In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing one's sin in order to have a closer relationship with God. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about a woman who initially did not want to attend a conference because she believed the speaker only talked about "sand" instead of sin. However, throughout the week, the speaker focused on the holiness of God, which led the woman to confront her own sin and seek repentance. The speaker explains that their main subject is helping people remove any barriers between themselves and God, encouraging them to reach a higher level of spiritual growth and fervent prayer. Additionally, the speaker highlights the urgency of spreading the Gospel and sending missionaries to foreign countries, as they believe time is running out due to the rise of communism and ideological influences.

It just broke my heart when after nearly 42 years in China I had to quit and come home. The calendar had gone around again and I was 70 years old. I didn't know I was an old lady. I was carrying about 15 hours of work a day, teaching Old Testament in our seminary, sponsoring a church, a new church that the mission had asked me to start right down in the center of the capital city of Taiwan. I had my last 11 years in Taiwan. You can't do mission work under the Communists, and I knew that, so I got out and they came in and went to Taiwan, the first Mandarin-speaking missionary over there, and was there nearly two years before any of our other Baptist missionaries went. Well, there my work was done. It was time to go home. Well, all the other missionaries, the younger missionaries, said none of us can keep up with Bertha. Now, don't you tell them I said so. I don't know whether they could have or not, I know they didn't. But I have to add here, I don't deserve any credit for my wonderful health. I just inherited a wonderful, strong body, and I've always cooperated with the Lord and eaten the proper things. I never ate snacks at any time after I got gone between meals. I knew to eat at mealtimes. And I took so seriously everything that I was taught. I did what I was taught in school and what my teachers told me to teach. When they told me how to eat, I ate that way. And I ate like my mother had taught us to eat. Always had recess in the middle of the afternoon, the middle of the morning when we were small, or when we were working. She sent something out to us to eat. But if we were not doing physical manual labor, we didn't eat between meals after we got half-grown. Well, that was good teaching. Well, anyway, I knew to exercise, so I don't deserve any credit for my wonderful health. I just praise the Lord. And up until I began to teach Old Testament in our seminary, if I had ever studied after 10 o'clock at night for any examination, I would have gotten on my knees and asked the Lord to forgive me for sinning against his temple. I knew my body wasn't my own. The Lord was living inside of me from the time I was saved, and it was my duty to take care of his temple. Well, I don't deserve any credit for that, either. Somehow or other, I just had that much sense and that much appreciation for the Lord to go to bed at night. I got up early, but I went to bed at night. Well, anyway, I had to come home, because you can't stay after you're 70, and the Foreign Mission Board has to have an age limit to send people home, because we would never know. You see, the thing you know with goes old, too. And we'd never know we were old enough to come home. Well, anyway, it just broke my heart. I was weeping one night over it, and I never said a word outwardly, because I knew the Board had to have a time to go home. I'm just so sorry my time had come. And there were just such open doors on the island of Taiwan, and so few to work. I felt like I had just learned that the Chinese were so gracious. They had all kinds of farewell parties and said all kinds of nice things. I went home one night after one of those farewell services. I don't mean church parties, I mean social parties, I mean church parties, church meetings, religious meetings. I went home and said to Mrs. Martha Franks, the woman I was living with, well, if there is much that is true about me that these Chinese are saying, and they think it is, I would just be ready now to qualify as a missionary. I'd just be ready to begin. And that's just the way I felt, that I could use all my past experience with all my blunders in the past and just start over. That's really the way I felt. The Lord comforted my heart that night when I was crying over leaving the work there. He said, I'm taking advantage of your going home. I want you to go home and do what you can do to help bring a revival to Southern Baptist Churches, so the whole world can hear the Savior, not just this little island you are working on. I said, Lord, I'll do my best. And then the next night he gave me the message that I was to bring home. I wasn't weeping. I didn't weep anymore. I knew I had a task at home. And he gave me the message that I was to bring home to you and the other Southern Baptist Churches. What do you suppose it was? Isaiah 58.1, cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and cause my people to know their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins. Now, there is a difference in transgressions and sins. Transgression is to trans, is to cross over, go over the border, get out of bounds. And of all people who have been blessed and all denominations who have been blessed with the interpretation of this book as the Baptist, our forefathers, but the thousands, died in Europe to keep this truth alive. And have we kept it alive? Well, it's not easy just to always show people their sins. But I don't just only show people their sins, but by contrast I show them God's holiness. We had summer conferences for the Latter-day Saints. One Christmas offering, which we got two, three hundred dollars a piece in four groups, divided into four groups in China to help people go to a summer conference. We had buildings, but they didn't have to have a summer resort. We just went to a mission station somewhere where the school building is in the summer and had a summer conference. They went over to Taiwan and we couldn't send that money to China if the communists took over. We got all of the money, which was a thousand dollars a conference. And we took that thousand dollars for two summers and bought land and put up some simple buildings and had a summer conference 15 miles up the hill, up a mountain from the capital of Taiwan, and had a summer conference. And the Lord just worked gloriously. And it's wonderful to get people that are not saved, especially our new Christians, away from their environment and teach them the word of God. And where there's no opposition and where they're with other Christians and they see how wonderful it is to become Christians, it's very easy to win them. Well, one year somebody asked a woman in the church who was a Christian, are you going to the conference this year? She said, no, I'm not going this year. Miss Smith is the speaker, and she just talks on sin. Well, she had enough money to go. I mean, her husband had work and she could go, and her friends knew she should go, so they urged her to go. And she went, and I didn't say one word about sin the whole week. What do you suppose I talked about? The holiness of God, the holiness of God the whole week. And lo, that woman saw her sin, and if she didn't go back, made over. And she told me about this herself later. So I just have two subjects to talk to people about. People ask me, you're coming, what's going to be your subject? And I say, I just have one subject, if it's put in one sentence. The holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. How we're failing God, and how Christian people are failing God with communism upon us. And a third of our Congress reported now to be communist. One third, no, more than a third. A hundred communists in our Congress in Washington, and a hundred men there, sincere men working to save our government, much which they call conservatives. And then a hundred and about a hundred and thirty-five on the fence waiting to go whichever will get them re-elected. And so much communism in our universities, and the children being taught of them so much in our public schools. Friends, it sure is a time, it sure is a time to show the Lord's people their sins. And I'm trying to do what the Lord asked me to do. And I'll be showing God's, talking on God's holiness tomorrow morning. And I'm trying to show people their sins everywhere I go. And of course the Lord never lets me off. He doesn't let me off. He shows me mine occasionally. Well, the old Chinese professors, scholars in China had an expression, one picture's worth a thousand words. And we missionaries take advantage of that and make all kinds of illustrations for the eye. And when China was China, somebody clever could draw one and send it down to Shanghai to the Christian Publication Society, and have them printed on paper for a few cents each. And people just all over China could buy them. And they're very wonderful for people that do not have much language. You can start with a poster that people can see before you get fluent enough in the language to teach the Bible passage. We have to study two years before we are missionaries and spend two years' examinations in Chinese language before we are counted as missionaries. Well, here's a poster which was drawn by a British missionary who was the private secretary for Dr. Chamberlain Morgan, and she did all of his handwork for his annotated Bible. And she says that Dr. Morgan gave her her Bible, and she's given it to other people. And this poster is just so, shows so well what people, that I like to use it. There's a Christian woman praying, a Chinese Christian woman praying. This word up here is salvation. It's literally translated saving grace, salvation. It's done up with many facets, like the cut of the diamond in your ring. And this woman is praying for all the graces that her salvation includes. Now, she's really sincere. She really wants all the Lord has for her. So she prays. Well, she's praying. Now, she's not very well taught, so she's praying for a home in heaven. Jesus told his disciples he was going back to prepare a home for them, and she's had a home being prepared since the day she was saved. And here she's praying and begging the Lord to prepare a home in heaven for her, and she's saved. He's already done that. That would be like a young woman sitting down to her husband when he comes in from his day's work and saying, Oh, I wish you'd become my husband. You just suit me exactly. I would just give the word if you would marry me. I would just love to have you for my husband. Now, you know what that man would do? He'd make an appointment with the psychiatrist for 9 o'clock tomorrow morning for that wife, and he'd have a right to. And yet we treat the Lord just like that, begging for something that he's already told us he's doing for us. Well, she doesn't know any better than that. I hope you do. We ought to praise the Lord from morning till night every time we think about it, that we have a home in heaven. And we certainly ought to thank him for the door, the one through whom we will get there, through Jesus and his death. We ought never to let a day go by without thanking the Lord for his Son, who solved our sin problem, so we'll stand in him when we stand before God, and we'll be received because we are in him. Well, here she is praying for the Lord's guidance, and she is praying the Lord will forgive her sins as she commits them. Why doesn't she stop committing them? Save people that the living Lord inside of them don't have to go on sinning and repenting and sinning and repenting and sinning and repenting. I went over to Greensboro, North Carolina several years ago from my home in South Carolina to lead a Christian life conference like this, and a handsome, well-dressed man, about thirty, stepped up to me between Sunday school and church and said, Miss Bertha, I am just heart sick. I just needed your messages so much that I postponed my vacation from summer to this month. I think that was in September or October. He said, Here this morning I get a telephone call to report for duty Monday morning. Now I have to go to work Monday morning. I guess the devil had seen to it that somebody else got sick or something and they couldn't give him his vacation. He said, I am just overcome with the same temptations day after day and day after day. I get on my knees every night before I go to bed and I just confess to the Lord and beg him to forgive me for every sin of that day, and the next day I am no different. I just go on the same. He said, I have read you a book, Go Home and Tell, and I thought from that book you could tell me how to live victoriously over all these besetting sins and all kinds of situations that I find myself in. And here I can't come to the meetings except today and tonight. Well, now the devil is clever, isn't he? He didn't want that man to live victoriously. He had him right where he wanted. Well, the Lord came as strong as the devil, and when he is living his life in us, we are not sick. He is expressing himself through us. I was in a meeting over in Tennessee one time, and a woman with four little children, and they were little, said she just lost her temper and just scolded her children. And she was just not a saved person now, she was just not being an honor to the Lord and a good example for her children. Well, you know she wasn't making her husband happy. Well, she just lifted her sins just like I've asked you to do, and then she put them all over on the Lord, and about the middle of the meeting she had gotten cleansed and all of her sins were given up to date, and she had thrown Christ in her heart. And she had invited the grieved Holy Spirit who filled her up, of course, when she was saved, but she just sinned and sinned and sinned and pushed him back in the corner, and nobody told her how to live saved after she was saved. And she just weaved the Holy Spirit back in the corner, and he couldn't express himself through her because she was so unclean. And though she got cleaned up and she made her wrongs right and confessed to everybody she needed to confess to, and she confessed, I'm sure, to the older babies for scolding her, maybe when it wasn't their fault, or at least when she was angry. Well, in a way, toward the last day of the meeting, well, I think the next day, a day after the ninth meeting she came to me after the service, and said, Miss Bertha, the Lord hasn't spoken unkindly to one of my children all day long through my lips. She had gotten the idea that she was not to live anymore, that Christ must express himself through her. Every time I get around in that section, that woman comes to see me. Well, over here, she wants the Lord's holiness, and she wants his protection, and she wants his patience, and all of this fruit of the Spirit she wants. Over here, she wants his peace. Now, the Chinese word there for peace is one woman under a roof. Now, that doesn't mean that two women can't live under the same roof and live in peace, but it means two women can't live under the same roof and be the wife of one man, each of them the wife of one man, and live in peace. And the Chinese have an expression, when the second wife comes in, peace goes out. Well, now, they can't divorce the wife over there because a woman has no way to live. They're not educated, and they'd have nowhere to go, and they have to keep them. But when they want another wife, they'll just build another room for the house, and they'll just room with the new wife. They have to take care of them, and so of course those two women don't get along well. So that's a warning to Chinese not to take two wives. Well, here she is, praying for all these blessings and living like a spiritual pauper. Why? She's not getting a thing she's praying for. She's not worth a thing to the Lord. Her testimony is not worth a thing to the Lord. She's not a good example even to her own children. Why? She's praying behind a brick wall, and every sin, every brick in this wall is made up of some sin in her life. What do you suppose this top brick is up here? She's built up this wall sin by sin and sin by sin and sin by sin, and she's just left those sins there. What do you suppose that top brick is? That's an idol. Could a Christian worship an idol? Well, what is an idol? Whatever you give the most of your love and devotion to. I know some men that make an idol of their wives. I haven't found any wives yet making an idol of their husbands. Do you know why? Now, dear young wives, you forgive me for saying this, but that wife wants that man to think he did something so wonderful in getting her that he ought to be just praising her all the time, making over her all the time. She doesn't know she's got to make over him. That's why some of them lose their husbands. I haven't had one, so I can tell you how to keep them. Well, I know some mothers who make an idol of their first baby, and the husband comes home tired from his work. Oh, that mother, she doesn't even, that wife doesn't have the time to say, oh, welcome home. I've just been longing for you all day. Did you have a good day? She's telling him what particular way the baby cooed today while he was away. Just filled up with the baby, doesn't have any time for him anymore. And it's love or attention for him, just filled up with the baby. Oh, people make an idol of all kinds of things, you know. And some women I've known made an idol out of the housekeeper. I was the guest of a woman one time who was a full-time Christian worker receiving a salary from cooperated board money. And a neighbor came in to see me the next morning, just long enough to speak to me. I was going out, and when she left, my hostess said, oh, just look at the dust on my desk. I've never had any neighbor I have come into my home and see dust on my desk than Mrs. Wood. Well, that wasn't the baby crying for food. That desk didn't know it had any dust on it. What was she fussing over? And if she felt that way about a furniture, what's the reason she didn't give up her job and dust the furniture and stay at home? Oh, she wanted people to think that even though she worked, she didn't neglect her housekeeping. Now, just what about a Christian worker talking like that, fussing over a little dust? When she's supposed to be a full-time Christian worker, fussing a little bit over dust. Well, she'd make an idol. We can just make an idol out of all kinds of things. Now, when this woman was saved, and she was the head of the house, and many widows are. They've had so many wars, so many men have been killed trying to get their government established. When she became a Christian, she invited some of the Christians over to her home to help her destroy her idol. The first thing they did was to pull down the secretary of all the other idols, called the Kitchen God. And that was just in front of the front door, paper God put up on the wall. And it was to keep account of their conduct in the family for the whole year. And before they passed over the Chinese New Year time, they got out all the ancestral tablets and placed them on a long table that reached almost across the back end of that room. And there they offered food, and all the family came out and bowed down at the Chinese New Year time to those ancestral tablets. And then they had Buddhas, grass Buddhas, also there on that long bench for the idols. A table it was, a long table. They called it, like we call it a bureau. We used to translate it a bureau. It was an idol table. Well, she took that, and the Chinese by the way, they burned, take down that secretary of the God, that paper God every year, and burn it. And it goes off to heaven to report on the conduct of the family. And if the family have just been too unharmonious during the year, and all the daughters-in-law and the married daughters coming back home and staying weeks back home with the family as they are permitted to do. And they're supposed to gradually get accustomed to living in their husband's family over there. And the first year they come back home, just stay weeks at the time. And they do their embroidery and sit up on that great platform where their mothers and their daughters-in-law wait on them. Well, if they just didn't get along just right, and they were embarrassed over the report that that idol was going to take up, they would put some sweet syrup on its lips before they burned it. So it would make only a sweet report. And if they thought it was just impossible to sweeten up the report, they'd get some wood glue and stick its lips together so it just couldn't poke at all. And then they burned it and put up a new one and made new resolutions to get along better the next year. Well, of course they didn't unless they came to know the Lord. And the Christian woman would always burn that idol, and then they'd make a fire and burn up all those ancestors' tablets after they'd had a teacher come and copy them all in a family book. And then they'd bury all the Buddhas and make a clean breast of idolatry because they'd become Christians. And they'd let everybody in their village or in their section of the city know that they were now Christians. Well, here's this woman worshiping an idol. I don't know what it was, but there's something in her heart that had come and taken the place of the Lord Jesus Christ after she was saved. And here she is, the Lord came to answer her prayer. And down here she wants everything she sees, just wants everything she sees. Now she may know she can't have it, but that doesn't keep her from wanting it. Now I'd like to bring this woman over here now. You know, when young people marry over here they want everything that they had in their home. They want every convenience their mother had in their new home, and maybe it took the mother 30 years to get it. And that young man just loves his bride so much he just goes in debt and he buys and buys and gets the house furnished just like she wants it. And he's just so sorry he can't buy her a car and the neighbors have to come and take her to the WMU circle meetings and take her visiting to the sick. And he just, as soon as he can, he buys her a little second-hand car and he tells her, now you go take people to your circle meetings and the hospital visiting and pay back to your neighbors for the other people that have taken you. And he's so happy he could buy that car. What does that woman do? She fills that car full of other women and they go all over the country hunting antiques. Got to have something old, got to have something old. Just the time to get enough money to pay up what the new things that they've had, got to have something old. Never satisfied, hunting something else, reaching out for something else, trying to keep up with the Joneses. Well, well, isn't it such? Now down here, she just gets upset and her tongue just slips and she just says a lot of things that she wouldn't want everybody to hear. And down here she just loses her temper and reviles the cat and scolds the dog. And here are two words, each has a mouth and words coming out. Now we speak of people having a long tongue. The Chinese say that person is a person of too many words and to talk a lot is a mouth with just words coming out. And here are two words together. Each of them have a mouth. One is a mouth with words coming out and the word for a mountain. She just sees little things like a mountain and just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. And over here is a word that's just not very, she's not saying very complimentary things about him. She's talking about all their folks. And then that has the mouth and the words coming out. Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. A few years ago I was invited up to Indianapolis to lead a prayer retreat for the women of the Southern Baptist churches. They had 140 Southern Baptist churches. And six months before I'd led one for the pastors up there and so the women wanted me to come and give them a turn. Well they'd rented a Northern Baptist camp 80 miles from Indianapolis, the nearest one they could get. But it's beautiful October weather and the leaves are pretty and it's a beautiful drive out there. The first day we were out in a beautiful, in a little pavilion for the meetings. And the pastors told them, and they'd better all take a cushion from this breath they'd have on their knees. Well it was surely nice to have the cushions because when I told them about their sins they've sent them off at the close of the first day and sent them off at noontime at first to go up into the woods with their Christians and everybody go get under a tree alone and lift their sins. And into the time the day was over I sent them up there to get all their sins transferred to the cross of Christ. I'd had a chance to tell them what what the Lord had done about their sins. And by the second day we had a terrible wind and the 140 people had to pack into a little chapel that really wouldn't have sent it seated comfortably more than 50 people. But anyway I talked that first half day about Christ not only taking our sins to the cross, he took us to the cross. We died with him. And when we come and take his death as our death, God the Father charges the death of his son to us. And he looks at us as if we had been punished for our sins because he sees Christ punishing our sins. And when we take Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit baptizes us into the living Lord. That's the only baptism of the Holy Spirit there is in the Bible, by the way. We are placed into Christ. Baptism has never meant anything but to submerge in. We are submerged into Christ and forever after God the Father sees us standing before him in his Son. And when we get our sins forgiven up to date and we make a break with this big eye, a definite break with it in the name of the Lord, refuse to let it dominate our lives anymore, we can invite the grieved Holy Spirit to come out of that grieved corner where he's been and ask him to fill us up anew. He's never left us, he's just there, but he just can't express himself to us because we are so unclean, he's so too grieved. And when we are willing to take that position of death and live there, why, then the Holy Spirit can fill us up. And he magnifies Christ through our personalities. We enthrone Christ instead of ourselves. We come down, get over the throne. And he magnifies Christ through our personalities and keeps us in that place of death. But anyway, the next morning they started getting up and praising the Lord, one by one, one by one, just as fast as they could, one right after and sometimes two or three at a time, telling the Lord. No, they got up first telling the Lord they would take that place of death. I would have liked to have gotten them on their knees to do it, but they didn't have any room to kneel, they were packed in so tight. And they started telling the Lord they were taking that place of death. In the name of the Lord, they refused to let this old sinful self, which was never going to get any better, dominate their lives. And they were ascending to their death in Christ, and they were accepting that as a stance in which to live from here on out. They were enthroned in Christ in their hearts. And then they invited the grieved Holy Spirit to come out of that grieved corner and take over and make this real in their everyday living. Well, it was this close. There was only one woman of 140 sitting over our window that didn't get up and take that step. They had a dear woman from South Carolina who had had three wives in China, but he died before the last one did. He lost two and married a third, came on a furlough and took a precious young woman back out there. She and the State Secretary for the WNU couldn't get in the building. She was retired, and her daughter married a preacher up there, and she had gone up to visit the daughter and got in on that retreat. They had to sit on a backless bench out in the foyer. The little chapel had a cement floor. When they started that time of prayer, when they were each one getting up and praying their own prayer to the Lord, those two just got on their knees on that cement floor back there. That woman lifted her voice to the Lord and just praised him, that missionary, that after 35 years of praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit, she had never known before how to let the Holy Spirit fill her. She thanked the Lord that all of her sins that she had listed were put under the blood, and she told the Lord she was making a break right now with that big eye, and she was enthroned in Christ as Lord of her life. She was accepting that stance of death to herself and asked the Holy Spirit to take over and fill her. Afterwards, I said, have you been a missionary 35 years? I remembered when he married and came back. I heard about it. I was in North China, but hadn't kept a record. She said from the day she knew she was going to North China, she started praying to be filled with the Holy Spirit and lived there 35 years out there, praying every day to be filled with the Holy Spirit and never knowing how to let the Holy Spirit fill her. Well, it was a glorious time. In the afternoon, about mid-afternoon, they all started home, and one woman wrote me. Well, about 10 days, I began to get letters from her, and one of them said that my problem was my tongue. Oh, I just talked, talked, talked, talked, talked, all the time. The Lord just showed me how despicable I was in the sight of him, and I thought I'd die if I went back home and just lived the same life I'd always lived. She was in a car alone and driving along. She said, Lord, what can I do? How can I cooperate with you so you can keep me from all this incessant talk? And she said, the Lord told her to stop at the first drugstore and get a roll of adhesive tape and stick up her lips. Well, she just did it, and then she started along, and then she said, well, this won't do. My husband won't think I've had a rash. Well, she just pulled outside the road and pulled out a notebook and wrote him a little note, and he came out to greet him. She handed him that note. Don't you know he was one happy man? That woman wrote me that he went in and told the children, our mother just wants to be quiet with the Lord a while. Perhaps she'll explain to us later, but we'll all just do our best to cooperate with her and do everything we're supposed to do without her telling us to do it. And she said she never dreamed, that she wrote in the letter to me, she never dreamed that a house could run so smoothly and everybody go do just what they were supposed to do without her directing them every minute, telling them what to do. Well, she kept that adhesive tape on her lips for five days, and she just removed it to eat and brush her teeth, and she ate in silence. And she said the seventh day her husband, who had just been a church member, was gloriously saved. And two days after, but the ninth day, he just got himself so related to the Lord that the Holy Spirit could just fill him up. And their home was made over, made over, but came a heaven on earth because one woman learned to keep her tongue. Well, down here, there's somebody she doesn't like. And this one has a mind and a heart in it. And with a mind and a heart, she doesn't like that person. That means she wills not to like that person. And she says, well, that person, she's not my time. Well, I'd like to ask this woman, are you the Lord's time? If the Lord can put up with you, who are you that can't put up with that woman? And maybe that woman didn't have the pastor you had. Maybe that woman didn't have the teacher you had. Maybe that woman didn't have the parents you had. She didn't have somebody to pray for her and teach her the word of God and teach her self-control and how the Lord can control her. Maybe she missed all of that. And here she is. She wants nothing to do with this woman because she's not her kind. But down here, here she's jealous of somebody. Jealous of somebody. I suppose of all the monasteries' sins in the catalog, jealousy must be the worst. It's absolutely, you don't get one thing for being jealous. Now, if you steal something, you get the object, at least the object you stole. What on earth do you get from being jealous of somebody? You don't change any situation. How can you get one thing on earth from it? But down here, there's something in her house that's not hers. My dear sister was a college history teacher. The last one left in my family of eight. Well, there were nine. We lost one little brother when he was ten months old. And four girls and four boys grew up. And our parents, I grew up in a family of ten, and they had the lowest privilege of being in the middle. In the middle, if you have older ones, you learn to look up to them and take authority. And they were to look after us always, no matter where we were, we were to do what they were if our parents were not there. Only our parents was above them in our lives. We listened to all of them that were older than us. And then I still had the responsibility of looking after those younger than us, so I had to take responsibility. So I say that's the choice place to grow up, was in the middle of the big family. My second, my sister was the second child, and she just helped mother bring up all the rest of us. And the Lord let her live to be ninety-one and a half, but I've outlived her now. And she never married. I said it was a college history teacher and retired at home when I got home. Well, we used to say, if a revival ever came to our hometown, we'd have to buy some new bookcases at our church, at our home. You know what that means? All the books that people in that town had borrowed from our bookcases would be brought back. Well, over here, now I know this doesn't, this doesn't fit you, but I'll give it to you anyway. The Chinese, as I said today, can't have company in their homes except the Chinese New Year time, or because that's the only time they have time and the only time that food will keep. They all have a month's holidays at the Chinese New Year, and they get their houses cleaned up to go over the New Year, new paper over the windows, and everything cleaned up, and so they have company because their food will freeze when it's brought home from the market, and it'll keep. They don't know how to have company without meat. They don't have company with meat ordinarily. Average Chinese family has meat twice a year. They don't have, and that's the Chinese New Year time, and in the autumn when they go over their Independence Day, when the old empire was overthrown, the 10th of October, and so they just take the guests to the restaurant. And this woman may be the guest of an unsaved person. That woman may want to sell her a little bit of land, or she may want to get her daughter engaged to her son, or her son engaged to the other woman's daughter. Anyway, she begins by having her at a feast and inviting a few other people. Well, the hostess is not a Christian. All the restaurant tables have the wine cups on the table when you arrive. They're just set with the wine cups. No Christians. A Christian hostess just has the wine cups taken off when you sit down at the table, and a Christian's not a hostess, but just a guest. Well, I'm sure he just turned their wine cups upside down so they don't have any. Well, they come and fill your wine cups as soon as you take your seat and give your order, and while they're cooking that delicious food, you have your visit and tell your jokes and sip the wine, and they just keep sipping, keeping your cups full of wine. You just keep toasting each other and sipping, but she didn't have any. Now, she didn't turn a cup down first. She didn't want to be too different from the rest of them, and lo, they poured wine in a cup, and then all of them began to motion to her. She had no idea of drinking that wine. The Chinese put wine drinking and cigarette smoking, any kind of smoking, just like the old sins of taking opium and everything else, and they say, when you're saved, your body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, and whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, you do it for the glory of God. A lot of people that don't drink wine do not eat for the glory of God. They do not spend their money for food for the glory of God, but that's what they say. And all those sins, and then, you know, they won't baptize the person that smokes over there. Well, I'll tell you a little more about that in a minute. And this woman sips the wine. They just keep insisting and insisting, and she just weakens and picks up the cup and drinks it. And lo, maybe that waiter there is a Christian, serving the wine, and he sees it. Oh, he tells everybody, that woman's not a Christian, that woman's not a Christian, she drinks wine at the feast. And she's lost her testimony, she's lost her testimony. And over here, she smokes in the bathroom. Now, of course, of course, being a Christian, she wouldn't smoke out. The man smokes out. I heard Dr. R.G. Lee say one time that he could always spot a Baptist church when he went into town on Monday morning, from the cigarette stubs that were around the front church steps. And I even have people in my church in South Carolina who have to go out between Sun School and church and have a smoke. Now, aren't they slaves? Slaves to a little white robe about three inches or four inches long. Uh, did you hear about that missionary that got appointed to China? A fine young doctor, and the foreign mission board was so thrilled over getting that young man to go out to China to work in their Baptist hospital in Honan province. And lo, that man was a slave to that little white robe. Now, of course, he's, now he'd never grown up to smoke. His parents were missionaries. He didn't grow up to smoke. He never smoked all through college. But when he got to seminary and got to practicing surgery, somebody told him if he'd take smoke, he could cut up those stiffs that were brought in with a little bit more comfort. And he started smoking. He thought, of course, he could quit. And when he applied to the foreign mission board, well, I'll quit. I'll quit. I'll quit. Well, he got appointed. And after a while, in those days, we traveled by boat to China, and it took a month. He said, well, I'll have a whole month to whip this habit on going out, and I'll stop before I get there. Well, he didn't. He didn't because he couldn't. Every atom of his being was crying out for that nicotine. He couldn't stop. Well, he went up to Langley School in Peking, and lo, there's some other men up there, missionaries, some other denominations smoking. And I found out that the Church of England, Episcopal Church of England, supplies their missionaries in China with a tobacco and wine allowance. Now, what about that? They don't have many missionaries. They don't have many. They just don't have many. That's the least denomination that has any over there, and getting less and less every year. Well, anyway, they were smoking, and they were missionaries, and he smoked with them. He didn't stop all that year. And that man went down to the city where he was to work in Kaifeng, China, and he and his wife applied to join the church Sunday morning, and that church wouldn't have him. They voted no. And I gloried in their strength. If they didn't receive Chinese who smoked, why should they lower their standard and receive a missionary who smoked? Why, they said, that belongs to the old life. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Where's any new creation in him? Well, that gave him the shock of his life, I want you to know, when he was a missionary out there, not fit to be a church member. Well, he went down on his knees and called on the Lord and walked the floor and ate peanuts. He didn't have any American chewing gum to help out. And the Lord came to his rescue, and he got delivered from smoking, and he joined the church and made a good church member and a wonderful missionary. He just died down in Florida and retired some years, died a few years ago. Wonderful man, but he sure did give a bad example for those years, I want you to know. He was surely not showing the power of the Lord in his life. Well, here this woman, it just doesn't always shoot at the truth line. She just sees the good a whole lot better and sees the bad a whole lot worse. And she just tells it that way because she just sees it that way. And down here, she's just not sincere. She isn't sincere. Here she's a church member and praying and really wants all the blessings the Lord has for her. Well, here, I'll bring her over here now. Chinese women don't have telephones. Their only telephones are in their business telephones, in their business houses. People don't have telephones in their homes. What do they do over here? And she has a neighbor whose husband's retired and children are all married, and that husband helps the woman keep her house and take care of it and everything put in its place and stays until the grandchild comes back. And she just doesn't have anything to do, and he goes off up the street and leaves her. And she doesn't know that this is just a wonderful opportunity to study her Bible and pray. She doesn't know the Lord that well. So she just goes to the phone and entertains herself, talking to her neighbors. And she calls this woman. Now, this woman's got her housework to do for her family, and she just hasn't got time to talk to that woman. And she's wanted her to hang up from the time she first heard her voice, but she patiently listens and patiently listens. And away after a while, when that woman gets ready to stop and hang up, this Christian woman says to her, what do you suppose? Thank you for calling. I enjoyed talking with you. What a great big black lie. A great big black lie. And liars among those that have their part in the lake of fire. One woman asked me, came up to me at the service, said, Miss Bertha, why would you say to a woman like that? Well, I would say, I wouldn't say I enjoyed it. I'd say, call again. Call again. And I'd be ready for her when she called. And I'll tell you, I'd have something every morning. I'd get something out of the Word of God ready for that woman. I'd get up early enough to have my quiet time before my day started. And I'd have something ready for her. And when she and I saw it, I said, oh, I'm so glad you called. I've just found something so wonderful in the Bible today that I want to share with you. And I would have just poured out to her all the Lord was and all that he was meaning to me every day. And that woman, she'd have to repent and get right or she'd be calling somebody else. Well, down here, this woman is just so proud of her. Well, first place, she just gives too much. She's just calling her children, not fitting them for life. They're all church members, all been baptized anyway. I don't find many of these saved that are baptized that I've talked to. I hope hers were, but they don't baptize children in China. And no children mentioned in the New Testament as church members. I think we ought to always, when they want to go in the church, take them in a separate group and take them as, what would you call them, under the watch care of the church. Take them all under the watch care of the church when they want to go. And I think those that want to go in the church ought to be put in a special Sunday school class and have somebody very special to teach the word to them. And teach them the word and teach them what it means to be lost and lead them on year by year and year by year and year by year. And the church look after them. The parents don't look after them, the church ought to get them in groups and have somebody to teach them and look after them. And not baptizing, we get old enough to be church members. The Baptist of England will not baptize anybody at 12 years old. Well, they're so liberal and so cold-hearted and so backslidden, we can hardly take them for an example. But the Christian Missionary Alliance Church, which was established by a Presbyterian pastor, Dr. A.B. Simpson, it was patterned after the Baptist. He was a Presbyterian pastor, came out of it and became a Baptist. I mean, no, he became a Christian Missionary Alliance Church, but he patterned it after the Baptist. And they don't baptize people until they're 12 years old, of course, baptized by immersion. And they don't let anybody attend a business meeting until they're 16 years old. Well, there's just one thing lacking in that, it ought to be 18 years old instead of 16. If you don't know how to vote, if you're not old enough to vote in your national affairs, how on earth could you vote in the house of God on spiritual matters? Well, this woman doesn't teach her children to eat a sandwich one day in the week when they come home and maybe make their own sandwich or have it ready and have them go out with her. And while she's witnessing to their parents, let these children witness to children their age. If they've been baptized, if they don't have something to tell those children, they had no business being baptized. And send them out to the people, to the neighbors, and she ought to go and take them at least one afternoon in the week. But she just spends all her time cooking a big dinner for them. You know what she says? Well, my children have to eat school lunches and they don't enjoy school lunches. Why didn't she tell those children about it? Still about a third of the children in the world go to bed hungry every night. And how grateful they are to have school lunches to eat. How grateful they ought to be to have school lunches to eat. Well, she doesn't have time to visit because she has to cook a big dinner for her children. Spoiling them, not even having them one evening in the week do without a dinner and have something simple and go out and tell the neighbors about the Savior. Well, hear that woman. No wonder she can't pray. No wonder she can't pray. Look here. Your sins have separated between you and your God. And you know what the rest of that verse is? This is Isaiah 59, 1 and 2. The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save. There is air heavy that he cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. And your sins have hid his face from you so that he will not hear. He will not hear. Down here we have a verse that's not quite so familiar. Chum-re-nee-kee-zway-yay-bee-yaw-mong-lan-shew. I have to read it in Chinese to be able to translate. This is Proverbs 28, 13. What is it? If we confess and forsake our sins, we shall receive mercy. If we confess and forsake, forsake, forsake. You don't get on your knees every night and say, I'm sorry I sinned today and go on tomorrow and sin again. You've never repented of that sin. When you realize that real repentance means you turn away from your sin and you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, he's the only one to turn to. And it costs God the lifeblood of his son for that sin to be forgiven because holy God can never forgive anything that comes from the devil. It must be punished. And he had to punish your sins in his son. You're familiar with Psalm 66, 18? If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Are people being saved because you pray for them? Now, the Lord is so good, he sends his rain on the just and the unjust. And oh, he just blesses us all the time with whether or not we pray. And maybe he blesses us in answer to the prayers of somebody else, your pastor, your son's school teacher or somebody else. But a key to whether or not you're living right is whether you're seeing other people saved that you pray for. And that's a miracle. That's a miracle of the Lord when a human heart turns from himself and turns to the Lord. Now, I ask those who are here, how many of you were not this morning? Let me see your hands, please. Those who were not present here this morning, put your hands up, please. I want to see how many are here. Well, I had some here who said they belonged to other churches. You weren't here this morning, were you? Nobody raising their hands? Oh, here's one. Oh, just a few. Well, I'm so glad that all of you have had a chance, the rest of you have had a chance this afternoon to work on your sin list. Let's see how many got started this afternoon. Let's see your hands. Let's see your hands. Well, this is pretty good. I think this is above average. And by the way, I want to say here that I talked to the largest training union group this afternoon. I've talked to a Baptist church in 21 years. I've never been to another church where they had that large a training union meeting at six o'clock. Well, now I'll have to tell the few that were not here what I'm talking about. I ask everybody here this morning to go home and get a good big sheet of paper and put numbers down the left-hand side. And after those numbers, write out, just list everything in your heart and life that is unholy. Everything in your heart and life, in your heart, not only expressed, we have a lot in our hearts that are never expressed. Write it out. I want you to look at it. Now, this is to be your secret. Don't you let anybody see it. Don't you let your wife see it, your husband see it, your mama see it. This is to be your own secret between you and the Lord, and he already knows it. Now, I ask you this morning just to list everything you could think of. Now, I want you to go home tonight. I'm sorry that I've gone over time. I forgot to look at my watch. I'll try to next time. I just left to talk to you at midnight. Well, you go home and pray. If you wrote all you could think of this afternoon, now you just pray this prayer. Now, Lord, you are light. Shine in my heart and show me anything else in my heart and life that you would prefer not being there. And if you're sincere, he'll evermore bring things to you that you don't even realize, the things you've forgotten. If you've got everything written this afternoon that you can think of, now you write those. And tomorrow evening, I'll have another lesson for you. And to you who were here this morning, and maybe the children came home this Sunday, that's family day, if they were near enough to come back, maybe your grandchildren came, you didn't have a chance to write, now you go home and get yours started and catch up with the rest of them. Now, I find everywhere I go, the people who follow me doing the homework, I have a reason for giving you this homework, I want you to face up to what you look like in the Lord. If you've got something between you and the Lord and a wall like this, I want you to get that wall down. And I want you to get on a high level of living, that's why I'm going around like I am to churches. And you want to get on to praying terms so you can pray down the reviving in these Baptist churches. So we'll begin to send out missionaries, but the thousands, we don't have more than ten more years at best to send missionaries to foreign countries unless this might have changed in America. And the way the Communists are taking over over here, and the way the ideologies are filling people's minds, they won't let, if they take over the government, we can't send money out to other countries and there's going to be no countries open to send them to. All the foreign countries are going to have a Communist government, they won't let us in. I've seen the Communists take a third of the human family when they took China and enslaved them. And I'm trying to get you on high praying ground so you'll be revived in your own soul and begin to pray for a matter reviving in these other churches. And I have a reason for what I'm doing, and I want you to just cooperate with me. And if you do now, you'll be blessed in your soul. Let me just take a minute if I can. In the morning at 930 there was a staff prayer meeting.