In this sermon, the speaker describes his experience of preaching for ten minutes at the end of a three-day event. Despite the lack of traditional elements like hymns and prayer, the speaker captivated the audience, particularly the teenagers, who were moved by his straightforward and honest approach. He emphasizes the power and influence of worldly pursuits like oil and atomic energy, and contrasts it with the opportunity for communion with God through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. The speaker encourages the audience to fully embrace this communion and highlights the significance of the blood and body of Christ in the communion ceremony.

But I did promise last night that we would come back to this great matter of the communion and that this morning sometime, probably in an hour's time or something like that, we'll break the bread and drink the wine together. If I don't finish this morning, there's tonight. And I want to move on this great figure. Those of you who were not here last night need not unduly worry. I sort of ambled a bit in a preamble over the great truth of the simplest form in that men have called this ordination, this great feast. It's a love feast in the barest of elements to show that God isn't concerned about feasting of the body, but the feasting of the soul. He reduced it almost to the irreducible minimum, just bread and wine, so that we shouldn't take it as an excuse for gluttony, or pointing us to any of those things, and also that he should show us that the spiritual is the real thing. And we thought of this in terms of the simple statement in Acts chapter 2, where it is called by the Bible writers, whatever men have called this has nothing to do with us now. The Bible writers call it the breaking of bread. Amen. I think it's a shame when men should get this thing all out of its truth. For instance, the Bible never speaks of celebrating it. When the thing is made other than God means it to be, it's so called a celebration. It is not a celebration. Glory be to God. This is the distortion, the perversion, the taking up of this simple thing, which is minimal, and only to direct us as a visual aid into the truth, and say now we're going to celebrate this thing, so we've fallen into the outward trappings, the usual trap into which men do so easily fall. And passing from breaking of bread to the next great word, this time, and we'll read this one, because I want to start here this morning, into 1 Corinthians and chapter 10. We pointed out the truth to our minds last evening, that the chapter starts with the great instruction of Paul about the baptism in the Spirit. Symbolically then, the children of Israel were baptized in the Spirit as they passed through the Red Sea. And following only from this, please, please understand this, and when I talk about baptism in the Spirit, I do not mean an experience whereby somebody speaks in another tongue. That maybe, and often is, included in the experience. I mean something which happens to you, which takes you down through a spiritual experience equated and by, and illustrated by, what happened to the children of Israel when they went down into the path that God made through the Red Sea, a sea of death to the enemies of God. Pharaoh and his host lay drowning, washed up dead on the shores on the further side, when the children of Israel looked at the end of chapter 14 of Exodus before they sang their great psalm of deliverance and victory in chapter 15 of Exodus. And that's what I mean when I talk about the baptism in the Spirit. Somebody came to me last night and said, you know, I've had this and that. They said, but I want what you mean when you talk about the baptism in the Spirit. That's right. I thought, praise God, we've got on the right ground right from the start. This is marvelous. I mean what God means when he talks about the baptism in the Spirit, do you? Because it's first of all the experience of God through which Jesus went when he hung on the cross, and then went down into Hades, the victor, and came back from among the dead, even as the children of Israel, as it were, stood up out of the sea from among the dead. The dead lay in the sea, Pharaoh and his vanquished and drowned host, and the children of Israel under Moses stood on that further side. But a step from the promised land had they gone on as they should, to enjoy the glories and the presence of God in a much more wonderful way than ever they knew, wandering about in the wilderness. Wonderful. All right. And it was from there, and directly down from that experience, we read in verse 14 of 1 Corinthians 10, that we were to flee from idolatry, that we are dearly beloved people. That's a marvelous thing. Would you like to be able to turn to everybody this morning and say, hello, my dearly beloved? Wouldn't you like to be able to say that? If not, you're scarcely on the right ground yet. I'm not talking in terms of fleshly things. Somebody may be sitting beside their sweetheart and be able to say that very easily. But the person that isn't your sweetheart, the person who may have been your sour heart too, that's the ground we're on. We're on the ground of the dearly beloved. What else can we talk about? Isn't it this that inspired the German man that wrote, Thee will I love, my strength, my tower. Isn't it this? And isn't everything else in the old earth worth but nothing beside it? All right. Dearly beloved, let me take you a step further back, up the chapter. You say, this man's going backwards. I often do it. Amen. I heard some fellow talk about a stupid fellow who tried to get the world record for walking backwards or something. He fell over himself. I should think so too. But he failed, of course. Never start to try and break records. Even I don't if I preach for hours. But in verse 13, we're told that no temptation has taken you, but such as is common to man, dearly beloved. Hallelujah. We're all in a world full of temptations. You understand that? And in verse 14, dearly beloved, we're all to flee from idolatry. Even idolatrous ideas about this thing that I'm going to talk this morning, if I get there. And it says, he speaks, he says, I'm speaking to wise men. You judge what I say. You may judge me, says the great apostle, and the Spirit of God talking through him. Would you like to judge God this morning? Sit up on your throne. You judge what I say, he says. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? Do you bless the communion of the blood of Christ? Do you understand it? Isn't it about the most wonderful blessing? I want to talk more about the blood tonight. So, let's all gather early. 6.30 is the meeting. Don't let's waste a precious moment. I'll try not to waste a tick in between. I'm going to talk about that more fully, I hope, this evening. The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many, are one bread and one body. For we're all partakers of that one bread. Amen. And it's this great word of the communion. The communion. I think we ought to understand, first of all, what the communion is. If you think that bread and wine are communion, you're entirely wrong. You see, people say, we're going to take the communion. You don't take the communion. Communion is something that you do. The word communion is from the Greek, which means the act of making common. That's the precise word. The act of making common. What a marvelous thing it is. Can best be thought of as common union. A union which is common. And this union that is common, is the union that is common in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You will know, I hope you do anyway, because I seem to remember, and if you do keep coming to these conferences, you're nearly bound to hear some things over and over again, like that hymn we've just sung, for instance. And we never tire of singing it. You will know that John, in his epistle, first epistle in the first chapter, he talks about being in the fellowship. And to John, God is not what we would call a trinity. He's not technical. John isn't technical. He's just a loving simpleton. God make me one too. And he thinks about God in terms of communion. That's your word, fellowship. That's how he thinks of God. God is a communion of three glorious persons in one eternal being. Please don't come to me and ask me to explain that. I'm struggling to write a pamphlet on it at the moment. How to put this into words is well beyond anybody's ability. It has defied us all throughout the ages. You can ask me the moment after I've been translated to heaven, I'll be able to tell you. But here it is. We've been called, says Paul, in the beginning of this great book, we'd better have a look at it anyway, in 1 Corinthians. And the first chapter, good to hear those pages rustling. When you come, bring your Bibles. Even if you happen to forget your chewing gum or your throat sweets, bring your Bible. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And we are told here in this verse 9, God is faithful by whom you were called unto the communion. You and I have been called unto the communion. And when you first heard the call of God, you may have been steeped in sin, under nine-tenths drug power in your life. And how many of us have been in that kind of background? I won't ask you to stand up or put your hand up. Doesn't matter. It's nobody else's business. I only quote this. That it doesn't matter where you were, where you first heard the call, as the Bible puts it. Something somehow dawned as light upon your mind. Somewhere you knew there was a light shining. Somehow you knew there must be a way out. Somehow you knew this and then gradually, it might have been cataclysmically, it might have been a sudden bursting, it might have been a great calling in your own heart. But whatever was the beginnings of your great coming to the Lord, remember the call ultimately is into the communion. And you will know, of course, that that's the Greek word church in the Bible. It means ecclesia, the called out ones. You can't be in the world and belong to the church. The very word contradicts it. Called out. You can't be in sin and in the church. You can't be in all these things except your legitimate occupation that you must follow. You are called out into the church. This is its exclusiveness. Well, isn't God an exclusive being? It doesn't mean to say he doesn't have fellowship, if you want, with other peoples. But in himself he is an exclusive being. The church is an exclusive company. And there's no way of getting around it. You can run bingos or jumbo sales or boutiques or something. You can do all sorts of things. But that doesn't do it. There is no breaking down the barrier that God has erected. You understand that? And when God raises a barrier, he raises a barrier. And he has done it. And Jesus Christ came. Not that the call doesn't go out to all men. It does. All men and women everywhere. But when you start to respond to the call, know what's in it. And don't deceive yourself. Amen. And ultimately the call is this. An open invitation. God knows it cost him everything. It cost him a tree and a crown of thorns and nails and hatred and bearing the sin of the world. Not that the physical suffering was the greatest thing that Jesus ever bore. It cost him everything to open himself, find a means, a method whereby he could legitimately, and you don't know the problems God had to solve, and don't try and bring your mind to it. Accept the truth. God will illuminate your mind perhaps centuries or aeons ahead. It will come. It's reasonable once you've learned to function logically on God's level called faith. And you've been called into this glorious fellowship. Here it's called exclusively, if I may put it that way, verse 9, God is faithful by whom you were called unto, at your Greek preposition, into with a sense of motion, moving in all the time. Called unto and into the communion of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia. Now that's your call. What a marvellous thing, that God should call us into this great common union. That is, the union is quite common to Father, Son and only Holy Ghost. That the angels look upon and wonder at, and adore and speed on his errands, him whom they worship and obey, but they're not in the fellowship. Not the communion. You're not called into a communion. God has a kind of communion with angels. God has a kind of communion, even though it be terrible with men, even though they're sinners, he still maintains a kind of a relationship that you could, by some stretch of the imagination, call a communion with the worst of men. He's still there. He hasn't forsaken the world. It's a dreadful place that a man reaches through his own sin and folly. Not exclusively, always. Sometimes an inherent condition laid deep and low by parents who ought to have known better. Or by a world that doesn't know how to handle men and women. But it's a dreadful place when he gets to an extreme and everything's dark and black and he feels there isn't any God. He's gone. That's why Jesus hung on the cross and said, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? That people at that extreme will know that that's where he reached in order to reach you. Oh, glory be to God. That's marvelous. I can only stand up and talk to you this morning because of this. I'd have no gospel. There's nothing to preach. What's the use of giving people homilies, ethical little sermonettes and all this business? They're about as useful as giving crutches to a person with no legs. Now, here then is the great secret and you're called via this precious thing that Jesus did. This great cross work of God. You're called into this glorious fellowship. What a marvelous thing it is. The communion. And the communion is best expressed, I think, let's just look at it, shall we? Though I want to be so simple and basic. I'm sure everybody here that's at all familiar with the Bible will know this glorious 17th chapter of John. It cannot be expressed better than this because it is the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. You'll know that when he moved amongst men, you will notice that that's where my marker is, you see, in my New Testament, right in that 17th chapter of John. All right, I hope you keep your marker there. I don't know whether you do or whether you don't, or perhaps you've read it so often now that you don't need to read it because it comes up all live in your heart by the Spirit. And in this great 17th chapter of John then, we read these words, Jesus is praying for us, and this is what he is praying. Verse 19, we've got to break into it for time's sake, for their sakes, and he's explaining, he's praying now exclusively for his own. In verse 18, or higher up, I'm sorry, higher up in the chapter 18, you come across these great words where Jesus says he's not praying for the world. That doesn't mean to say he's abandoned it, but he says I'm concentrating now in my prayer. As long as, as you may say, I'm praying for A, not B. Not that I won't pray for B some other time, about some other thing, but I am praying about A, Lord, his needs, her needs. This is the thing. And he says this, these people are not of the world, verse 16. And he says in verse 19, for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one as thou father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. That the world may believe that thou hast sent to, not a gospel, not a church, not of this, not of that, me. Me. What a wonder. One. One. The communion. The common union. Father and I are one. That's what he said. This was the almost unbelievable thing. That there he walked on the earth, one solitary man, whom many flocked to at times and left. The enigma of the ages. The unexplainable being. They came. They were blessed. They couldn't deny it. They left him. Who was this man? Who was he? I and my father are one. Left them no alternative in the end, but either to believe him or crucify him. He left them no alternative. You must do that. The cross is available to you. The Bible says that you can crucify Jesus Christ afresh. Bible says that. Oh, not a trunk of a tree, only your stubborn, unbendable back. Your forehead as hard as brass. Your heart like stone. Your words like nails. Your thoughts like thorns. You can do it. For what was enacted in actuality is a picture of what happens in reality in the spirit of man. And that's the thing that you and I've got to see. We who drift our lazy way amongst the philosophies and sophistries of men. We who want the plaudits of the world. I'm speaking quite generally now as human beings. We who want positions. We who want recognitions. We who want all these things that in the end, when we lie in our coffin, won't matter that much. Transitory baubles. Men live and die for them. A thing called oil. Touring, revolving round a thing called an atom. The smallest, they used to tell me, it's not true, of course, indivisible particle of matter. There, these are the sorts of things. The empires that men build, the lengths to which they'll go, the deaths, the tortures, the rottenness, the perversity that's there in the heart, doesn't come out of the atmosphere, doesn't grow out of the ground. And the Lord gives us the opportunity. We must do one or the other. There's no middle ground. He hung on that cross. Bless him. And by the work that he wrote there, you and I can come right into this great communion of God. Not communion with him, but communion of him. The life of his being. The glory of his love. The strong, powerful righteousness of him that explodes down at the root of sin in us and blasts it out and moves us there into this marvelous life of God. Are you there? Are you there? That's the communion we're called into. That they all may be one. As thou, Father, art in me. Father was one person, only one. Jesus was another person, though not another being. Hallelujah. God, I don't want to be another being from thee. This thy greatest love. This is the revelation. It's only this that can ever bring a man out of his lostness and his sense of being out on a limb and unwanted and rejected. There's no panacea, none, save Jesus and the communion to bring us into this glorious life. Hallelujah. When a man's there, he doesn't want sin. He doesn't want the means of sin that are in the world. Temptations there are. Idols there must never be in your heart, though temptations lie in your path. Brought into this glorious union with God. Hallelujah. Oh, I'm getting excited about it. This is life. Now, it was this that the Lord Jesus wanted to keep before us when he instituted this lovely feast. As I have already said, so simple, so basic that a child could do it. Not too difficult. Though, and I want to comment on this, if I may, as a passing thing. I have seen to my inward distress in many places where I go that parents retain their children in the service and give them the bread and give them the wine. Now, if you're at one of these Now, I don't know, I don't know what you'll do in your fellowships, groups, churches or wherever you belong. If you're one of these people that do that, you're feeding your children on the elements that will bring damnation to their soul, unless they know what they're doing. And you see, it's only for people that are in the communion. That's all. It's not for your child, just because it's your child. Do you think there's something magical about it? You're sowing the desperate deep seeds and sowing them deceptively. Though you may think you're doing it with the best of intentions, you're sowing them deep down into your child. Keep them clear of it. Let me read what the Bible says. Keep your, come back into the 1st Corinthians. Verse 27 of chapter 11. Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation for himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly. Do you see where sickness comes amongst churchgoing people? It comes from, for many, for this cause, many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. There it is. Premature death comes on through taking communion. If you're not in the communion, you have to be worthy to take this. You may say, well nobody's worthy. Yes, you are. You are worthy if you've been bought by that worthy Son, through His worthy body and worthy blood, through His cross, through His redemption, through total abandonment under Him, to say, Come Lord, take me. Do Thy will unto Thy fullest pleasure in me. I am Thine and Thou art mine. And you're brought into the communion. Then you're worthy to take the communion. All right. By no stretch of the imagination can you make a three-year-old child examine itself. Beware. It's a potential danger to those who are not in the communion. It's the greatest blessing when we are in it. All right. I want to make these things so very clear. I'm not at all sure why the Lord told me to speak along this line during this conference, but here it is. We're called into this great communion. Now the way the Lord instituted it is told us by the Gospel writers. So we'll go back to the Gospels. You will be aware that Matthew, Mark and Luke write about this. John does not. John talks about the incidents preceding and following the communion, but doesn't himself talk about it. You keep that clear in your mind when you're reading your Bibles. Oh, how wonderful it all is. Let's take Luke's account, shall we? Luke, as you may remember, if you were here last evening, was not present at the communion that the Lord established. In fact, at that time, please note, it is not called the communion, because though the Lord instituted it among his apostles, they were not at that time in the communion. He was praying for them that they should come into the communion in John 17, just prior to the cross. All right. That is, he prayed it after he had established the breaking of bread and the giving of the wine. He prayed to the Lord, let them come into this communion. They weren't in it, but in the nature of things, of course, God had to do it amongst them, even though at that time they were not regenerate. These were the people he'd come to make the foundations of the church, when they'd received the Holy Ghost by virtue of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. But it's not called the communion there, because at that time it was not the communion. It is the Apostle Paul that gives it the name, the communion. Amen. He came in after Calvary. He came in following Pentecost. He did not come in prior to Calvary. At this time, it's described by Luke this way. Let's read it, shall we, in chapter 22. Verse 19. And he, that is, Jesus, took bread and gave thanks and break it and gave unto them, saying, this is my body which is given. For you, this do in remembrance of me. Amen. That's what he did. He took the bread. He gave thanks. He break it. He gave to them. This is my body, he says, which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me. What a marvelous thing. Amen. What was the Lord really saying? You know, perhaps you will not agree with me here. But I think that you're perfectly at liberty to agree or disagree with what I have to say now. I have hitherto been absolutely on the truth that we all must receive. But I am persuaded, personally, I must say that when I was as young as some of you, or as young as some of you older ones of you, you know what I mean. Yeah. I didn't see this thing so clearly myself. I knew the truth of communion. But this precious thing, Jesus took the bread. And he broke it. And he gave it to them. And he said, now this is my body given to you, for you. So they took his body. All right. We know the bread is only the symbol. Now he said, this do in remembrance of me. Well, what did they have to do? They had to break the bread too. And give it to someone else. Who had to take the bread and break it and give it to someone else. That's what they had to do. There was nobody at the front saying, give it back, you know. I give it to you. Nothing of that. That's only come about by people who want to celebrate something. People who are in the glorious communion. This is what he's given you to do. This do. Do what? I take it. Do I break off my piece and eat it? You're not told that Jesus did that. I believe we should break off a piece and give it to someone else. For the essence of communion is in giving. And that they should take it. You see, if I gave it to sister here, she should take the piece. I've already taken my piece from someone else and the loaf. Break it to you. You take your hand it. Give the piece to her. She takes it. That's how it goes on. I must confess that I haven't seen this for years. Not that I think that method is the great thing. But do you not see that the Lord chose these basic elements as the means to describe a method? Communion, beloved, consists primarily in something that you do. In other words, communion always has to be made. It did not exist between man and God till Jesus Christ made it. Men were estranged from him. What a marvellous thing it is that it's because Jesus broke the bread and gave it to them. Hallelujah. That they might say, yes, yes, Lord, I see the preciousness of it. It keeps the poignant moment clear in the vision. That's what it does, lest it fall into mere ritual and mean nothing. Something that we take, something that we celebrate instead of something that we do. What a marvellous thing it is. And this is why on a Sunday morning or whenever it is I take communion, I shouldn't always sit by my crony. I should go and sit beside someone else, because I want to create communion between me and thee. I want to make you, you should not always sit by your wife or your sweetheart or your pal. Not always. Do you realise that in the church there's neither marriage nor giving in marriage? Do you realise in the church there's neither male nor female? And if jealous is buying men and women together so that they can't move except they be in one another's pockets, that's got to be destroyed by the same cross. That would destroy communion. It only keeps you in one with one special person. And Jesus was in communion with two special persons, the Holy Ghost and the Father. And he came down here. And it was only at the point of being forsaken in his extremity. I don't understand the mystery, but I know that at that point, that's when he made his communion with thee, friend. He found you lost and bruised and dying and he poured in oil and wine and he whispered to assure me I found thee, God of mine, I never heard a sweeter voice, made my aching heart rejoice. Oh, the love that sought me. Oh, the blood that bought me. Oh, the grace brought me to the fold. That's the essence of communion. Have you ever got there? All you see about me, my salvation, Lord, thank you for being so good to me. You know, you break the bread, you close your eyes so you don't see anybody else. You're trying to shut them out. It's the exact opposite. They've all got to be brought in. You're struggling to get a communion with God. You failed if you wait until that moment. The communion is the communion between the members of the body. Men and women, take it with your eyes open and full of love. Do you think they all shut their eyes when Jesus Christ said, here, take the loaf? They said, well, they'd be groping for it. If we'd only have common sense. But we escalate it into something that's aesthetically glorious and we have sweet music and burning candles and you may think it's sweet incense, I don't. But here then is the terror of it. Here's the curse of it, bringing damnation to their own souls. We've all done it. God has had mercy on us. Communion. Communion is two great arms reaching out and gathering in the world if they'll only come. Communion is the giving of self. Communion couldn't be established even by God himself. In the rituals of Old Testament worship and temple goings-on came at the point where he cried out in his agony and said, I thirst as the saline and blood had run out of him, mingling with his sweat on the cross and dripped onto the ground. And then just missed his spade. And he gave it into father's hands that father could give it to you. All wonderful and sweet. But he says, look, how can we keep this moment forever in the hearts of the people in the church? Let's have a look. He says, bless God, you haven't cut it up into little square dices. Bless God. Jesus didn't do it. So now I just cut you a little piece off there. God help us. Let's have a look. He says, break it. I break my communion with thee father. Oh God, where are you? Give it to me. I'll have communion with you. What can you say? You're harder than the rocks. Unless it's reached your heart, man. You deserve to go to hell. You deserve to exist in your misery. He's got mercy upon you. Oh, not just eating the bread and drinking the wine. God, keep us off that. But let it forever be symbolized among us, Lord. That from the one great loaf of God, if I may put it this way, it should be the natural, supernatural, of course, food of all men. Broke himself to feed me on righteousness, peace, joy, love. The things I feel I have a right to know are mine. That's the communion. There have been those who misguidedly felt they should have put the outward symbols out of the church. They rose at times in the history of our nation. Because the church, we'll call it the church, shall we? Huh. Had made the symbols the thing. So they rose up. And they said, we won't have the symbols. We'll do without them. I won't name the people. Names don't matter now. What is it that Wesley has us sing? Names and sects and parties for. Thou, oh God, art all in all. That's it. That's where we gather this morning. Hallelujah. They put them out. They wouldn't have either baptism or the communion. Because baptism had gone wrong. It had been taken out of the sphere of individual believing and put into church acceptance. So they destroyed it. Thank God for them. They wouldn't have the bread and the wine. Because people came and bowed and did marvellous things with chantings and all that. And they weren't in communion with God. So they said, let's put the symbols out. They may have been extremists. But they shocked people into reality. We need shocks. God believes in shock treatment. Not the way that men do it, but never mind. We are made that way. How about the shock of Jesus? We're gone, God. That's right. But beloved, listen. God has put these things into the church. I'd better stop mauling it anyway. We're going to eat it in a moment. Does that matter to you? Are you one of these hygiene fiends? What are you? You'd never have done to be a disciple of Jesus. That's what they did. Who are you? Are you a true disciple? A devotee of health and strength or something like that? What are you? Listen, God has brought us into this wonder. The two great ordinances. Baptism. Down you go into the water. You're dipped in the water and you come up. It's a symbol that you're totally immersed saying, that's the total end of me and the destruction of my old life. And you come up totally out of the water and say, here I am a new creature. The water doesn't do it. Neither does the fellow who put you in the water. But that's what you are doing. To show something. Communion. The communion. You take the bread. You break off the piece. Instead of eating it yourself, give it to someone else to eat. And then let them take the loaf and do the same, apostle. I'm sure that's the way it happened. You say, well, the communion would take a long time like that, wouldn't it? Yeah. Wouldn't matter if you took a long time to establish the true communion among yourselves. Wouldn't matter if you took all the rest of your life, not only to establish it, but to promote it. And to sustain it. Wouldn't that be lovely? Look right now. Are you in communion with everybody in this room? People that you know. You can't be expected to be in communion with people you don't know. But you must have in your heart the desire to establish it. It may mean a Calvary for you. It may mean a death. The death to your personal taste. You're not the kind of person I'd have for my friend. I'm in communion with many people that I wouldn't have chosen to be my friend. I don't know why I'm that stupid. But there it is. You're ever so nice. But that's the kind of thing that goes through human personality. We're made that way. And they talk about personality conflict. Now, don't you be a humbug. It's the conflict you've got to get rid of. And that'll cost you a cross. And it's got to be your cross, not his. It might be a good idea if we had the bread and wandered about amongst one another. And say, dear brother, when I give it to you, I give myself. And when I give it to you, I tell you I'm a crucified person. Yet I'm alive. When I give it to you, I say, there's no enmity between us. There's no gulf between us now. There's nothing. Only love. Any soul can cross on the bridge of love. Any gulf that ever there was. Now you know why there are divisions. Now you know because we've promoted something to a celebration. God forgive us. Yeah, I suppose we ought to stop. I'm not feeling a bit like it. Tonight I want us to talk about the blood. I wonder whether we ought to defer the whole thing till tonight. When we've talked about the blood as well. For communing in one element is as foreign to God's heart as it was impossible for Jesus to Christ to hang blood on the cross without his body. It's stupid. It just isn't true. It's just impossible. Isn't it? If we'd only let sanctified common sense talk to us, we'd get places. These are the people that are going out to prepare. That may be a hint to me. The communion. Shall we leave it till tonight, Malcolm? You don't mind. It was I who asked specially that we should have it this morning. Forgive me. But why shouldn't I open my heart to you? Why shouldn't I tell you what God has told me? And why shouldn't we share truth as it is? I remember once being out in India. Went to a school way up in the Nilgiris to talk to them. I never had such a racket in all my life. It was an American school, by the way. All right. I'll let you all. Apologies to you if you're American this morning. Sorry. In other words, it was run by American people. Very, very a la school and I don't know what. And I was brought in to talk to the young people. And it was like going into bedlam. I had 10 minutes. There were no hymns singing, nothing. I was put on for 10 minutes at the end of a real ferrari. You know, this guy's come from England and he's going to, you know, I was a guy there. And I think, well, I think they described me about right. And I went on talk for 10 minutes. Stop. People think I can't talk for 10 minutes because I usually talk for two hours. I went to. They had to go to their classes. Three mornings. I spoke for 10 minutes. No easing in by prayer. Nothing. I just had to stand up, bang into the midst. At the end of the third morning, they came, the kids. OK. Bless them. When I say kids, I don't mean mere six, seven, eight year olds. I mean the teenagers. They came running up into there and some youngsters as well among them. And one said, I want to belong to Jesus. And they want to know why I said he said he says it. He tells us like it is. That's right. That's what they said. And that's what young people want. They want to be told it like it is. Like it is. And like it is in heaven and in the glorious being of God, like it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. We have it written in the book. And when heaven and earth have passed away and there's no more wheat to be found and no more grapes from which wine can be crushed, the communion will stay forever. Listen, will you be in it? That's the point. Will you be in it, friend? In the communion. Just to think of it. Yeah, I am. This glorious life in your soul with God. As it was prayed this morning, not just in a conference meeting, but out there in the hard and horrid every day. In the communion. And just to turn from that which has to occupy your conscious thought for honesty's sake to your governor for whom it is you serve. But in the moments when your thoughts are not legitimately taken up in these things, the communion, you're in the communion. There, that is eternal life. Eternal life is the communion. It is a communion so far as you are concerned personally. It's the communion. The original glory to God. Drop it. Drops around me the name of Jesus like a temple, a tabernacle. And I'm shut in with God. Is that right? If you've only just begun, whoever you are, that's the way it should begin to be consciously understood by you. That's the way it will develop. That's the way it will grow. And if this morning we've been able to share in simplicity and love in these marvelous things, and we've been enlightened thereby, it is only light, the life you will enjoy. And it will be him in you and you in him. Is that right? Let's pray.