In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of God's word in our lives. He refers to a verse in the Bible that talks about God's promise to bring rivers to the mountains and streams to the hills for His people. The preacher believes that God will perform miracles for His people and make their lives brighter than ever before. He also discusses the tendency to overlook what is right with us and encourages the congregation to take time out to reflect on their spiritual state.

I have in my hand a book and it says Holy Bible on it, and this book has so many virtues that no one can ever say this is the virtue of the Bible. It has so many crowns on its head that no one can point to one and say this is the crown. It has so many functions that no one can say this is the function of the Scripture. You can miss that. Always say, because there are so many. So I would say tonight, for the subject matter, that 30th chapter of Isaiah which we read, that one mission of the Holy Scriptures is to find us. It's to find us. When the Bible says we're lost, it is exquisitely accurate in what it says. We're lost. The world is lost. And we don't know where we are. Once in the city of Pittsburgh at the Roosevelt Hotel, and if you've ever been in the Golden Triangle, it's a golden labyrinth to me, and I couldn't find my hotel. And I told them afterward about it, that I wasn't lost, the hotel was lost, but somebody was lost there that day. And it's easy to get lost in the world and not know where you are, not know what time, not know what events mean, not know the mood of the hour, the spiritual temperature of the hour. Now, the one mission of the Word of God is to find us. It is to locate us, and to identify us, and identify our times. To show us what's wrong with us, and also to show us what's right with us. And I'd like to stop there and accent that. Mostly in our eagerness to make things better, we're inclined to overlook what's right with us. And this is never good. Always we should acknowledge what's right with us, that God says is right with us. And whereunto we have attained thereby, when to confidence which hath great recompense of reward. There is no virtue in digging at yourself all the time with a pick. There is no virtue in always condemning yourself, because the Word of God shows us what is right with us as well as what is wrong with us. Now, I say us, meaning Christians, because it is well known that there's nothing right about a sinner, right about a lost man, there's nothing right about a rebel. And I think it's safe to say that there is nothing about popular religion as we know it today. But the Word of God is very clear. I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I saw his eyes shining as he pointed to that and said, Well, look at this man. And when the woman, the woman of Serepta came to him, he said there were many, many lepers, days of Elijah, of Elisha. And yet to none, to none did faith come. This woman, this had faith. The Lord always approves whatever he sees that he can approve. But a peak of the evangelist who is not led by the Spirit is to go into a church assuming that everybody. ...to the janitor is a thoroughgoing scoundrel, and then begin there with that presumption. That's not the way the Word of God does it. The Word of God always finds you. The business of a good doctor is not only wrong, but to slap you back and tell you when you're all right. And so the business of the Word of God is not only to tell me when I'm wrong, the business of the Scripture also is to tell me when I'm right. And say, well done, and go ahead, you're my child. Now it finds us, it locates us, and it brings our time into focus so that we can, or God can, pronounce judgment or approval. And there is a unique felicity in the Word of God, a wonderful ability to find parallels, moral parallels, and spiritual parallels. I am somewhat delighted to sound a bit and read the mail and meet and talk with people that the old onion-clad, rigid pigeonhole, another verse in another pigeonhole, and said, do not disturb until Christmas is passing away. While we all believe in the dispensations of the Scripture, there is coming from everywhere onto the fundamental element, the evangelical element of the Church of Christ, a feeling that while we recognize dispensations, we do not allow them to draw iron curtains around us, but that the Holy Spirit draws parallel, moral and spiritual parallels between different dispensations, between peoples and situations and dangers and opportunities. For instance, the New Testament parallels, so that if you read the Old and then read the New, you begin to find yourself. And if you look at your own times, you will find a parallel, the Old Testament and the New Testament. So that regardless of and going across the dispensational lines, there are the moral and spiritual parallels, principles that underlie all dispensations and all the works of God, so that we can locate ourselves and know where we are. Brethren, I'd like to say to this little congregation tonight that you could do yourself a world of good if you would take some time out, just as you take a week or two weeks out for a vacation. Get hold of yourself physically and get off the strain. If you'd take a little time out, and it wouldn't hurt you if you, some of you are worried about calories. I ate breakfast with a man this morning, a very handsome young man, and he said, I'll take a calorie breakfast, please. And we're the people who worry about their calories and worry about their weight. And that's good. There's something that's more profounder than that, something profounder than our health. And our relation to God, where we are in God's will for us, where we are at this moment in all purpose of God for our lives in this day. And I say it wouldn't hurt you at all if you were to take a day off, have dinner, and get a little lean once, and let the pains of this world kind of fade out on you, and get a little feel bad, and your stomach will protest, but it won't kill you. Nobody died from missing a meal. I'm not a pastor, and I'm not pushing you, but it might be a good idea sometimes, take a day or so, and examine yourself in the light of God. Now, until carried too far becomes a hindrance to the very thing we're trying to do. Everlastingly digging up the corns growing is one way to be sure we'll have no corn. And everlastingly digging at our own spiritual life to see progress is one way of arresting all progress and bringing it to a dead stop. So that I do not recommend we content ourselves, but I do recommend that since one mission of the Holy Scriptures is to locate us, take our pulse, settle on our spiritual health, and pronounce and prove or condemn or command or warn or encourage, I recommend that between now and, say, the next ten days or between now and the next two weeks, take a little time out with the hasty morning devotions, but take a longer time out and search the Scriptures and read them and get on your knees and put worries aside and all these, what do you call them, marginal notes and get on your knees and let the Holy Ghost talk to you. You know, brethren, it's possible even to have too many translations around. It's possible I've got so many I'm bored with them and they bother me. Just get a good one. It doesn't make too much difference which one, but the King James is always a good, safe one. A plain text. Just read the word of God and let it talk to you. And it's wonderful how it'll... Now, the New Testament, I say, parallels the Old, and the Old and the New find a parallel in the day with Israel's condition in 700 B.C., as sketched here in Isaiah 31 to 33. And there we're in. Now, we read all this, so it'll be familiar and fresh in your mind. They were in a state of rebellion. They rebelled against God, and rebelling against God is like walking against a cold, fierce wind. Always walking against a cold, fierce wind. Going ahead against the will of God is like flying a little, light, one-motored plane against hardly making any headway at all, barely staying up, getting nowhere. Rebelling against the will of God. God wanting you to go another. Now, set yourself tonight and think this over. Is there any rebellion in your heart? Do you? Which you're afraid if you sought the will of God you'd find he wouldn't let you have? Or do you want to avoid something and have reason to believe God wants you to have or do? Well, now, that's rebellion, and rebellion is as the same. Let's not take it lightly. Let's take it seriously. The will of God is the health of the universe. God is the harmony of heaven. It is the peace of paradise. The will of God is salvation itself, is life. The will of God is everything a moral being can want, and bucking the will of God on anything, even on any little thing. And in trying so hard, I heard today about a man. A person, a man, has gone against the will of God tragically and shamefully. He has flouted and violated the will of God and repented of it, no, but is living in it and has crystallized it and hardened it so he'll never get out of it. I heard only today that that man is present at the pre-Sunday school Bible class. He's present at the Sunday school. He's present at the evening service. He's trying desperately by being present and searching the scriptures to make up for the fact that he has violated the will of God against his own life and the cold, tempestuous wind of the will of God. My brethren, the will of God is your safety, and we're not safe any other place. And if you are anywhere in it, God, on any line, holding anything against God, then remember this, that all your prayers and all your faithful attendance at church won't mean a thing. It's simply whistling by the cemetery. It is simply talking big to hide our shameful fears. Get right with God and you can sleep another hour. Get right with God and you can relax. Get right with God and peace will come to you. ...rebellious in that day, says there were rebellious people, and there were self-confident people, and there were people who misplaced their confidence and put the confidence somewhere else. And there were seekers and counselors and having conferences, and they had their princes and ambassadors running all around finding no help, and God said sharply that they were ashamed. They found no help at all. Now, I don't want to enter even close to that deep, dismal swamp of politics, but it's so parallel with the United States of America here, all of this self-confidence and rebellion against the world and this seeking advisors and counselors and secretaries of state and plenipotentiaries and having some princes and ambassadors traveling about. If everybody would ground himself for exactly... and think and get straightened out and give his soul a chance to settle and the dust a chance to settle and the burning gasoline a chance to settle, we'd find the air would begin to clear and we'd find the will of God. But conferences, Will Rogers used to say that peace conferences were the direct cause of war, and if we could stop all peace conferences, we'd end war. Tongue-in-cheek as Will would, but there was more to it, you know, more than there was a certain amount of sly humor, that peace conferences, people are conferring too much, and there you can't flip your dial anymore, but there'll be somebody on there asking somebody else questions. Questions reminds me of the Irishman of metaphysics. He said it's a blind man in a dark basement looking for a black cat that isn't there. And as it's parallel, in the modern effort to find peace of mind, if a man can hit a home run, we promptly hear what he thinks of the international situation. And if he can sing so, as to bring the teenagers to their knees with rapture, why are we asking what he thinks of the atom bomb? And we're interviewing and conferring differences, brethren. When God Almighty made the heaven and the earth, it didn't come out of a conference. And when Jesus died on the cross, there was no, it wasn't by any action of a council. Now I know that a certain number of conferences have to be held, just the same as there have to be certain visits to the dentist, and certain banquets, and after-dinner speakers. I know that. We have to share the exit. There are certain things that have to be. Ooh, my district superintendent is here. I forgot. But go on. Anyhow, you say that these things are necessary. Board meetings are necessary. I know. But brethren, after all, if we get to God first, we could cut down the length of time it takes to find that the committee, you know, is a group of people which singly can do nothing, but when met as it can officially vote that they know not how to do it. That's the difference. Now, brethren, I believe in committees, but remember this, that if the members and young people first, we'd have some light when we get to another, but we meet with our light and pool our darkness and then go away again. That's often the way it is. These political conferences, these political conferences, if Secretary of State would stay at home for years into the distance, into the future, but if he continues to run around, he'll get his end of the ear. He's a Republican too, God help him. But if he continues running around and shooting off, we'll get into it. Some assassinate somebody and then hell will break out on the earth. God says, you find no help. You're looking for help and you're holding your political conferences and you're running about and you're asking questions of people who don't you and you don't know. Mr. Palin Rector that I spoke of this morning came to me over and said, there are some questions I want to ask you, Brother Tozer, two of them. So he asked me the first one. He said, how do you resolve that? Well, I said, Brother, I don't know how to resolve the problem and answer the question. I haven't yet got far enough along. I don't even have the problem. Well, that's that. But there are answers and God has the answers. And we'll not find them running about asking questions because, and so God says now here, put this in the book. Put this in the book. Think of the irony there. Put this in a book. Put this in a book that my people are rebellious people, that they want my protection but they will. They want my blessing but they don't want to obey me. They want my heaven but they don't want my walk on earth. Put this in a book that they're a lying people, an untruthful people. You hear an awful lot of liars among evangelicals. But outside of that, because I hear things about never happened in the white world. I haven't seen Billy Graham in five years. So why couldn't it happen? Yet somebody started and as well. And they insist on hearing religious talk. I have a note which I want to write on sometime. I learn more from myself by the grace of God than I do from anybody else. And when I get an idea, it pops into my head when I pray on it. And then later on I develop. Maybe it will last three years. And I have a little note that says this. Why is it that some Christians are always at the church, always at the prayer meeting, always asking prayer requests, sharing their Bible, always eager for orthodoxy, always ready to defend the truth, and yet, grouchiest, and meanest, and nastiest, and hardest to live with people in the world. Now I have a question here. Can you help me, Brother Tom? I don't know why. And I asked old brother M.A. Dean, M.A. Dean, they called him, M.A. Dean. I asked Brother Dean about that. And Brother Dean said, young fellow, now as a young brother it's like this. He said, some people are spiritually cross-eyed. And he said they look two directions. They're looking one way and going another. Now he said, that's the way I've resolved it. I doubt whether that would be accepted out in Fuller Seminary, or in any other of the great seminaries where great minds are. But it seems to us simple people to be the truth. People are just spiritually cross-eyed. And they're untruthful, and they're unbelieving, and yet they're some of the most pious people. And they insist on hearing religious talk. And yet there's no humility there. Humility is a beautiful thing. Simplicity is a beautiful thing. I told Brother McAfee about it. Now my brother Bill is here, Petlock. He'll know about Latvia. I don't know where Latvia is exactly. I know Middle European arrangements there, that's always a hinderbox. But there was a woman at Highland Lake, maybe 35, though I've not told her that, but she's probably 35, a blondish, high cheekbone, the typical Slav type, you know, square face, came so modestly and said, Mr. Tozer, there is something I would like to ask you. And she said, I am a Latvian refugee. I was a teacher in my own land, and I fled. And I'm here in the United States. And I am a Christian. I have been born again. And I'd like to ask you a question. All right. She said, you talk about a spiritual life. And the question I want to ask you, she said, the spiritual life for plain people like me, isn't the spiritual life for apostles and great and great people like that, that need it? She said, do you think that a simple woman like me, she was not a simple woman. This woman had been a teacher in her own land and spoke English, except for she couldn't get the diphthong beautifully. Well, I was humble and meek. And so humble, that she was willing to forego the full spirit because she just thought it wasn't for her. God looks on people like that and loves them, don't you think? By giving her a Christmas present and giving her that which she feels she's not worthy to receive. Oh, humility is a beautiful thing wherever it is found. And pride is just as heinous wherever it is found. And yet there's the religious talk all the time. People are wanting to hear religious talk and more religious talk and more religious talk. And yet never hear the real voice of God. Isn't this an ironic thing here? Sometimes I get blamed for being a bit, but brother, the word of God is so sarcastic, sometimes you can shave with it. It's so sharp. Listen to this. Says, I can find it here now. He says, they say, prophesy not unto us right things, smooth things, prophesy deceits. Says, don't tell the truth to us, prophesy unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Do you know what I would do if I were a layman, if I delivered milk or dug ditches or was in any other profession and wasn't a preacher? Do you know what I'd do when I entered the church and I sensed the Lord giving me smooth things? I would get up, scoop up my hat and leave the building. And as I went, I'd say, and get out of there. I'd never want to stay in that church where men speak smooth things. I go, I don't want that doctor to lie to me. I want to know the worst that I can prepare for. And I don't want to be screwed up. I want to be told the truth. Speak unto us smooth things. Men make reputations smoothies. You can ask them a question and you don't know. It says about Paul, Thou hast known my doctrine. But there are a lot of people that if you ask them a question and you don't know when they're finished, well, don't believe. They start in and talk all around and when they come back you still have your question but you don't have the answer. Say whether they're for it or against it. Paul says, You've fully known my doctrine. He delivered his soul. He wasn't afraid of people. He told everybody. Now what was the sentence on all this smooth deceit? This religious talk. This lying. This unbelieving business. This running to Egypt and trying to get help there. Running to psychiatry and running to somewhere else for help. Well, God says, the sentence is that you're going to go down like a wall. And being a farmer, I've seen walls. And I know what it is for a great wall. And as it goes down, and the dust begins to rise. But your wall, I wish, I wish that I could tell you the truth and tell that we are in times of great revival. I wish that I could tell you that I thought things were looking up. I wish not. Not for a moment can I. The brother who runs Highland Lake Conference in his mighty praying reminded me in his intensity of prayer. And as he prayed, he said, Oh God, the evangelicals have a God that is no God nor the true God much anymore. And young people have been cheated and sold downriver. We must see again the glory of God. And the burden of his prayer was, Oh God, this poor generation deserves to see thy glory. Show us thy glory. Now, there is a remnant that according to the election of And if we parallel the rebellion and the self-confidence and the misplaced confidence and the king of counselors and princes and ambassadors dashing about looking for things and not listening to God, then how our sentence shall go down as a bowing. I don't think we can. Remember that it's not good exegesis taking all the blessings and giving all the curses to Israel. Remember that it's not good exegesis to wonder promises and ignore all the warnings. Remember it. And yet it's been done. A whole generation has grown up that never put up a line under the warnings, but tenderly underlined all. You take the average fellow's Bible and reprint only the underlined passages, you'd think that God was a soft, spineless, moral, Santy Claus who was just full of self-pity and had no justice or judgment at all. That's because we choose the passages that please us. A heretic, as you know, is a messiah. That's what the word means. He selects. He selects the passages that he wants. And if you go through your Bible selecting the passages, you're up. Why, you're a heretic in that measure. Not that you're teaching false doctrine, but you're not giving the whole word of God. It's like living all the time on upside-down cake. You've got to have some other things. Now, I want you to notice over here, though, that the goodness of God came in and saved Israel and pushed for 100 years the good grace of God, even though they deserved all the good grace. In verse 18, he says, The Lord will wait that he may be gracious unto you, and he will be exalted that he may be gracious unto you, for the Lord is a God of judgment, and blessed are they that wait for him. And he says, Your eye, you shall hear, will be very gracious unto you with the voice of thy cry, and your teachers will not be removed into a corner anymore, and you will hear a voice saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left. I wonder now if you can parallel this. I wonder if evangelicalism and we starting in this church can't parallel this. Can't we, Lord? You notice that it doesn't say you'll hear a voice ahead of you. Why? Other times it says he goes before his people and leads them. When he put it forth his own, he goes before the shepherd is ahead. Why is it? Can anybody tell me, answer me back? Why does he say, You shall hear a voice behind you? Why? When you turn to the right hand or when you turn to the left, you'll hear a voice. Why? Because the Lord never leaves the path. And as long as you're behind him and he's ahead and you're following him, but as soon as you turn away from the path there's a voice behind you saying, This is the way. Come back here. You're off the way. This is the way. And I pray that to fundamentalism and to all of us there may come a willingness to listen. God is waiting. We deserve. What have we deserved? We've deserved judgment. This is the way. Walk ye in it. Then he says these things, that in these days there shall be upon every high and every high hill rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter in the towers. Isn't this the day of the great slaughter? And did we not go just now through a few years ago disastrous and bloody and deadly wars in history? And have we ever had an hour when the guns weren't shot? Celebrated the end of the Korean War but there's never been a moment in this terrible day when everything that is good and all that we stood for has gone down? The purity of manhood and the purity of womanhood and the dignity of childhood and the desire of integrity in government? The patriot used to hold the flag and preach God and country and the people left. But now a man doesn't hold the flag. They call it flag-waving. And patriotism has become a corny thing for young people to laugh at. And young people in, I think, Brooklyn the other day, girls, mind you, girls, girls, a group of girls beat their girls and beat them until they had to be taken to the hospital and when a policeman came to rescue the girls that were being beaten up, beat him until he was wounded. We have produced a generation like that. A fresh, self-assured, rebellious, sarcastic generation. Everything good is corny or square. My friends, the hope we have is that God says, I'll exalt myself. I lift myself up not to throw and show mercy on a poor, miserable people. And I wonder if we can't begin to listen. It's happening. You hear it. It's coming. I talk to this one and that one, Reformed church man, Episcopal man, Baptist people. I hear them all and they are saying pretty much the same thing. They're saying we've been sold downriver for years. Christianity has become a show. And we want God back again. We're sorry along with it. And you'll hear it everywhere. And people that used to be so sure of themselves become tenderly. I remember one time hearing Jadakiss. He said, Dr. Jadakiss, he said, now I recommend Stolen Stones book. He said, now I don't believe every degree with everything in it. He said, if I agreed with everything in it, I'd have it. And he said, furthermore, by the time I wrote the last page, I might not be so sure of something I'd written on the first. Oh, I know how he meant it and everybody else did. He rushed up to me and he said, did you hear that? It was positively, he was steaming hot. He said, did you hear that? What kind of talk is that? What kind of talk is that? He said, Mr. Tozer, I haven't changed my mind on a thing in ten years. He probably hasn't yet and that's been ten years ago. He's probably frozen. He's frozen. But, I don't mean change your mind about Bible thought, but you know that spirit, that spirit of surefire governmentism is pretty and I find and I don't say it because this brother is a Baptist. I would have said this and didn't but I did say it in Highland Lake and I'd say I find probably the who now in the North American continent are Baptists. They're eager, tender people. I find them every, all sorts of Baptists too and they're eager, they've got that solid fundamental doctrine. Please don't all even go to the Baptists. Maybe I'm going to lose my church here. I am saying that I find that that happened to be a Baptist pastor that told me that. I haven't changed my mind in anything in ten years. But his kind is sort of fading away and people find that their doctrine isn't enough but their doctrine's got to lead and if it doesn't lead you to God it might as well be Mohammedanism. If the doctrines you hold doesn't lead to God then there are no doctrines for you. And I find a tenderness coming on people. I find Bible church brethren calling me, me, asking if I've seen such and such an old book. Eager, hungry people all over and together Dr. Maxwell calls it the order of the burning heart. You know that? I thought you might have mentioned that. We call it the fellowship of the burning heart and we don't care your denomination but the fellowship of the burning heart. Those who love the Lord speak to one another and God says that in that terrible day when out in the great world the towers are falling and it's the day of slaughter there shall be upon every high mountain and hill rivers and streams. Rivers on high mountains they don't belong up there. They belong in the valleys. Well God said if they muddy the streams and my people pray and hear my voice I'll put rivers up on the mountains for them and I'll put streams up on high hills for them. My dear friends it is to be known what God will do with us here and us in our society and with evangelicalism if we're lonely. And he says in verse 26 moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun. And the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. And the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people and healeth their wounds in that day God will make our light brighter than it ever was before. We have been this society, this missionary society, fifth largest now I think in the world with three million dollars and over for missions going in where nobody else goes and all of that and we've criticized each other a lot I wonder brother if we listen for the voice we won't yet hear a voice saying just a little but this is the way and I'm waiting and I'll give you rivers and high places and I'll give you streams on high hilltops where you didn't know and I'll make you brighter in the world of religion seven times brighter than you were and I'll make you seven times as bright and I will multiply seven days on one. I'm hearing, I'm waiting, wondering if we will hear from God and I wonder for our own church not more than about a month ago I came back from the east. In fact, I even talked seriously about a home in Mount Vernon, New York and thought maybe that it might be in the will of God that I should leave here and be the pastor and go to writing and editing and how did you show me over the next weeks a sign, a fleece, a light, a bit of light in the church. I'll take it that that isn't the will for me yet. And we never had better meetings and we had warmer meetings and better times even in this hot summer of and I wonder if God isn't saying to this church, all right church, dear brother Jones here this evening or not, but he wrote me a letter and marked it personal, I'm almost done, marked it personal. You were talking about the ministry of this church and I just sat down and went over the records and he said I wrote here it was. He said now here are the old people that have gone and he mentioned them. Many of them brothers used to know. The Gramlich's and the Moore's and all he named against them. He said they'd gone by reason of age and then he said there are others and then he named a whole list because they had moved and he said about 40 families have left this church in the last two years. I think he's low on count. About 40 families in all parts of the country. East and west and south and north. And a great many have gone out as preachers and gone to the fire. Missionaries from here and preachers from here probably 29 missionaries. A few weeks back I wondered maybe if the old world wasn't moving but I've heard the Lord say the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun. The sun shall be seven times as the light of seven days in the day when the Lord binded up the people and healed the stroke of their wounds. Now there's only this question. There's only two of them I want to ask briefly. On whose side are we in this day? Are we on the side of take it easy or are we on the side of those who have been found and located prophetically situated so we know where we are? We found ourselves and will look upon the poor dead churches and poor dead entertainment isn't waiting and expecting that we shall see, this church shall see, rivers where there hadn't been and streams where there hadn't been before. And the lightning times, I don't know for you, my friends, but I'm not dead yet. And for myself, God to multiply me seven times to his church, not only to this church, but to his church throughout the whole earth seven times yet before I die. And won't it happen that he can use me seven times if it's a book or whatever it is. I have a prayer in my little prayer book that I carry, oh God, I have been the worst of me. Therefore let grace triumph to the chief of sinners and make me the most useful of men. Once across the table, I think a Chinese restaurant, Brother Thomas, Brother Thomas, I want to love God more than any man in my generation. And Brother Thomas said, all right, but if you do yourself for others, he's dead, right? I don't know that it'll be suffering that much. He wounds my heart and I grieve and bleed over things, over things maybe that are none of my business. And so I want God to wound me, wound me. The man in the east who said, Brother, I walk around with a wound. I want that wound to heal. I want that wound to heal. I'm willing to take on me the judgment of God. I have been rebellious. I haven't been all I should have been. And I have kind of muddled along and been careless, but oh, I want to admit it tonight. And then I'm willing to believe with you that God will be gracious to me and hear my voice and that he will be willing to multiply my testimony and my spiritual ability yet seven times before the end, before the Lord returns. And I'm going to ask Brother Thomas to come up and we'll have a closing prayer. Are there such who say I take both the judgment promise for a new thing in my life? Will you stand where you are? Come on up, Brother Thomas. Well, everybody stood. Maybe I'm not clear or else maybe you're better people than I thought you were. But anyway, oh, may God make this real to you while I, Brother, lead this in prayer. Oh, Lord, if we know ourselves, we do want thee. We want God. We want the walking. We want not only thy blessing, but we want thee more than anything in this life. And as the man of God was exhorting us tonight, Lord, this thought came to me. Here we are back with the mechanics of running the church and the work of God. Here we are in the spirit of laws and bylaws and rules and regulations and methods and traditions until, Lord, we stand stiffly bound and with power to reach out and spread our wings because we are in the straitjacket of all of these things. We without unwrap us, even as Lazarus of old was able to cast aside his he was loosed and let go. So, Lord, help us to know how that we may be loosed to the things that are holding us, whatever those things may be, and let us once more know the visitation of the Holy Spirit's presence and the very God himself, not only upon us but within us and give us a new sense of the heartfelt love and compassion and urgency and all that accompanies God upon his people. Let us experience thee once more in this age before it's return. Lord, we're thinking of these places of the ends of the earth, especially the places where we so recently have been. There where the need is so great and where the message must be given. Lord, here we are, hands with our feet in chains, our spirits locked up because of the many things that we've already mentioned. Oh, God, and visit us again with thyself. Visit us even, Lord, as we have never been visited and come upon us and move within us. As has been mentioned, there's a ministry that we have. There's a ministry this great district across the vast expanses of seven states may have. There's a new ministry that I can have. Lord, let us have that ministry. We don't want to be selfish, but we want God and we feel that we're bound. Lord, loose us, we pray, and let us go. This we call upon in earnestness tonight, Lord, in all sincerity, in heart hunger, in our standing sincere desire. Oh, God, like the locust that comes out of it, spreads its wings and lifts its health and strength. let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us let us