Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the necessity of being born again, arguing that mere morality is insufficient for true spiritual transformation. He critiques the modern church's focus on superficiality and calls for a deeper understanding of biblical regeneration, highlighting that true Christianity is about receiving Christ into one's life rather than just adhering to moral standards. Ravenhill illustrates his points with historical references and personal anecdotes, stressing that the essence of salvation is a radical change of heart and life, which is only possible through the Holy Spirit. He urges believers to seek a genuine baptism of obedience and to recognize the urgency of the gospel message in a world increasingly detached from God.

There's something wrong with you. What else is wrong with me for trying to put something on top of what you've already heard anyhow? I think it's true of us and all other people that what we really need is not more light but more obedience. Most of us have enough light to condemn us anyhow. What we need is a baptism of obedience. When the brother was talking about the offering I heard a story about a young man who left a small town and went out to become a millionaire and came back and they decided to let him tell his success story in the town hall. Then afterwards in the church he testified that the reason he became a millionaire was that he was sitting in church one night they were making a missionary offering and he had a dollar in one pocket and a dime in the other. And he argued with himself and said I can't afford to give the dollar anyhow I'll give the dime. And then he said the Lord said the dime's no good giving me the dollar. And he was going to give the dollar then he said the dime's no good to me so I'll give the dollar and the dime. He said I put it all there. He said that night I gave the Lord everything I had and that's why I'm a millionaire today. And the little old lady on the front row said in a stage whisper I dare you to do it again. Just a very simple word tonight. I heard the news and a particular brand of news I heard tonight said that the 50th state, I think Hawaii is the 50th state, today passed a new law to legalize abortion. And it may be now that this will become the, Hawaii is the 50th state, today passed a new law to legalize abortion. And it may be now that this will become the one state which becomes an abortion mill for the whole of America. We are progressing in our deterioration very rapidly. England has passed a similar law. And I've often reminded other people and myself that Sodom had no Bibles, no Bible schools, no preachers, no prayer meetings, no broadcasts, and yet despite all that spiritual ignorance they perished. I remember a phrase dear brother Comrade Morell said last time we were talking there in in Dallas. He said let's take care that we're not trying to preserve what God has already condemned. There's a great deal of truth in that very simple statement. The year 1912 was distinctive for three things in my memory. Because in that year the great ship the Titanic was lost in mid-Atlantic and more than a thousand people perished. Not only did the great ship sink but the great leader of the Salvation Army William Booth died. And I think the great philosopher H.G. Wells lost his reason the same year though he would never admit that. He was a member of that very distinguished and brilliant school of Fabian Socialism in England. The big boy in the class is now the Prime Minister of England Harold Wilson. In 1912 H.G. Wells, cocky, confident, declaring he wasn't an atheist but I think at least admitting he was something of a, well a very serious doubter about the things of God anyhow. He began to tell us that we could have a new world order without the Bible, without the church, and without Jesus Christ. He said it was possible to have a man-made millennium. And if the power was given into the hands of the socialists he said we'll pull down the hills of wealth and we'll fill in the valleys of poverty and we'll make the crooked places straight. He was a materialist not an evangelist and therefore he did not talk about repentance or forgiveness or sin. He talked about the adequacy of materialism. He talked about the of man. He talked about the inevitability of progress. And with a wave of the hand and no intelligent man does this he dismissed the church, he dismissed Jesus Christ, and he dismissed the Bible. Two years before the bloodiest war in history. By the time of the Versailles Treaty which I think was signed in 1918 or the beginning of 19, H.G. Wells wasn't quite so sure of his philosophy. It had at least a serious crack in it. And then there was the five-par conference at Geneva. And between 1919 and 1939, the time of the Second World War, the Church of Jesus had I think the most wonderful opportunity since the day of Pentecost to declare the whole counsel of God. But instead of that we started telling the people how much we did not believe in the Bible and in the supernatural. Just as two years before World War I H.G. Wells stood up. And again I said with great confidence assured us we could have a new race of men by intellectual and biological processes he said. Two years before the Second World War one of the most famous women preachers in the world at that time stood up in America and said we shall not have another war for at least 100 years. She said that in 1937. She was only 98 years out and that's not bad for a woman. Just 98 years out of the target. For two years after she made the statement we were ushered into again the bloodiest and most terrible war in history. And then we came to 1945. And if I remember right it was the 6th of August 1945. At sixteen minutes to eight we were in a normal world and at 15 minutes to eight we were in the atomic age. Like my dear predecessor who gave that wonderful message I hate war I hate bombs. And Russia has pointed a finger at us very maliciously since then and said well remember it was a Christian country that first roasted another nation. Wasn't communists it was Christians that dropped the first atom bomb. We dropped that bomb on Hiroshima at 60 minutes to eight and liquidated a hundred thousand people roughly. And you can get a report now from the government office of printing every year on how many people still died last year in 1969 from that bomb that was dropped in 1945. The bible talks about a day when horses will stand in the field and flesh will drop off them and they'll still be alive. But that happened on human beings. They found some men standing by a wall and you could take a pencil and push it between their lips. Their faces had shrunk. Their eyeballs were melted just like candle wax down their faces. And you still got a bunch of idiots there in Japan as a result of that bombing. And then we dropped another bomb on Nagasaki you remember. Before he died H.G. Wells was not at all sure about his philosophy. He wasn't sure that you could put Humpty Dumpty together again. He wasn't as confident that by mere intellectual and biological processes that somehow we can erase human depravity. For remember after all now here we are in this strange dilemma that Mr. Nixon's trying to salvage. Because you see at the end of World War II America had the big stick whether she walked softly or something else and she was going to make the world sit up. And if ever we had another outbreak of war she said we're going to drop an atom bomb the first week and get it over the first week and not trail the thing out for years and years. But what have we done with our multi-billion dollar program of atomic bombs? They're rusting in the ground. We didn't use them for the simple reason that Russia might retaliate. And today's another day of history because today Japan put its first satellite in orbit after trying for four years. We don't even need war planes as far as I'm concerned. You can put an intercontinental ballistic missile in a warhead and shoot it four thousand miles and be only a hundred yards off target. And I think sometimes that the atom bomb disturbed everybody except the Church of the Living God. Other people were up in arms. We folded our arms. Other people were wringing their hands about the situation. We just rang the church bells and went back to sleep. And now we live in this strange situation. It was frightening what our good brother shared with us tonight about what the Russians have. And I guess there's a lot more than that if we really knew. But remember this friend that we're living in a day now when there isn't a city in the world whether you take the capital of Russia or you take Gaipuri or you London or you take Moscow or you take a beautiful city that I've flown over many times and admired, the great city of, um, in Australia, the great city of Sydney or Auckland. There isn't a city in the world, be it New York or its skyscrapers pointed to heights, there isn't a city in the world you can't blast into shapeless rubble in less than fifty seconds. You can abolish a thousand years of history and all the choice architecture and all the priceless paintings and all the other culture. As soon as you could sneeze you can blast it into vapor. And if you happen to be a hundred feet or a hundred yards below the ground and you crawl out of that hole you've been in, all you would have to do is claw your way through rubble and twisted remains of skyscrapers. And when you did you'd breathe in strontium-90 that have fallen out of the sky. And if you reproduce your kids would be as distorted as frogs and you'd wish to God you'd never have them anyhow. And you expect me to bow down and worship science? It may be true that science has increased the mortality rate for infants and hardly anybody dies anymore of polio or some of the childish, but it's sharpened the fangs of war as well. And I'm not interested that men deny the hell of the Bible, they've made a hell on earth as bad as the hell of the Bible anyhow. So where did it bring us? It brings us to a realization that with all the achievements of science, and 25 years ago the president of the University of Minnesota said, if you give us 25 million dollars and a little on top of that, we will guarantee that in the next 25 years we'll produce in America a race of culture and gentlemen who will never even think of defiling a woman. There'll be no stealing, there'll be no war, we're going to bring utopia in. He said that 25 years ago, but just a few months ago he apologized and said something went wrong. We've got the most reckless, lawless, lusting age that this world has ever seen. And I don't pull any punches tonight that I was bitterly disappointed to hear Billy Graham speaking there at a rock festival down in the other state just a few weeks ago when he spoke in Florida to a bunch of lusting, dirty, filthy rebels against God and man, sex perverts, drunks, dopey kids, smoking, drinking beer, and he finished up by saying they're a great bunch of guys. They're a bunch of rebels against God and man. And while we tell them they're great guys, they're not going to get any idea they need to repent and seek God. The day has come, I'm sure, when we need again. I'm convinced with all my heart that in this shabby, slick, sick evangelism of the hour, that one of the greatest things you could do as a pastor would be to give your whole church a series of messages on biblical regeneration. Because most of our people don't know what justification, and pardon, and adoption, and forgiveness, and assurance, and regeneration really are. They got a package deal, and it seems to me that Protestants are about the most theologically and biblically ignorant people in the whole wide world. I like the emphasis my dear brother made tonight on the fact that a man can be born again, and if he is, if he is born again, he must receive the witness of the Spirit, and he must, to my degree, receive the anointing of the Spirit too. And yet by the same token, the same Christ who breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Ghost, going to all the world, before he finished the sentence says, carry till ye be endued with power from on high. So I want to talk very simply about this very, very old story that everybody knows. The man who came to Jesus by night, and Jesus says to him, Nicodemus, ye must be born again. Now I have often wondered why this man came to Jesus. I'm quite sure he wasn't a drunkard. He belonged to the most holy club on earth, the most seclusive club on earth. They kept a ceaseless watch that nobody ever defiled the purples of that liberal group of people that he belonged to. He was a Pharisee, and they were the holiest people on earth. We ridicule them sometimes. We scorn their righteousness. Jesus never scorned their righteousness. He said, accept your righteousness, exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. You can't make right wrong, whatever you do with it. Here is a man who has impeccable morality. But Christianity is not morality on stilts. Christianity is not a higher standard, merely, than the other fellow has in the world. It's more than that. It will include that. But I'm quite persuaded because, again, this man was a rabbi, and he was a ruler of the Jews. And I don't think he was scared, maybe, of dying. I don't think he was a drunkard. I'm sure he wasn't a drug addict. I don't think he was a criminal. But I do think that H.G. Wilde was right in one area. Because he said, inside of every human personality there is a God-shaped blank that only deity is able to fill. You can satisfy your body with food. You can satisfy your intellect with learning. You can satisfy your emotions with love. And still there is an area inside human personality that God alone is able to fill. And I want to emphasize this very really tonight. Christianity is not a comparative religion. It's a superlative religion. It isn't like any other religion. It's unlike every other religion. It is the only religion in the world where a man gets assurance his sins are forgiven. And it is the only religion in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of him. You see, sometimes we shoot over people's heads when we preach. Because they get the idea that the preacher is insuring that secretly you're an adulterer, or a drunkard, or a liar, or cheating on your income tax. And the fellow says, I'm not doing anything of that, and so this is not for me. You see, the way we present the gospel is, you're bad and you need to be good. Now Jesus Christ never, never, never came in the world to make bad men good. He did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live. And every man outside of the kingdom is not a bad man. I know a man, I know a number of men, who would rather die than lie. I know some princely men who are unfaithful. In fact, I prefer their morality and their standard of living to some people who profess to be saved and sanctified and of all the trimmings. I think this man came to Jesus because so often he had heard the scriptures read. He had heard about the one who should come, the Christ of God. And maybe there's a clue at the end of the previous chapter. It says in Jerusalem at the Passover, on the feast day, many believed on his name when they saw the miracles which he did. And maybe, I like to think it was so anyhow, I can't prove it, but I like to think that maybe this wonderful man Nicodemus sat on the edge of the crowd when Jesus delivered the greatest sermon that ever was delivered. A sermon that was in the realm of religion what the atom bomb was in the realm of physics. It was shattering. I've heard some of these bearded rebels and stinking prostitutes that I've reasoned with in New York and elsewhere say sometimes, well how is it the world's gone on for two thousand years and we're in this mess? Has nobody got a pun of fear? Isn't there a remedy for it? Sure there's been a remedy two thousand years, the sermon on the mount. It's the greatest thing to ever fell from human lips. I like to think that maybe Nicodemus was on the edge of the crowd and he's swallowing every word and enjoying it like the good brother. I can't say like he did. I'll have to rehearse that a bit but I enjoy the way he said it for I knew he was enjoying his religion and most people don't enjoy it, they just endure it. But anyhow he enjoyed it. I think Nicodemus sat on the edge of the crowd and the response of his heart was yes that's right, blessed are the poor in spirit. Oh that's a marvelous, marvelous sermon. I gave brother Jim, my good friend Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones a dress and maybe someday he'll come along and I hope he takes this series on the sermon on the mount. They're certainly fantastic. In any case you could get his two books on the sermon on the mount before he gets here and really read them. It's a majestic thing. And I like to think that this man Nicodemus was here because he says I know that thou art a teacher. Now you get lots of people today who accept Jesus as a teacher but they won't accept him as a savior. But if he's a teacher then accept his teaching and the first point of his teaching is this he must be born again. Now don't deny it. Accept him as the teacher, take his word and Jesus says, Nicodemus, he must be born again. Now notice he didn't say it's reasonable or advisable or commendable or possible or acceptable. He said it's inevitable if you're going to enter the kingdom. It's not optional. My word these days we even preach an optional discipleship don't we? I love to read the wonderful record of Wesley. I don't know about dear brother as he preached. He was about the size of Wesley I guess. Wesley was only about five foot. I don't know what our good brother is, maybe a bit more. But Wesley was a small but man alive. What an experience he had with God. And you know what he says over and over and over again in his diary? He says, today I fathomed my mare. And I preached before breakfast. He preached five times a day when he was healthy. When he was sick he cut it down to three. But uh he says, I went and I preached. I preached at Wednesbury and then I moved on to Sault. And today I have addressed five groups of people and I offered them. What did he offer them? Peace with God? Forget it. A mention on Main Street? No sir. Forgiveness of sins? Never. He says, I preached and I offered men what? An escape from hell? Oh no, no, no, no. That's not salvation. That's a benefit of salvation. He says, I went here, I went there. And I offered men Christ. We don't offer Christ. We said, you want to go to heaven? Well you're an idiot if you want to go to hell I'll tell you that. Do you want to be forgiven? Well you'll have a breakdown if you carry all your sins anyhow and maybe end up committing suicide. I was very, very disgusted and disappointed and distressed listening to the news this morning where they interviewed the Miss America Indian or Miss Indian uh Miss Indian you know of the tribes anyhow the American Indian tribes and this was a very lovely girl from one of the universities and uh no it was someone else who was interviewed uh talking about the Indians. A fellow right after that. And he said, the suicide rate amongst the young people in the tribes of American Indians is three times the suicide rate of other teenagers and 21 year olders here in America. Now that's something to think about. You know it's a strange thing but some fundamental churches will pay you if you preach to the Indians in South America but they won't support folk who preach to the Indians to the tribes in North America. They're not missionary. You see you've got to get on a boat to be a missionary. My brother your front street's a mission station now I'll tell you something for nothing. And the tragedy is that most of us have more concern for folk at the other side of the world than people at the other side of the street but they're going to the same hell if they don't repent. And we can be very effective in the uttermost part if we're not effective right here at home. Now I say Jesus said to this man, you must be born again. Oh I like that lovely hymn of course I'm a rather pro-Methodist being raised a Methodist I guess but I don't think anybody put it better than Charles Wesley when he wrote that lovely hymn heart the herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn king. Mild he laid his glory by. Born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth. Born to give them second birth. My that's something isn't it? Somebody asked a distinguished Chinese scholar a while ago, a man who had read the Quran and the Vedas and all the all the at least many of the ancient religions and read them in their language. And they said did you ever read the New Testament? He said sir I've just read it through for the fourth time. How does it compare with other books of religion? It doesn't compare it contrasts. What do you think is the most profound thing? What is the deepest point of the New Testament? And they thought he'd say oh I was blinded I was numb when I thought of the mystery of the incarnation or the or the majesty of the resurrection or that Jesus reversed the law. He reversed every law. Jesus reversed the law of birth didn't he? Because he had no father. He reversed another law when he walked on the water. He reversed another law when he rose from the dead. He reversed the law of gravity when he ascended. He's going to reverse another law when he comes down. But when I think of the Holy Spirit of God brooding over the matrix of the Virgin Mary and conceiving Jesus Christ said I come back to the thought of atonement. Because he said the most dazzling thing that has ever been put in human language. The thing that rocked my intellect and made me stand in awe was that you people say in the Christian religion in the end of the second chapter uh the second chapter of the Ephesians that you are the habitation of God. You mean that God Almighty lives in your personality? And you know from that day I read it about three years ago I never ask anybody if they're saved anymore. I never ask anybody if they're a Christian anymore. I say does Christ live in you? Well uh well uh I've been baptized. Oh that only means you went in a dry sinner and came out a wet one if you weren't born again. I I I I've found a decision. I once went up to the front and somebody no no no no that's not it. I don't care how you came up sanctification and an endowment with powerful and high. In my judgment the greatest thing that the Apostle Paul ever uttered in all the vastness and comprehension he had of deity and the finished work of Christ and the profundity of the human depravity I think the most amazing thing that he ever said was this Christ liveth in me. Is there anything higher than that? Come on does Christ live in you? Christ in you the hope of glory that the rapture of anything else won't make any difference whether you're cut down with an automobile you'll be absent from the body presence with the Lord and then we're going to have a body like unto his glorious body but even now Christ liveth in me. I love like Christ, I live like Christ, I pray like Christ, I suffer like Christ, I seek the glory of the Father as Christ thought it. Oh do you wonder that another little man who always reminds me of this Nicodemus fellow he was the same kind of man. A man of impeccable morality. A man who in my judgment might have died a multi-millionaire because he had the brain of a genius. A man who might have ended up as being the greatest archbishop of Canterbury that England ever knew. A man who might have been sat in dazzling splendor as the Prime Minister of a very illustrious British empire that was just blossoming. A little man by the name of John Wesley but he said about on the 24th of May 1738 about a quarter to nine I went very reluctantly to Aldersgate street and I heard a man reading the preface of the epistles of the Romans as Mr. Luther had written it and suddenly I felt my heart strangely warm. You know the world has been warmer ever since that moment. When John Wesley was born again England was born again. Yes sir I take courage tonight because I know this that the moral condition of England was as rotten then as it is tonight. There isn't one degree of corruption in England now that wasn't abroad in the day as I told you I think yesterday. They committed sexual immorality in the street as a sport and many times in the street. One man says I can't go across London with my hand on my purse unless I have a man before me who is armed like a man going to battle. He needs a shield and a club otherwise I'll be destroyed before I get through the city carrying my purse. In other words mugging was as real then as it is now. Out of two thousand houses in the City of London twelve hundred of them were gin shops. The rate of prostitution and the rate of illegitimacy was as high as it is now per capita and I'll take a crutch from under the arm of my enemy and hit him on the head with it right here. Because Leckie who is a secular historian not a church historian he says remember the bloody revolution swept over France. They gathered the monarchy up and threw it all in the garbage can. They set up that tricolour of liberty, fraternity and equality. They took a woman and stripped her naked and put her on the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral just to disregard the laws of God and men. And not many days after they took a pig there, a swine, and they cut its throat and let its blood desecrate that altar in sheer mockery. And from that day to this in my judgment France has never recovered. But Leckie says when it looked as though that deluge of impurity, when it looked as though that vileness would swamp little England, God raised up a man. That's all he found. And I'm willing to stick my neck out tonight and tell you that God is still looking for some men he can find if he can find them. Oh he uses angels and archangels sometimes but normally in the program he uses men. He found little John Wesley that night and John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed and he was born of the spirit and he preached on the witness of the spirit more than any other subject he ever preached on in his own life because he said the witness of the spirit to me is the Holy Spirit of God mysteriously communicating with my spirit that my sins, even mine, have been done away, that I have passed from death unto life, that my name is written under the bank of Lamb's book of life, and that even now I'm a child of God. And so you can sing with assurance, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh that's a very wonderful thing. You see Jesus didn't say to Nicodemus you need reformation, possibly he didn't need it anyhow. And in any case reformation is something I do. Repentance is something I do. Remorse is something I have. That I can have remorse, I can have repentance, I can have reformation and not be born again. On the divine side God's masterpiece is the incarnation. God contracted to us that. How do you make the ancient of days the infant of time? How does the one who flung the stars into space have to nestle at his mother's breast or he'll perish? How do you get a little baby with a dimple in his hand and his mother washing it, and wondering, I wonder if she did, that one day he's going to stand with the seven stars in his right hand? How does the ancient of days become the infant? How do you press God into the matrix of a woman, do you know? Nobody ever knew it. It is mystery all, immense and sheer, but oh my God it found out me. And when that miracle does take place a man again like Bunyan's pilgrim can take three leaps for joy, and he says the burden loosened off my back and it went into an empty sepulcher and I beheld it no more forever. You know gossip can be good sometimes, not often but sometimes. And I remember going in the streets of Bedford in England and going to the moothall there, and then going to the parish church and sitting down in the chair where John Bunyan used to sit. Never made me able to write like him but I enjoyed sitting in his chair. I once sat in Adam Clarke's chair too but that didn't make me a theologian. But I remembered as I sat in that chair that going down the street one day a drunken, dumb, dissolute man was going down the street. In those days women used to make their own bread and put it by the fireplace to rise. My mother used to do that I can remember. And the woman came to the door and she began to witness to her neighbor. She said you know I had a great experience. I go to a Baptist church and well I've been born again. And the woman, you've been what? I've been born again. You look very much the same kind of, oh well this happens on the inside. You see my sins have all been taken away and I've been made a partaker of the divine nature. You see that's why he had to take human nature that we might be made partakers of the divine nature. The drunken man was going past and he heard the woman say I've been born again, my sins are all forgiven, I'm a new creation. And he slipped back a little bit and leaned near the wall and listened to the whole conversation. And that's where God started his work of grace. These young preachers don't know too much about this but you know the old preachers used to preach a lot about prevenient grace. The working of the Spirit of God before you get anywhere within a hundred yards of being born again. God begins to do some manipulating in their life. Oh brother this was prevenient grace all right. And one day this man really got a vital relationship with God. You know Mick Colston talked in 15 years in jail. But in those 15 years he wrote the most wonderful book outside of the Bible, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. And then his holy war. But it all happened because a woman gossiped the gospel and told how she passed from death unto life and from the power of Satan unto God. I say John Wesley used to say that the greatest thing that a man can know is that he has assurance. And you remember how the apostle mentions that in the 8th chapter of Romans. The Spirit dareth witness with our spirit. And brother there isn't a man on God's earth, there isn't a demon from hell if you ever get the witness of the Spirit. And now with an experience he's never at the mercy of a man with an argument. And if you heard the voice of God, the voice of man, the voice of reason, the voice of logic, the voice of philosophy, nobody will ever shift you from that fact if you've really been born again of the Spirit of God. You can stand on both feet and say I know in whom I have believed and I'm persuaded because Christianity is a no soul religion. We have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father. You know that's a new word I believe that was given to us by the Lord himself. It didn't exist before Jesus. It's a different connotation. It really means I believe in the Aramaic it means the dependence of a child upon his father for sustenance and power and resources. I like this phrase because it says again that if you and I are really truly converted to swing to another word we are born again of the Spirit of God. Now that covers a big range of stuff doesn't it being born. I'm always thrilled when I dedicate babies. I never baptize them. I'm scared they get flu if I put too much water on them. So I always dedicate babies but when I look at the little thing I say to myself now what's hidden in this personality? I don't know. I haven't the slightest idea. I remember a crusade was held in England about 70 years ago. It took two weeks to get through and at the end of it they'd got nothing but a 14 year old boy was converted and the elders in the church were very disturbed about it. We gave the evangelists so much, we burned so much fuel, we burned so much for lights, we burned this for expenses, we have this for advertising and the only result is a boy 14 converted and he's not very bright. It reminds me I was 14 when I got converted and I think when I left the altar they said the same thing he's not very bright but anyhow. That boy went on to walk with God and became a great and marvelous preacher, became the president of the Methodist Church in Britain, became the president of Cliff College, England. I was privileged to go there, Blinko and a few other guys went around that same college. But you wouldn't have guessed when that little boy got up that night that he was going to be one of the outstanding preachers of the age. You wouldn't think that little boy there with a creased face and an impish look would one day walk through the saloon of one of the greatest liners in the world when he was on his way to South Africa to preach and immediately he walked through the saloon then snuffed out their cigars and hid their pipes and took their cards and fit them in their pockets and sat like this. And when he'd gone through somebody said uh what do we do that for? What do you snuff your pipe out for? What do you put the cards away for? Why did you pick up the money? Oh he said I felt uncomfortable in the in the presence of a man with a face as holy as that. My it must have been shining through. But you know one of the wonderful things about a newborn babe, and thank God they're all new ones, everyone is a new personality and one of the wonders about a newborn babe to me is it has no past. And I say glory to God when a man who's really born again he has no past. No past! He may have a record of crime as long as his arm, he may have been in lust and incest and impurity and hellishness. He may have been the worst of the worst but the moment he passes from death unto life God erases all his records. He's like a newborn baby has no past. Now there's some things I don't like about babies too. You know you go see a little newborn baby there and little thing's shouting at the top of its head and it's got no teeth and no hair and no sense and then they say isn't it like its father. I think that's a bit disgusting. Say it's like its grandfather wouldn't be so bad but say it's like its father. But you know somewhere along the line that little one is going to bear a likeness of its parents isn't it? And thank God this is exactly what we should do and we could do and we must do. We must bear the image of the heavenly as we born the image of the earthly. A man is born again of the Spirit of God the miracle of regeneration. It's a theological word it isn't in the scriptures except by implication. That the same Holy Ghost who conceived the Christ in the Virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ in the heart of the individual and he passes from death unto life and from the power of Satan unto God. I've often wondered when I've seen crowds singing blessed assurance how many of them really had assurance. People get awfully uneasy if you put a bit of pressure on and said you really know that you're well now. I've never kind of felt really you know short or very confident about this. Say if you were going up a hill and you had a sack of potatoes on your back and your knees were getting more buckled as you got up and you thought you wouldn't make it and I came up behind and took the burden off your back do you think you'd know? If you were in a room and in that room you were manacled to a big chain and the chain to the wall and there was a man there about seven feet high and even if you snatched your hand away from the wall and made for the door he was going to clobber you like that and I came along and I beat him down and I released you from the wall and I took you out of darkness into light do you think I'd need to write it down on a piece of paper that you got out of prison? Don't you think you'd really know you'd gotten away from the fetter that was binding you and the monster that was going to beat you up? Can a man really be born again in the spirit lose his burden of sin get out of bondage of Satan and not know he's born again? If he doesn't know it brother he just ends and that's all there is to it. That English were good theology. He knows that he's passed from death unto life. Now how do we know that we pass from death unto life? Well you have to go down to the great exposition because in my judgment the first epistle of John is merely an exposition of of the new birth and you know what it says? You know there are some sermons pardon me there are some texts that I think preachers avoid like the plague. You know why? Not because they're not true. Sure they're true. Oh well what does it say? Well do you know what Peter says? Let me read it to you. He says this is thankworthy for man for conscience toward God and your grief suffering wrongfully for what glory is it if when ye are buffeted for your faults ye take it patiently but if when ye do well and suffer for it ye take it patiently this is acceptable with God. Now here's the tight spot for even on here unto what ye call because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps. Now what are the steps? Well here they are and I didn't write it. Number one he did no sin and you're to walk in his steps and do no sin. Number two now there was any guile found in his mouth so you have to have no duplicity. Number three he was revived and he revived not again. Number four he suffered but he threatened not. Number five he committed himself unto him that judges righteously. Now I think that one of the serious breakdowns in modern evangelism is this it offers us too much for too little. What we do mostly is offer people forgiveness but a man needs more than forgiveness. A man isn't saved because he repents even. There are men who are repenting in prison tonight. They're eaten with remorse. They're killing themselves in grief over what they've done but it doesn't mean that they truly repent toward God or that they're born again of the spirit of God. Here's little Mary coming down the street and mother says come in it's time for you to have a bath I'm going to change your clothes and we're going off to see your Aunt Mary. So she comes in gets a bath gets beautifully dressed up and mother says now you stand at the doorstep you don't move. You see those little pools of water you might slip and get all dirty. Now mother's going upstairs to get dressed and you won't move and she says I won't move. And then the little kitten runs out and she runs after the kitten and she topples over and she goes down in the pool and she's all muddy and dirty and she starts crying and mother says now what have you done? He says I fell in the pool and I'm all dirty. Mother says oh the best dress and I ironed it and oh what a mess. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Mummy forgive me. Will you forgive me? Mother says yes I forgive you. And she puts her little face up. Mother kisses her and pats her head and says you're forgiven. Sure the dress is still dirty what have you done for She needs more than forgiveness she needs clemency. Again we preach an optional discipleship. There is no true conversion unless a man takes up his cross as our good brother Fang tonight. There's a little word there our brother would tell you because he knows far more Greek than I do I'm no mill. But there's a little word there in the in the New Testament. A little word that's called kurios k-u-r-i-o-s which is meted out 745 times in the New Testament. And you know that really scripturally you have no right to ask anybody if they'll take Jesus Christ as saviour. It's not scriptural. The only thing you can ask is will you take him as lord and saviour? Oh that's another matter. You see Jesus isn't one of your lousy sins. What good will they do him or anybody else? It isn't your sins you want it's you you want. He wants. Why did Adam get kicked out of the garden of Eden? Did he get drunk as far as I know he didn't. Did he beat up his wife? The record doesn't say so. Why did he get thrown out of the garden? Because he decided to run his life his way and not God's way. Why was Satan be thrown in heaven? Did they find him stealing a slab of gold off Main Street? I don't think so. You'll find some Christians up there doing it the way they go after gold down here. There'll be gold diggers up there. No I don't know that Satan was found stealing a slab of gold. And he wasn't beating Michael up. And he wasn't creating a disturbance. He decided he was going to run his life the way he wanted to run it and not the way God wanted to run it. And therefore because of that he got pitched out. And by the same token the boy, the fellow got thrown out of the garden of Eden because he wouldn't run his life God's way. And when the prodigal got to the end of the journey he came back and he said, Father I have sinned against Adam and in thy sight make me of thy hired servant. Why? Why didn't he come swaggering in and say I'm a son and I'll always be a son and I'm coming back and I'm going to live here anyhow and I don't care what you say. In other words he said this, Father I've tried living my life