In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of prioritizing time with God and living a disciplined life. He encourages listeners to go to bed early and wake up early to spend time with God. The preacher shares his personal experience of waking up at 12 am to spend four hours with God. He also emphasizes the need for preachers to have a personal encounter with God and to preach the Word of God with conviction. Additionally, he challenges one individual to memorize 60 chapters of the Bible in the next five years. The preacher believes that if every preacher would practice and preach the simple gospel, it would have a transformative impact on society.

To our radio friends, this is a portion of the service of ordination for Brother Al Cockrell in Kansas City, the Open Door Baptist Church. All that we've done thus far is well and good, but apart from the application of the gospel, it's but routine. There have been many a man go through and answer the questions of the presbytery who's turned back or quit or become a modernist. But tonight, with no desire to win a popularity contest, but with seriousness of soul and believing that the preacher actually is God's standing army, and believing with deep conviction that the world stands at the end of the trail in the Church in its final apostasy because of modernism in the pulpit, modernistic schools, I'd like to challenge my brother tonight, whom we, like you, have learned to love, and I want to be a help to him. What I have to say, the Lord gave me at least a few jotted notes after 6 o'clock this evening. You recognize this is the close of a real busy day and a wonderful day. I appreciate these dear men, and I, but for the leadership of the Lord, feel no sense of worthiness that would bring me to the time to bring this ordination message. Brother Al, I'd like for you to get a chair and sit over here where I can see you. I trust your very likeness will inspire me somewhat, but I'm depending on the Lord mostly. And I want to make sure that you're still here, and I'm going to keep an eye on you while I'm preaching. In 1 Corinthians 1, I'm going to begin reading at verse 18. And folks, let's not be in any hurry now. This message is going to cost me some friends, but they weren't very good friends to start with. And what I preach in private, I ought to preach in public. And what I preach in the Church, I ought not to be ashamed to go on the radio. And what I preach tonight, I believe with all of my heart, would cure the world. Stop Vietnam and completely lock the divorce wheels of our courts. Stop juvenile delinquency, empty out the jails and penitentiaries. If every preacher would practice and preach the simple gospel which is old-fashioned. Thirty-five years ago, the Lord told me, as best I could figure it out by the Word of God, this is right. And I'd be a traitor to the cause tonight if I preached less than I'm going to preach. So at least, enemy and friend alike, give me credit for being sincere in what I say to this, our brother Al Cockrell. For the preaching of the gospel is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God. By the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ, crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, hath it not many wise men after the flesh? Not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Our text tonight, After that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Our Father, just before we unload the wagon that we believe thou hast loaded, we pray that in his Spirit, in his name, our lips shall speak carefully and yet powerfully. Lord, help us to know there is nothing personal in this thing at all. We are here on business for the King, and we dare not take lightly what thou hast taught us. Help us to be true and faithful, and blessed by the cockerel. Give him a fruitful ministry, and fruit that will abide. Save him from pride and from the flesh. Give him prudence, and may Jesus be his wisdom, and his sanctification, his justification, and his redemption. In Jesus' name, amen. Time would forbid for me to say all the things I'd like to say, but our radio friends will have to know that many questions have been asked and answered. I'd like to mention, first of all, a preacher without a personal life is no good. You'll never climb higher with your congregation than you do in your private life. I want to mention seven things I believe the Lord would have me say. Number one, you give evidence that you're saved. You gave the time and the call. Sanctified, we discuss sanctification. I believe it's throwing yourself out of joint with the world, living different, choosing the things that are sweet and pure and clean and right, settled, soaked up in the love of God, sent with a salty conversation and a simple message for the world. Now then, that's just so many words, but the application. You read the requirements a while ago for a preacher. One of our brethren asked you about the requirements for a pastor. May I say I believe that the requirements of all preachers are the same. I hear people say, well, if you're going to be a pastor, you can't have but one wife. If you're going to be an evangelist, you don't need but one either. One's enough for anybody, especially a preacher. And I say that with a good deal of animated feelings. I'm sick and tired of this rash of preachers getting rid of their wife and staying in their church and then getting another and remarrying and deacons being married in the church and having church. That's an abomination of desolation. Now you keep your hand off of couples who are not qualified to be married. You set her out an example. In the first place, you have one wife. You have no way, I believe, to get people tangled up in another marriage unless they have a dead wife or somebody that's gone the way of death. The Bible says that. The best way to be safe, my boy, and I don't know everything, but I believe I have found out that if preachers would quit compromising and marry everybody that comes through, I believe we'd stop a lot of this divorce business. They're not qualified to be married again. Tell them to go to the justice of the peace. You'd say, what do you mean? And I'm still on the radio. I mean that according to the Word of God and my conviction, it's as deep as my soul. I believe that a preacher or anybody else, when they get married and they say, until death do us part, it means exactly what they say. And we're never going to stop this rash of broken homes and shattered hopes and cheated children and all the rest of it until our preachers get on their hind legs and stand up for holiness in the home! Brother, I've charged you tonight, you keep your hands clean as well as your heart and your life and your ministry. You see to it that you don't compromise. I know there'll be friends, and I've lost a host of them because they wanted me to tie the second or third knot. I can't tie knots like that. I can tie the first knot, and that's all of them! And it's one thing to talk about sanctification, it's another thing to live it. You'd say, well, don't you think? Graham's nothing. Let me tell you something, brother. Just go back to the, how many wives did God make Adam? What kind of choice did he give him? He said, here she is, bud. It may sound a little crude and rude, but I believe that's the way it was. Take her or leave her! He didn't say, Lord, couldn't you give me a selection? He said, there she is. My heart's been grieved, really, honestly. We just need to hang crape, I mean black crape, on the door knob, and weep for the loss of conviction in the ministry about this marriage business. Sanctification, your personal life, your own personal life. And don't you ever, as far as I'm concerned, don't ever apologize for having to live or being expected to live better than anybody else. You ought to live better than anybody else. You ought to be head and shoulders above everything in church. Why? You've been saved and called! And tonight, as we've sought to set you apart as a special vessel to be used of the Lord, I believe in personal sanctification and separation. I believe you ought to observe the Lord's Day as the Lord's Day. I'd like to remind you, don't hobnob with the people. Don't wine and dine with the people. They'll sap all your strength and then fire you because you can't preach. And if you can't, you ought to be fired. But you can't attend every dogfight in town, and you can't be at every social occasion and then come up with power on Sunday morning and Sunday night. You must not be a slave of the people if you want to set your people free. And no church is ever free until it's pulpit is free. Man didn't call you to preach, and man can't stop you from preaching. This call is of God. And I believe in a divine call to preach. I believe in a divine call to preach just because the gospel is so important and God's not going to put His gospel in the hands of just anybody to preach it. And if I wasn't on the radio, I could name some that I don't think were called to preach. And you'd have to listen to some of them if you don't turn off your radio. I believe that no man is called to preach other than I, the Virgin of birth. Not by the Lord, he's not called to preach. And so, my brother, oh, in your personal life, the biggest battle. Now, you said, Wally, you believe in a personal devil. And of course, the reason is because he's attacked your person. And he'll deal with you. You're going to have to deal with the devil. Martin Luther said one day, he certainly believed in a personal devil. He said, in fact, a devil came in his room, and he threw an ink bottle at him and nearly hit him. Well, he said, I fight a personal devil. And yet we live in a time when people don't believe in the devil anymore. I feel like my colored brother who said, If there's not any devil, who's doing all this devil-ment? Right. When I talk about personal sanctification, I talk about paying your debts. And don't be a leech on your church. If you go hunting, buy your own shells. If you go fishing, pay for your part of the expenses. Don't be a leech. The world's lost its respect for the preachers because they've kept their stinking hands out behind them too much. It's not right. If God's your Father, he'll supply your needs. And what he doesn't supply, you don't need. Pay your debts! I'm not mad, I'm just mad at the devil. I'm just sick and tired of the minister being blamed because of a bunch of preachers that leave debts behind them. It's not right. Live in your own income. And don't expect your church members to sign your notes. They're the worst people on earth to get the bar money from. Build such a reputation where you can go in the back like a businessman, and sit down and sign a note, and they'll say, We're glad to do it! And then pay it like you ought to pay it. If you ever come to the place where you can't pay a debt, you be there on time to tell them why you can't pay it, and you're still honest. We must not have crooks in the ministry. I mean, any more than we've got now. And I'm not against the ministry. I'm for them. But I'm simply saying, Brother Al, we must not let the ministry be blamed any more. You're enjoying the highest calling in all the world. And actually, if they were to call you from Washington tonight, the awful, sordid, sinful, satanic state of our government, and our nation, and our people, and the backslidden condition, and with the awful war in Vietnam, and with the violence of storms and homeless people, and the so many sundry and varied needs of the American people and the world. But if they were to call you tonight when we're through with the coordination service, and say, Mr. Al Cockrell is wanted on the phone. And they were to say, we just had a nationwide election, and they have elected you to be the President of the United States. They know that you're earnest and honest and upright, and they want you to come immediately. The President has just stepped aside and said, I also cast my vote for him. That'd be no temptation to a preacher. Immediately you'd say, I appreciate the honor, but I can't stand the demotion. God's just called me to preach, and I'll stay with the ministry. Listen, I still believe the highest calling in the world is that of the many. What Dr. Ray used to say in the homiletics class, he was 80 years old, but a man of great tears and tenderness. Oh, I've seen that old wrinkled face with its ditches full of tears, many, many times, many times. Almost hear him with his deep resonant voice at the age of 80. But he'd say to the preachers, the hot sun and a slow mule has called a lot of fellas to preach. It might have, but it won't keep them preaching, I'll tell you that. It's going to take more than a slow mule to keep you in the ministry. But I believe if you'll practice what you say you believe, my brother, I believe that there's hope for a fruitful ministry. If you'll stand and mix faith in what you heard and what you read in the word of God, I believe the Lord will give you full ministry. Brother Al, and I'm going to talk just like you were my son, you're not, but I love you and I'm interested in you. And I want to make an investment in your ministry and prayer and concern and love. You have no right to join any secret organization. Be not entangled with this world, and don't get tangled up with unbelievers. Now, the world will say, if you'll join us, you may win us, but you'll lose them when you do. The way to pull a man out of the ditch is not to back off in the ditch with him. Keep your wheels on the concrete. I'm surprised that our preachers, that by their testimony and by their practice, have indicated that the church is not enough. I've got to go somewhere else to get me some fellowship. I believe that your ministry and your life ought to be soaked up and settled and saturated with the fellowship of God's believing people. And you have no right to run off to the world looking for fellowship. And you can't hobnob with the goats of your community and keep your sheep fed like they ought to be fed. I'd like to challenge you, Brother Al, to keep your convictions straight. If you don't get them straight now, you never will. There's an eternal cry in the Word of God, and that is the cry that they gave to Elijah, Come down! Now, that cry hadn't come to a lot of preachers because they never have been up. They started out down. They've never heard that call at all. But, Brother, let me tell you something. If you ever become a mountaintop preacher, you're going to hear it day after day, 24 hours a day, Come down! Come down! That's where the world is. They won't chew down where they are. That's what they said to Nehemiah doing a great work on the wall. Come down! We want to have a conference, a committee meeting. He said, I'm already committed to the wall. I'm doing a great work, and I just can't come down. You'll constantly hear the call, Come down! Be one of us. Get adjusted. Fit in. Be a regular fellow. I mean, have a winsome personality. And it's all right to have a winsome, but what it means is to win some for Jesus. Paul said, I made all things to all men, that I might by all means win some. He had a winsome personality. He did a sorry job of winning the world, but he sure won some wicked sinners. And that's all you need to be. And Brother Al, while I'm on that, I wish you'd not fool with your church members a whole lot. When God calls you to pastor, I mean, just tell them to look out for themselves. They ought to be able to cook and eat, if they're not all a bunch of babies. Don't serve soothing syrup. And you deal with lost people. Let a bunch of church members, if they won't see you, let them come to church and hear you. I mean, your church dies while a preacher is trying to pacify a bunch of worldly church members, fixing bottles, and visiting in the home, and trying to keep them from getting their feelings hurt. Listen, I believe you need to get a divorce, in a sense, from your people in the church, and go out and win lost people to Christ. And if you're going to be in—some of you folks don't know what I'm talking about. I'm telling the truth. You'd kill your preacher as dead as a hammer, just hobnobbing with him. Come over, Brother Al, and let's have donuts and coffee. Come over and eat with us, Brother Al, and while the world's going to hell, you'd have him in there kicking up your heels, doing nothing. And then you'll wonder why he died while he was your pastor. I'll tell you something else, Brother Al. Just as sure as I'm a foot high, you need it, and everybody else needs it. I need it. I found out many years ago, your church members will kill you with kindness, but you'll be just as dead if they'd have shot you with a rifle. I mean, they'll feed you enough chocolate pie and coconut pie, and they'll want you to stay up till midnight and daylight, and then wonder why you didn't get up early next morning. Brother, let me tell you something. If you don't exercise some personal discipline, in the first place, you'll never be well, and nobody wants a sick preacher. Come up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and say, I just don't feel well. No matter who made you sick, you're still sick. You owe it to God and you owe it to your people to stay well. And you're not going to stay well if you don't discipline the flesh you're living in. And we've got a rash of sickness across this country, and oh, the wasted time and the wasted life and the wasted voice and the inefficient ministries because we've not disciplined these old bodies. What'd Jesus say? He didn't deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. I didn't ask any questions while ago, because I thought I'd just say it, and you couldn't talk back. I believe you ought to learn what it means to pray and fast. Every great man of God that's ever lived to bless his generation has been a man of prayer and fasting. You'd say, where's that in the Bible? You ought not to be that ignorant. It's all through the Bible. Moses fasted 40 days twice when he got the word of God. How do you think you're going to get the word of God? It's a revelation. You don't learn it. Some of these are professors in Godly men and know how to teach the word of God. But the best we can do and they can do is to make an explanation. God's got to make the revelation. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And Paul said immediately, I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem, but I went into Arabia. Regardless of what you think about it or what anybody else says about it, I believe every preacher needs an Arabian experience where God speaks to him for himself. And until the message becomes yours, you'll never get it to the people. You can read all the books you want to read, but those books will be nothing but dry fodder until the Holy Spirit takes it and makes it real in your own heart. You might as well learn to get messages right out of the word of God. That leads me up to this thought. I challenge you, Brother Al, to accept the spiritual exercise of memorizing sixty chapters the next five years of your life. Anybody that's as young as you are, anybody that's got the brilliance that you have and the intelligence you have, you'd have no difficulty at all if you'd set yourself to it. And in five years from now, I'd like to meet you and greet you and see what it's done for you in your life, the confidence, the power. The Bible says you earn not knowing the scriptures, neither the power of God. If you want power in your ministry, you won't have it until you have this. If you want to double your power, you double your knowledge of the word of God. I believe the Holy Spirit refuses to dwell anybody in his fullness that is a stranger to the word of God and not in love with Job, said, I've esteemed thy word more than my necessary food. Paul said an old preacher, beaten and battered and scarred, had all of his ordination marks in his hide and on his head, had his certificate written in his own blood, left for dead, 195 deep stripes in his body, so cold at times he had not enough clothes to wear, in jails all over the country. And yet his final remark was, when you come, I'd like you to bring my cloak, but he said especially the parchments. Oh, I want to hear old Sinai thunder one more time. I want to climb that old hill with Moses. I want to fellowship with John. I want to be on Mount Carmel with Elijah one more time. Brother, he loved the word of God, and you are to love the word of God. There's only one thing I'll make a preacher out of you is the word of God. Only one thing. People say, well, I think you ought to go off to school and make a preacher out of you. School don't make preachers out of anybody. They may help you, but they don't make a preacher out of you. And if you don't go to the right school, it'll be a curse instead of a blessing. I know more preachers have been ruined by education than anything I know of. I've said for many years, I'd rather say I've seen than see something I have seen see nothing. And I'm not against the right kind of English. I wish I could speak it. But I'm telling you right now, brother, your words will be sounding voice and tinkling cymbals apart from the Holy Spirit and a heart that's saturated with the love of God. This is a worthy world. Everybody's talking, but not many people are walking in the real practice of the word of God. I'm talking about your personal edification and sanctification. Don't get tangled up in the world. And don't be program-minded or denominational-minded, remembering that God didn't call you to build a denomination. Jesus started a church. And don't get tangled up in the organizations of the world, because all of those are to go with the using, every one of them. And every plant that my Father hath not planted will be rooted up. Don't waste your time, and don't wait till you get as old as I am to learn that you owe your allegiance to Christ first and the Bible and the Holy Spirit and emphasize the importance of building a local church. That's the thing that gets the job done and wins the souls for Christ. And don't worry about climbing some man's totem pole, because it's going to fall. You'll be true to Jesus. And something else, don't worry about where you're going to preach. Just get your message ready and keep your gun loaded, and God will give you more games to shoot at than you'll ever shoot, if you stay loaded. And I mean just the Word of God. You say, how do you think you're going to get it? Get up in the morning, get up early. Don't go to bed at twelve, one o'clock at night. You're dissipating your life. I mean, it's a habit of your life. Don't hop-knob around all hours of the night. That's what the world does. They stay up, these drive-ins and everything else, eating hamburgers and french fries and all the rest of it. Now, get home and go to bed and get you some rest and then beat the devil's crowd to bed and then beat them up in the morning. I'm serious about this. I really am. I mean, this is a part of my soul. And I mean, anytime God would take anybody as ignorant as I was, and as sick as I was, and as dumb as I was, and he convinced me. He said, son, you're going to have to be different. I mean, you're going to have to give me some time. And so he wakes me up. This past week, I had four hours with him from twelve to four. It's a wonderful time. And stay full of preaching. If you can, get on the radio. That'll make you stay with it. Preach every day. Don't preach just once a week. I know a little old preacher over yonder in Georgia. He preaches one sermon a week between his cigarette smoking. Talks about what a job he's done. Well, I wouldn't have a preacher who couldn't preach more than once a week. I mean, what do you want with him? Brother, preach! Preach! I mean, the average preacher doesn't preach enough to stay in practice. I don't believe there's any substitute for practicing. I remember the time the Lord called me to preach. Of course, I didn't have a place to preach. I didn't know about a woman to preach. The fact is, there wasn't. I'd get in the bathroom, and I'd look in the mirror. I only had one in my audience, and that's me. I'd make every expression. I'd holler, preach, shake my fist at me, practice. Oh, listen, with the call to preach comes the desire to preach. And when you lose that desire to preach, my brother, you're backslidden. And when you don't enjoy preaching more than you do eating, you're backslidden. And when you get to the place, if you pass through a church where you're so glad to see a brother preacher come by, well, praise the Lord, I won't have to preach! You ought to say, well, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to make a sacrifice if I let him preach. The preacher is to do one thing, and that's to preach. Then I'm going to say something else, because I'm going to be true. You have no right under the sun to be connected with Hollywood in any way. Not in any way. Your calling is too important. I don't even know whether you have a television set, but if you do, you don't have any more right to a television set as a preacher than you would a dozen rattlesnakes in your living room. You have to apologize to everybody that's spiritual in your church for viewing and say, well, I just don't watch it. I never watch it. You know you lie, and you do watch it. If you've got one, you're going to watch it. Now, if I closed the chill over the service, I'd trust God to warm it up a little bit. I'm sick and tired of preachers having to apologize for everything they do. They ought not to live apologetic lives. Listen, thirty-five years ago when I started preaching, there wasn't a man of God on the face of this earth that didn't give an altar call for anybody that went to the movies and said, come out of them. But it's a little different now, isn't it? And those same old movies, except they're a lot dirtier now. The filthiest movies that ever invaded their home are in the homes today. You wonder what's wrong with the American home. I'm mopping up after a bunch of worldly mothers and daddies that let Hollywood come in and take the place of the family altar, and the Hollywood to me is the devil's family altar. And a preacher, I said you ought to live head and shoulders above everybody else. Another thing, you're going to go off to revival meetings. How many children do you have? One. Well, the devil would get that one. If you leave a television set behind, and if you leave your children and leave your home, as far as I'm concerned, I believe it's time for God's preachers to live pure and sanctified and holy lives. No wasted time, brother Allen, it's all you've got! Between you and me, I'm going to take an end of the trail. If that's non-progressive, call it what you will. At least I've been consistent for 35 years, and I'm not going to betray my call to preach at this late hour. And you mentioned something about the judgment seat of Christ a while ago, and I believe we're going to have one. And that's where you're going to give an account, and I'm going to give an account for my convictions and my practices as a Christian. I've had two preacher sons come lately, and I've gotten calls from two other preachers. And I just thought about it. I'm supposed to go through a city tomorrow and deal with a man, and he's a preacher, about his son. That's five preacher sons. And I sympathize with them, but so far as I know, Hollywood is in every living room of every one of those homes. And one of those preacher sons threw his own mother on the bathroom floor and made an attack on her. And he said, Mother, I was watching the television set that Daddy brought home when I lost control of myself. And you look just as pious as you can. I'm going by the dirty, black, stinking record of the enemy of all righteousness, the enemy of the Church, the enemy of the home, the enemy of the schoolroom, the enemy of the young people, the enemy of society. Say what you will. I'd like for it to be different, but since it's not, I'll tell the truth on it. And I intend to continue to do it. And only God could cause my ministry to survive after telling people what I tell them about sin. But sin is still sin. And Brother Al, don't expect God to bless you unless your own personal life is right before the Lord. I wish I could encourage you to spend your time and start your day in Bible reading and prayer every morning. Close out your day every day with the Word of God. In the night watches, we are to meditate upon the Lord and think of him. And let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. The second thing I want to say, and it will have to be brief and I'll close the message in just a few moments. Your home must be an example. The wife and the children must be in subjection to you completely. That's God's order. You can't expect the women in your church to obey their husbands if your wife doesn't obey you. And she's to be an example before the women in the church by the way she dresses, by the way she talks, and you're to correct her when she needs to be corrected. And you're to be the head of your own home. And the Bible said if you can't rule your own home, how can you rule the church? And I believe you're supposed to rule both of them. I believe it's God's will for you to rule your home, your children. Somebody asked me the other day, and I know this is a blunt, rather brutal way to put it, but they said, Brother Locke, my child, it was a preacher, said, my child is in my home now, and he and his wife will not attend church. He stands now different from the way I've taught him. My heart's broken. This old preacher said about his grown son, Brother Locke, am I to let him stay under my roof while he dishonors my Christ and the gospel I preached? I sometimes wish people wouldn't ask me questions like that. My answer was this, not any child of mine could live under my roof and dishonor God. You say, that sounds hard. That's right. But that young man's grown. He's heard his old daddy preach for all these years. He comes back now maybe with an unbelieving wife, and because this old preacher takes such a stand against sin, she got her feelings hurt and moved out against him. But, dear friend, you will never conquer in the homes of your people until you have a sweet Christian home. Pray with them every day. Don't ever go a day without praying with your family. Read the Bible and pray with them every day. That's the way it is. That's old-fashioned, but that's right. Don't ever get up and preach on family altar if you don't have one. Maybe have two. But I mean, pray with your wife. She needs it, and you do, too. It's hard to fuss after a warm family altar. And it's hard to have a family altar if you haven't gotten your fussing straightened out. Nothing will make a husband apologize to his wife like leading in a family altar. You can't pray over a bad home. You can't preach over a bad home. And so have a family altar every day. And get your men and women to commit themselves to a family altar. All the time, pray every day with your family. Get your wife and children to pray with you. Have a family altar. Now, the third thing I want to say, and I'm thankful to the Lord for you, sweet wife and child. May the Lord bless them. The Church, you're to love it, you're to be its preacher, you're to rule it with a ruler. I hope you'll understand what I'm going to say. I mean, the members of the Church. The preacher is to direct the affairs of the Church. God doesn't use committees compared with the men of God. If you want to have a healthy Church, Al, you lead the Church. You do the thinking for the Church. God calls you to do that. If you can't do that, you can't pastor a Church. I believe that God calls men to lead in great movements. God only needed one man to get millions of Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, right? But there were two who went along, and one of them became a worthy associate pastor. And he caused a lot of trouble, didn't he? I'm not against associate pastors, but only get them when God sends them or gives them to you. It wasn't God's plan for Aaron to go along. It wasn't God's perfect will for Aaron to go along. Moses wanted him. But I believe that you need the name of boards. We talk about the Board of Deacons, we talk about the Board of this and the Board of that. Dear friends, go back to your Bible. The Deacons were ordained, and the kind of Deacon Jonah was ordained is the man full of the Holy Ghost and faith. You don't have to ask him if he smokes. If he's full of the Holy Ghost, he's not full of unholy smoke. And the Deacons were ordained long ago because the duties, the mercenary, or the duties of serving tables and waiting on the waiters and taking care of the poor, was falling heavy on the ministry. And the preacher was wearing himself out and was not preaching with love and power, and the word of God wasn't going forth. And he said, it's not right. Look you out among you, men full of the Holy Ghost and faith, and they got him. And the Bible says, and the word of God increased, and so did the disciples multiply. When? When the preacher preached the word of God. And a board is an organization that makes a final answer. That's not true in a church because the church makes the final answer. But I believe that a good friend, and you'll respect him and love him, or will be your Deacons and get along with him. Don't try to run him off. If one of them gets sideways and swelled up and crooked and ugly and doesn't understand, don't try to run him off, try to run him in. Try to get him right. Love him. But if the time comes, whether it's the Deacon or you, let him be the Deacon. Stay with the stuff, brother. Be God's man. Don't be a coward, a sissy. Stand up for God's truth. But I want to say something sweet to you now. This is a way to work it out. You can preach through nine-tenths of your problems. I believe that. No better than I can preach. I've preached most of my problems either in or out. In all these 35 years. And I'll tell you something else. And I've made all the mistakes, I believe, in the ministry. And I don't brag about that because the Lord knew I was just as simple and ignorant. I made a lot of them, I didn't know no better. But when I learned better, I started doing better. But brother, don't ever waste your time and the people's time preaching a sermon to one man or one woman when there's 179 out there listening. He's not that important. If you've got something to settle with one man, get him off in the bushes somewhere and settle it. But don't waste your time trying to get even with somebody when he can't talk back. I mean, just go ahead and preach to the people and curse God to work out the problems and the difficulties, and he'll do it. I mean, commit him to God. I mean, if a fellow just says, well, I'm not going to cooperate, and I'm going to either run this thing or block it, just kind of whisper to him, I'm going to tell Jesus on you. Tell on him. Talk to the Lord. And don't ever get to the place where if one of them does get killed, you rejoice about it, weep about it. I mean that. I've seen some of the people that sought to wreck my ministry. Some of the people know what I'm talking about and who I'm talking about. I've seen them killed instantly. But I didn't pray like that. I loved those men. I really did. I know what it is to walk by in the late of night and hear a little group of people say, twenty-three years ago now, we've got to get rid of him, and him was me. Why, he's running over us roughshod. Why, all he does is pray about something and get something, does he? We've got to get rid of him. Why, listen, we're all for that old even keel that we've always known. I stood there on the sidewalk and tuned in. I tell you, it really scares me to know how that thing came out, and the awful things that happened, and the man that said those words where he is tonight, and others that tuned in. Now, don't ever get any enjoyment out of getting even with your enemies. You're going to have some, and if you're not, you're a coward. You're going to have some enemies in the ministry. But the Bible says you're to love every one of them. I mean love them. And love worketh no ill to his neighbor or his enemy. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. And God will give you the wisdom and the strategy and the compassion and the judgment and the discernment to meet your problems as they arise. Now, I wish I could say this other word. There's no substitute for compassion. And there's nothing to me that's worse than dry cheeks and no tears. Jesus wept. Paul said, I wept day and night for three years. I mean, day and night, he said, I wept. The pew will never weep until the pulpit weeps. And until God's people get back the compassion and the love for people. Brother Al, you're not working with mules but men. You're working with not animals but people. Every one of them is precious in God's sight. Love every one of them. Love the little children and have time for little children. Spend time in prayer, even with a little child. And love the members of your church. And then love lost people. And then one other thing. Love the down-and-outs. That's one of the tests of your sincerity, is to love the down-and-outs. Just like Paul said, the grace of giving tests your sincerity. But if you love those that are not loved by anybody else. I'm not saying that just because we are connected maybe a little more closely with that ministry. But there's nothing that will be like a tonic to you, like loving the unlovely. I mean, that's being like Jesus. He didn't come to call the righteous to what many. And so love your church and live close to the Lord and close to the Word of God. And stay with the lost people and seek to save those that are lost. There's a million other things that I must close that people have been patient and so have you. And I covet for you the fullest ministry that a man could ever have. And I believe that if you'll practice, especially the 60 chapters, get up early in the morning, read the Bible and pray. Walk with Him during the day. And above all, learn to live by faith. But you can't apart from this book, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. There's only one walk that honors God, and that's the walk of faith. And remember, your ministry is not effective unless you're winning lost people to Christ. You can. And when I say that, I mean personally. You can't do in the pulpit all of the soul winning. You've got to be out on the field, knocking on the doors, talking to the people, in the hospitals, jailhouses, on the street corner, everywhere you go, Brother Al, with a warm heart, loaded, loaded with a little Salvation Bibles and ready always to say tenderly, I sure wish you'd read that. My, that'd be a blessing to you, and I'll be praying for you. Oh, give out the Word of God and be faithful. And listen, though I said a while ago, I do not believe in being organizationally minded in the sense that I'm tied up in any particular group, but cooperate with all of God's people. Love every one of them. Love every one of them. And as God shall make possible, cooperate and love those that are saved, and help them and encourage them along the trail. This illustration and the message is done. It's an old story of H.C. Morrison, a great man of God. And oh, I wish I had time to say, keep your missionary heart all warm. I'm talking about every kind of missions. Home, foreign, community, every kind of missions you can think about. I mean, get in the middle of every bit of it. Put your hand in every kind of missions there is. And giving, brother, I mean literally give your life and all that you have to God. Because it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. H.C. Morrison came back to the mission field. Sweet and blessed missionary. So tender and so warm and so rich in his experiences. He got on the boat, and you remember reading the story, Teddy Roosevelt was on the boat at that time, the President, coming home from a big lion bear hunt in another country. H.C. Morrison, I think, told us later, they got back to New York and said, Oh, the flags were waving. The flags were waving. And oh, the big banners and the big words were shining in bold letters. Welcome home, Teddy! Welcome home! Oh, they were welcoming the President home. H.C. Morrison, God's old soldier, walked down the gangplank. And nobody said, Welcome home, brother Morrison. He said there wasn't anybody there to meet me. He said, I got lost in the crowd. My whole body was weary. I was sick and tired. All I could hear was the screams, Welcome home, Teddy! All he'd been looking for was lions and bears. And I'd been working with precious souls. He said it didn't seem fair to me. He said he got on his way, made it on the train and got off and came in. He said, You know, there was no great assembly to say, Welcome home, brother Morrison. Took his little old satchel and started walking up the street. He said, Lord, is this all we get for being a missionary and serving? He said, I felt sorry for myself. All of a sudden, a heavenly manger came and said, Brother Morrison, you're not home yet. This is not home. Oh, just wait till you get on the other side. We'll have your welcome committee out. Oh, yes, angelic hosts and loved ones and friends and souls from the mission field have gone on to glory because you told the truth about Jesus. They'll be saying, Welcome home. Welcome home. Dear friends, you put it down. You and I are not at home down here. And you better not act like you're at home down here. We're pilgrims and we're strangers here. We're seeking the city to come and we're getting awful close. Oh, sometimes I think I hear those angels singing and saints are singing, Home, sweet home. Folks, if you're not saved tonight, you're missing it all. I don't know of anything that would crown this service like some soul coming to Christ. What will my answer be? What can I say when Jesus calls me to come home? What can I bring that will ever repay the wonderful love he has shown? I know that Jesus will never forsake his love. He'll find me a way. He'll bridge the gap if his hand I will take. But when he calls, what can I say? Day follows night. Night follows day. Farther and farther I roam. What will my answer be? And what can I say when Jesus beckons me home? Paul could look in his face and say, I've fought a good fight. I've kept the faith. I've finished the course. Bow your heads while we pray.