In this sermon, the speaker discusses the radical changes that have occurred in the world since Jesus' time, such as the industrial and communicational revolutions. These changes have not forced God to modify His plans for His Church and mankind. The speaker also talks about the decline of moral protest in Protestantism and the rise of people who talk about God but do not truly understand or follow the teachings of the Bible. The main thesis of the sermon is that there is a need for a radical reformation in Protestant circles, specifically in our practical beliefs about God's design for mankind.

Again, more or less, I'm not preaching from a text exactly, any time, any night. But I certainly am weaving plenty of scripture in all the time. But remember I gave you a text, Zechariah 4, 6, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. My thesis is, for these nights, that radical reformation is the present imperative in Protestant circles. And I defined reformation, last Sunday night, as being the removal of faults and abuses, and the restoration to a former good state. And that's my thesis, that we need this, need it desperately bad now, in Protestant circles. Now, one area of our thinking that needs to be reformed, that is, needs to be changed by the removal of abuses and faults, and restored again to its former bright and good state, is this. We must reform our practical beliefs about God's design for mankind. Now, I say practical beliefs, because there is a difference between nominal beliefs and practical beliefs. The nominal belief is what you hold in name, and the practical belief is what you hold in reality, and what holds you. And while there probably isn't as much fault to be found with the nominal beliefs, there's a great deal to be found with the practical beliefs. And it's these practical beliefs, particularly in our circles, that need to be restored again to their happy and bright state, with the faults and abuses purged out of them. Now, it has been a long time since Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and died on a cross, and rose again the third day, and ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and sent the Holy Ghost to establish his Church. And I say it has been a long time. And since those days, there have been changes in the world, changes so radical and sweeping and all-pervading and revolutionary, as to be entirely incredible to anybody living in Jesus' day, and entirely and totally unimaginable to the world of those times. Now, have these changes forced God to modify his plans for his Church and for mankind? And here is where we have fallen by the wayside, and here is where we need to have a reformation, a purgation, a removal of the faults and a restoration again of the faith of Christians to a belief in the truth. Now, I say, have these changes that have come forced God to modify his plans for his Church and for the world? Now, a large number of professing Christians say yes without a question. They say yes, that's true, or I suppose they wouldn't like to have it put up to them like that. They don't like, people don't like to have the most realistic construction put on things. What they would say, and they are the liberals and the modernists, question mark after both words, but they wouldn't like to stand right up if you backed them into a corner and took all the little lapels and said, Do you think God's been forced to change his mind? I don't think anybody would quite have the courage to say yes. But nevertheless, they do say it, and here is what they say in effect. They say it little by little, and here a little, and there a little, till it's brainwashed their people. They say that the Bible must be interpreted in the light of new developments. That a book that was written in the day when men wore togas and Mother Hubbards, and when they rode on mule backs, that a Bible or any book written at that time necessarily has to be reinterpreted in the day when women wear what they wear now, and when you ride in airplanes. And they say that the prophets and the apostles were mistaken about God's purposes, that God hasn't changed his mind, maybe, but the prophets and the apostles were mistaken about what God had intended to do. And they say the Bible is outmoded and largely irrelevant. Irrelevant is a word which, if you don't use, you haven't been to school at all. And the more you use it, the more for longer you've been in school. They say that the Bible is outmoded and irrelevant. Irrelevant, of course, as you know, means it isn't related to anything. And outmoded means that we have new modes now, new modes of thinking and living, and the Bible is outmoded. It's a back-number magazine. And they say that we must therefore reassess its teachings and rethink our beliefs and our hopes. Now, I'm not overstating this at all. This is what we're being taught right along. It gets into the newspapers, and people are saying it, that the Bible must be interpreted in the light of all these changes which I have mentioned, and that the prophets and the apostles were mistaken. They had ideas which were good and advanced for their day, but not advanced for our day. And that therefore we must reassess the Bible's teaching and we must rethink our beliefs and our hopes. Now, they say that we're more advanced than they were in those days, that we know more about ourselves and more about human motivation and more about the nature of things than we did in those days. Therefore a book written at a time when people thought that the earth was flat and that the sun went around the earth, rose in the morning and crossed over and went down into the sea behind, that no book living, written in a time when men believed those things, that it can possibly be taken too seriously. And while it certainly contains some beautiful poetry and some marvelously inspiring thoughts about human nature and the world in which we live, nevertheless, all this is to be understood and it is to be reinterpreted and reassessed and rethought. Now, I just want to put this in. It isn't really part of the sermon, but I can't possibly keep myself from saying it, that I challenge the truth of this idea that we are advanced. I challenge it, even though I know that 99% of the modern educators and the modern newspaper men and TV men and radio men and politicians and all the rest, 98% anyhow, don't agree with me. Nevertheless, I challenge that we're any further advanced than they were in the day of Jesus. If we are so far advanced, then I want to ask you some questions. Why did we kill 850 human beings made in the image of God? If we're advanced in this day and we know so much and because we can ride automobiles instead of mulebacks, therefore we're advanced. Why was it that we used those automobiles to kill 850 human beings in one country alone? And if we are so advanced in this day, I want to ask you why it is that our penitentiaries are packed absolutely full and our mental hospitals are crowded to the doors. If we are so far advanced, I want to ask you, why then is the whole world a powder keg? And a man in Ottawa or Washington or Berlin or London or Moscow, if he says the wrong thing, they blow up the world. It wasn't so in the day of Jesus. Save your whole life, you couldn't have had anything but a brash fire war in that day. But you can have a war now that will blow up the world and leave nothing but puffs of white ash around where you used to be. And if we're so far advanced, I want to ask you, why is it that we not only killed 850 human beings celebrating Christmas in one country of the world, and we'd have to add other countries on, but why is it that we, one country, one advanced nation, has spent $40,000 million, that's $40 billion, to defend itself from other advanced nations? Now, if we've advanced so far, and the fact that we're riding automobiles instead of the backs of mules, if that proves that we're so far advanced, then why did the United States have to spend $40 billion, that's $40,000 million, not $40,000 or $400,000 or $40 million, but $40,000 million to protect itself from other nations that are also so far advanced? And if we're so far advanced in our day, then how is it that for the first time we have weapons of destruction now that can annihilate the world? You know, they began with the fist. And if one man was mad at another one, he just poked him with his fist. And then somebody thought up how to take a stone and make it sharp and bop him over the head with that stone. And then somebody else thought that they could take something and sharpen it and shoot it and get him if he wasn't close enough to bop back. And so they had the bow and arrow and the spear. Then they went on from that to gunpowder, which was invented by the Chinese, and then on to our present weapons, the terrible, awful weapons that can annihilate cities and nations and the world if we don't watch. Well, why is it that it's in this advanced period, when we are so far advanced in every way, so far advanced that the Bible is now outmoded and irrelevant, why is it this is the first time we've got a hold of this devil weapon? I ask you again, if we are so far advanced in our day, why is it that women don't dare walk in the parks anymore? And now I don't want you to tell it, but I say there are men who don't walk in parks either. I'm one of them. When I go to New York City, I like Central Park, beautiful place, but I don't walk in Central Park, particularly after the sun's down, because I don't want to be mugged. That's a modern word, that's Greek, mugged. I don't want to be mugged and have my little money taken away from me and my watch and my credit card and flying card. I don't want to lose that, so I stay out of Central Park. Why is it that in Chicago, Illinois, they had a great, beautiful park there with a hedge all the way around it? And so many perverts hid in the hedges and jumped out on women that they had to cut the hedge as level as the ground so everybody could see all the way. And if anybody saw a pervert on the way, he could duck around some other way and miss him. Why is it? Why is it that happened in this beautiful advanced age when we know so much about ourselves and therefore we're so far advanced over those men who wrote the Bible? Why is it, I want to ask you, why nurses who get out at midnight never walk home anymore but take taxis three or four together and split the price in order that they might be able to get home safely? Why is it in this advanced age that dope and violence and illegitimacy and divorce are soaring? Well, that's not part of the sermon, but I thought I'd put that in, because I've been told that the Bible is irrelevant and outmoded because we know so much now and we're so far advanced. You see, there's a type of mind that thinks that every motion is progress. Every time you make a move, you're progressing. Then there's a type of mind that thinks that every time you move in a straight line, you're going forward, forgetting that you can move in a straight line and be going backward. But of course, that's old-fashioned and obscurantist. I've been called obscurantist. They haven't really named me, but they've drawn a picture and it's mine. They said every time we move, we move forward. So we're moving forward toward full penitentiaries and mental hospitals crowded. We're moving forward toward the killing of so many people on the highway that it's a disgrace on the North American continent and all over the world. We have moved forward to a place where the world's a powder keg and if Jack Kennedy or Nickity Khrushchev get up some morning or John Diefenbaker or Mr. Green and they have had a bad night of it and say the wrong thing, they can blow up the world. Why is it we've moved forward to that? We've moved forward to the place where we don't dare walk anymore, where we can't walk on the street. All right, we've moved forward, yes. Now, the tragedy of the century is that the Protestants have accepted this progress and move forward thing and actually believe it. And if anybody calls up a preacher, he's sure to say this. They want him to say it, you see. They call him up. I get called up occasionally by the newspapers and want my poor little two cents worth. And there's not much use because I don't believe what they want me to believe and I don't say what they expect me to say. They wanted me to go on TV over in Ottawa and I wouldn't do it because I knew that what I would say wouldn't be the thing that they wanted at all and I would simply be, I have a name for it but can't use it tonight and I wouldn't want to spoil their party for them. Now, the tragedy, I say, of the century is that the Protestants, the sons of the great protest, the sons of the great protest, the sons of the Reformation have been brainwashed and re-indoctrinated by these who believe that changes have made a difference in God's plans and a difference in Christianity and a difference in Christ and that we can't read the Bible as we used to, face to book, but that we have to read it through colored glasses, colored by the changed, the ones who made the changes. And they have been hypnotized so by that old serpent, the devil, into believing that we no longer have a trustworthy Bible and so Protestantism is no longer a moral force in the world. I hope I'm talking to a congregation of people that have too much background and too much intelligence to believe that Protestantism is a force in the world anymore. Protestantism is not a force in the world. Protestantism has sold out to the brainwashers. And instead of being the sons and daughters of the great protest, we are now yes-men and yes-women. I saw a cartoon one time of a fellow standing in the middle of an office and he was saying, yes, yes, yes, yes. And he was saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And somebody said, what's the matter with that fellow? He said, he's a yes-man on his vacation. And we are now having yes-men in the churches of Christ. Yes-men everywhere. We're training them in the schools and sending out little yes-men who bob their head, yes, like a plastic duck, by what, in the 10 cents store. Up and down goes their little heads, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But the great protest that could stand in moral protest to what was going on in the world and say, this is what God says, that day is over almost in Protestantism. And we now have running the Protestant world a lot of people who talk very solemnly about Christ but don't mean what the Bible means. Talk about God but don't mean what the Bible means. Talk about revelation but don't mean what the Bible means. Talk about inspiration but don't mean what our Fathers meant. And the gospel churches, and this is the second great tragedy, that the gospel churches are also confused and intimidated. They're confused and intimidated by numbers. And they accept the belief that there has been a change and that Christians must adjust to the change. The word we have now all the time is adjustment. They say you've got to get adjusted, forgetting that wherever the world has been blessed, it's always been blessed by the man who wasn't adjusted. The poor little guy that gets adjusted, he can't do much anyhow, and he's not worth having around. The great men who stood, the great men who stood in Canada and helped make her a world power were the men who didn't bow. They stood and protested and dared to, if you're going to be any adjusted, let them come around to me, they said. Same almost everywhere in every field of human endeavor where there has been any progress that has been made. That progress has been made by those who stood up and said, I will not adjust to the world. I tell you now, if you don't adjust, you'll get a complex or something. If you don't adjust, you'll have to go to a psychiatrist after a while. Well, Jesus, I said one time to him in a college, that Jesus was among the most maladjusted men of his generation. They wrote in their paper afterward and said, I rocked the theologians onto their heels with that one. But they should have been rocked onto their heels because Jesus Christ, our Lord, never pretended to adjust to the world. He came to die for the world and to call the world to him, but the adjustment had to be on the other side. If there was any adjustment, it had to be on their part. It wouldn't be on his. He was right in the first place. And because he was right in the first place, he would make no adjustment. But they said, adjust. Every poor little guy, we start with him when he hasn't cut his first tooth yet, trying to get him to adjust to the world. And one of the most all-embracing, omnibus compliments that a teacher can pay to a child is that she adjusts beautifully, he adjusts beautifully, forgetting that the great composers and the great poets and the great architects were people that wouldn't adjust at all. There's a certain college, I won't mention it, but it's a religious college, and they say that a student is never any good unless he's kicked out of it, that he goes to it, but if he graduates the regular way, they have brainwashed him until he'll never amount to anything. But if he has the courage to stand up and get kicked out, he'll amount to something. And I know a number that got kicked out, and they amounted to something. I don't know the cause and effect relationship, but I assume it's pretty close. But now they say, let's get adjusted. And so we're all busy trying to get adjusted. Some of you people that starved out poor, shivering sheep with every kind of sheep disease known to man, and you had it in some denomination that was brainwashed, where they taught you that the Bible had to be reinterpreted in this new day and that it was outmoded and largely irrelevant, and then you go to some gospel church and you're not there three months until you're trying to introduce the very baloney that you ran away from into the church where you went for help. What's the matter with us anyhow? Are we on hold in our heads? If we ran away from death and we ran away from unbelief and we ran away from this phony advanced stuff and get to a church where they love God and believe the Bible, then we start making changes, because we have been confused and intimidated by the changes. We've accepted those changes. Now the contemporary world, I don't mind telling you, is the result of radical changes down the generations, changes amounting to a revolution. Let's look again, the scientific revolution. That is, we're learning to control the world instead of being controlled by the world. That's at the base of the scientific revolution. And then there's the industrial revolution. It means that goods are now made in factories instead of in your house. Every man used to make his own shoes, and every woman her own clothes, and the clothes of her family. Now they wouldn't do it and don't do it. They make them in factories. That's industrial. You see, every man used to go out and cut down trees and saw them up and get his own wood. Now they have unions and they dig coal or get oil, and that's the way we get our heat and our light and our power. So that's the industrial revolution. Then there's the communicational revolution. I was reading along with my wife in a section of the book of 2 Kings the other day, and they came upon those runners. They used to send a runner out, right on this continent, right in this country, 200 years ago, 150 years ago. If they wanted to get a message to somebody, they picked a long, lean, wiry Indian and said, Now, dogleg, big chief, you go on the run. So dogleg takes out with a message, and away he goes. He's a runner. And some of those runners could run 20, 30, 40 miles, you know, and hardly be puffing when they got there. They went there with their message. Now, those were the runners. But what do you do now? You step to the radio, two-way radio, and call up and tell the fellow. And there's been nothing but the union used up about one-fourteenth of one watt. There's a difference now, they say. See, that's communicational difference. Then there's the philosophical difference. I might mention that communication business. Some of you, I don't know who you are, but some of you have gone to somebody's home or had in your own home shortwave radio and have talked to your friends in other parts of the world. HCJB, the Christian station down in the Andes. Sometimes the missionary will get on down there and he'll talk to somebody in Canada or the United States or somewhere. Beautiful, you know. You don't have to stand a runner or wait three months for a sailship. You just radio the thing. And then there's philosophical revolution. And I could, I suppose, talk for 20 hours on that subject. But at the bottom it just means this, that men are man-centered in their thinking now instead of God-centered. That's the difference. Men are man-centered instead of God-centered. And there's been the social revolution. That is, there's a new and radical change that has come, a new attitude completely, a new attitude toward marriage and a new attitude toward sex and a new attitude toward parenthood and a new and radical attitude toward work. The day when men worked and were proud of it. Even in my grandfather's day, we had an old rocking chair made by my grandfather, a very comfortable old rocking chair. The old boy made it himself, cut down the trees and made it himself, you know. And they were glad to have it and it came down to us and then finally got lost. You know, we got one of these functional, we got these functional chairs now, you know, that make you feel like a potted flower when you get down into them. But anyhow, they used to make things and enjoy making them and keep them for two or three hundred years. Say, my great-great-grandfather made that. That was when work meant something. Women made jelly and pick a lily and all the rest and were proud of it and telling my wife today about my old mother. She made butter and sold it in a little town nearby and she had a reputation for making good butter. She never let it get rancid. It was always just the right, everything was good. My mother was really and properly and pardonably proud of the fact that people when they came to the store said, we'd like a couple of pounds of butter. Have you got any made by Mrs. Tozer? And she was proud of it, God bless her little old heart. She was proud of the fact she could make butter. You don't even know, you've never even seen the cow that gave them milk that your butter came from, you know. You've got no pride in your butter now, got no pride in your jelly. We buy jelly that says made in Scotland, of all things you know. Not jelly, but it's, what do you call this stuff you put on food? Marmalade. Made in Scotland. Work used to be something you could be proud of. It's something you get through with as fast as you can now in order to get the money out of it, in order that you can go play. So there's been a radical change in our views of work and a radical change in our views of money. I was mentioning to somebody recently of the first penny I ever owned, I remember, ever earned, I remembered, first penny, not dollar, penny, I remember it. I went out and helped a fellow pull weeds out of a corn patch. I was a little sawed-off fellow and I'd never earned a penny in my life. And I helped him with his weeds and he gave me a penny. I didn't keep it, I wish I had, but I think I know probably what I did with it. I would dash off, it was a mile and a half to the store, and I had to go across and I'd buy a penny's worth of candy. I got a handful in those days and I always kept some for my mother, I remember that. No, I'd no more do it than I'd cut my own head off, eat all the candy. It was sticky and it was dirty the time Mother got it, and it was usually, I pulled it out of a pant pocket covered with lint, but Mother got a little of it anyhow and thought best that she was too smart to ever let me see her eat it or ever know that she didn't. But I rather suspect that she didn't or at least washed it first. But that was the day when money meant something to somebody, but money doesn't mean anything to anybody now much. You get enough of it and away it goes. There's been a radical change in our attitude toward our reason for living. Our old Presbyterian friend said, man was born to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But now we've changed it so nobody knows why he was born. And our human goals and heaven and eternity and the world to come, vastly different attitude toward that now. You remember the old poem written by a long fellow, the village smithy beneath the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands, and in one place he says about the old village smithy with his hard hands and his soft heart, he went on Sunday to the church and sat among the boys. He heard his daughter's voice singing in the village choir and it made him think of her mother's voice singing in paradise. And with his hard rough hand he wiped a tear out of his eye. But we're not thinking so much about that now. The churches are not thinking about heaven. They're thinking about whether we should have the atom bomb in Canada and whether capital punishment is right or wrong and whether we should or should not live with Khrushchev. They think about earthly things. And the views of men have to do with earth. The views of the church in the early church had to do with heaven and God. And now it has to do with this world. The communists have made us ashamed. They have said, you're not worried about people now. You're looking for pie in the sky. And because these poor creatures were only half-saved to begin with, they allowed themselves to get intimidated by the mocking shout, pie in the sky, pie in the sky. Well, if any commie ever came up to me and said, you're selling pie in the sky, I'd say three things. First, I'm not selling pie. Second, I'm not selling anything in the sky. And third, I'm not selling anything. But I believe in heaven and God and the future nevertheless. But these changes have come. Now, part of the liberals have outright said that they've come and we've got to face them and we've got to adjust to them and we can't be the way our fathers were. And we can't expect Christians to be the kind of Christians they were in those early days. They were simple-hearted, childlike people with no knowledge of astronomy and no knowledge of science and no knowledge of themselves, no knowledge of human motives or the nature of the universe. And they just took things simply and naively like children. We've got to be different now. Now I want to ask you, haven't you, old church, and you that listen to me, I want to ask you this night in God's name, choose you this day, are we going to accept, that is, accept in act if not in creed, in act if not in creed, are we going to accept the belief that the Bible must be interpreted anew in the light of a new development? Are we going to allow ourselves to accept the doctrine that the prophets and apostles were mistaken about God? Are we going to allow them to tell us that the Bible is outmoded and largely irrelevant and must therefore be reassessed in the light of modern advancements? Are we going to do it? If we are, then God help us, for it is already written across our door, which way shall we go here? Has God changed? Are we going to accept it? Is there a change in the purpose of God? Have these changes in human society, have they startled God? Have they shocked him? Have they brought him to heel? Have they changed the everlasting God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth? Is Jesus Christ, who said, I'm the same yesterday, today and forever, is he changed? Is he now chiefly useful as a name to be used when you baptize your baby or at Christmastime or Easter? Or is Jesus Christ what the apostles and who the apostles said he was? Have the scientists now been able to do and the industrialists, have they been able to do what Jesus said the gates of hell couldn't do, prevail against the Church? And is the day of miracles past? Must we, in order to keep intellectually respectable and have good standing with these who doubt the word, must we humbly say, well, I don't believe in miracles. You're right, Doctor. You're right, Doctor. I don't believe in miracles anymore. Or have we got enough left of our Protestant protest and enough of our courage to stand up and say, I believe in miracles whenever God Almighty wants to perform them? And I believe that whenever God wants to do anything, it's out of the ordinary and contrary, or at least above the common processes of nature, and God's able to do it. And I believe the miracles of Jesus Christ. I believe they were real miracles. I believe the miracles of the Old Testament. I believe they were real miracles. But are we going to allow ourselves to be brainwashed along with all the rest? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around, over this country as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare as being Protestants indeed? to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare to stand and protest and be known around as being Protestants indeed? Or are we going to dare Or are we going to dare to stand and protest as being Protestants indeed? or are we going to dare abroad. After all, we mustn't be radical, we mustn't be extreme. We've got to reassess our faith in the light of new advanced knowledge. We've got to rethink our beliefs and our hopes in the light of new views of things. If you adjust, sir, you're done. But if you dare to stand, the world will adjust to you, I can promise you that. Not all of them, but some of them. There'll be people that adjust to you. And I ask, has Jesus Christ been defeated? There are people right now, Americans and Canadians and Britishers and Scotsmen and all the rest, who are worried for fear communism was the great unforeseen invasion. They said nothing's been like it, and they're right, nothing like it since the history of the world. But when Karl Marx and Lenin and the rest of them thought out communism, it was like opening the pits and letting out their locusts. They have taken one-third of the world's population, and they've killed Christianity wherever they've gone, except for a few that are hiding away in secret. Some are saying to themselves, is communism the unforeseen, unpredicted invasion? Is that that thing that God didn't know about, that Christ didn't foresee? And so is Christ after having come down this century, triumphant? Has he at last met his Waterloo? What's your answer to that? My answer is a loud, roaring, resounding, No! He's never met his Waterloo, and he never will. He, the Lord Christ, is going to ride down the sky on a white horse, and upon his thigh there will be written, King of kings and Lord of lords, and the rich men and the mighty men and the scientists and the doctors and the lords of finance will cry for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them, to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb and from the fury of his power. Have his people at last been plucked out of his hand? He said we'd never be plucked out of his hands. But did he know enough to tell us that? Hadn't there been some new developments he didn't foresee? The answer again is, No. Shall we surrender to the world? No. Shall we surrender to liberalism? No. Shall we surrender to apostate Protestantism? The answer is, No. Shall we surrender to the brainwashed gospel churches whose preachers are afraid to stand up and talk as I am talking tonight? And the answer again is, No. Our church is going to go the way of the gospel. We're not radicals, we're not fools, we don't fast 40 days, we dress like other people and drive around and have modern homes and are human and like to laugh, but we believe that God Almighty has not changed and that Jesus Christ is the same and that he's victorious and that we don't have to apologize for him and we don't have to modify nor adjust nor amend. He stands, that glorious Lord, and nobody needs to apologize for him. If our answer to all the questions that I've asked you is, Yes, then we leave to our children a heritage of death and nothing but death. I'm nearly finished. Shall we believe the ringing words which say, I, Jehovah, change not? I believe them. Shall we believe those words of the Lord which say, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever? I believe them. Shall we believe the words that say, He that overcometh I will give to each of the tree of life. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. He that overcometh shall sit with me on my throne. My dear brother and sister, we're not going to be sheep running over the precipice because other dumb sheep are running over the precipice. We see the precipice, we know it's there, and we're listening to the voice of the shepherd, not the voice of the terrified sheep. But the terrified, intimidated sheep are going everywhere. I look at the newspaper Saturday night and I'm hurt inside of my heart. I read magazines, Christian magazines, religious magazines, that ostensibly are orthodox and stand for truth, and the stuff they advertise makes me sick to my stomach because they've given up to the belief that the Bible is largely outmoded and they've got to think up some new deals in order to get anywhere, that they've got to reassess our beliefs and rethink our hopes, and that the prophets and apostles were all right in their day, but while we believe in Jesus and want to accept him and get saved, still we've got to rethink this whole thing. I stand solidly in protest against it. I believe that we need a reformation everywhere, again in Christian circles, back to the belief that God knew what he was talking about in the first place, back to the belief that Jesus Christ did not miss anything but saw it all and foresaw it all, back to the belief that the apostles spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, back to the belief that our fathers who gave us the great creeds were not fool but wise saints and knew what they were talking about, back to the belief that Protestants are to protest, that dissenters are to dissent, and nonconformists are to refuse to conform. Use of the Scottish blood. Read your history and be ashamed. Read your history and see how the day was when the Covenanters stood and died rather than give up to the enemy and left sweet blood on their heather, but they left it there. And you of other countries and nations and generations, use your German blood. Use the Scandinavian blood. Read your own history and see how back there they stood, those fathers. Are we satisfied to be degenerate sons of great fathers? The name of Simpson, my brother mentioned his name tonight, the man who walked the shores of the Atlantic Ocean with cardboard in the soles of his shoes because he didn't have money to buy new shoes. The man who walked and prayed and groaned in spirit as he walked the shores of that Atlantic and cried to God for men of all colors that hadn't heard the gospel and prayed, Oh God, I believe Jesus Christ, thy son, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We're his descendants supposed to be spiritually. We ought to spend a day in sackcloth and ashes. The man who at 36, the Presbyterian preacher, was sick, but he said, I feel I'll fall into the grave when I have a funeral. So sick that he couldn't preach for months at a time. Went to a little camp meeting in the woods and heard a colored quartet, four colored boys sing, No man can work like Jesus. No man can work like him. And he went off among the pine trees with that ringing in his heart. Nobody can work like Jesus. Nothing is too hard for Jesus. No man can work like him. And the learned, stiff-necked Presbyterian threw himself down on the pine needles and said, If Jesus Christ is what they said he was in that psalm, heal me. And the Lord healed him. And he lived to be 76 years old and founded a society that's now the fifth largest in the world. And you can add in Baptists and Protestants, Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists and Catholics. And it's still the fifth largest. We're his descendants. We sing his songs. But are we going to allow ourselves to listen to the world that will modify our faith and modify our practices and modify our beliefs and water down our gospel and thin down and dilute the power of the Holy Ghost? I for one am not going to. And I'm cheered to know so many of you are with me in this. We're going to go to the New Testament. We're going to be Bible Christians. We're going to sell out to God and not to the devil. We're going to pray more. We're going to read our Bible more. We're going to attend prayer meeting more. We're going to give more. We're going to break bad habits by the power of God. And we're going to become Christians after God's heart, aren't we? Amen, aren't we? And we're going to be protesters in an hour when that smooth, sticky, slippery, rotten, backslidden, degenerate and apostate Christianity is the big thing of the day. We're going to stand for God, not to be fools, not to be idiots, not to be intolerant, not to act like the Duke of Boers burning their houses down, but to act like simple Protestant Christians, to act like our Presbyterian Scottish forebears, to act like our English Methodist forebears, to act like the dear old Baptist who broke the ice in the creek and baptized them through the ice. And they had a saying in those days, nobody ever thought they would get baptized in the ice. God Almighty thought that nobody ever died on the moon. They made these two nations. They made this continent. Are we going to be descendants of which they can be ashamed? Or are we going to say, Lead on, boys, we're following. You follow Jesus Christ and we'll follow you. I believe, my brethren, that God's hearing our prayers and hearing our declarations and that we're going to see him do some wonderful things here at Av. Hewitt. I feel good about this myself. I do. I believe he's going to do wonderful things for us here. Now, some people won't like it. Some people will get mad. But if you don't make anybody mad and they're glad and they're sad, you never were called a priest anyhow. So for everyone I make mad, I promise you to make two glad. And for everyone I make sad, I promise you to make three glad. You'll just believe it and go along and follow God and Christ and not be brainwashed, nor dare to listen to the voice of the siren that says, Things have changed and you've got to change. That's what he thinks. The only change is going to be on their part. We're going to stand like rocks, aren't we, and say, O God, you will give us the strength and we'll do the standing. There was an old Welsh preacher I used to hear. He had a nice little beard. He was as beautiful as a picture. His name was John Thomas. Now, there isn't a good name. John Thomas. And I used to hear John Thomas preach. He looked like an angel while he preached, and he'd raise his hand and say, You supply their grit and God will supply their grace. He's right. You've got the grit, God's got the grace. Amen? All right, we're going to sing.