In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of recognizing that the power to bring light into darkness lies solely in the hands of God. He encourages the listeners to cry out to God and pray for the message of God to open people's eyes. The preacher also highlights the role of believers as vessels of God's message and emphasizes the need for repentance and belief. He discusses the three-fold ministry of evangelism, which includes awakening, exhorting, and comforting. The preacher urges the church to fulfill its evangelistic ministry and reach out to the world.

Turn if you wish to follow the scriptures of the 40th chapter of Isaiah while you're turning with such a joy to hear Brother Don. I remember some years ago I was preaching for his now-daddy-in-law with Rupert, and I remember one evening after service he was gravely disturbed about the fact that I preached both election and the responsibility of men. It's good to be down here in the country where Bible terms can be used without starting a fuss. By the way, it was good to hear Brother J. He's great on prophecy and the last days and about the terrible times that are coming. And after the service I learned the world's in a worse shape than I thought it was. One day a holiday's enough, but he got a brother that can preach for two hours in a row on the world. I don't see how he can make it. I want to sound a word of caution. Baptists are likely to fall into the same pit that the Jewish elect nation did, and brag on ourselves and crucify Christ at the same time. It is a Bible fact that a perverted conception of the doctrine of election led to the crucifixion of the Son of God. God helps you get it right, and keep your mouth shut unless it grows extremely missionary, evangelistic, intercessory churches. Our independent Baptist churches, I'm glad we tell people we're fundamental. They'd never find it out if we didn't tell them. I'd rather people would find those things out, but as long as Mr. Wet Eyes and Mr. Amen are absent from our congregations, we're still going to be dead. That person who believes that in the providence of God, that he has forever been the object of God's affection, is under a tremendous debt, that if God should show mercy to you, he wouldn't have big trouble saving anybody else. And your disgrace to the name of Jesus Christ and any of the precious doctrines that buttress his ministry, if that doctrine doesn't leave you, so long that every other human being shall drink at the same fountain where your thirst for God was quenched. And I wish we could come back to that. One of the tragedies of my ministry has been marred by a million mistakes. There's so many young preachers who've gone off past God and taken a doctrine that he's held out everybody with it. But the doctrine's no good, except as it foundations the Christ. And I long for us not to have to say that the heart of missions and evangelism is the movement that we sometimes call Calvin. I never admit to that term now, because the average Calvinist believes in taking the grace of God as an excuse to live like hell. And I don't like that. We're still in hell full of a carnal doctrine of the security of the believer, which is not what the scriptures teach. And we need to be humble. God help us to measure up to the fact that if you have any life from God, you can't brag about it, it was given to you. And I wish we'd be merciful to others who have not yet come to the light we may think we have, and know that it's our job to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ. There are just two weapons, my friends, that the Church of the Lord Jesus has, wherewith to prosecute the task that the Lord gave us, and they are preaching and prayer. Strangely enough, we've been getting along without both for nearly 60 years. Our preaching has been mostly a religious whine, or an attack on somebody who ain't present. And we've majored on mine. We have, my friends. And we're out at the fringes. And we're isolating ourselves from the mainstream of the word of God. And we've got so separated that sinners start running every time they see us coming. We're so little like him who was a friend of sinners. I'm calling fundamentalists to the morn of things. They're doing more harm than all the modernists put together. I would rejoice if in the light of the message this morning we had courage enough to attack with broken hearts the monster of this day. And it is Roman Catholicism. But you boys ain't got guts enough to tackle it, or they'll not only put you off the radio, they'll take the water off, take the meter out. They've got power. And of all the brethren who are skinning the people out of dollars on the radio to help rid this country, help this country fight communism, they all got converted and quit becoming millionaires. And every one of those big radio boys are getting rich doing that. Communism is not our enemy. Perverted religion is the enemy of Jesus Christ. And the only remedy for that is the proclamation of truth. But truth in itself is the deadest, coldest thing this side of hell. And there's nothing on God's earth that does as much harm as a professing Christian expounding truth without a sovereign's voice. That's the God's truth. Give me a deep creek Arminian every time to a dry pelvis. Truth, not saturated in intercessory prayer, burns everything it touches. We desperately need to get on the mourner's bench there. I speak out of a little experience. God had to bear all of the criticisms of what we try to preach, in that it dries up our tears, it dries up our passion, it dries up our mission. And in far too many places our churches have turned into societies where we congratulate ourselves instead of bleeding hearts stretching out to reach a world of sin. I wish we'd come back to preaching and prayer. You can't have one unless you've got the other. They must go together. Well, we never were more badly fooled than to think that what this world needs is to hear the truth. That isn't what this world needs. What this world needs is to hear somebody's got the truth baptized in the spirit of God and with tears. If you do not have tears in your voice, for God's sake pray for God to give it to you. It's a gift of God. The world's in bad enough shape without you butchering it some more. Unless this thing is heartbeat with us and cuts into our very hearts, the heart of Paul's doctrine of election made him the greatest missionary the world's ever known. I am willing to be all things. We wouldn't have accepted him in our fundamental ranks because he would do things that we wouldn't approve of. He'd let his hair be shaven one time just to win some. He even went to the place of taking the jury's bow. Of course, as fundamentalists we suspect we wouldn't do that. But Paul did. And he said that he endured all things for the elect's sake. It might be wrong. If you have not read J.I. Packer's book on the sovereignty of God and evangelism, do it at your next meal and buy it. There is a rise all over America and I'm heartened that the days of dependence on God, us doing what God called us to do, proclaimed, baptizing it in intercessory prayer, there is a rise of that all over the country. And it presages a great day to come. If you differ with me on your doctrine of the last things, I just ask you to fix it out on your chart, if you will, so that I'll get in on the blessing that's coming. And I believe the days of the glory of the church which Christ purchased are yet future. And I expect to be right in the big middle of it. I have a longing in my heart that this generation that I'm living in now shall experience and see an evangelical awakening that simply means a gospel awakening. This generation, this isn't something to laugh about or to take pride in ourselves about, but this generation is utterly asleep as to what the gospel of salvation really is. We desperately need to come back to the message used of God in our days, and it'll be the one he'll use in our days, to awaken people to their need and to see the beauty and glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Instead of some of your books on prophecy, I'd recommend you soak your soul in the only man God's ever used in America to bring revival, Jonathan Edwards, the man that God used, and we're still weeping from the last flickerings of the power of God that came on this country through that one man's ministry. I would recommend that we soak our souls in David Brainerd's ministry, the inspiration of his life, led to the 40 pioneers of missions. Every last great missionary leader of the modern generation of missions got the inspiration to go and plant these great organizations. This boy represents one now. The reading of that man who prayed himself to death as his blood mingled with the snows of New York, and there's more good theology and more tears and more fire and more heart in his one book than all the schools in America put together. I would recommend that we study after the man makes change. You may go to Scotland now and see the study from whence he would not come to preach to the people until the glory of God had settled in his heart and he knew he had an utterance from the Lord. He got up off his knees, having prayed that God would visit his people with salvation. The greatest contribution, they say, that John Knox ever made to the Reformation of Scotland was that day when 5,000 people gathered together to hear him preach in that great cathedral, the name of it slips me now. After waiting for minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes, the great preacher finally came out of his prayer room and got up and held up his hands and said, We arise for the benediction that dear Lord has not given me an utterance and to dismiss the crowd. God helps for a man to keep silent when God hadn't given him something, just got to preach. It would be a great contribution these days. Utterance. The ministry of John the Baptist is the ministry God uses. In the threefold ministry of evangelism, I wish to speak about it a little while this afternoon, first, the awakening ministry, second, the exhorting ministry, and third, the comforting ministry. If we would live up to what we said, and you folks push strong on that I hear down here, that the commission was left to the Church, okay? We ought to start minding it then a little bit. That means that the Church has an evangelistic ministry. It has a message that no single church has a right to call itself a church of the Lord Jesus Christ, hear me? Unless its ministry reaches around the world. That's right now. This church must have a worldwide ministry reaching out. Any church with ten members can support one pastor and one missionary if they ever got saved and right with God. We just play at this job. I'm glad we're bugging on ourselves. Nobody else does. The Church, been commissioned with a ministry to awaken men and women in its day, once the main people are awakened, to exhort them. Once we've exhorted them to bring them the comfort that they find only in the rest that Jesus gives to those who are united to him. Isaiah foresaw the ministry of John the Baptist and the emphasis and content of that ministry. And in the 40th chapter of Isaiah, we read verse 1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquities pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. The voice. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. That's John the Baptist. Thank God the work is not ours. It's God's. But we are far more than spectators. We are soldiers of the King. The Holy Ghost is the preacher. Ours is the voice. Do you ever feel that in your bones? All hell can't scare you. Just the voice, the one that's doing the crying, the one that's doing the demanding, is Almighty God. God's crying in the wilderness. He's using the voice. Thank God we are not electioneering for God. We're standing in his stead and he does the preaching. He hadn't done something and gone off to watch the world go by. He's active in demanding men to repent and believe. God speaks, uses my voice. God calls and uses your voice. God demands and demands through a humble voice. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, but thank God earthen vessels are not. We've got it. We've got it. Paul said, therefore, having received this ministry as an act of the mercy of God, we never lose hope. Can't lose. Thank God. The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, who's doing the crying, God, using a voice, what God's saying, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it, that's coming. And the voice said, cry. And he said, what shall I cry? Just two things. All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. This is the most hopeful day I've ever seen because the key to the whole situation is that man stands in the pulpit of our churches and they've lost their cockiness and some of us have almost got converted like the wood do. If we became what they call a foreign missionary, he becomes a Calvinist five minutes after he gets there. You get over there and deal with them, you know God's got to do it. We don't think so in this country. Therefore, we don't have any prayer meetings much. We're just giving out the truth and it's just bouncing back in our faces. But pretty soon after Don got over in Brazil, I bet you Don had an account. I can't get this TRD one straight. It got straight pretty soon. He understood that this business of giving life where darkness is is utterly in the hands of God. And if you believe that, you'd be crying to God. My only weapon is to pray that as the message goes forth that God of the message will open eyes. Open eyes. What shall I cry? Cry all flesh is there. It's the flesh. Prophetess N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Nothing. Not one thing. Yet whether it could fade us away. We just about believe that now. We've been crowded to the place it looks like we're going to have to go to look into God. We've looked everywhere else. And we've about tried all of our tricks. And we've run out of all our alibis just about. Looks like we're going to have to say amen, John. You try it. All flesh is there. All flesh is there. And then verse 9. They're just two messages. To awaken sinners. First, strip them. Take everything away from them. I like to do that. I get to go into churches. I don't like the whole meetings where they've had much truth. They don't need me, but I get most places. I watch. They want a revival, but they ain't got but five days to do it. It took us 60 years to get in the mess we're in now. We're going to get out of it in five, six days. And I watch. The dear people, they don't know. And they watch the preacher. And he's nodding his head. They say, we believe that, too. That is, if they like it. A fellow came up to me. I was over in the city wide meeting one time. I wasn't very wide, but that's what they called it. And he's trying to straighten me out on something. I remember I asked him. I said, well, brother, what do you believe about something? And he said, I don't know. But I said, I'll write headquarters and find out. He said, bring us back because somebody knows what we believe. We don't. Headquarters, you know. But, oh, beloved, everything has got to be taken away from a church that it leans on before it will ever lean on God. Baptists used to didn't have to do so much announcing about us. It just leaked out on us, that power. But, oh, God kept some of us trusting our organization and some in our fundamentalism and some in our being sound on doctrine. To be honest with you, we hadn't thought we needed to depend utterly on God. And I rejoice that God's stripping us everywhere the cry is. If God doesn't come, thy rescue is gone. We are shut up to the miraculous intervention of a miracle working God who never has died. We just never have had any need for him in our days. And I believe that we're coming to Rickson Corner. And I believe some of our churches, and I know a lot of preachers are coming fast to the place. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble. And when we cry unto the Lord in our trouble, he healeth us of our distresses. That's good for a church, that's good for a preacher, and that's good for a lost sinner. Every sinner God ever saves, he has to hem him up the way he's got nowhere else to go for he'll never look to God as long as he's looking to where else. And when he brings him to such deep trouble, he'll cry unto the Lord. And when he does that, the Lord will deliver him out of his trouble. Most of the movements, all of the little movements you and I have experienced come from the restlessness and the knowledge of not getting the first base. Most of them started in the power of the Holy Spirit, but we soon tried to help the Spirit out with the strong arm of our flesh. And now most of us, praise the company accepted, are defending our position instead of evangelizing the world. God help us. Strip us. Just take everything away from us. One word, then all flesh is dressed. And then the second message of awakening is found in verse 9. O Zion, that bringeth good tidings, get thee up to the high mountain. O Jerusalem, that bringeth good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. Lift it up, but be not afraid. Say unto the cities of Jerusalem that have been stripped, Behold, your God. And when men are stripped, they'll be entrusted in a vision of the God of the universe. All flesh is dressed. Behold, your God. That's the two-fold emphasis of an awakening ministry. Take all the glories we heard so wonderfully this morning. I rejoice in that kind of preaching. Don't you? I love it. Be around where you can hear more of it. Take all the glory away from man. He points men to the only place there is any glory. You know the only difference between a saved man and a lost man? The lost man's never seen the glory of God in the face of Christ. The saved man has. He was in the flesh and he dwelt among us. And we, not many, most of them received him not. But we beheld his glory. The glory of the only begotten Son. All will call attention to the fact that if our gospel be heard, it is heard for them which are lost and those lost people are the ones God made a promise to Abraham or the elect. The rest of the world ain't lost exactly where they ought to be but God made a covenant and he got by on those people but they're blind. He got blind. And the reason that our gospel is heard for them that are lost is Satan has blinded the mind and that mind means the whole man. Blessed is the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ that shines in their hearts. And then verse 6 says, Paul, here's how he described his salvation. This generation back, he said, I gave God the honor of accepting Jesus as my Savior. But Paul said, I'll tell you what happened to me. It was God who commanded darkness to shine, light to shine, and the darkness has shined in my heart. To give the knowledge of the glory of God, well, in the face of Jesus Christ. That's the reason there's a light on the face of a child of God. It's there, but these stolid expressions I preach to, God never has turned the light on them. It's just a kind of glory of God, brother. It's what the old-time Baptist preachers talked about. God gets glory in the church, amen, the world without him. He can't get no glory now, for this time I have a testimony that people get up and brag on themselves, and God won't share his glory with anybody. Amen. You know, the Christian needs to be converted every day of his life, but the sinner needs to be slain, utterly slain. Would you hear me, you dear preachers? It's high time we came back to realizing that the whole of the counsel of God is in the cross of Jesus Christ, for the cross is of such nature in the heart of God that it demands a resurrection. And in the preaching not of the death of Christ, but of the cross of Christ, you're preaching the whole of Christ. And it takes the whole of Christ, from his virgin birth to his present reign, at the right hand of God. Salvation is being united to him. But I wish to continue. I changed my message after listening to Brother Holliday, and if this one isn't good, you'll have to blame it on him. But I wanted to follow something he touched on this morning, and this is such a needful thing. I wish under God we'd buy us a Bible. We don't use the ones we've got. And we would learn quickly that he who loves souls would deal truthfully with them. And that in the Old Testament and in the New, all the methods we've used in evangelism are utterly foreign to the Old Testament and the New. We have literally filled hell full of people by quoting out of context the first chapter of John. He came into his own, and his own received him not. We have literally filled hell with people. We've gone out and said, all you have to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and we've quoted from the 16th chapter of Acts, not recognizing that nowhere in the Old Testament or in the New has anybody ever offered a remedy until the sore has been opened and the need has been faced. And until somebody's trembling, begging, is there any hope for me? What must I do to be saved? Listen to me now. Listen to me now. He who would be true to eternity bound souls must learn how to be cruel, like the world would say. We must quit trying to get them to put a poultice or a sore until the chance has been revealed. And the reason there's no conviction of sin, and the reason people are not seeking the Lord, for a generation we've been trying to wish off Jesus on people who haven't the slightest sense of their need of him. All our personal work in our house-to-house visitations, been trying to get people to make a decision, but salvation never was by man's decision. It's always by God's revelation. And I've been butchered, and I don't know how to preach it, but I know that Jesus Christ must be made real to ones in most being, and then the decision comes. I'm in favor of a decision like Saul of Tarsus. When the work's been done, he falls as you will and says, Lord, you're the boss from now on. What will that have me to do? But I've fought a fight over this country. It has been my privilege in some sections to mention the word election where it never been heard, to mention the fact that salvation's by revelation, not by man's decision. And I've made so many mistakes, but I tell you, the time's come when every church is full of dogs, and they're ringing the pastor to death, and they're about to wake up to the fact that the Lord said all the time, give not holy things to dogs, and cast not your pearls before swine. And that sounds cruel. But if we would be true to the souls of men, we must preach the first message of the cross, and that's L.A.W. Law. Why did Christ hang there? Listen to Ralph Barnum a little bit. He hung on the cross because he dealt with God's unmerciful, pitiless, holy, perfect, just, and good, strict, and severe law. He ran right smack dab in the law. And there isn't any mercy in law. And there isn't any pity in law. And these Bible preachers that you send a dollar for their booklet on, that put the law out of business these last 40 years, have helped fill hell with church people who've never appreciated the blood that flowed, mingled down from Calvary's cross, because they've never been slain by the demands of God's holy law. Sinners need to be slain. It's still true that God says, I kill and I make alive. Oh, my dear brethren, when I another somebody down here got something started, many of you dear preachers, you know so much truth. How big you must be. How big-hearted you must be. How missionary-minded you must be. I tell you all over America, the densest ignorance of the awakening ministry of the Bible is terrific! Like priests, like people, propit and people are going to hell trusting an imaginary Jesus and to know nothing of the Jesus who hung on a bloody cross because God gave his darling into the clutches of the holy law of God and he was made sin, absolutely made sin. And when the law catches up with sin, there's no pity, there's no mercy. My God, I don't want to have to deal with the holy law of God. Every sinner that comes to judgment is going to run right smack dabble into it. Eichmann said he didn't need a mediator. I wish we could preach the demands and the perfectness and the holiness and the severity and the strictness of God's law. Hell is nothing more or less than a demonstration of the severity of almighty God's law. I wish we could fill this country with it until man and woman might express a little interest in what actually happened when Jesus Christ hung on that tree outside. They don't give a hoot now. If you want to get them to cry, tell about a little dog getting run over. If you can tell about Jesus dying, then you're blew in the face and this gang of kids never shed a tear. They got no interest in him. They've never been brought face to face with the first message of the cross. For the first message we must preach is not to offer salvation, but to bring condemnation. You better watch it. Paul said, I give you as an order of first priority the gospel how I receive. But that ain't all the preaching. The death, burial, and resurrection, that's wonderful. That's wonderful and it's pleased. But God bless your heart before that must come fine. Did Jesus hang on that tree? I'll tell you why, Brother Oakley. L-A-W-L. God will send every one of you people to hell. For he'll violate one iota of his holy life. We heard about that this morning. God knows this country hadn't heard it. You little folks build your church buildings, get your little doctrines and let the world go to hell. But if you ever take seriously the commission Christ gave you, out from Mount Gilead will go the membership to sow this country down with the first message of the cross. The Quakers had it right. The service begins when they meet men. The service is out yonder where men are. And until we preach that, we're going to keep on praying the preacher to do our preaching for us and let the world go to hell. Out from this bed must go missionary-minded men with the goal of a new confrontation with the living Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost, with a song in their voices and their feet planted on the rock to give this generation a witness that Jesus Christ, God's Son, came on that cross to deal with the law of God. And that those who are not bound to return to that Christ who hung there, but he's not there now, will have to deal with that law without a mediator. And that's hell. Going forth to convince the impenitent that Christ died for them is not being true to them. Just to convince men that they're sinners, we've got to do that. That God is holy, God is just. Peter preached the cross at Pentecost, but he didn't say, O house of Israel, will you not believe that Christ died for you according to the scriptures? No, sir. He said, the one you took and killed, God raised him from the dead and declared him to be Lord. Paul preached the cross in Acts 17 and proved it by the resurrection, but he expounded on the resurrection not as a proof of justification in the death of Christ, but as proof of the judgment of the world. He says, as sure as that man is raised from the dead, this world hated for judgment, you better repent. The death, burial, and resurrection of Christ has priority and importance, but not time. The foundation must not only be that message, but it must be what I've been talking about. The sinner must be slain before you will or can hold label of the blood of Christ. Out of the deep conviction that will come on some, if we'll go to preaching the cross and start with its first message, first condemnation, the cross brings all the world under condemnation. Is that right? And it's only guilty sinners that will sleep for a part. Out of this deep conviction, some of it will come. Multitudes will yet be born into the kingdom of God. Wherever there will come this awful sense of God's presence stealing over the hearts of men, the fountains of the deep are broken up. Gone will be the voice of the sinner. We've been hearing it for 40 years, whether or not he will patronize the Son of God. We hear them talk like this, Christ is knocking at my sad heart. Shall I let him in? Shall I bid him forever depart? Or shall I let him in? Instead, we shall begin one more time to hear the heart-wrung sob of sinners. Depth of mercy, can there be? Mercy still reserved for me. Can my God, His wrath forbear me, the chief of sinners, bear? And when we've pressed the awful, awful severity of God's law that got God in a position where He had to make His Son sin or send everybody to hell, and some are awakened, then we may exhort them. For there must be an exhorting ministry. And when men are awakened to their violence and their deep need, thank God we can plead with them to seek the Lord, to seek Him by penitent and prayerful pursuance of the means, not seek saving faith in visions and experiences, but seek it in an unfolding of the Word of God. Now listen to me. The very essence of saving faith is hearing the Word of God. And that faith that does not have any element of seeking is not saving faith. And when a sinner is awakened, you may tell him what Paul and Silas did believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but until he is, you may tell him what the Bible says, seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. Seek Him. No man will ever get saved apart from a persistent seeking of Christ by faithful hearing of the Word of God. Now brethren, we've got some work to do there for so many years. We've made salvation something we've taught folks into making decisions. Instead of actually believing that faith cometh by hearing, we've tried to get sinners to make a physical act and call that salvation. Why, actually, I go places and they think you've got to get up out of your seat and come forward to get to Christ. But Christ isn't in the nearer to you after you've made your physical move. He's as near to you as faith, but you ain't got it. Faith cometh. God has to give it. And he never gives it apart from hearing His Word. And a man's got to hear God speak to him through this voice. Not memorized in scripture, but no man will ever be saved until he's conscious that it's God talking to him. And when God speaks to a man, nobody can stay in a grave. Thank God it'll come out. We exhort men to do what? To listen to God's Word! That's how faith cometh. You believe that? Why, but you keep on having your knees and try to get them to make a profession. They will. And go on to hell. I'm not a hard shell. I know this. That no man will ever be saved any other way than the folks at Thessalonica knowing that, oh brethren, your election from God. How you know? For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but in power, and in the Spirit, and in much assurance. There came a time you might have been a thousand miles from a church building, but you knew God was talking to you. This is God. There's just one voice that's got power to raise up dead sinners, and that's the voice of the living Christ, and He speaks through His Word. Not apart from this Word. He speaks through it, but He must speak to you, you must hear Him. We can exhort men to a faithful hearing of the Word of God. And then when we've exhorted that we can sinners, thank God, it'll fall to our lot sometime to have a comfort in ministry. Sometimes God's pleased to let us stand by His midwives to bring men to rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. One who has confronted the Lord of glory in an awakening experience who has sought Him where? In the Word. Now comes to know Christ as the very Lord is life. We join to Him in Bible union. Somebody said the watchword for this hour, my brethren, is there can be no justification before God apart from Bible union with God's Son. We have been desperately near preaching that if a man believed that Jesus died for him he is a Christian. But there is no salvation in the death of Christ. Salvation's in the Christ who died and is now alive. And you may stand afar off and believe in the facts, but you'll have to draw an iron layholder on the person of Him who was on that cross and now He's on the throne. He that hath the Son. Not a mutual admiration society about Him but He who hath it. He who can say I don't have a million dollars but I have Him. He who's been married to Him. Who's been joined to Him as a branch to the vine. There's no justification in the sight of a holy God by believing some facts. It's by being joined to the One who made those facts to act with flaming tongues. We may say that our message is our invitation. And our invitation is our message. It is there by a faithful hearing of the word of truth that sinners become awakened. And some of them are made seekers after saving faith. And it's there that a conscious union of peace passes over the soul of the seeking sinner. And he hears just as rarely as if it were audible. The living Son of God speaks like He used to. Thy sin be forgiven thee. Go thy way in peace. And sin no more. I say you're a fool if you accept anything except the voice of the living Son of God. Giving to you the assurance that your sins are gone and you're one with Him. Catholicism says we use different instruments. Old time Baptists used to say God's alive. And a seeking God and a seeking sinner can have communication. And the sinner can reach out and touch and from the living Christ there'll come power to transform. And I still believe. I still believe. Oh, what a wonder that Jesus found me out in the darkness. No light could I see. Oh, what a wonder He put His great arm under and wonder of wonders He saved even me. God, give us of thyself to be used of God's voices as a message to awaken this sleeping generation of all flesh and grass. This generation needs to look at the living God.