In this sermon, the speaker begins by acknowledging that he initially thought he could easily give these messages without much preparation. However, he realizes that he is working just as hard in his sermon preparation as when he was younger. He emphasizes that he is a cautious and conservative man, not a radical. The speaker expresses his passion for the young people and encourages them to make decisions and commitments. He concludes by reminding the congregation that the power of the Spirit is essential in their endeavors and that they must fight against the tendency to deteriorate in their faith.

Zechariah 4, verse 6. This is the word of the Lord unto the people of Avenue Road Church. Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. And I believe that we are at the beginning, the eve of a great, or the morning of a great season. And we're going to work hard at it, and pray hard, and be true. And I'd like to add what I said this morning, that those of you who are enjoying yourself, you're for us, you're with us, you ought to join us. You're with us, you're part of us, whether you join us or not, I told you that too. Because this is a spiritual fellowship, and just as soon as you walk in among the people of God, you're a member. But we haven't any way of knowing who's for us, and who's dragging his feet, and who would like to see it go on, or which we were dropped dead. We haven't any way of knowing that, unless you do something about it. So I invite you, see me, or Mr. McNally, tonight, tonight yet, don't put it off, and wait, but tonight. And say, put my name down, I want to join. Quite a number came this morning, and I was encouraged by the numbers of people, older people and younger people, who came and said, Mr. Tozer, you can count me, we're for it, we're for you. All right, I can't work if I don't know that, and the only way I can know it is if you join and give. Give of your money, and be present. All right, with that text. Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord. Now that isn't the text for tonight, and neither am I going to preach on the text, any text tonight particularly, although I will certainly give much scripture. But I want to read a passage here that will be my credential. Why are you talking to us? All right, listen. 1 Corinthians 2, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. Now those are my credentials, and that is the authority I have for beginning a series of talks to you that I have never given before, though certainly much that I will say has been woven in here and there into my various messages. I thought when I came here that I could just go to the old familiar barrel and take out the old outlines and use them without too much study or hard work. I said to myself, and I spake as a fool, I said, Well, you spent a good part of your life and hard work getting these messages, and now you can just give them. But here I find I'm working just as hard at my sermon preparation here as I did when I was a young fellow just starting out. So this is a new series that I have not given at all anywhere before. And I think that I ought also to preface what I will be saying over these evenings by reminding you that I am not a radical, but rather a very cautious and conservative man, and I have not swept up by the wind from somewhere that you have to watch with raised eyebrows and question. This church is a member of the Society of 1100 Churches on this North American continent, founded by the great Canadian minister, Dr. Albert B. Simpson, and with headquarters in the United States and Canada, and operating in 24 fields of the world, fifth largest in the world, including the great denominations with their millions of members. And your humble and unworthy servant has been on the board of that society, the board of directors for so long I forget, and editor of its magazine for years, and vice president twice. So that I just want to clear the air now so that you won't say, Well, this boy, he's seen something and we ought to watch him. You don't have to watch me at all, because what I'll be saying to you would pass anywhere in the evangelical circle. I've preached this same kind of thing in Moody Church and Wheaton College and elsewhere, though not this series of sermons ever. All right, now I begin a series that's born out of three things, the word and the Holy Spirit and the present religious situation. I mean by that that what I'll be saying night after night is born out of the word of God. If it is not born out of the word of God, then I want nothing to do with it, whatever. But it is also born out of the Holy Spirit. It is the burden and the grief and the joy of the Holy Ghost. I would say to any of you who are wondering about the spirit-filled life, if you just want to be happy and nothing else, you'd better steer away from the spirit-filled life, because the same Holy Spirit that will give you joy will also allow you to share his burdens and his griefs. And out of the burden and the grief comes the joy and the victory of the Holy Spirit, come these messages, and the present religious situation. The scripture says, our Lord himself speaking, that a faithful and wise steward, he gives the people their meat in due season. Some people preach, and they preach the Bible all right, and you can't deny they preach the Bible. They do preach the Bible, but they preach the Bible this way. They go to the Bible as you would go to a book of symptomology, a doctor's book, to find out what you should prescribe. And instead of their prescribing to suit the patient, they just prescribe for everybody at one time. When we were in the Army, some fellow would get sick, and they would put medicine in all of our coffee. Everybody got it. I've even drunk more bitter coffee because somebody got a tummy ache, and I had to drink the medicine. Just give it to everybody without any thought that maybe it didn't fit there at all. Now, preaching, when we're not preaching to a given situation, is like giving medicine indiscriminately to people that it is not particularly fitted for. Or, teaching the word of God, even though it's faithful and true, without any regard to the current situation, is like teaching the multiplication table. That is, you say, Children, 2 x 2 is 4, 2 x 3 is 6, 2 x 4 is 8. All right, but so what? It's true, all right, but so what? What does that mean to me in my present situation? The New Testament epistles are written to specific conditions, as were the seven letters that serve the Revelation. You will find that they were written to particular situations that developed, and then the man of God wrote to these particular people. And the seven letters to the Revelation are found in Revelation 2 and 3. They are also written to that particular church, having regard to the need of that particular church. And it was so with the prophets of the Old Testament. No prophet of the Old Testament went into an ivory tower and settled down and relaxed and breathed deeply a while and took out a pen and said, Now I'm going to write me a book of prophecy. He didn't do it that way. He wrote to the need. He wrote to the situation. He aimed his arrow at a target. And if we don't do it that way, then I suppose we might as well not talk at all. Now, God is speaking, and it is when God is speaking to a particular situation that the power of the Holy Spirit is present and also active. When David sinned, Nathan the prophet came to him and put a little parable before him. And then when David gave his judgment on what to do with the sinful man, he pointed his finger at the king and said, Thou art the man. And David immediately threw off his crown and his robe, dropped his scepter and fell on his knees, and there repented before his God. Now, that was a particular situation. You can read the 51st Psalm, which was his prayer of repentance. You can read it, and it's as meaningless as the multiplication table for anything moral or spiritual, unless you apply it to a situation that needs it. But it is when we are talking to a situation that the sheep are separated from the goats and the veil is removed and the judgment begins. Now, the question these evenings is not going to be, Is this the voice of God to us? I hope nobody will try to evade responsibility in that way. But there are two other questions which will be before us. And those questions are, How many of us are willing to hear the voice of God? Jesus, you know, said in that wonderful, terrible 23rd of Matthew, that terrible 23rd of Matthew, one of the most awful books in the entire Bible, when I see the tender, curly-bearded Christ with an angelic smile, a kind of a Mona Lisa smile on his face. When I see that, I don't know who wrote that 23rd chapter of Matthew. That terrible castigation, that frightful attack upon the hypocrisy and unreality and insincerity of those religious people. And yet the tender Jesus ended that terrible castigation by saying, Wherefore, behold, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes and some of them you'll kill and crucify, and some you'll scourge and persecute from city to city. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. There we have, were these people willing to hear the voice of God? And the answer was no, they were not willing to hear the voice of God. Way back then, a thousand years before Christ was born in Bethlehem, the Holy Ghost said, Wisdom crieth without, and she uttereth her voice in the streets, and she crieth in the chief place of concourse in the openings of the gates in the city. She uttereth her words, saying, How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity and scorners delight in scorning and fools hate knowledge? Turn ye at my reproof, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you and make known my words unto you. But because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hands, and no man regarded, but ye have said not all of my counsels, and would have none of my reproof. I will laugh at your calamities, and I will mock when your fear cometh. Now, I'm quoting those scriptures to show, the question is, how many of us are willing to hear the voice of God? And the second is, how many are worthy to hear the voice of God? In Acts 13.46, it was necessary that the word of God should first be preached unto you, but seeing that you have counted yourself unworthy of eternal life, therefore we turn to the Gentiles. This is a terrible thing. Now, here is the gist of what I want to say, that a radical and sweeping reformation is imperative among the people called Christians, Protestants generally, and Evangelicals in particular, and such people as we are. We're Evangelical, but we're also supposed to be full gospel, in that we believe in some things that some Evangelicals don't. We believe in the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and we believe in healing of the sick in answer to prayer. A lot of people don't. We don't make an extreme fanatical point of it, but if they come and want to be prayed for, we believe it's right that we should pray for them. We believe that, and some don't, though more increasingly they do in the Evangelical churches, Baptists and other churches. But I say that this is for us now, that there is a radical sweeping reformation, and that it is imperative, absolutely imperative now, if we are going to save Christianity from the wreck which is before us. Now, what do I mean by reformation? Some people may recoil from that word, because I have heard men wave their arms as if they were doing setting up exercises before the open window, and say, I don't believe in reformation, I believe in regeneration. Sounds good, and it gets some amens, but the fact is, if you don't have reformation, you can't have regeneration. The Holy Ghost won't come and regenerate a carnal and stubborn people who won't obey him. There must first be a reformation. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded, and turn unto the Lord, and he will hear you. Learn to do good, and cease to do evil, and then return unto me. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. But I want to be fine in that. I always walk the chalk line between being hopelessly dull and interesting. Because, you see, if you're not defining, you're not interesting. And if you define too much, you're dull. So I say I walk the tightrope between the two. I want to define what I mean by saying that Protestantism and Evangelicalism and this church and the Christian and missionary alliance and my friends among the Baptists and Presbyterians and I might name them all, for I take them all in, I say that we are in need of a sweeping reformation. And what now do I mean by reformation? Well, let me give you the definition of reformation as it's given in the dictionary of religion. It's simply change by removal of faults or abuses and a restoration to a former good estate. Now, that's not so bad, is it? A change brought by removal of faults and abuses and a restoration to a former good estate. Now, I don't know anybody in the wide world who believes he's a Christian could ever object to this. Changing in the direction of the removal of faults and abuses toward restoration to a former good estate. Now, here's the word change. Let's look at that word. This very word disturbs many people. They have accepted the status in quo as being the very tablets given by the Holy God in the mount. The status in quo. Collard Brothers said the status quo was the Latin for the mess they were in. And I've often smiled about that good practical point of definition. But most people accept, if they happen to be in any church anywhere, they accept the status in quo without knowing or caring to inquire how the status got into that quo. In other words, they don't ask anybody, Oh God, is this of thee? Is this divine? Is this out of the Bible? But because it was done and being done and a lot of people are doing it and some people come to see them do it or hear them do it, they assume that that's all right. Songs are written about it and books are written about it and it gets into magazines and pretty soon people are called to it. And the first thing we know, we have gotten into a situation, a religious situation, where it is not of God, not according to the scriptures, and where God isn't pleased with it at all but angry with it. And yet we don't know it because we don't like the word change. The change took place slowly before we arrived on the scene and we think because that is everywhere current that it's therefore right. And so we accept the status in quo, the existing state of things, and say this is it, forgetting that history demonstrates that religions invariably degenerate. Now this is one of the hard things that people don't like ever to face up to. But just as fruit rots and just as people get old in spite of all they try to do to drugstores if they could help us, they'd help us. You can go there and buy anything in the wide world to try to help you and pep you up and make you young and keep you young. And if you finally give up and say, I can't stay young, all right, they'll give you something to make you look young. But we do get old. It's an inevitability. It's built in. And so it is with religion. It's just built in that we start to deteriorate shortly after God comes and blesses us. You go back to the story of Israel and look what happened there. God called Israel out of Egypt and she began to deteriorate before she reached the Red Sea. Then he gave her a revival by taking her through the Red Sea and got her over into the wilderness and she started to degenerate before she'd gone 20 miles in the wilderness. And then for 40 years she wandered. You can just follow the history of Israel. You can see the story of the kings. It's the most depressing story, the story of the kings in the Bible. The story, here's a man, he lives and he did evil in the sight of the Lord and he begets a son. And his son did evil in the sight of the Lord as his father before him, yet he did not attain unto the wickedness of his father. He helped a little bit there. The Lord gave a little bit of revival. So it's degeneration. Then somebody comes along that dares to question the status in quo and say, wait a minute here now, where do you find this in the Bible? Read the word and see. Is this script true? And they say, no, this isn't. All right, says Zechariah. All right, boys, be out here Thursday morning at 10. I've got a job for you. So they all showed up at 10. He went to the temple. He said, now that statue there, God hates it, get it out of there. And that place where they sacrificed pigs, get that out of there. And this place over here, this picture over here, God hates that thing, take that out of there. And all this dirt that's swept under the pew, get that out of there. And he said, all of this evidence of your carnality and your wickedness, get rid of it. And they spent days with wheelbarrows wheeling out claptraps that never should have been there in the first place. And when they had done it and had got the claptrap out, God came on them, and they were blessed for a whole generation. But the spirit of degeneration and deterioration seems to be present just as soon as God blesses anybody, anywhere. And this idea that all you have to do is to accept Christ and you're in, my brother, it's a great mistake because it leaves the people with the impression that if they accept Christ, they have no fight to fight and no warfare and no job to do and no temptation. They're just in. Well, you accept Christ rightly as your Lord and Savior. You're in, all right. But being in, the honest man has got to tell you that you've just started to fight. Put a uniform on a young fellow and he squares his narrow shoulders back there and is thankful for the padding and gets his picture taken and sends it home to his girlfriend. He's a soldier now. What's he in there for? To get his picture taken and look pretty? No, he's in there to fight. And so they send him out there somewhere and start shooting at him. That's what he's in there for. It would be unfair to a young fellow. I've seen the posters, Join the Navy and See the World. Join the Army and Learn Mechanics and all that. What a slick way to get a young fellow to go sign up thinking he's going on a tour of the world. He will if he doesn't get shot. He doesn't get shot somewhere because that's what they're out there for. We don't know it now, but right in Vietnam they're shooting down American planes. We Americans have a lovely habit. I don't know. You know I'm one and I love them. We have the loveliest habit of doing stupid things when we know better. If it weren't done, we'd just act stupid. And now we've sent airplanes over there to get shot down in Vietnam. We could go over there and clobber them in 20 minutes if they had a little something where their belt goes around. But instead of that, we're fooling around with the thing. Letting our fellows go over there. Well anyhow, that just happens. It's not a part of the sermon. But here I tell you that we get people converted and we don't tell them here, listen, you've got to fight all your way through to heaven because the spirit of degeneration and the tendency to deteriorate and lose out will follow you like a hound dog should you die. You've got to fight it and pray it through and suffer it out and live in praise and worship because if you don't, you'll deteriorate. And then read the history of the Christian church if you can keep your faith and keep from weeping. Read the history of the Christian church. As they say, it's just three generations from church-leave to church-leave and it's just three generations from backsliding to backsliding. Now that's first change. There's got to be some changes. And some people would die before they'd make a change. They just want what they want and they want to be that. How? Well, that's the way it's done everywhere. Nobody ever stops to inquire whether it should be done that way or not. Then by removal of faults and abuses. Well, where are the faults and abuses? I was trying to recall today whether it was Michelangelo in the 16th chapel or whether it was Sir Christopher Wren in that building there in London. I've forgotten which one. But I think it was Wren, Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect. They had a little plaque. He was long gone, of course, from the scene. They had a little plaque. People would come in to see his great cathedral and they'd look around for his monument. There was a little plaque there and it said, If you would see my monument, look around you. Look around you, see it. Now when I say that reformation means the removal of faults and abuses, or all abuses, somebody says, Where are these faults and abuses? All I say is, Look around you, brother, at the religious scene. Look around you at the religious scene and you will see the faults and abuses and the desperate call for change. Now, where are the sample saints? We ought to be raising sample saints. The model saints were Christians who could take them as examples and say, I want to follow this man, this woman, and be like them, as they are like their Lord. But we are simply not producing saints in this day in which we live. Somebody kindly gave me the story of Holy Ann, the Irish Saint. My wife is reading it, I see. I've been stealing a chapter or two here and there. Again, I read it years ago, written by Mrs. Bingham here of Toronto, who is now in Heaven, I think. I think she's gone from this scene here. I know she would be in Heaven if she weren't in Toronto. But anyway, this dear soul wrote about this great soul, a myth. I don't even know her last name, but her first name was Ann. There was a sample saint. There was somebody that we can read about and talk about still, and we're building her sepulcher and writing her life and quoting her. Where are the Ann's? Where are the Billy Bray's? Where are we? We're simply not producing sample saints. And I want to say this cautiously, and I don't want you to get mad at me now. Oh, I won't lose sleep if you do, but I hope you won't, because I want you to accept it as being true. Mostly we Christians are bad examples to other Christians. Now, that's the sad thing. We work hard to get a man converted, and we think we do God's service. And then after we get him converted and he gets to know us, we're a bad example to him. This is a terrible thing. I consider this an abuse in the Church of Christ. Now, I ask you, are these false laziness, for instance? It's a terrible thing to say, but if we evangelicals had one quarter of the enthusiasm for Jehovah's Witnesses, we could take a continent. But we've got the power, and they don't. That is, we have it available to us, and they don't. They deny the Lordship of Jesus and the Deity of Jesus, and you can't have spiritual power by denying the Deity and Lordship of Christ. But we have a lazy bunch of evangelicals on our hands. In carnality, Paul talks about the carnal Christians of Corinth. He labored and prayed and wept over the carnality of the Christians and said, I couldn't talk to you as I talked to grown-up Christians because you were carnal. You acted like babies. You were yet in your babyhood stage. Now, what is there about a baby? Well, helpless, irresponsible, and loves play and drinks milk. Paul said these Christians of Corinth, here they were, irresponsible and weak, and they loved pablum to be given to them with a bottle, and they couldn't eat meat. They weren't grown-up. They didn't grow up. This describes this, my brethren. This describes Christianity. This describes the Alliance. This describes evangelicals almost everywhere. Carnal, immature, no miracles, no wonders, no wonderful sense of the presence of God, but holding together by social activities and nothing else. And then the prayerlessness of the Lord's people. Think of the Moravians for 100 years. They never stopped praying. They had their prayer tower, and they manned that prayer tower as a factory manned its machines in 8-hour shifts. A man comes in, works 8 hours, takes off his overall, wipes his tools, goes home, and another man takes his place and works 8 hours. Around the clock, 24 hours they do it in some places. And they did that for 100 years in hernia, because they were going to pray it through or die. And the result of that was a mighty upsurge of missionary zeal and power such as the world never knew before. Since Pentecost and the Christian Missionary Alliance is a direct outcropping of that thing. So is the Salvation Army, and so are the Methodists, and so are a great many other movements that have blessed the world in days gone by. And the carelessness, careless Christians. I've met a few Christians that I thought were scrupulous to a point where they harmed themselves. But for every scrupulous Christian, I have met 100 careless Christians. And a careless Christian is one who doesn't discipline himself and doesn't examine himself. I think it was Plato who said that a life that is not examined, that is, an unexamined life, is a kind of death. That is, the man who simply lives by his instincts and does the best he can and works enough to get enough money to fulfill his instincts, and doesn't examine himself and won't be taught to, and doesn't worry about his condition, he's a careless man. He'd better be dead. So said the Stoic philosopher. And I say the idealistic philosopher. And then coldness of heart. Oh, the coldness, the coldness. Did you ever worry over your coldness? Did you ever worry? Did you ever wish that you had fire in your bosom? And if you ever worry about it, somebody has to tell you, because the temperature of evangelical churches all around about us and Protestantism everywhere around about us is so chilly that nobody imagines that he's cold in his heart. We sing songs, these beautiful songs, we sing them, and there were some of them at least written out of hearts that were hot as fire. And we sing them coldly to a slow, creeping tempo. Ah, brethren, we say, Then I have accepted Christ, and all is well. Of course I'm cold in my heart, but I've accepted Christ, and all is well. Of course I'm careless about the way I live. I lose my temper, and I do lots of things I shouldn't do. Of course I do, but I've accepted Christ, all is well. Of course I don't pray very much. I nibble a little at prayer occasionally when I'm in trouble. Pray before me eat, but that's about all. But of course, I've accepted Christ, and all is well. Of course I'm carnal. Of course I'm filled with lust and pride and jealousy and all that. I try to keep it down the best I can, but all is well. I've accepted Christ. Of course I love money. Of course I have fleshly habits. Of course I'm carnal. But I've accepted Christ, all is well. Now, that's evangelicalism, as I've known it, all throughout the continent. And they want me to accept this and shut my mouth and say nothing and go on trying to promote this and give my life to it and say, We want to promote more of this, promote more carnality, promote more carelessness, promote more laziness and unfaithfulness and worldliness. No. These are abuses and faults. And reformation is the change by removal of faults or abuses. Are these abuses, for instance, spending millions for religious amusement for the saints of the Lord, supposed saints of the Lord? I was thinking about this. Maybe I'm mistaken. I could be radical, a little too radical on it. And if I am, we'll modify it a little. But I think I'm right in saying that if the money the saints had spent having fun during 1962 were put in the hands of missionary societies, two thousand Protestant missionaries could be on the field now preaching the gospel to the heathen, getting in ahead of the condemnants, getting in ahead of the Mohammedans, getting in ahead of the atheists. But we're dragging, and the Alliance is proud of its 880 now it will be, 880 missionaries. We're proud of the fact we ought to have 2880. But you can't get it because the Lord's people have accepted a necessity for fun. And it costs a lot, I'll tell you. It costs a lot. There are rattles for the saints and teething rings for the retarded children of the multi. You know, you can't predict. You can predict, and you say to yourself, Now, I'm making a prediction, and I sound like a fool in making it. It'll never be. And then you'll read about it somewhere. It happens. You know what happens? Well, the saints in a certain town, I'm not going to tell you the town, but it's in the States. Big town, over a million population. Nearly two million. They had been looking with covetous eye on the nightclubs of the town. And they said, Well, now, why should we allow the whirlings and the unbelievers and those who haven't accepted Jesus to have all the fun in the nightclubs? Let's start nightclubs of our own. So they started nightclubs, the Christian nightclubs. And they have drinks, but of course, no alcohol. Somebody said, water on the rocks. And they also have entertainment, but it's nice Christian entertainment. They get nightclub singers who also say they're Christians to come in and do their stuff. And then somebody said, I think this might have just been sarcastic, but somebody suggested they probably sold candy cigarettes, too. I don't know. But here we go, brother. Here we go. We can't be saved from the fact that the world has the condemnation of Almighty God on it. And if we're Christians, we're going to have to separate from the world. God's got enough, my brother. If he hasn't got enough to satisfy you in Toronto, he won't have enough to satisfy you in heaven. And if Jesus Christ isn't big enough and wonderful enough and good enough to please you in Toronto, you will be deeply disappointed with him in heaven. And anybody who is disappointed with Jesus in heaven will have a quick trip to hell. Because the people who love Jesus Christ and adore him and say, he's enough for me, he is all I need there, they're going to be the ones that fill heaven. Well, then what do I mean by reformation? I want to make it broader and talk more about it. But as I go on, that means simply that I return to the faith of our fathers. The faith of our fathers. Oh, how sweet that faith of our fathers, in belief and practice, in the individual Christian life and in the local church. I was praying yesterday, O God, show Toronto there's a God in Israel. Show Toronto there's a God in Israel. And I thought of old Samson and I prayed, O God, just this once more, show that thou art a God in Israel. Samson slew more in his death than he had in his life and delivered Israel dead than he could deliver them alive. And I think I'd be willing to be the one the building would fall on if I thought that I could gather to me and to my good and beloved brother here a people, a serious-minded, joyful, optimistic people who are ready to make in their own lives the changes that might be necessary to remove the faults and abuses and restore to a former good faith. It would be pleasing to God that our young people could gather. I was cheered this morning at the young people who came to me. Not only older people, but young people who came to me with a quiet word of deep assurance that they wanted me to know they were on our side and that we're going someplace here at this church. We want this sort of thing. That's our hope, dear friends. That's our hope. The hope of this church is its youth. The hope of this church is its serious-minded youth. Its serious-minded youth. The playboys. They're all everywhere. Yak-yackers. You can find them a dime a dozen. They're not worth taking out Wednesday morning for the man who drives the big truck. But there are serious-minded men and women, young people, too, who believe in God and in his Son Jesus Christ and who want everything God has and who want to be in the vanguard of the revival that may come to sweep the earth or at least to revive it in places. And I'd like to see our New World Church the leading church. Out from here there might go such a wave of beautiful Christianity that the other churches would say, how do they do it? And get on their knees and ask God how it's possible to have a growing church and have young people coming in for nothing else but to know about God and Christ. And it could set a trend here. But I won't say more about that later. Because what we may be doing at a given time is not important so much as what trend we're setting at a given time by what we do. And I'm concerned that our trend should be in the direction of producing a few such saints as Geoffrey and Simpson and Holy Ann and Billy Bray and Tom Hare and a few that have been. Some are gone. Well, that's the first talk. Talk number one. I'll be with you, God willing, for talk number two next Sunday night. And we'd like to have you back. Bring your friends. New students, new young people, you come on. You may have a little snow on the roof, but there's fire in the front. And don't you for a minute imagine that because I'm not young and good-looking like this man, that I don't have a youthful heart for you, the young people. All right. Now, beginning next Sunday night, I want to begin to ask for decisions and committals. And I will give invitations. And when this series is ended, we will go right on into evangelistic terms, into the synod. But tonight I'm going to leave you, after we've sung a number, to just quietly think this over and decide what you want to do.