In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal story about a man who wasted 15 years of his life before finally surrendering to God. The man's testimony of regret serves as a warning to others not to delay in responding to God's call. The speaker also highlights the importance of seeking God's will and trusting in His provision. The sermon emphasizes the need for revival and a renewed love for the Word of God and traditional hymns.

I want to deal with the subject of why is revival important. Let me point out, first of all, revival is not everything, and sometimes people get the feeling that if it's not revival it's not important. Revival, after all, has to build on something. It has to build on faithful teaching of the Word of God, which may have gone on for years. And revival profits from what's going on, in the normal course of events, in churches prior to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And, you know, sometimes people say, well, what do you do before revival comes? Is it worthwhile doing anything before revival comes? We should never feel that way. Certainly, we have to carry on the normal work of the church, do all we can, but keep believing God and praying for revival, for a deeper work of the Holy Spirit. And we don't want to discount things that happen apart from revival. Sometimes there's a tendency to do that. That isn't right either, because there are many things God may do that you would not call revival, but which are important things and have to do eventually, in the long run, with revival. Why is revival important? I would say the most important reason, perhaps, is because it brings such glory to God. Do you know, I mentioned the 1858 revival before, and I mentioned this book called The Event of the Century. And the title of the book came from a statement from a leading industrialist in the United States at the time of the revival, a man who was not a Christian, but he saw the social impact that the revival made on communities everywhere in the United States, and he was so impressed by it that he said, this is the event of the century. This is the most important thing that's happened in the United States of America in a hundred years, the event of the century. And so it brings glory to God, and people who discounted God and didn't believe in God and talked flippantly about God in a time of revival often come under deep conviction and change their views entirely because of what they see God doing. And oftentimes sinners are converted in a time of revival because of the change they see in Christians they've known for years. They've watched the Christians struggling and complaining and living at a very low level, and they don't want that. And all of a sudden they see Christians come alive and alert and they're rejoicing in God, and they want that. And so revival is very important because of the vast numbers of sinners that are converted. Dr. Orr has written, as I mentioned before, a lot of books on revival, and he's done it by areas. He's got books on South America, he's got books on Europe, he's got books on the United States or Western countries, he's got a book on Asia, and so on. And he's got a book on India, and it's absolutely thrilling to read of some of the things that happened over there as a consequence of revival, especially back around 1905-1906. You see, at the time of the Welsh revival, the Welsh revival got all the publicity because it was in England. People came from all around the world to Wales to see what God was doing there. And Dr. Orr did the Church of God a great service by pointing out that at the same time that this happened in Wales, there was revivals all around the world. Wherever there were churches there was powerful revivals, especially in India, in the United States, in Canada. There was great meetings all across Canada, and thousands were converted at that particular time. It wasn't just in Wales. And of course in India, so thousands of people, there was tribal movements where whole tribes were won to Christ at that particular time through the revival movement. And so that's common when the Spirit is poured out, large numbers of sinners will be converted, and it brings, I say, glory to God. People stop doubting that God exists, and stop doubting that the Bible is true in a time of revival. Spurgeon's church in London, England, was certainly, you might call it a revival church. When he became pastor, he was very young, I think 20 or 21, was called to London. This church would seat 1,200. Sunday mornings they were running about 60. The prayer meeting was running at five. And he got the people to pray, and at the end of 12 months, the church was packed on Sundays. The prayer meeting was running at 500. This was before the 1858 revival. Dr. J. M. Munor in one of his books made mention of the fact that he thought that the 1858 revival made Charles Spurgeon, and I corresponded with him about that, because four years before that revival, his church was in a state of revival. He tells how sometimes the Holy Spirit was working so powerful in the meeting that he was afraid to even go to the pulpits. This is how he felt. And the people prayed. God just did something special among the people in his church. An American tourist once asked him, Mr. Spurgeon, what's the secret of your great success? And he said, it's quite simple. My people pray for me. And when he preached, he had 400 people usually praying for him in another auditorium all the time he preached. I mention this because one of the things that Spurgeon's church did was start Christian schools, and when they began a public school movement in England, they sent a committee down to study Charles Spurgeon's schools to see how it should be done. And many parts of the world, revivals have resulted in the establishing of schools. There have been thousands of started as a direct result of revival in many countries. That's one of the spin-offs, we might call it, from revival movements. Now, one of the things that happens, of course, through revival is prayer. People start to pray. People start establishing family altars. Do you know, in the Hebrides, before the revival in the early 1950s, every home in Harrison, Lewis, and Skye, every home, converted and unconverted alike, they had a family altar twice a day. I sometimes ask a congregation, how many people have a family altar? And you know what happens? Most people don't know what a family altar is. And a few hands go up. But there was a time when every Christian home had a family altar. John Song, he was a great evangelist in China. There was Song in China and Sing in India, Bok Sing in India. These men were great evangelists. John Song came to the States. He was converted in the States. Bok Sing was converted in Winnipeg in the YMCA many, many years ago. It was interesting. But John Song, he never liked Americans. But he learned something in the United States that he took back to China, which saved China when the Communists took over. He learned this thing called a family altar. And he came back to China, and everywhere he went in this great crusade, thousands were being converted, and he got every one of them into this family altar thing, reading the Bible, praying with the family together at least once a day. When the Communists took over and closed down the churches, it didn't mean anything, because the people were meeting in the houses anyhow. And so they don't know. Today they're talking about 50 million Christians in China. It's probably that some people say 100 million. We don't really know. There are cities in China, there's a city in northern China, 800,000 people, 400,000 profess to be born again, in spite of Communism. But it's through prayer. As God's children pray, a lot of things happen. And I know I often thought during the revival in Saskatoon, you know, people were phoning everywhere and telling their friends what God was doing, you know. And I thought to myself, boy, these telephone operators listening, they're sure getting an earful, you know. People coming out, God had done this for them, God had done that for them, you know. And I mean, our telephone bills sometimes got up to $200. People would drop by, people were always dropping in, you know. And they're going to phone somewhere and they forget to pay. Nobody even think about it. It's just, we're all in this thing together, you know. Let's get it out as far as we can. Much praying. Thank God for it. We mentioned, of course, restitution before, and that's the subject. You know, Chief Kettles, he was the chief of police in Saskatoon at the time of the revival, and he issued a statement to the press at that time. He said, I am not a religious person, he said, but I know the difference between ordinary church work and revival, and revival has come to Saskatoon, and we know this because we have a lot of people coming confessing to crimes they've committed. Well, that was interesting to hear that from the chief of police. And so, it's a common thing, and many times Christians are crippled for 30 or 40 years because they won't deal with something like this, and at time of revival they do it and wonder why they didn't do it 30 years ago, you know. Because God's always with us in a thing like that. One lady told us how she went into a store, she was trying on purses. Now, men don't have to do that because you carry your purse in your pocket, but you know, they carry it on their arm, and she forgot about walking out of the store with a purse on her arm, a brand new purse. She got a couple of blocks down the street, and it was fun to realize she had this purse on her arm, I've stolen this purse, and she thought, well if I go back they'll arrest me, and so she never went back, you know. And you know, this bugged her for years, it just bothered her. And finally she went back, she was in some meetings, and God spoke to her, and she went back and talked to the store manager, and he sat her down in his office, he started to cry, he said, lady, this is wonderful, he said, we've never had anybody come back, you never even stalled when you came back, you know, but he said, you know, this is wonderful, he said, it's just blessed me, and it was just a great thing. And so restitution, and it sets people free. Do you know, a missionary in Africa, who was a camper in a Bible camp I ran at Bergdorf, Manitoba, many, many years ago, finally wrote me a letter. As a camper at the camp, and that would be 30 years ago at least, she had stolen a box from my cabin, a little box, I don't even remember the box. She said, I stole it from your cabin, and I took it home, and my mother said, where did you get the box? And she said, I told my mom, Bill McCloud gave it to me. So she writes me this letter, and she was so sorry that she'd stolen this box, it had bugged her all these years that she's stolen this box. And so why don't we deal with these things when God brings them to our attention, deal with them, He'll be with us in that, and bless us, and lead us from there on. Anyway, restitution is setting people free. Broken relationships restored. We had two brothers in our church at Saskatoon, they both graduated from Bible college, and they had a bad, I didn't even know, I'd only been there 10 years as pastor, and I didn't know they used to sing duets together. They hadn't sung for 10 years, and then we found out they hadn't spoken together for two years. I didn't know that either, I knew there was a relationship, a strained relationship there, but I'll never forget the day when God straightened it out. One of the brothers came forward, they were in their 40s, and one of the brothers came forward and got right with God, and I said, you know brother, it's time you and your brother got together, and he said, well God's been telling me that too. So we got ahold of his brother, and I took one of my deacons, we went down, we told the church what we were going to do, so the church was upstairs praying, and we dealt with these people downstairs. So the one brother, who'd experienced revival, went to the other brother and said, my brother, can you forgive me? And this other guy sits there like this, and he says, that's about time you came. Wouldn't even extend his hand, you see. And so the other brother said to me, I know you wouldn't forgive me, and he started for the door, and I just prayed and said, Lord, don't let that man go through the door, and he didn't. He got to the door and stopped with his back to us, you know, just stood there. And so I just unloaded a truckload of Bible verses on this guy that didn't do a thing, you know. He just sat there with his arms like this, and couldn't have cared less. So I said to my deacon, I said, brother, let's pray. So we just ignored him, got down, started to pray, and God touched him, and he gave a scream, and he ran to the wall. It was a cement block wall. He began kicking the wall with his feet, and beating hundreds with his fists, and crying to God, and he began pouring out a fountain of junk that had been bottled up inside for years, and he was running around us in a circle. At one point, I thought he was going to jump on us or something, and confessing, and confessing, and confessing, and confessing, and finally it all quit, and I looked, and he was sitting there, he had the light of heaven on his face, you know. So I looked at him, caught his, and I pointed to his brother at the door, and he ran and grabbed his brother, and almost cracked his ribs, you know. And then we went upstairs, and the two of them went to the front, and made their confession to the church, and the wives and the kids came running, because the wives and kids had been fighting too, and they had a big meeting at the front of the church. I was standing in the back of the church, and my heart was going thump, thump, thump, thump, and I thought to myself, what's a beautiful way to die, you know. I see things like this happening. Oh yeah, by the way, right after this, they sang a duet in one of the public meetings. We moved them to the Alliance Church. It was a much larger building than we had, and before they sang, the one brother had to make a confession to the Alliance Church, because he had been disciplined by that church on a certain charge many years before, and he had to make things right with that church. Now in the congregation, there was Baptists, and there was Mennonites, and there was Pentecostals, there was Alliance people, there was everything in the congregation, and as soon as they asked the forgiveness of the Alliance Church, somebody jumped to their feet and said, I make a motion we reinstate this man as a member of our church. Someone else jumped up and said, I second the motion, and they took a vote, so all of a sudden he's a member of two churches. This wasn't planned, by the way, this just happened. Broken relationships restored. We see a lot of that over the years, and it's wonderful. Victory over sin experienced in times of revival, where people sometimes have struggled for many years, and all of a sudden hundreds and hundreds of testimonies concerning all kinds of problems that people have struggled with, and God has met with them, and broken the chains, and set them free. And that's, of course, one of the reasons why revival is so important. Then the fear of death is removed. You know, in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 14 it says, For as much as the children then are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy or render powerless, that he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Are you afraid to die? And you're subject to bondage, right? And so, in times of revival, all of a sudden people can hardly wait to meet the Lord, you know. Things change. And I was reading something in the book recently about the revival movement, where people who had been so afraid to die, and now they were just looking forward to meeting God, they didn't care how they died, or when they died. They'd lost that fear. Our fear of death, family relationships restored, of course we see that all the time, and sometimes wonderful things in families where kids have turned against parental authority and come back and beg their parents' forgiveness. I remember one meeting, and there was two fellows, and they were afraid of what they saw happening in revival, because they knew it might get to them. So, the mother of one of them was listening in on the extension telephone when these two guys were talking, and it went something like this, Now, we'll go Sunday morning to keep our parents off our back, but remember, don't respond to those invitations. This is straight emotionalism. We have nothing to do with this. Okay, so they made up their minds, you know. Well, one Sunday morning, I guess they forgot what they'd been saying on the telephone, and this one kid, he came forward, and it was kind of a strange thing, because the meeting wasn't ended, but I was counseling already in the side room, and somebody else was leading the thing. We had a problem there, in one sense. Anyhow, they brought this fellow, and he wanted to be saved, and he received the Lord. The other fellow came forward. They were sitting on different sides of the church. Both of them met God that morning. One of them lives down in the States now. I looked him up when I was in his area, oh, several years ago. He's walking with God still, but these feelings they had, now don't go forward, don't listen to these emotional appeals, meant nothing when God got over their heart. They forget all about this, you know. It wasn't an emotional thing. It was God, the Holy Spirit, and then these kids had to make things right with their parents. Christians getting involved in soul winning. Gordon Bailey was supposed to be here. He's with the Lord in glory instead, and Gordon told me he'd been a Christian for six years before the revival, and Gordon told me he used to sit in church in a cold sweat. Why? Because he was afraid I might call on him to lead in prayer. He said, if you'd have done that, I'd have fallen through the floor. He said, I couldn't have got two words out. Well, I didn't know he's going through this, you know. Well, then the revival came, and here's what happened. One Sunday morning, he went to the front of the church, and it went something like this. He said, you know, the reason I sat in the back too for a couple of years is because there's some of you people I hate, and he said, I've been shooting arrows of hatred at the backs of your heads. He said, I want to be forgiven for all this junk, you know, and so I asked some of our men to take him to the side room. They did. They prayed with him, and then he went home, and he did. He said it was the hardest thing he ever did in all his life. He got, he sat on a bunch of chairs, got his wife and his kids, and he sat here, and he asked each child, and finally his wife, to forgive him for being such a poor Christian, such a poor father, such a poor husband. Oh, he said, that was hard, but the Bible says if you humble yourselves in the mighty hand of God, he'll exalt you in due time, and that night, that same night, he had a herd of black Angus cattle. He was working in the barn. I've heard Gordon's testimony many times. We did some crusades together, and all he ever said was, I was working in the barn when God filled me with the Holy Ghost from top to toe, and he started soul winning. He led about 30 people to Christ in nine months. He got a work established in the Sioux Indian village south of Saskatoon, and eventually took early retirement for his job as a cattle inspector, and has been holding meetings in Canada and the States, and God has blessed him. He was in one place, he told me, gave an invitation, only two people came forward, so he dismissed the congregation, took these people in the back room, prayed and counseled them for half an hour. When he came back out, the whole congregation was still sitting there, and he looked around, he said every face, there was conviction on every face, and so he counseled the whole congregation as one person, and he was in churches where he would give an invitation, the entire church would come to the altar. And you know, Gordon murdered the Queen's English, sometimes he'd say, use guys, you know, I mean, you're not supposed to use that from the pulpit. He'd say ain't instead of isn't, you know, and the Spirit of God didn't seem to be bothered by this at all, you know. Anyway, he just loved to witness, he loved his job as a cattle inspector because he was with men all the time, you know, he just loved, he was up at Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, told me one time, preached in the church there, a bunch of people came forward, a lady was standing over here, he wanted to see what she wanted, and she said, well, my husband, he hates God, and he wants to stop me from coming to church, and she said, I don't know what to do, and he said, well listen, you go home, tell your husband, Gordon Bailey's coming over for dinner, and he's going to talk to you about Christ. If you'll tell him that, I'll come, you know, so she did. So he goes there after he was through counseling, and it was pretty frosty, you know, and then the guy was a rancher, he had a lot of cattle, Gordon was a cattle inspector, so they get around common ground, and they worked on that for a little bit, got into gospel, the guy got saved, and he said, you know, as I was driving away, the two were standing on the front just outside, waving with their arms around each other, crying, he says, and I was crying, he says, man, he said, this is the best wages you could ever get, you know. But what happened in Gordon Bailey's life? He didn't read a book on how to do it. He just met God, you know, humbled himself, God met him. All right, through revival, then believers learn how to give. I just read something in a book on revival recently, where a pastor had to stop his people from giving. They were giving so much, he just had to stop, it was too much. A friend of mine was in Korea, and it was like, you know, speaking in churches and stuff, and one place he asked the local pastor, now do you mind if I bring a message or two on tithing? And they said, no, we don't want you to do that. He said, oh, don't your people tithe? Oh, they said, listen, these people are so far beyond the tithe, we don't want to go back to that. Well, as you know, in North America they tell us about 15 percent of the people give 75 percent of the money than the average evangelical church. And that changes when revival comes and people learn how to give. They love to give. And you know, in the 1930s, they call it the dirty 30s, that's when you couldn't buy a job. No business in Canada prospered but God's business. There was 35 Bible colleges started in Canada in the 1930s. And people were really sacrificing the little bit they had to get Bible schools off the ground. Now we've got the money to do it, we don't have the time or the heart to do it, it seems. That's a problem. Learning how to give. New love for the Bible. I mentioned something about that in a previous session. All of a sudden people find they can't leave the Bible alone. And you know, when you think about it, among Muslims, for example, Muslim boys by the time they're eight, many of them know the whole Quran off by heart. And the Quran is about the size of the New Testament. You know, the average Christian, if we were asked to accurately quote 100 verses from the Bible, we'd be hard put to do it, don't you think? 100 verses? Very likely we'd have a hard time to do it. Well, how come they can do it we can't, you know? Of course, TV programs and all these books and stuff we have to read and deal with, you know, we don't have any time for it. We've got to make time for it in Bible, in revival, this is what happens. There's a new love for the Word of God. And by the way, there's a new love for the old-fashioned hymns. People tell me, hey, those old hymns in the psalm book, you know, used to hate them, now they love them. At Pioneer Camp, and this is a long while ago, maybe four years ago, I was there three years in a row on the look of the woods. I was there once as a leader, once as an assistant director, and finally as a director, and then I started my own camps after that. But that third year we had a revival at the camp, and there's a real revival, and kids were sitting there at dinner with their heads on their dinner plate. They couldn't eat, they couldn't do anything. You remember one kid, his head was on his dinner plate, and he looked up, and my camp name was Shippy because I taught canoeing and stuff, and he says, Shippy, can a guy know, really know whether he's saved or not? He said, yes he can, bang, his head hit the table, hit the plate again, you know. And we had a wonderful time at that camp, just, I think it was the first time I ever saw a revival. And then the kids were singing choruses all the time, and some of these camp songs, you know, do your ears hang low, can you wobble to and fro, you know, this kind of stuff. And then the kids found a hymn book. Hey, they came to me, hey, look at these wonderful songs, can't we sing those? And we started singing hymns. They wouldn't sing choruses anymore, you know. Don't ask me why, I don't really know, but that's one of the things that happens. Revival restores a lot of things of this kind. And then a great desire to be found in the house of God. Ever notice in a time of revival, the front pews fill up first? In normal times, the back pews fill up first? That's how it is. And I remember one revival, and I asked the local district worker for that group of church, and I said, hey, would you mind going back and counseling with these people that need to accept Christ? And no, no, he said, Bill, I'm not leaving here, I'm staying right here, I want to see everything God does. I don't want to miss a thing. And I couldn't blame him, because God was doing some great things, and it's wonderful to see the Spirit of God at work in people's hearts. And I don't know how some people did it, but you know, back in Saskatoon, I think we had seven weeks of meetings, and there were some people who never missed a meeting. I mean, how do you do that? Don't these people ever get sick? You know, doesn't anybody ever call on them? No, people call, and they took them to the meetings, you know. And just a desire to be found. I was glad when they said to me, let's go up to the house of the Lord. And that's what happened, one of the things. All right, and then, many going into full-time Christian work. The Hebrides revival in the Isle of Lewis and Harrison Skye, the total population is not large, but a higher percentage of converts went into full-time service through that revival, a higher percentage than any revival of which we have any knowledge. And that's interesting, that every revival is produced. As you know, the 1858 revival was followed by 40 years of pioneer evangelism around the world. There were thousands of people went into full-time Christian work as a consequence of that revival. And I think every continent felt the impact of the work of God at that particular time. So many were going into full-time Christian work. I remember reading of one area in the States, and they had 3,000 people in training for the mission field before the revival, and 11,000 after the revival. I mean, that's just in the period of a year or two. And so the impetus it gives to foreign missions, and of course, what inevitably happens is, when a revival happens in the homeland, people write to missionaries, brothers, sisters, whatever, on the mission field. They begin seeking revival, and revival breaks there. All right, why is revival important? I think we should mention this. Believers begin to see answers to prayer like they never saw before. I've often, after Crusades, left a couple of weeks later, get a letter from a pastor saying something like this. Our people are seeing so many answers to prayer now. Well, thank God, why don't we see answers to prayer regularly? But when we get in a right relationship with God, then God can answer the prayers. And we may have been praying for something for 30 years, and God could not answer us, because to do this would encourage us to continue walking in the flesh, so he doesn't answer. We get right with God, and he has no problem answering our prayers. And so, another reason then why revival is so important. Children learn how to obey their parents. Christians learn how to love. There's a book just simply called China. You know, during the Cultural Revolution, they had a group of people, young people, called the Red Guards, and they were allowed to go anywhere in China they wanted to go, and kill. They were to target intellectuals, they were to target religious people, and they were to target the wealthy. And they did, and they killed thousands of them. In one case, they broke into a home with clouds, and they clubbed the whole family to death, but the mother lived. She recovered. They thought she was dead. She recovered. Well, the Cultural Revolution found a disrepute after a while, and this lady who lived discovered that the leader of the gang that broke into her house and murdered all her family, and almost murdered her, was living only about three blocks from her place, so what did she do? She started praying for him to be saved. Then she heard he had a son who was very ill, and he couldn't afford medical help, and so she went down. He did not recognize her. She said, nothing at all about the past. She said, I heard your son was sick. If you like, I'll nurse him for you, and it won't cost you anything. And she nursed his son back to health. After, and he was so thankful after, and he thanked her, and thanked her, and thanked her, and then she told him who she was. And he fell on the floor, and just trembled, and shook, and cried, and repented, and became a believer. I read that, I thought to myself, how could this lady do this? She was able to do it because she was filled with the love of God. And we had something like this happen when Blanche Johnson, whose husband is a doctor at Meadow Lake, when they're, well they'd gone to China on holidays, and left their children, three or four children they had, left them with their grandparents, her mother and his husband in North Battleford. So the grandparents took the kids out for a walk one day, they were walking along, and a drunk teenager came along and ran into them. The mother, the grandmother was instantly killed. The grandpa died a couple years later. The kids were not hurt, they were on the ditch side. The teenager was caught, he was in jail, and then they got Blanche and her husband home from China. And my son-in-law had the funeral in North Battleford at that particular time. I knew the family very, very well, and Blanche and her mom and dad, they were very, very close. She found out where this young man was that killed her parents, you know. And she went and visited him in the jail, and she told him who she was. She said, you killed my mom and dad, and I miss them very much. I just want you to know, I forgive you with all my heart. And you know what happened? The kid got saved in the spot, you know. And again, you say, well how could a person do this? You can't do it, except you're filled with the Spirit of God. And you constantly, I know a case back in our area where this guy's been into adultery, and he's gone to his wife and confessed it, and she cannot forgive him, and she's having a terrible struggle, you know. It's written all over her face. And we're just praying for that she'll get to the point where she can, Jesus said, 70 times 7, right? You know what that means. As often as they come and ask forgiveness, we are to forgive. All right. They may not respond to that, but we are to respond in that way. So, we learn how to love. We learn how to counsel one another. It's amazing how, in a time of revival, how people who've had no experience for training and counseling at all, can effectively counsel other people. We were in an afterglow one time, Pastor Walter Bolton, myself. There was maybe 70 people there. You know how you have a big circle of chairs, and one chair in the middle. And a lady came and knelt at the chair, and then she got up and went back to her seat. And somebody said, you look very unhappy. What's the problem? Oh, she said, you know, I went to that chair, and I knelt and asked God to show me what the problem is. And he never showed me anything, and I don't think God's got anything for me. And there's a kid sitting there. He was about 17, and he lifts terribly. And he says, sister, go back to the chair. So, she got up and knelt at the chair. And this kid just took over. Now, he said, right now, ask the Lord to search your heart, and we will believe, all of us in this circle, we will believe that God will do it right now. So, she started to pray. She says, oh God, I didn't know that was the problem. I never knew that was the problem. And all of a sudden, she was up on cloud nine, just floating in the air, you know. It was wonderful to watch. And we, she forgot about us, and we sang a couple of choruses before she came back down to the earth, you know. But this kid had taken over, just done this, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. And God can do that for us, and often does. And so, in times of revival, we see things of this kind happening. Do you know, this is interesting to me, very interesting to me, that many of the revivals in the States in the 1700s were started through children. Children were asked if they couldn't have children's prayer meetings run by themselves. And adults would come and sit in the back pews and listen to these kids pray. And it was so real, that parents came under conviction. And in some cases, powerful revivals resulted because children were praying, you know. That's interesting. You know, a little child shall lead them. We could perhaps interpret that in that way in cases of that particular kind. Now, revival has often healed divisions in churches. I was in Edmonton in meetings. I spoke to a gathering of pastors, and one of them said, well, Bill, you know, we hear that revival splits churches. And I was ready for that question. I knew it was becoming. And so, I said, well, it's interesting. He said, I said, you know, I've just come to Edmonton, and I've heard of five churches in Edmonton that are in the throes of a division right now, and not one of them has said revival. What happened? They all began. Well, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we know. Now, revival often heals churches. Not always, but sometimes it does, and certainly it can. The power of God is unleashed, and people begin to get honest and humble themselves. All right, secret sins are dealt with. Sins of longstanding. I remember hearing a man one time, he was probably 70, and he told us how when he was 30, God spoke to him about a certain sin he had. He never dealt with it, and now he dealt with it. And he said, and he just wept, he said, why didn't I deal with it 40 years ago? Why didn't I deal with it? Gordon Bailey told me about a man, and he had been through a powerful revival and never stirred, and they asked him why he wasn't doing something about his sins, because they knew he had some problems. And he said, I've got so much garbage behind me, I'm not even going to be, I'm not even going to start. If I start, I'll be busy till Jesus comes. This was his attitude. 15 years later, he met the Lord in some meetings Gordon Bailey had, and Gordon said, you should have heard his testimony. He said he would just stand there, the tears would stream down his face, and he said, people, don't make the mistake I made. Don't make the mistake I made. Deal with whatever God is talking about. Do it, deal with it now. Don't put it off like I did. I wasted all these years. So it humbles us, makes us honest. Secret sins are dealt with. You know, we had, we had meetings in Winnipeg, right after meetings in Saskatoon, and there was a men's quartet in Winnipeg that desperately wanted to sing in our meetings because the crowds were large, and we wouldn't let them sing because we knew that they were not really walking with God. And oh, they were angry with us, you know. Well, two of them met God, and they gave their testimony on a Sunday morning, and they sang a message. I don't, it was on the cross. I don't know, don't remember the song. And the Spirit of God came over the whole place, and all he said was, the concert room's over there, 150 people got to the feet and just stampeded into the prayer room, and God did a marvelous thing. And then the one fellow, in his testimony, he said, God has spoken to me about my sin. I have made a list of all the things I have to make right. I've got 35 things on my death list. He called it a death list. He said, I'm working at it. I'll never sing again until I've dealt with the 35th thing on that list. And that time came before we were two, because we went on for five weeks in Winnipeg, and he sang again, after he dealt with the death list. And Finney used to say, you sin one by one, confess one by one. And Finney used to advise people, make a list of the things you know are wrong, and deal with them. God will be with you in that. He certainly will be, as anybody who's experienced this would know. Do you remember 1 Thessalonians 3, 12 and 13? The Lord make you to increase and abound in love, one toward another and towards all men. To the end that he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness, before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints. What is Paul praying for? He's praying that God would make us Christians to increase and abound in love, one toward another, and toward all men. A fella told me he slid in the ditch one time, and he went up and trying to flag, nobody would stop, you know. And then he saw a car come with a big gospel text on the front, and he gave him a big, you know, pointed his car, and he just went zooming by the South Island, you know. Then a fella pulled up with a big cigar in his mouth, driving a big truck, you know, I'll get you out of there. And so he went ahead and backed up, and it was all mud, you know, and you got chains out, and you got mud all over. And so he said, well, you know, he tried to talk. No, the guy said, I might be in a ditch sometime, he'll pull me out. So they got out, you know. Then he offered the guy $20. The guy said, I'm insulted, he said. Someday I'll be in a ditch, and you can pull me out. Goodbye, and away he went, you know. The Christian never had time. The sinner did it, you know. And sometimes, like you take, when Elijah was in the wilderness, he was fed by ravens, and ravens, they brought him bread and flesh in the morning, bread and flesh in the evening. And the raven was an unclean bird, and sometimes God has to use unclean people to do some things, because Christians won't do it, perhaps, you know. We were running a Bible camp one time, and we ran out of money. We had 40 kids up and out of Kamek Lake near the par, and we had a meeting of our leaders, and we pooled our resources. We never had enough money to buy enough food to last longer than a day. And so we said, well, we're going to have to ask God to do something, and so the next day a truckload was uploaded with food, you know. And there was ice cream and watermelons and everything you can think of, far more than we needed for the following four days of camp. And so I asked the driver, where did this come from? Why is it a guy? And he told me his name. This guy was a terrible sinner, you know. And he got into the store and bought all this stuff and said, take it up to McLeod's camp. I guess God tried to get a Christian to do it, and he wouldn't do it, you know. So God got a sinner to do it. I think this goes on a lot of the time, you know. You know, when I, the first year I was out preaching, I met a fellow. He was from the Church of God, but there was no Church of God in that town. And so I invited him to my church. You know what he said? Why seek you the living among the dead? You know. That was kind of hard to take. But anytime I met him, I was, you know, friendly to him. I did love the guy, you know. He had a big family, six kids. And then I heard that he didn't have a job and he was really struggling. And back then there wasn't much help as there is today. And so I went to a store and I bought some groceries. And I said, I want you to take this down to this guy's house. Don't tell him where it came from. Just say somebody came in and bought it, you know. And then I saw a big cheese sitting there. I said, how much for the cheese? So he told me. I said, well throw that in too, you know. So they took it to this place. A few days later I met this guy in the street and he was just bubbling. Oh, he's jumping about a foot near. Brother Bill, you'll never, you'll never guess what happened the other day. And I said, tell me about it. He said, we were kneeling around the table giving thanks. We had nothing to eat. We were just kneeling around the table giving thanks for the food that God was going to send when it came a knock at the door. He said, there was a guy there with a box of groceries. He said, would you believe it? I said, I can believe that, yeah. So then he says, he starts to cry. He says, you know, when I was praying for food, I said, hey God, you know how I like cheese. Would you send some cheese along? I thought, oh man, it's wonderful, you know. God's really in business. He knows our shirt size, our hat size, our shirt size, and all this kind of thing, you know. And we learn that as we, as we begin to walk with him. All right. Christians become eager to get involved in good works. Ephesians 2 10 says, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before prepared that we should walk in them. We have such a heavy emphasis on the grace of God, we don't talk much about the good work thing. Read the book of Titus. It's loaded. I think seven references to good works. Of some, he said, they profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, every good word reprobated, no judgment. He says, he says to Titus that he was to be careful to instruct those who have believed in God to maintain good works. He said, these things are good and profitable unto man. So there's a heavy emphasis in the Bible on this, but the average Christian, he tries to evade responsibility because he doesn't want to get caught up time-wise. He's got so many things to do, he's got no time to do this, and so he tries to avoid this. And then through revival we see how we need to be involved in the work of God. If you don't do it, who's going to do it, you know? Careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto man. One of the amazing things, and this of course is part of the social impact of revival, is the fact that in many areas where powerful revivals have occurred, crime diminished to zero. There were areas where for eight months after revival there wasn't a single criminal case in the courts. I mean, they had nothing to do. In the Welsh revival, the policemen had nothing to do, so they formed quartets and went around singing in the churches, you know. Nothing to do. Well, how can this be? When the Spirit of God is poured out in multitudes, it has an effect on the whole community, on the whole of society. And it's incredible to read some of these things, though. No crime, no house break-ins. Winnipeg is one of the worst cities in the world for house break-ins. We only were there in August a couple of months. We had our house broken into, and later on three houses next to us were broken into. And by day, like Saturday afternoon, they came and kicked in the back doors and helped themselves, you know. And we meet people all the time, almost everybody we meet in Winnipeg has had his house broken into sometime, you know. We're praying for revival, we're praying for 50,000 people to be converted in Winnipeg, and I think that'll come, and it'll have a profound effect on the whole city. Because God will become real in society, and that's something we certainly need. All right. There's even a new appreciation of nature. I've read the testimony, heard the testimony of some people saying everything was new. I led a lady to the Lord not long ago, and she said, oh, I saw her a couple days later, she said, you know, everything is new, everything is new. And it is, you know. There's a new appreciation even of nature around us when our hearts are right with God. We've intimated this before, but a tremendous impetus given to missions, and then there's steadfastness under persecution. You know, the great revival in the states in 1858 was followed a couple years later by the Civil War, and there's no doubt at all that the revival was partly given because God saw this bloodbath that was coming. At the time of the war in the states, that war in the states, it was the bloodiest war in the history of the world up until that time. And there was great revivals both in the Southern Army and the Northern Army. You know, in the Southern Army, one-third of the soldiers were godly, praying men. The percentage wasn't as high in the North, but there were thousands and thousands of soldiers on both sides that were born-again believers. And revivals swept through some of those army camps at that time, which is quite unusual because in times of war, usually revival peters out because people are involved in the war, they're concerned about the war, they have no time to think about God. But for some reason, God was able to overleap that back in those times. And thousands of soldiers were converted at that particular time. But steadfastness under persecution, that certainly is a one of the things that revival does for God's children. There's a new desire for learning. People want to learn all they possibly can. I've talked recently to somebody who said, you know, I never used to read a book a year. Now I'm reading them all the time, you know. He got his life straightened out with God and all of a sudden found a new desire. I know before I was a Christian, I used to daydream all the time. I love to daydream. Sat in school and daydream. I wouldn't get anywhere in school, you know. I wasted hours and hours just sitting in school thinking about canoe tripping and, you know, important things like fishing stuff. Well, I got over 2,000 books in my library now, and I carry, I got about six of them I brought with me, and I'm reading books all the time, and I enjoy it. And I'm still learning, although I'm 78 years old. All right, a forgiving spirit. Anybody here can't forgive somebody? They did something awful to you? They lied about you? Anybody like that you can't forgive? You want to take care of it? The Bible says, be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. You know, it's hard to love a person who lies about you. I've had people lie about me, and the initial response is, well, I'll say something bad about them. You know, that's not the right response. You have to keep loving them in your heart, and not allow any bitterness at all to come in. You commit this to God, and leave it in God's hands. And I was in South America, and we raised some money. We got back, there's a pastor in South America. He wanted to come up to one of our conferences. He came to a conference in Saskatoon, and I remember before he went back in our living room, we knelt down before my family. He prayed for all my family and everything. Went back to South America, and he told the people, I found this out later on, that the revival in Canada was just a farce. It never really happened. Nothing really happened up there in Canada, and we don't need to have Bill McCullough come down here for meetings. I was planning to go down for meetings, and I didn't know a thing about this. I got to South America, and then some people clued me in as to what had been going on. So I called a meeting with this man, and some other pastors and missionaries to find out what the problem was. And so he said that I had lied to him. So I said, when did I lie to you? He told me what meeting. He said, you didn't lie to me, but you lied about something. And I was in the meeting, and I heard it. And so we got the lady who interpreted for me in that meeting, and she said, I never said anything like that, and I knew I hadn't. But he was adamant, you know. So how do you handle that? I love this guy. He had a lovely wife and kids, you know. Like I said, something was eating at his heart. We found out later on, a friend of his said, he wanted to be the instrument of revival for Argentina. He didn't want Bill McCullough down there. So my first feeling was, since he was with the Southern Baptist denomination, was to write to their publication and talk about my side of it. And I prayed about it, and God said, don't do it. So I never did anything. I just let it lie. And you know, one day, walking down the street, he dropped dead. I felt terrible about that. I really did. But God just took him out of the picture, you know. And I felt badly, very badly about it. But you see the old self problem, you know. Job said, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Apparently, Job didn't believe in this self-esteem stuff, you know. By the way, did you notice this? Recently, two PhDs in the States, they did a long study on the self-esteem idea, and they said this whole thing is feeding people towards violence. That's what they're saying. And that's interesting, because that's challenging the whole status quo among psychiatrists and so on, because they're all teaching this, and some preachers are preaching this self-esteem thing, you know. I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. So we stand in the way of God. All right, there's very little backsliding of converts during a revival. Boy, I was in a church down in Rio Hondo, Texas, and it's a small town of a thousand people. He had a church of 500 people, at least Sunday morning he had 500. And it was interesting to see what happened. He had, on the average, five crusades a year. And we were one of the five. And just before we came there, five weeks before we got there, he had an evangelistic crusade. And he had 1700 people profess to be saved in one week of meetings in a high school auditorium in that area. So he formally said, tell me what happened. He was just praising the Lord all over the place. 1700 converts. So I thought, hey, this is great. We're going to go down there for a week of meetings, be able to get these new converts into revival truths and so on. He met us at the plane, and really he needed a roller skate under his chin, you know. He was just really down. So we talked to him. His name was Gene. And I said, Gene, you have a problem? I have a terrible problem, he said. I said, keep your heart open, ask God to work, and God will work in your life. He said, is there anything wrong with right now? I said, no. We came in the motel, and people, he fell on the floor and just bawled. Of the 1700 converts, five weeks later, he hadn't baptized one, he never had one attending his church. It almost put him out of the ministry. What had happened was, in order to get the crowds of young people, he had got a rock band in to get the crowds. And he got the crowds, and they responded at the altar calls by the hundreds, obviously, and none of it was of God. His wife almost left him because she saw him violating principles they'd stood for for years, just to get a crowd. Anyway, one of the other things that happens, one of the reasons why revival is important, is because Christians, and I mentioned yesterday, was it? I'm sorry, this morning, perhaps? Well, somewhere recently, that every Christian has gifts from God. And, you know, people often say, poor little me, God never gave me any gifts. Well, yes, he did. The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man. Does that include everybody? The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man for the common good. First Corinthians 12. Every Christian is gifted by the Holy Spirit in some way. There's some things you have a gift to do that I can't do. And in times of revival, these gifts come to the surface. When people start doing things that they never dreamed of doing before. There's a group called Christian Brotherhood down in Omaha, Nebraska, and I had meetings with them numbers of times over the years. A fellow named Buddy Medlock, he was deeply involved in selling drugs, got converted through some women in the Alliance Church there who were praying for God to save the most outstanding sinner in Omaha that he knew about. And this guy got saved, and after this guy, Buddy, got saved, they lost the burden they had. So they concluded it had to be Buddy, you know. Well, he knew all these dives, so he began soul winning, and he got into all these dives, and he led scores and scores of these kids to Christ, you know. And the pastor of the church, the Alliance Church told me, he said, this guy, Buddy Medlock, he's got a gift for counseling like you've never seen anywhere. He said, I just stand amazed, and when I hear this guy counseling people, it is incredible. Never read a book on it, but he was gifted by the Holy Spirit, and he knew this. And so he had these kids, he had, it was like, almost like a Bible college, two-year training course, and he bought several three-story houses. Everything he turned touched to gold money-wise, and he bought three houses or so of these that have got guys in one, gals in another. He had a bookstore with several thousand titles in it, and all that sort of stuff. I went through his bookstore, he asked me to do that. I couldn't find anything that I couldn't agree with, and the Spirit of God had been leading him in that also. But he trained his young people in discovering their gifts, and after they discovered their gifts, then he trained them in developing their gifts. It wasn't charismatic. There was no speaking in tongues among them, but there were certainly many gifts of the Spirit among those kids. I was only there two days, and several walked up and said, we know what your gift is. I said, what do you think my gift is? And they told me, I said, yeah, you're right. How did you know? They said, we know. But he trained us as to how to recognize people's gifts, you know. Oh, that's interesting. It was really a revival movement, and God blessed them wonderfully. All right, I was reading something recently in a book, and it was saying in the revival in this particular area that violent people became lamb-like. Lamb-like. Quiet, peaceful, whereas before they were angry, and upset, and violent. One of the signs of the last days is that people will be fierce. Paul used that word in 2nd Timothy chapter 3. Fierce. And because they're fierce, then they're violent. Him that loves violence, God said, his soul hates. And so violent people become lamb-like as a result of revival. I should perhaps correct something here, because it's not really revival that does it, it's Jesus Christ that does it. And it pains me sometimes, I think I've made the same mistake, but I sometimes hear somebody saying, revival did this for me, and I say, well no, not really. It's not revival that did something for you, it's Jesus Christ that did something for you. And I want to just set the record straight there. Believers will develop a very tender conscience toward the laws of the land. One of my churches, I had a guy who was always going through stop lights and stop signs, you know, and I drove him a time or two, and he'd be muttering to himself, stupid stop signs, he'd be saying, stupid red lights, stupid this, stupid that, you know. I had the same thing down in South America, driving with a missionary, and he had a French car, you know, it was just a bucket of bolts. He was always pounding the steering wheel and talking about this terrible bucket of bolts he was driving. So one day I said, hey, wait a minute. I said, isn't this the car God gave you in answer to prayer? And I said, listen brother, I mean you're riding a car, I see a lot of people walking on the sidewalk, they can't afford a car. You ought to start thanking God for the car you've got. And he never said a word. But a couple of months after I got home, he wrote me a letter, and he said, you know what? I took your advice and I've been praising the Lord for the car, and it's run like a top ever since, he said. Sometimes, you know, you get banged in the steering wheel and complaining, and things will start going wrong, you know. Things will start falling apart. You start praising God and pray over the motor, pray over the transmission, pray over the tires and the steering wheel, you know, and everything. Pray over everything, you know, and it'll just go on like a top. And we learned, there's one lady in one of our, I think it was in Sault Ste. Marie, and she had a heavy foot. And she said, you know, 100 miles an hour is my usual speed in the highway. I never got caught once, she said. Well, in the meetings, God spoke to her heart. And so she decided she had to do something about that. So she gave her testimony one night and told the crowd her God had really dealt with her about this, and no more of this stuff on the highway. Boy, she stayed within the speed limit. Well, that lasted about a week, and she was out on the highway one day, and she said the old urge returned, and I was doing 110 miles an hour when I heard a siren, you know. And she pulled over and a policeman pulled up behind her, and he came over and she rolled the window down, and he looks and he says, Hey, I heard you give your testimony at Bill McCloud's meetings. And you said you would never do this again. Why are you doing this? So, you know, that night she gave her testimony. She told us all about it, and she said, and there's the policeman sitting over there grinning from ear to ear, and he was grinning from ear to ear, you know. She said, Dear people, you better pray for me so it never happens again, you know. Well, that was interesting. We need to have a... I remember before revival in my own life, I had a truck. I was starting a church in Transcona, Manitoba, and on the tailgate it said Dodge. So I got some Scotch light, and I made a thing, Don't Dodge Jesus Saves, you know. I thought that was pretty cute, you know. So one day I was calling her home. This lady was a Christian, and she told me about her husband. He was a real wicked sinner. I said, Okay, you make yourself scarce Thursday night, and I'll come and visit him. So I did. We got in to talk about this, and I got to talk about the gospel. He said, Now, wait a minute. He said, What do you drive? And I had this sinking feeling, you know. I drive a Dodge Halfton. Oh, yeah? He said, Yeah. He said, I've driven behind you in the highway. You don't believe in obeying the laws of the land, do you? Well, I get out of there as fast as I could, and I got alone with God, and I begged God to forgive me for my wickedness, you know, and promised God I'd never do this again. And occasionally, it gets a little on the wrong side, you know, when you're driving a long trip, and you get back as fast as you can. But you know, we're on stage. We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men, Paul said. And the word spectacle is theotron, the Greek word, and it's the word from which you get the English word theater. We are made a theater to the world, to angels, and to men, whether we like it or not, you're on stage. We Christians are. And revival makes us aware of this, that people are watching us. It's important what we live, what we do, how we react in I know a couple one time, and their child was killed in an accident, and they had a testimony in the area where they lived, but they complained to everybody they met. People were dropping by from the neighborhood to, you know, to encourage them, and they were bawling all over the place, why did God do this to us? And you know, they blew their testimony right out the window. Instead of recognizing, as basically they must have somewhere in their mind, that all things work together for good to those that love God, and giving God the glory, they had a wonderful opportunity, really, to show the power and grace of God, and they lost it all by complaining the way that they did. The Bible says, do all things without murmurings and disputings, that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. And so, the Lord Jesus, in times of revival, makes us aware of some of these things. Materialism loses its hold on such people. I remember one time at a conference down in the States, and it was a church seating a thousand or so, and I found a room over the organ, it was a room for mops, you know, and closet, just nothing but in there, but mops and pails and stuff, and I found a chair and got it up there, and then people couldn't find me between sessions, and I fasted the whole weekend. I just came out when I had to preach, you know, and I had some wonderful times in that room. And I was, God had given me a new message called Mammon the Demon of Greed. I got that title from a book that had that title, I didn't preach the book, but I took the title for that particular message, Mammon the Demon of Greed, and I preached, the place was packed, and God did a mighty, mighty thing. There was a doctor there, he went home and talked to his wife, they sold their big house, they got a house, they didn't have any kids at home, they got a house much smaller, and they put their excess money into missions, he got rid of a couple of the extra vehicles he had, he got rid of some other stuff he had, they just cleaned out everything they didn't really need and gave it to missions, you know, and people went into full-time Christian work, and so on. Mammon the Demon of Greed. And we've really got it here in North America, we, so much stuff, somebody said, our houses are so full of things, their feet stick out the windows. And they're all supposed to be, you know, labor-saving devices, but you spent so much time repairing these labor-saving devices, you might as well do it the old way. You know, in times of revival, people never complained about a long meeting. Have you noticed that? Meetings go on for three hours, and people don't complain, and very few people leave. It's so wonderful to have God, and just to have the Lord drop in. And sometimes, when the Lord drops in, it's just, I remember one time in some meetings, I had a couple with me who'd experienced revival before. They told me, now, if you have any need, any time for helping me, just let us know, and we'll come if we can. If we can take a holiday in the summertime and come and help in crusades, anything, you know, they would do anything for us. And they would sit on the platform, just grinning from ear to ear. And so I said to them one time, you know, it's really neat to have your people sitting on the platform grinning from ear to ear, but why are you doing it? Well, they said, because they know what's going to happen down there. And so they're just waiting for, because they knew God would drop in. He doesn't always. We wish he would, but he often does. That's why revival is so important. Usually a great spirit of humility. You know, Praying Hyde from India was asked one time to speak at the Keswick Conference in England. I don't know if you know anything about Praying Hyde, but he prayed eight to ten hours a day. His name was a household name in India, and I was in India. They wanted to take me over to Sialkot, where he used to work and live, because even now he's been dead for a long while. His name among Christians in India is very, very high. When the bell rang at the missionary compound for dinner, he would pray and say, Lord, do I go? And if God said no, he never went. And he asked God for one soul a day, and then he asked God for two souls a day, and he asked God for three souls a day, and I think he got up to four souls a day, and he never went to bed at night until that four souls were saved. A deeply spiritual, powerful man. He was asked to speak at the Keswick Conference in England, and the Keswick Conference in England is the mother of all the Keswick Conferences around the world. Very prestigious. They didn't know that Praying Hyde was a very slow speaker. It took him 15 minutes to get warmed up. So after six or seven minutes, the crowd got restless, and finally the lady got up and announced to him, and they sang him down, and he never spoke again. Now let me ask you this question. If you were in his shoes, how would you feel? Angry? Embarrassed? Look for a hole to crawl into? How would you feel? How did he feel? A friend of his went running up and said, Oh, Brother Hyde, that was a terrible thing they did to you. And he said, Brother Hyde smiled ever so sweetly and said, Oh, my brother, it is the Lord. Let him do as seemeth him good. And that's how he felt. That's humility. And God produces humility in his people in times of power. We have nothing to be proud about. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then something else that happens, of course, is that lay people become successful workers. We had a guy in Winnipeg, he was a truck driver, and his English was abominable, and he was driving down in the states. He had experienced revival in Winnipeg. He was driving down somewhere in the states, and on Sunday morning, he pulled into a church to go to church in his trucker clothes. As he came in the door, a guy at the door asked him who he was. He said, I'm from Canada. And the guy said, Do you want to think about the revival in Canada? Oh, yeah, I said, I just got revived a couple of weeks ago. So this guy goes beading up to the pastor. The pastor announces there's a guy from Canada. He's going to tell us about the revival in Canada. And here's this truck driver up in the platform behind the pulpit in his trucker clothes, you know, talking about the revival in Winnipeg. And he came back to Winnipeg, and he shared in our meetings there. We went for weeks there, five weeks all together, I guess. And he told us what happened. He said, I just told him what God did in my life, and then I did what you guys do. I gave an invitation, and almost the whole church came to the front. And he said, I was counseling people at two o'clock in the afternoon. Well, where did he learn how to do this, you know? And we got an SOS at the time of the revival in Saskatoon to send somebody down to southern Colorado, I believe it was. A bunch of churches went together for a ten-day crusade, and we sent a couple of farmers. I think you remember that, Harold? We sent a couple of farmers down there, and they had a real crusade. People were saved. Christians were revived. We didn't have anybody else we could send. And in the 1858 revival, by the way, practically the whole movement was carried on by laypeople. Almost everything that happened was carried on by laypeople. They did all the counseling. See, there was very little preaching. Here's how the meeting would go. The stores closed down from 11 o'clock to two o'clock in all the major cities in America at that time, so people could go to the churches to pray. All the churches were open for prayer. Some churches had five prayer meetings a day, kind of crowded every meeting. And so people would come from the stores and everywhere else into the churches. And somebody would open the meeting. It might be a pastor, it might be a lay person. That didn't seem to matter at all. And they'd start. And then you were allowed to speak or pray for five minutes no longer. And there's a guy with a bell. And if you got over five minutes, he rang the bell, and you had to quit. And that's how the meetings were run. Then people would come up and say, pray for me, I need to be saved. And so right away, the whole crowd would start praying for this man. He'd give him his first name, and he'd get down on his knees, and they'd all pray for him. He would get saved right away. And the people weren't counseling very much, just praying that he would be saved. But there were thousands this way. And this was the format. And lay people were running the whole thing. And some pastors didn't like it, because they were kind of pushed aside. It was just the way God was doing it. And all the other great revival movements, there seems to have been some great leader. And in this one, there wasn't. And significantly, it was the most powerful of all the revivals I've seen. So revival is important for what God does at those times. You know, in Kentucky, in the Kentucky revivals, before the revival movement, every fifth person was an alcoholic. That's far worse than even today. After the revival, they said, you couldn't find a drunkard in 100 miles. I'm driving through villages late in the day, you'd hear hymns from every, almost every home. People were singing hymns around the table as they were eating their suppers. And it was such a powerful and lasting work that God did. And people, we've got to be praying for revival today. I don't know what's going to happen another 20 years down the road, and we keep sliding down the hill the way we are today. We must have revival. We must pray for it and believe God for it. Well, by the way, Dr. Orr has noted that in areas where he could get information on it following revivals, there was always a decrease in sexual immorality. In many cases, gamblers and saloon keepers were put out of business. And one time in the states, during the time of revival, there was 18 grocery shops were closed down. They had no business. I read recently one of my books, a place where in this particular saloon, Saturday night was their big night. The revival had come, hundreds were being converted, and on Saturday night this saloon took in six cents, that's all. I mean, many saloons had to close down because people were not going there anymore. Some saloons, saloon keepers got converted and turned their saloon into a prayer room. And people were going there just to pray. I remember reading one time, there were 18 prostitutes who'd been converted in the revival, and they were going in a group down to a prayer meeting one night, and a bunch of police stopped them because they knew who these gals of the street were. So, where are you gals going? Oh, we're going to a prayer meeting. Oh, yeah, you're going to a prayer meeting, you know. Well, yeah, they finally persuaded the police we're going to a prayer meeting, you know. And they were because they'd been truly converted. You know, this revival down in Texas back last January, a year ago, in that town, was it Brownwood, I think, Brownwood, Texas? There was a gang of 22 young people who had been violent in the area. They were very well known. They showed up in the meetings one night. They were planning to liven up the party, and 18 of them got converted in that one meeting. And that was just a year ago. You know, God is doing it again. He's encouraging us to believe him, to call on him for a deep and powerful work of the Holy Spirit. Common law, people would get married if you want to be right with the Bible, right with others. And there's always a desire to exalt Christ. Glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's. And people have a desire, because Christ has been working in their heart, to exalt him. I had a very interesting thing happen one time. You know, I got tired of this, because, you know, you preach, and then people come up sometimes, and they say, oh, that was a wonderful sermon. And my heart just sinks, you know. Chalmers preached a marvelous sermon one time in this church in England. It was at Scotland. People who were there said it was such a thrilling sermon. The whole congregation jumped to their feet, and they all crowded to the front. They didn't want to miss a movement of a finger, even. And afterwards, one of the elders came running and said, oh, pastor, that was such a marvelous sermon. And he said, and what did it do? What did it do? Who was blessed? Who was changed? So we're not here to preach wonderful sermons. We're here to be an instrument that God can use, and through whom he can bless other people. So I was in meetings in the States one time, and I had a tremendous burden. You know, I spent all afternoon praying. I said, God, I don't want these people to see me. I want to see you. Can you do something for me? Can you wipe me out so they'll see you? And I preached that night. And afterwards, Lucitaire's wife and another Christian worker's wife came up, and they said, we don't know how to say this, but when you were speaking, we never saw you. We couldn't see you. We can't explain it was a spiritual thing, but all we could see was Jesus Christ. I'll tell you, as a preacher, I went home happy that night. We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. And that's where it's at. So, God's power in revival is so important, because it puts God back in the saddle. I was in meetings one time, and I never heard a voice. But you know, you get these impressions in your heart. It went like this. The Lord was saying to me, now look, there's a coffin here. I want you to climb into this coffin and lay there. Now, you stay in the coffin. If you get out of that coffin and start walking around, I'll have to stop working. You can stay in the coffin. Just watch me working, and just stay out of the way, you know. It was as real as anything could be. I said, okay God, I'll stay in the coffin. I'll just stay out of God's way. And watch him work. And he's able. I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save, he said. And he's the what?