In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the power and importance of prayer. He references three Bible verses that emphasize the significance of prayer in the life of a believer. The preacher highlights the need for a renewed vision of God and emphasizes the importance of hallowing God's name in a sinful world. He also criticizes the use of manipulative methodologies in the church and emphasizes the need for a genuine spiritual revival. The preacher concludes by stating that evangelism is simply an extension of the kind of religion one already has, and that true transformation and revival are necessary for effective evangelism.

The latter part of the 16th verse, this statement, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. And in the fourth chapter of the same book, two and three, he hath not because he ask not, or he ask and receive not, because he ask amiss. And then in the 18th of Luke, he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to think. This is the only parable that is explained before it is given, so I'll not read it. The moral, as they say, is given before the parable is told, and the moral is, men ought always to pray and not to think. Now there are three texts telling us three things. So that indicates, of course, that I am to speak on prayer, since all three texts have to do with prayer. There was a great old Spanish brother by the name of Molinas. He wrote at least one great book, and in it he makes this statement, that prayer is an ascent or elevation of the mind of God, and that God is above all creatures, and the soul cannot see him nor converse with him if she raise not herself above them all. Because God is above all, I must in order to speak to him, raise my soul above all, and contemplate that which is above all. And now with that thought in mind, that prayer is an ascension of the soul to God, notice these three texts. One of them says that prayer is a potent thing. I'm amused at the translators trying to translate in English what the man said here. But it all adds up to this, that it is a potent thing. Prayer has tremendous power. Now this the Old Testament and the New Testament teach. But this also the Old Testament and the New Testament demonstrate. Then another text says that even though prayer is a potent thing, sometimes we do not have, even when we pray. And the reason we do not have is that we have asked selfishly. Or that we haven't asked at all, that of course is part of the text. We either haven't asked, or having asked, we have asked with wrong motives. And prayer with wrong motives is useless. But the third text says that nevertheless, even though there are times when prayer doesn't get through because it isn't the right kind of prayer, nevertheless, even though there are difficulties and discouragements, men ought always to pray and not to faint. Now I can sit down after having said this, and I have said considerable already, I think, because these three texts have said it, and I have repeated them with a minimum of explanation. Now about prayer. You know there is a great deal of prayer going on currently. Societies such as ours in the United States and across the line into Canada, and I suppose all over the world for that matter, whoever were influenced by some current philosophy or something else, we have our ups and downs. If we were to take prayer and its popularity and have a graph and start way over on this side of the tabernacle and end over there, and go back, say, over the last fifty years, you'd find your graph moving up and down. There were times when prayer was at the peak of popularity. Everybody was praying. And then there were times when it was considered rather old-fashioned to think about it, and then it would go back up again. Right now we happen to be in one of those peaks of the graph where it is quite the popular thing. Everybody prays. I don't know whether the gangsters have started praying yet or not, but I wouldn't put it past them. Everybody else does. Movie actress who makes movies so filthy that police have to ban them in the cities will pray solemnly. And prayer just seems to be, it's quite the thing now. Everybody prays. Between the First World War and the Second, it was philosophically bad to think about prayer. It threw you over on somebody else, whereas you ought to be depending upon yourself. And then in the Second World War, there were no atheists in the foxholes, and everybody began to pray. The prizefighters even pray now. When a prizefighter, he prays that he might be able to paralyze the other fellow. And then when after it's a nip, nip, and tuck, and he's bloody but unbowed, and the other fellow's lying over quivering in the corner, and they're fanning him, putting ice packs on his noble dome, why, they say, Now, all right you, would you say a word to your public? And he gets up and with much panting and breathing says, I didn't do it, God did it. I didn't do it, God did it. We've been praying. I've got praying friends all over, and I want to take this opportunity to thank my praying friends for praying for me. Amen. Well, God bless him. That kind of paganism belongs in New Guinea. It doesn't belong in the United States, but it's in the United States nevertheless. Can you imagine what kind of a God God would be who would get into a prize ring and answer the prayer and unseen be the third man in the ring? And when the number one, the man who'd done the praying missed and didn't duck in time, why, God would hit the other fellow so as to guard his friend. That would be a terrible thing to do. It would be a sneaky thing to do to begin with, and it would be unlike God and unlike Christ and totally carnal and altogether out in left field. God would never be caught doing it. So prayer is a common thing. Everybody's praying, you know. People stop in the midst of any kind of wickedness and put up their little hand and pray. God's on everybody's mailing list. Everybody that wants anything, they go to God about it. I remember once reading an article about John D. Rockefeller and what a bunch of deadheads he had hanging around him and freeloaders always writing him for money. One fellow wrote him this, Brother King, if you want to copy this for making money for the alliance missions, this works, you know, if you get anybody to go along with it. This man wrote and said, Dear Mr. Rockefeller, you're a rich man and you're a man who understands business. I'm not rich and I don't understand business, but what I want to ask is you lend me $500 and then invest it for me wisely. And then after it has made a big chunk of money, take out your $500 and send me the rest. Now that's one way, that's one way of getting money. And now every sort of personal interest and selfish project, I say project because I've been up in Tenet a year and a half and that's what they say, but project is American. Every kind of selfish project is being carried on, unscriptural, unspiritual and injurious it may be, but it's sanctified with a text and it may have no higher motive than to relieve some fellow from doing an honest job or making an honest living with his own two little hard patties. He just won't do it, so he gets a religious job somewhere that he thought up himself that has no place in the scriptures at all, he didn't learn from the scriptures, and he puts that across and works all his lifetime and gets old on that. Or it may have no higher motive than to provide him an opportunity to travel at other people's expense, that's quite a popular thing now. And yet the fellow will call prayer meetings and he'll even pray all night in order to get that prayer answered before asking God to bless a project that God never thought of. Jesus said that here are these trees and every tree that my father didn't plant will be cut down and thrown into the fire. My dear people, we ought to be generous and we ought to give generously, but let me say to you most solemnly this morning that if you waste your money contributing to the delinquency of religious bums, you will pay for it in the day of Christ when he asks you what you did with your money. You're not only to give, but you're to find out where you should give, and give it where it counts, and give it where God is doing something. Put your money where obviously the cloud and the fire are, and don't waste it giving to fair-haired, curly-locked boys with a good, soft voice who have no higher motive than to get out of the job. So the fellow one time sent a letter around, and every step he sent it around to all of his mailing lists, and I happened to be one of these suckers. I got a letter, just a form letter, nicely written, and he said, I feel deeply, I feel called to make a missionary journey. He said, I must go, the heathen are perishing, we must get the gospel out, and therefore would you put a dollar in this envelope and send it in. If all of my friends to whom I write would send a dollar, I can make the missionary journey. So he said, if you will send in enough, I want to go to Bermuda. Can you imagine it? I send out to my mailing list from Toronto and say, I want to go to Florida in midwinter. What a ridiculous kind of business is it? But that fellow is praying, O Lord, bless my trip to Bermuda, and I'll take my bathing suit along just in case. Now about prayer. There are personal, intimate things that we ought not to pray about in public. I'd like to pass that little word on to you. As a pastor of about 43 years, I have learned the hard way that there are some things you just don't talk about in public, you don't bring them in. We should talk those over to God. There isn't a thing, not one lonely, tiny little thing that God isn't interested in that affects you. He is interested in everything concerning you. John Wesley prayed for his horse and it got well and he rode off to his next appointment. The Lord will hear prayer for almost anything that is not selfish. Because the Lord loves you and he loves everything about you, and he loves all around you, and belief and above you, and you move around in a glow of God's love if you're his child, and everything that touches you touches God. But there are things that ought to be talked over between you and God, and not be brought into the Wednesday night prayer meeting. I've seen many a prayer meeting bogged down by personal details that never should have been brought there at all. I remember one time being in a prayer meeting and a dear old brother, a Godly old scholarly looking sweet old man by the name of Brother Adams, he was leading it, he's long been in heaven, but he was leading the meeting. And he said, now we'll have prayer requests. And there was one prayer request after another was made, and one little old lady said, Brother Adams, would you pray for my twitching eyelid? It's bothering me. And he solemnly took time out to pray for her twitching eyelid. Well now, if I'd been leading the meeting, I'd have said, honey, rub it. Rub it. That's the best way to handle a twitching eyelid. Don't waste God's time, they're my time. You rub it, it'll get all right. And we just ought not to waste prayer meeting time bringing in personal things. We ought to pray for the great big things. I'm going to tell you what they are shortly here. But then there is a second kind of prayer, and that is what we call corporate prayer. That's the kind of prayer that should have an aim that affects the whole Church of Christ, not only the Christian Missionary Alliance, but the whole Church of Christ. That should be what I call strategic prayer. Do you remember once a group of people in the New Testament met and prayed for a man? And it was rather a personal deal, because Peter was in prison, and his brother James had been killed with a sword. No, James, one of the other men, had been killed with a sword, and Peter was in prison waiting also to get the sword. So they went to God about Peter. Now that affected Peter, but oh, it affected everybody else. Peter's job wasn't done yet. Peter was so important. Peter wasn't the first Pope, but Peter was so vastly important to the Church of Christ at that time that he was indispensable for a moment, and they couldn't give him up. So they met and prayed, O God, here this affects all the Church and the Church for all the centuries to come. Get Peter out of prison. Peter got out of prison, and they didn't believe it, because some of them had prayed with him. The ones that had believed, believed it. But the ones that had just been going along for the ride, they didn't believe it. And when they saw Peter, they had been mumbling, but they hadn't been believing. And when they saw Peter, they said, It's his ghost. They said, He's dead, and this is his ghost. They've already beheaded him, and here he comes with just his ghost. But that was strategic praying, my friends. They were praying strategically. They were doing something that would not only affect a man, and particularly a man twitching eyelids, but that would affect the whole Church of Christ. And I believe that corporate prayer, the prayer of the body, the prayer of people when they meet, ought not to be wasted on details, but that it ought to be given over. For instance, our Congo situation is so tragic now, and so, so critical. When we meet to pray, we ought not to pray that my foot will stop hurting. These tribals, we ought to pray, O God, have your way in the Congo. That's strategic praying. We ought to pray strategically, and we must pray in harmony with our work. That is, we can't, as William Law has said, we ought not to pray one way and live another. But we ought to pray in harmony with the way we live, and in harmony with what we're doing. And then we ought to bring our doing in harmony with our prayer, and our living in harmony with our prayer. Pray according to the will of God, and then bring what you're doing and the way you're living into harmony with your prayers. Now, there are two desires that should burn in the children of God. I want to give you these two desires. These are prayer requests that can be made in private, and God knows that I, for one, try often and much and earnestly to pray these two prayers in private, but they are legitimate prayers for the corporate body. The saints, when they meet, the company, the assembly of God-redeemed people, when they meet, ought to keep praying these two great kinds of prayers, these two great prayers. One is a restoration of the vision of the Most High God. Now, I am getting along, and after a while I'll be middle-aged, and I don't want by any means to become a fanatic and go out on a limb and sit out there and twang a little harp before my time. There are too many of the Lord's dear people, when they get along a little, they get out on one thing and they sit and twing, twang, and they think it's a whole symphony, just one little note, twing, twang. Well, no, I don't want to do that, and I don't think I'm doing it. I believe that I have surveyed the whole Church of God, and I know something of Church history and the development of the work of God through the years, and I believe I know something of the scripture, and I'm in a position, I think, wisely to tell you these two things. One of them is, I've said, the restoration of the vision of the Most High God. You see, we have too low a view of God now, and that is why the Church has such a low place. The Church rises or falls altogether depending upon her view of God. If she takes a high view of God, her people are inclined to be reverent and worshipful and solemn and brave. If she takes a low view of God, they become funny and flippant and foolish and live worldly lives and give up to the flesh. If she takes a high view of God, she simplifies her Church services immediately. If she takes a low view of God, she has to drag in every kind of theatrical truck in order to keep her people coming. It depends upon her view of God. The old Presbyterians used to have such a high, noble view of God. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. Many of that school of thought held high views of God. Brethren, do you know the result of that? The result of that is that generation after generation following generation they stayed true to the faith. But as soon as we take a low view of God and get to thinking of God cheaply as they think of him now, cheaply, that God is a pal or that he's my partner or that he's the big Joe upstairs or that he's, call him by some other name, a living doll one girl said he was. As long as we think about God like that, we've never seen God. Imagine Moses trembling in the fire and smoke on Mount Sinai, referring to God in any other way than in awful solemn terms. What we need in the United States is a revelation of what the philosopher called the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery, and what the Bible calls Jehovah, high and lifted up. Isaiah saw him at his train filling the temple. The trouble with you, dear young people, and God knows I love you as I've told you before. I do. I love young people. I love the twinkle in their eye. I love their little giggles. And I love everything about kids. I love youth. And I don't like the word youth at all, but I love young people. I love them, but they're being cheated in this awful hour in which we live. They've never seen God, and they've never seen very many people that have. And so you poor kids are victims of an elder generation that never saw God. And so they've had to teach you trash and drag in every kind of crap to try to keep you happy. And if you tell me the truth, you don't respect them for it. You go along with it, but you don't respect them for it. My brethren, we need to see God again, the glory of God and the return of that glory. This is an imperative, and anything else is secondary to it. It is more important that God be glorified than that men be saved. It's more important that God be glorified than that his work be carried on. It's more important that God be honored in his universe than that I be saved. But here is the wonder of wonders. God in his love and goodness has so arranged it that the more he's honored, the more people will be saved. So that it isn't an either-or. I either win souls or I glorify God. But the more I glorify God, the more souls will be won. And if a baptism of clear seeing were to come to the Church of Christ in America, sinners would come. And you wouldn't have to talk like them in order to win them. You wouldn't have to go out on that false philosophical boat with holes in it that'll sink one of these days, that I've got to come down and be like them in order to win them. I don't have to do anything of the sort. Paul made himself all things to all men, but all he meant by that in the wide world was that he'd sow tents or he'd go anywhere. He never meant that he was going to cheapen himself and come down to the level of cheap sinners in order to win those sinners. No, he was that dignified man of God that walked about with a glow on his face. And in those early days, the Church dwelt on Solomon's porch and no man durst join himself to them. Nobody on Solomon's porch was running out and learning to talk like a beatnik in order to win a beatnik. On Solomon's porch, they were there in a glow of glory so that people were afraid to come near them. They said, look, God is on those people. And they fell on their faces and said, God's in this place. What we need is to have a vision of God again. And by vision of God, I do not mean anything to the visible eye. Anything you see with your visible eye, you can safely ignore, because that's merely matter. Matter. But I'm talking about the inner eye. You see with your inner eye. You have an eye inside of you, and with that you are to gaze upon the holy face of God. And we are one more time to see God. And you know the first corporate prayer was, Our Father which art in heaven, and the first request was, Hallowed be thy name. That the name of God should be hallowed in the sinful world is more important than anything else. It's more important than candy. It's more important than any church on the continent. It's more important than any school or any project that we're doing, that the name of God be glorified. But the beauty of it all is that if we're to see God big, and think of him big, and honor him, all these other projects, as we call them, if they're his projects, will glow and grow like the lily of the valley. You don't say, I must either work with candy or I must glorify God. No, glorify God and watch candy grow. Glorify God and watch the alliance grow. Glorify God and watch your church grow. But we try to make it grow and forget God. God isn't in half of the things. A fellow told me the other day about being with a certain man. He was one of the Christian businessmen, brethren. I worked with them a lot and loved them, and certainly this isn't true of very many, but it was true of this one. He wanted to sue a fellow, a doctor, and this doctor went to him and tried to talk with him. He had printed some chapter or other that was supposed to reflect on this man, and hadn't, but he said it did. And he came to see him, this Christian, and he said, now I'll sue unless something is done. And this doctor said, well now, brother, he said, we're brethren. He said, surely God's children. Oh, leave God out of this, he said. Leave God out of this. This fundamentalist, this evangelical, this man who bellows about being born again, he wants to leave God out of it. Brethren, anything you leave God out of will rot in your hands. Anything you leave God out of will die before your eyes. Anything that God isn't in will be burned in the fire. Don't leave God out of it. God must be in it. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son, said Jesus. God answers prayer for the glory of the Father through the Son. And no project and no organization and no need, nothing is valid until the glory of God has been restored to mankind. Until we think of him reverently, until we think of him high and lifted up, until we understand that he is the great God Almighty and Jesus Christ is the Lord. Jesus Christ has been reduced and reduced and brought down and brought down until nobody fears the Lord Jesus anymore. He is simply a big brother, easy to get along with without very high standards. And we can live in the flesh and go along with the world, and then when we're in trouble, run whiffering to our big brother and he'll help us. Oh, what a neat, what a neat trick of the devil to get people to live like the world and the devil and then think they can run to the Lord when they're in trouble. Why, the Lord isn't a garage you go into when you've had a fender dinged. He isn't the hospital you go to when you've had a heart attack. He is the Lord. God hath made this man both Lord and Christ. And has set him at his own right hand, and there he has all authority. When John saw him, he fell at his feet as if he was dead, and took the hand of Jesus to raise him back from the dead again. A low view of God means a low living church. High views of God mean correspondingly high living church. And we need how desperately we need to see the church brought back again. And that brings us now to our second thought. That the second great desire should be a deliverance of the church. Now again, I do not want to be nostalgic. I never knew better times than I know now, so I'm not looking back on any departed glory. And I don't date back so far that I remember Finney and Augustine by any means. But I will say this. Judging the scripture, judging the church, our church, you say, what church, Brother Tozer? Are you referring to the liberals? No. What are you referring to? I'm referring to us land people, for instance. And then I'm referring to all of the other evangelicals who are all tied with the same stick, or blessed with the same grace, and hold the same doctrines generally. The church now. When I say the church, she ought to be and must be restored from her Babylonian captivity. For the church is in Babylonian captivity, as Israel was, and he is in Babylon. You remember Israel in Babylon. She stayed there 70 years, and there came along a man by the name of Ezra, Nehemiah, and some others, and they took them back into the land again. Built the temple, dedicated it, and started again to live as they should have been living all the time. This was a parenthesis, 70 years out of the land. I believe the church of Christ now, the church, the evangelical church, the fundamentalist church, and the borderline church, doesn't know whether it's liberal or evangelical. I believe the church is in Babylonian captivity. But the Lord didn't desert Israel while she was in Babylon. He kept her there, he blessed her, he had her whole, so she came back, the covenant held, she wasn't lost, she was still God's covenant people, but she was out of the land. And being out of the land, she was away from the place of power, and away from the flame, and away from the sacrifice, and away from worship. She was scattered through Babylon. Then when they brought her back, she built her temple and went to worshiping again. I believe the church now needs to be delivered from her Babylonian captivity, her disgraceful fornication with the world, and brought back into the place where the church should have been all the time. Some people call that a revival. I don't talk much about revival. I used to when I didn't know anything about revival, preach about them. I'd read Finney and preach on revival. But I've got humbler since that day, I hope. And I don't preach on revival, but I do believe that it would bring revival to the church of Christ, the church would be revived if she was brought back again to the place she should be, back to her New Testament position. Back to living her morals in line with the New Testament teaching. Back to the methods of the New Testament, and back to the objectives of the New Testament. Nobody has any right to institute any program that is a New Testament in its origin. And then nobody has any right, having instituted a program, ever to carry it on by any other methods except those given us out of the New Testament. Methodology that doesn't originate in the New Testament is a deadly thing, and you ought to get away from it as far as you can. Methodology that goes according to the laws of psychology and salesmanship and all the rest, it's a poor cheap substitute for the Holy Ghost, and we ought to reject it. I tell you, until this is accomplished, until the church has been restored, until we've been brought back again to the place where we can live as New Testament saints, a good deal of our work will go down the drain. Evangelism is simply an extension of the kind of religion you now have. The evangelist can only reproduce himself. There's a law in the Bible, after his kind, everything produces after its kind. And the evangelist goes into a neighborhood, he can only make converts in his own image. That's all he can do. And so evangelism is simply extending the degenerate Christianity that's now everywhere abroad. Now, by degenerate, I don't mean there's not some life in it. There was life in Israel when she was in Babylon, but she was out of the land. There is life in the evangelical church. If there wasn't, I'd leave it. There's life here. There's life here, it can be. I trust there's life right here in this body. And I believe there's life among you people of God. This is not to talk you down and unchurch you. It's only to say we're not where we ought to be. We're judging each other by each other and ourselves, by the rest, and we have adopted a low dead level by comparing each other with each other, and we haven't seen samples in recent time of holy men and women. I saw the other day a scrapbook given to me by Mrs. McGarvey, or lent to me to look over, and there were the old saints there, way back to the beginning. Hess, and Brother Richard's father, and Dr. Simpson, those were men of outstanding, they were head and shoulders above the average. There were giants in the earth in those times. And they naturally reproduced themselves. But now we're slidding badly down, and our evangelism only reproduces and turns out a great mass of people that are just like us. The children that were born to Israel in Babylon were born in Babylon. They were born, and there was some life there, but they were born in Babylon. And then somebody else says, well, then what we need to do is to get busy on missions. Now, the treasurer of the Christian Missionary Alliance is here, but I have to say this anyhow, that, and he agrees with it, I'm quite sure, I'm only kidding. I know he agrees with it. You know, there's a notion abroad that if you've got an old dead church, where instead of having sheep, you've got goats, and instead of having saints, you have people that are hypocrites and no good livers and all the rest. If you just start a missionary program, boom, up you go immediately. That missions is the panacea for all backslidden churches. And if you'll just start a missionary program, you'll have a revival immediately. My dear brother, that just isn't so. There is nothing in the New Testament to teach that. And dear reverend brother, if you've tried that in your church and it hasn't worked, remember that it didn't work because it wasn't so. And if you have instituted a spiritual program for missions in your church and the church has been blessed, then that still doesn't prove it works. It proves that the same yearning after God that led you to institute the missionary program in your church also led you to God. One is not the cause of the other, but the both are the result of a deeper cause. So now, what are missions? I never knew whether to say was or were. I don't know whether it's singular or plural. Whichever it is, anyhow, missions. What's for missions? It's simply going to another country than your own and preaching the gospel. A missionary is an evangelist who's gone abroad. An evangelist is a missionary who's preaching at home. And what prove evangelism's true of missions? A degenerate church goes to Cambodia or Timbuktu, makes some converts, establishes a church, they will carry their own concept of Christianity to Cambodia or Timbuktu. And the church there will be what they made it. And if they're occupying a secondary, low place at home, they'll carry that same secondary concept over there. I've been disappointed to the point of being disgusted. Some of the information we get from the field, somebody dies. And they'll say, and at the funeral, the trio sang, There's No Disappointment in Heaven. Can you tell me what excuse in the wide world of God anybody with the IQ of 6 and 7 eighths, what excuse he would have of going to Cambodia or Loyola or wherever it is, and I don't mean those fields, and transplanting a cheap, low, almost vulgar song. From the United States to that country, when we have a whole bushel basket full of great hymns that they could translate into the languages over there, and teach them theology while they're singing. That's only one sample. And we make them in our own image over there. So what we need to pray for is that God will raise up missionaries of such a superior spiritual quality, that when they go over there they'll produce converts of a superior spiritual quality. But somebody says, Mr. Tozer, now wait a minute. You mean to say there's a difference? When you're born again, aren't you born again? And isn't every Christian like every other Christian? How foolish can you get? There's such a thing as being stillborn. We had seven and they were all live born. But there's such a thing as having a stillborn baby. There's such a thing as having a baby that lasts a few minutes. A dear lady told me that she was in her forties before she had her first baby and then it died. Well, now that's too bad, and I'm sorry for that. That baby lived just a little while. It's in heaven now, thank God, but it just lived a little while. Well, there it is. There are babies born healthy, there are babies born not healthy. We had a baby born, it weighed ten pounds and fourteen ounces. Well, now that boy, he came into the world bouncing, bouncing. But my younger brother was born to my mother when she was in middle life, and he was quite a long, several weeks old before they could take him off a pillow. They carried him about on a pillow. His head was all pulled off on one side. He came into the world a sickly baby. Our boy Roland came into the world a bouncing, healthy ten-pounder. So Christians can be born into the kingdom of God, and there are different kinds of Christians. Some are born well. Some pray it through and repent and change all their ways and leave the world, die to their flesh and believe on Christ and take him as their Lord. Man, they're big Christians in no time at all. Others come in under poor auspices. They come in where they barely get in, and they're weaklings, and they live and die weaklings, and they get weaklings after them. So missions and evangelism won't do. Missions and evangelism ought to grow out of spirituality, not produce it. And also our books and our schools and our magazines and our editorials and our sermons will all be of a kind with the kind of Christians we are. If we're poor Christians, second-rate Christians, third-rate Christians, weaklings, our books and our schools and our printing presses and all the rest will be second-rate weaklings. But if the power of God rests upon our foreheads, and if we have said goodbye to the world and decided to follow Jesus Christ and follow the Lamb wherever he goeth, our schools and our books and our magazines and our sermons will rise correspondingly. So I say it's very necessary that we pray. Now his name was Pat Kelly, and he was an Anglican. He was an Anglican. And I believe he said, if I recall, that he was the chairman of the Red Cross, either Red Cross or Heart or Cancer Society of Canada. Anyway, he believed in that. And he said, I hope you won't think that I am too pessimistic. And I said, no, I've just written a book that's worse than that. It's just about as bad. Because I don't believe in humanity. I don't believe in the goodness of people, unless God helps us, unless God gets into us, or unless we get into the kingdom of God. People are not good by nature, they're bad. But we don't believe it. Humanity doesn't believe that. People don't believe it. And there's man's kingdom, filled with the subjects of Satan. And it's organized and it's implemented by science and it has in its favor history and familiarity and visible success. And it is of the flesh and it's from the flesh and it's for the flesh and it's dedicated to the flesh and to the passing world. Now that's the kingdom of man, into which you and I are born, regardless of our race. That's the kingdom into which we're born, a fallen, hostile, alienated race. Then there's another kingdom, and that is the kingdom of God. And that kingdom consists of recreated persons, persons who have been born again anew, persons who have made Christ their Lord and in whom Christ is honored, persons who have no confidence in fallen humanity, persons who have no confidence in the soundness of man's moral judgment, but believe that left to himself, man will always go wrong, persons who know that they can do nothing in themselves and have no confidence in the flesh or in their own strength, persons who trust in God alone to do an immortal work in them and through them. These are called Christians and they make up the true Church of Christ of whatever denomination. But it's a different kingdom altogether. There's the kingdom of man and there is the kingdom of God. And those two kingdoms coexist and sometimes they spill over into each other as water spills over into the boat and has to be bailed out to get together. And I suppose there isn't any church anywhere that is totally, totally, totally committed to the kingdom of God to a point where everything is done by God. I suppose there will be a little bit of the flesh and a little bit of old Adam and a little bit of the kingdom of this world getting to all churches. I've never heard of one that didn't have a little of it. Then there are churches that have almost totally given themselves over to the kingdom of man. And their philosophy is man's philosophy. Their beliefs are man's beliefs. And their viewpoint is man's viewpoint. And they go the way man goes and they live the way man lives, and yet they call themselves churches. Then there are such churches as this, where an effort at least is made that the majority of what we do should be divine and the majority should be on the side of the kingdom of God, but where undoubtedly around the edges there are things that God's not in. And the business of a minister and the business of elders and deacons and church members and Christians everywhere is to keep the church and make the church just as pure as she can be, and to keep all the kingdom of man out of her, and to keep her so replete with the kingdom of God that when you step into the fellowship of the saints you step into a divine fellowship, a fellowship dedicated to the proposition that all men are bad until they're made good by the blood of the Lamb, dedicated to the proposition that we're on the wrong road until we find the road home to God through the cross, dedicated to the belief that it's only God in us that can do any mortal work. And so we in the kingdom of God have for our motto, in everything by prayer, because you see we've already admitted we can't do anything. We've already admitted there's nothing in human muscle that can do the work of God. We've already admitted there's nothing in the human brain that can think the word of God. We've already admitted that there's nothing in human nature good enough to build in to the temple of holiness which God is raising in his universe. We already have admitted that. How then can we do? What shall we do? Hunt a monastery somewhere and hide ourselves away? No. We're to be in active work. But we're to do it by prayer, in everything by prayer. Now let me show you the contrast between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of the world, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. And then you see how locate yourself, locate this church, locate me, locate us, locate ourselves in this. Now the world says in everything by money. Just have money enough you can do anything. Everything. Money talks. And money opens doors. And it's money, money, always money. The more money the better we get along. Always money. Christ hadn't a dime. But we say money, if we had more money. But the church says in everything by prayer. The church says we're wise enough to know that money is needed in the kingdom of God and that God uses it and says let everybody lay up in store on the first day of the week. We know that. And we know that when we give God takes it and blesses it. He has spread abroad, he has given to the poor, scattered abroad, he has given to the poor, his righteousness remaineth forever. We know that. We know that in the kingdom of God, God uses money, but he uses it only because everything is done by prayer. But if you have money without prayer, you have a great curse on you. I believe the greatest curse could happen to have a new road church would be for somebody to will us $100,000 and the Lord not to raise up praying people commensurate with it. If God will raise up men and women, commensurate with the gift. And I wouldn't hesitate to accept $100,000 and put it to work. But you get money without prayer and you have a curse. Yet prayer without money is amazing what God can do and where he'll find money. Amazing where he'll find money. So the world says in everything by money. And then churches rise up and they're dedicated to the kingdom of this world without knowing it, the kingdom of man, and so they try to run the church the way man runs the church. One man said, I'm a such and such, that is he was certain denomination which I'll try not to divulge. And he said there hasn't been anybody interested in my soul in all these years. He said nobody. He said I make my pledge yearly and I send in my check monthly and nobody has bothered me in years. He said I never go to church. Why don't you go to church? I never go to church because nobody's interested in me. He said they're only interested in my pledge and my check. And he said I see, coach, that I get my pledge and my check in and that takes care of my religious responsibility. Now he was sarcastic in that. He didn't believe it, but he knew the church believed it. The church got his check and that's what they wanted. He could stay home. The pastor could preach to his empty seat because the check was in. I'll take the people and you can have the checks. I'll take the people, God's people, God's good loving people. I love the people. But you know, I find if you get the fish, you get the coin. And you get the fish, they'll be coining his mouth. And if you get the sheep, they'll have wool on his back. So it isn't a choice between getting the people and getting the money because if you get the people, you get the money. The point is if you go after the money and don't care about the people, we're hirelings and not shepherds. You know, get to know people. Big shot. Well, I've always felt that social prestige won't do it. Christ was born in a manger. And Peter was a fisherman and John was a fisherman. And Levi was a despised tax collector. And the early church came up out of people that didn't amount to very much. Not many. Not many are wise. Not many are learned. Not many are rich. Not many, a few, but not many. The early church was born up out of the lower stratum of the strata of society and not out of the higher strata. She came up from the common people. And the people who did miracles and went about everywhere doing miracles were common people. And some of our modern scholars shake their heads over Peter's Greek. They say, Peter's Greek wasn't so good. It wasn't anything like Paul's Greek. No, it wasn't so good Greek. But he managed to write some epistles that have blessed a few million people down the centuries. And he managed to preach a sermon that converted 3,000. And he managed to do a few other things, and yet his Greek wasn't so good. I suppose that if he had been more proficient in the Greek, he would not have had one ounce of power more than he had, because everything was done by prayer. It was not by social prestige, but by prayer. And then in everything by publicity. I sometimes tremble to think that my son is now the head of a publicity, a public relations society, public relations. Well, they're talking about getting a Bureau of Public Relations in the Christian missionary line. Bureau of Public Relations. I don't even think I know what they mean. I don't really know. You go out and stand on the street corner and preach Christ to the passing crowd, you have public relations. You preach Christ to the people you work with, and that's public relations. Be decent to your neighbor, and that's public relations. Behave yourself and obey the law, and that's public relations. Live as a Christian should, and that's public relations. But I don't think we need a Bureau of Public Relations. I don't think we need somebody sitting back at the desk deciding how he can make everybody like him, and win friends and influence people for the Christian and missionary line. Brethren, what we need is the power of God, and let the public think what they will. And if we have the power of God on us and live like Christians, regardless of what the world says, I don't care what the world thinks of me. I want to stand well with God, and if I stand well with God, I'm likely to stand well with these best people. And after that, I'm not much concerned. But the world says public relations. We ought to have a Bureau of Public Relations. I went to a church when my wife and I went there before we were married. We continued there after we were married for a while, and I began to preach. And it was a great church, really a great church. They used to pray and testify and sing, and the power of God was there. They'd come to communion service and kneel down to take communion. I've seen them break into tears and break into laughter along the altar, and the joy of God was on the place. The little church was packed full, and we were having a great time. Then something happened, and they had a tremendous church row, and the pastor was thrown out and the devil was voted in. And then you know what they did next? They established a Bureau for Public Relations. And we used to get literature from them, the Bureau of the such-and-such Bureau of Public Relations. Imagine that! When they grieved the Holy Ghost so he couldn't bless them, then they felt they should do something to keep themselves in good with the public. Scripture says, in everything by prayer, not in everything by money. In everything by prayer, not in everything by social prestige. In everything by prayer, not in everything by publicity. In everything by committees. You know, we just tried to do everything by committees, and it would go wrong, and we'd get a bunch of committees, and we'd get a committee together. A committee, said Vance Havner, is a company of the incompetent, chosen by the unwilling to do the unnecessary. And we have these expensive committees floating around. And just one fellow, the Holy Ghost would come on one man, and he could make a decision and say, do it this way, bang, it's done, you know, and he can go off about his business. Instead of that, they have to sit around and talk for hours about trifles. Talk for a half an hour about whether to take a 15 or 17 minute coffee break in a religious office. They say they have to have it to relax. And everybody knows coffee doesn't relax you. It does exactly the opposite. I drink it, but I know it doesn't relax me. Everything by committees. I am for one more committee. I would like to see a committee formed for the abolition of all committees, for at least a little while. No, you've got to have them, I suppose. They're like cleaning a house, and scrubbing the dogs, and doing things you've got to do. You don't like it, but it's necessary. And I suppose there's got to be committees until the end of time. They had them in the Bible all down the years, and we've got them now. But the point is, if we realize that a committee could cut its time down one half if it prayed more. Moody said that a man prayed in public, the length of time a man prayed in public was sure to be an inverse proportion to the length of time he prayed in private. If he prayed a long time in private, he made his public prayers short. But if he was short in private, he was long in public. And I believe that the committee meetings that run endlessly are simply indicating that they haven't prayed enough. And if we pray more, we can talk less. And then in everything by business methods. We're trying to do the work of the Holy Ghost after the technique of modern businessmen. It won't work. And everything by prayer. Everything by education, they say now. What we need is a more educated clergy, more educated ministry. Well, I believe in education. I have said that many times. And if you don't get it in school, you ought to get it in somewhere or other. There are books everywhere. You can go down here to Eaton's. Twenty-five dollars, you can buy yourself enough good books. Get yourself an education in some fields. And you can get it in a year's time if you read. But I have noticed that when a denomination starts to backslide, they always start to elevate their standards academically. The less we have of the Holy Ghost, the more we have to know about Plato and Aristotle. Call that being acquainted with contemporary theology. I think that we ought to be acquainted with the ancient theology of Moses, Isaiah, David, Daniel, Paul, Peter, John, and the rest. And let the contemporary fellows kick the football around. Because always there's a bunch of self-conscious intellectuals who are busy kicking around a current football having to do with theology. Nowadays, you know, it's neo-orthodoxy and neo-evangelicalism. Those are big, long words that don't mean very much, really. But in everything by prayer, says the Holy Ghost, says Paul. In everything by prayer, and he made good on it. And then the world says, in everything by compromise. I met a man not long ago, a Canadian man, who says that he is a goodwill ambassador for industry between the United States and Canada. I pressed him to know what he did. Well, he said, I go from the United States to Canada, back and forth, all the time, from city to city, representing Canadian industry in the United States. Keep us in harmony. I like that job. It's trying to get harmony between the two. And he said this odd little thing. He said, the difficulty is to make the two countries see that they're foreign to each other. He said, they don't act as if they were foreign countries. He said, they won't act alike. He said, you can't do that under law. I said, it's a pretty nice way to be, though. Yes, it's a nice way to be socially. But he says, under law, they've got their two countries, but they're one socially, in friendship. Well, that's a good thing, I suppose, to make compromises where you can. But in the kingdom of God, compromising is a pretty deadly business. And the Church, as long as the Church goes out to the world and follows the world's ways, the Church says, compromise where you can. Compromise everywhere, and just take in anybody. I think that if you, I don't think there's a gangster anywhere from San Francisco to Long Island, but what could join some church in the United States? I don't know about Canada, but I suppose you're about the same. They could get in somehow or other, you know. If you smile and give them a check and dress well and comb your hair nicely, if you have any, they'll take you in. They'll take you in. Nobody asks any questions. Compromises are cut in everything by compromise. Try to get along with people. Let the Church get along with the world. The Church in the days of her power never got along with the world, and the world never got along with the Church. In the days of her weakness, she gets along with the Church, and the Church uses her like a cat. A politician wants to get elected, so he makes love to the pastor, hoping the pastor in turn will be silly enough to tell his congregation that they ought to vote for this big love. I wouldn't vote for him if he wrote me a letter. Just the fact he wrote me a letter, I wouldn't vote for him. Try and use the Church. The Church isn't to be used, brethren. The Church is to serve her generation by the will of God. But she'll decide how she's to serve her generation. The world won't decide it for her. Well, the truth is, you can't delegate prayer. Now, there are some things you can delegate. I can delegate my singing, for instance. I can have Nan McCracken sing my solos for me, because I can't sing solos. But I can't delegate my prayer. Nobody else can do my praying for me, unless I'm unconscious. And then, you know, your wife sends for somebody to come pray for you, but you can't pray for yourself. But normally, you pray and we'll do the practical things. You pray and I'll sing. You pray and I'll give. You pray and I'll entertain missionaries. You pray and I'll teach, or sow, or serve. You pray and I'll do the practical things. That is a deadly snare. If you cannot and will not pray, God won't accept your sowing. If you can and will not pray, God won't accept your singing. If you cannot and will not pray, God won't accept your entertaining people. God won't accept your money, if you cannot and will not pray. It is prayer that gives power to all these other things. Singing, giving, entertaining, teaching, sowing, working, serving. Those are all good things, if we set them aflame by prayer. But if we try to do them without praying, we would hay and stubble in the day of Jesus Christ. Now, the true success of any church is going to be prayer. We can easily deceive ourselves, but our purity and our power and our spirituality and our holiness will parallel our prayer. If you were to have a graph that businessmen love so well, and politicians, if you were to take a graph and put it up here and have two lines across it, zigzag lines, one you mark prayer. You've just listened to the second portion of a message by Dr. Adolph J. Tozer of Toronto, Ontario, the editor of the Alliance Witness, on this great theme, In Everything by Prayer. I'm sorry due to technical difficulties, we weren't able to get the last few moments of this message, but the gist of it was that no man has any right to be on a church board unless he's a pray man. No Sunday school teacher has any right to be serving in the capacity of a Sunday school teacher unless they are a praying teacher. No individual has the right to be a church visitor unless they are a praying individual. And you follow that gist of truth, which is so good for us to re-evaluate these days in the light of so much watered down and meaning spiritual activity within the church. And we trust that God might have used these remarks that Dr. Tozer gave us to bring us back to these basic things that are so important. A praying church, praying board members, praying teachers, praying pastors, and a praying family. Would have gone that this might be a fall season in which we would give ourselves to prayer.