In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the power of God's calling and purpose in a person's life. He uses the example of the apostle Paul, who was chosen by God and had a divine purpose to preach the gospel and establish churches. The speaker also mentions the story of Professor James, who sought healing from a simple laboring man instead of relying on his own knowledge and expertise. The sermon highlights the importance of being spiritually engaged and receptive to God's calling, rather than relying solely on physical or intellectual abilities.

I would like to read just three or four verses from the first epistle of Paul to the Clintons, the third chapter, reading from verse one into verse seven. Now I don't know if you like to hear what the preacher is going to preach about. I think sometimes it's rather like giving a menu to people in a restaurant, and I have some messages I like to preach, and I have some messages I certainly don't like to preach. But I have one message that I would like to bring, if I can get the all clear from the Lord on it. And it isn't a nice message at all. So far we've had very nice ones, but this one is a very rough one, and it's on the judgment seat of Christ. It deals with the judgment of the sinner, and then it deals with the judgment of the believer. And you know there are a lot of evangelists. As a very famous doctor friend of mine says, there are evangelists who preach to the sinners, and all the church members come, because you shoot over their heads. But there are evangelists who preach to the believers, and not many church members come, because they kind of think it's for other folk. There is a section of theology called eschatology, that is dealing with things that still have to come. And I think the most neglected thing in preaching in the Church of God today, is preaching on the judgment seat of Christ, particularly for the believer. And so if you'll pray, and tomorrow night you'll give me, get me up at quarter to eight instead of eight, and I might get through in an hour, or an hour and a half. I've preached on this text for two and a half hours. I don't promise to do that tomorrow night, but anyhow you're not going anywhere except to bed. And you may as well go broken hearted anyhow. So maybe tomorrow night, if the Lord gives us the all clear again, we'll share our particular concept of judgment for the sinner, and judgment for the believer. Let me just say this. I don't think many believers, in the world today, or in the past, or in the future, I don't think many believers will stand very tall at the judgment seat of Christ. Now, reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 1. And I, blessed one, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto beds in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men? For while one saith I am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul? And who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted Apollos water, but God gave the increase, so then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth, and he that watereth the one, and every man to receive his own reward, according to his own labor. One of the most forgotten, and the most unquoted preachers in America, was a man by the name of Henry Varley. He was a man who, almost without exception, when he preached could say, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he hath anointed me. And I want to say to you again, particularly to evangelists and preachers, that I believe the most elusive thing in the world today is the anointing of the Spirit of God. We mistake eloquence for anointing. We mistake very often the personality of the preacher. That there is a mysterious, indefinable something, which as a colored brother said, I don't know what it is, but I know when it isn't there, that we call the anointing of the Spirit. And Henry Varley preached this way. And he was preaching as only he could, when one night he shot, as evangelists often do, he shot a ball to venture. And he gave birth to a phrase, which has become a classic in the jargon of preachers, because he said this, the world has yet to see what God can do through one man who is totally committed to Jesus Christ. Sitting somewhere over here was a young man, he wasn't very important, he wasn't an executive, all he did was put shoes on people's feet in Chicago. But that young man said under his breath, well if the world hasn't yet seen a man totally committed, then by the grace of God I'll be that man. And eventually you remember that he became D.L. Moody. Now until he died, D.L. Moody was not a preacher of good English. He murdered his English. But he saw revival. And you're better to murder your English if you must, and have revival than be eloquent and a Demosthenes or an Apollos, and not get revival. But you know, it wasn't true when Henry Varley said that a hundred years ago, and a hundred years still hasn't made it true, and another thousand years will not make it true. It is not true that the world has yet to see what God can do through one man totally committed to Jesus Christ. I think that the greatest brain the world has ever known outside of Jesus Christ was the Apostle Paul. This man had acres of culture. This man had every prize that everybody else was grasping after. Socially, intellectually, he says I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, oh that was something, I'm of the seed of Abraham, he was a member of the Sanhedrin, he had everything going his way. And yet there came a day, you remember, he was going down that Damascus road with fire coming out of his nostrils, bleeding out threatenings. And I always get a thrill when I think of that man going down with a volcano in his heart, for just as soon as Jesus was born, they were going to liquidate him. And as soon as the infant Christ was born, Herod wanted to kill him. And as soon as the infant church was born, Saul wanted to kill him. Kill it. And yet the man that was bleeding fire out of his nostrils, and going to liquidate everybody that he found in this way, that man wrote the greatest poem on love that the world has ever known, 1 Corinthians 13. What a transformation. When Paul went down that Damascus road, he thought that he had in his, under his toga there, the death sentence of the early church. And he'd reckoned on everybody except God. And there on that Damascus road he met Jesus Christ. I'm glad he didn't need a preacher or hear a sermon, that might have been the end of him. But he didn't need a preacher, and he didn't hear a sermon, he met the Christ of God. And the old preachers used to talk about people having a personal encounter with the Son of God. We don't do this too much these days, we've got a mass psychology. Somebody wrote a stupid book, and you can buy it if you're silly enough, on 64 different ways to make an altar call. Isn't that putrid? There isn't an altar call in the New Testament. The altar call is a modern invention. When the Holy Ghost departed, men stepped in and made altar calls. Now I do it sometimes, sometimes I don't. Because the psychology of people is they expect the gate to be open and you invite them to come in. But there on that Damascus road the apostle met Jesus Christ. And you know, again it wasn't a case of raising his hand, signing a decision card. He didn't come to the altar and make a down payment to the few hot peers and expect a mansion over the hilltop, with music piped in from a thousand million angels, world without end, and immunity from eternal judgment, and escape from hell fire. There was no down payment to the few Jews. This was a case where, if this is the very Son of God, then he says, what this Christ offers me must be everything or nothing. And he summarizes his life. I kind of smile, I do smile occasionally, and I smile sometimes when I hear preachers say, you know, I fashion my life after the apostle. Well I admire your humility, but apart from that, oh we like the apostle Paul, sure we like him. We like his power, he could raise the dead. We like his peace, he gloried in tribulation. We like his poise, he says none of these things move me. We like his purpose, he says this one thing I do. We like his passion, he says for me to live is Christ, but there are two things we wouldn't like. We wouldn't like his poverty and we wouldn't like his prison. On that Damascus road I say we had a confrontation with Jesus Christ, and he gives you the whole story himself. Because you see this is what Christianity really is. Christianity is not getting rid of a lot of lousy sins at an altar. That's part of it, but a decimal fraction of it. I say again that we're living in a day of the cheapest evangelism that we've ever had in history. I read an article not recently, very recently, from one of the leading evangelists in America, and he was appealing for sons like people do, and he said, and he said now I want you to support me because I've moved into another area, but he said do you know in the last few years I have led personally through my ministry, I have nine million people to Jesus Christ. Now if you take all the big evangelists in the last 20 years, and all the local efforts in our churches, and all the people who've been to the altar, everybody in America has been converted, and warmed up, and rehashed, and soon be the leftovers. Everybody in the country has been dealt with somehow. Well I'm very simple as you know, but you know I don't understand how you can have nine million converts, when it only took 120 to turn Jerusalem upside down. I was in a city not long ago where a man said to me, you know in this city we only had one church 50 years ago, we were very despised. Now he said we have some of the finest churches in this city. As a matter of fact, we have 120 churches of our denomination, of our particular brand of theology, we have 120 of those churches in greater, it was Houston, greater Houston, and he said we have 120 of those churches in this area. Wonderful churches. Members from 100, 200, 300, 500. Well come on what are you thinking? I said well I'm wondering how it was 120 men could turn Jerusalem upside down, and now you can have 120 churches in the city and nobody knows you're here. How do you figure that one out? One of the great reproaches of the church of God today is that the world doesn't know we're around. They can get on with us. They couldn't get on with the early church because the world was going that way and the church was going that way. They were always having collisions. After all Paul did one of two things wherever he went. He either had a revival or a riot. We have neither. We just have a relapse. They're going down that Damascus road. He says later do not happen to me, and I don't care how you phrase your theology, any second work of grace if you like, call it a baptism with the Holy Ghost, call it sanctification if you're a Nazarene, call it something else if you're a salvationist, but I tell you this, this is my conviction, that the greatest thing that can fall from human lips fell from the lips of the Apostle Paul when he said this, Christ liveth in me. On that Damascus road he didn't give Christ his sins, he gave Christ his total personality, and he says this in his own language. He says I have an exchange life, it is not I, but it is Christ that liveth in me. It was not only an exchange life, it was an exciting life, because he said he wrestled with wild beasts at Ephesus. It was not only an exciting life, it was an expensive life. Oh sometimes I feel like putting my hand up and saying stop, and I hear people singing, we're the whole realm of nature man, you won't even give him a hundred dollars for the preacher tonight, so why do you sing a lie? Most of us would like to give God what we don't have. I heard of a young man going back to a city in the States, he had been raised in this small town actually, and he became a millionaire, became very wealthy, and when he had a homecoming they put a banquet on in the local city hall that wasn't too big, and they said now tell us about your success, and he said well really it all began in a missionary meeting one night, and they were asking for money, and he said I had in one pocket a dime, and I had in the other pocket a dollar, and I thought well I can't afford to give the dollar, I can only give the dime, and then as they put pressure on I said all right I'll give the dollar, and then as I was giving the dollar I thought well after all the dime doesn't matter much, so I gave the dime and the dollar. And he said the reason I'm a millionaire tonight is on that occasion I gave God everything that I have, and look how he's blessed me and made me a millionaire. You know sometimes little old ladies can be very awkward, and a little old lady up at the front on the front pew said in a stage whisper I dare you to do it again. My richest gain I count at loss. Paul takes all his accumulated advantages, and he says this I can't remember but doubt that I may win Christ and be found in him. So it was not only an exchange life, it was an exciting life, it was an expensive life, it cost him everything that he had. It was an explicit life, this one thing I do, and it was an extensive life because his life still has an influence right down to the day in which we live. I think he must have marked extra on that Damascus Lord, and he must have remembered it many times, because you see the Lord revealed himself to him on that Damascus road. But when the Lord had got him so far, he took him in the backside of the desert where every preacher should go. And the God who revealed himself to him on the Damascus road revealed himself in him when he got there. Herodotus has been called the father of historians, and he tells us that in the ancient days, in the temple of Heracles, the altar fire was kept burning 24 hours a day. Those were the days of slavery. Remember in the day of the New Testament there were 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire, and the Bible doesn't say anything about it. If a man could escape from his master, he would rush down into the temple. Maybe the priest would be asleep and he would nudge him, and the priest would say what you want, and he'd say brand me, brand me. Well they had branding irons like they have in Texas. And the man could choose the branding iron, and they would put it there in the furnace and heat it. And then the slave who escaped would put out his hand, and they would brand that hand with the brand of the God that he had chosen to serve. He would lift up his foot, and they would brand his instep. He would slip the rags he was riding down, and they would brand the back of his neck. And after a few days he would go out into the bazaar. His master might see him and say to another slave, get hold of him, bring him back. See who's there? Aristarchus, bring him back. And Aristarchus would go back to his master, and the master would start pouring imprecations on him, and tell him how he would nearly slog him to death, and what have you got. And then suddenly the young man would open his hand, and raise his foot, and show the back of his neck. And then the previous owner would get very angry, and he would say, so you got branded with the mark of your God. I have no sober claim on you. I have no rights to you, as long as you bear branded in your body the owner's mark of a God. And a spear or bids adieu to the world isn't always mourning like some of these, you know, I might have been a great television star, but the Lord called me. You might have been blacking boots on State Street too. I'm tired of these bankrupt half-worn-out Hollywood stars that go strutting around as though they've done a God Almighty something, because they have a guitar, and they sing one or two songs for him. God pitious. Paul doesn't wave any salute to the world. Here he is, the greatest intellect of the day, he mouths about Gamaliel, Gamaliel. But one day he capitulated to Jesus Christ, and you know what he did? He says as he says goodbye to the Galatians, henceforth let no man trouble me. I bear in my body the owner's marks of Jesus. Or as Weymouth translates it, I bear the brands of the Christ of God. His hands were branded, he would do nothing but what would please God. His feet were branded, he would only walk where it would please God. The base of his neck, because his intellect was branded for God. He says at the end of that same epistle, God should do that I should glory, said in the cross, by which the world is crucified to me, and I am crucified to the world. You see we're living in a day when people will go to the cross, but they won't get on the cross. They want the benefits of his death, but they don't want to die, they're too ambitious. Ambitious and carnal very often even on ministry. You see we folk, maybe fortunately, have never seen a crucifixion. When a man was crucified and he carried his cross outside of the city, you could be sure about one thing, he wasn't coming back. And brother if you take up your cross tonight, and you only carry a cross to the place where you're willing to die on it, you don't need to carry it an inch further. But if you carry a cross it's a one-way ticket. And the man carrying his cross wasn't coming back. If you doubt yourselves tonight, if you doubt your own ambition tonight, if you doubt your pride tonight, if you doubt your lust, whatever it may be, the lust of the flesh, or the lust of fame, or the lust of your distinguished personality, if you doubt a selfishness or some other thing, you can take the cross and you can die on that thing, and you can stay dead by the grace of God if you want to. But that thing can come back too, I know that. But you see the man that brought a cross, once he got on that cross he had no rights. You could take a bucket of garbage if you like and throw it on him. This man could say, I'll take a rock, let me try and knock out his right eye, and you try and knock out his left eye. You take a bigger rock and crush his ribs. You take something that will lacerate his body. Once he's on that cross he has no rights. The Son of God had no rights, had he? Paul had no rights. And everybody went, particularly if you were going to crucify a man like Barabbas. Oh come on, let's take a rock, let's take filth, let's make this man, put him in hell before he gets there. And they would ridicule and taunt and cast everything they had in the teeth of the man on the cross. But as soon as the sun went down they began to rush back to the gates of the city, nobody wanted to be out of the city when the sun went down. And if they went to see a crucifixion at six o'clock at night, they never went to see a crucifixion at six o'clock in the morning. There's a cross. As soon as the sun begins to rise while the skies are still down, the vultures would come and rest on the arm of the cross, and they begin to pick at that body, pick out the eyes that hadn't been destroyed, pick on the body, tear at it until the entrails were out and blood was running down. It was this despicable, horrible, revolting, sickening sight. It was sudden to see the man dying, it was agony to see him in the morning, when he was all torn apart, for no sooner had the birds left him than the dogs would come out and leap up and tear his feet or begin to lap up the blood and they would be barking and snarling. Now that's no pretty picture. But that is a picture that the Apostle Paul gives us here when he says, the world is crucified to me. To many of us the world isn't as ugly and rotten and sinful and wicked and dirty as that. It still has some fascination. As in the church not too long ago where the pastor said to me, you like my new church? I said, it's very admirable. Notice all my elders standing at the back of the church Sunday morning, very handsome men, I give them all a nice white flower and they escort people there to their pews, and we have a wonderful system here. And I said, you're very favoured. He said, the only thing is this, on a Wednesday night when it's, when it's the prayer meeting night, I can't find my elders at all. Do you know where they are? They're in the bowling alley. So I said, oh I see they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and went to a bowling alley. Well he said, I wouldn't say that, but you say that the members of your church have to be filled with the Holy Spirit, they can't be members. And yet there they are in a bowling alley. I think it's pretty stupid to paint the front torch when the house is on fire. I think it's equally stupid to, to, to be playing balls when after all you'll get no reward for balls, when after all you could be in a place of intercession because today the world is on fire. And the reason that millions of people are going to hellfire tonight is because the church of God has lost Holy Ghost fire. Paul says the world is crucified. It has no fascination for me. And what's more, he says I am crucified to the world. They don't find anything attractive in me anymore. They think I'm strange and I'm perverted and twisted in my ideas. Surely not. You think of the scope of the life of this amazing man. He began his life in Tarsus, the historical capital of the world. He ended his life in Rome, the military capital of the world. In between he, he went to Jerusalem, the religious capital of the world. In Acts 17 he went to Athens, the intellectual capital of the world. In Corinthians here, chapter 3, he goes to Corinth, the immoral capital of the world. Oh, I, I, I pray for my heart that somehow in these few days we're here that, that God might get one or two men at least with, with a baptism of passion like this man the Apostle Paul had. Because he was restless. He's a God intoxicated man. He has no joy except people are coming to Christ. You, you can't give this man any honors. He has all the honor in the world. He, he's established as a prophet of the Most High God. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him. He can pray and call the Holy Ghost to bear witness, and he can pray with tears and passion. We don't pray like this anymore. Maybe in your church, well if you do, thank God for it. But I said sometimes almost facetiously that over the door of the prayer meeting, over the door of the prayer room in the church, we should put a sign, just three words, we wrestle not. In its original setting, you remember, it is we wrestle not against principalities, against powers, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world. And prayer is the hardest work in the world. My good friend who has just retired from Westminster there, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, I, I find anything easier in my life than prayer. Sure, Satan will drive you from your knees. Everything goes wrong if you decide to have a day of prayer and fasting. Everything comes up that day. There's nothing in this world, Satan says, he doesn't fear our preaching. I noticed one witchy American said not long ago he found a new proof to the inspiration of the Bible, because he had survived so much bad preaching. Well, that's, that's a rather dismal view of the thing anyhow. But, but the thing is, you see, that we're living in a day when, when Satan knows he doesn't need to be nervous too much about our preaching. But all Satan really fears men and women who know how to pray. And Paul could pray and pray in the Holy Ghost. He says in, in, in the 8th of Romans there, he talks about the groaning of the world, and he talks about the groaning of the spirit, and he talks about us groaning within ourselves, because the highest form of prayer has no language at all. Hannah prayed, she never said a word, but she got a baby and answered a prayer. Moses prayed, but he stammered, he wasn't eloquent, but he saved the nation. A little civil man I mentioned last night, or the night before, weighed about 110 pounds, and died at the ripe old age of 28, and left us one of the most fabulous records of praying, David Brainerd. You know, America has produced some of the greatest praying men in history. David Paton, the praying patient of Portland. Dr. V.M. Browns, as a young man, rose at four o'clock every morning, and when he got older and was nearly 80, he rose at three. His daughter wrote to me after I compiled a book of his prayers, and you should buy it because it's wonderful. I didn't write it, I merely compiled it. It's, it's, it's seven of his books put together in a book we call The Treasury of Prayer. And his daughter wrote to me and said, I'm glad you've done this work on my daddy's books. And she said, you know, as he got older, the older he got, the earlier he got up to pray. He knew how to pray in the Holy Ghost. Oh, I wish somehow we could, we could get some little groups of folk in our church and teach them, and men and women, to pray. We teach them to pray baseball. Man alive, you'd hardly believe. I, I was in a big college just a few months ago, and it had a very high saluting title, and I said, if you're, if your forefathers or your fathers 50 years ago knew that in this college where you have an emphasis on the fullness of the Spirit, you're engaged in competitive football and competitive baseball, and you said, never perish the whole thing. But they spend more time praying now than praying. One way to lose your vision is go to Bible school. You'll lose it all right, unless you're very careful. Because the program is so tight, and there's so much accent on this, and that, and the other, that there isn't too much concern about, about having the anointing of the Spirit. Paul sets off with his seven-league boots, if you like. Very wonderful man. He had nobody to finance him. He had no committee. He had no circular letters. But he was in constant communication with the Most High God, and God directed his steps. And in the course of, of the way that he went, you remember again, he came in 17 to the intellectual capital of the world, and they discovered that this little undersized Jew that wasn't too attractive, according to tradition, which is uncertain, I know. But when he got with the intellectuals and they began to reason, they found that he knew as much philosophy as they knew, he knew as much history as they knew, he knew as much of their poets as they knew. And they were amazed at his brilliance. But he didn't establish a church at Athens. There is no epistle of Paul to the Athenians. I say this man, on the Damascus road, when God met him, God revealed himself to him, and there in the wilderness, God revealed himself in him. I'm going to ask him one day what, what happened. He went to God's Bible school. And you can go there, it doesn't cost you a thing, except obedience. It's a rough school. He took Moses there for forty years. He took John Baptist there for twenty. He took Paul, the reddish bread in the world, there for about three and a half. It's called the university of silence. And God revealed himself in him. Now I don't know what happened altogether, but this I do know. He came out of that experience filled with the Holy Ghost. And for all his amazing life afterwards, you come outside five moments of his life and he backslid. Indeed, as he gets nearer to the goal, you'll find he quickens his pace and his passion. Everything that Jesus did, Paul did. Jesus raised the dead, Paul raised the dead. Jesus healed the sick, Paul healed the sick. Jesus is in violent opposition to the status quo, or as the kids would say today, the establishment, and so was the apostle Paul. And yet, after this most amazing ministry of his, after thirty years of supernatural, and like the good pastor, he didn't have a penny to his name. He didn't have a house. He had no creature comforts. He was more often in prison than in palaces. And yet after this most amazing anointing of the Spirit of God, miracle, and establishing churches against tremendous odds, and pulling down the strongholds of Satan, and yet as he gets nearer and nearer, he says, I'm still longing that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. You'd rather think he didn't know him when he'd done all those miracles. You'd rather think that he, when he'd established churches in ancient manner, against all the vast monolith of the day. Against the superstition and the false religion, that he would be pleading his service and say, well of course, I'm very glad to come your way, I can't stay many days, I'm, I'm booked solid for the next five years. How, how evangelists get booked solid for the next five years, I wouldn't know. Boy, I don't know God's will for tomorrow, never mind the next five years. Also, we should have, my dear wife and I should have gone away. Switzerland, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, even Brazil, Argentina. And you know, we've cancelled every invitation we have this year except this one. Now why we came here, I wouldn't know. I am going to talk on Satan next three mornings, and maybe the Lord brought me to teach Brother Jimmy, I don't know, but why, why, why we should come to this conference, I, I, I just wouldn't know. But the Lord must have something in it anyhow. But I may know him and the power of his resurrection. Do not, I believe, disagree if you like. I believe it's possible for a group of people in your church, three, four, five or six, I believe it's possible for God to get a nucleus that I would call a body, and the Holy Ghost to make that body spiritually pregnant. When Paul came out of Asia Minor, he was spiritually pregnant. All these epistles have been conceived in him. The epistle to the Romans, the epistle to the Philippians, the epistle to the Colossians, and what have you got, fourteen if you count Hebrews. They were all conceived in him by the Holy Ghost, because he got time to be alone with God. And listen, the dew never falls when there's any wind about. Now I'm not disagreeing with the evangelist, God bless you, he may disagree with me too. But you know, I never like people to break up a meeting and shake hands. Heavens, it's taken about six months to get them all settled down. Then you break them up and out of order, shake hands, and they start looking and saying, I'll see you after the meeting, and the minds are disengaged. I think when, these are the difficulties you have in preaching. First of all, you have to get people here physically. Secondly, you have to get them here mentally. And thirdly, you've got to get them in the spirit. And Paul had conceived in the Holy Ghost, he was pregnant spiritually. Not only pregnant because of these epistles, but he was going to give birth to these churches there. And some of them were in the very womb of the devil when he got the mind of God on them. And then you remember what else happened as a bonus? The Lord took him to heaven. I was in a conference a while ago, and a fellow came to me and he said, I've read some of your books. I said, well that's nice. And he said, did you ever read my wife's book? I said, no. What is it on? Cooking? Oh no, no, no, my wife's the woman that died and was in heaven for seven days. I said, where is she now? He said, she's at home. I said, she must be the most stupid woman in the world. What do you mean? My wife was in heaven for seven days. I said, look, once I get inside those telegates, Gabriel won't send me back to this dump. Brother, once I've got to that place where we're going to sit down with Abraham and with Isaac and with all the saints who informed their labors rest, and I can see Finny and Moody and all the others. Brother, you're not getting me back here. No sirree, not if you give me Cliff Barrows to lead my meetings and Billy Graham to write my notes. I'm, I'm not coming back to this dump. I'm just going to stay right up there in the glory. And, and you know, this all went to heaven. I wrote a book about it. The apostle Paul actually went to heaven and the Lord said, keep your mouth shut. That's the thing you'll never talk about. You're not to share it with anybody. Did God roll out a plan of the ages? I think he might have done. He might have shown the apostle the time when Jesus came at the incarnation and shown him the consummation. And maybe the apostle saw when all the clouds have rolled away and as we sing when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound. And he showed him Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords and all the nations bowing down to him and everything under his feet. And Christ going to reign forever and ever. And therefore Paul had the light in his eye and the passion in his soul. And I say he comes out of Ishmael spiritually pregnant, charged with the Holy Ghost. And no man was ever able to discourage him. Man, we talk about the things the Lord does for us and we lean on the Lord and all you need, if you get a headache, you've got to get an aspirin. But the apostle, remember, was lashed 195 times. One side a stone, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day in the deep, in weirdness, in fastings, in painfulness, in perils of the deep, in perils of mine own countrymen. And he stacks all these things to high heaven and you think he has no sense of humor. I think he has because when he got all those tribulations and distresses and adversities and the tearing of his spirit and the troubling of his mind and demons forsake him and the revival thought he broke up because he was going too fast. And then he says my life affliction, which is but for a moment. Now, what do you think of that? If that isn't humor, what is? This man had something, you put him in prison and you can't starve it out of him. He was pickled in the Mediterranean for 36 hours and the waves couldn't wash it out of him. They put him to a post and they tried to lash him and they couldn't lash it out of him. Why? Because God put it in him. Some years ago at Harvard University there was a very brilliant professor. He wrote a book on varieties of religious experience, which until recently cost ten dollars. You can get it in paperback now for about a dollar fifty. When Professor James had earned four doctorates here and then they were not given to him. He was a doctor of, a doctor of philosophy. He was a medical doctor. He was a doctor of psychology and I forget the fourth, but he had four doctorates. And in the very middle of his life, in the prime of life, his body began to sail. His shoulders began to stoop. His feet wouldn't go as he wanted them. And he suffered along as a young man. People like to ask obvious questions. And somebody said one day, would you like to be cured? And he said, sure I would. Well, well then what you should do, you should go to a certain doctor in Vienna. And he took the slow boat as they had seventy more years ago and he went to Vienna. And when he got there, the professor said, I'm sorry I don't have the answer. You came too far. You just go back to Berlin. He got to Berlin. They said you came too far. Go to Paris. He went to Paris. They said you're on the wrong side of the channel. Go to London. He went to Harley Street. And the professor said, you're at the wrong place. Take a train 400 miles to Edinburgh and meet a specialist. And he met him and the specialist said, sorry but there's no cure for the disease you have. And so he took a boat back to the States. He was tempted to jump overboard. But he made it back to Boston. He was going down the street and a man came and looked at him and said, excuse me, I believe you're Professor James. And he said, that's right. And he said, would you, are you feeling better? No. Would you like to be healed? Well, certainly. Well, he said, just go down the street into the next block and knock on the door at number so and so and tell the man I sent you. Is he a doctor? No. Is he a psychologist? No. Is he a scientist? No. Is he a very learned man? No. Well, why do I go to him? Because he has the answer. He went and knocked at the door. A little old man came. A man whose hands were roughly tall. He looked at the professor and said, I've seen your picture in the paper. You're a professor, I think, at the university. That's right, he said. Well, why do you come to me? Well, because, he said, I, I, I understand you, you've got the cure. Come in, Professor. The man gave him a chair that wasn't very pretty and he said, look, I don't know who sent you here. I have no skill. I have no medical knowledge. But sometimes when I pray for people who are sick, God has healed them. And if you'd like to kneel down there on that chair, I'll, I'll, I'll, launch your head with oil and I'll pray for you. Oh, Professor James said, my medical experience said, don't be stupid, what can a few drops of oil on your head do? And my psychology said, this is unreasonable. And my pride said, get out of the door. But he said, my crippled condition said, why don't you risk it? And so he said, I got my weary bones and I knelt down at that chair and he said, the man hadn't very polished English and he was so nervous because I was a famous man and he was nobody. And I could feel his hands shaking on my head and he said afterwards, look, I, I, I don't have any answers. I can't explain it medically, psychologically, intellectually. I don't know the answer, but this I do know, that when that man put his hands on me and he just said in simple language that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is able to deliver you and it's the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, quicken your mortal body, you'll be delivered. And he said it was just as though he turned about a hundred thousand volts of electricity and something went through my body and I jumped up and said, I'm healed. I'm healed. I don't know why, I don't know how. How did he do it? I didn't do it. Who did it? God did it. His Son was risen from the dead with all power. He touched you. It wasn't my hands, he touched you. And the professor said, you think I've been going around the world, spending a fortune. I went over to Europe, I went to Vienna, I went to Berlin, I went to Paris, I went to London, I went away there in Scotland to Edinburgh, and once it was just one block away from where I'm living. You know that's pretty true of the world, this sick world that we're living in. After two World Wars, after World War I we, we built a palace at Geneva. And the one thing that you mustn't let people do is think. That's why we have radio programs 24 hours a day to brainwash us so you won't think. Somebody asked Albert Schweitzer just before he died, what's wrong with modern man? And he said he can't think. I don't think that's his problem. It isn't that he can't think, he won't think. We have the United, have the League of Nations, nothing happened. We have the United Nations, we're in as big a mess as ever. We've tried psychology, we've tried education, we've tried new philosophies, we've tried to resize God's program, we've tried to change God's word, and yet just as, just as a few places from where he was in his sickness, they've been around the world looking for the answer, there was the answer just a block away. And the poor sick world tonight needs what? It needs the thing you and I sang about at the beginning of this meeting, it needs the old rugged cross, so despised by the world. And so when Paul comes here to the Corinthians, he says look, I'm not coming to you with enticing words of man's wisdom. I'm not going to do a theological juggling act. I'm not going to try and lose you in the profound ramifications of theology, though he could be desperately profound at times. But he said, I've come to you in Corinthians, you have what need. I'm going to put the flag of Jesus Christ down in the debris, down in the wreckage, down in the slavery, down in the immorality, down in the devilry. And God breathed there in that area of Corinth, and he established the Church of Jesus Christ. And the old German commentator Meyer, Meyer says this blessed and sublime miracle of God, that in all the corruption of Corinth you could lay the foundation of the empire of Jesus. Paul did it, he did it because he knew how to travail in birth. I don't believe any preacher living, Graham or you or me or anybody else, I don't believe any right to preach on you must be born again unless you've travelled that people can be born again. And Paul travelled in birth, he said. You've got ten thousand instructors in Christ, but he said you've only one father. I haven't forgotten you. He establishes this church. He writes this epistle when they've been converted, I guess, for about two years. And he makes a tremendous diagnosis here. He claims in this chapter that he's a wise master builder. He claims in this chapter he's a good husbandman. I make a third claim, he's a good diagnostician. I thought what is beautiful, more beautiful than a baby. I was preaching in the great Methodist church in Dublin, opposite the Abbey Theatre there. I let a preacher of that conference, was a man by the name of Leonard Evans, a licensed Methodist preacher. And I'll never forget how he startled the congregation one night. He said I'm thirty-five years of age. I went to school, high school, college. I had a large number of trophies as a sportsman. And he said thirty-five years ago in a little Welsh town called, if I remember right, the strange name of Farnese. Thirty-five years ago my mother was walking over the square, going to hospital. Another lady crossed the square and they turned and looked at each other. And one said, the other one said, hi, oh Mrs. Evans. And Mrs. Evans says, Gwyneth, you're going to have a baby. Say, which hospital? And she said, which hospital? And she said, look, when your baby's born, send me a note. Tell me whether it's a boy or a girl, and what colour hair it has, and all the rest of it. You know all the things they say about babies. Half of it's guesswork, but anyhow, it sounds all right. I think sometimes women get away with it too much, you know. I remember when our baby, first little boy was born, he's a missionary in Brazil now. You know, you see a little baby there, it has no teeth, it has no hair, it has no sense, and somebody says, isn't it like its father? If you said, isn't it like its grandfather, I wouldn't be too bad, but I happen to be a grandfather right now too. But here you've got two little scones of human life, and nobody knows what's going to happen with this wonderful little child. It's beautiful. And Leonard Evans said, I was in born, and my mother sent a note to the hospital. I got a little boy, I'm going to call him Leonard, and this is the colour of his hair, and these are the colour of his eyes, and he weighs so much, and he's so long, he's a marvellous little baby. She got a note back about four days after I have a little boy, and he's so long, and he's this, and he's that, and the other. Now said Leonard Evans, I'm preaching to you in this fine Methodist church, the boy that was born four days after I was born is still lying on the bed where his mother took him thirty-five years ago. It's true that he's six foot two in length, but she does the things for him today, she did the day she brought him from hospital. He's grossly retarded. His mother has been a slave. He's never been an asset, he's a liability. Now Paul says to these people, I came to you, and when I come I find that you're dead. For two years you've been staying in this protracted infancy. He expected to find people in God's infancy, fighting the fight of faith. They weren't in the infancy, they were in the infancy. Most of our churches today are not armories, where people put on the whole armour of God, they're not armories, they're nurseries. The pastor is a babysitter. He has to feed you with milk and not with meat. He has to be very careful, because if you offend that lady, you know, she wouldn't give five dollars a week to the offering that she does. And if you offend that man up there, he's a deacon. He's not full of the Holy Ghost, he's full of money in his own opinion, but he's a good guy in the church anyhow. And so you've got to keep him, and look after him, you know. Oh brother, wouldn't that be awful if we offended a man like that. Now that's not a deacon walking out, he's a preacher, so don't be thinking he's a deacon. But the day in which we're living, we've got a nursery on our hands. He makes a diagnosis, he says, what's the reason that you haven't grown in grace? You should have on the whole armour of God now. You should be resisting the devil, instead of that he kicks you this way, he kicks you the other. And he makes a diagnosis, he says, here's the trouble, this is why you're not mature and grown up. You know what he says in the middle of his wonderful fourteenth chapter to the Corinthians, the same epistle. He says, when I became a man, there is a conscious movement out of infancy into maturity. It wasn't some legal or Jewish transaction. There's a day when he knew he'd come into the fullness of a blessing, and God had anointed him, and after that he needed no more amusement. God figures, our churches need so much amusement. As I said last night in the early church, they were all amazed. In our church they're all amused. You see little things in the church calendar there, come next Friday night, we're going to have a wiener roast. Well boy, you need the Holy Ghost for a wiener roast, or it falls flat. You imagine the Apostle Paul saying, I was coming to you people at Carthus for a wiener roast, I'm sorry I couldn't make it. You wonder the kids in church don't want our religion, we praise it. We have to be amused. Come for food and fun and tell us it. So we have a lot of silly things, and we sprinkle it with a bit of prayer and thank you for it. And when you've done it, it's still caramel anyhow. He makes a diagnosis, and he says the reason that you're not mature is because you're caramel. And then he diagnoses caramelity. He says there is among you envy and strife and division. Envy is internal, strife is external, and division is internal. Envy. Marcus Aurelius, you remember him, the famous artist, says that he read 167 books in Greek and Hebrew. I read it, 167 scholars trying to find the answer to this monster that is within me called envy. But there is no answer. Well there is, but it's crucifixion. How many of our churches today are divided by envy, and jealousy, and bickering. And you pray for your children, and then you sit around the table and criticize the pastor and everybody else. And the kids go to bed and say, hey boy, I don't know my dad's religion anyhow. There is among you envy and strife and divisions. Are you not caramel, Marcus man? You say then what do you mean you believe after man is born again there's something in him called caramelity. Yes in most cases, I don't think it should be. I think if we really preached regeneration according to the Bible, that a man would put off the old man and everything else when he was really born again. If he's really baptized into the body of Christ, all the evil would be put out. After all salvation is more than forgiveness. Little Mary Jane has a queen dress on and she says, mother says now don't spoil it, I'm going upstairs to get changed. And little Mary runs after the cat and she falls down and she's all muddy and she comes in and says she's sorry and she weeps. And she says, mommy will you forgive me? And mommy says yes I'll forgive you. And she bends down and kisses her. And little Mary Jane dries her tears and she smiles. Her mother's forgiven her. But has forgiveness taken the dirt out of the dress? She needs more than forgiveness, she needs cleansing. We live in a day when people are more disturbed if you talk about holiness than if you talk about sinfulness. Christianity is not a sinning religion, it's a victorious religion. One lady said to my late friend Dr. R. R. Brown, you know, he said you have a favorite text. She said yes I have a favorite text. I like that the word in John 1 that says when we sin we have an advocate. He said just a minute. What version says that? Well it must be the reverse version because there's no other that says it. It doesn't say when we sin we have an advocate, it says if we sin. If you said to a person if you really get born again you don't need to sin until you die. They'd be astounded, they'd throw the pew at you. You see we live in such a sinning, repenting, most of us could be as good as we're Mohammedans as we are with our profession of Christianity. What did Jesus say to the woman in adultery? Go and sin less. I heard a man say not long ago he said you know I'm only just a wicked converted sinner. I'm a saved sinner. That is logical of saying I'm a married bachelor. That's like me telling you I have a friend who's an honest thief. And I know another man who's a truthful liar. You'd say well look you're fooling around with words. A man is either a truthful or liar. He's either honest or a thief. A woman is pure or adulterous. Well by the same token how do you make it up that a man can sin and sin and sin and sin? What's the difference between a sin committed by a believer and a sin committed by a man who is an unbeliever? Oh I know the old argument you know God looks at me through Jesus Christ. Well where's that in the bible? Oh somebody passed it on. One evangelist got it and traded it. That's not what the bible says. If there's one thing that God hates it's sin. And we'll never get God used to our sinning. Jesus didn't go through the hell of Gethsemane and the agony of the cross to make us sinning repenting believers. He went to the cross in order that he might destroy the works of the devil and that we might become the habitation of God. Well then somebody says there's an old nature here and a new one at the side of it. Well come on give me a scripture for it. No not because it's baptism. I mean somebody's theology. Uh who told you that? Oh I was reading a famous preacher. Forget the preacher what does the word of God. The word of God says that in Ezekiel I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Not I'll put a heart of flesh at the side of a stony heart. There's a constant warfare. Oh now I know we'll get confused and I I better wait till Friday night and talk about it. But you see we we so often mix human nature with carnal nature. Now you can get any experience you like. You can be sanctified 10 times over or receive a baptism of the spirit every weekend if you want but you'll still be a human being. And you don't have one appetite whether you're six or 60 that God will ever take out of your body including sex. All he will do is purify the appetite. Not destroy it. Now this is a Quaker meeting isn't it Clare? Uh the the the the apostle says that you'll come and there is among you ending and strife and divisions and you come and walk with me. Now look I'll tell you what to do. Since you're plenty of time. Read the seventh chapter of Romans the battleground of the theologians for a couple of thousand years. And take a pencil and and and as you read it go through Romans chapter 7 and take a pencil and every time you come to that one small little word there uh you know I I I. It's a great word isn't it? I I I. Put a mark under it. Oh man it's it's it's quite exciting to read that chapter. Oh really I should say I guess it's distressing. That which I do I allow not. That I would that I do that do I not. But what I hate that I do if then I do that I would not. I consent to a law. Oh boy how many I's. It's all I I I I. You see Romans 7 is a third centered chapter. Now when you've read through and you've marked all the I's go through with another colored pencil and mark how many times the Holy Spirit is mentioned and you won't have any problems because he is not mentioned once. Romans 7 is a funeral bird. Romans 8 is a wedding march. Romans 7 about 32 times he says I I I and no Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 8 19 times the Holy Spirit is mentioned and there is no I except in verses uh what uh 18 I think and 38. I reckon and I'm persuaded. You see in Romans 7 it's sin centered, self-centered and in Romans chapter 8 it's Christ centered. Oh now now what does Paul say at the end of Romans 7? Paul says at the end of Romans 7 after he has uh talked about his experience which in my judgment is before ever he was converted and he says woefully he says oh wretched man that I am. He says woe is me I am done. I'm done. He says it is not I. This battle is not I. It's sin that has dominion over me. All right. But I heard Campbell Morgan preach a most eloquent moving sermon once on the holiness aspect of the Christian life and he took us up to heaven and then at the end he said but remember even to his dying day Paul was saying oh wretched man. That's a lie. He wasn't saying it to his dying day. It's a lie on the cross of Jesus Christ. If the cross of Jesus Christ has not dealt with our past sins and can deal with the sin in us then Christianity is painful. All right hold on with it. Hold on with one hand. It is not I but sin that dwelleth in me. Now let me take you here. I rush into Paul's room. They're going to chop his head off tomorrow and he's very happy about it. He isn't crying on anybody's shoulder. He says boy it's going to be a great day tomorrow. They're going to chop my head off. I'm going to see the one I've wanted to see for about 35 years. I'm going to see Christ. And I said just before you go on behalf of all the Christians that ever lived or ever will live. Paul I want to thank you for your amazing dedication to Christ. For all the epistles you have written. For your example of suffering, your fortitude, your faith, your fight. Now I'm after Jesus Christ. You're the greatest person that ever lived. He says please, please don't say that anymore. Look at all the churches across Asia Minor. Look at all the thousands of letters you've written, words you've written. By the way Paul are you still nursing carnality and bitterness and failure and weakness? Are you still saying it is not I, it's sin that dwelleth in me. You know what he says? He doesn't say it's not I that sin that dwelleth in me. He says it's not I, it's Christ that liveth in me. You can't have both. You can have one or the other but not both. Let me suggest this and read the 32nd chapter in the book of Deuteronomy sometime when you're quiet. And there you'll discover the Lord says that he, he despises two things that have contrasting natures. It says that you can't plow a field with an ox and an ass. Why? Well because you can't get a yoke. They'll tear each other's necks when they're walking. No, no, no, no that's not it. You can't plow with an ox and ass for the simple reason that one is a clean animal and the other is an unclean animal. It says a couple of stanzas verses further down that you can't sow two kinds of seeds in the field because one will strangle the other. And then it says the priest of the most high God ministering at the temple, at the altar, he cannot wear a garment that has any wool in it. He must wear a kosher garment. He must wear a garment that is all linen right from his toes. Why? Why do you wear wool? Well you wear wool so you'll be warm. And if you get too warm what happens? Oh you perspire. You perspire. Sure. But there's another old-fashioned word that's a bit easier on us. It says you sweat. So if you don't say that if you've been to college you say you perspire. Well you'll go to Penny's tomorrow and say, and the lady says what do you want? You say I want two perspiration shirts for my husband. And she'll look at you as very crazy. Say I want two sweatshirts. But man never sweat until the curse came upon him. And when the priest was ministering holy things he must not perspire. He must not sweat. He cannot have a garment that has a mixture of wool and linen. It must be pure linen. They lit the tabernacle in the wall, the temple of the tabernacle, the temple of it, with lamps that had what in them? They had oil. What kind of oil? You say olive oil. No sir, pure olive oil. The desk was overlaid with gold. It wasn't. It was overlaid with pure gold. We live in a day when you can get by with almost anything these days in the church of the living God. But God is still a God of purity. In that amazing psalm, where the psalmist says, where brethren grow together in unity, there the Lord commandeth the blessing. And it's like the oil that was put upon the head of the priest, and notice what it says, the oil put upon his head and it came down his face. No, no, no, no it didn't. What did he come down? It came down his beard. And then from his beard where did it go? It came onto his garment. And where did it go from the garment? It went onto the floor. The sanctifying oil never touched the flesh, the corruption. God never sanctifies corruption. You say, Lord, I'd like you to clean me up a bit. And Lord, help me with my temper. He won't help you with your temper. He should put it to death. He should put your pride to death. He should put your prayerlessness to death. But he doesn't do a repair job. It is not I, it's sin that dwelleth in me. No, no, no, it is not I, it's Christ that liveth in me. You know why? Because he says in Galatians 2.20, that marvelous, marvelous much-quoted verse of the apostle, he remembers the day when Paul the apostle went to the cross. And he says in Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, and yet not I, it is Christ. His will have been swallowed up like two streams coming down the side of a mountain, and then they become one. I like the hymn written by Edwin Hatch, the old English hymn writer. Breathe on me breath of God. Breathe on me breath of God. And then at the end of one stanza he says, until with thee I will one will. You see some of us want God to help us on certain levels, but not others. And I emphasize again by saying what God is wanting in 1969 is the complete takeover of human personalities. And listen, brother, you better be careful. Because God might interfere with your fishing program and your hunting program. And you might discover when you get to the judgment seat you've spent more days hunting than you've spent hours praying. And God doesn't give you rewards for shooting deer. Or catching fish. Or playing golf. You've got to make up your mind, this one thing I do. I'd have done a burnout for God, or couldn't let somebody else do the job. I was preaching, and let me finish with this. Preaching with a very fine preacher in a conference a few years ago. There used to be a great preacher in America by the name of Pettingill. You remember Dr. Pettingill? He wrote a number of books. This good man bought a lot of books that dear old Pettingill had left behind when he died. And Pettingill said, way out in Arkansas, some people here from Arkansas I guess, and he said when he was a young man, that was somewhere in the last century, some people lived out there homesteading away in the wild. A young couple got quite a big acreage, and they had quite a ranch. And one day suddenly the young man died, and his wife was terrified. Here she was out on the back of the ranch. This was going to cause a lot of complications, but well that's what she could do about it. She asked the fellow who was passing to call up the undertakers, and the undertaker came along. And he said to the undertaker, now look, I'm not short of money, and I don't care what it costs. We have only been married about three or four years, and I love George very much. He's dead, but I want you to embalm him, and we're going to put his best suit on him, and I want you to prop him in a chair in the front room there, in the dining room. And I want you to come every month and attend to his body, and so there's no smell or any sense of decay. You look, and now I'll pay you, you just do this. And he said all right. And then she remembered she got another problem. She had to admit her husband was dead, and she had to deal with the estate, and so he sent for a lawyer. But by this time she had dug a hole at the back of the house, and put a mound of dirt, and a cross on it, and some old flower. And she said maybe you'd like to see where George is buried, and he said he would, and she took him out. The lawyer came, coming back, it was a big estate, and he had been coming for about nine months, and he began to feel quite an interest in this lovely widow. And one day he asked her for a paper, and she said she didn't have it. Oh yes, maybe I do. And she went in the, in the room there, and she was quite a while, and he went, and he looked through the crack in the door, and he said no. Can't be. He's buried. I saw his grave. That looks awfully like him, sitting at the end of the dining room table. But I better not say anything. He went two or three other times, and finally one day he popped the question to her, and said you know I'm, I'm very interested in you, and I, I believe I love you, and I'd like to marry you. I have plenty of money, and so forth, and so on. And she said well I've got interested in you, and I would accept your proposal. I, I think we could, you'd be happy to live out here I suppose, on this ranch. And she, he said I would. And he said well now there's just one thing. When you went in the room about three months ago, I went up behind you, and I, I looked through the crack in the door, and it seems to me that sitting at the end of your dining room table, your former husband is there. George is sitting there isn't he? And she went very wide, and she said yes. Yeah that's, that's, that's my husband. Well darling he said I, I, my proposal for marriage stands, but I want to tell you something. As you know my name is George too, but I want to tell you something. Before the new George comes in this house, the old man has to go out. Unreasonable? I don't think so. You see Paul says these people are immature, they're babes. What's a babe's main interest? It's self. Children are easily offended aren't they? They're very touchy. There's no sense of values, in money, in any other thing. Isn't this true of so many people in the spiritual realm? Do you know what Dr. Arthur Pink, the great expositor of New Testament books said, before he died? He said I believe the greatest weapon that Satan ever made in this world, to destroy the power of the Christian, is what? You'd never guess, the automobile. Because he said when we were children, if you wanted to go see Aunt Mary up the road, she lived 40 miles away, and you had to get in a buggy, and it took you a day to get there, and then you stayed a day or two, and it took a day to come back. But now you get on the highway, you're there in 25 minutes, and you can stay here for two or three hours, and talk, and come back. And it's destroyed so much Bible meditation, so much prayer. We're so childish. We want to be interested. We're so selfish. The child is filled with its own opinions. It's concerned about itself, and it won't play with you today, and it's upset about something else. It has no value of money. And this chronic condition ruins the church of a living God, I believe, in the day in which we're living. And the only answer is this. That I come as Paul came, not merely through the cross to get an answer for the problem of my sins, but to come with this thing that again we call theologically, maybe carnality. Put it in a simple word, if you like, selfishness. Wanting my own way in this. Preferring a newspaper to my Bible. Preferring a sporting event to a half day or a half night of prayer. Being upset because I don't get my right place in the church. If Paul came tonight would he say the same thing? Does the Spirit say that to you tonight, that you're carnal, you've got enmity, you've got pride, you've got jealousy, you're touchy, you're easily upset. You don't fight the battles of the Lord. Babies don't fight battles, they want bottles. You don't carry any burden. You don't put a burden on the back of the babe. Maybe when you're preaching, or when I preach, you say, well I don't understand what you mean by having a burden of the Lord. I don't understand what you mean by maybe taking two or three days off in prayer and fasting. I don't know what you mean about wrestling against principalities and powers, but you will when you grow up. You will when God removes that carnality, and the Spirit of the living God takes entire possession of your personality. And instead of living a self-centered life, you live a spirit-centered life. And I'll tell you this, when I finish with this word, as Tozer said, no man ever got through with the Holy Ghost and didn't know it. No sir. Once you go to that cross and get put to death, whatever aspect needs to be put to death, once that thing is put to death and the Holy Ghost takes the monopoly of your life, you'll be a totally transformed personality. And you'll be able to say with Paul, it is not I, it's Christ that liveth in me. Shall we pray? Father we thank you tonight for this privilege of fellowship together. I guess there are many of us here tonight, Lord, who are tired of watching a sick church in a dying world. And yet many of us would have to confess our own spiritual life is sick tonight. We're so feeble. We have no strength to carry the burden of the Lord. We have no strength to fight the fight of faith. We want others to carry the burden and we want to bear no marks in our body. We don't want to be branded spirit, soul, and body, or our hands and our feet and our minds for the living God. Oh God I pray tonight that some will be so desperate to get liberation from bondage of carnality, but whatever it may cost they'll say yes to thee. And believe me for cleansing tonight and for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to ask you to keep your heads bowed a moment and ask Brother Jim Robertson to close the meeting.