In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of being perfect and thinking in alignment with God's word. He mentions that those who reason differently will face consequences from God. The preacher also introduces the concept of three models: being forward and backward, doing God's will alone, and being a jealous lover of God. He talks about the need for a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit and a return to New Testament Christianity. The sermon concludes with a reminder that true worship and service to God do not require fancy equipment or gadgets, but rather a sincere heart and a willingness to pray.

I am giving, I'm reading a, I'm basing it upon a text by Paul, but tonight I wonder again, we've read it, you know variously, I've read it, and we've read it responsibly, and we've read it variously, now I want to read it from a translation you may never have heard of, and certainly most of you have never seen. It is a translation directly out of the Aramaic, but out of the Aramaic of the Eastern Church, the language Jesus spoke and the language Paul spoke. I just read the same, it's Philippians 3, 7 to 15. Not much difference, but a little, and by the King James of course, but I thought you'd like to hear this. But these things, says Paul, which me, I counted a loss for the sake of Christ, and I still count them all loss, for the sake of the abundant knowledge of Christ, for whom I have lost everything. And I have considered all those things refuse, so that I may increase in Christ, and be found in him, since I have no righteousness of my law. But the righteousness which comes through the faith of Christ, that is the righteousness which comes from God. Through this righteousness I may know Jesus and the power of his resurrection, and be a partaker of his healing to a death like his, that I may by any means attain the resurrection from the dead. Not as though I had already attained or already perfect, but I am striving that I may reach that for which Jesus Christ. My brethren, I do not consider that I have reached the goal, but this one thing I do know. Forgets are behind me, I strive for those things which are before me. I press toward the goal to receive the prize of victory, highest calling through Jesus Christ. Then he takes a breath and says, Lecture 11 Justification and Sanctification 2 Therefore, let those of you who are perfect think they are perfect. That's why we're meeting these Sunday nights. And if you reason any other way, you've got any other way, that's why God will reveal even this to you, that I'm right about it. And if you don't see the way I do, God will show you the way. Now, I've given you two mottos, I want to give you a third one tonight. You know that we're holding a 600-year-old book to help us along the way, called The Cloud. And we're basing our teaching on the New Testament, and then we're allowing this brother to help us a little along the way. And I have given you already two mottos. They are, forward and let be backwards. Last week I gave you a second one, he will that do but alone. I give you the third one tonight. He is a jealous lover, and he suffereth no rival. Now, I have said that there are four identifiable stages before, but there is a common Christian about which I've preached already, and I'm a special Christian. I talked about that last week. And we'll move on in the weeks to come into what we call singular Christian. And then there is the Christian who has moved up into God until he has begun to be perfect, though it is said both by Paul and the writer that we may begin in this life, the life of perfection, but never attain fully to it till we attain it. Now, Paul is our example, and Paul said in the text that I may know, and the word know there means acquaint or acquaintance, and it means experience. It means to be acquainted with and experience. You may be acquainted with a man, and yet not have experienced a man in any sense. I introduce you, for instance, to my friend, who is almost lifelong friend, Reverend Miller here tonight. You could say, yes, I'm acquainted, but you have not experienced him in the sense that I have, running around with him, traveling with him in his car usually, and preaching with him here and there and talking with him endless numbers of times and praying with him. There is a difference between acquaintance and experience. To get acquainted with God is one thing, but to go on to experience God in intensity and richness of acquaintance is something more. Paul said, I want to know him in that depth and a rich intensity. Because you see, as I have said many times, personality can't be fully known as one encounter. You may meet a person you don't particularly like at first, but as you get to know them, you get to like them because the hidden potentialities in their personality that you didn't know were there. Christ is of increasing intimacy of acquaintance. And if I have anything to say to the Church, to the Alliance, and to the evangelicals in the world, it is this, that our greatness is that we not only are not going on to know Christ in rich acquaintance, but we are not even talking about it. We don't even hear about it. It doesn't get into our magazine, it doesn't get into our books, it doesn't get on to our radios, it's not found in our churches, this yearning for him in increasing measure. Now, we may enjoy this increase with that. I want you to hear me say that. And you say, but Jesus Christ is he. Why do you call him that? Now, you may not understand me now, but as Paul says, if you think otherwise, believe in that unto you. Before we can know God as a he or him, we know God as that. I think that every theologian would agree with me on that. And I find back here, in the Book of Words, first of all, before I read them, remember what was said to the Virgin, that holy thing which is born of thee shall become called a son. That holy thing which is born of thee. And now, not an amateur theologian, but the man who had laid his head upon the breast of Jesus, ends his wondrous first epistle with the word that. That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon in our hands and handled of the word of life, personality is not found there. For the life was manifested and we have seen it. And bear witness and show unto you that eternal life, Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that you may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. It's not in the last two lines of the third stanza that he puts personality in there. It's that. Now, remember, my friends, that Jesus Christ, while he is person, and you know that we all agree that he's the person, he's the Son, the eternal Son, he is also that which is the source. He is that which is the foundation and the fountain of everything you and I are cloyed. He is the fountain of all truth, but he is more. He is truth itself. He is the source of beauty, but he is more. He is beauty itself. He is the fountain of all wisdom, but he is more. He is wisdom. In him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden away. He is the fountain of all grace. He is source of all light, but he is more than that. He said that I am the bed of light, and I am the light beam of love, but he is more than that. He is love, he is resurrection, and he is immortality. As the song says, brightness of the Father's glory, sunshine of the Father's face. You know, we discover what gets wrong with us when we start to backslide in groups and denominations and churches and individuals. Our Lord Jesus hit on the head of it when he said, You have left your first degree of love, not consecutively in the sense that there is love number one and love number two and love number three, but he said, You have left your first degree of love. What I'm preaching to try to bring about in the Church of Jesus Christ is a rediscovery of the loveliness of the Savior, that we might begin to love him again with an intensity of love for all fathers and youth. I have said before, and I repeat it now, that the power and greatness of A. B. Smith and his theology, for he positively was not a great theologian compared, for instance, with Calvin or some of the other theologians. The greatness of the man lay in his unquenchable love for the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord. This song we sing, and I want to read two verses, two stanzas that we don't know about. The first one says, Jesus, ruler of all nature, O thou of God and man, the Son, thee will I cherish, thee will I hold glory, joy, and crown. We know that one and two others, but there are others that we don't get. It says, Where are the flowers? Where are its children? When viewed in youth's unclouded day, they must perish, all will soon vanish. Jesus alone abides for us. Gaze out upon the women, your friends, your loved ones, all the lovely beauty of children and young people viewed in youth's unclouded day. Yet candor and realism compel us to say they must perish, all will soon vanish. And when they have vanished, we have only one who alone abides for us. Earth's fairest beauty, heaven's brightest splendor, in Jesus Christ seen, all that here shineth quickly declineth before his spotless purity. I always trouble you because you can't get all steamed up about things. A friend of mine, a cousin of mine, I just can't get all excited and steamed up about earthly things. I can't do it. I can't possibly stand off and strike an attitude of awe at a little beauty, or a Cadillac, or something else. I can't. And the houses they're building that are supposed to be so magnificent. Remember that when you have seen the house or the city that has foundations, who has built God, you can't get excited about any house ever any man in this world ever built. You can't get about it. Somebody said that Abraham saw the cities that had foundations, whose builder and maker was God, and built a house after that. He said, I'll never try to imitate it. I'll live in a tent until I get my house up there. It was so beautiful. Well, earth's in heaven's brightest splendor, are all unfolded in Jesus Christ, and all that here she declineth before his spotless purity. That's what one man said about Jesus. I want to tell you that it costs Christ like that. It costs, and most people won't pay the price for it at all. That's why most Christians are common ones, because for Christ's sake they have surrendered evil things. That is, things that are unjust, and things that are unclean and grossly sinful. Everywhere in fundamentalism we have given up the grossly sinful, and we have all agreed on what those grossly sinful things are. We shudder at the thought of the honk, though there are some churches and tabernacles that you couldn't tell the difference if somebody didn't yell Jesus occasionally to give it a holy atmosphere. The honky-tonks and unholy places, we stay out of them, and there are certain things we don't. For Christ's sake we have surrendered those evil things. But this is the mark of a common Christian who has never gone beyond that, is a mediocre Christian. Paul surrendered the good along with the bad. It's only the things that are bad have I given up. But he said, what things were gain to me, those I counted lost, were gain to him, and that he had every legal and moral right to lay hold of and say, this is mine, I'm not going to take it from him. He said, I've given up even that, because I've seen something so much better. It is that which was with the source, that fountain from which flows all wisdom and beauty and truth and immortality. For the sake of that, I have given it all up. He knew, Paul did, that the human heart was idolatrous, that anything that it possessed, anything that you get your hand on, you will worship as a little child who takes his teddy bear. So we grown-ups have our teddy bears, too. We were too grown-up and mature to be caught taking a teddy bear. But we have what must look to God like teddy bears and dolls. We hang on to them. A baby, of course, has a right to that. I believe teddy bears floating around for years at home, until they got groovy, and they were pretty old when they did. But the point I'm making is that we oldsters, we mature people, people even in their teens, we insist upon hanging on to things. Whatever you hang on to, you worship. Don't forget that, because it's in God, whether it be property or family or reputation or security or self. Jesus taught us that we couldn't even hang on to our life itself, that if we made our living on earth and we wouldn't give up and hung to, it would get in our way and we'd lose ourselves at last. He taught that plainly. Then this grasping after security, always. We want to be secure. Paul wasn't secure. He said he died daily. And he was out on the bosom of the sea for three weeks and nights, always in difficulty. It's this longing for security. I want security in this life, eternal security in the world above. And there we have it, that's fundamentalism. Security here and eternal security there. Let's give it all up. I disavow and disown everything. There are certain things God let him have, a book or two. He let him have a garment, a cloak. He let him have his own hired house for two years in one instance and have some things. But Paul never allowed them to touch his heart. In the external case, your heart is a curse. Paul said, I give that up, that I might know him, that I might go on to deep and increasing intimacy and vast expanses of knowledge of the one who is inimitable in his duty, and I go on to know him and that I might know him. He never allowed anything to touch his heart. You see, friends, we have been taught over the last years in our Christian circles that Christ is something added on to a happy, jolly, rather clean, but holy life to save us from hell and to get us into the mansions over there. But that's not New Testament way of looking at it. Paul did not look at it at all. Paul looked at it as that Jesus Christ was so infinitely that he didn't count anything at all to amount to anything. Paul was a learned man, a learned man at the feet of Gamaliel. He had what they called deep. Paul was a learned man, but Paul said, That's all dross. He said, He used an ugly word about it, a garby. I put it all behind me. And he said, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, and I'm circumcised the eighth day, and I've got the marks upon me, and my name's in the register, and I can show you who I am. But he said, For the sake of it, I count that nothing at all. I put that under my feet. Some of you are proud of your Dutch blood, and that's why you're half carnal all the time. Some of you are proud of your Swedish blood, and that's why you're carnal all the time. Some of you are proud of some other blood. All blood is the same kind of blood. I don't care whether it comes from royalty or from the gutter, or it's corrupt blood. But we're proud of it, and proud of what we can do. Paul said, Everything, the proudest thing I have, the thing of which I am the proudest, I count it but lost. A modern Christian, and he says, Stop gambling or the bomb will get you. Stop drinking your own. Stop this or that. And you pick out those ugly, bestial things that nobody wants in their right mind, and that's all the sins there are. Paul said, I quit those so long ago. He never even did them. He didn't even do them. He was a Jew, and he didn't have to quit them. And that's why I sometimes feel like kind of sourly when I hear a big testimony about somebody that drank, and then he got saved and quit it. No, sure he did, but that ought to be elementary. That ought to be way back down the years. A man who writes a book on how bad... I have the book. I already have books I won't read. Well, friends, now let's let this go a little bit here. He says, But one thing I tell thee, he, that is God, he is a jealous lover, and he suffers no rival. Brethren, that's what's the matter with us. We're allowing rivals to come up. No decent fellow that has any self-respect is going to suffer a rival. But he says God is a rival, and he says here in this old English, which I'll translate into bad modern English, he says, And work in thy will, but he only will be by himself. He says that God won't work in your will, but only be there by himself. We have too many gods, we have too many irons in the fire, and we have too much don't understand, and we have too much religion, and too much church animy, and too much institutionalism, and too much. And the result is God isn't in there by himself. He says, If I'm not in your heart by myself, I won't work. He says, Remember that now. Him list not work in thy will, but he only must be there by himself. When Jesus Christ has everything in his temple and dwells there alone, he'll work. An old friend of mine talked about him. He said, God's working like a miner in the depths of the earth. Have you ever been in the coal? Way deep down in the earth they're mining out coal, or gold, or diamonds, and anybody can fly overhead or walk or travel by and never dream what's going on in the depths of the hill yonder. Never know that way in that hill unseen there's an intelligent bringing out gold. And so it's said to come along that that's what God does in the human breast. He's an unseen within the breast, but we're dramatic in our day. We don't want God to work unless he comes with a beard and a staff playing a part. We want him to be theatrical and do the thing you know, a good deal of color and pyrotechnics, which means fireworks. And God won't work like that. God says, No, no, no. You children of Adam, you children of carnality and lust, you show in the flesh, you who have been brought up wrong and have wrong ideas about my son. I won't work. I won't work in you. Jesus says, I can't do it. I'm sorry. I can't work in you, in your wilderness. I can be there alone. But some of you need to do is cleanse the temple. You just need to get busy and throw out, drive out the money changers and shovel out the dirt and get rid of a lot of things that are rivaling the Lord Jesus Christ. There's Lamarro, he's a jealous lover and he suffereth no rival. He goes on and says this, Lift up thine heart with a meek stirring of love, and mean himself, and none of these goods, and thereto look thee loath. I looked at them, the unabridged, and it's an old English, Saxon word meaning unwilling, be unwilling. Be unwilling to think on aught but God himself, so that nothing works in your wit or in your will. That's in your heart, but only himself. Now, again, we're back to where we started when I said that himself, when I said that they talked about himself, and he shocked and blessed the generation because he talked about himself. He said Jesus himself, it's himself. I suppose you know how himself came to be written, I'm sure somebody, if not I've told you, about how Dr. Simpson went over to a Bible conference and there were three sermons on sanctification, and he preached the last one. That's a bad spot to be in. The first fellow got up and said that the way to be holy and victorious in your heart was to suppress the old suppression. Another man got up and taught eradication, and he said, deliverance from the old carnal life, education, get rid of the old man, pull him up, turn him up to the roots up to the sun as to die. And Dr. Simpson was between there, so he got up and he took one word for himself, and he gave his testimony about how he had tried to be holy, and he said, sometimes I would get it and think I had it and then I'd lose it. Then he said, when I came to the knowledge that vication, deliverance, purity, holiness, all is himself. He said after that it was easy for my life. I thought that was a beautiful piece of diplomacy. I also thought that it was the most wonderfully wise way to have theology. And then around that he wrote his famous hymn, Once it was a blessing, now it is the Lord. Once his gift I wanted, now himself alone. There has got to be more of himself these days. Christianity, I've said this before and I'm summing it up tonight, it has gotten to be a way of getting things, a way of we give a tithe in order that our 9 tenths will go further than our 10 tenths. And I claim that any businessman who works with long, hairy ears, a man who would find out that by giving God one tenth, his 9 tenths went ten pad, ordinary business would lead you to do that, wouldn't it? Sure it would. A man that wouldn't do that, that's not spirituality. And if a man wants to be a businessman and a news god, but that's not what the Bible teaches and that's not what Paul talked about. Paul had given up that years before. What the old writer of the Cloud of Unknowing talked about, he said, it's only himself. And he said, Now do thou that in thee is creatures that ever God made, so that thy thoughts nor thy desires be not directed nor stretched to any of them, but let no heed of them. So that Christian businessmen are in danger. I talk to Christian businessmen. They want me to come and beg me to come just to say this to them. I'm not condemning my good friends of the Christian Businessmen's Committee or my good and loved friends of their magazine back here, Dave Enloe. But I say, Christian businessmen can get to a spot where they may be a way to have a prosperous business down here in a mansion in the sky. Either way you'll win. If you follow the Lord, you'll prosper down here. Brethren, to follow the Lord doesn't always mean, in fact, I would thoroughly mean to have financial prosperity. But following the Lord has meant down the years to count loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. And where a fellow prospers in spite of himself, by then the way he gets around it, he gives as much as he can, at least, and keeps enough to live on. Thank God he's still here, body and soul held together in a place to live and a car to take him. But further than that is not much concern. But we have made Christianity to be a way, a technique by which to think. Paul didn't. He knew better than that. He said, Yea, doubtless I count all things but the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. I have suffered the loss of all things, and I do count them, but done that I may know him through the power of his resurrection. Now, it's himself. He said, Let them be in them. That's why you can't get anywhere. That's why some of you are going to stop coming to hear me preach this series, because we're getting around close where you weren't so near to yet. But we're beginning to get there. We're getting there. We're getting there. We're getting there. We're getting there. There's a cross, there's a gallows, there's a man with stripes on his back, there's an apostle with no property, the tradition of loneliness and weariness and rejection and glory, but there are no pills. Some want the pills. But I say himself, himself, himself. Dear friends, I don't wish, yet I don't wish, I don't wish anything. I pray for it, and if it isn't God's will, why I don't want it, and if it is God's will, why I don't want it. But I'd like to see somewhere a recapture once more before I die of the glory that men knew of the beauty of Jesus. One old brother said this about him, his name was Alberus, and I might say, that as you students know, but the average person wouldn't have any reason to know, Ishii is the word for husband in the Hebrew. And so he wrote a poem about Jesus. This old brother, Judas, named Alberus, brother, shepherd, friend, and king. But there none unto my spirit such support can bring. Ishii, Ishii is the jewel. Mine ears while ages roll into such glory. Holy Ishii of the soul. Other joys are short in season. Thou and I can, thou art all together lovely. Ishii, Ishii of my heart. Where could you sing that now? I think we could sing a choir ballad. But there aren't many places where you can sing it because people don't have the experience to that it embodies. Whenever a song is rejected, it's rejected as a rule, it's a good song, because the people find it, and they find it dull. If you like rock and roll, you won't like Ishii. And if you like lady watches over me, you won't like Ishii. And if you like tea, you won't like Ishii. Ishii, oh mine ears while ages roll, angel taste not except glory. Holy Ishii of the soul. And this is the life. It is to put away all the creatures that ever God made, and stop trying to promote your family, promote your business, and use God to do it. Stop trying to promote anything and use God to do it, and put everything away with God, unless he can be there alone. Put everything else out. Some young preachers will study him until he has to take care of his failing eyesight, because he has an idea he wants to become a famous preacher. He wants to use Jesus Christ in Ishii. He's just a huckster buying and selling and getting gains. They'll ordain him, he'll be known as reverend. And if he writes a book, he'll be known as doctor, but he's still a huckster buying and selling and getting gains. And if the Lord comes back, he'll sample along with the other cattle. But we can use the Lord for anything, or try to use him. But what Paul taught here, and what was picked up by the centuries, and brought down the years, and what gave birth to the society that you and I know about and belong to, was just exactly the other thing. Oh God, we don't have what we want. That's the cry of the soul on its way up. That's the cry of the soul. In England they say there's a bird called a skylark. We don't have them here. The nearest thing we have to it here, that does the same thing, what they call the American goldfinch. But it's a poor little weak example of the skylark. But they say the skylark will mount, sing as it mounts. And the poets have talked about it, they have said that the skylark mounts as it has engaged. And it mounts until it's out of sight, they say. And they can still hear the song coming down while they can no longer hear it. Mounting and singing as it rises. My friends, this is what I'm preaching about. But this is what most people don't, I think most of you must, or you wouldn't be here because you knew what I was going to preach on. Another thing a man said that I've always loved to quote, love sits on his eyelids and scatters delight to all the wide regions above. Carry of them veil in your sight and tremble with raptures of love. These people who have to have clothes of gadgets to get their religion going, what do they do when they don't have anything like that? That's where they're going. I heard a man boast this afternoon on the radio to come to his place because they were going to bring in equipment from Pennsylvania to serve the Lord with. Equipment, what equipment do you need to serve the Lord with, brother? So I had the dear old camp meeting ladies used to see. This is my harp of ten strings. This is my harp of ten strings. And I praise the Lord in the old round spots, you know, and they clap their little old wriggled hands with shining faces. Your harp, what do you need? What do you need? Do you need a bush in the back of that basket full of dust to serve the Lord with, brother? If you have two knees, and even if you're stiffened up with arthritis so you can't get on your knees, you can look up in your heart for prayer isn't getting on your knees. Elevation of the heart to God. That's all a man needs. You can pray in a prison, you can pray on an airplane, and I do, and you can pray in a ship anywhere, and you can worship God. Because himself, it's himself that we want. Himself, well, it scatters delight to all the wide regions above, and their faces, their cherubim veil in his sight and tremble with rapture. Now the only kind of revival that I'm even remotely interested in is the kind of revival that will cause people to tremble with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all. Now I'm merely proving, but I'd like to say this to you, proverbs devotionally every day, and I've gotten into the 13th chapter, and I rather smiled when I read one of the proverbs in King James, but I have two other translations here. One of them says, every sluggard is employed in worship. That's idleness, will and will not both at once. Now there we have a lot of Christians. We're sluggards. And being a lifelong student, I wouldn't take that word to face value. I said, what's a sluggard? So I looked up straight up to find out what a sluggard was. Well, a slug is a streamlined snail. And when they crawl along, they do about a millennium. They just crawl along, leaving a wet streak behind them. That's a slug. And a lame slug, some fellow looked at it, and then when his son wouldn't work, he said, you're like that slug, you're a sluggard. And that's how we got that word, a sluggard. And the Bible says that every sluggard is employed in worship. Chases from one part of the city to the other to hear a new evangelist, hoping that he can become a spiritual man, but he's too late. He will and he will not both at the same time, it says. Now, that's the way a lot of Christians are. And what are you going to do if I have to wake them up? I can't. I've set off every alarm clock I could wind up and print in public, and I'd be left. Sluggards will be sluggards till the Lord comes, I suppose. But I think some of you here can get rid of the shell. I'll tell you this, that if some of you went to keep your soul, you'd be in for a divorce. Your wife, your husband wouldn't stay around. And if some of you, man, isn't this the way you keep your soul, your wife couldn't live because you'd go bankrupt. What's your response? Well, in closing your seven minutes, the old brother says this, and I found it true. I'll paraphrase him and then read. He says, if you're going to go on now, I'm no God, get up and stir yourself and put away things and desire for property and things and seek himself alone and let him work in you without any. Well, he says, all the things will be cured and I'll do this. And they will try all that they can do. You won't get it to the corner, but what some things will be after you. So if you want security, don't seek God. The devil will give it to you for a while and send you to hell. If you're afraid of kings and all the rest, don't try to seek God. And I like it. He says, well, let's not. Therefore, but travel there until thou feel lit. Now I'll explain that. I don't want to be boasting. That means don't you don't be hindered. Don't let anybody hinder you in your seeking after God, but travel there until you feel. They're all such practical men, these old saints. They claim they were dreamers. They weren't dreamers. They were practical men. He said, start out to seek a new height, become something other than a common Christian. He said, the first thing you'll find the devil facing you to stop you. He said, I just stopped because of that, but press right on whether you feel like it or not. There are two times to pray when you don't. Some want to be emotionally lifted and lofted into the sky, but the old saints knew better than that. Now then, when you've got through by what he calls a naked intent unto God, I want you to take that, a naked intent. Now that's what we need, brethren, is this naked intent to know God, to know Christ, to put the world beneath our feet, to put people beneath our feet, to open our hearts to only one lover, and that is the Son of God himself, and keep everything else out of us. Have all the relationships, husbands and wives, father and son, mother and daughter, businessmen, taxpayer and citizen, all those we keep outside of ourselves, but in the of our hearts we have only one lover, and he is here in heaven. Now why does God make us do it this way? He says, it's through the intent that your understanding and your reasons and your whole faith is thrown back on God. And from there on we mount and go. I've said I don't think anybody was ever filled with a Holy Ghost who didn't go through a time of awful darkness, and what he called the cloud, the shadowy cloud where you couldn't seem to get through, but you believed God and you trusted Christ and you went on and you believed and you obeyed and you prayed when you felt like it and you prayed when you didn't, and you obeyed and you did what you should, taken things out and you got adjusted in your business and you got adjusted in your home and you got adjusted in your relationship and you quit wrong things, things that have been whether you felt like it or not. He says, it's all a naked intent. Here's the strangest thing. If you talk about mysticism and the day in which we live, every fundamentalist throws his hands high in the air as though the spirit of old Solomon, and you say, well, they're dreamers, they've been in feelings. Every one of them that I'm acquainted with taught you've got to believe God by a naked, cold intent of your will. And then the other things follow along, most unusual things. I got a letter this week from the priest asking me to write a review of a book on mysticism. If you can get mixed up any worse than that, I don't know how, but they wanted me to review a book on mysticism that had been written by D. News years ago. Mysticism, is it possible that we find out that code, square, doctrine, theology are not enough? Is it possible that we're all seeking something better? Yes, it's possible, all together possible, more than possible. I'll feel it in my will only, a naked intent unto God. Have you got that tonight? Naked intent unto God. You're going to be that kind of Christian, and you're not going to let anybody stop you or fool you, and you're going to keep right on, and if you don't feel like it, you're going to believe anyway, and you're going to pray right on through with a cold, naked intent unto God, believing the truth. Oh, I have this to say. God will out of your pain and grief, he'll raise a bell. Out of the hill, he'll lift you into the sky. Out of the darkness, he'll lift you into the light. Old Rudy went down to here and lay on his little tummy on the floor in the kitchen on descent, home, and prayed that he might be baptized with the Holy Ghost, but he got nowhere, and then went out from there to the city, and the blessed Holy Ghost fell on him, and he cried, O God, stay thy hand, or I'll die. About of his tummy, grief got right. It's always so. But the chief saintly and the undersized, they won't be happy unless they can be happy. They just won't. They just demand it. I wouldn't put it past some of our so-called evangelical leaders to send for pristine feathers to tickle the kinsmen's hearts, to make them laugh. They'll do anything in the world to make people temporarily tickle Jesus and himself. But if we get himself, we'll get all the joy and delight and all the rest. I'm a hard man in some ways, but there are times when the joy of the Lord gets my heart very, very high. There are times when I sit down here looking as if I was dead, I suppose. They say I do. Colorless and unemotional. There's such a joyous look toward God that I could scream out my joy. What about it? It's 8.30, and I'm going to quit. Do you want what I'm talking about? You want to move on past the low level of the common Christian, and go on to know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship, and the excellency of his knowledge, and increasing flight to spiritual elevation? If you do, I've taken you a little further than I think you do, or you wouldn't be here. Now, let us pray. Before I pray, I want again tonight to know who wants me to pray. You're a little puzzled. You're even a little upset. The neat, step-by-step, kept-up formula that you have been traveling on has sort of bothered tonight by this kind of preaching, and you'll want to come back, whether I'm a little lost in a beam, or... But in your heart, there's one thing you can recognize, and that is a cry, Oh God, I want thyself. I want thyself. I want to know a husband in my heart. I want to know what the old prophet, not the holy God, shall call me no more. Lord, thou shalt call me Isaiah, for I will be a husband unto thee. You want to know the eternal husband, the spiritual bridegroom of your heart. That you do know. You're not too sure about all the doctrines, but this one is after, Oh my God, that's what I want. And I want to pray for you. And if I pray for you now, remember this, I'm going to be as rough as he has to be, and I'll be as hard on you as he needs to be, that he might bring you through out of this action which Christianity is wallowing now, up the sunlit highlands. And it may be tough on you to go back and write a letter home and straighten out things. Maybe some of you'll have to pay up where you didn't pay. Maybe some of you'll have to quit. You've been very close to. But anyway, you're going to put everything under your feet and say all the torture that I may know, even when I don't care what it costs. Pray for me. Who raised your hand? You. You. Who else? Put the hand up. Yes, I see you. And you. Put the hand up. Yes, sir, I see your hand right there. And you, sir. Oh, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, how nice we live in a world where perils and dangers are upon every hand. And life of kindness, freedom, and judgment is coming. And Satan is busy. Bums are squaring themselves across the path, trying to prevent us from going ahead. But we here, we come to you. And we want to know the power of our resurrection, suffering, and be made conformable under that death. We want to know the beauty and wonder. And we pray for these who request the path. Oh, Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus, thou who did come in olden times in the form of a dove into the fire. And thou who did come to Peter and to the Moravians and to the saints of New England. Thou who did come, O Lord, and spot here and there. Oh, withhold not thy glory from us. We cry, show us thy glory, Lord, show us thy glory, and teach us how to go on. Now, grant, we pray, that this may be a good week. And if the devil makes it the worst week we've ever had, we'll have a naked intent and determination, and we'll calmly, quietly believe, even though we should, even though the darkness should settle over us, we'll know it's the cloud of unknowing, it's the dark night of the soul, the peace morning of the heart. And we won't be frightened. For we know thou didst go through the garden and through the cross, and out of the darkness and into the tomb, and out of the tomb and into the glory. So wilt thou lead these, and lead us, and lead this church. And oh, we pray, bring us to a place where soon we may be under grace, spiritually prepared for a mighty outpouring, an outpouring that shall bring in reality that which everybody's talking about and nobody has. And we shall testament spirituality back to Book of Acts Christianity again. And maybe out from us here there shall flow into the desert waves and fire that shall touch churches and groups as we wait. And above all things show us thyself, thyself, Lord, and show us thy glory. For thou passest by, and show us thy glory, so that all the glory of this world shall appear as ashes to that wondrous sight. This we ask in the holy name of Jesus.