In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of God's will and how it is often misunderstood. He emphasizes that God's will is not just something that will happen in the future, but something that is actively being done in the present. The speaker refers to Psalm 40:7-8 to highlight the importance of accepting God's will. He also talks about the need for suffering and sacrifice in order to experience resurrection and the power of God. The sermon concludes with the idea that following God's will may come at a cost, but it is worth it in the end.

In the third chapter, you know that passage, that what things were doomed to me, those I found at last were trite. Write down something I found also, but let's not read the rest of it because you're familiar with it. Except that passage, it says that I am a manian from the power of the resurrection, from the fellowship of the sufferers, who make some formidable unto himself. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with right along, but there's also a passage in the 40th Psalm, which I want to read now. Psalm 40, verses 7 and 8. Then said I, Lo, I come in the volume of the big city written of me. I dearly like to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. Now, to put it in simple terms, all spiritual perfection is no more and no less than to do the will of God, and I want tonight to talk about the will of God and its relation to our cause. Now, hell is the place where the will of God has never been, and that is why it is hell. And heaven is the place where it is always done, and that is why it is hell. Between hell and heaven, there is hell, and the earth is the place where the will of God either is not done at all, as out in the out-of-stage world, or is perfectly done, as among most of us Christians, or is perfectly done. Now, our relation to the will of God is twofold, positive and negative. It is positive in that it is a recognition that God's up. Well, if you think you've read the last four or five of them, and then you've probably come that I don't know, have you? And, I want to ask you whether you would agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God in the day in which we live, we almost invariably mean, and are understood to mean, recognition to God's will. We sing about the will of God and, when we sing, we usually mean that Mary meant when she said, "'Do it unto me even as thou wilt'." Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was recognition and positivity. That was saying, God, I set thy will for me. Go ahead, do whatever you think is all right with me, and that is necessary, and do it. But, there is a second relation to the will of God which we've many, I'm sure, are willing to do and which is rarely talked about, and that is the opposite side of the will of God. Voluntary observance of God's commandments. That is, to make such changes as God indicates, to drop some things into the oven, and to live an entire life in accordance with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reformation in the church, and it would result in a revival. But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it, so that the actual voluntary observance of God's commandments. Do you remember, I think it was Paul Reader who pointed it out from a great sermon I once heard him teach, that God heard Elijah because Elijah heard God, and that God did according to the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of God. And, you can't separate these two things. There's a great lot of passage talking about things have their own way, Lord, have their own way, and we don't know what it's going to be. There's passage going on, but that is only a part of it. The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what was told, and that means action. That means bringing an entire life into accord with the new testament teaching, with the bible teaching. Now, I want to speak a little, as I've said, about God's will and the cross. The will of God, I will say to you, brethren, you can see the will of God is the place of blessed, painful, fruitful trouble. Paul called it the fellowship of the suffered, and it is my conviction that one of the reasons that we have so little of peace cross power is because we will not have to cross trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us. We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffering, but don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering there will sometimes be near manifestations. I say this with hand up raised, that if there's anything in this world that I want to do is to have a clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul takes delight, and we do not have it because we cannot relate the will of God to the cross. Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was raised on the bloody hill. They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them. They were quick, and they noticed the direction of which cross came from. This cross came from the Old Testament, and I claim, brethren, that Christians ought to be exercised in spirit very frequently, and they ought to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently, and if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own hearts. Joseph didn't, I think, but did later know his own heart, and Joseph's cross was Jesus. The worst possible kind of cross that a man can do if it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and his cross was the world, and there was Job, and his cross was the devil. So, we have the world, the flesh, and the devil in Joseph, Daniel, and Job, and the devil crucified Job, and the world crucified Daniel, and Joseph was crucified on the tree of his own judgment, his own carnality, and then there was Moses. This cross was the apostle of God's people, and there the apostles, their cross came from the root of the Trinity, and there was Luke, and his cross came from the church that makes so much of wooden crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Jephthah, and his cross came from the Protestant church, and I could go on down the line and just take the rest of the evening laying in Joseph's, you had crosses in the will of God, and you followed the will of God to their cross, and even though it is before Christ's time to become a teacher, God will not cross a person who is poor. Afterwards, he said, I am crucified with Christ. By faith they looked forward, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed, and painful, and sinful trouble. Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the holy day, and I want to talk a little about our cross, and point out to you, my friends, that we cannot go up on the hillside and thus receive following Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus simply was the easiest, cheapest way to get off. Anybody could get out of earth and say goodbye to his family and say, I'm going to follow Jesus, and my little kids did. They followed him physically, but they didn't understand him spiritually. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross physically. That would be the easiest way to do it, but your cross isn't going to be going out and following Jesus along a dusty pathway, and it isn't going to be the time to go to the hill where three others are in the middle left between them. Our cross will be the trouble we get our own hearts into by obedience to the will of God. The brethren there is the gentrification. Our friends, brethren say rightly, make a great deal of gentrification, and they should. For that gentrification, oneness with Christ, a chance at more oneness and gentrification, oneness, and don't forget that I'm talking generally using some of the phrases of an old book called A Child of the Lord. That's where men are one with God, and this is the purpose of this series, that a few Christians of Greece might take this thing seriously, and that they might seek to be one with God in a way that the careless evangelical world seems to consider either fanaticism or any type of stuff that they're not even talking about in our day. And, again, gentrification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they'll never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death. When I was a young fellow, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wonderfully filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was going along. My friend Edwina down there remembers well how we used to get up together, and I was getting on well, and then I read a book about the cross, and that book took me on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, it was still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was gloom all the way through. Now, the preacher himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that gloom into his books, and I had an awful time picking that up. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it. But, there was a preacher back beyond that time by the name of A. B. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation, and it was that there's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all it would take, brothers and sisters. Now, we have the promises here tonight, and they're among my favorite people. I like them as people, and I love them as Christians, and I enjoy them as singers. But that's not the greatest thing that could have happened to us. Let's think we have H.G. Hirschberg and Lillith Sandberg, and they're fine, tender, classical types of singers singing salvation army songs, and we'll enjoy them. But that's not the finest thing that could happen to this church, no, no. And the best thing that could happen is there wouldn't be that we could get younger, and better, and more active people, all that. That'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing that you've never seen talking about, that you could see, would bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be that we could have a loving relationship with the Savior before the summer, so that we knew He, so that Jesus came, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other's backs, with each other's necks, and just be cold and safe, and listen to words, and wish it was over. But that suddenly, before the tent, that's always been the way it came, and I want to see that. I don't know when I'll die, but I do know if God will let me see one time, even on a small scale, this one children on earth, I'll consider today the favor He's done me just that there should be a sudden manifestation. Now, I don't mean roaring and yelling, I don't mean yelling, I don't mean tongues, I don't mean any physical manifestation at all, except that it would result in that tenderest manifestation of joy. But I just mean a presence made known to spirit, that's all, and He's willing to do that. That's what they had in the Welsh Bible, in such a degree that the kind of a teacher couldn't be reprieved. He couldn't be reprieved. They had that, but you don't see it much, and nobody wants it. And that's why I'm saying, and I'm going to say, and if you'll pray for me, I'll say it nicely, but I'm going to continue to say that we must have reformation, and we must have the look back on us again before we can hope for revival that is really revival. Now, those three words, identification, resurrection, manifestation, they're all to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I said I'm not going to talk very long tonight, but I do want to give you a few little presences here which I have taken from a man whose saintliness is known around the whole world, and still is down to this day. So, it's about the cross, and he says it better than I, so let me read a few phrases in Tamil. He says, God is ingenious in making us cross. Think of it. God is ingenious. He can't take us up to the hillside there, and if you just say, I'm crucified with Christ, by truth that will cost us all. That's technical. But, he, God wants to reincarcerate us. So, he's ingenious in making us crosses. He makes them of iron and of lead, which are heavy in themselves, and he makes them of straw, which seems to be nothing, but yet they're more or less difficult to carry. Some of these straw crosses that nobody thinks amount to anything, but are just crucifying means to improve. So, he says, he makes them of gold, which makes us pains, which dazzle the spectators, and excite the envy of the public, such as crucify more less than the crosses which our Lord has crucified. Now, brethren, what he means here is he's writing to these people here in high court, and he said this. They wrote him, and they said to him, we're forced into high society. We're forced by our political jobs, and yet we wanted to crucify with Christ, and yet we're forced. We're in the money, and you've got to be, and he said, why brethren, that's your goal, these crosses made out of gold, these precious stones, and it dazzles the spectators, and excites the envy of the public, but it crucifies you if you know how to take it less than the others. He makes them of all things we like the best, and turns them to business. Now, he says this, and some black-and-white people might not like this, but I'm going to say it anyway. It is often pleased that God has joined physical weakness to this servitude of the spirit. He said, nothing is more useful than these two crosses together. They crucify a man from head to foot, and when I read that, it was like a shock to my soul. Did you know the things that Jesus Christ was crucified from head to foot? Did you know that when they nailed a man who was crucified all over, there wasn't a part of his holy nature that was not tearing from the cross? He was crucified from head to foot, and he says God takes pleasure in that compounding human power which is only weakness disguised. Weakness disguised. That's the power you have, my friend, whatever kind of power. Intellectual power, you have a great mind. Good, I'm glad you have. It'll bother you, and get you in trouble, but it's a good thing to have if God has so ordered. But, it's weakness disguised. You have talents, all right, but weakness disguised, and everything you have is just human weakness disguised. And, God takes great pleasure in compounding it. Well, he says God wants to make what the world most admires ridiculously tight and faithful, so he treats without pity those whom he raises without name. He treats without pity those whom he raises without name. He joins the process, and crucifies the man from head to foot because he wants to raise him without name. Oh, you know that passage, don't you? Back there, I think I read it the other day. I read it a year and a half ago. Let this mind in me which is also in Christ Jesus, keep him in the form of God, that is not robbery. Robbery could be anything with God that made himself of no reputation, and took on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and he found his passion as a man who humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. You know the next word? Therefore, God also has highly devoted him, and given him a name which is above every name. That is the name that Jesus has released, vow, and every son can take. Now, my friends, God will crucify without pity those whom he wants to raise without name. I believe this, and then he adds this rather beautiful, and almost half humorous expression. He says how beautiful it is to have our purgatory where others seek the paradise. I wonder who would wish to get your purgatory where other people are looking for their paradise. Everybody else wants their paradise down below, and this wise old brother says you can have your purgatory here. You're going to have to wait to go to a purgatory after death. But, right down here where others are seeking their fun, and their best, their entertainment, their movements, and all the rest, you're walking with God, and you're letting the will of God lead you into that place, that cross, that place of blessed, fruitful trouble. Your own heart. How beautiful it is to have your purgatory here. And then he says, suffering, then, is only a matter of being silent before God, for it is God who brings to birth within us dryness. Some of you have dryness over the last week since this campaign, since these evening services began. You've had more dryness than you ever knew before. It is God who brings to birth within you dryness, and impatience, and discouragement to humiliate you and to show you yourself. It is he who does all we have only to see him and adore him in all, to adore him while he prays, and to love him while he crucifies. So, he says he crucifies without pity those he raises without measure. So, if you want to be raised without measure, do you want God to save for all angels and all creatures with whom you dwell? Well, it's also this man. There's no limit to where I take him. There's no measure, no ceiling on what he can have. Just keep it open. There's no top to it without measure or reason, and because without pity or crucify. And what does he mean? Well, he says in the very next line, he says, have the odds that anyone in this state consider the hand of God which crucifies them so pitious? Well, what does he mean? He crucifies without pity, and he crucifies through pity. Oh, you that have had children, or have the care of children, do you know what it is to punish without pity and yet punish with pity? Do you know what it is when you pray for your child, and you want that child to be the very finest example of a good kid, and you love them, and you give your blood out of your veins just like that for them, and yet without pity you turn off the Lord? And yet, what is it through pity that makes you punish them without pity? You see the beautiful mix up there? So, that's the way God feels. It is the pity of God over children that lets him turn up to God that he might make us the kind of people he wants us to be. Brother Thomas, where are we going to find a sample of what I'm talking about? Where are we going to get a company of Christians from where who are completely separated from all their prejudices, and all their carnal desires, and that are willing to put themselves in the hands of God, and bear any kind of cost, iron or lead or straw or gold or anything, and be the kind of samples that we're talking about? Now, he says, it is God who does it all, and we have only to see him and to adore him in all. There will be a time, and I don't know when it will be for any of you, but there will be a time not far between when all you have will be God and the cross. We shall hold our right cross before my closing eyes after us. Time to reveal his pointings of his time. And all you have, and how pathetic it is, and I don't want to be unkind, but how pathetic it is. It's full of people who've never understood, and they've never been taught, and they have no evangelical message at all. Clutch to their dress the cross when they're dying. Clutch it and hold it tight, thinking that they're metal and wood and pink and enamel. There may be some things you can take them over the river, although that's not the cross that helps them more. It is another kind of cross. It is that cross which comes to you from being in the world of God. That which you do by being in the world of God, and it comes in many directions as well, and most of the time I think it will come from within. Mine usually comes from within, and God lets me fall on my face or break a nose or do some cool thing or otherwise injure my soul, and that's the cross, and the Lord nails me there, and now all we have to do is see him and adore him in it all. When he closes, and I'm closing with these words, oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. I adore indeed this dying beast with whom I also must die. Oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. Not a cross on the road, not a cross on the church, not a cross on a chain, not a cross around the neck, but the cross of the world's God, whatever it is. The cross of obedience to the will of God. The man, as I said here some weeks back, the good English brother who was talking to me and to his brother, said this. God has given him a marvelous testimony, and he said this. He said, I find obedience brings the cross into the life quicker than anything else. Now, do you dare say tonight, and will you say, will you say, looking forward to holy manifestation, resurrection, and power, can you say, oh God, crucify me from head to foot? From head to foot, God, this is the reformation we need now. Once they knew they needed a reformation, it would bring the Bible back to the church. They got it. Again, they needed a reformation. It would teach men they could be justified and cleansed, and they got it under the record. And, now we need a reformation. That shall take the will of God and adore it, and look on God and let him work, and look not backwards, but look forward. Disassociate itself from all whatever it calls itself, and however sound it may think it is, in doctrine, all that is unspiritual, and all that is unchristlike, and all that is in the testaments, and look on him and let him work, in personal, causal, and good cause, and they see. If you say this is so very easy, it's an awful way to talk to young people. I'm not thinking in a word about young people. I understand it's amazing how teenage Christians, if they're really Christians, get what I'm talking about, and some want it. But, brethren, did you ever stop to think that the Easter came after Good Friday, and that there had to be Good Friday before there could be Easter, and before he could rise and sing among his brethren, he had to bow his head and suffer among his brethren? This is what's lost from the church. The only suffering you know about now is that which is imposed by accident from the outside, and everybody looks about it, and they feel as a people that wouldn't have had it that way if they'd got out of it, and had no credit coming because it happened to them by accident. That's no cost, my brethren. Your cost is what you take from the hand of God, looking on him, and letting him work, and thanking him, and adoring him, and you wouldn't change it if you could, and you could if you want. And so, when it comes to glory for a director, when it comes to lips and to breath, now, I don't know whether this would be a good illustration or a poor complete illustration of what I mean, but there was a minister here last Sunday night, a young minister of another denomination, and he went into the prayer room, and they prayed with him there, and it took quite a while. But, he came to him in such a state of radiance that those with whom he was praying said he would talk about nothing else all that evening and the next day. That was all the conversation was about. He was so lifted and so radiant with it all, but before there can come the radiance of the dawn, there must be the darkness of the night. Before there can come the light of resurrection, there must be the death that ends another kind of life. Oh, cross! Oh, good cross! I adore and be the dying Jew. Now, my friend, I believe that you want to go on with it, and I know I do, and I do at any cost, and when I say at any cost, I mean at any cost. And, do you at any cost, when you say at any cost to us, I have here, I have here a little prayer which I have, nobody says it to me, but I wrote it here a long time ago. Oh, God, let me die right rather than live wrong, rather than be hardened down into another prison, and live a life down on a low level. I'd rather reach a high spot and turn off the light, rather live right, die right, and live wrong. Oh, blessed cross of Jesus! Oh, Lord God Supreme! Oh, sweet Lord God, do you know anything about it? Are you in it? Has it done anything for you or to you? Have you known the place of sleep, rest, and trouble, and of heart-searching, and of travel? If you haven't, you can never know in the dusting and the gnawing. You can pray for revival until you die. You'll never get any revival. You can join groups and pray all nights for revival, and all you'll lose will be sleep, and all your gains will be exercise. But, friends, if we believe in this time of reformation that costs God more than we want, then why don't we do something about it tonight? Why don't we have a little taxing time at the office tonight, hmm? Where we can come and call, and say, oh blessed will of God, blessed will of God, oh blessed cross, for I adore my Savior, crucify me from head to foot. I believe that a part of you certainly agrees there'll be a battle raised. Oh, cross, for this is but my head. I dare not ask to hide from thee. I lay in dust-like glory, dead and from the ground, and blossoms where life of showering you must be. Please come and lay this glory in the dust tonight, the best you know how. Please come and lay her glory in the dust, the best you know how, and refer the Lord. Teach the will of God for you in obedience. The will, and the cross, and the identification, and the presence, and the glory, and the resurrection, and the life. We'll do it. Further could we sing. You want to announce it now? And we'll stand and sing together. So, we've a third chapter, and you know that text. But what things are gain to me those I found at last, they say. There's doubtless in their cowardice, but let I not read the rest of it, because you're familiar with it. Except that passage, it says that I am a manian, and the power of the resurrection, and the fellowship of the receptors, we make conformable unto his death. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with all along, but there's also a passage in the 40th psalm, which I want to read now. Psalm 40, the verses 7 and 8. Then said I, lo, I come in the volume of the big pretty kitten of me. I'd really like to do thy will, O my God. Will thy law is within my heart. Now, to do, in the simplest terms, all spiritual perfection, is no more and no less than to do the will of God. And I want tonight to talk about the will of God and its relation to our cause. Now, hell is a place where the will of God is never done, and that is why it is hell. And heaven is a place where it is always done, and that is why it is hell. Between hell and heaven, there is the earth, and the earth is the place where the will of God neither is not done at all. As I've been led to say, worlds are always partly done as among most of us Christians, or imperfectly done. Now, our relation to the will of God is two-fold, passive and active. It is passive in that it is a resignation to God's acts. There are two things that go to mind, four or five of them, and then you probably come to what I don't know, I guess. And I want to ask you whether you agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God in the day in which we live, we all make very little need and are understood to need resignation to God's will. You think about the will of God, and when we do, we usually mean that Mary meant when she said, do it unto me even as I will. Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was resignation and captivity. That was saying, God, God, I accept thy will for me. Go ahead, do whatever you think is all right with me, and that was necessary and good. But, there is a second relation to the will of God which is very, I'm sure, a way to be, and it is rarely talked about, and that is the active side of the will of God. Voluntary observance of God's commandment. That is, to make such changes as God indicates, to drop some things and take up others, and to live an entire life bringing forth with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reformation through the church, and it would result in a revival. But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it. So, that the actual voluntary observance of God's commandment. Do you remember? I think Mr. Paul Rayburn pointed it out in a great sermon I once heard him teach that God heard Elijah because Elijah heard God, and that God did according to the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of God. And, you can't separate these two things. There's a great lot of passage speaking about things have ran away, Lord, have ran away. And, we don't know what it's going to be. We're absolutely in doubt. But, that is only a part of it. The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what was told. So, that means action. That means bringing the entire land into accord with the new testamental teaching, with the bible teaching. Now, I want to speak a little, as I said, about God's will and the cross. The will of God, I will say to you brethren, which is the will of God is the place of blessed, painful, fruitful trouble. Paul called it the fellowship of the suffered. And, it is my conviction that one of the reasons that we have so little of peace across time is because we will not have peace across trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us. We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffering. But, don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering, there you will find positive, clear manifestations. I say this with hand upraised, that if there's anything in this world that I want, it is to have a clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul takes delight. And, you do not have it because you cannot relate the will of God to the cross. Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was laid on the bloody hill. They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them. They were good, but they noticed the direction that each cross came from. Each cross came from his own carnal self, and I claim, brethren, that Christians ought to be exorcised in spirit very frequently, and they ought to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently. And, if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own hearts. Joseph didn't, I say, but did lately know his own heart, and Joseph's cross was Jesus. The worst possible kind of cross to a man can be if it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and this cross is the world, and there was Job, and this cross was the devil. So, we have the world of Christ and the devil through Jacob, Daniel, and Job. And, the devil crucified Job, and the world crucified Daniel, and Joseph was crucified on the key of his own wickedness, his own carnality, and then there was Moses. This cross was the acceptable of God's people, and there were the apostles. Their cross came from the root of the Trinity, and there was Luke, and this cross came from the church that makes much of many crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Heckney, and this cross came from the Protestant church. And, I could go on down the line, and just take the rest of the evening, lay me, go to bed. We had crosses in the will of God, and we followed the will of God through the cross, and even though it is before Christ's time to come with Jesus, God on that cross is said to look tall. Afterwards, he said, I am crucified with Christ. By faith, they looked tall, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed, and painful, and sinful suffering. Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the Holy Ghost, and I want to talk a little bit about our cross, and point out to you, my friends, that we cannot go up on the hillside and not receive following Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus physically was the easiest, cheapest way to get on. Anybody could get out of work and say goodbye to his family and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. Mother, please do it. They followed him physically, but they didn't understand he was spiritual. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross physically. That would be the easiest way to do it. But, your cross isn't going to be going out following Jesus along a dusty pathway, and it isn't going to be the climb to the hill where three others are, and be mailed up between them. Our cross will be the cover we get our own hearts into by obedience to the will of God. The brethren there is a gentrification. Our cross is a gentrification. So, for that gentrification, oneness with Christ. The child said, no, oneness includes affliction. Oneness, and don't forget that I am talking generally, using some of the phrases of an old book called Child of the Lord, that where men are one with God. And, this is the purpose of this series, that a few centuries of grief might take this thing seriously, and that they might seek to be one with God in a way that the paralects of the angelic world seem to consider either fanaticism or a type of stuff that we're not even talking about in our day. And, a gentrification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they'll never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death. When I was a young fellow, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wonderful filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was going along. My friend, if you know her down there, remembers well how we used to go out together. And, I was going along well, and then I read a book about the cross, and that book put you on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, you were still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was gloom all the way through. Now, the preacher himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that gloom into his book, and I had an officer in taking that off. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it, but there was a preacher back beyond that time by the name of A. B. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation. And, this was that's where there's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all the good faith brothers and sisters. Now, we have the promises here tonight, and they're among my favorite people. I like them as people. I love them as Christians, and I enjoy their feelings, but that's not the greatest thing that could have happened to us. Let's think we have H. G. Sturzberg and Lillith Strandberg, and they're fine, tender, classical types of singers singing salvation army songs, and we'll enjoy them, but that's not the finest thing that could happen to this church, no, no. And, the best thing that could happen to this church wouldn't be that it would get younger, and better, and more active people. Oh, that'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing, that which you've never been talking about, that which you could, you could, it would bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be that we could have a loving relationship with Jesus before the for the beginning of the age, before the Jesus came, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other's backs, with each other's necks, and just be cold and safe, and listen to when the music was over, but it suddenly became all of a sudden. That's always been the way it came, and I want to see that. I don't know when we'll die, but I do know that God will let me see one time, even on a small scale, if I'm still here on earth, I'll consider it the greatest favor he's done me yet. This could be a sudden manifestation. Now, I don't mean rain in the house, I don't mean yelling, I don't mean tongues, I don't mean any physical manifestation at all, except that it would result in that tenderest manifestation of peace, of joy, but I just mean a present, made known to the spirit, that's all, and he's willing to do that. That's what they have in the wealth survival, in such a degree that sometimes a preacher couldn't be the priest, he couldn't be the preacher. They had that, but you don't see it much, and nobody wants it, and that's why I'm saying, and I'm going to say, and if you'll pray for me, I'll say tonight, that I'm going to continue to say that we must have reformation, and we must have lift back on us again before we can hope for revival that is really revival. Now, those three words identification, resurrection, manifestation, they're all through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I said I'm not going to talk very long tonight, but I do want to give you a few little presences here which I have taken from a man who's totally missed, who's known around the whole world, and still is down to this day, and it's about the cross, and he says it better than I, so let me read the phrases in common. He says, God is ingenious in making us cross. Think of it. God is ingenious. He can't lift it up to the hillside there, and if you just say, I'm crucified with Christ, by faith that will cost us all. That's technical. But, God wants to re-incarcerate us, so he's ingenious in making us crosses. He makes them of iron and of lead, which are heavy in themselves, and he makes them of straw, which seems to weigh nothing, but yet they'll let more or less give themselves to carry. Some of these straw coffers that nobody thinks amount to anything, but are just crucifying me to improve. Then he says he makes them of gold, which makes it change, which dazzles the spectators, which strikes the envy of the public, but which crucify more or less, and the crosses become more despised. Now, very good what he means here. He's writing to people who are in high court, and he said, there wasn't any such thing. We're forced into high society. We're forced by our political jobs, and yet we wanted to crucify with Christ, and yet we're forced. You've got to win the money, and you've got to be, and he said, why brethren, that's your gold, your cross made out of gold, in place of stones, and it dazzles the spectators, and it strikes the envy of the public, but it crucifies you if you know how to take it, no less than the others. He makes them of all things he likes the best, and turns them to their enemies. Now, he says this, and turns out the line people might not like this, but I'm going to say it anyway, that it often pleases God to join physical weakness, as it says in the book of the Spirit. He says, nothing is more useful than two crosses together. They crucify a man from head to foot, and when I read that, it was like a shock to my soul. Did you know, friends, that Jesus Christ was crucified from head to foot? Did you know that when they nailed the man, he was crucified all over? There wasn't a part of his holy nation that was not paying for the cross. He was crucified from head to foot, and he says God takes pleasure in that compound human power which is only weakness disguised. Weakness disguised. That's the power you have, my friend, whatever kind of power. Intellectual power, you have a great mind. Good, I'm glad you have. It'll bother you, and get you in trouble, but it's a good thing to have. You've got it so ordered, but it's just weakness disguised. You have talents, all right? They're weakness disguised, and everything you have is just human weakness disguised, and God takes great pleasure in compounding it. As I said, God wants to make what the world most demands ridiculous and frightful, so he treats without pity those whom he raises without measure. He treats without pity those whom he raises without measure. He joins these crosses and crucifies the man from head to foot because he wants to raise him without measure. Oh, you know that passage. Don't get back there. I think I read it the other day, again, a year and a half. Electric minds can be used, as also in Christ Jesus, to be in the form of God. Father God robbed me of the teaching of God, but made himself of no reputation, and took on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and he compounded his passion as a man. He humbled himself, and became a deity unto death, even the death of the cross. You know the next word? Therefore, God also hath highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, that is the name that Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue should say. Now, my friends, God will crucify without pity those whom he wants to raise without measure. I believe this, and then he adds this rather beautiful and almost absolute expression. He says how beautiful it is to have our purgatory where others seek the paradise. I wonder how it is to get your purgatory where other people are looking for their paradise. Everybody else wants their paradise down below, and this wise old brother says you can have your purgatory here. You only have to wait to go to a non-existent purgatory after death. Right down here, where others are seeking their funds, and their vests, and their entertainment, their movements, and all the rest. If you're walking with God, and you're letting the will of God lead you into that place, that cross, that place of neglected, fruitful trouble, your own heart, how beautiful it is to have your purgatory here. And then he says, suffering then is only a matter of being silent before God, for it is God who brings to birth within us dryness. Some of you have dryness over the last month since this campaign. If you've even heard this again, you've had more dryness than you ever knew before. It is God who brings to birth within you dryness, and encouragement, and discouragement to humiliate you, and to show you yourself. It is he who does all we have only to see him, and adore him in all, to adore him one place, and to love him while he crucifies. So, he says, he crucifies without pity those he raises without nature. So, do you want to be raised without nature? Do you want God to say to all angels and all preachers, well, the lid's off for this man. There's no feeling on what he can have with teeth that open. There's no talk to it without marrying without raising, and because without pity our crucifixion. What does he mean? Well, he says in the very next line, he says, at the odds raising in this state, consider the hand of God which crucifies them through pity. So, what does he mean? He crucifies without pity, and he crucifies through pity. Oh, you that I have had children, or have had the care of children, do you know what it is to punish without pity, and yet punish with pity? Do you know what it is when you pray for your child, and you want that child to be the very finest example of a good kid? And you love them, and you give your blood out of your veins just like that for them, and yet without pity you turn off the Lord? And yet, what is it to do with pity that makes you punish them without pity? You see the beautiful mix up there? So, that's the way God feels. It is the pity of God over his children that lets him turn off the Lord that he might make us the kind of people he wants us to be. So, the problem is, where are we going to find a sample of what I'm talking about? Where are we going to get a company of Christians somewhere who are completely separated from all their prejudices, and all their carnal desires, and yet they're willing to put themselves in the hands of God, and bear any kind of cost, iron, or lead, or straw, or gold, or anything, and be the kind of samples that we're talking about? Now, he says, it is God who does it all, and we have only to see him and to adore him in all. There will be a time, and I don't know when it will be, but there will be a time not far distant when all you have will be God and the cross. We can hold our right cross before my closing eyes at last, time to redeem and point me to the skies. And all you have, and how pathetic it is, and I don't want to be unkind, but how pathetic it is. The poor people who've never understood, and they have never been taught, and they have no evangelical message at all, clutch to their dress the cross when they're dying, clutch it and hold it tight, taking their own metal robes and suits, and then I know there may be some things that take them over the river. Oh no, that's not the cross that helps you know. It is another kind of cross. It is that cross which comes to you from being in the world of God. That which you heal by being in the world of God. It may come from any direction at all, and most of the time I think it will come from within. Mine usually come from within, and God lets me fall on my face, or break a nose, or do some cruel thing, or otherwise injure my soul, and that's the cross the Lord lends me there, and now all we have to do is heal and adore him with it all. When he closes, when I'm closing with these words, oh cross, oh good cross, I embrace you. I adore in thee this dying Jesus to whom I also must die. Oh cross, oh good cross, I embrace you. Not a cross on will, not a cross on the church, not a cross on a chain, not a cross around the neck, but the cross of the will of God, whatever it is. The cross of obedience to the will of God. The man, as I said here some weeks back, he was with his brother who was talking to me, and he said this. God has given him a marvelous testimony, and he said this. He said, I find obedience brings the cross into the life quicker than anything else. Now, do you dare say tonight, and will you say, will you say, looking forward to all the gentrification, manifestation, resurrection, and power? Can you say, oh God crucify me from head to foot? From head to foot, God. This is the reformation we need now. Once they knew they needed a reformation, it would bring the Bible back to the church, the goddess. Again, they needed a reformation. We would teach men that could be justified and cleansed from the goddess under the record, and now we need a reformation. That child takes the will of God and adores it, and looks on God and letting work, and looks not backwards but looks forward, disassociates itself from all whatever it calls itself, and however sound it may think it is in doctrine. All that is unspiritual, and all that is un-Christlike, and all that is in the testament, and looks on Emmanuel, letting work, and says, oh God, oh good God, and they see. Did you say this disclosure isn't just an awful way to talk to young people? I'm not thinking in a word about young people. I understand it. It's amazing how teenage Christians, if they're really Christians, get what I'm talking about, and want it. But brethren, did you ever stop to think that the Easter came after Good Friday, and that there had to be Good Friday before they could go to Easter, and before he could rise and sing among his brethren, he had to bow his head and shuffle among his brethren? This is what's lost from the church. The only suffering you know about now is that which you impose by accident from the outside, and everybody looks about it. And, those heroes of people that wouldn't have had it that way if they got out of it, and had no credit coming because it happened to them by accident. That's no cost, my brother. Your cost is what you take from the hand of God, looking on him, and letting work, and thanking him, and adoring him, and you wouldn't change it if you could, and you could if you won't. And so, when it comes to a story for a director, when it comes to lips and to breakfast, now, I don't know whether this would be a good illustration, a full, complete illustration of what I mean. But, there was a minister here last Sunday night, a young minister of another denomination, and he went into the prayer room, and they prayed with him there, and it took quite a while. But, he came through in such a state of radiance that those with whom he was praying said he would talk about nothing after all that evening and the next day. That was all the conversation was about. He was so lifted and so radiant with it all. But, before there can come the radiance of the dawn, there must be the darkness of the night. Before there can come the life of resurrection, there must be the death that ends another kind of life. Oh, cross! Oh, good cross! I adore and envy the dying Jesus. Now, my friends, I believe that you want to go on with it, and I know I do, and I do at any cost. When I say at any cost, I mean at any cost. And, do you do at any cost, in a sense, at any cost, George? I have here, I have here a little prayer which I have, nobody said it to me, but I wrote it here a long time ago. Oh, God, let me die right rather than live wrong. Rather than just hiding down into another prison and live a fool's life down on a low level, I'd rather reach a high spot and turn off the light. Rather than live right, die right than live wrong. Oh, blessed cross of Jesus! Oh, will of God supreme! Oh, sweet will of God! Do you know anything about it? Are you in it? Has it done anything for you or to you? Have you known the place of sweet blessed trouble and of cart-searching and of travel which you haven't, which you'll never know the blessing and ignore? You can pray for revival until you die. You'll never get any revival. You can join groups and pray all night for revival, and all your losers will be free, and all your gains will be exercised. But, friends, if we believe in this kind of reformation that costs God more than we want, then why don't we do something about it tonight? Why don't we have a little fashion time at the office tonight? Hmm? Where we can come and call and say, Oh, blessed will of God! Blessed will of God! Oh, blessed cross! Oh, I adore my Savior! Crucify me from head to foot. I believe that up out of there'll be a battle raised. Oh, cross to lift this up my head. I dare not ask to hide from thee. I lay in dust like glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms where life that shall and must be. Who come and lay his glory in the dust tonight? The best who knows how. Who come and lay his or her glory in the dust? The best who knows how. And, before the Lord speaks the will of God for you, who will be the will, and the cross, and the ramification, and the presence, and the glory, and the resurrection, and the life, we'll do it. Brother, could we sing? You want to announce it now? We'll stand and sing together. When you read the third chapter, you know that passage. But what things are gained to me, those I founded last for Christ. Break down Christian orthodoxy, but let I not read the rest of it because you're familiar with it. Except that passage that says that I am a man in the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his supper, he made conformable unto his death. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with right along but there's also a passage in the 40th psalm which I want to read now. Psalm 40, the verses 7 and 8. Then said I, lo, I come in the volume of the big city with you of me. I'd really like to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my hand. Now, reduced to its simplest terms, all spiritual perfection is no more and no less than to do the will of God. And, I want tonight to talk about the will of God and its relation to our cause. Now, hell is the place where the will of God is never done, and that is why it is hell. And, heaven is the place where it is always done, and that is why it is hell. Between hell and heaven, there is the earth. And, the earth is the place where the will of God either is not done at all, as out in the unsaved world, or is perfectly done as among most of us Christians, or is perfectly done. Now, our relation to the will of God is twofold, passive and active. It is passive in that it is a recognition that God's up. Well, if you think this way tonight, there are five of them, and then you probably come to that, I don't know. And, I want to ask you whether you agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God in the day in which we live, we almost invariably mean, and are understood to mean, recognition to God's will. We think about the will of God and him too. We usually mean that Mary meant when she said, be it unto me even as I will. Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was recognition and captivity. That was saying, God, God, I accept thy will for me. Go ahead, do whatever you think is all right with me, and that was necessary and good. But, there is a second relation to the will of God which is better, I'm sure, a way to do, and it is rarely talked about, and that is the active side of the will of God. Voluntary observing is God's commandment. That is, to make such changes as God indicates, to drop some things and take up others, and to live an entire life in accordance with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reclamation in the church, and it would result in a revival. But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it, so that the actual voluntary observance of God's commandment. Do you remember, I think this Paul Rader has pointed it out from a great sermon I once heard him teach, that God heard Elijah because Elijah heard God, and that God did according to the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of God. And, you can't separate these two things. There's a great lot of passive thinking about, to have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way, and we don't know what it's going to be. We're passive in that, but that is only a part of it. The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what he's told you, and that means action. That means bringing the entire life into accordance with the new testament teaching, with the bible teaching. Now, I want to speak a little, as I've said, about God's will and the cross. The will of God, I will say to you, brethren, and sisters, the will of God is the place of blessed, painful, fruitful trouble. Paul called it the fellowship of the suffered, and it is my conviction that one of the reasons that we have so little of a place cross power is because we will not have to cross trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us. We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffered, but don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering there will sometimes be clear manifestations. I say this with him that way, that if there's anything in this world that I want to do is to have this clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul is blessed, and we do not have it because we cannot relate the will of God to the cross. Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was raised on the bloody hill. They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them, and it's good that they noticed the direction that this cross came from. This cross came from his own carnal self, and I claim, brethren, that Christians are to be exercised in spirit very frequently, and they are to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently, and if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own heart. Brigham didn't, I think, but did later know his own heart, and this is Christ. Why Jesus? The worst possible kind of cross to a man can be if it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and this cross is the world, and there was Job, and this cross was the devil. So, we have the world of Christ and the devil in Jacob, Daniel, and Job, and the devil sits inside Job, and the world sits inside Daniel, and Joseph is crucified on the tree of his own wickedness, his own carnality, and then there was Moses. This cross was the receptor of God's people, and there were the apostles. Their cross came from the religious authority, and there was Luther. This cross came from the church that makes so much of wooden crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Lesley, and this cross came from the Protestant church, and I could go on down the line and just take the rest of the evening laying in those things. You have crosses in the will of God, and you followed the will of God through their cross, and even though it is before Christ's time that all the preachers died or left Christ because he was poor, afterwards he said, I'm crucified with Christ. By faith they looked forward, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed and faithful and faithful subjects. Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the holy day, and I want to talk a little bit about our cross, and point out to you, my friends, that we cannot go up on the hillside and receive following Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus strictly was the easiest, cheapest way to get off. Anybody could get out of work and say goodbye to his family and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. Mother, please do it. They followed him physically, but they didn't understand him spiritually. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross physically. That would be the easiest way to do it, but your cross isn't going to be going out and following Jesus along a destined pathway. It isn't going to be the climb to the hill where the others are, and be mailed up to see them. Our cross will be the cover we get our own hearts into by obedience to the will of God. The brethren there who say that the cross is a justification until it doesn't rightly make a great deal of a justification, and it should. For that, a justification, oneness with Christ, a chance at oneness in his description. Oneness, and don't forget that I am talking generally, using some of the phrases of an old book called Child of the Lord, that where men are one with God, and this is the purpose of this series, that a few Christians of Greece might take this thing seriously, and that they might seek to be one with God in a way that the careless of evangelical world seems to consider either fanaticism or old-fashioned stuff that we're not even talking about in our day. And, identification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death, and I was a young fellow. I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wonderfully filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was going along. That's when a nun down there remembers well how we used to be out together, and I was getting on well, and then I read a book about the cross, and that book put me on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, it was still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was gloom all the way through. Now, the preacher himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that gloom into his books, and I had an awful time taking that off. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it. But, there was a preacher back beyond that time by the name of A. B. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation. And, this was that there's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all it would take, brothers and sisters. Now, we have the promises here tonight, and they're among my favorite people. I like them as people, I love them as Christians, and I enjoy them as singers. But, that's not the greatest thing that could have happened to us. Let's think who has 18 chorus birds, and limit string birds, and they're fine, tender, classical type of singers singing salvation army songs, and we'll enjoy them. But, that's not the finest thing that could happen to this church, no, no. And, the best thing that could happen is there wouldn't be the future getting younger, and better, and more active preacher. Oh, that'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing, that which you've never been talking about, that which you could, it would bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be if we could have a loving relationship with Jesus before the summer, so that we would be, so that Jesus came, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other's backs, and each other's necks. And, just because you sit and listen to where the music was over, that a sudden recall of a presence. That's always been the way it came, and I want to see that. I don't know when I'll die, but I do know that God will let me see one time, even on a small scale, this one children on earth, I'll sing to you today the Savior is on the earth. Just that there should be a sudden manifestation. Now, I don't mean, I don't mean rolling in the clouds, I don't mean yelling, I don't mean tongues, I don't mean any physical manifestation at all, except that it would bring light to that tenderest manifestation of joy. But, I just mean a presence made known to the spirit, that's all. And, he's known to do that. That's what they have in the well-spirited Bible, in such a degree that the time of the retreat, he couldn't even preach. He couldn't even preach. They had that, but you don't see it much, and nobody wants it. And, that's why I'm saying, and I'm going to say, and if you'll pray for me, I'll say it nicely, but I'm going to continue to say that we must have reformation, and we must have this back on us again before we can hope for a revival that is really a revival. Now, those three words, identification, resurrection, and manifestation, they're all through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I said I'm not going to talk very long tonight, but I do want to give you a few little presences here which I have taken from a man who's totally missed, who's known around the whole world, who still is down to this day. And, it's about the cross, and he says it doesn't deny it, so let me read a few phrases and comments. He says, God is ingenious in making us cross. Think of it. God is ingenious. He can't put us up to the hillside there, and let me just say, I am crucified with Christ by faith. That will cost us all. I expect nothing. But, he is, and God wants to reincarnate us. So, he's ingenious in making us crosses. He makes them of iron and of lead, which are heavy in themselves, and he makes them of straw, which seems to be nothing, but let's just let low-length pieces of it carry. Some of these straw crosses that nobody thinks amount to anything, but are just crucifying me to improve. Then, he says he makes them of gold, which makes it change, which dazzles the spectators and excites the envy of the public. But, this crucifying the crosses become more despised. Now, brethren, what he means here is he's writing to the people who are in high court, and he said there wasn't any such thing. Why, we're forced into high society. We're forced by our political jobs, and yet we wanted to crucify with Christ, and yet we're forced. You've got to win the money, and you've got to be, and he said, why brethren, that's your cross made out of gold and precious stones, and it dazzles the spectators and excites the envy of the public, but it crucifies you if you know how to take it, the less than the others. He makes them of all things he likes the best, and sends them to misery. Now, he says this, and sometimes I find people might not like this, but I'm going to say it anyway, that it often pleases God to join physical movements in his services of his spirit. He said, nothing is more useful than these two crosses together to crucify a man from head to foot. And, when I read that, it was like a shock to my soul. Did you know the things that Jesus Christ was crucified from head to foot? Did you know that when they nailed a man who was crucified all over, there wasn't a part of his holy nation that was not tearing from the cross? He was crucified from head to foot, and he says God takes pleasure in that compounding human power which is only weakness disguised. Weakness disguised. That's the power you have, my friend, whatever kind of power. Intellectual power, you have a great mind. Good, I'm glad you have. Good daughter, and you're going to get me in trouble, but it's a good thing to have your daughters so ordered. That is just weakness disguised. You have talents, all right, they're weakness disguised, and everything you have is just human weakness disguised. And, God takes great pleasure in compounding it. Now, he says God wants to make up the world's most admired, ridiculous, and frightful. So, he treats without pity those whom he raises without laziness. He treats without pity those whom he raises without laziness. He joins these passages and crucifies the man from head to foot because he wants to raise him without laziness. Oh, you know that passage, don't you? That's where I think I read it the other day, again, a year and a half. I believe this, and then he adds this rather beautiful and almost half-truist expression. He says, how beautiful it is to have our purgatory where others seek the paradise. I wonder who would wish to get your purgatory where others are looking for their paradise. Everybody else wants their paradise down below, and his wise old brother says you can have your purgatory here. You only have to wait to go to a non-existent purgatory after death. But, right down here where others are seeking their fun and their best, their entertainment, their amusements, and all the rest with your walking with God, and you're letting the will of God lead you into that place, that cross, that place of neglected, fruitful trouble in your own heart. How beautiful it is to have this purgatory here. And then he says, suffering then is only a matter of being silent before God, for it is God who brings to birth within us dryness. Some of you have dryness over the last month since this campaign, this evening service has began. You've had more dryness than ever in your life before. It is God who brings to birth within you dryness, and impatience, and discouragement, to humiliate you and to show you yourself. It is he who does all. We have only to see him and adore him in all. To adore him while he prays, and to love him while he crucifies. So, he says, he crucifies without pity those he raises without measure. So, do you want to be raised without measure? Do you want God to say to all angels and all preachers that these were the lids off for this man? There's no measure where I take him. There's no measure, no ceiling on what he can have. Just keep it open. There's no top to it without measure or without a reason, and because without pity are crucified. What does he mean? Well, he says, in the very next line he says, half the yards raised in this state consider the hand of God which crucifies them through pity. So, what does he mean? He crucifies without pity, and he crucifies through wisdom. Oh, you that have had children, or have the care of children, do you know what it is to punish without pity and yet punish with pity? Do you know what it is when you pray for your child, and you want that child to be the very finest example of a true infinity, and you love them and pray to give your blood out of your veins just like that for them, and yet without pity you turn off the rod? And yet, what is it through pity that makes you punish them without pity? Do you see the beautiful mix up there? So, that's the way God feels. It is a pity and God over his children that lets him turn off the rod, that he might make us the kind of people he wants us to be. Brother Chalmers, we're only going to find a sample of what I'm talking about. We're only going to get a company of Christians somewhere who are completely separated from all of prejudice, and all of carnal desires, and that they're willing to put themselves in the hands of God, and bear any kind of cost, iron or lead or straw or gold or anything, and be the kind of samples that we're talking about. Now, he says, it is God who does it all, and we have only to see him and to adore him in all. There will be a time, and I don't know when it will be for any of you, but there will be a time when all you'll have will be God and the cross. And all you'll have, and how pathetic it is, and I don't want to be unkind, but how pathetic it is that poor people who've never understood, and they've never been taught, and they have no evangelical message at all, clutched to their breast the cross when they're dying, clutched it and hold it tight, thinking that they met their own world when they took an enamel. There may be something we can take them over the river, although that's not the cross that helps you know. It is another kind of cross. It is that cross which comes to you from being in the will of God. That which is yours by being in the will of God. It may come from any direction at all, and most of the time I think it will come from within. Mine will usually come from within, and God lets me fall on my face to break a nose or do some thing or otherwise injure my soul, and that's the cross, and the Lord gives me that. And now all we have to do is see him and adore him with it all. When he closes, when I'm closing, with these words, oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. I adore indeed this dying Jesus with whom I also must die. Oh cross, oh good cross I embrace you. Not a cross on the road, not a cross on the church, not a cross on a cave, not a cross on the neck, but the cross of the will of God, whatever it is. The cross of obedience to the will of God. The man, as I said some respect to the English brother who was talking to me until he's done, said this. God had given him a mild testimony, and he said this. He said, I find obedience brings the cross into the life quicker than anything else. Now, do you dare say tonight, and will you say, will you say looking forward to all the gentrification, manifestation, resurrection, and power, can you say, oh God crucify me from head to foot? From head to foot, God, this is the reformation we need now. Once they knew they needed a reformation, it would bring the Bible back to the church. They got it. Again, they needed a reformation. It would teach men they could be justified and cleansed when they got it under the refuge, and now we need a reformation. That child takes the will of God and adore it, and look on God in letting work, and look not backward but look forward. Disassociate itself from all whatever tells itself, and however sound it may think of indoctrination, all that is unspiritual, and all that is unchrist-like, and all that is in the testament, and look on him and let him work in simple, causal, good cause, and they see. If you say this is so very easy, it's an awful way to talk to young people. I'm not just being worried about young people. I understand this. It's amazing how teenage Christians, if they're Christians, get what I'm talking about, and some want it, but brethren, did you ever stop to think that their Easter came after Good Friday, and that there had to be Good Friday before they could do Good Easter? There had to be Good Friday before they could eat, and before he could rise and sing among his brethren, he had to bow his head and shuffle among his brethren. This is what's lost from this trip. The only suffering you know about now is that which you imposed by accident from the outside, and then rewrite books about it, and make heroes of people that wouldn't have had it that way if they'd got out of it, and had no credit coming because it happened to them by accident. That's no cost, my brother. Your cost is what you take from the hand of God, looking on him and letting him work, and thanking him, and adoring him, and you wouldn't change it if you could, and you could, but you won't. So, then comes the glory for the rest. Then comes the list of the best. Now, I don't know whether this would be a good illustration, a full, complete illustration of what I mean, but there was a minister here last Sunday night, a young minister of another denomination, and he went into the prayer room, and they prayed with him there, and it took quite a while. As he came through, he had such a state of radiance that those with whom he was praying said he would talk about nothing else all that evening and the next day. That was all the conversation was about. He was so lifted and so radiant with his awe, but before there can come the radiance of the dawn, there must be the darkness of the night. Before there can come the light of resurrection, there must be the death that ends another kind of life. Oh, cross! Oh, good cross! I adore in thee the dying youth. Now, my friends, I believe that you want to go on with this, and I know I do, and I do at any cost. And, when I say at any cost, I mean at any cost. And, do you do at any cost, in a sense, at any cost, boys? I have here, I have here a little prayer which I have, nobody said it to me, but I wrote it here a long time ago. Oh, God, let me die right rather than live wrong, rather than then harden down into another tricky, Liverpool life, down on the low level. I'd rather reach a high spot and turn off the light, rather live right, die right than live wrong. Oh, blessed cross of Jesus! Oh, Lord God Supreme! Oh, sweet Lord God, do you know anything about it? Are you in it? Has it done anything for you, or to you? Have you known the place of sweet, blessed trouble, and of heart-searching, and of travel? If you haven't, you can never know the blessing of the glory. You can pray for revival until you die, and you'll never get any revival. You can join groups and pray all night for revival, and all you'll lose will be sweet, and all you'll gain will be exercise. So, friends, if you believe in this time of reformation, that's God's God knowingly wants, then why don't we do something about it from now? Why don't we have a little passing time at the altar from now? Hmm? Where we can come to call and say, Oh, blessed will of God! Blessed will of God! Oh, blessed cross! Oh, I adore my Savior! Crucify me from head to toe. I believe that up out of this stony grief there'll be a deathly rage. Oh, cross that lifts up my head. I dare not ask to hide from thee. I lay in dust like glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red light that shall enlist thee. Who come and lay this glory in the dust tonight? The best who knows how. Who come and lay her glory in the dust? The best who knows how. And, we pray the Lord, teach the will of God for you in obedience. The will, and the cross, and the emancipation, and the presence, and the glory, and the resurrection, and the life. We'll do it. Brother, could we sing? You want to announce it now? We'll stand and sing together. So, here's the third chapter. You know that passage. But what things were doing to me those I found it lost their sight. They've done things in their power also, but like I've not read the rest of it, because you're familiar with it. Except that passage that says that I am a manian, and the power of the resurrection, and the fellowship of the sufferers, remains insurmountable unto itself. Now, that's the passage we've been dealing with right along, but there's also a passage in the 40th psalm, which I want to read now. Psalm 40, the verses 7 and 8. Then said I, lo, I come in the volume of the big city, if you would listen. I'd really like to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. Now, reduced to a simple term, all spiritual protection is no more, and no less, than to do the will of God. And I want tonight to talk about the will of God, and its relation to our cause. Now, hell is the place where the will of God is never done, and that is why it is hell. And heaven is the place where it is always done, and that is why it is hell. And the earth is the place where the will of God either is not done at all, as out in the unsaved world, or is perfectly done, as among most of us Christians, or is perfectly done. Nor are relations to the will of God as twofold, passive and active. It is passive in that it is a recognition that God's up. Well, if you think you've read the map, four or five of them, and probably some of you I don't know are here, and I want to ask you, whether you agree with me on this, that when we mention the will of God in the day in which we live, we all make invalid, we mean, and are understood to mean, recognition to God's will. You think about the will of God, and when you see, we usually mean that Mary made when she said, do unto me even as thou wilt. Now, that was something God was going to do, but not something that she was doing. That was recognition and captivity. That was saying, God, God, I put thy will to meet or help you. Whatever you send is all right with me, and that is everything I'm doing. But, there is a second relation to the will of God which we haven't, I'm sure, are willing to do, and it is rarely talked about, and that is the active part of the will of God. Voluntary observance is God's commandment. That is, to make such changes as God indicates, to drop some things and pick up others, and to live the entire life through the course with the new testament. Now, that is what I call reformation in the church, and it would result in a revival. But, if it cannot come yet to the whole church, then it can come to as many as will receive it, so that the accurate, voluntary observance of God's commandment. Do you remember, I think this Paul Raderer pointed it out from a great sermon I once heard him teach, that God heard Elijah because Elijah heard God, and that God did according to the word of Elijah, because Elijah had done according to the word of God. And, you can't separate these two things. There's a great lot of passage speaking about, to have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way, and we don't know what it's going to be. So, that is only a part of it. The other part is to hear the voice of God and do what we're told, and that means acting. That means bringing the entire life into accord with the new testament teaching, with the bible teaching. Now, I want to speak a little, as I've said, about God's will and the cross. See, the will of God, I will say to you, brethren, in history, the will of God is the place of blessed, painful, fruitful trouble. Paul called it the fellowship of the suffered, and it is my conviction that one of the reasons that we have so little of a place cross power is because we will not have to cross trouble, and because we will not let the will of God trouble us. We want to be passive, but we will not allow the will of God to trouble us. Now, Paul called it, I say, the fellowship of the suffering, but don't forget this, that at the fellowship of the suffering there will sometimes be clear manifestations. I say this with hand up raised, that if there's anything in this world that I want to do is to have a clear and continuous manifestation of that presence, that one in whose presence my soul is relaxed, and you do not have it because you can or do not relate the will of God to the cross. Now, the great saints were acquainted with the cross even before Christ's time, and before that cross was laid on the bloody hill. They were acquainted with it in essence because their obedience brought it to them. There it is good that they noticed the direction that this cross came from. This cross came from his own carnal past, and I claim, brethren, that Christians ought to be excercised in spirit very frequently, and they ought to be in trouble with their own hearts frequently, and if they are not, probably it is because they do not know their own heart. Brutus didn't have faith, but did later know his own heart, and Jacob's cross was Jesus. The worst possible kind of cross a man can do, it was Jesus, and then there was Daniel, and this cross is the world, and there was Job, and this cross is the devil. So, we have the world of flesh and of devil in Jacob, Daniel, and Job, and the devil crucified Job, and the world crucified Daniel, and Joseph is crucified on the key of his own wickedness, his own carnality, and then there is Moses. This cross was the acceptable of God's people, and there were apostles. Their cross came from the religious authority, and there was Luke, and this cross came from the church that makes so much of wooden crosses, the Catholic church, and there was Hathor, and this cross came from the Protestant church, and I could go on down the line and just take the rest of the evening naming those souls who had crossed in the will of God, and who followed the will of God to their cross, and even though it is before Christ's time, it's on the teacher's guide on that cross, it says, it is Paul. Afterwards, he said, I'm crucified with Christ. By faith they looked forward, and their obedience in the will of God led them into the place of blessed, and painful, and sinful suffering. Now, this is going to be a short sermon tonight, but I think it's going to be an effective one in the whole day, and I want to talk a little bit about our cross, and tell God's people, my friends, that we cannot go up on that hillside and receive following Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, following Jesus physically was the easiest, cheapest way to get off. Anybody could get out of work and say goodbye to his family and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. Mothers did this. They followed him physically, but they didn't understand him spiritually. So, therefore, the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross is to carry the cross physically. That would be the easiest way to do it. But your cross isn't going to be going out and following Jesus along a dusty pathway, and it isn't going to be the climb to the hill where others are in the middle of the stream then. Our cross will be the cover we get our own hearts into by obedience to the will of God. The gathering there is a gentrification, until its gathering things likely make the greatest deal of gentrification, and it could. So, it's that gentrification, oneness with Christ. A child says, well, oneness in Christian Christian. Oneness, and don't forget that I am talking generally using some of the phrases of an old group called the child of the Lord, that where men are one with God. And, this is the purpose of the series, that a few Christians of Greece might take this thing seriously, and that they might they might seek to be one with God in a way that the character of angelic awareness seems to consider either fanaticism, or a type of stuff that they're not even talking about in our day. And, identification, there's a word, but resurrection is another word. There are some men who preach death so much that they'll never get anybody up out of death. They preach death, death, death. When I was a young girl, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, wondrous experience of the Holy Spirit, and I was going along. That's when Fiona down there remembers well how we used to be out together, and I was getting on well. And then, I read a book about the cross, and that book put me on the cross in the first chapter, and as far as I can remember, it was still hanging on the cross in the last chapter, and the result was it was green all the way through. Now, the creature himself wasn't that kind of a gloomy man, but somehow he got that green into his book, and I had an awful time taking that off. It took me a long time to get away from the gloominess of it. But, there was a creature back beyond that time by the name of A.D. Simpson, and his approach to this cross was so radiant and wonderful that he died and blessed a generation. And, this was that rapture you hear. There's a cross, but beyond the cross there's a resurrection, and an identification, and a manifestation. You know all the true faith brothers and sisters. Now, we have the Promisers here tonight, and they're among my favorite people. I like them as people, and I love them as Christians, and I enjoy them as singers. But, that's not the greatest thing that's going to happen to us. Let's think we have H.P. Horsford and Lillith Turnburg, and they're fine, tender, classical types of singers singing salvation army songs, and we'll enjoy them. But, that's not the finest thing that's going to happen to this person, no, no. And, the best thing that could happen to this kid wouldn't be that he could get younger, and better, and more active people, all that. That'd be perhaps desirable. I'm not suggesting that to the board, but that probably would be desirable. But, brethren, the most desirable thing, that which you've never seen talking about, that which you could bring tears of joy to your eyes every time you remember, would be if H.P. H.B. had a loving, ruinous behavior before the so that we may be, so that Jesus came, and we weren't forced to sit and look at each other, back to each other's necks, and let the coldness finish, and listen to where the music was over, but a sudden leap before the present. That's always been the way it came, and I want to see that. I don't know when I'll die, but I do know that God will let me see one time, even on a small scale, this arm still here on earth. I'll consider it to be a very, very familiar. But, that there should be a sudden manifestation. Now, I don't mean, I don't mean rolling in the house, I don't mean yelling, I don't mean tongues, I don't mean any physical manifestation at all, except that it would result in that tenderest manifestation of peace, of joy, but I just mean a present, made known to the spirit, that's all, and he's willing to do that. That's what they had in the wealth revival, in such a degree that sometimes the preacher couldn't be the priest, he couldn't be the priest. They had that, but you don't see it much, and nobody wants it, and that's why I'm saying, and I'm going to say, and if you'll pray for me, I'll say it tonight, but I'm going to continue to say that we must have reformation, and we must have this back on the screen before we can hope for a revival that is really a revival. Now, those three words, identification, resurrection, manifestation, they're all to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I said I'm not going to talk very long tonight, but I do want to give you a few little presences here which I have taken from a man whose patroness is known around the whole world, and still is down to this day. So, it's about the cross, and he says it better than I, so let me read a few phrases in common. He says, God will give you peace in making us cross. Think of it, God will give you peace. You can't take it up to the hillside there, and if you just say, I am crucified with Christ, by truth that will cross the floor. That's technical, but he is, and God wants to re-incarcerate us. So, he's ingenious in making us cross. He makes them of iron and of lead, which are heavy in themselves, and he makes them of straw, which seems to be nothing, but yet they'll let no less difficult to carry. Some of these straw coffins, and nobody thinks about anything, but they're just crucified with food and fruit. Then he says he makes them of gold, and places stones which dazzle the spectators, and excite the envy of the public, but which crucify no less than the prophets which are more despised. Now, brethren, what he means here, he means writing to the people who are in high court, and he said, they wouldn't, and they said, please, we're forced into high society, we're forced by our political jobs, and yet we wanted to crucify with Christ, and yet we're forced. You've got to earn the money, and you've got to be, and he said, why brethren, that your gold is crossed, made out of gold, and places stones, and it dazzles the spectators, and excites the envy of the public, but it crucifies you if you know how to take it no less than the others. He makes them of all things he likes the best in terms of individuality. Now, he says this, and sometimes people might not like this, but I'm going to say it in a way, that it often pleases God to join physical weakness to this servitude of his spirit. He says, nothing is more useful than these two coffins together, raised from man from head to foot, and when I read that, it was like a shock to my soul. Did you know, friends, that Jesus Christ was crucified from head to foot? Did you know that when they nailed him there, he was crucified all over? There wasn't a part of his holy nature that was not tearing from the cross. He was crucified from head to foot, and he says God takes pleasure in that compounding human power which is only weakness disguised. Weakness disguised. That's the power you have, my friend, whatever kind of power. It's intellectual power. You have a great mind. Good, I'm glad you have. It'll bother you and get you in trouble, but it's a good thing to have if God has so ordered. That is weakness disguised. You have talents, all right, so weakness disguised, and everything you have is just human weakness disguised, and God takes great pleasure in compounding it. Now, he says God wants to make what the world most admires ridiculous and frightful, so he treats without pity those whom he raises without measure. He treats without pity those whom he raises without measure. He joins these coffins, and crucifies the man from head to foot because he wants to raise him without measure. Oh, you know that passage. Don't get back there. I think I read it the other day, again for you, my friend. Let this mind be in Jesus, which was also in Christ Jesus, to be in the form of God. God is not robbery to be eaten with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. He compounded passion as a man. He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. You know the next word? Therefore, God also has highly vaunted him, and given him a name which is above every name. Yet, it's the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue should say. Now, my friends, God will crucify without pity those whom he wants to raise without measure. I believe this. And then, he adds this rather beautiful and almost hapless expression. He says, how beautiful it is to have our purgatory where others seek the paradise. How wonderful it is to get your purgatory where other people are looking for their paradise. Everybody else wants their paradise down below, and this wise old brother says, you can have your purgatory here. You don't have to wait to go to a non-existent purgatory after death. Right down here where others are seeking their fun, and their best, their entertainment, their amusement, and all the rest, if you are walking with God, and you're letting the rule of God lead you into that place, that cross, that place of trouble, your own heart, how beautiful it is to have your purgatory here. And then, he says, suffering men is only a matter of being silent before God, for it is God who brings to birth within us dryness. Some of you have dryness over the last week since this campaign, this evening, Thursday, began. You've had more dryness than ever in the evening before. It is God who brings to birth within you dryness, and impatience, and discouragement, that humiliates you and excludes you yourself. It is he who does all we have only to see in and adore him in all, to adore him while he slays, and to love him while he crucifies. So, he says, he crucifies without pity those he raises without notice. So, do you want to be raised without notice? Do you want God to say to all angels and all creatures of his world, the lids off for this man? There's no limit to where I take him. There's no regulation, no ceiling on what he can have. Just keep it open. There's no top to it without marrying without a reason, and because without pity or crucifying. What does he mean? Well, he says in the next, very next line, he says, Have the odds raised in me this faith, consider the hand of God which crucifies them through pity. Well, what does he mean? He crucifies without pity, and he crucifies through pity. Oh, you that I have had children, and have the care of children, do you know what it is to punish without pity, and yet punish with pity? Do you know what it is when you pray for your child, and you want that child to be the very finest example of a good city, and you love them until you give your blood out of your veins just like that for them, and yet without pity you turn off the Lord? And yet, what is it to lose pity that makes you punish them without pity? Do you see the beautiful mix up there? Well, that's the way God feels. He is a pitying God over his children. Let him turn off the Lord that he might make us the kind of people he wants us to be. Brother Chalmers, where are we going to find a sample of what I'm talking about? Where are we going to get a company of Christians from where who are completely separated from all of prejudices, and all of carnal desires, and that are willing to put themselves in the hands of God, and bear any kind of cross, iron, or lead, or straw, or gold, or anything, and be the kind of sample that we're talking about? Now, he says, it is God who does it all, and we have only to see him, and withdraw him from all. There will be a time, and I don't know when it will be for any of you, but there will be a time not far distant when all you have will be God and the cross. We shall hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes, trying to redeem me from sin, and all you have, and how pathetic it is, and I don't want to be unkind, but how pathetic it is that poor people who've never understood, and they've never been taught, and they have no evangelical message at all, clutched to their breast the cross, and they're dying. Clutch it, and hold it tight, thinking that in metal, and wood, and paint, and enamel, there may be something that can take them over the river. Well, no, that's not the cross that helps them, no. It is another kind of cross. It is that cross which comes to you from being in the world of God. That which you feel by being in the world of God, it may come from any direction at all, and most of the time I think it will come from within. Mine usually comes from within, and God lets me fall on my face so they can always do some cool thing, or otherwise injure my soul, and that's the cross, and the Lord lends me there, and now all we have to do is feel him, and enjoy of him in it all. Then he closes, and I'm closing with these words, O cross, O good cross I embrace thee. I adore indeed this dying Jesus with whom I also must die. O cross, O good cross I embrace thee. Not a cross on the chest, not a cross on the chin, not a cross around the neck, but the cross of the will of God, whatever it is. The cross of obedience to the will of God. The man, as I said, he had so many facts. He was an English brother, and he was talking to me until he said this. God had given him a mild testimony, and he said this. He said, I find obedience brings a cross into the life quicker than anything else. Now, do you dare say tonight, and will you say? Will you say, looking forward to all the gentrification, manifestation, resurrection, and power? Can you say, O God, crucify me from head to foot? From head to foot, God, this is the reformation we need now. Once they knew they needed a reformation, this would bring the Bible back to the church. They got it. Again, they needed a reformation. We would teach men that could be justified, and clear means. So, they got it under the record, and now we need a reformation. That shall take the will of God and adore it, and look on God and let him work, and look not backwards, but look forward. This essentials itself from all whatever it tells and however strong that they think it is in doctrine, all that becomes spiritual, and all that becomes Christlike, and all that is in the testament, and look on him, and let him work, and pay no cost, any good cost, and they see. If you say this is so very easy, it's an awful way to talk to young people, I'm not thinking in a word about young people. I understand it. It's amazing how teenage Christians, if they're really Christians, get what I'm talking about, and some want it, but brethren, did you ever stop to think that their Easter came after Good Friday, and that there had to be Good Friday before they could eat, and before he could rise and sing among his brethren, he had to bow his head and shuffle among his brethren. And this is what's lost from this trip. The only suffering you know about now is that which you imposed by accident from the outside, and then you write books about it, and those heroes of people that wouldn't have had it that way if they'd got out of it, and had no credit coming because it happened to them by accident. That's no cost, my brethren. Your cost is what you take from the hand of God, looking on him and letting him work, and thanking him and adoring him, and you wouldn't change it if you could, and you could if you won't. And so, in comes the glory for the rest. In comes the lips and the guts. Now, I don't know whether this would be a good illustration or a full, complete illustration of what I mean, but there was a minister here last Sunday night, a young minister of another denomination, and we went into the prayer room, and they prayed with him there, and it took quite a while, but he came through. He was in such a state of radiance that those with whom he was praying said he would talk about nothing else all evening and the next day. That was all the conversation was about. He was so lifted and so radiant with it all, but before there can come the radiance of the dawn, there must be the darkness of the night. Before there can come the light of resurrection, there must be the death that ends another kind of life. Oh, cross! Oh, good cross! I adore and grieve the dying Jesus. Now, my friends, I believe that you want to go on with it, and I know I do, and I do at any cost, and when I say at any cost, I mean at any cost. And do you lose at any cost when you say at any cost to us? I have here, I have here a little prayer which I have, nobody said it to me, but I wrote it here a long time ago. Oh God, let me die a life rather than live long, rather than harden down into another prison, live a cruel life down on a low level, I'd rather reach a high spot and turn off the light, rather live right, die right, and live wrong. Oh, blessed cross of Jesus! Oh, will God's praise! Oh, sweet will of God, do you know anything about it? Are you in it? Has it done anything for you, or to you?