In this sermon, the preacher begins by inviting the congregation to pray and listen to the word of God. He then focuses on the 2nd Book of Kings, specifically chapter 4, and highlights various chapters and their significance. The preacher emphasizes the importance of faith and the power of God's miracles, using the example of a child being brought back to life. He encourages the congregation to have faith and trust in God, reminding them of the need to be still and allow God to work in their lives.

Immediately after the benediction, we'll remain quiet while the organ plays softly. Let us pray that God may help us to hear not only but to be also doers of the Word. And all those who would like to see Mr. Wiley after the service may meet him here in front of the auditorium. Thank you. Now we'll turn right away to our portion of Scripture in the second book of Kings, chapter four. I don't know if you think we are moving slowly or fast, but chapter after chapter is being forged in this picture book that I think reveals the secrets of victory, and we are going to take our title tonight. Let's see now. Would you like me to check over the chapter? Chapter one, Man of God. Chapter two, Take the Mantle. Chapter three, Dig the Ditches. Chapter four, Pour the Oil, in the opening verse. And this morning, chapter five, Watch Your Day. Under the little key it fell on a day. Watch your day. Now tonight we are going to take a little phrase, and you can count how many times it comes in the Scripture reading. It's the little phrase, Shut the Door. Shut the Door. Two Kings, chapter four, verse four. When thou art come in, this is the prophet speaking to this poor widow woman in great distress. When thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all the vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons who brought the vessels to her. And she poured out. It came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. He said unto her, There is not a vessel more, and the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God, and he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest. Now move down the chapter to verse eighteen. When the child was grown, it fell on a day. He went out to his father, to the reapers. He said unto his father, My head, my head. He said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out. She called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men and one of the asses, and I may run to the man of God, and come again. Verse thirty-two. When Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain. Prayed unto the Lord. He went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands. And he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed. War. Shall we bow in prayer for the moment? Quiet. Lord, bless the reading of thy word to our hearts, and thou, as we talk another over the open page, help us largely to forget and be conscious that thou art leading us by thy Spirit into thy truth. And wilt thou teach us something that may leave its mark upon our spiritual experience? It might be, Lord, that from tonight we shall learn the secrets of the shut door. For the Lord Jesus Christ is risen. Are you counted rightly? I know you all counted rightly. It was four times you get the little phrase in the reading just now. Shut the door. Shut the door. I suppose you've often looked round your home, and you've thought to yourself, well, why do people put windows in the home? Well, it's to let the air and light in. Of course, in your day, with air conditioning and electricity, you could live in a house without any windows, but I don't think it would be very nice. Windows are lovely. You can look round your home, and you say, well, what are these cupboards for? Well, they're to put all your goody goodies away in safe places behind the cupboard door. As you look round, everything has a usefulness. Perhaps even an old ladder that you put on the floor will link the floor and the ceiling, or the floor, or some picture, and it's tremendously useful in your home. But perhaps there is nothing in your home that is used quite so much as the swinging door to close you in, and to let you out, to open and welcome guests. And a door is a very useful thing. Now, there's an old story about a politician, David Lloyd George, the Welsh Prime Minister of Great Britain. He came from the country parts of Wales, and he used to like, occasionally, to take some of his London business or some political friends down to his home country. And taking big walking sticks, they would say, let's go out for a walk in the open, fresh air, far from the big smog of the city. And as they came in these little patchwork fields, from field to field, they would come to gates, and there would be a gate from one little field, with its hedge and ditch all the way round, it might be a two-acre field, into the next little field. Those of you who've been to Britain will know what I'm talking about, the little patchwork fields of Britain. And as they passed from field to field, David Lloyd George would always open the gate, and his guests would pass through, and then he would spend quite a time shutting that gate and seeing that the latch was fixed and give it a shake. One day, one of his London friends said to him, why do you bother to be so particular about the gates here? And he looked out over the field, and Lloyd George said, well, you're not a countryman, you don't know. He said, you look over in that field over there, you can see perhaps twenty cows. And he said, they'll graze and slowly move round, and they'll come to this gate, and they'll edge against it, and if it's open, they'll slip through into the next field. And he said, if those gates weren't closed, you could find your cows a strain three, four, five fields away. He said, you see, a gate must be latched and closed to keep things in their rightful place. Now, this is what I want to teach tonight. I want to teach the value of the shut door, the closed door. What can happen behind that door, and why that door should be closed, and without the closing of it, things don't happen. Let's look for a key verse in the New Testament teaching in Matthew 6 for this. Matthew 6 and verse 6. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, thy inner chamber, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Now, Abraham used to pray under a big oak tree at Mamre in the heat of the day, sitting, talking as friend to friend. Dear old Jonah prayed in the great big fish's belly down in the gurgling waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and his prayer shot up to glory. Nehemiah prayed with a cup in his hand as he was serving his king on the throne. A situation arose, and he says, so I prayed to the God of heaven, and these were men who were in touch with the eternal throne. And I know that most of you, if not all of you, pray in your kitchen, pray on your bed while you're relaxing, pray in the car sometimes, even as you're speeding along a highway. This is praying without ceasing. But there are times when you've got to enter into a quiet inner chamber and shut the door. And without this, some of the deepest secrets that we are searching for this week will never be known. When thou hast shut the door, what does it really mean to shut the door? Well, I know it means a material door, and I know that a quiet place is absolutely vital with a shut door, but it can't mean only that. I am thinking down in Guyana on the South American coast of a precious colored girl who teaches in one of the big Sunday schools down there, a sweeter girl of 18 or 19 years of age, you could not see. And you see her in her cotton frock on a Sunday standing with her Bible and teaching her class, and I watched her, watched her carefully, and I have found that she is a spiritual, glorious, victorious Christian. One day she came to me and she said, Mr. Vardish, would you visit my old auntie? She's very, very ill. And I went. Nearer I stepped out into one of our yards. I wonder if you know what that word means. It's a big sort of one third of an acre yard with one common water pipe and round it many little what you would call huts, one-roomed huts, where poor families live. And as I passed through the yard, the little negro children were playing around, scores of them, and I thought they all have to go from these little huts to the same place to draw their water. They have no such thing as electric light, little lamps in the huts. And we went downstairs and went into a little cabin and there was a big bed and on the bed was her auntie, a big, spoutish woman, apparently very ill. And I talked with her, prayed with her. And after a bit, this precious girl, about eighteen years of age, had slipped through something. I said, you know, you've got a very precious and wonderful girl there. She said, haven't I? Oh, yes. She said, she's a wonderful girl. And I said, you live here together? Yes, she said, but her brother lives here as well and so-and-so comes in occasionally to live with us. And I looked round the little room with the one big bed and I thought of the old auntie sick in bed and a girl of eighteen and a brother who comes to sleep at night and someone else. And if you don't know the conditions of poverty in many of the small hovels and huts of your land, well, it's another side of life you haven't seen. And God was producing, in circumstances like this, this precious, lovely Christian girl, victoriously seen in her public work in the Sunday school. And I went back to think and when I went back to think, I thought to myself, how in the world does that girl ever shut the door? Now, I am absolutely convinced of this, that we have got to find a place where we can meet with God, where we can shut out the bustle of this old world and it's in that secret place of meeting with God we shall find our solutions, solutions that we need to make us victorious Christians. And if you don't know anything about that secret place and that shut door, I'm not a bit surprised that you are not a victorious Christian. You may get all the theology of it, you may buy all the books, study them and answer every question, but if you don't know the secret of the shut door, a vital thing, isn't it? What does it mean to shut the door? Now, behind those closed doors, somehow the fullness and the power of God is revealed. And two women in this chapter with their deep, deep needs knew what it was to shut the door. This is women's day, don't forget. The first one, in the opening verses, is the poor widow with her two sons in great distress who learnt behind a shut door the secret of pouring, in living faith, the oil that she had in that little pot of oil into all the vessels till they were filled. Now, I know some of you will question me, and I don't mind a bit, long as it produces a question that searches in your heart and makes you search for these things. I doubt whether you will know anything at all about the fullness of the Holy Ghost, unless you know the reason of the shut door. God didn't do this thing publicly out there in the yard. He didn't do it out there in the great mass meeting. It was alone with God when the door was shut that she took that pot of oil in her hand, and there came a moment when she said, I must do it in living faith. I don't understand this, and I can't explain this, but, bless God, it must be true. Here we go. She poured, and it's full, and she poured, and it's full, and she poured, and it's full, and it's getting exciting. She's pouring and pouring, and she says, bring me another vessel, and they said, Mom, the last one's full. Two women, their deep needs. This first one, the amazing moment when faith began to pour. Now, can you tell me a moment in your life when you first looked into the face of Jesus and said, thank you for Calvary, and there came to you peace and pardon and the knowledge of sins forgiven, and you said, by God's grace, I'm saved. I don't understand it, but I'm a child of God. I've been converted. I'm born again. I don't care what phrase you use. By grace, ye are saved through faith. And there comes the first look of faith into the face of the Savior, and whether you know the time, the date, it doesn't matter very much. There came a beginning to that precious, saving faith that brought you pardon, and you knew that your sins were forgiven. And from that moment, your soul, with all its guilt, is resting in the precious blood and finished work of Christ alone for pardon, for cleanse. Now, if I challenged you, I believe most of you could tell of that happy day. Oh, you say, let me tell it. But I stop, and I ask you, can you tell me a day in your life when, for the first time, your faith said, I'm a child of God, and my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and I know it, and I'm sealed of Christ's precious possession, and that gracious Holy Spirit of God, ungrieved, can fill me, my mind, my eyes, my ears, my lips, my hands, my feet, my everything, and I can know His gracious, Holy Lord, I'm just under your control. There's no watertight compartment, no reserve. It's waking in the morning, His. Going through the day, His. And facing the battles and tasks, His. Do you know, this can take all strain out of Christian's heart. Did you know that? Oh, how many worried servants of God you see, anxious, anxious about their next task, and how they're going to accomplish it. Wonder if I'll get on well, and wonder if they'll like my sermon, and it's all the anxiety there. Lord, You've made every provision by Thy Spirit, and He's come into my life to magnify Christ, and to make Christ large in my life. These hands? Christ's hands. These lips? Christ's lips. These feet? Christ's feet. For Christ liveth in me, and in the power of an ungrieved Holy Spirit, He can fill all these desks. Have you ever had this experience, I wonder? You know, so many people do not realize this simple, simple fact of Romans 1, verse 16 and 17, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. You say, are you a believer? I'm a believer. Good. For therein that's in the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. You say, from faith to faith? Yes. From faith, the first look of saving faith to Christ, to faith, the just shall live by faith. The whole of the pathway, if it's ever going to be victorious, is a pathway of faith, a resting faith, and a simple resting faith to believe that the Lord you look to is the Lord who by His Spirit can possess His possessions, and through those possessions accomplish His will in your life. Then you begin to rub the eye out, not eye, but Christ. He's going to do it. He's big enough to do it all the time. Now in the second case, the second woman, it was not a widow, it was a farmer's wife. Healthy, busy woman, running the dairy and the farm and helping dear old hubby with the cows and the rest of it. And into her life came this man of God. And you know she was so kind to him and his servant Gehazi. And one day they wanted to reward her and she said, I want no reward from the king or the captains. I'm just so happy in my home. And do you know they made the promise that they would come to that home a son she longed for. And it took place until the little boy was not only crawling but running around. And do you know what little boys are? Must be a farmer going out to help daddy bringing in the sheaves. And out there in the hot harvesting he gets the sun stroke. And my head, my head, he's carried back to the farmhouse and he sits in mother's lap and she rocks him. He dies. She takes him in and puts him on the prophet's bed in the prophet's chamber. And she shuts the door. Little lad lied. She saddles a donkey and she goes off on that long, long journey twenty miles to get Elijah. And when they turn round Gehazi is told, now you go ahead you take my official staff of office and you go and put the staff on the child's face and see if the child will wake. And that staff, that lord of Elijah I suppose was representative of his wonderful prophetic power and strength with God. And it's encrusted to Gehazi. And he goes ahead and Elijah said, now listen, would you like to go on with him? And she said, no, I'm staying with you. But you'll get there quicker to see the lad if you go with him. He's going to not say, how do you do or shalom or anyone to anything on the way. He's not going to stop and ob nob with people. He's going direct. I shall take quiet time. I'm coming along. I'll talk to folk on the way. No, I'm not going with him. I'm going with you. She waits. And at last they come. They go inside that door. And in verse twenty-one you find in this chapter they're face to face with the great problem. There's the little child laid on the man of God's bed in verse twenty-one. And now they come and in verse thirty-three Elisha came into the house. The child's dead, laid upon his bed. Verse thirty-three. He went in therefore and shut the door upon them twain. Just a living man and a dead boy. And behind that closed door something happened. See what? A soul is quickened from death to life. A miracle. Supernatural. Inexplainable. Today they are trying and successfully trying to imitate this. When he once pulled out of a pond or a lake drowned immediately today they try this mouth to mouth. But just what it meant for the prophet as he climbed onto that bed and he stretched himself upon the child and let me tell you it's the children that stretch you. He embraced the child. He covered the child. He over, as it were, shadowed the child and brought to a cold dead child warmth. But he climbs off the child in utter dependence and faces up and down the floor in that room and speaking to God the giver of life and he goes back to the child and then the miracle happens. The child is made alive. The door is thrown open and mother comes and takes her child. Have you ever had an experience like this? I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had an experience like this? Has there ever been a moment in your life when you have been an instrument in the hand of God to watch the quickening of a soul out of death in trespasses and sins into life, eternal life? Oh, I believe I'm talking to soul winners. Many of you have had this joy again and again. But you know, I believe it's a joy that God good could give to ever so many more of his children. You see, not me. The preacher has that joy. The evangelist has that joy. Certain chosen souls. Well, the gift of the evangelist is a very real one to the church. He has a gift of storming the will and pleading for a decision. Very rarely, very rarely do you find an evangelist at the height of his power as a teacher of God's Word. He may grow to be a teacher, and as he becomes a teacher, he will largely lose his gift of evangelism. It's a specialized gift. I've met some men all through their lives as soul winners. I've met others who've been used for 15, 20, 30 years, and they've won thousands and thousands for Christ. And then, God says, now your ministry is over. You can go on teaching. And in the evening of life, they have taught the Word of God. They have matured into a teacher. These are the abiding gifts in the church. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about every Christian who has life being the means, somehow, to a grandchild, a neighbor, to someone, of bringing newness in life. And far more souls are won one by one like this. And you would believe if you test the meeting. Oh, I know if I asked how many of you were saved in the great gospel campaign, many hands might go up. If I said how many of you were saved as children at mother's knee, quite a number of hands would go up. If I looked into your faces and said how many of you, by God's grace, were saved because someone loved you and came into close contact with you and warmed your heart and all of a sudden you can't explain it, a miracle happens. This miracle is happening and God is using channels and we can be the channels. I know when the last word is said, we are channels only, blessed Master. It's the Lord who does the quickening work, but He uses the human lips. And many of you read when you were children that wonderful story, Alice in Wonderland. I wonder what you thought of Alice in Wonderland. Well, interesting round the table for you to tell me sometime what you thought of that fantasy. I've never met an older person than 30 years of age who's read it after 30 for the first time that didn't say, what foolishness. Children lap it up, even modern children do. And they go down Bunny Hole and they get into Alice in Wonderland and they meet all the characters and it's the world of a child's fantasy. A wonderful book. Do you know who wrote it? Lewis Carroll. And Lewis Carroll understood the child mind. He loved the children. They tell me that when Lewis Carroll went in to see pictures in an art gallery, he would go from picture to picture and gaze and all of a sudden he would stop at a picture. He would gaze at the picture and then he would move a little to the left and then a little to the right and then he'd go down his knees like this and look at the picture on his knees. And they said, why do you go on your knees to look at the picture? He said, I'm looking at the picture from a child's level. And he was always looking at things as it were through a child's eyes. And he understood children. Oh, I wonder, I just wonder if perhaps tonight like these two amazing miracles, the woman's hand that took the pot of oil. Oh, it's impossible. As long as it's impossible and you think so, it's impossible. But faith says nothing is impossible with God. Here she comes. Look. Fool. Fool. Fool. Fool. Fool. Until, where's another vessel? All fool, Mama. The oil stays. And if you look into my face, dear children, those past 50 years of age and say it's not possible for me, then it's not possible for you. You say, is it possible? Of course it is. It doesn't matter whether you're 60, 70, 80 or 90. The fullness of the Holy Spirit is possible. But if you think it's impossible, you're going through life without it and you'll never taste it. Faith is the secret. Faith is the key that says God says it. In that pot of oil, there's the answer behind this closed door. I'm alone with God. It's not men looking at me. It's not extravagance. Look at my debts. Look at my creditors pressing me. Look at the peril of my boys. Look at the needs of my home. In faith, I pour every vessel with faith. In simple faith, the man of God went in behind the doors and shut those doors and stretched himself upon a child. And he said, I'll think as a child. I'll look as a child. I'll talk as a child. I'll work as a child. I'll get right down to the child's level in the closest contact. But all he could do was to warm the child's flesh. Oh God, you are the life giver. Could you give life to this little boy that was born to this shunun lady? And he was quickened. Quickening is going on all over the world. Quickening out of death into life. It's happening. It's an amazing miracle. It's something you stand back and wonder when you see it. It's literally a soul being made anew by an eternal birth of something that's going to abide as a new creation work forever. And why should you be out of it when God wants you in the thick of it? Now, how do we shut this door? Here in my closing moments, I don't want you to be hurt. But I want to tell you, God says, be still and know that I am God. And we've got to get away from that rush, from that bustle of the great, big, throbbing, legitimate world around us that makes all its demands. And we've got to get into a place, even though we're in a crowd, where somehow it's shut out. And we're alone with God in the stillness. And God is willing to reveal himself there. And God always does his deep work in the stillness. Hard lesson to learn. A nice little study if you ever like to take it. The Red Sea, they were told, in the trap they found themselves in with the Red Sea in front and hilly country on either side and the Egyptians pursuing them behind. They were told to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. You can't do a thing about it. It's all up. If it was you doing it, you're beaten. But if you'll stand still and let God bring this great salvation through, you'll see the waters opening. You'll see the enemy destroyed behind you. You'll be a separated people to God. You know, to little Ruth, dear little Ruth, the Moabitess girl, when she was so upset about her romance and wondered what the future held in a strange country, the advice was given, Sit still, my daughter. Sit still. It's all working out all right. Precious girls, there's no need to pull too many strings to catch Boaz. Sit still, my daughter. There's something working out all right. And you just sit still and it'll be all right. You know, this verse in Psalm 46, Be still and know that I am God, is a key verse, and I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. If only we spent more time in the stillness. You can use the old authorized word, the secret place or the closet. If only we spent time behind the shut door, what a transforming effect it would have upon our lives. It seems that from this place we can go out in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. It's from this place we can go out with the power of the Holy Spirit. It's from this place we go out to accomplish the things which normally would be battlegrounds where we are defeated. I wonder if you would be interested. I don't know if I've ever told you this before, but I learnt a lesson when I was a young fellow. I was facing some problems, some real problems, and I felt the need to be alone with God. And so I started off after breakfast over the Essex Hill, just near the River Thames in England, and I found a quiet spot under one of those spreading old English oak trees, and behind me, just here, was a wheat field. The wheat had come up to its almost ripeness, and on this lovely summer's day I could look out and see the ships going up and down the Thames to London, and I sat there alone, alone, to pray, to talk, when all of a sudden things began to happen. Oh no, don't get alarmed, don't get excited, don't get emotional, don't get psychic, nothing like that. I was just sitting there, a lovely summer's day, and speaking to God, and the oak tree was over me, and I had this beautiful setting, when all of a sudden I saw a little bird fly over my head, and I just looked up like this, and I saw him pop into a little round hole that was only six feet above my head. And as I sat there I saw another bird come, and I saw these two birds, one mostly coming and going, and every time he came to this little hole, I heard little noises, and I saw little yellow beaks like this, stretched up, and the mother bird was sticking some stuff down into these little open throats. And I sat there, very still, and I thought, goodness me, I know all their secrets. I was a boy, I used to go bird nesting, and I used to go with Harry and Jim, and the three of us would go with sticks in our hands around the English hedges, and we would dive into the hedges, and we would look for blackbirds and thrushes' nests, and we would shout, Anything over there, Jim? No, Harold, have you seen anything in those trees? And all the little birds said, shh, till the rough, rude boys had all gone by. You see, birds don't reveal their secrets to rough, rude, noisy boys. Any naturalist can tell you that. Then I was still, sitting still. Two little birds revealed their secrets to me. They told me that they had met each other, and he had said to she, How do you do? And she said, very kind, how are you? And he said, could we go for a walk together? A fly, I mean. And so it went on until courting days turned to a firm engagement, and they went house hunting, and they found this little spot up here, unoccupied, for rent. And they built a lovely little nest, and they laid four little eggs in it, and there are four little babies in there now. And I knew the whole story of these birds just by sitting still. And as I sat, I looked around, and I saw him. Coming up out of his hole, an old English rabbit. Looked around, perked his ears up, ran across to the corn. And I could see him now putting his paws up and pulling the corn down to have a breakfast, some cornflakes for breakfast. And when he had a good old eat of corn, and I just watching him out the corner of my eye, he sat there in the sunshine. I don't know whether he was shaving or what it was, scratching himself like this. He went slowly back to his hole. And I thought, goodness me, when I was a boy, ten, eleven years ago, I used to go hunting bunnies, and I used to get a stick and push it down their holes, and all the little fellows bit down the ground like this. And I never saw one or got one, but now sitting still here, all these secrets are being revealed. And God is just like His handiwork. God does not reveal His deepest secrets to rough, rude, noisy, busy, rushing Christians who are always on the move. You say, we've got to keep busy. I know, but there's a balance. And as surely as God has written His principles that every time I breathe in, I breathe out, and I breathe out and I breathe in, and there's the balance, so in Christian work it's the same. And you may toil and work for the Lord, but unless you know the secret place and the closed door, much of your labor will be utterly in vain. And you'll know little of the fullness of the Spirit, little of the quickening power of God's Spirit in other lives, unless you know the secret of the shut door. Time has gone, and I must let you go, but, oh, do you know this secret? I'm not advocating laziness. God hates lazy Christians, but I'm advocating a balance between that zeal and busyness and that laziness that is balanced, and I'm going to ask all of you to take it to heart. Is it they that wait upon the Lord, They that go to the closet, the secret place, and shut the door and get alone with the Lord, something will happen. It always has. It always will. They will mount up on wings as eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint. They'll lift to the high places. They'll run the race with patience, successfully pressing toward the mark, and their walk will be worthy of the name of their master, if, if they know what it is to wait on the Lord. Do you? May I ask you, lady, have you got a secret place? Have you got a closet, sir? Whatever that word means in our authorize. Have you got a place where you can shut everything out and keep those everythings in their rightful place so that you can be alone with the Lord? Or you'll say, yes, I go into our drawing room and I shut the door and I get down on my knees and I begin to pray, and all of a sudden I remember that the, the dinner needs putting on, or some milkman's knocking at the door, or a mailman might have left the mail outside, and there are a thousand distractions. Oh, so many Christians are robbed complete of the quiet place, of the communion, of that time of renewing. I'm not advocating laziness. If you know anything about eagles, you know that Mr. and Mrs. Eagle build their nest away up on the top of the mountains in some ledge. And then when the little eaglets are born, those little scraggy eaglets, day after day, mother and daddy eagle are swooping into the valleys to find rats and mice and owls and rabbits and bring them up there to feed those little ones. And if you know anything about eagles, you will know as those little tiny scraggy things get plumper and plumper and bigger and bigger, the mother and father are getting more and more scrawny and tattered, and their wings get tattered. When at last they see that those little eaglets are ready to go out into life, and they begin to push them toward the edge, and the squalling little eaglets say, no, no, we want to stay here forever. Over you go, and they're out of flappity-flappity-flap, and they're going to die. And a great big eagle comes underneath and bears them up, puts them back on the ledge again, and they crawl back into the nest. And after a few days, the eagles take the nest and tear it to pieces and fling it aside. It's no more use. Then they see that they're able to do it. They push them over the side, and there's no one to come underneath them. And they're flying over to that rock, and then from that rock to that rock. They've gone out into life to hunt for themselves now, and left their mommy and daddy who've grown thin and scraggy, and their fur, they're not their fur, their feathers look all tattered. And they just wait and rest, and slip around and get a rabbit or something and eat it and share it, and slowly the new feathers begin to grow. And the strength and the weight begins to come back into their body. And they tell me that there comes the day when the eagle turns his eyes to the sun, and all of a sudden he stretches his great wings, and he's gone like a bullseye toward the sun to heights no other bird can ever go to. They that wait upon the Lord shall change their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. I'm not talking about physical things. You can go to the ostropeth, and you can go to the nature curer, and you can go to all the finest doctors, and they'll tell you how to keep your body in good trim. Not talking about that. At this conference I'm talking about your spiritual life. And if your spiritual life is going to know the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and is going to know the quickening power of God working through you, you must know God in the secret place. You must know what it is to shut the door. Shall we pray? Lord, you know our heart longings, as well as our deep, deep needs. Oh, how we long, very many of us, that our lives in the midday and evening of life might be lives that would enjoy the gracious, ungrieved fullness of the Holy Spirit. We know His one object is to display Christ in us and through us to others. And we would love to think that even in the closing years of our life, we could be channels of blessing to those who are dead in trespasses and sin around us. We could touch them and see them quickened by Thy power. Loving Lord, we've just finished another study of Thy Word, and we pray that Thou would write upon us the words, Shut the door. When Thou hast shut the door, oh, may we know how to keep everything in its rightful place. And now, Lord, we're going out to the evening, to the joy of fellowship and friendship, recreation, refreshment. To our rooms many of us lay to sleep and rest, and we ask that Thou would give us Thy watch-care for the night and refreshing and fitting for tomorrow. Keep ever in our hearts the hope of Thy coming, that soon our faith will give way to sight, and give to us a strong spirit of adventure as Christians, to realize how exciting it is that we can be Thy representatives day by day in a world that gives Thee very little place. So write Thy Word upon all of our hearts. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, abide with us always.