big church, let me tell you, this memorial service for my daddy. As they stood around the walls, all these men, women, children, from all over the land, as they stood around the front, all in the foyer, just standing, unable to move into the church, just wanting to be there. And I looked, and I realized most of these people he led to Jesus. Most of these people have come to his memorial service to pay their respects to the man who brought them to Christ. Will that be said at your funeral, sir? Will one attend your funeral that will thank God for your life, because he's been saved from hell, because you cared for his soul? At the door, this man took me away from my mother. And I was reluctant, but he says, you come with me, boy. And I walked away from mommy under this tree outside the church. And this wealthy man said to me, I tell you why I wanted you here. I want to tell you about your father, because you're a preacher. And I want you to tell the world about your father, my boy. The world needs to hear about such a man, what a Christian can be in this world. And I want you to say this when I tell you, boy, when your daddy was with us, as he went around in this sort of advisory capacity in his older age, while he was with us, he had a deep, profound effect upon the whole firm. But one day we were having a meeting upstairs in these glass panes, overlooking all the factories and all the sales areas, all over the business. And I had all the heads of the department, the managers all over, were in my office having a meeting with me. And suddenly we became aware something terrible was happening down there in the firm, in the factory area especially. So we cancelled the meeting and said, let's all get down and sort this out, whatever's going wrong. We went down and there was a salesman advertising tiles that he'd come in trying to get us to buy or somehow propagate his tiles. And so he stood with all these men, but he had a transfer, a photograph that would put against the tile in your bathroom or somewhere. You pull it off and there's a perfect photograph of a woman. I won't tell you any further. It was wicked. I don't want to defy you, but it was wicked. These men, as the salesman was giving this out with glee, because he saw how excited all the men were, and these men lost their dignity, their decency, their honour, in moments through a stupid photograph they were carrying on like animals. And I looked at them, and I looked at this photograph, and I threw it down and said, how evil, how wicked. I looked at this man, but he didn't divert, he just kept giving him out, smugly. And the men were clamouring like animals to get them, putting them in their pockets. And then suddenly, while I was standing there grieving, I looked and I saw your father. He walked in, Keith. I saw your father walking into the factory and I thought, oh God, oh my God, what will this man do now? What will this man do now? And your father walked in oblivious to what was going on, looking at all these men carrying on. And he found one of these photographs, and within seconds the tears streamed down his face and he groaned like a hurt from within. He groaned so loud, everyone stood in silence. Keith, within a few seconds I looked and every single man was weeping. I looked, not one wasn't smitten, deep in their hearts, convicted to the presence of one man of God. In seconds they were weeping. He said, give them to me, give them to me. And I watched, Keith, no man tried to hide a photograph, no man tried to slip one away. Every single one just screamed forward, trying to push past each other, saying, take it, Mr. Daniel. Forgive me, sir, forgive me, sir. They were shamed just by one look from one man of God. That's how we should be, salt of the earth. Are we? Do we stop sin? That's what salt does. The advance of evil cannot go farther than salt. Salt stops corroding, stops corruption. The moment it's there, it cannot advance, it stops. Do we, as the light of the world, stop evil men? For their sin, they cannot go on. And then Daddy took all his pile and put it into the man's hand, the salesman, and said, get out, sir, get out, go. The man says, it's my job. What am I supposed to do? I've got to make a living. I don't choose what to sell. They tell me to do it, I've got to do it. My father looked at him weeping and said, oh, I would rather starve and die before I did this to make money. I would rather starve and die than do this to make a living. You're going to hell, boy, he said. Don't you know you're going to hell, boy? And you deserve it, unless you come to Christ, unless you come to Christ and repent from this. Get rid of your job, even if you starve. Unless that happens, get out and don't ever come back here. Don't ever come back here. My daddy wept. Suddenly, this man shook everyone. He fell down on his face and wept. He wept. And when even your daddy couldn't take the way this man was trying to help him, he said, no. He wouldn't allow anybody to lift him up. He was so ashamed of himself. No one could believe their eyes. The man crawled, not on his knees, but on his face. He crawled out of the door. Why, everybody stood there groaning for him. Even your daddy didn't want that. Do you think that is going too far, sir? Do you think that's what God doesn't want us to be in this world? Do you know how brave and evil men are who fight to legalize depravity in the name of art and freedom of speech, no matter how defiling it is? Do you know the millions of children that cannot stay pure because of evil men fighting to legalize evil? They have no guilt. Do you know what the salt of the earth will do to those men in seconds if we were what we should be? Do you know how fast things won't be legalized? How fast people will stop fighting as if it's nothing to be ashamed of? In their shame they won't whisper the things they're fighting for today. But where's the salt of the earth? Do you think my daddy was the only one God wanted to make sinful evil men crawl in moments? It might sound pitiless, but it wasn't. That's how wicked men should be on the ground weeping, sir. If we were what we do, pray for revival, what do you think will happen when revival comes to you? Do you honestly think the unsaved won't be affected in seconds, weeping, when they, embracing wickedness, oh, the salt of the earth stops, sir, believe me, when it's real, when it's effective and hasn't lost its flavor, and good for nothing, God says. I wrote on my father's gravestone words that my mummy said, I have to show you before you go, boy, when I was home. And there, this tombstone, given by men who loved him of the business world, they had written these words with all the other words we prescribed, but they had written these words, and when I saw the size of the tombstone that stood out as you were walking over the hill, that's it, fit for a king. Can you believe what they did for him? As you know what they did on that tombstone, they wrote these words, he walked with God, he walked with God. What will they write on your tombstone, sir? Ask yourself, will they write anything, though you say you're saved? Will they be forced, will they be forced, everyone who knew you and loved you, forced to write such words? They had to. I said to my mother, these words had to be written on my dead, these are the only words that had to be written, without us telling them. My daddy came to me before he died and said, my boy, I haven't got long, I'm going soon, but I have one real burden, Keith, you're not married, boy. He said, Keith, I've watched you, you live out of a suitcase to the next town, that's your whole life, that's all you have on earth now is a suitcase, and I've watched how content you are with that, you don't want anything more, I'm thrilled at it, watching you, just looking for souls, all you see is souls, Keith, I don't want that to change, boy, but I have this in my heart, I don't want to die until I see you married, and I've asked God to get you married before I die, and I haven't got long, Keith, I want to see, I want to see who God's kept for you, that I've been praying daily, God, keep her pure, whoever she is, for this boy, keep him pure for her, please, God, I want to see the one I prayed for, Keith. He turned and walked away, and three days later, you know, I saw Jenny, I never saw anything more beautiful in my life, I never saw anything, I never believed anything was so beautiful on earth, I never could have believed my eyes, I stood there trembling at the beauty of this girl, I've never seen anything more beautiful since, it wasn't a vain beauty, it was an inward purity, a godliness, that just somehow shone through her whole being, it was so beautiful, but when my father knew that this girl loved me, and knew it was God in her heart, he said, please, fly her home to us, we want to see her, I want to see her. So, of course, we flew Jenny, she got off the airplane at this airport, and daddy stood back from the rest of everybody that was there, my big family, to meet and to see this girl now that Keith finally found and fallen in love with. Daddy stood back, and I turned and looked for him, there he was, weeping, when he saw what God had given me, he stood there in the airport, and he wept, and he wept, and he wept, and he wept, he didn't speak to Jenny the first day, you know, he just wept through the day, and when God had answered his prayers and given his son, then I got married, and three weeks later daddy died, and went to Jesus, and he's there with Jesus now, safe, I don't want him back here, I would be cruel to ask such a man to be back in this world, though I so miss him, but I know I'm going to see him again, and I thank God for that, when I see Jesus, I will be so taken up with Christ, I don't know how I'm going to find this possible, but I know Jesus is going to make me look for my daddy, and I know I'm going to sit with my daddy again, and I know I'm going to have eternity with daddy. That's the consolation that God tells us to console, we're going to see them again, brother, and we're going to know them, we're going to talk of the things that God did, we're going to stand and turn back and look at Jesus as we talk of those things, and worship him, the angels won't be able to, only us who are washed in the blood, who lay in our drunkenness at 13 years of age, who wouldn't speak to fathers for months in hatred of them, who filed for divorce against men who fought harder than any other man to keep his marriage intact, who lost everything in life, including his health, trying to prove something that was without God could happen in his life, oh, we'll turn and look at that savior, and we're going to worship the songs you've never heard. There's such praise that he could do that to my father, and my brother, and my mother, and me, and my children, all three love Christ.