In this sermon, the preacher shares his experience of holding a meeting at a research center and witnessing a powerful move of God. The people in the town were stirred up and even started a petition to run the outpouring. The preacher emphasizes the importance of knowing the true God and having a personal relationship with Him. He highlights the need to turn away from sin and have a genuine affection for God. The sermon concludes with a call to prayer as the ultimate remedy for the desperate state of society.

A poor old brother came to me on the side one day, and he said to the preacher, he said, could I say something to you? And I said, sure. He said, now I've been in, I've been serving the Lord a long time. He said, I'm an old man now, and you're young. He said, I just want to drop you a hint. He said, you can catch more flies with molasses than you can with vinegar. And I said to him, but brother, I'm not trying to catch flies, I'm trying to kill sinners and bring them to the end of themselves and shut them up to Christ. You see, you have to die in order to be saved. You have to die in order to be saved. Now, if that's true, then the greatest need of our churches today is for the news to get out that God's people are waiting upon God in prayer that will not take notice of their needs. It's crazy. Meetings and meetings, programs and programs, we get worse in the ditch all the time. You know, I'm telling you, do you know, do you know the God and will and provision? Now, I know that you have, some of us have made, some of us have made a God out of, some a God out of, that will enable us. You either know the truth or a God of your own. A whole nation, the Jewish nation, even out of God's chosen, and serves their own. When you read the text, you'll find the quote. And lifted up his eyes, thou is come, glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal. Now watch it. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. My Lord said, no man knows the Father but me. And if any man gets acquainted with God, I'll have to introduce him. Here the Lord says that he's the one that gives eternal life to me. He's the only one that has the, he is the giver. And then the Lord doesn't make shopkeepers, doesn't have anything to say of me. And a man that doesn't know, and a man who knows God has, we Baptist, I'm not very smart, I'm, when we know it, do we know it? But unless a man knows, my spirit, who's Jesus Christ, the Lord willing I'd preach on the subject why God sends men to hell. Back to the service is over, a great big fellow, I remember him close to the stomach. And he said, I'll be back tomorrow night. He had married somebody. I hadn't heard a lot of stuff. Found out later. Well I said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Don't send me to hell. And he said, I'm sorry you don't want to come. Punish sin. Don't anybody believe he will now? We've waited without a little God that won't punish. They said, no use for us trying to get educated to save men from sins. And if God won't punish sin, I don't see where we need to be saved from. We preachers said, we preach in our hearts out here, and nobody wants to be saved. Nobody wants to be done with sin. Nobody wants to be turned to righteousness. And the reason for it is that nobody much believes that God will punish sin. And he said, instead of trying to get people to accept Jesus as Savior, if you'd come and preach three weeks on the radio and in the auditorium on the Sunday, we'd pray for you, and day on our faces that God Almighty take the truth over the radio and in the auditorium, men and women would go to their place of business and back to their home. He didn't say it. And I went. And one time in my life I saw a Holy Ghost conviction. I saw men who could not go to their place of business. I saw people have to go to the hospital so stricken with the fear of God. They said the people went crazy. One young woman was sent to their asylum and got through custom there. But conviction seized that town. Businessmen were saved. Church members were saved. Young people were saved. We never did get this to punish sin. A man lived in the community in Bethel, a farm right next to the little church where the people worshiped. This man was an unbeliever. He'd work all week on his farm, and then on the Lord's Day he'd crank up his tractor and he'd plow around his land right close to the church so that the noise of the tractor would interfere with the worship. Oh, he was a tough on man. So nothing took place. Finally the crops were gathered, and this man made a bumper crop. Bumper crop. He wrote a letter to the editor of the little weekly newspaper. He said, I violated your Sabbath day and I plowed my fields on Sunday while y'all was in church. And he said, I made more per acre than anybody in this country. He said, I proved to you that you don't have to pay any attention to this God business. And the editor published the letter without comment except down at the bottom of the letter. He said, my friend, God don't settle accounts in the month of October. Just hold on a little while. God don't always settle accounts in the month of October. But it is appointed unto man who wants to die. And after that the judgment. After that the judgment. It may not be in October, but it'll come. And God deals with men and women about the sin question. It's against sin. I hate sin. Who has been listening to some older preacher trying to apologize for God. And this young preacher had copied a statement I've heard many times that God does not send people to hell. They send themselves. Why it's just as silly. I arrest myself and then I execute myself. Does your, what attitude does your God take towards sin? Do you have a God that enables you to treat as you please? Ladies and gentlemen, listen to me. The God that America worships and the God of this Bible are two different peoples. The God that America serves that lets in the most church members all on earth that ever happen to them that quit some of the sins and will go to hell. The God of the Bible will send men to hell. Who will God send then? The old theologians approached this question from two different directions and said the same thing. They said, first of all, that God will send nobody to hell who he can wisely say. Would you listen to me? There are some things that God cannot do and stay God a million times then for God to put up these many years. And I'd rather for you to go to hell that he cares using all that he's got. If he stays God and before God, the terms upon which God proposes are repentance and faith. And faith that has been at the quality of perseverance and victory and endurance and conquering power over faith. The old theologians said that God saves men on the terms of repentance and faith and perseverance. We think it a little better now to say he saves men on the terms of repentance, a whole hatred of and forsaking of all faith, and laying hold on Jesus Christ in such a way as never being wrong to turn and lose. Listen to me. Do not misunderstand me. Salvation isn't like this, that God's sitting over here and the sinner's sitting over here and they're playing checkers, and God makes his move and then it's up to the sinner to make his move. And when the sinner's made his move, then God steps in and saves. No, no. God doesn't save men if they repent. God doesn't save men if they have faith. God saves men through repentance and faith. That's the only way God can save anybody, through that sinner turning from his sin to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what salvation is. More and more I hear them talking about God does his part, and then the sinner's got to do his part. But the Bible says that salvation is God's part, and that's God! If they're willing to be saved. Listen, God doesn't save people. Now watch it. God doesn't save people if they're willing to be saved. Did you get that? God doesn't save people if they're not willing to be saved. God saves people by bringing them to the place they're willing to be saved. Listen to me. Until you see that you are sure to go to hell, I'm preaching to you. As long as you think it's in your power to do something, you can change your ways, but you can't change your heart. You can change some of your... God looks at the heart. The man has been brought to repentance just as long as... I don't think you have much kick at the judgment that God sent him to hell. Don't tell me something else, honey. As long as you've got your sleeve holed up spitting on... I tell you men and women who want to go to heaven but are using all of their strength to go to hell, that ain't the way to get saved. God had to take a rough bond. I didn't want to be saved. I didn't want to go to hell. I didn't want to stand at the judgment. What I didn't want to be done was sinning. I didn't want to be done with sinning. And that's what salvation is, to be done with sinning. And I didn't want it. When I tell you that no man can come to the next people willing to be saved on God's terms. I don't know why he hasn't named you willing yet, but most folks who haven't named willing may drop on that willing. All the glory goes to him. And I come back to tell you that you keep telling me we can't go on much longer. We don't need some more conversion like a lot we've had in the past. We need somebody named willing to be saved on God's terms. We don't need many more professing Christians who have come. I get you to pack the place and stay in tears of your agony. Pray unto God that he'd do for others what he did for you. He'd make them willing to be saved on God's terms. Everybody whom God loved, doing the best he can, using all the means at his disposal, is a named one. God will send them to hell, whether it be your boy, or your husband, or your loved one. And that's your evangelism of the day. Because the lead out to sin Christians. Did you say you want to be saved from hell? Everybody wants to be saved from hell. But if you walk down this aisle and repeat this prayer, God, the mercy of the mere sinner, I guarantee you'll sing and you'll never be lost. You wouldn't take up a proposition like that. And then they go right on out to the same hogpen they've been in all the time, trying to dine and go to hell. Because salvation is not from hell. That's incidental. Salvation from sin. You ain't never been saved, my friend, unless you wanted to be saved from sin. If all you ever experienced was you decided you didn't want to go to hell, you don't know, my Lord, we came to save people from the sin. That's right with us. And unless he can do that, he'll have to send you to hell, if he stays gone. Two reasons. God sent people to hell first, to keep them from doing any more damage. He took the bodies of six million Jews and used the ashes from them to make soap to wash the bodies. I don't believe he's in hell. Heaven be my strange place if that butcher's there. Whoever that woman was that took that little green lease boy out and killed him, and then got $600,000 ransom money and went on to get him drunk. I don't think they'd fix him to go to hell. He'll send to hell. Because if he left one unsanctified, unregenerated sinner into heaven, they'd turn heaven into hell. And he's not going to do that. My blessed Lord says I need my brother sent into hell, and deliver him from hell. And when I get to heaven, my people who are happy in the presence of God, they're not happy to have anybody as policemen up there. Not the correction, but the punishment. God hates this. When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his angels of might, in flames and fire, and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall be purged with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. Oh, God will punish me in hell. And do not cry, my little girl, as we would if we did. I was down in the city of Mobile, Alabama, and I was on the radio in a tent meeting. I had 30 minutes on the radio. I was led out to preach on Judgment Hill, and for three solid weeks I was on the radio. People came to the tent under conviction, whittled down by God through the message of the radio. Then the phones began to ring. The religious people of Mobile were angry. People being saved in the stowage. People talking about the things of God on the street. The religious people were getting angry about it. They began to phone in to the manager and said, You must take that fellow off there. He said, We can't stand it any longer, all that hell business. He said, If you don't take him off there, we're going to quit advertising with you. If you don't put him off there, we're going to write the Federal Commission and have your license taken away. He came and told me all about it. I said, We're behind the time, and I certainly don't want to cause you any embarrassment. We'll just go off there. He said, No, you won't. He said, No, you won't. He said, I know the law. And he said, This is the first time I ever saw anybody in this town interested in escaping the judgment of God. You're going to stay on there, bless his heart. He showed that my message hadn't got over to him. He said, Young man, I've been listening to you preach, and I want to differ with you. He said, I do not believe that it would do a sinner any good for God to send him to hell. The next day I made that sermon. I just said, A friend writes, and I think he's missed my message altogether. And I said, His position is that he does not believe it would do a sinner any good for God to send him to hell. And I said, That man's exactly right, for God to send him to hell. God sends people to hell to punish them for the sin. He hung his son on a cross, if God won't punish sin. And there's forgiveness, there's peace in him. And until the sinner flies to him for refuge, he's under the very presence of wrath of a holy God. May God bring us to the place of wrath. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A, Edmonton, that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N, Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T-6-L-3-T-5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay what he never knew.