In this sermon, the preacher discusses the current state of society and how it has departed from God. He emphasizes the need for prayer and divine intervention, referencing the story of Moses and the process of elimination that led him to be alone on the mountaintop. The preacher also criticizes prominent figures in the church for not effectively using their resources to bring the nation closer to God. He highlights the alarming statistics of teenage suicide and child runaways, questioning their whereabouts and the possibility of human trafficking. The sermon concludes with a mention of the high divorce rates in society.

There have been a number of requests for tapes, and so this has been videoed and audioed, and if you want to make, uh, if you want to get them, you need to see someone at the door. Do the whole series, right through, uh, well, maybe till Easter. I don't know how long. But anyhow, we want to, uh, give you something to take home and think about, if you want to take a, uh, a, a tape of it. Isaiah 64. O, O that thou wouldst rend the heavens, and come down. I meditated over this early this morning, and realized that while all praying men are not prophets, all prophets are praying men. That's the secret of their strength. Years ago, in 1940, when the Germans were battering England, I pastored a church in a city called Bath. The Romans were there. They started building the city in 55 B.C. A very beautiful city, maybe the most beautiful in England. And each time I went to the sanctuary, over on the right, there was an old disused theater. Not a movie house, a theater. On the top of it was a bust about as tall as I am, just a head and shoulders, of a man by the name of David Garrick. He was contemporary with Wesley, and all that marvelous bunch of hymn writers, like Newton and Cowper. And he is considered as the greatest, in those days, the greatest Shakespearean actor that had ever lived. And some people say that that's true of him even today. Somebody told him that this man with an amazing voice, maybe one of the most amazing voices in history, was that of George Whitefield, a contemporary, and at one time a co-worker with Wesley. It was said, I don't know if it was ever proved, that in the theater, George Whitefield could make the congregation, or whatever you want to call them, the gathering there, he could make them weep, just by saying the word Mesopotamia. He had a very musical voice, it was like a church organ, it could thunder, it could whisper. A man got saved sitting on the side of the road, a mile away from where he was speaking, without any amplification, and the man got saved. They can't even hear if you put all the amplification on these days. People are too deaf to hear. Well, somebody told this amazing Garrick that George Whitefield was preaching at Mile End Waste, I think it was, in London. Would you believe he got up at five o'clock in the morning to go hear that man? Oh, mercy. You imagine two and three thousand people waiting at five o'clock in the morning to hear a preacher? You couldn't get them there today if you offered them a free breakfast of two eggs, three strips of bacon, and four pancakes. There was a hunger for the Word of God. George Whitefield had one word in his vocabulary that all the great saints have had, I think, and it was that word, Oh. Somebody said to David Garrick, you should hear him say it, he's not an actor. You should hear him say that word, Oh. It will move you to tears. So he went that morning at five o'clock, a dirty English, foggy, wet morning. There was George standing on a barrel and preaching one of those hellfire sermons. When he got to the end of his tether, as you would say, and he didn't know what else to do, he would yearn over them. He would say, Oh, and people would begin to weep. It's the language of this amazing man here, Isaiah. He is in the classification of the greatest men that ever walked the earth, as far as I'm concerned, and they're called the prophets. Dr. Bugs Bazin was a Jew who was converted in this country, a very brilliant Jewish scholar. He has a marvelous book on Isaiah, if you can find it anywhere. I remember this lodged in my mind when I was reading from him years ago. He said the prophet, by the very nature of his calling, is a tragic figure. He has a broken heart over his lost nation, and he has a burning spirit and a burning love toward God. So he feels the pull toward God, and he feels the pull to his bankrupt nation. Do you remember reading when, what was it, someone came to David and said, Your son Absalom has been killed. Absalom was trying to steal the crown off his head and the throne from underneath him. You would imagine he would have said, It serves him right. He'd been a traitor all his life. He's never, never been worthy of my name. But when they said, Your son Absalom has been killed, his heart broke and he says, Oh, Absalom my son. When Ezekiel saw the desolation of the nations, remember in the ninth chapter he cries out, Oh, that my head were waters. In God's name, how many preachers do you think want a broken heart over the sin of America today? Do you expect your nice, well-starched, well-dressed preacher to stand in the pulpit Sunday and say, Oh, that God would give me a broken heart for, for my city. They're all looking for new theological menus to feed people with. They won't do a thing any more than me giving you a menu if you're hungry. I say, Forget about the meal, read the menu. That's all we say in most churches any more on a Sunday. Here it is in the book, we'll eat it, receive it, and they go out as dead and unmoved as when they came in. What is this man crying yield, what's he calling about? Oh, he says that thou wouldst rend the heavens, an admission that he cannot rend the heavens. An admission that he's not trusting in the other people round about, the top-head children, if you like, in the kingdom of Israel. He isn't asking to form a committee. He hasn't, he isn't asking for people to uphold his arms like Moses had. He says, Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might flow at thy presence. Let me read to you a little here from the 19th chapter of Exodus, where God came down. Exodus 19, let's read from verse 9. The Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee forever. Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord, and Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord. The Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day. Verse 12, Thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, go ye not up unto the mountain, or touch the border of it. Whosoever toucheth the mountain shall surely be put to death, there shall not on hand, there shall not on hand touch it. But he shall surely be stoned, or shot through, whether it be beast or man, it shall not live. When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up into the mount. Verse 14, Moses went down from the mount to the people, and sanctified the people, and they washed their clothes, or cleansed themselves. It's difficult there. Said unto the people, Be ready against the third day, come not with your wives. Came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders, notice, and lightning, and thick cloud on the mount, and a voice, and a trumpet exceeding loud. Verse 19, When the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder. Well listen, I ask you in God's name, how do you think they felt? Here's thick darkness, here are the rolling thunders, here are the flashes of lightning, here is the voice of God, here is a trumpet, and it gets louder and louder. So he's determined to get their attention. Verse 18, The mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in a fire. The smoke thereof ascended as smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses unto the top of the mount, and Moses went up. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze. Oh boy, that's something we like to do today, isn't it? Something flashy, sensational, on TV, miracle healing services, of what have we got? But God is a jealous God, and he hides himself in thick darkness. I wonder if we cry to God tonight for God to descend in our midst, whether tonight or in the course of the next few weeks, are we really prepared for what God may do? Come with some shocking revelation of his majesty? Instead of revealing more light, planting us into more darkness until we fight our way through? Stuff our ears to every other voice until clearly we hear his voice? How different to come into the awful presence of the living God, that even if a beast came on the mountain where he was, it died. Or if a person pushed through, they died. But we come to a mountain that can be touched, Mount Calvary. We come to a God who has revealed himself as light. Verse 19, When the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake to God, and God answered by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai at the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mount, and Moses went up. The Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. Verse 23, Moses said to the Lord, The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for thou chargest us, saying, Set bounds to the mount, and sanctify it. The Lord said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, and Aaron with thee, and let not the priest and the people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them. So here we have a people wanting to come near to God, God says no, holds them off, the priest cannot come, the people cannot come, but there's one man that can come. Read what about the, I didn't check it, about the 24th of Exodus, where you remember Moses and how many, 70 plus 4, left a million people behind, and came up to the mount, and then after they left the million behind, they leave the 70 behind, after they leave the 70 behind, the 4 go, and then gradually there's a process of elimination until Moses is there by himself on the mount. And then when he got there, after that tremendous expenditure of effort, and time, and suspicion, where's Moses going? Who does he think he is? All you have to do is to decide a little, to walk a little closer to God, you'll be criticized more in the church than you will in the tavern down the road. Maybe the pastor will jump on you. Do you know one of my young men is fasting two days a week? Do you know one of my young men spends a whole night in prayer? Pretty embarrassing for a dry pastor, isn't it? But Moses is not afraid, he goes up on the mount at the voice of God, but when he gets there, God keeps him for seven days in quietness, God doesn't speak. Didn't I think I would have done? Well, I would have said, well I missed it. I mean, I know God isn't discourteous, I mean, he wouldn't have kept me here for, I've been here seven days, nobody's said a word, I haven't seen a human being, I can't see down in the valley, and yet he stayed and he heard the voice of God. I tied this in, in my thinking anyhow, with that word in Malachi that says, the Lord whom ye seek. Well, honestly, come on now, don't answer audibly, you don't have to. Did you come here tonight to meet God? Or did you come to hear a sermon about him? How many people will go to our sanctuaries on Sunday, whether they've a hundred in, or two thousand, or three or four thousand? How many expect a confrontation with deity? The amazing thing to me about this wonderful man here, Isaiah, that he is the man who has already had for himself that amazing vision, you remember, in the sixth chapter, where he sees that holy being. John 12 says, it was Jesus he saw, because no man has seen God at any time. Now notice that here, Isaiah doesn't say, oh God in mercy, send the cherubim to help us. Lord, send the seraphim down to walk amongst the people. If they see seraphim with flaming wings and hear voices of seraphim, surely they'll repent. He's gone beyond that. This is the man who not only had the vision in the sixth chapter, but he had a terrible, terrible, horrendous vision in chapter one. Look at it for a minute. You can see how far their corruption has gone in one single verse, without reading the whole chapter. Verse nine, except the Lord of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we should have been a sodom. This is the nation that had the prophets, the most God-favored nation that ever lived. People say, that's America, forget it. The greatest nation that God ever blessed was surely Israel. What do you do with towering figures like Jeremiah? What do you do with men like Isaiah? That old man Bucks Basin that I was telling you about says, here is Isaiah, the supreme man of God, with buckled knees and streaming eyes, crying, God, come, oh Lord, come down to us. Without you we're shot, without you we're sunk. They have had these amazing prophets, and yet they've corrupted themselves. Except the Lord of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we should have been a sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of sodom. Now he nails them on it. You're ruling over sodom. You think you're the chosen of God, you corrupt rebels, you renegades, you shareholders in iniquity? You know, you could put the name of America in here, or England if you like. Verse 19 says, if ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. He doesn't say the mouth of Isaiah has spoken it, he says the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Some of you were in our little fellowship last Sunday morning, we had those two lovely twins, men about 40 years of age, they sang. They admitted they weren't professionals, I'm glad they did, because they out sang all the professionals I've ever heard, I think. They were just beautiful. We had lunch with them, and then David Rokison brought them to our house, and we stayed maybe nearly two hours and talked. And David's heart is with lost people, you know that. In fact, he used this technique, he's the only big-time evangelist that goes on the streets and meets people eye to eye, eyeball to eyeball. David mentioned about the gay people, the gay community up in San Francisco. One of those lovely little guys opened his eyes, he said, Mr. Wilkerson, gay, what is a gay community? Well, it's a gathering about where all the homosexuals and lesbians live. Oh, we don't have that in Poland. Isn't that something? A nation that's jammed in between strong communism and strong Catholicism, and they have no pornography, and they have no lesbianism, and they have no homosexuality. James Robinson, the other day, I heard him say, we've got a message. We can change Japan. I thought, well, Jimmy, well, James, it's right at home. There's a revival in the nation. I've never seen it. What does revival do? It changes the moral climate of the community. The last revivalist in America, as far as I know, was a dear old man I never met, I wish I had, by the name of Mordy K.I. Hamm. Isn't that a name? Mordy K.I. Hamm. An old man asked me four or five years ago, do you ever meet Mordy K.I. Hamm? No, sir. Did you? Yes. Oh, I wish I'd. Oh, he was a wonderful old man. He will come with a big tent to Lindale. After being there three nights, he had to have a police escort to get him to the pulpit, and a police escort to get him out of it. Do you know anybody that scares the devil enough now to need a police escort to get in his pulpit? Why, we've got the red carpet, we've got the mayor on the platform, and all the big shots, and broken down film stars, and sportsmen with burst lungs that can't go. So they all fall back and become Christians. They've lost their voices, so they sing gospel rock, or is it rot? Which is it? Rock. Okay. He had no techniques. Isn't it just pitiable when a man only has God? Won't it be wonderful when God Almighty strips him of all this stuff? It's good, I'm not kicking against it. I think within the next five or six years, all the big shot evangelists will be off the air. Whoever gets in, the economy is going to collapse totally. Not locally, not nationally, but worldwide. It's going to be an epidemic in the not too far off distant days. Oh, James says, we can take the message to Japan. Why? Japan has over a hundred million people. They have less than 20 murders a year in Japan, and we've almost 20 a week in New York State. If I were a smart Japanese, I'd say go back and clean your own doorstep up. A heathen country, again, Poland, with no pornography, heathen to me anyhow, no pornography, no homosexuality, no lesbianism, no dirty films, and we got to tell them how they can be saved. So we should, I'm not arguing against that. We're going to Japan. Well, listen, dear friend, I wouldn't care if Billy, uh, well, Billy Roberts and Oral Graham, I was going to say, but that's all right. If they were standing here tonight, I'd say, I'd say, gentlemen, look, you have had more millions of money to move this nation to God in the last 25 years than we've spent since the day of Pentecost, and you've done nothing. We don't have a message big enough for our generation. Sin-soaked, sin-saturated, sexually mad. I think the newscast today said 400,000 teenagers will contemplate suicide in America alone this year. Over a thousand children run away every week. Well, it's 50,000 a year. Only 5,000 of them are found. Where are the rest of them? What are they? Are they slaves in somebody's backyard? Are they used for child porno? Are they locked up in some hotels? A massive white slave traffic? We have more divorces than ever. If the crime rate goes up 1%, boy, they put it on every news channel. They've departed from that, and they've gone after strange gods and gone after strange flesh. Oh, listen, we'd better button our lips, I think. Tonight, maybe for a little while, and yet not if you have a broken heart. Because we may cry, and God will hear us. We will cry, and God will hear us. But remember, Malachi says this, who shall abide the day? We may call the Lord whom ye seek. Shall what? Shall what? Suddenly, shepherds were in the fields watching their flocks by night, and suddenly there was a sound of a heavenly host. One minute, it was a normal night, watching sheep. The next thing, there was a divine revelation or manifestation. They were all waiting together in the upper room. And what? Suddenly, up to this moment, it's normal, the usual. And suddenly, there's a divine invasion. Suddenly, there was a sound of as a rushing mighty wind. And the world hasn't been the same since. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to us. And wait a minute, who shall abide the day of his coming? If Jesus suddenly walked down this aisle, like he walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, would we stand or would we fall prostrate and worship him? Would we say, come, I know you can see every crevice in my heart, every bit of carnality, jealousy, pride, envy, greed, lust. Thy kind but searching glance can scan the very wounds that shame would hide, yes. But a man in his despair, spiritually, who had already made a great name as a preacher, one day got desperate for God. He cried, search me, O God. He doesn't say, search Jerusalem or search some other place. Would you like to hop down here, fill these chairs, let those people come in? Good, don't worry, we're glad to see you. Now the chance to breathe. He is desperate for God. His ministry has been fruitful so far, but he realizes that somehow there's some tremendous obstruction in his life. Do you feel like that tonight? Have you something that's shutting God up from having perfect way in your life? So he wrote a hymn, search me O God, my actions try, and let my life appear as seen by thine all-searching eye, to mine my ways make clear. Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the motives that control, the chambers where polluted things hold empire or the soul. Search till thy fiery glance hath cast its holy light through all, and I by grace am brought at last before thy face to fall. I like that other verse, search me, my actions try, let my life appear as seen by thine, search all my thoughts. One of the daring things I think that David the Psalmist wrote, well in Psalm 51 you remember it says, hide thy face from my sins. When he's lashed with guilt, when he's tormented with conscience, he doesn't want God to come near. There's a burglar whistle for the cop to come and arrest him. He's weighed down with guilt, with transgression. So in that 51st Psalm he says, hide thy face from me. In Psalm 139, when as far as I can understand, he's living as near to God as ever he lived. He bears his heart to the Holy One who is called in Habakkuk, where it says there that he is of holier eyes than to behold iniquity. David says in Psalm 139, search me O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, thrift me, don't let me enroot in it, come down again at springs where where evil thoughts hold empire over soul. Maybe I said this last week, I'm not sure, but I'll say it again, it's sure worth it. You see the reason we don't miss revival is we've never been in one. We've had some little boy come along, just out of the seminary, and he has to tell you how much he learned in the last three years, and he's as cold as an iceberg. But what about revival coming with holy fire from heaven? Who shall abide the day of his coming? When God comes with holy fire next time, he'll go to his own house, to your house, to the White House, to the last opportunity he got, to the sex perverts, at the side of the dock in Liverpool. A young German there with a Heinkel or a Messerschmitt comes, he does a dive bomb, and he drops his bomb right down the funnel of the ship. It goes down there, down, down into the boiler room, and exploded. It blew one side of the boat out. You know they have propellers about this height made of bronze, mixture of brass, and so forth. When that thing burst, it blew part of the propeller off that was found two miles away on a hill. They checked and found it fitted to the propeller, should be on the propeller of the boat. Here is a man standing on the dock. It didn't even singe a hair on his head. He saw the boat going away. That must have been the shock, don't you think? Boy, I'd have scratched my head to have a hole in it, I think. Am I seeing things? Yes, brother, you are. That ship that was there a few minutes, part of it is on the hill two miles away, the other has gone down here, and here's a fellow standing gazing. Boy, I'd like to see that again. Well, maybe you would, but you won't. So near to an explosion that could blow a million dollar ship away as though it were made of paper. And then he never felt a thing. A righteous man can give his daughters to these perverts? Oh, I've got something worse than that. I can't prove that they were, and you can't prove that they weren't. I believe with all my heart that Ananias and Sapphira were in the upper room, filled with the Holy Ghost, and three chapters after, filled with the devil. Look, if people could live in the upper room and then go out and be hypocrites, what in the world do you think they can do in our churches today? I hear a fellow yelling over TV sometimes, Sunday morning, he doesn't like divine healing, he doesn't like this, he doesn't like the other. Well, I don't like the young people in this church. They tell me they go mixed bathing in their bikinis and they go drinking cocktails and they smoke. Why not start at home? It's too easy to shoot the enemy down a few miles away. Ananias and Sapphira in the upper room. I discussed this with Brother Dave the other day. He says, well, I think you're right. And it was he that reminded me, he says, well, look again, here is, here is Lot, a righteous man, yet he gets caught up in that rotten system somehow of living, and he can give his children, like throwing your baby to the wolves. Ananias and Sapphira lied to the, oh, is that what preachers do at Pentecost? You mean Peter pronounced it a death sentence? I don't think it is. Well, why did they die? I may be wrong, but I'm sure I'm right. I'll tell you why they died, because in the upper room they suddenly had a revelation of the holiness of God. And then they saw their corruption and they died of shock. They died of fear. They died of shock. No matter how they died, they died. And they died immediately after the most amazing invasion of God in history, until the next one. And as I've said so often, I'm living to see a Pentecost that will out-Pentecost Pentecost. Something that isn't a blackboard theology of Pentecost. Some place where people come in the meeting and start gasping inwardly because they know the holiness of God is here in a way they've never known that before. You see, now the fashionable thing is to have a good meeting and an altar call. Tell me where there's an altar call in the New Testament. There isn't one. John Baptist preached in the power of the Holy Ghost. What happened? The soldiers who were pagans from another country, they cried out, what must we do? The people cried out. The Pharisees and Sadducees cried out. Now that's preaching. In evangelism, we make the altar call. In revival, people make the altar call. I've been in meetings often when, before you were through preaching, fellows started walking down the aisle on their hands and knees and weeping at the altar. Now we have to sing, and we'll sing it just once more for you. We'll sing it once more, just once more, just once more, six times over. Let's face up to it. Who shall abide the day of his coming? Oh, he doesn't come into a visible form with a crown on his head, but suddenly there's an invasion of God's holiness and righteousness and purity, and suddenly I find something like a serpent in my bosom. I'm a leper in the sight of God. Come on, it's the old colored people used to sing that lovely song, it's not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, oh God, standing in the need of prayer. Revival is drawing a circle on the ground and standing in the middle and saying, Lord, start revival in this circle. I think one of the shocks in heaven will be to see how long we stuttered and stammered about revival, how long we were content to be spiritually immature, to have heads full of theology while the world goes to hell fire. Now, I am sure in my heart there's going to be an awakening. If not, I'd have wanted to go to heaven a long while ago, but I'm not going to hang my harp on the willows. I'm not going to look at all the depressing circumstances, and that the hierarchy of the world financially is saying we cannot get through two years whoever else is in government power, because the whole world now is bankrupt. It's not only morally bankrupt, it's financially bankrupt, it's spiritually bankrupt, but God always comes in the darkest hour. It got pretty dark, hadn't it, before God delivered Israel, and the only way they got out of bondage, sorrow, and night was what? To put the blood over the lintels and the doorposts. It wasn't enough to kill the lamb and keep the blood in the house and say, a woman saying to her husband, Isaac, don't, God's a gracious God, he's a loving God, he won't destroy us, it's only for Israel, it's only, not for Israel, it's for Egypt. And we've got the blood here, God has seen it, it's our precious pet lamb, the boys loved it so much, and here it is, and here's the, God won't mind. Well, you better watch it, because partial obedience is disobedience. You know, I could almost get discouraged from this standpoint, it's true of you. Now, I love you all, or I wouldn't be here. I stayed up till two o'clock this morning, almost every morning this week, till two o'clock, praying, meditating, thinking of this meeting. I'm not a hero to do that, I do it. Some of you younger guys should be doing it anyhow. I do not want you to stand, as I've said so often, I do not want to stand at the judgment seat with everybody from Adam to the last babe that's born before I go into eternity. I do not want God to call me up, whether I'm escorted with angels or not, to the judgment seat. And I see the lamb of God, and tonight I can receive the blood of the lamb or the wrath of the lamb. That's the option. I do not want to stand there by myself, my darling wife won't be with me, my wonderful sons won't be with me. I have to stand there by myself, here's John Wesson looking on, and all the prophets of all the ages, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and all the saints in the Acts of the Apostles. Isaiah will be there, Jeremiah will be there, Malachi will be there, all the minor prophets, all the major prophets, all the great preachers, all the evangelists, they're all going to be there. And Leonard Rameau has to walk up there nervously to the judgment seat with the blazing light of Jesus, whose eyes are a flame of fire. No longer kindling with mercy, but kindling with anger. Not there as a savior, but there as a judge. You can fall down and repent if you like, you won't get saved, you go right to hell anyhow from there, if that's the only repenting we do. I say, I do not want to stand there by myself in splendid isolation with billions of eyes looking on me, and the Lord Jesus with tears in his eyes looks down and says, son, while you were living in Texas I had many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them. In other words, you were too immature. My heart was bursting to reveal myself to you. I wanted to take my word and illuminate it, but it would have destroyed you, it would have blown you to pieces. You weren't secure enough even in the word of God. That's going to be the most awesome day in history. Yes, I want to learn, I mean this. I think I said to a brother who was here tonight, the other day, I hadn't said it to my sweet wife, I forget things, you know, I remember some, I forget some. But as I was praying, I heard the word of the Lord say this, this is my body which is broken for you. If you can get it, there's a biography of one of the greatest modern saints by the name of John Sung, S-U-N-G. Came to America, Life Magazine wrote him up, Time Magazine, World News, as the most brilliant student that ever came to America. When he came, he could hardly speak a word of English. In three and a half years he mastered English. He did one of his main studies in German, which he didn't know. He learned English language in three and a half years, German language in three and a half years. Got his BA, his MA and his PhD and learned two languages in three and a half years. Then he went back to Japan, to China, pardon me. He had revival where even the great American Jonathan Edwards did not have revival. I can't give you the whole story. If I could find the book, I'd like to get a dozen of them. Are you ready brother Delta? Yes. One of the most amazing biographies, because it's a modern young man anyhow. I gave the illustration, there's a lady at the organ and she, tears were running down her face and I said to her afterwards, or she said to me, oh that Bible study this morning was so refreshing. Oh, you talked about John Sung. I said, yes I did. I said, by the way, had you heard that story before? She said, I played the organ for him in his revivals in China. I said, is that book true? She said, they couldn't write a book on John Sung. The last 15 years of his life, he was near paralyzed every day with tuberculosis. He would kneel on the edge of the altar and welcome people come, while the door of mercy, people would stream to the altar and he had permanent revivals. They say where the church of Jesus has been most concrete, if I can use that word, or consolidated in China through all the years of trouble, two areas of China where the church has flourished most, number one is where Watchman Lee used to preach and the other way John Sung used to preach. But she said in his last 15 years, he would crawl to the edge of the altar, beckon people to the altar. He never got dressed like so many guys want, you know, a nice American suit and a black tie and a white shirt. He wore a little cotton shirt tied on the corner of his shoulder with a string, a rebellious lock of hair that wouldn't stay up and there he would move it as he was preaching. But she said my friend had the honor of having him in her home. He had his private room, he would come in at night after the meetings, throw himself over the bed, shirt sticking to his back, body heaving with his advanced tuberculosis. She said my friend said I would go to the corner of his bedroom and just peep in each night. It was holy ground, I didn't walk in. And every time I saw him, I only thought of one scripture. I have never heard this quoted in my 60 odd years of preaching, 70 odd years going to meetings. I have never heard it quoted out of context. I looked at that little China man with his almost skeleton body and his little cheap shirt and his shirt stuck to his back, groaning and traveling even now for revival. The only scripture that came to my mind was this, this is my body which is broken for you. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I'd like to be, not to tempt God, but to be a living proof that I don't care whether I live or die. Not because I'm an old man, I would say if I was 28 instead of almost 78. An experience of God that costs nothing is worth nothing and it does nothing. Well, you can't buy anything from God. Well, you better read a King James Version, get rid of that one you've got. Why? You mean we can buy from God, not salvation? Let me wind it up with this. What does God say to one of the churches in Revelation, I counsel thee to what? To what? To buy. I can buy from God, how? Two things, faith and obedience. That verse in scripture where Paul says, redeeming the time. You know, you young people get fooled over that more than anything else. You live as though you're 20 more years to live, this may be your last day on earth. We've some lovely cemeteries around here, go take a trip around. You'll find somebody died at your age, whether you're 8 or 18 or 58 or 88. I counsel thee to buy of me. The word redeeming the time because the days are evil is literally translated from the Greek, buying up the opportunity. A young fellow in this group told me just a few weeks ago, he said, I'm not running down to a van every night now to play tennis or racquetball. It doesn't do anything for me. I feel a bit happy if I beat the other guy, but I've got nothing out of it. Exactly. What the devil wants you to do is waste your life gathering nothing, and at the judgment seat we'll get nothing. You know that little ditty that you used to see on the paper, only one life will soon be passed, only what's done for God will last. Well, that isn't what the point wrote. What he wrote was only one life will soon be passed, only what's done for God will last, and when I am dying how glad I shall be if the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee. Somebody says you don't have to rust out, you have to last out. I know you have to burn out, but sometimes we burn out in the wrong place. The thing is not to rust out, not just to burn out, but to last out for God. We're starting Tuesday night over, oh no, we'll be here Tuesday night, I was going to say over in the other place. We'll be here Tuesday night, and we're going to get into the epistle to the Hebrews, the 11th chapter, if you want to read it. We're going to go right through all the heroes in Hebrews 11, and then digressing for a moment as I thought this much today. It says there's a number of people, what they were stoned and they were sawn asunder. What about the heroes in Hebrews 11 that are not mentioned? What about the people who all their latter days lived in dens and caves of the earth, and they wandered around in sheepskins and goats being, being destitute and afflicted and tormented, and refused to bow to Caesar, refused to take any state aid. Oh God, when we get to eternity, what a marvelous thing. When the saints come back, oh I've read about Abel and all those people in Hebrews 11, till I feel they were my neighbors almost. But I thought today, what about this multitude that no man can number, and nobody knows, and nobody has their names except the book of God, stoned, sawn asunder. Tradition, which is a very uncertain thing anyhow. Tradition says that Isaiah was strapped with his feet up here, and he was sawn right through the middle with a wooden saw, not even the pleasure of getting it done quickly, a wooden saw. Can you think of the agony? Tradition says when they wanted to crucify Peter, he said, no, no, no, don't, you don't be crucified. He said, not like my Lord, I'm not worthy of that. Crucify me, but crucify me upside down. Think of the agony of being held in that position till you're almost mad. But he was willing to do it. I'm not talking about unnecessary suffering, I'm trying to show you how pampered we are in this day in which we live. So you young fellows don't need to blame the devil, blame the bed. Don't tell me what weight you can lift, you go pumping. I don't care how much you can pump. Can you throw the bedclothes off and get up at two in the morning to pray? Can you say to your buddies, well you can go if you like, but friend, I don't have that much long to live. A hundred years is too short to live. I'm not going to waste my time, I'm not going to waste my money, I'm not going to waste my conversation, I'm not going to waste my reading. I have only one ambition, and that's to get nearer to God. I thank God for all the way he's led me since I was a boy 14 years of age in England. I've been through rough times, stormy times, difficult times, good times, bad times, other times, but oh, there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, isn't that true? Just before we go to pray, let's sing that. I think it's in this hymn book, is it? Anybody remember? How does it begin? Yes, three hundred and one.