In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of spending quality time with God. He references Moses spending 80 days and nights alone with God on Mount Sinai, highlighting the significance of fellowship with God. The speaker laments the lack of time Christians dedicate to studying the Bible, attributing their weakness to this neglect. He emphasizes that true peace and strength can be found through the Word of God and encourages listeners to prioritize it in their lives.

I remember way back there in 1971, in December of 1971 when the crusade was on here in Winnipeg, Bill McLeod was our speaker, and God the Holy Spirit moved in a mighty way, and in my own heart as well. I remember those years, and we don't look back at that time as that being the ultimate, that was the beginning of something that God wanted to do. And it all began in Bill McLeod's church in the city of Saskatoon, and spread throughout the other parts of Canada. Since that time, for the past 18 years, Brother Bill has been traveling full time in the interest of revival throughout this country, and not only in this country, but throughout the world. And it is a great privilege that I have now of introducing our speaker tonight, Brother Bill McLeod. He'll be going several days before I get there to sort of prepare the churches, there are five or six French churches going together for these revival meetings, and I know it's going to be a real blessing to have Brother Don go there a little early, and prepare things, and he'll stay for several days, possibly a week after the meetings are over, to work again with the people who have responded in those meetings. I know that some of you people pray for us on a regular basis. Somebody told me just before the meeting tonight they did that. We appreciate it very, very much, and think of the first two weeks of April, and ask God to really bless his people in Quebec. You know, Quebec is one of the meatiest mission fields in the world, but we don't think it is because it's in North America. It's far meatier than any Central American country, far meatier. And very little has been done there in the past. Now the province is open to the gospel, but the laborers are very, very few. And we need to be praying that God will move on the hearts of many people to become pastors, evangelists, and so on, church planters in the province of Quebec. While we're praying for that, let's not forget to pray for Easter Europe. That's been suggested already. I think we get excited about it. We thank God for it. We think it's a great thing, and often that's as far as it ever goes. I think we ought to be praying daily, and as often as God brings this to our mind and attention, praying for a great, a deep and powerful work to be done in Romania and Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Poland, East Germany. And then in some of these communist countries that haven't yet filled it up, you know, like Albania. Albania is the only country in the world that's declared themselves officially on a government level to be totally atheistic. Not even Russia did that. They say, we're not reforming. Well, God can change that. We should be praying for Albania. It's an extremely moody and a cold, hard country. What about Cuba? Why, Castro says, they're not going to reform either. Well, God can change His mind in a hurry. Let's pray for Cuba. Let's pray for North Korea. Let's pray for Vietnam. Some of these countries that haven't really responded yet to what God is doing. I think God really wants to do this around the world, not only in communist lands, but in Buddhist countries, Hindu countries, Muslim countries. And we need to be informed, dear people. We need to be praying. We need to get behind any honest effort to take Bibles or send keys and so on to these particular countries at this time. There's a power vacuum in all these countries, and it isn't going to be there forever. We don't know what will happen down the road. That's why we need to be praying constantly for God to overrule, because no doubt at all, Satan's got other plans to try and get these people from the frying pan into the fire. And that'll happen unless the Church of God here in North America and other countries are awake and alert to what Satan's trying to do and what God wants to do. There are a couple of portions of the Scripture. You don't have your Bible open. I see a few Bibles around, but not too many, from Jeremiah chapter 23 and then from 1 Peter chapter 1. Jeremiah 23, 23. Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can he hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him, says the Lord? Do not I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord? I heard what the prophet said. The prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yes, they are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts who think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers have forgotten my name for theirs. The prophet that has a dream, let him tell a dream. And he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chance to the weak, says the Lord? Is not my word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Then I want to read from 1 Peter chapter 1. For seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides forever. For all flesh is as grass, nor the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereof falls away. But the word of the Lord endures forever, and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. If so be you accasted that the Lord is gracious, whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious. You also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. ...on your word, punctuated because we are nearing, as we all know, the end of the age. My prayer to St. Imla and the lying prophets back in the days of King Ahab, good example, what was going on then, or Elijah, with the prophets of Baal and the prophets of the gulf, 850 false prophets seducing the nation of Israel, raised up by Satan, and one man of God to answer this need, Elijah. In Jeremiah chapter 23, there were prophets, many false prophets, in the days when God had Jeremiah. And these men were constantly criticizing what he talked and said, and criticizing him personally. Matter of fact, Jeremiah said, everybody in the nation curses me. They're hurting him because he was standing for God and truth and righteousness, and one of the things these false prophets were doing was constantly referring to all the dreams they had. And God said, you're causing my people to err by your lies and by your lightness. There was no light to these people. It's written that Pharaoh, king of Egypt, he was just a noise, just a big noise. And these prophets were something like that, just a noise. There was nothing to them. They were as light as the air. But they were getting a lot of attention because they were telling the people things the people wanted to hear. And they would talk things out of the deceit of their own hearts. Now, there's so much said in the Old Testament regarding this, and I don't want to spend much time on this, just to refresh your minds, because we see it, of course, going on even today. And the wheat and the pears will grow together until the harvest when Christ comes back. Then the angels will make a separation between the wheat and the pears, and the wheat will be taken to the god barn and the pears will be burned. I mean, Jesus told us that in Matthew chapter 13, and we know this from other scriptures in Revelation as well. The kingdoms of this world are desiring to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. That day is coming, and we need to be thinking about it, praying for it. It's right to pray, that kingdom come. It's a good prayer to pray. Satan's day is just about it. The nations who are angry will sit over there in Revelation, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that God should give reward to His servants the prophets and to those who fear His name, small and great, and should destroy those who corrupt the earth. If that not, that we've corrupted the air and the water and the soil, it's far worse that we've corrupted the minds of man. And when God's day is actually in, all of this will end. In Matthew chapter 13, the Lord Jesus Christ indicated that when He came back, He would send the angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they would dry clean the world. Now, it doesn't use that exact phrase, but it says they would gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, all scandals, one translation says, anything that causes sin will be taken out of the world by the angels of God, and those who commit sin will be taken out of the kingdom of God by the angels of God, and it says, then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their fathers. The dreams and visions that they were having purportedly from God, and they were basing their authority on the dreams and the visions that they had. He that has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? The dreams and visions are chaff, the word of God is the wheat. And there's a parallel even today, because sometimes as Christians we get all caught up in this, you know, dreams and visions, and so on, and we neglect the word of God. Dreams and visions, I do not deny that, but I don't think we speak nearly as frequently this way as some people are saying. I've talked to people who tell me they have dreams and visions almost every day of the week. This particular time was the law of Moses' five books. God only appeared to King Solomon twice in 40 years. Dreams and prances all the time. Now back in Jonathan Edwards' day, it's really interesting, there were all kinds of people back in his day, there was a great revival moving on, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitfield, and so on, and many, many people were talking about, you know, having prances and visions of God. You know what Jonathan Edwards said? He said not more than 3% were genuine. The word of God is not 3%, it's 100% genuine. We can stand on it and be positive about it. I don't know how he ever did it, but he did. Besides praying 4 hours a day, 2 hours by himself, and an hour with his wife, and so on, and sometimes praying with other people, he read the Bible through 100 times while on his knees. In the Holy Spirit, he said, I learned more in 3 months than I've learned in 4 years. That is, he brought us to the birth by the word of truth. Now we should be a kind of first proof of thank you, rise unto salvation, to faith which is in Christ Jesus. You want to get saved? The Bible will sure show you how. It will work that miracle in your heart. We read in 1 Peter 1, being born again, not a corruptible seed, but an incorruptible by the will of God, which lives and abides forever. If my need is to be born again, to be saved, I can have that experience by the will of God. So clear, so there's no more sin. We just sort of put up with a low level, a low standard, and we get more or less satisfied with that, instead of coming up to God's standards in the Bible. Again, B, you want to stop sinning? Then get into the Bible, begin to read it. Read a chapter a day, read 5 chapters, read 10 chapters a day. You know what the kings of Israel, they were required, Deuteronomy 17, they were required to handwrite a copy of the Law of Moses, so their hearts wouldn't be lifted up above their breadwinners. 10 and some, by the time you're 7 or 8, they know the entire Quran off by heart. They will not read any further in the Bible than they are currently willing to obey. If they read something, hey, I'm not doing this, if it takes three months, they will not read any further than that verse, until the verses master them, and we're able to say, now I'm doing that. Then you read on. No wonder they have Puerto Revival in their churches, I can understand. Since Christian college and seminary, 8 years training back there, he was in a secular job. I asked him why. He said, well, I came to go and preach because I don't have a clean heart. Well, I said, you can have a clean heart. Oh, he said, show me how. You know, Christ said, now you are clean to the word which I have spoken of you. How do I get a clean heart? I get it through the word of God. Individually, collectively, in Ephesians chapter 5, Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. It's the word of God that cleanses churches and cleanses individuals. It's unique. And they're reading this all the time. And the message they get is often blurred and slurred. It's unclear. They really don't know where we're at. We have different gods than they have. The only difference is we baptize ours and they have them baptize theirs. Another thing, and the rest of God so often just languishes, because God's people who have it, they've got so much glue on their fingers, it never gets away. It may be a million or three million dollars. Lord, I'll be sure to give you ten thousand. Do you want to be revived? Expose yourself to the Bible. Take some kind of a revival, small or great, in your life. David said, For with them you have revived me. I don't know if the new English has got some missionary, somebody to translate it from, I don't really know. But anyway, here's what he said. I went through your crusade in Mendoza. I listened to all those hundreds of Bible verses you gave us and it rolled off me like water off a rock. He said, it didn't do a thing for me. But he said, the other night, God woke me up in the middle of the night and he told those hundreds of Bible verses that we just had to understand their teachings and it poured through my heart over and over for hours. And he said, I was powerfully, powerfully revived. He started the words of the living God. And the word of God has been weakened and perverted in our days, even by some who profess to be his friends. Because they've discovered it has a fantastic insight into human nature. Why? Because God gave us this book. The wealthiest countries in the world. Why did God give that to us? That country is the most beautiful country in this country. And he said, now I'm in Canada. How is that beautiful? The Lake Country in the north. The Maritimes west of Canada. I don't think the job is over yet. He issued a proclamation to those people in the state to take a certain Sunday as the day for and it started to rain right after they had that same day and night and it rained for 2,000 weeks day and night. And I was there shortly after. It was like the garden of Eden. Everything was so green and beautiful and lush. So I contacted the Premier of Manitoba and told him what they did down in Fort Smith and suggested to do the same thing here. I got a flight note saying, well, the people don't know how to pray. They're probably praying anyway about the rain. That's enough. They did. They believed in God for it and also praying, Lord, what would you have me to do? How should I be involved? Everybody's got to get involved in some fashion or way. Maybe I feel that I wish and I mean the judgment of God's mouth. That's the word of God. God's judgment, God's word, God's way through the world. Seven times a day he prayed God for the word of God. You ever do that? You want to get joyful, get into the Bible. Sometimes I'm reading the Bible and just have to close it and spend a while praising the Lord because it's true that God brought to my heart. Joy, peace, you get it through the Bible, my friend. And that's really what we need is to expose ourselves to the word of God. Let it work. You know, we rush to it like a fox chasing a rabbit or something. You know, they said the average Christian reads his Bible the way some people pull a garden. They do such a good job of sticking to God so when they come back next day they'll know where they left off. We run away someone said to a chapter of the Bible and thank God that's over for another day. Instead of looking at the Bible as being God's word to my heart today. Lord, what do you want me to do? God, what do you want to say? Speak to my heart. Never read the Bible as a prayer somewhere along those lines. And God will respond to that. He just loves to answer people who are truly concerned about his word. Joy, peace, love. Most Christians say, oh, I wish I had more. Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that loves not knows not God for God is love. Listen, can I ask a personal question? If you had to get to heaven on that basis would you make it? A lot of Christians would never make it on that basis. He that loves not knows not God. That's what God said. He that loves not not God. He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not not God. He that loves not knows God. He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not He that loves He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not knows not God. He that loves not not God. He that loves not knows not God. loves not knows not God. He that loves not knows God. He that He that and finding your safe thing with all your heart. I remember reading about a kid, two months ago, dying and he said, hey mom, Uncle Joe went forward tonight, he won't get saved. And she said, how do you know? Oh, well, when he prayed, he only got down in one knee. Down in one knee, but I think we know what the kid meant. He wasn't really to the point yet where he was seeking God with all his heart. And that's one of our greatest problems, I suppose. We go so far, not all the way, hold back, see if we can sort of call us God and get God into our mold and make him come out looking like the kind of God we want to have. Not a God that's going to demand anything of us, but a God that's going to fill our pockets with money, keep us in good health all the time. There's a great book called Coping, it's about people like Amy Carmichael who spent 20 years in bed, and Susanna Sturgeon's wife, she spent 20 years in bed, and Sturgeon himself, the last 20 years of his life, marvelously used of God, prayed for the sick, saw hundreds, they said more people were healed in London, England by Sturgeon's prayers than by all the doctors in London, but his own wife was bedridden, and he was not bedridden, but sick the last 20 years of his life. These people learned how to cope by the grace of God. It's not the will of God to heal everybody. If it was, nobody would ever die. And there's a blessing sometimes in being laid on a sick bed. I'll tell you, God can speak. I have a friend in Ontario, and he was one of these real hard-nosed separatists, nobody's right with me, I did. And he said, I had nothing to do with read the Bible. He came out of there so filled with the love of God, he was totally changed. I couldn't believe it. He asked me to come and speak to a bunch of the workers with his particular mission, and when he introduced me, I couldn't believe what I was hearing him say. He said to these workers, he said, Think of the tragic mistake we've made in our organization. We thought all these years we could determine the depth of a man's spirituality by the length of his hair. You know, he's saying, Now there's a connection between the two. He said one Saturday he made 85 house calls, and his Bible says, Finally, Moody went to an old Christian and said, I know what's wrong, I'm going very night, but I never get anything done. My hair's always spinning, what's wrong? And the old man very wisely said, Mr. Moody, take a deep breath, which Moody did. Now let it out, he did. Now he said, let it out again. When he said, I can't, I'll bring it in. He said, that's your problem. Every morning at four o'clock, and he read the Bible and prayed for four hours every day for the rest of his life. And it wasn't too long after he started doing that, that God filled him with the Holy Spirit. Because he said, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and not be a fanatic. And you've overcome the wicked ones. Then there's a great promise in the next verse, And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. Because God will give it to you. But not if you're going to hang on to it. Defiantly, it abides alone. But if it does, it brings forth much truth. And I want you to notice something. Many times Christians feel, Jesus was talking about his own death on the cross. No he wasn't. Because the very next verse makes it very clear, he's talking to Christian believers. If you try and save your life, you'll lose it, he says in the next verse. If you lose it, you'll gain it, you'll win it. The way of life, spiritual life, in the Christian walk, is dying to self. In verse 72, this church, Ewing Chapel, There have been about 30 people who have gone into full time Christian work, as a direct result of those series of meetings. We thank God for that. But I think of one young man, they brought to me, some people here, we knew together, we asked God to search their heart, and just confess anything God chose you. And he struggled with that for a while, and said, yeah, I guess I will. But you see, he's been running the church down, that he attended. He didn't like it. He said, they're playing games, and the current game is who's got the most good games, you know. And sometimes there's five students, and they're the top on the ladder. He said, mister, is that what's Christian? No, I said, that's not what it's all about. Let's forget about the truth. What's God saying to your heart? So they go down, they start to search him, and he began to just quietly, and then he got a little noisier as time went on, because God really began to work deeply in his heart, and he poured all this garbage and junk that was in there. He saw the truth of Bible baptism, so he decided that he wouldn't accept Bible baptism, until he was willing to die to himself, because he saw the topology and all the symbolism of baptism, and so he took his Bible and went out in the woods. And for several weeks, he read the Bible day and night, he prayed, he read the Bible, he prayed, and prayed, and prayed in the consecration of God, and finally he said, he finally could say, by the grace of God, I'm dead to myself and alive to my God. That's a particular way. I know sometimes people say, well, didn't he smoke a big cigar or something? Let's forget. Later on, how evil it had been, but not at that time. But certainly, with the life he had, I thought that Jesus, at age 16, who gave everything to God. And when he came to London, at the age of 20 or so, he just took London in with a storm. A church he went to would seat about 1,400, they were running 60 or 70 Sunday mornings, that was a crowd, and the prayer meeting was running at about 5. At the end of 12 months, there were 500 in the prayer meeting, and the building was packed to the doors, so they enlarged the building to seat 3,000, had the dedication service, it was already too small, they had to build a building seating 6,000, and then for 35 years, he preached to 6,000 Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, and thousands were saved. Every now and then, several times during the year, he'd close the church down and tell the people, no service in this place on Sunday, and he'd rent the city hall music gardens, which would seat 20 or 30,000 people, and he said, I don't want to see one of you people there. You people stay home and pray for sinners. And the place they packed it, there were sometimes 10,000 open streets trying to get in. He said, self is like the sucker that twines itself around the plant and robs the plant of nourishment so the plant dies. He said, there's only one remedy for self, you must cut it up. Now the Bible says, we must be crucified. Galatians 5, 24, David of Christ hath crucified the flesh with a passion and lust. Paul said, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. Alright, let's crucify him. Let God fill us with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, his Son. Then God can use us. God will use any person. Any person. Ask the God, if any man will come after me, Christ said, let him deny himself. I read a commentary on it, it said, it means utterly repudiate self. Sometimes the people, the milk is sour because of what? He tells us in verse 1 of 1 Peter chapter 2. Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and enmies, and all evil speaking, these are the things that people have soured the milk of the word of God. So we read it, we don't enjoy it, because we know our life isn't right with God. But when your life is right with God, the Bible becomes a brand new book. Well, like in Proverbs 1, 23, God said, you too, admire with truth. Behold, I pour out my Spirit unto you, I'll make known my words unto you. It is mentioned twice over.