In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of accepting Christ and making one's calling and election sure. He compares accepting Christ to having a compass on a sea journey, stating that without it, one will sail in circles and eventually perish. The preacher criticizes the idea of accepting Jesus and continuing to live in sin, emphasizing the need for repentance and transformation. He references the story of the prodigal son as an example of leaving behind a sinful lifestyle and returning to God.

I am glad to be here with my friend Stratton Shufelt. I knew him before he got old. He came out of Wheaton College greener than a cucumber salad, and was with me three years in Chicago, and then you went to that little church on the north side, Moody Church, and after that he sort of been drifting around singing here and there. His sister said the last thing as I was going out the door last night, she said, Now I'll be praying for the Pittsburgh Convention more ardently than ever. I have prayed because my brother is there, and now I am praying still harder because my pastor is there. So at least you have one person back in Chicago that is holding up the convention. Now, tonight I want to preach a little heresy and otherwise confuse issue the best I can, but I want to ask a question and then I want to answer it. I know these sermons that start out with a question usually don't get the question answered, and I hope I don't fall into that snare. But the question I want to ask tonight is, What is it to accept Jesus? What is it? I'm going to try to answer that question, and thus I'll be taking a few practice shots before I really get underway for tomorrow night and the rest of the week. But in the book of 2 Peter, there is a passage that will serve as a text. It's 1 Tim. Wherefore, the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. And I just want to talk a little, not give an exposition of this verse, but with a thought and sort of background, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Now, what is it to accept Christ? I'm very happy to be able to tell you that there are very few things in the world that matter very much, and there are still fewer things that are matters of life and death. There are a few, however, that are not only important, they are vitally, critically important. For instance, a compass to a sea journey. You start out on a journey on the sea without a compass, and the chances are a million to one that you will run in a circle, sail in a circle until you die. It takes a compass to cross the ocean. And the captain who would take a vessel out onto the great bounding ocean without a compass, he's not gambling, he's committing suicide and murder. Or a guide, say, in plenty of water on the desert. A lot of things don't matter. What color a man's hair is when he's crossing the desert, that doesn't matter. Whether he has any or not, that doesn't matter, that's comforting to some of us. And what colored clothes he's wearing, that doesn't matter. What color the camel is, if they're colored camels, that doesn't matter. But that he has a guide in water, that does matter. And a man who would try to cross the Sahara Desert without a guide and without sufficient water, he's not gambling, he's not a bold, reckless, daring fellow taking a chance, he's a fool committing suicide, that's all. Because when it comes to crossing the ocean or crossing the desert, you've got to either be right or you'll be dead. Now, when it comes to my relation to Jesus Christ, that is one of the few important things that matter in the whole wide world. That really matters because it's either be right about that or be lost. When we are careless about our relation to Christ, we are not bold fellows, we are fools. We are not being careless, we're being criminally reckless, and we're killing ourselves. We're making absolutely certain that we'd perish. Now, our relation to Christ, the average person takes for granted. We say that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that's true. We say we are saved by Christ alone without works, and that is all true. It is salvation through faith and grace without works, that is all true. But the point is, how do I come into saving relationship to Christ? Now, that's the big matter. That Jesus died for the whole world, every Protestant believes. That we are saved by faith without works, every evangelical Protestant believes. But how do I come into saving relationship to Jesus Christ? There are millions in the world that have not come into saving relationship to Christ. Not only that, there are millions who know that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and that by coming into saving relation to him they are saved, and they yet have not come into saving relationship to Christ. Now, if I were to ask the question, how do I come into saving relationship to Christ, and drive you back into a corner and force you to answer, not only you, because I'm not being personal here, I just mean the evangelical Christians everywhere, there's one of three answers given, and they're usually synonymous and interchangeable. One of them is taken from Acts 16, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. The other one is taken from John 1-12, receive Christ as your own personal Savior and you shall be saved. Then there's a third one that has no biblical foundation at all, but seems to be a sort of an interchangeable use with John 1-12, and that is the words, accept Christ. And that accept Christ thing is going all around the world now, and accepting Christ is being made a panacea for all ills. It's being recommended as the surest possible way to whip the Russians and to conquer communism. Accept Christ and there won't be any depression. Accept Christ and your business will prosper. Accept Christ and you'll fan the opposing batter. Accept Christ and you'll knock out your opponent bloody on the ring. Accept Christ and your solar plexus will relax. Accept Christ and you'll get the man you've been dreaming about. Accept Christ is the touted panacea now for all ills. I want to ask the question, what do we mean when we say accept Christ? Well, there's a lot of easy acceptance these days, and it's being fatal to millions of people. I may be preaching right now. Now, let me say two or three things to start out with, brethren. I'm not cowed in the slightest nor awed by you here at Pittsburgh. You've got a big reputation and this conference is supposed to be a big thing, but you don't cow me a bit. I don't come here awed in a hushed voice, because I've seen crowds just as nice looking as you, and where there was just as much of the Holy Ghost present. So you and I stand together, or kneel together, exactly on the same level, and I'm not a bit afraid of you. I love you, but I'm not a wee little bit scared. So that now, I think we ought to get started off right on that. You can't awe me by the fact that this is the great north side Pittsburgh convention. Brother, you're on your road to the same little hole in the side hill that I am, and you're on your road either to heaven or hell, and I'm not always sure which. And therefore, I want to talk very plainly, and I know your pastor. He's a very kind, gentle, suave type of man, and I'm a blunt farmer, but he likes my kind of preaching, so he won't mind at all. So he and I agreed on this. He didn't tell me to say this, so I thought it up myself. But I am afraid a lot of us, and maybe some of you here now, that are present, all ready to go, all full of butterflies in your stomach and all fluttery and ready for a week of wonders. Brother, you may not even be converted, you know. You may not even be saved at all. You may have gotten in a window or leaped into a crack in the roof. You may not have come in the door at all. You may not be in the kingdom. And that's why I'm going to probe around and help, help to find you. And if there's somebody howls, he's in there anyhow, we got that far. Now, what about it, this easy acceptance? I say it's been fatal to millions. You accept Christ and your problems are over. Accept Christ and you say, that's true, but it's presented in a manner that makes it untrue very often, because it makes the whole attitude wrong. It puts Christ in an attitude of standing hat in hand, waiving our pleasure, forgetting that he is the sovereign Lord and that he can by a snap of his finger turn worlds out of being or bring worlds into being, and that he's the sovereign Lord, second person of the Trinity, and he waits hat in hand for no man. And that's not what I think of him, but what he thinks of me. That's the most vital, fatal question that I can answer and ask myself now, is what does Jesus Christ think of me and what's my relation to him? But always remember that instead of his applying to us, we apply to him. That instead of Christ waiting meekly and modestly like a paperboy outside waiting for his quarter, Jesus Christ stands in his tall majesty, and you and I will either bow to him and accept him in the right sense of the word, or we'll turn away and leave him forever. And we can do the latter and still be religious as a Mohammedan. Now, there's a lot of painless accepting of Jesus these days. This is being preached pretty broadly, that we've taken all the pain out of accepting him. How can I be saved? Accept Christ. Accept Christ, go to Christ, and smile at the personal worker, and I'm in. Now, brethren, any salvation that comes without pain and without cost and without inconvenience is only a thin veneer, just a paint job, and underneath there may be rottenness and corruption and dead men's bones. We ought to get that straight, that accepting Christ saves you, but accepting Christ isn't what it's properly thought to be. It might have worked, I suppose, in Israel's day if they had been willing to be as shallow as we seem to be willing to be when the Lord said, you'll put blood on the doorpost and all that Passover thing, and then they'd stayed in Egypt and not waited for the trumpet, not got their garments on and their shoes on their feet and their hat in their hand and their staff and ready to go. Their descendants could have been in Egypt to this very hour. They had to act in the direction of acceptance. Yes, I accept Moses, I accept the Passover, I accept the blood, I accept the lamb, but I'm staying in Egypt. They could have perished in Egypt and died there. They had to get up and be ready to go, and then when the trumpet blew long they had to get up and go or they'd still have been in Egypt. Then there's the story of the prodigal son who went into the fire country. Years ago I wrote a little squib that I've never printed, maybe someday I will, but it was something like this. It said that there was a certain man who had two sons, and one of them said to his father, the younger one, give me the portion of goods that follow to me. And the father divided under them his living, and after a few days the younger son took his departure into a fire country, and there he wasted his substance with riotous living. And he joined himself to a farmer in that country, and the Jew that he was was sent out into the field to feed swine. And the pay was so low and the famine so bad that he fain would have filled his belly with the husks if the hogs hadn't been pushed him away. And he was there quite a while and sort of got used to the smell of things and the look of things around there. And after he'd been there a few years, lo and behold, a young man appeared, and he had some cracks in his pocket, and he said to the younger brother who lies with the swine, I have good news for you, good news. And the younger brother says, and what is it, pray tell? I have news that your father is ready to forgive you, if he'll only accept forgiveness. And the young man says, all the times my eyes have been dimmed with tears, thinking about the shoddy trick I played on my poor old father, and I certainly would like to be forgiven for the way I treated him, but how can I be sure? Why, and then comes out the tract, and the young evangelist says why you can be sure, because it says here, whosoever believeth in him shall have remission of sin. The young fellow cries softly, blows his nose twice, and gets up, and the evangelist says, goodbye, and God bless you now, witness. And he walks away and leaves them among the swine, and he never leaves the pen at all, he stays right there. But after thinking it over a while, and reading the tracts, he gets up, and he forms a little society of other swineherds, who are willing to listen to the good news, and they clean out an old pen and start a tabernacle, and sing choruses. But it's noticed that the citizens of the far country, when they come that way, when the wind's in the wrong direction, will elevate their noses and hurry by. And the first church of the swineherd says, Praise be to the Lord, so persecuted they the prophets which were before me. They don't figure that it was that they smell bad, but they were being persecuted. And then one day a young man came with a Bible under his arm, and he asked permission to speak, and they said, speak on. And he quoted from Isaiah, Wash your hands and cleanse your heart, and learn to do good, and cease to do evil, and straighten out, and keep my sabbaths, and obey my voice, and then come and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. But the elders of the first church of the swineherd rose white-faced with anger, and said, This man is a heretic, he teaches legalism and salvation by works. Have we not been happy in this swine pen low these many years? And they dumped the young man out, and he takes his Bible and disappears sadly down the road. And still they sing choruses, and still the populace walks around them because they find it inconvenient to come too close, because of the way they are living. And back home, poor old daddy dies from old age, and the calf goes up and becomes a cow, and that's the end of the story. But, brothers and sisters, that's the way we're doing it these days. We're doing it these days, we're running around telling everybody, accept Jesus and live the way you've been living. And it's deadly as cyanide. No, no, no, the prodigal son had to leave that dirty, smelly mess and come home and get cleaned up. And so does every sinner. And no amount of tears or sobs or thick whim in the throat or tender, quavering notes will change the solid truth of God, that except a man repent he shall surely perish. Now, Jesus Christ was very clear about it all. Clear as daylight. With Jesus Christ there never were any shadows, never any wavy lines that you didn't know where you were. Never any shadows. Everything was either black as night or clear as white. And it was neither or with Jesus. You're either saved or you're lost, you're on the road to heaven or you're on the road to hell, you are God's child or you're not, you've repented or you haven't, you're forgiven or you aren't. Always there was a clear line of demarcation. But it's the desire to make converts that's let the bars down. It's the desire to build up this church and get a bigger crowd that's let the bars down. And people can get in now. Almost anybody can get into the average church. Brethren, I don't know how much longer I'll be around. Some old lady over at Hula Beach, she says, dear, brother told her he's getting feeble. Well, I don't know whether she meant physically or mentally, but I'm not as feeble as I might be yet. But I'll tell you one thing. While I'm around, I'm not going to sell out the message. While I'm around, I'm going to draw the line tight and sharp and say, now look, make sure, make your calling and election sure. Now, what is it to believe in Christ, to accept Christ? Well, let me get it to you. It is to form an attachment to the person of Christ that is revolutionary, that reverses the life, that transforms the life and completely changes the whole character. That is to accept Christ. And if that hasn't happened, then you have not accepted Christ. It's to form an attachment to Christ that is not only revolutionary, but complete. And it leaves no part of the life unaffected. Jesus Christ doesn't save people by chunks. You can't save a man from hell by pieces any more than you can pull a man out of the sea in pieces. If a man is perishing, drowning in the sea, they don't pull him out in chunks, they pull my whole man out in one whole piece. And so Jesus Christ saves the whole man, the whole personality, all the man. And when I accept Christ truly, I form an attachment to Christ that is so complete that it leaves no part of my life unaffected. It exempts no area of my total being from his control, and is not only revolutionary and complete, but it's exclusive. Christ is not one of several interests. Christ is the supreme interest, and every other interest has its meaning and takes its significance only from the fact that I have settled that supreme interest. A really saved man has found Jesus Christ the supreme interest of his life. Now, let me say here, I got a nasty letter from a fellow one time for saying this in print, but I fixed it up. I wrote back and told him he was a nice fellow, he wouldn't read an article. But I don't believe in saviorhood without lordship. This is a modern heresy that Jesus can save you by pieces and you can accept him in pieces. You can talk about your delayed payment, if you want to, you can buy automobiles and T.V.'s that way, but you can't get saved that way. Nobody was ever saved yet who deliberately said, I will take Christ as my savior and later I will figure out whether I want him as my lord. Jesus Christ is savior and lord. And the Bible says that we are to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, not on the savior, but on the Lord Jesus Christ. And apart from the lordship of Christ, there is no saviorhood. But we have messed this whole thing up. In order to make a place for a second work of grace, we ruined the first work by telling the people they can be saved now and accept the marriage of Jesus' blood now and then later, maybe ten years, maybe ten days, maybe ten months later. They can take Jesus as their lord and all it won't do, my brother. Now I admit that sometimes we can come with a very imperfect knowledge of who Jesus is and we can throw ourselves on his mercy and attach ourselves to his person and later on there will be such a blaze of glory come to us as to his lordship and to all that he is that it'll be to us like a second conversion. But if there's any reservation, the first time there'll never be a second time. I cannot come and divide the offices of Jesus and say I take him now as my savior and I'll give some thought later to him as my lord. My brother, if he can't control you, he can't save you. If he can't be lord of your life, he can't be savior of your soul. We might as well get that straightened around. Now, to accept Christ is this. I'm not going to talk long tonight. To accept Christ is this, is to accept his friends as my friends. And I'm glad for that. I got so many wonderful friends. I don't deserve any and I have so many. So many wonderful friends. I know I'm getting old because they call me our beloved. You know, when you begin to get old and battered, then they say our beloved. When they cease to pay any attention to what they say, they give you a honorary degree called our beloved. And they're calling me our beloved now. And I don't know whether I've been listening to them much or not, but they're still my friends and I have some wonderful friends. And we accept his friends as our friends. Some of our dear young people try to accept him and then keep their old unsaved friends. Can't do it, Junior. Can't do it. If you do not quit the game, you prove that you have not accepted Christ in any right sense of the word. For to accept the master is to accept all the servants of the master. To accept the head of the house is to accept all the children of the household. And to accept Jesus is to accept Jesus' friends. I think there's probably no one thing that injures as many young Christians, I mean youthful Christians, as bad friendships. I see them in my church. I suppose everywhere it's the same. They come and they go through, and we put them through every grilling that we know how to try to make them see what it is to be saved. And they seem to be converted, and we think they're converted, but they don't leave the old crowd. They go back and run with the old gang, and in two weeks' time they're cooling off, and in two months' time they're back sitting. Now, if you're going to be a friend of Jesus, you're going to have to be a friend of Jesus' friend. And the sweetest people in the world are the friends of Jesus. Now, learned people, I like to be with learned people. I like to be with sharp-brained, trenchant thinkers that can out-Plato-Plato. But I love God's people better than I do with the thinkers, because the thinkers can do such lame and miserable wretches often. But the dear children of God always have a flavor about them. It's the aroma, the sweet fragrance of the lily of the valley and the rose of Sharon, and their garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cashew out of the ivory palaces. And you know something, brothers and sisters, if I'm around you very long, I'll sniff, and if I don't smell the fragrance of Sharon's dewy rose, I'll pray for your salvation. Yes, sir. A bee always comes back smelling like where he's been. Have you ever noticed that? Back home here in Pennsylvania where I came from, I'm in Pennsylvania now, but in Clearfield County we used to raise buckwheat, and you'd catch one, hold him carefully, you know, from the top, and smell him. He smelled like buckwheat. You always smell like where you've been. And the Christian that walks with Jesus always has a fragrance of Jesus about him, a moral sweetness of Jesus upon his life. Well then, to accept Christ is to accept Christ's enemies as my enemies, and that takes some courage. The first is fellowship, and the second is courage. God has so many half-saved Christians, so many that I don't know whether they're in or out, and I don't think anybody does, but God, I don't know whether the angels even know or not. But God knows. But they will not allow themselves to make any enemies. They're going to be a friend to everybody, including Hitler and the devil, but they're still going to sneak into the kingdom of God somehow. Man will never make it. Why don't you stand up and realize that Jesus Christ has enemies that hate the ground you walk on? And they'll not be his friend, and they'll not be your friend. Perfectly willing to make enemies for Jesus' sake always have been. You know, it's the oddest thing. A lot of Christians lose friends trying to make friends and influence people. And some other Christians make friends perfectly willing to make enemies. Years ago, I had to decide whether I was going to try to please everybody or please God and let the chips fall where they would. And I've had more friends since than I had before, but they're the right kind of friends. That's the main thing. To accept Christ means to accept Christ's ways, which is obedience. You can't say, I have accepted Christ and then go some other direction. You've got to go the direction he's going in all times, under all circumstances, in your home and in your business and everywhere. To accept Christ is to accept his rejection as my rejection. F. W. H. F. Meyer, the great English poet, one of the great English poets, was also a Christian. And he wrote some beautiful things. He wrote a thing called St. Paul, and in that he was good enough that he ranked up along with Tennyson. He was an ordinary sermon writer. But he said something speaking for Paul, as though he were Paul. He said, And God forbid that I should fall into the treason of accepting an honor which they gave not me. Do you understand that? Be received by those who reject my Savior, welcomed by those who turn my Lord out into the night, loved by those who hate the one who died for me. Never, never can it be. There's a certain rejection that the people of God have to get. Now, I'm going to tell you something. I'm old enough. I'm fifty-eight. A man who's fifty-eight can always earn his right to say anything he wants to with decency. And I'll tell you this, brethren. I hope you never get so big and popular over here that you lose the stigmata of the cross of Jesus off of you. Your thread, Pittsburgh Church, grew out of the stigmata of the cross. The rejection and the blood and the spitting and the shame. I hope you never prosper to a point where you think you can get along without the stigmata of the cross. A great evangelist came to B.L. Moody and said, not B.L. Moody, but A.B. Simpson, and said, Dr. Simpson, if you'd stop preaching healing, you'd be one of the most popular evangelists in America. He said, brother, I always want to keep something of the shame of the cross on my ministry. And we'll be to us anywhere in Chicago or Pittsburgh or anywhere in the day when they speak well of us and too many people like us. His rejection is my rejection. I won't ask to be rejected, and I won't seek persecution, but I want to walk so close to him that when they reject him, they'll dump me out along with him. He managed to accept his cross as my cross, and that means death. There was a cross on the hill, and that cross on the hill meant salvation to me. But there's a cross in my heart, and that cross in my heart means sanctification to me. But you know, we don't hear much about it anymore. You can examine young fellows out of Nyack, and they don't know what you mean when you say that deeper life or the second work of grace or sanctified life. They look at you innocent as a young calf, and they say, we didn't hear that. What do you mean? Well, brother, I know that when you heard it, I went through it. Oh, I thank God for the privilege of dying. Yes, sir. My dear old mother-in-law, God bless her memory. She sleeps with the just and sings with the saints in the glory. She got me down on my knees in the living room beside the old pump organ and said, young man, you need to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. And all I thought I needed was just to let my personality flash. I had personality then, I lost it later, but I used to have a flashing personality and black hair, lots of it, lots of black hair. I'd toss it when I preached, toss my black hair out of my eyes. I quit that bad habit. I thought I had personality enough for three or four, but she knew that I didn't have far enough for one. So she sat me down there, and she was the kind to get you on the back and go and put a scripture in your ear and make you stay. So after hours and hours of dying and dying and dying until I thought I was pretty close to dying, until all my joy went and all my self-confidence went and all my peace went and everything went, and I was finished. And I felt unsaved and lost and miserable and rejected and almost felt like saying, Eli, Eli, I want to sit back there. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And just at that hour a verse of scripture was quoted in my ears, and I believed it, and down came the Holy Ghost like a flood of golden oil and leaped into my spirit like a lightning flash and went to the depths of my being. And I had to die first, though, but nowadays they have a shortcut. They teach you how in seven easy lessons. You can buy a little booklet to show you how to be filled with the Spirit. But the way I was filled was after God had killed me, then came and resurrected me, and I take his cross as my cross. The cross that slew him slays me, and the cross in which he was raised up I am raised up. And then it means his life is my life. I accept his life as my life. That's resurrection. I read a book one time, what was that book called, written by an Englishman. He should have been doing something else at the time, let's see. I forget the name of the book, but it was about the cross. And so after I had read that, it was years after I was filled with the Spirit, I read that book on the cross. And that day, Brother, I had a concept of the cross that I think was very inadequate. He kept me up on the cross all the time. And when I was through, I was still on the cross. But I remember that even Jesus only hung on the cross six hours, and then he quit. He died. And three days later, he rose from the dead, never to go back to that cross again. Now, I believe it's entirely possible for us to have this business of dying, get it out of the road. Oh, I know there's a sense in which we die daily, but I also know there is a sense in which we come to Jesus Christ's cross, and own that cross as our cross, and then go on to believe in his resurrection from the dead. For me, Dr. Simpson, the great Christian leader he was, was not that he taught the cross. A lot of men teach the cross. I could read a book, but I will not for decency's sake. There was a certain woman writer in England about that time. She had you on the cross all the time. You never got down off of that cross. And I read devotional books that keep you on the cross all the time. The brethren, there is such a thing as getting your dying over with, and then rising in faith with Jesus Christ to a new, beautiful, wonderful life in God. Then if you ever get off the track somewhere, you'll feel that cross again. But you don't have to. You can walk with the Savior, bump out down, accept his future as your future, which means union and identification with Jesus. And though we sing at our altar calls a song that never was written for an altar at all, it's where he leads me, I will follow. And we've sung that at the altar calls until we have associated that song with the invitation to a point where the average Christian, if he were asked, would admit that he thinks that where he leads me, I will follow is falling down the aisle to the altar. But that's not an altar song, that's a life song. That's a song for tomorrow, and next year, and the next decade, and the next score of years of Jesus' perish. Where he leads me, I will follow means that I, by accepting Christ, have identified myself with his holy being, his person, to a point that wherever he goes, I'll go where I know why. The old prophet was on his way to be whipped off into heaven, and his young assistant pastor was following along behind him. And the old man wasn't sure of the boy. He knew he had a lot of gift, but he didn't know whether he was willing to die or not. He said, I'm going over here to such and such, and you're going back home. And he said, as the Lord liveth, I'll not go back. I'm going to follow being clear as through the Jordan. That's following your prophet, and that's following Jesus. I don't want him to go anywhere that I can't go, and I don't want him to go anywhere where he can't go. I don't want to have any honor that he can't have, and I don't want to be put anyplace where they wouldn't have him. There's where power lies, ladies and gentlemen. It doesn't lie in advertising, it doesn't lie in personality, it doesn't even lie in intellect. Power lies in following the Lamb whithersoever he goes. This is to receive Jesus. This is to accept him and believe in him. If you go wrong here, it'll be fatal to you. It'll either be right or be lost. There's no middle ground, no compromise, no halfway. It'll either be right or be lost. And now in the name of Jesus Christ, this five minutes after nine, I'll be through in two minutes. In the name of our mutual Savior and Lord, won't you think it over about yourself? Are you sure that when you accepted Christ, anything really happened, that you really got in? You say, I feel good? Yeah, sure. They feel good when they're bebopping down here at the hottest night spot in Pittsburgh. You can work yourself up into a wonderful time. A lot of religious people have a good time, but it's just psychic. It's flesh, it isn't spiritual. When you accepted Christ, did you accept his friends forever as your friends, his enemies forever as your enemies, his ways as your ways, his rejection as your rejection, his cross as your cross, his life as your life, and his future as your future? Well, without him, you didn't. I don't think you're saved at all. You've been deluded, deceived. May God Almighty help us. Moral sanity requires we settle this first. Don't take it for granted, but make your calling in the election sure. The old brother Tom Hare, some of you know him here in Pittsburgh, I'm sure. The old praying Irishman, Scottish false, preaches too long and too loud. But he's a dear saint of everyone with. I saw him in Beulah Beach. He's just as round as I am skinny. I put my arm around his old fat Irish body, and he put his arm around my skinny American body, and we walked over the green swath of Beulah Beach together. I said, Where are you going, Tom? Well, he said, Brother, after I leave here, I'm going back, 13th of September, I'm going to fly back home. He said, I'm going to call a moratorium on talk. He said, I've been talking too much. What's my trouble, brother? I've been talking too much. He said, I'm going back home, and I'm going to cut, stop all talking, all engagements, all preaching for six months. He said, I'm going to spend six months searching my own heart, and having the judgment seat of Christ now, while I can do something about it. There is wisdom from on high, ladies and gentlemen. Even though he prayed three nights a week for years and years, and even though he walked so close to God that he shamed the rest of us, he still had talked himself thin, and was going back home to have a little judgment seat of Christ. He said, I want to know the worst about meself while I can do something about it. I plead for you, let the excitement of everything carry along. Lean back and refuse to be moved by mere excitement. Ask yourself, my soul, how is it with you? Ask God, my God, am I really in, or do I just think I'm in? I'll give no invitation tonight, but I do want to pray for you. Let's pray.