In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of the Holy Spirit's presence and power in the lives of believers. He encourages the congregation to be willing vessels for God's work, comparing them to kindling wood that can start a fire. The preacher urges the church to repent and remove any obstacles in their hearts, homes, and churches. He criticizes the tendency to rely on human efforts and religious extravaganzas instead of seeking genuine spiritual transformation. The sermon concludes with a cautionary story about a pageant gone wrong, highlighting the need for a true outpouring of the Holy Spirit rather than mere religious spectacle.

I saw a sign on a church bulletin board years ago, and I titled one of my books after it, Why Not Just Be Christians? That's enough. One of our religious leaders some years ago was riding on a plane in a stormy time, and the other passengers were frightened. And he had such cool composure that somebody asked him, Are you a Christian scientist? And he said, No, just a Christian. That's all you need to be. You don't have to be a Christian this and a Christian that, just a Christian. I know of a church that had a sign in front, Jesus Only, and they had a storm one night and blew out the first three letters and left us only. I don't belong to the us only church. We have some like that. You know, they even had a Jesus party over there in the Corinthian church, and it was just a party. They said, I of Christ, and they were about as selfish as the rest of them. I have a lot of fun over this. I'm a Baptist, but I minister all about. I'm going to be over at Grace Presbyterian Peoria and in First Church Freeport. Some people say, Well, I belong to the brethren. And I say, Well, I'm one of the brethren, too. Then somebody else said, Well, I belong to the disciples. And I said, Is that so? Well, I'm one of the disciples, too. And the other said, I belong to the Christian church. And I say, Shake, brother. I belong to the Christian church, too. And somebody else, though, you get all kinds. Some say, Well, I belong to the church of Jesus Christ, the Latter-day Saints. And I say, Well, now, wait a minute. Hold everything. I belong to the church of Jesus Christ, and I think I'm one of the saints, and I believe we're in the Latter-days, but I don't mean quite what you mean, I think, when you say that. And somebody says, Well, I'm a Bible Baptist. And I said, Well, I'm a Baptist, and I believe the Bible. Another one said, I'm an independent Baptist. And I said, My, you can't be any more independent than I am. Nobody tells me where to preach, what to preach, how to preach. So I don't pay much attention to all these tags. Jesus healed three blind men. One he just touched, and the second one he touched twice, and the third he sent off to the Pulasalam to wash the mud off of his eyes. And if those fellows had ever got together, what an argument they might have had. One of them said, Well, he touched me just once. The other one said, That's not enough. It has to be twice. And the third one said, No, he has to put mud on your eyes and wash it off. And yet I started three denominations there, the one-touch, the two-touch, and the mudites. But, oh, I started right from that sort of thing. Well, I thank God they could all get up and sing, He Touched Me. And that's what matters about the whole business. And that's the way I feel about it, so I have a great time with the Saints. On the day of Pentecost, when the multitude saw the early church filled with the Spirit, they asked, What does this mean? And Peter replied, This is that. This is what Joel was talking about. And after his sermon, the listeners asked, What shall we do? We've tried to reverse the order. We expect the world to ask, What shall we do? Before they've seen enough going on in the church to ask, What does this mean? And in our desperation, we've staged religious extravaganzas and stirred religious excitement and simulated religious ecstasies. But the multitude is not crying out today, What shall we do? Centuries ago over in Florence, Italy, Lorenzo, the famous Lorenzo, put on a pageant of Pentecost. I'm a little uneasy about pageants anyhow. But he put on a pageant. He had twelve apostles all lined up down there. And at a given time, fire, sure enough, fire was to fall from the ceiling. Well, things got mixed up a little bit. The fire fell all right. But the apostles caught on fire, and the curtains caught on fire, and the building caught on fire, and they all did well to get out of there with their lives. Something like that always happens when you try to have a synthetic Pentecost. Something happens every time. Now, in this day of Jesus' movements and other movements, massive religious gatherings, and Amazing Grace has become a bestseller, and Gospel Rock packs church auditoriums, and the name of Jesus is at an all-time high popularity, from every direction people are asking, Is this revival? Well, the fact that you ask it, Is this revival? is its own answer. It implies doubt and uncertainty. If we ever have the kind of revival I'm thinking about tonight, we'll know it. A genuine work of God is always self-authenticated. It bears its own credentials, and you won't have to have a conference of experts to identify it. If this were revival, there would be a return to the authority of the Bible as the inerrant word of God. Some of the brethren today who are battling for orthodoxy ought to major on calling the church to repentance, because if the church ever repents and forsakes her doubt, liberalism won't have a leg to stand on. And what argument could never accomplish comes naturally, or I ought to say supernaturally, when people turn to God. I never get tired of reading about the Welsh revival. I have an old ragged book, Rent, Heavens, and I read it again and again. And it was said then, the revival was largely a protest against the philosophic Christianity that had been preached by the ministers whom Welsh universities and colleges had trained. One minister greatly used in the revival had been interested in the new theology, but he had a new experience and the writings of the higher critics lost their attraction for him. But orthodoxy itself needs revival these days. Fundamentalism needs a revival. You can be as straight as a gun barrel theologically and just as empty as a gun barrel spiritually. And unless there's a return to sound doctrine accompanied by spiritual renewal, you may have some kind of a reformation, but it won't be a revival. There isn't anything deader than a co-fundamentalism and a dead orthodoxy. The Pharisees were fundamental. Jesus said, Do what they say, but don't do the way they do. But the Welsh revival did both. It brought theology and doxology. And we need the combination. If we ever have revival, there will be a profound conviction of sin, and there will be the confession and forsaking of sin. We won't call it immaturity and arrested development and biological growing pains. We won't talk about the big buddy upstairs, and parents will get around to saying, Once more my boy and my girl is lost. You don't hear that anymore. It's been years since I've heard any dad or mom say, My child is lost. And yet Jesus came to seek and to save those folks. Johnny is a good boy, and the rich young ruler was a good boy, but not God's boy. We need to get back to the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart. We talk about complexes and inhibitions, and we let the psychiatrists deal with it, not the preacher. And old-fashioned sinners are harder to find than whooping cranes over the country today. The prodigal son said, I have sinned. Today it used to be fornication. Now it's premarital sex. It used to be adultery. Now it's an affair. We're being rehabilitated by social programs and building modernized hog pens out in the far country. If they'd have had a social gospel on the day of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him soup and a sandwich, and he never would have gone home to the father. We cannot expect God to take away his sins by forgiving them if we're not willing to put them away by forsaking them. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. And there'll be no mercy and forgiveness until the wicked forsakes his way, and the unrighteous man is stolen. If we had revival, the divorce rate would drop, and houses would become homes again, and marriage would be for life, and unwed college students wouldn't be living like men and wife in dormitories all over the nation, and pornography and homosexuality and nudity and other abominations would not be accepted. Husbands would be the head of the home, women would be the heart of the home, and any home with two heads and no heart is a monstrosity. Motherhood would be elevated to its true importance and to the consternation of women's lib, and discipline would be restored in the home and the church from which it has disappeared almost entirely. If we had revival, it would make an impact on lawlessness and crime. We're living in a time when it is as though all the highway signs had been taken down and everybody was free to drive as he pleased. The criminal is cobbled and given a slap on the wrist by lenient courts, and the streets are no longer safe day or night for a decent citizen because they're infested by the demonized denizens of darkness, and in such a time, capital punishment, they're trying to put it out though God ordained it. If we had revival today, there would be restitution and reconciliation among Christians. It doesn't take much religion to confess other people's sins. Some folks are pretty good at that, never get around to their own. I heard of a woman who came to a psychiatrist. She had a strip of bacon over each ear and a fried egg on top of her head, and she said, I've come to see you about my brother. She needed a little help herself. The churches are rent today. I go from church to church to church, and I find so many rent with all those things that Paul enumerated, envy, strife, division, swellings, whisperings, tumults, schisms, various debates, contentions, and I might add tackling and gossiping and backbiting and jealousy among the flock, even among preachers, husbands and wives and parents and children and neighbors who need to be reconciled. Is there anybody in the crowd tonight, husband, wife, that you're not getting along too well at home? Have you got enough of the grace of God to go home after this meeting tonight and say, I'm sorry, I've not been acting like a Christian, let's get on our knees, confess our sins, forgive me? Any young person here tonight that's not been acting right toward dad and mom ought to do the same thing, and sometimes they ought to do the same thing with the children. Personality clashes in church staffs today as never before, sins of the tongue and the temper. All these evils that beset Corinth plague us today. Zacchaeus needs to straighten out his crooked business practices. We still have two-faced hypocrites who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers, and only a revival will clear that up. Now, if we had revival, there would be a decline of worldliness. I don't hear sermons on worldliness anymore, that's out. We call it secularism, nobody knows what that means, so that lets the preacher off the hook. We used to preach, come out from among them and be separate. Today even fundamentalists and conservatives are saying, get into it and get with it. Anything that sounds like old-fashioned separation from the world is abhorred like the bubonic plague. We're living in an age that's growing near Babylon, when the harlot rides the beast. The world and the church have been casting eyes at each other. I'm talking about the professing church. They've fallen in love and the wedding approaches. Living in a day when preachers that once thundered against specific sins don't do it. Now, they tell us you shouldn't talk about specific sins, just talk about sin. Nobody ever gets convicted over just a sermon on sin as a generality. When Jesus talked to the woman at Jacob's well, she didn't get under conviction. When he talked about the water of life, that's an important subject. She didn't get under conviction when he talked about where's the best place to worship, but when he said, go call thy husband, that's when it happened. She'd had too many of them already, and that was the sin, the sin in her life. Some church covenants today, I'm thinking of one in particular, an important church used to have references to drinking and a whole lot of other things. We will abstain from all that in the world. They say, now, all evil, well, that sounds good, but everybody can put their own interpretation of what evil is. So that leaves the gate wide open. Of course, when they get their eyes on Jesus, the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. If we were having a revival, we'd have an outbreak of old-fashioned, original New Testament Christianity. We'd quit swinging between Rigor Mortis at one extreme and St. Vitus at the other. We'd get over this Christless church-anarchy and churchless Christianity, and both of them are the plague today. A. W. Tozer said, and we miss him, he was a prophet, The present flair for religion has not made people heavenly-minded. It has secularized religion and put its approval on the carnal values of fallen men. It glorifies success and eagerly prints religious testimonials from big corporation tycoons, actors, athletes, politicians, and very important persons of every kind, regardless of their reputation or lack of one. Religion is promoted by the same techniques used to sell cigarettes. You pray to soothe your nerves just as you smoke to regain your composure after a hard business day. Books are written by the stores to show that Jesus is a regular fellow, and Christianity a wise use of the highest psychological laws, and so on. And I agree. I agree with him. If this were that, we'd be delivered from such popular aberrations as the notion that we must dress like the world and talk like the world and sing like the world in order to reach the world for Christ. You don't have to look like a clown to witness to a circus. When I was pastor of a church years ago, we had a rescue mission service every Saturday night. I didn't dress like a bum to go over there and talk to the bum. The bums wouldn't have appreciated that themselves. The language of the gospel does not have to be degraded into the jargon of the hippies. Even the hippies would resent such pitiful procedure. We have the obsession today in some quarters that Isaac Watts, for instance, the hymn writer, his idiom, people don't understand it today. So we have to switch from hymns to hootenannies, forgetting that such great songs as Well Won, Jesus, and Shall It Ever Be written by a ten-year-old. It's an insult to the intelligence of modern youth. And let me say parenthetically, I have a better response today from young people, than I've ever had in all these years of preaching. I never saw anything like it. If they think you're not a phony and you lay it on the line and you're honest, they'll respond. But they say today that the kids can't understand technical language of theology, so we've got to bring it down into the mud and into the dirt. That's an insult to their intelligence. They're still studying Shakespeare in the vernacular. They're still studying the med students' medical language, and that's pretty strong. The law students are still trying to wade through legal terminology. They haven't changed that to suit the whims of this time. A real vision from God would make us red with embarrassment. Did we ever use such cheap devices? Of course, I didn't expect any amens from that part of my sermon. If this were that, there'd be a recovery of modesty in dress and in deportment. That is both explicit and implicit in the Bible. Christians would be different in appearance and set a standard for a sex-crazy generation. I don't mean we'd look like something the cats dragged in. I don't mean that at all. I think we ought to look our very best for Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about that. But I do say that we ought to go about clad in such a way as to magnify the business we're in and set an example. Well, somebody says, what matters is your heart, not your clothes. Yes, but the world doesn't see your heart, it sees your clothes. It sees you. There's no evidence of freakishness in the appearance of Jesus. He set no weird standards in haberdashery or haircuts. And if this were that, Christians would attract no special attention by being doodish at one end of the line or dowdy at the other. We need to watch what I call sometimes trendism. It's a dangerous thing. There are things, beloved, that are not bad now. They're not really bad as of now. But they have the potential. And you have to ask yourself today, now, where's this thing going? And where will I go if I go with it? Paul said, if eating meat offered I was caused my brother to stumble, I won't touch it. Nothing wrong with meat. But he was looking at the context. We have to deal with these things when they begin in the incipient stages. Deal with it when it's a tiny serpent, not when it becomes a boa constrictor. We have to deal with the trickle before it becomes a torrent. You say, oh, those things are just symptoms. Yes, but you ask any doctor. If symptoms aren't important, symptoms help to tell what's the matter with you. And certainly, we are letting the world dictate to us just about everything. If we had revival today, the sanctity of the Lord's day would be restored. Have you noticed that when the weather reports come along the last part of the week, everything's geared, it is down my country, I'm sure it is here. What's it going to be like in the mountains, and what's it going to be like on the beach? Because they know where everybody's going, including the sands. What used to be the Lord's day is now the weekend. And a three-day working week, if it comes, what do we do with leisure? We don't know what to do with it now. This new calendar of long holiday weekends is almost a disaster to the Church. And if it's extended, and we know no more than we do now what to do with leisure, may the Lord help us. My own denomination in one of its conventions prepared a new statement of faith and said this about the Lord's day, we should refrain from all secular employments, works of necessity, and mercy except it. I don't think most of my crowd know that that was ever voted on and passed, because I'm sure a lot of them wouldn't have voted for it. Now, according to that, Sunday football hardly qualifies. It's not a work of necessity and sure isn't a work of mercy. And if all the preachers and the parishioners whose eyes are glued on Sunday afternoon to television spend some time on their knees in prayer and alone in meditation, this revival might begin to happen. The Church began to degenerate, Augustine tells us, when the holy days were mixed up with the holidays, and we never have gotten over that. I could read to you if I had time what Spurgeon and A.J. Gordon said it sounds today. Well, people say, oh, that's old hat. Nobody ever says that anymore. But we don't have many Spurgeons and Gordons around over the land. It would make a mighty impact on entrenched evil. There was a day when Sam Jones and Billy Sunday and Mordecai Hamm fought the liquor business, for instance. Today, even religious leaders sometimes have a good word for Paul's advice to Timothy and stretch it a bit. Use a little wine. I look for an outbreak of stomach trouble among a lot of the saints these days. I heard some experts on TV the other day discussing alcoholism. I listened. I thought maybe I'd get some word worth hearing. They discussed it for the whole period, and they never once mentioned alcohol as such. Now, I'm just a country preacher from western North Carolina, but I always thought that what caused alcoholism was alcohol. I think that makes sense. But what we're trying to do today is mop up the floor and leave the faucet running. We're trying to sweep out the cobwebs and never touch the spider, because the big sacred cow of the day is the liquor business. Nobody's going to say anything much about that. You can get excited about saccharine and do much about liquor. You can't do anything much about tobacco. I don't have a sermon on tobacco. You'd think I'd waste time on a thing like that. I always tell my crowd, if you're coming back tonight to church and bringing your tobacco with you, leave it on the steps. Now, I guarantee you no hog or dog will get it until you go out after the sermon. You say, you know, I like that kind of preaching. I can tell you of some folks who got straightened out with God over that one remark, because he did name something. And Billy Sunday, my soul, he said about that business of liquor, as long as I've got a foot, I'll kick it. As long as I've got a fist, I'll hit it. As long as I've got a tooth, I'll bite it. And when I'm footless and thistles and toothless, I'll gum it till I go to heaven and it goes to hell. I'd like to hear that kind of preaching today for a change. Some of you probably did then, and it's gone out of style. But God is calling some of us today, for what little time we have left, to name it and say it like it is. Alexander White, that great old Scottish preacher, just about my favorite writer, W-H-Y-T-E. In his eighties, he was always a stern preacher against sin. He said, I was out walking and thought, maybe I should give myself to the gentler themes of the gospel. But there came to my heart, as it were, a voice saying, No, go back and show the house of Jacob and Israel their transgression and their sins. Not many preachers today will risk their life and reputation to do it, and you don't have much of either left to risk. And he said, I went back, and that's what it is. Now, I've been preaching all week until today, messages mostly of comfort. And I love it. And I've told you how that God has given me a new note, more than ever before, along that line. But the devil is clever. And I was writing with a preacher the other day, and I told him about that. He said, Well, brother, thank God. But we don't want to lose the prophet, either. Satan can get you to being so sweet. And that's a trick. We must not be ignorant of his devices, that you fail to cry out against evil. So we try to balance it. Now, what are we going to do about this, beloved? We don't have revival. We have spotty revival, and thank God for every one of them. In different churches and localities, we have the great evangelistic ministry of many great evangelists today. But I'm talking about revival, not talking about evangelism, because revival is another matter. Revival doesn't have anything to do with sinners. Revival deals with Christians. It gets them right with God and each other. Evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel to win the laws. What are we going to do about it? Your church members are here for the most part tonight. All the way through the Bible, God deals with the remnant. All the way through. Moses stood and said, in that awful day when they had slipped and backslidden, who is on the Lord's side? And a little group joined him. Gideon, 300 after he'd cut down a larger army to what God specified. Malachi, no matter what Malachi preached about, they'd say, where in, where in? Campbell Morgan has a book on the where ins of Malachi, I believe. And people do today. You preach plainly. They say, well, you don't mean me, do you? But the book ends, Then they that feared the Lord spake often unto another, There is your remnant. And over at Laodicea, my Lord calls the church to repentance. They didn't repent. But as I said this morning, he said, I have one more proposition. If anyone will hear my voice, I'm going to gather. Campbell Morgan says he excommunicated the whole church and started over with one man. And I believe that's the way God's working today. I believe that there's something going on in all our denominations, all our churches. It never gets in the records and the statistics. God is moving among the few that have not bowed the knee to Baal. Now, I'm just thinking, I looked at the crowd last night, and I look at you tonight, and you're here from ever so many churches. It would be interesting to know how many different churches. And you're perhaps among the best people in that church. You're sort of the cream of the crop. It couldn't run, some of them, without such folks as you. But there's a great danger, beloved, that we forget that revival does not begin with the backsliders. It does not begin with the Sunday morning crowd. It does not begin with the Christmas and Easter crowd. It begins with the best people in the church. The Shantung revival in China started with Dr. Culpepper, and there never was a saint near a man who ever went to China. When God got through with him, you'd have thought he was the worst sinner there. Let Bertha Smith, who was there, tell about it. One missionary had to get converted over there, and I was in South Carolina preaching. She's an old lady now, came up after the service, said, I'm that woman. I went over there to convert the heathen. I had to get saved. I said, come tonight and tell it in the meeting. God started with the best people. Now, you've got a conglomeration of good people here tonight. God bless you, and I love every one of you. But will you let me, speaking for God's sake, are we right sure that we don't need a revival in our own hearts, and they're getting right with God on a hundred different things. The last word of Jesus to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing Jesus said to the church was repent. Nobody likes that. And a few folks will always walk out when you're talking about that. What is the sin that you need to deal with? Omission? What is it that God wants you to do and you won't do it? It's just as bad, just as wrong not to do what God wants you to do as to do what God doesn't want you to do. Is it a sin of commission? Something you do and you ought to quit. Is it a sin of disposition? Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Is it something doubtful in your life with a question mark after it? Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. When I was a boy out in the country, my daddy used to take me to an old flour mill that was run by a water wheel. I've used this illustration many, many times. I make no apologies because it says what I want to say. The stream would pour on the big wheel and the big wheel would turn the others. Now suppose that miller would come down some morning and there wasn't enough water to turn the wheel. How silly he'd be to get down there and try to make it go around. He might call in the neighbors, but that wouldn't do it. What he could do is go up the creek and deepen the channel and then the stream would flow and the wheel would turn. He'd be back in business. I go from church to church where they're having conferences about how to make the wheels go around. Education leaders, music leaders, pastors, Sunday school superintendents, and we're puffing and blowing and reddening the face trying to make the wheels go around. I say all over this land, what we need is to go up the creek. We need to confess sin in our lives and get things out of the way in our hearts, our homes, and our churches. Then from within us shall flow rivers of living water because all the wonderful things in Acts are simply the outpouring and the overflowing of the inflowing of the Spirit of God. I wish I knew some way to get you folks, maybe four from one church and six from another and a dozen from another, to promise God tonight right in here that you would be willing to be God's kindling. How do you know that what God sent you here to get a few coals of fire to take back to that church and start a fire? And you know how you start a fire, how we used to, with kindling wood. We don't start it with the backlog. You start it with the kindling wood, just a few. Are you willing to be God's kindling wood? I know this is a hot night talking about starting a fire, but I'm talking about a spiritual fire. Are you willing to be God's kindling wood in your church? Now, I don't mean a super sanctimonious Pharisee looking down your nose that everybody doesn't dot all his I's and cross all his T's like you do. I don't mean that. But I do mean, are you willing to be the fuel of the flame of God? Get a little group together. All my life I have been preaching this. In the days I had a little country church, we broke the rules and regulations and didn't have any program. If you've got a word for Jesus. I wrote a book, Not Peace But A Sword. Never had so much. Some folks thought I was trying to write a novel. I don't know how to write novels. I wasn't trying to write one then. I was merely trying to put down, as I saw it, a little group of people in a church like In His Steps. You've all read that. Who decided to take Jesus seriously and see what happened. Now, if you'd ever try that in some church, plenty would happen. How many of you would be willing to get together, and I don't mean one of these little cliques meeting off somewhere. The preacher ought to lead it. The pastor ought to lead it. Every time. If you were a pastor here tonight on vacation or something, go home and start it. There would be plenty of trouble. All the whirlings in the church will talk about this new sanctified crowd in the church. Super saints and all that sort of thing. But that's part of the price that you pay. Go about it in love. Don't go in holier-than-thou attitude. But my friends, if I could get you as a delegation from this church and that church and the other church, get your crowd together. I had a meeting in Florida in a little place because I had a cancellation in another, and a preacher said, Would you come over and preach for us a week? We don't even have a motel here, but we need a revival. Well, I preached a week, and not much happened. Not anything unusual. But the kids, the young people, started meeting on Saturday night in an old school building. Saturday night of all nights. Didn't have a thing in the world, but they met and prayed. They started with six or seven, and it grew up to about 200. And do you know that I don't know how many of them are preachers now, and married preachers and Christian work of various kinds, Christian schools, and they're doing me up a book about how it all came about. The kids took Jesus seriously. Something happened. I don't care how you do it. I'm not trying to start an organization. If you organize these things, you kill them. Give the Holy Spirit a chance. Let Him have a try at it. There isn't much of a way to make an invitation here because I know the weaknesses. I've faced people for 63 years, and I'm afraid if I said how many of you are willing to do that, I think you'll understand when I say just about everybody would probably get up. And that's human nature, and that's mass psychology. And I wouldn't want to make you perjure yourself because other folks get up and say, it won't do for me to sit here. I claim to be a Christian, so we get up. Sometimes I think we've just about rededicated ourselves to death. I've seen more people walk down more church aisles and make God more promises and do less about it than anything else that I can think of. I wish I knew some hard way that never had been thought of to do this. Because we might not get, but it isn't. But they'd mean it. I can only say that I've thought about this for the last three days, and I couldn't talk about anything else. I never know when I've had the last chance to talk to a crowd. Now, if you want sometimes to drop me a line and say we did it, that's fine. I've got nothing to say. You know nothing. I'm not putting on any kind of a program. But I have a feeling that some of you would like to do that as you never have before in any way. You'll get together in your home and with a few of the saints wherever you're going. Maybe your church is having problems, and you're not going to have them by discussing them and everybody getting mad and arguing about it. And you're not going to settle it by moving out and starting another church down the street because that'll be just like this one in a few years anyhow. Something's got to happen within, and somebody's got to pay the price. And it's a stiff price sometimes, and you will be misunderstood. And it won't be easy. I could take it easy and preach one, just pick up one of my sermons, preach it here, and take my honorarium check and go home and make a living. But I can't understand any preacher who can take it easy in a day like this. Somebody has to go too much for some that don't go enough. I'm going to leave it with you. If somebody wants to slip up before I get out of here and say, Preacher, I mean to do that, I mean to do something about what I've heard tonight, that would be a little more serious. You don't have to do that. Tell God. Sometime maybe drop me a line, and if anything happens, tell about it. I hear a lot about that sort of thing. And so we're going to close just that way. Father, I thank Thee for this week here at Winona Lake. Thou knowest how I love this place and these people. I thank Thee for the many kind and sweet things they've said to me and written to me and this week have said to me. And Lord, Thou knowest our heart tonight. Thou knowest the state of the churches. Our Lord standing among the candlesticks tonight saying, Repent or else. Great God, raise out of this congregation a group of people who will take that seriously as they never have before and will band together to be a Gideon's band and an assembly of the anyones who hear his voice and open the door. And Lord, we believe that if they're willing to be kindle in wood, you will start a fire. We commit this. We've said it the best way we knew how. We trust the Holy Spirit to do what we never could do, lay it on their hearts and energize them to do it. In Jesus' name, amen.