In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of spreading revival and the love and power of God. He references the miracle of healing performed by Peter and John on a cripple man and the resulting revival that spread throughout Jerusalem. The speaker encourages the audience to recognize the spark of God's love and power within them and to let it burn brightly, spreading to others. He emphasizes the need to talk about Jesus and commune with Him, drawing from the example of Mary sitting at His feet.

Now, this announcement about the revival at the Fall Creek Church, they begin their revival tomorrow night, and I know you'll want to attend some of the services and pray for them that God's blessings may rest upon them during these days of revival and gospel efforts. We've been sort of calling our prayer meetings off and going down and being with them on Wednesday nights, but I feel like maybe we ought to stay in our own services now and continue on with the blessings of God that he started within our hearts. So we'll have our prayer meeting Wednesday night, so you come, and I'm sure God will have a great blessing in store for us. Many of us are wrestling with different decisions that need to be made after these messages that the preacher has brought to us. I'm in the same boat with you. You're not all alone. There are many things that God has spoken to me about, and that God has revealed to me about my own self and my own life and the life of this Church and its ministry. And I hope that we won't let nothing steal away from us these divine impressions and impulses that we receive during these nights and days of revival service. God has dealt with us in a marvelous way, and I hope that we'll respond as God shows us the way, and that our lives may be pleasing to him. Somebody said, That man sure is hard on us. He's not been harder on you than he is me. He didn't just preach to me every night, he preached to me all day. And if you think he's just nice, or he's nice as an individual, or hard as speaking to a collective group, you ought to let him get a hold of you as an individual. He's told me some things about my life and about my ministry that's hard and heavy on my heart. And I believe he uses wisdom and that he's God's man and that he's given the message. And I want you to pray for me, that God will help me to carry through on these issues that are personal. It's not easy to follow God. You've got the idea it's just easy and lovely, just a little rosewater religion, and you've got the wrong conception of God. God's people have always been a suffering people. They've always been suffering and disgraceful in the eyes of the world. But I want grace to be God's man and God's servant and a real Christian for his glory. I know you love me, and I want you to pray that God will help me to do his will. A lot of you are asking the same things, and I'm not going to make it easy on you. If you think I'm going to come to this pulpit and apologize and smooth over what that man said, you've got another thought coming. He brought the message to our hearts. He brought the message to this church where you know it or not. I hope you know it. And I want God to help us, to give us grace to carry through on these things, to get in here and really mean business for God. The thing that's disturbing me about some of you is that you're lost. Some of you good folks have never been saved. I know you've done things in the Church. You hold offices, but you don't know Jesus Christ as a personal, definite experience in your heart. If you don't think that's disturbing to a preacher's heart, you just can never know. You just can never know how disturbing it is. But God's going to save you. Many of you are so heavy-hearted and so disturbed that you don't know which way you're going. I'm glad for you. I know some of you are afraid things are going to get all messed up around here, and it might be well if they did. To be honest, we've just tried to be too nice here, and I'm just as much to blame as you are. I've tried to go along and be nice, be kind, and make it easy on everybody. I don't think I've compromised the truth, but I've held back the truth in a measure because I was afraid of some of you, to be honest about it. I wasn't afraid that you'd do something, but I was afraid of what you'd do in this Church. But I'll tell you one thing. I ain't afraid of you this morning, and I might be tomorrow if I miss God, but I'm not today. I'm the pastor of this Church, and I'm going to lead it. Now, if you get in the way, you just get run over, bud. You just try it. You say, Oh, you're just young, and you've just got all stirred up. That's right, I've got stirred up. And if I stay at Calvary, I'll stay stirred up. And some of you are going to get stirred up. So I want us to do the will of God, to follow Jesus. That's the only way out of here, and I pray that God will help us to do it. I'll tell you, I need your prayers, that God will help me. I didn't know I was so mean, but God will help me, and I know he will, and he'll help you. And I want us to pray about these things, pray for one another, that God will enable us to do his will, to follow him, to be led of his Spirit, filled with his Spirit, and to follow through on these eternal issues that God has confronted us with. If you have your Bible, I want to read a portion of scripture found in Acts 4. This event that's taking place here comes from chapter 3 and goes on into chapter 4, but there is a text verse in the 4th chapter that I want to read for our thinking today concerning the miracle of healing that was performed on the crippled man by Peter and John, and then the consequences or the results of that miracle and that revival that continued to spread throughout Jerusalem. I'll begin reading with verse 13. Now, this miracle has already taken place, and Peter and John have been called in before the council, before the Sanhedrin. The chief priests, the elders of Israel, Alexander, and all of the leaders are now confronting these two preachers concerning the doctrine that they were preaching, and the matter of this miracle that had taken place. They are asking him to give an account of this man that they are preaching and this miracle that has been performed. When they said, We are preaching in Jesus' name the crucifixion and the resurrection, and there is none other name given among men whereby he must be saved. When they had answered the council, these words are recorded in that event. Verse 13, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them, is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But that it spread no further among the people that I straightly threatened them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. They called them and commanded them not to speak or not to teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. May we pray together. Brother Thurman, will you ask God's blessings on this word, if you will, please? I've been trying to speak to you for the last several Sundays on Revival, and for fear that we'll think that these series of meetings coming to an end today is the climax of what God wants to do in this Church, I want us to continue to think about the wake of Revival. I believe with all of my heart that God has kindled a fire of Revival in this Church. It's small as to its manifestation now, but if we have spiritual discernment enough to fuel that flame with our prayers and consecration and obedience to God, God can, through this Church, shape this entire country for his divine glory. In fact, the spirits that have been kindled already in this place are already beginning to catch on in some of the other churches through their preachers in this country. I pray that somehow we'll learn to know that God is working and that just a series of services does not conclude the working of the Spirit of God, but it is just simply more fuel to the fame of God that has already been sparked in our hearts and in our Church. Now, we need to be conscious of the fact that Revival is not the owning of membership to a Church. Revival is not just some emotional meeting where we all get stirred up and feel good and release a lot of tensions and pressures that are within us and go home feeling like everything has been done. That's not it at all. Revival is simply a person or a community coming to the place that they are willing for God to work in and through them to bring to pass his divine will in a certain place or in the world. Revival is nothing more than getting thoroughly right with God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When a soul is radically related to Jesus and is open for his blessings as his instrument, then that is Revival. We need to recognize that here. I feel that many of you during these days have surrendered yourself to God in many ways that you never have before in all of your life. And God is beginning to bless you as a Christian like he has never blessed you before. But you need to realize that now, since these meetings are coming to a close and that's on the next week out of the atmosphere of these prayers and these messages from the servant of God, the balance will begin. But the fire will not go out if it's burning in your heart. And we need to pray for we submit. God will help us to know how to spread this fire out under in the community and in the world to the glory of God. So many churches make me so sick when they have meetings and they say, well, we had a certain number saved and they've gone to church, but the church never makes a mark in the community. That is not Revival. Sinners never get discarded. Hockey cops never close up. Men are never fearful and afraid of the church and the people of God. But when genuine Revival comes into the heart and into the life of the church, my brother, the sinner will be conscious that God Almighty is meeting among his people. They will not be able even to sit with calmness in the congregation of their relatives. And so we need to know how to spread it, to spread the Revival fires that are burning in our heart and at the altar of this church. Now, what are the secrets of spreading the Revival fires? I think they reveal for us in this church they're summed up in one statement in verse 13. When they saw these two preachers, they perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men. They were standing in the presence of the intellectual leaders of their day, of the wealthy leaders of their day, and of the professional leaders of their day and generation and nation. You're just too common-fishing that Jesus had called a fire and to serve him and to preach his divine gospel, had been burning because of the fires of God that were burning in their hearts, and had caught in the life of a man, and he received a divine touch from God Almighty. And they were trying these preachers because of this miracle and because of their preaching. They tell us in verse 13 that when they noted that these men were unlearned and ignorant men, they were not professionals in religion. They were not intellectual giants in theology, but they perceived that they had been with Jesus. That's the secret of Revival. In fact, when all of the analysis of Revival has been taken, you can sum it up in those words, they have been with Jesus Christ. There is Revival in the heart of any person or in the life of any church is when Jesus is ordered and glorified as the head of the church and the sovereign of the Lord's body in this earth, and we are thoroughly right with him. So you see here, these words, they had been with Jesus. Now, if you're like me and you've been with the Lord this week, God has somehow brought you to these walls and lifted you over and above these walls and put you down in new areas that you never dreamed existed in Christian experience. You've seen Jesus as never before in your life. That's Revival, my brother, and God expects you to spread that Revival in this church, in this community, in other communities. Wherever you go, God will put a spark in your heart that is to burn even until death or until Jesus comes, and that spark is to frame that thunder in the world to the glory of God. If we let it die out, it's not Revival. But if we recognize that God has kindled a flame of sacred love and power in us, and we go out of here in spirit and those in the community that are wounded and sinful, God help us to know it. In this church, it is seen, first of all, in that Jesus was the subject of their confession. They said, by what power, I mean, what name? Jesus Christ, whom you crucified and hanged on a tree. But on the third day, God raised him up from the dead, and he's assumed into the Father, and God said, this has been done, that God is moving in and through his people. He is the subject. I was praying and reading before my face, and I had to pray for you as an individual. He was doing it. I've heard many of you talk about your business. I've heard you talk about your crops and your farms and many other things. But I saw that I was three years of your pastor. Here you mentioned the name of Jesus Christ one time. I suppose one of the greatest in the past of this church. I was talking to a certain relative of the family, and I dinged the doorway, weeping, and put it in my hand, and she said, Brother Pastor, I want you to know that I'm right with God. I want to tell you so you can know that I'm a Christian, and that my heart's right with God. I left that home rejoicing, praising God in my soul, and Jesus carried his church with a friend at the decease of that precious mother. I could say your mother told me, I'm assuring in the name of Jesus, this is her confession in Jesus' name. You can spread it by his name. They said in the name of Jesus. That's the confession. That's the secret of spreading confession. Now don't you go out of here and talk about what a great man we had in our pulpit. Don't you go out here and talk about your greatness. You go out here and talk about Jesus. Jesus is the subject of our confession. I haven't been feeling very well for the Sunday school. That's the reason. I fear many times many of you misunderstand me. I'm an oddball, and I know it, and sometimes I have to tell you things that I don't need to tell you, simply to keep you in good faith, but that's the reason I didn't come. But when I started walking up here this morning, I thought I'd miss you. That'd be something. But I heard somebody singing here, and they were singing about the name of Jesus. They were singing about how precious, how wonderful is Jesus the Son of God. Oh, that everywhere we could go, if we could just say Jesus. Some of you poor fellows are so ashamed to say something about Jesus. You can talk about your politics. You can talk about your church and everything else. I want to tell you something. He said, I'm going to be ashamed of you. You say, I just can't talk about it. Oh, yes, you can. If it's in your heart. He said, let the redeemer of the world say so. You may not can brag about him like someone who studied his life, but you can say he's precious. That's the subject of our confession. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. He's the author and the omega, the beginning and the end, and all in between. It's Jesus. Oh, that we could see that to spread revival. Notice the strength of their conviction. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, this word boldness simply means fluency and freedom of speech. When they saw that they could stand and speak freely and freely about the name of Jesus, though they were unlearned and ignorant men, they said they've been with Jesus. You can't speak about Jesus unless you've been with him. Some of you take your Sunday school quarterly and you learn all the facts of the lesson, but you don't know a bit about Jesus. That's a tragedy. That's such a tragedy. My God, if we ever expect to do the things that God wants us to do, we must learn Jesus as a person, as an experience, as a battle within us. They spoke with freedom, the strength of their conviction was Jesus Christ himself. God's people have always been attacked along the lines of intellectualism and professionalism, but Jesus has the answer in the word of God to these attacks. We're told even about Jesus when he spoke in the midst of the Sanhedrin and of the leaders of his day, they said this man's letters are different. He doesn't know the letters. They were really said this man called Jesus the prophet has never stood at the feet of the great teachers of Judaism, but yet he shook up the world. He was a savior. He tells us in 1 Corinthians that he hasn't told the great and mighty things of the world. In verse 26 of the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, the scripture reads as following, "'For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men are after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, the things and the things which are mighty, and those things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, the things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are.'" Why? Why does God, when he wants a preacher or a leader of a church, go down here and pick out some little insignificant, ignorant person, and pick them up as his instrument and put his message in their heart? Why doesn't God go to the White House and pick out one of the nobles? Why doesn't God go to one of the universities and pick out one of the intellectuals? The very next verse answers the question that no furnish should glory in his presence. When God picks up the little insignificant instruments of this world and puts his message in them and sends them out, all that's done, they know, is done in his power and in his strength, and he receives the glory for it. But if he picked up some up here of the noble and the mighty, they would glory in what they had done, rather than in the cross and in what Jesus has done. And the strength of their conviction instead of revival was simply in that they had been with Jesus. Every day I live, I become more distrusted with this orthodox religion. You've got some independents over here who've pulled out from other religious parties and they're raising their flag like they're the only one in existence. And then on the other hand, you have some of the denominational bodies who are so wrapped up in buildings and up. But God is looking for a people, my brother, of their conviction. Some people you talk to, they don't know a single thing about God and Jesus. Jesus Christ. No theology or denominationalism from Genesis to Revelation, or to even known orthodoxism, and to be straight at every point, and let him be the strength. We're in a destitute hour. We're in a dangerous hour. And if God has somehow sparked the spark of all time and reason and revival in this time, to spread it out. The way to do it is to let Jesus be the subject of our confession and the strength of our conviction. A lot of you have convictions, but Jesus is not the strength of them. And if he's not the strength of our convictions, then the conviction. To have a conviction and not to have Jesus as the strength and the life and the source of that conviction is to hold something that will be. That's the simple reason why Jesus said, to the kingdom of God, neither will you. All right. Then the way They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. They had walked with him. They had talked with him. They had listened to his sermons and his teachings. They had seen his miracles. They didn't know a lot about the world about it. They knew very little about Judaism. They knew very little about Greek culture. They knew very little about Roman dominion even. But they knew a whole lot about Jesus. The substance of their communion was Jesus Christ himself. They had walked with him and talked with him. They had experienced him. We need to find the place in our lives, and that's what Brother Tyson has been trying to get us to see all the week, is a place of devotion and communion with Jesus Christ. I tell you, that man liked to kill me. He actually liked to kill me spiritually and physically. I don't say this to magnify him because some of you don't think much of him anyway. But he crawled out of bed every morning at two o'clock and laid on his face in our living room. I didn't want him to know I was cold. Then he'd study all day. I'm about dead, I'll tell you. But he knows God. He knows God. You can say what you will about him, but you have to say this. He's been with Jesus. I could get with Jesus, not just because he does, but because it's right, and I ought to be. And so stay with him, and be so absorbed in his grace, and in his love, and in his power, until when I walk. It's not my beautiful sermons. In fact, you don't hardly know what I'm saying half the time. But if I could solely live in the light of his divine grace, if I could have him as my communion. Some of you got the idea that Jesus is some little He'll meet with you anywhere on this earth that you desire to meet with him. And if we ever expect to spread this revival fire that God has kindled within us, he must be the subject of our confession. He must be the strength of our divine convictions. Learn about this church building, and you are Jesus Christ. This building's your God. He's not the strength of your conviction. What you're doing around here is. And oh, then if we could get around him, and let him flow out of this thing. You talk about a church. There wouldn't be a church on earth that God could use any better than he could this one. God's let a lot of you people get wealth. He's let a lot of you get education. He's put you in here, this community, for one purpose, and that's to start revival in the earth. You thought it was to have a big salve, but God Almighty has let you come to this hour in his kingdom that you must learn the term for revival, to fly to the ends of the earth. He's the subject of our confession. God has sparked the flame. Can we spread it? I pray that somehow we can. That everywhere we'll go, we'll talk about Jesus. That all we believe is God. He'll be the substance of our communion. We'll come and commune with him. To sit at his feet like Mary of old, and to hear his words hurled from his soul to sleep. About Mary's communion, he said this cannot be taken away from her. She hath chosen that good part that shall never be taken away from her. But if only one time you've had him and he died. I'm not saying we don't need him. We need something. The center of all we need is Jesus. And how Jesus, and how that experience with Jesus could hold these things that we do need and that we should have. Jesus said, now Martha, you're talking about just doing things, and that's going to be taken from you. But Mary hath chosen that good part that shall never be taken. She hath chosen to hear the words of eternal life. Now they're both important. Don't you run out of here and get them over balanced. They're both important. But the important thing that Jesus said, the one thing meaningful, the one thing meaningful is to hear his word. We got two extremes in this church. We got some of you trying to build mechanics. We got some of the rest as you can be. You say, I don't like that preacher. I don't care what you like or not. It's so. But the one thing that's meaningful, my friend, is to gather around the living cross and communion with him. Some of you are pulling over here. Some of you are pulling over here. And I'll tell you what, to be honest with you, you just about pulled me apart. God's got me set on. If you get mad and blow up, not a big deal. You say, I'll go home. Whoa. Till you get right with God. And some of you that are home ought to be in here. All that God would send back help us is to know God in Christ Jesus. Jesus said, Mary, this shall be the substance of our communion. He must be the subject of our strength, of our conviction, the substance. May God help us to see that and to move with him as he moves. Jesus, precious Jesus, there is salvation in your name. There is strength, communion, conviction, all in the name of Jesus. I pray that you'd help us all to talk about him, to speak for Jesus with boldness, with love and grace that would cause men to see him and to know him, to follow him. I pray that you would speak to our hearts today. Lord, there are men and women here that's lost without God. There are Christians here that are rebelling against the truth of God. And you've said in your word that if we would judge ourselves, that we would not be judged. But if we fail to judge, we'll be chastened of the Lord. Help us to be big enough to judge ourselves and our motives in the light of Jesus, in the program of God's redemptive work in the world. Speak to us, our Father. Save the lost for Jesus' sake. There are many women here today, Lord, that unless you save them, they're going to hell from this church. They're lost, they're blinded. They need you, and you love them. You died for them. I pray that you would save them. Lord, I love them. That's why I preach like I do. I love them. I pray that somehow they may see today that our salvation is in none other than Jesus. Speak to hearts for time and for eternity. We'll praise you for it. Just stand on your feet, heads bowed, eyes closed, no one looking around. Just stand quietly, the whole congregation, if you will, please. While we stand in God's people are praying. If you know the Lord, would you rebuke Satan and pray? These folks here today in this service, you're lost. You've been hiding behind some, you've been excusing yourself, but God speaking out of that Satan called. There's others here. You've heard the truth of God, and you're standing in this room trying to get the hypocrites out of your eyes. It's a serious hour for you. If you're here and God's trying to get you to do something, if God speaks in your heart, I want you to do what? I want you to play through one of the verse. I don't know what it is, but there's still something that hasn't concluded the service. You'll be obedient to the spirit of God as they play one of the verse.