In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of Christians looking to Jesus in their daily lives. He highlights the power of being a consistent and faithful example to others, as it can lead them to Christ. The speaker warns against actions that could ruin one's ability to be used by God in leading others to Him. He urges believers to focus solely on Jesus, who offers salvation and fulfills all expectations. The sermon encourages listeners to be active participants in leading souls to Christ by first experiencing His grace themselves.

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold. You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www.charityministries.org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1-800-227-7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522. These messages are offered to all without charge by the free will offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Would you turn your Bible to 2 Corinthians, the first chapter, with me? I'd like to use a few verses here to greet you. And I would like you to read with me as I read them. I'm not going to use Paul's exact words here, but I use this portion here for a reason. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, and he always, when he wrote them, he always greeted them with beautiful words, wonderful meanings behind the words. And I'd like to greet you that way this evening. Paul said, unto the church of God, may I say unto the church of God, which is at Rehersberg, or unto the young people which are in the Pilgrim Conference, and all of you together here tonight, I'd like to give you this greeting because it is the best, the greatest, or through the greatest, that I can give a greeting tonight. We often stand up and we say, we greet you in the name of Jesus. And you know, we don't realize the powerful effect that that greeting should have. The name of Jesus, in the Amish church, when I was a boy, we had a practice that when the name of Jesus was mentioned, when we were standing, we bowed our knees. And it was, it was a, I realized it became a form, and maybe didn't, well it certainly to me when I was there, didn't mean what it should have, but I would like to say that our spiritual knees, if not our physical knees, ought to bow at the name of Jesus. Too often they bow because of other things. And Jesus is, we just handle the word so freely. Tonight, I would like to use Paul's greeting when he said this, and I'd like to paraphrase it a little bit, to the church that is at Raresburg, to everyone here tonight who is a saint. Yes, a saint. Those words, I remember the time when those words shook me when somebody said, a saint. I thought, what are they talking about? I didn't realize in a sense that it was quite so seeped in Catholicism, because saint shook me up as something that we, something that's way gone and past. But Paul uses these words. And a saint is a sinner saved by grace. That's what a saint is. He says this way, called to be saints. Them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints with all that in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. Grace be unto you and peace from God the Father, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, the words ring to me tonight. Grace be unto you and peace from God the Father. Now Paul said if we preach in an unknown tongue, we should translate. But I translated first. And then I preached probably to some of you in an unknown tongue. But I love those words. They ring from my childhood on. And I would like to use the next, the next, no, I'm in, I'm sorry, I'm in 1 Corinthians. I thought I was in 2. But it's about the same thing. I'm going to turn to 2 Corinthians, the first chapter, because that's the verses I wanted there. In 2 Corinthians we have a lot of the same words. Where he says, grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. Now, I'd like to use verse 4 because of my message tonight. He uses this verse. And I'm going to tell you tonight, frankly, last evening before I preached, I said my message is simple. And it's straightforward. And tonight, I trust it was. And tonight, the message is not so simple. There is a lot of people make this message very simple. And yet, it is. So I'm a little perplexed on how to handle it. But, in verse 4 it tells us, who comforteth us, this God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercy, and the God of all comfort. Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be comforted, or that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. I'd like to tell you something, brethren and sisters, tonight. And I use the word quite freely, brethren and sisters. I am asked to preach tonight, to teach or to talk, and just simply show us in a short time, how to lead a soul to Christ. And if I can't call you a brother and a sister tonight, I can't continue on because I don't believe you will be able to. I don't believe you will be able to. Because you're going to handle something that needs to be the, Timothy, Paul wrote this way to Timothy, The husbandman must first be made partaker of the fruit. And in this message, that is so very essential. That the husbandman be first partaker. He has to taste, to experience. Alright, now I thought I could, tonight, save my voice quite a bit. How many of you went down to the basement last night and got one of these? I'll tell you something, young people. I wish I could see hands going up all over the place tonight. Maybe you have one. If you have one with you, turn to page 20, read it, and you have the message for the night. Now I never saw this before tonight, or before last evening. I took it home, drove home last night yet. And I took this in my study this morning. And I started going through this. There is not any man's thinking necessarily in here, except what God probably gave to a man, to put into a scriptural balance, so that we don't become confused. And I appreciate it. Now I could tell you, well, if you want to know how to lead a soul to Christ, if you want to know what is expected, how he should look at it, we could turn to 20 here tonight, and maybe I could read it. You know, I did something the other Sunday, that I never did in my ministry. I read a message. I did not make many comments on it. I just read the message. I didn't read much in the Bible. I read a tract, and it was marvelous. I just, I couldn't, yes, I should be able to say I could believe it, but it was beyond my expectation, the response that it brought in the hearts of the listeners. It was not my writing. I had nothing to do with it, except to stand at the pulpit and read it. It was a tract about hell. And I saw brethren and sisters sitting in the congregation there with tears running down their cheeks. I think sometimes we think a message has to come from a certain person to make it authentic or powerful. That's not true. The message has to come from the Word of God. It has to be flowing from the Spirit, from the throne of God and through the messenger. And then it will have its power. And I was just looking at this, God's plan for salvation. We could go over it very quickly. If you want to, we could turn to Isaiah and read, Come now, and let us reason together, out of this little booklet. Come, let us reason together. Saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall become white as snow. You know, we could reason. And often, with a sinner, you have to reason. Because he doesn't understand. It is to the natural-minded man foolishness, Corinthians tells us. He cannot understand it. It is to him foolishness. Because he is natural-minded. And he can't understand it. But tonight, I'd like to take us into some areas that go further than just, I guess, I thought, what am I doing? What am I doing standing in front of a group of people like this? Looking out across a fairly large group of people tonight and telling you how that you should lead a soul to Christ. What am I doing? Don't you know? Don't you know how to do it? But you know something? I believe God does not have a concrete method. God didn't put this thing in a box and say, this is how you do it. And I'm so afraid. I'm so afraid, dearly beloved, that when we come down and we get into these, into a lot of this literature that's going about how to win souls, we find a little box. And then we're supposed to say, well, you go to a certain place and you tell the person this and that and then you get them on their knees and then you can walk away and shout hallelujah and the person is left to wander around in darkness. I don't appreciate that. I said something last evening about some of this cheap grace that is being preached. I say, brethren and sisters, I don't appreciate that. There's going to be ministers that are going to have to answer before God. For this cheap thing, and I don't even like that expression, but that's about what it is. Tonight, I can't do that. And maybe with the time that I have, I would like to, rather than tell you what scripture to use, I'm going to tell you, look at some of these. I've just been going over this. I couldn't default it. And I'm not here tonight to preach this little tract. But really, what it is, it is just scripture. It's not some man's thinking or some man's reasoning. And I appreciate it. So I'm going to let it that way. All right. I'd like to turn, first of all, to Isaiah chapter 45. The Old Testament. When you preach about Jesus Christ, you think the Old Testament. When I was converted, soon after I was born again, the Old Testament, just for a long time, remained sort of dead. Oh, I loved to get into Romans and Ephesians, and the book of John, the pistol of John, and some of these. And it just seemed to, oh, it just thrilled my soul. And the Old Testament seemed just like, well, oh, you poor people in the Old Testament. I'm sorry you were in that old form and old church. I'm so sorry you ought to get into the new. But you know, God worked in the Old Testament, not a whole lot different than he does in the new. Yes, the administration of it was different. In fact, he tells us, Paul writes in Corinthians, that that administration was glorious, so much that Moses' face shone. But he said, if that administration, which was glorious, was put away, how much more glorious is the administration that we have today? I'm glad I don't have to stand up here and tell you young people how that you're to butcher the goat, the sheep, the heifer, the pigeon, whatever it may be, and how to lay out the altar. I'm glad I don't have to go through that. But you know, they did it by faith. And we can go into the Old Testament, and we find scriptures that just show a beautiful picture of God's desire and a prophecy of the perfect sacrifice that was going to come. And I'd like to say, lest I forget it, if you have a privilege to exercise what we preach tonight, to lead us all to Christ, do not be afraid to use the Old Testament. Because I believe there is things in there that open up wonderfully and beautifully. I was asked just the other week, well, I say the other week, last week, I've got a call from a brother, a minister from another constituency, and asked me if I would come next summer, next spring, to their church and preach for six messages on the book of Esther. Now I have, I don't know, I'm probably, I don't know if you've heard messages in the book of Esther or not. Some people know that I have a very fondness of the book of Esther. A great love for it. And I have preached quite a few messages from it. But I said when he told me, I said I would love to. The book of Esther is a book that opened up to me one time when I was having meetings, and it has been a thrilling book to me ever since. And it doesn't even have the word God in it. But it's such a beautiful type. And I could, and I say, no, I say I. I believe that a minister or a person can spend time in that book and preach one message after the other, and he can bring out, well, it's a little bit like Pilgrim's Progress. You know, I'm often challenged when I ask people, young people especially, did you ever read Pilgrim's Progress? Well, yeah, we did. What did you get out of it? Well, it was this boy that was, or this man, this young man that was traveling and wanted to get to a certain city, and he had some hardships on the way. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. John Bunyan, when he wrote, John? John Bunyan, when he wrote that book, he was filled, I believe, with a tremendous spirit of God that made him and, oh, what could I say, gifted him to bring that book in. If you ever read Pilgrim's Progress, do it in the Spirit, because there are tremendous lessons in that book. I used to think it's a book for young people. I mean, like children, you know. But I say, we took that book, I told the church at home, I'd like to study Pilgrim's Progress in a midweek service. And they got me to teach it. And I love it. I love it. Because it's deep. And that's how the Old Testament is in some of the prophecies that I brought out. Isaiah, chapter 45, verse 22. I'd like to use one, oh, maybe just a verse here. And I'm going to bring some things out tonight. Like I said, I'm not going to necessarily go into a lot of Scripture. But I'd like to bring some things out tonight that I think are very essential, very needful, and some things that are not needful. When we feel moved to talk to a person about the Lord Jesus Christ, and when we have this glorious opportunity to sit down with them and feed them the manna from heaven. Isaiah, chapter 45. I'd like to read verse 22. Just one verse here. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is none else. I said last evening, when we talked about the hope that lies within us, and how that we should speak to every man, I said we need to be very careful, dearly beloved, tonight, that we do not become respecter of persons. You know, sometimes when we think of going out with the Bible, or we're going out with the good news, then we sort of think who we ought to work with. But God thinks different. And He's going to lay someone on our doorstep that we may have never thought about. And it's a real challenge. Now He says here, unto all the ends of the earth. You know, I don't know how, I can't see how you can go further. Unto all the ends of the earth. Alright? This is the promise of promises that the Lord gave to Isaiah here, where He said, look unto me, and be ye saved. Look unto Him, and be ye saved. It lies, this lies, at the foundation of our spiritual life. How simple is that direction? Look! Look! You know, I've seen this done already. And I would to God that Christians would practice this in the spiritual sense. But I remember some years ago, here in Lebanon County, when I was a boy, there was a farm sale. And there was an old farmer that lived not far from our place at this farm sale. And he stood up in the barn hill. Now most of you probably are acquainted with farm sales and barn hills. He stood up in the barn hill, and there was a whole crowd out there in the field. The auctioneer was selling. I was probably about 11 years old, 12 years old. And this old farmer was rather a jokester. He lived neighbors, not too far from us. And standing on the barn hill, he started looking up in the sky. And then he pointed his finger up there like this, up in the sky. And the crowd down there, one by one, saw him and started looking. It was a beautiful sunny day, and they were looking. And after a while, when you looked, the whole crowd was looking. The auctioneer was trying to sell. People were looking. And up in the barn hill stood my old neighbor. Now I'd like to use a lesson on that. I say, brethren and sisters, if you and I as children of God aren't looking to Jesus in our daily living and life, what do you expect these people are going to look for? And that's what I appreciate about these words. Look! And he's saying to you children, look! So that those that want to see what you see will know how to direct their eyes. There was nothing in the sky. But it just taught me something that went through me or kept with me through my years. How people want to follow something that's interesting. And if you and I can make that look that we turn Godward, if we can make it seem in our daily walking life, you have taken your first step in leading a soul to Christ. That is the first step. You say, what do you mean now? What were you talking? Standing on a barn hill? No, what I am saying is this. The first step to leading a soul to Christ is that he may look at you to see you looking at Christ. If you don't, you have failed your mission. You have failed your mission. Surely the creature should look at the Creator. Surely the creature should look at the Creator. We have looked elsewhere long enough. And it's time that we look alone to Him who invites all our expectations. That we look alone to Him who gives us the promises for ourselves. B.C.D. type of thing. Tonight I thought of that so much. What should I say? What should I say to a group of Mennonite people? And they asked me, show me how to lead someone to Christ. What should I say? And I thought, well, number one, do this. Number two, do this. Number three. You know, that's a little bit how some people look. But brethren and sisters, I would like to say, I am not going to number it tonight. But get your own hearts and your eyes and the gaze of your soul on Jesus so that your life is followed by that which you see. And you have made a tremendous step in leading someone to Christ. I'm going to give you somewhat my own experiences tonight. I've thought about this and thought about that. Whether I want to give you my testimony of how I got converted. And I thought, no, Abner, just forget that. But I'd like to tell you a few things about it. Number one, when I was a boy, 20, 21, 22 years old, I worked for one of your people. Many of you here know who it was. Clarence Burkholder. I worked for him in the butcher shop and on the silos. Clarence was a man that would not push me in a corner. He would not force me. Clare was a young boy. He would come into the area. He was worked up, he was up at his uncle's farm more than down at Clarence, because I think he got along up there a little better up there than he did with Clarence. And the reason I say this is because Clarence had some of these people come in that they called each other saints. Now, I'm not judging you, Clare. I'm not too sure where your opening was, but I know what mine was. And some of these people would come into Clarence's place and they would talk about the Lord. And I'd be working there out in the butcher shop and they would come out and ask me, Abner, how's things with you and the Lord? Oh, I used to wish they'd left me alone. Just stay away. Just stay away. But I believe, brethren and sisters, the Lord was working in my heart even though it wasn't anything done for another 70 years. I believe it was His working. Now, what I'm trying to say this for is, dear people, when you think of leading someone to Christ, just remember this, that you can ruin your ability to be used as a vessel of God by something you don't think of, maybe five, ten years. So isn't it very needful that our life is a wall of consistency according to this which we profess to believe? I'm sometimes tremendously astonished at the many people in the United States of America tonight, today, they believe in the Bible and their lives were condemned to the very fact they said. And I say, be careful. You might be asked, you might be watched. Somebody follows you. You might not realize it. You might be like my girls were. You know, when I come to a place like that, I sat at a bench here, and I have a problem. And people say, well, I just can't hardly believe that. But I sat here at this bench up here this evening before I got up, and my stomach was just going... I was just all shook up. My girl said, just before we got here, daddy, my heart's starting to pound. Are we always there? I said, how would you like to preach? I'll tell you something, brethren and sisters. I would like to say, you better tremble, not at people, but at the Word of God. And I say, to preach the Word of God across the pulpit to a group of believers is one thing. But to preach and teach the Word of God to a group of unbelievers is something else. It's something else. I have preached at the campus of State College already, where they asked me to come in and preach on the campus. And there was professors sitting out there in the audience, and I literally shook in my shoes. I'll confess that. Maybe I have fear of man. But I say, brethren, I believe we ought to tremble with the Word of God, because it is something we cannot afford to handle in a careless way. We cannot afford to mix it with our thinking, but to let God work it out through us. And that's what makes it important. And when we think of winning the soul for Christ, I'd like to emphasize again and again and again, don't you separate yourself from the power that comes from God through the Word, because it is Jesus Christ. The Word was made flesh, and the Word was God, and God was the Word. And I believe that's what we have the pleasure of handling, yet in all seriousness, sometimes it causes us to tremble. Now, we were talking about a look heavenward. You know, this look does not require, it requires neither wit nor wisdom at that point. When I think of my experience, and please pardon me, but I'm going to go back into mine. When I think of my experience of coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, my wisdom of what I needed, and I guess I could tell if Brother Lloyd Martin or Brother Ivan Weaver or Brother Paul Landis was here, they would probably say he was so ignorant. I was. I was 30, 29, 30 years old, and I was so ignorant in the Word. And when those men came, I'll never forget it. I had been so desperate for help, and I was told to stop reading, you're getting confused. And then these men came to my home. I had finally told Brother Ivan, and he saw that I was a... But I was at the end of myself, and I confessed... But God knew. And I testify to you tonight, dearly beloved, if there is a soul that God has out there, people who were not in a sense of my kinship, but people that longed. I remember Brother Ivan coming to me on a Friday morning after a week of about five days where I was just struggling. I would put my welding hood down and weld, and I would cry. My welding hood would blot out with tears. And I didn't know why. I didn't know what to do. I knew I was going to hell, and I had no answer! Where were the Mennonites? He said, now wait a minute, Abner. You were to tell us how to reach a soul. Let us get a burden in our heart for souls. Where were the Mennonites? Where were the men of Baptists? Where were the God-fearing people? Well, I'll tell you something. There was one working with me. He came to me on a Friday morning. And he said, Abner, do you have a problem? I said, what do you mean? He said, you have a problem, don't you? I'd like to help you. I said, I want your help. You see, a sinner doesn't know what he needs. He can't help himself. He knows there's a vacuum. And I remember I preached a message at Roxbury some years ago, and God gave me that thought, and it's stayed with me ever since. I believe every human being has a vacuum. It's inside there, and it pulls for something. I use that expression. And I've said already that that vacuum is God-shaped. May I say Christ-shaped. And we try to fill it with tobacco, with liquor, with drugs, yes, with work. None of them fit. Because the vacuum is Christ-shaped. And that vacuum, I didn't know how to fill. But someone did. And I'm marvelous, I think, that back, that Brother Ivan came and said, can I help you? But you know, I was so steeped in traditionalism that I wanted no help from the Mennonites. I don't want the help from those people. I have a strange belief. I don't want any help from them. But come Saturday, before noon, and I praise God to this day that we used to have a crew coming up to clean on Saturday, on Saturday morning, and I'm so thankful God had it all ordained. Yes, I believe, before the foundation of the world was laid, God had it all laid out. And that day, Ivan was supposed to work. And come about 11 o'clock, I went to Ivan and I told him, I said, Ivan, I've got to have help. If you can help me, please. Well, you told me that this man was coming to preach there in North London, and he said, if you want me to, I'll bring him over this afternoon. And I just couldn't. And finally I said, well, bring him over. And I was walking the floor, and I went out to the barn, and I smoked one cigarette after the other. He said, what, you didn't know how to pray and you were a church member? Oh, yeah. But it wasn't that high. No, it didn't even go that high. It just fell right to the ground. Brethren and sisters, I am telling you this not because it was myself, but I'm telling you that you might understand what some people need when they need Christ. I remember when that car drove in the lane, one of the greatest shocks I went through is when you got out of the car and every one of them had a Bible. I thought, well, I'll get myself one too. You know, you may think it's strange, but to me that was like a living sword. Well, I can't fight with that thing. What do they have that Bible for? I wanted to talk to them about the church situations. After all, the churches, they've got a problem, and my wife and I have a dear little son and my daughter. What am I going to do with them? And it came with this. Well, they're not saying anything in here about what the other church ought to do. And you say, well, you were ignorant. Amen, I was ignorant. And a lot of people you meet today in the streets are ignorant. They need an understanding. Here, I'm going again. I'm just getting away from the notes. I like to say this, brethren and sisters, that confidence when you see, that confidence when you see a person, I'm sorry, I think that was a fly. That confidence when you see a person who is longing for satisfaction to that vacuum in his soul, you can only answer as you carry this book. I'm sorry, I don't want to be amusing. Please. I threw back and I pulled that fly out of my mouth. I'm sorry. But I don't want to be amusing. I'm on a serious subject, brethren and sisters. So tonight, when I tell you you need the experienced young people of Christ in your heart if you want to win a soul, you also need to have the Word of God. What does it take to bring a soul to Christ? It takes a person that is feeding on the manna of His Word, the preciousness, and having had, oh my, the experience of that. Alright. One of the first how-to's. I'm going to turn to Matthew 28. I was going to give an answer about coming here tomorrow morning. I said, I don't believe I'm going to come, but after all I'm going to feel I have to come back and finish this message. In Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20, I'd like to bring this out. Jesus, well let's look at verse 18. It's Jesus came and spake unto them. But then He said in verse 19, and it's a well-known verse, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. I'd like to say tonight, brethren and sisters, that I believe one of the main operations in leading a soul to Christ is in instructing a man or a woman that they may know the truth of God. I had an experience some years ago of two girls who came out of what we call the Jesus Movement, and another boy told me he wished I would come and talk to them. And I went over to another home over in Belleville, and these two girls were sitting in the room, and they were sitting on sofas. They had their legs underneath themselves, sitting there like they were in a meditation. You know what this modern meditation form is? And they were strumming guitars. And I walked into the room and started to talk to them. And I asked them questions. And I said, Do you believe that you are born again? And they looked at me, I don't know whether we're born again or not, but we know that we have Jesus. And I kept asking them things, and I found out that it was a strange fire. A very strange fire. And I'll tell you, brethren and sisters, I cannot repeat often enough to you tonight, you watch that you don't throw embers or firewood or fuel on a strange fire. We've got a lot of strange fire going around. And Brother Irvin talked about the sons of Eli and the strange fire. And we've got a lot of teaching and a strange fire coming out where people, and I wanted to talk on that tonight, where people come out with an emotionalism that is not solid on the Word of God. Be careful of that. I'll just have to rush on. Therefore, it says to teach all things. To teach thee all things. Let's not forget that. You cannot just go and run them through a program and walk away. Bringing someone to Christ is not just merely showing him the forgiveness of the blood of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sin, but it's to show Christ as Lord and Master of His life. If you don't believe that, I'm afraid you're seeped in Calvinism. And we've got too many of us boarding so close to that thing that it scares me. Alright. The Gospel according to Isaiah is incline your ears. Do like my dad's mules. Set your ears forward. Listen to what's happening. That's what the Gospel is according to Isaiah. And come unto Me here and your soul shall live. Those are the words of Isaiah. The Gospel is good news. To hear some preachers, you would think that it's some sort of an emotional medicine to excite you in your brains and in your body of emotionalism. But it's good news. And you know what news is? The Gospel is news. It is nothing of that kind. It is news. It is therefore information. And I believe that we underestimate that information. The information that is needed. There is instruction in it concerning matters which men need to know. The Word of God. Now, forget that. I see too much of this easy salvation plan. Now, I don't want to be overly critical, but I say, brethren and sisters, it is no wonder that we hear these men who say, well, last evening we had a meeting and about a thousand responded to Christ, and about forty came to the inquiry room, and about fifty or sixty of them received the deeper work of the Spirit, and they go on and on, and about twenty-five of them received the baptism of the Spirit. I'm going to tell you something, brethren and sisters. I fear that type of spiritual boasting. Is that what we call it? And we mark it down in our tabloids, in our books, in our tablets, and we mark it down, and we keep these accounts to ourselves, and we keep adding them up, just like we do at a cash register at the end of the day. I say, brethren and sisters, our heart needs to go deeper than all that. I believe we need to have a godly concern for that soul. And I'd like to, tomorrow, tomorrow evening, I'd like to bring out some of those things. I'm just going to have to go on. But I believe we need to understand that it's not just, it's something that man needs to know. It's not just some magical incantation of a charm or a force that therefore can collect itself in a body, and when the emotions are sprung out, then it's gone. I just believe it's more than that. I believe it's a revelation of facts and truth which require knowledge and faith. They require knowledge and faith. Now, I remember in my conversion, after I got through this first big obstacle that afternoon, and Brother Paul kept referring me back to my own life. I was trying to tell him, and he wouldn't listen. I was trying to tell him where the churches have a problem, and it seemed that he just wouldn't listen to me. But he kept saying, but what about you, Abner? What about you and your wife? What about your souls? And I couldn't associate, I couldn't understand why he keeps referring to that. I mean, what does that have to do with it until all at once the realization came in that I'm saved on a personal experience in Christ and not in a general experience with the church. Now, I couldn't have laid it out that way to you. No way. I couldn't have told you what I saw. But Paul told me later that I stood up and I looked at him and I said, do you mean that I, that I can hear in our house, that I can find peace without all the rest of them with us? I'll never forget when that came to my mind. You say, well, how ignorant were you, brothers and sisters? I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know how ignorant I was. But when that truth sank in my mind, I asked him, I said, well, what do you do to get it? He said, we kneel and pray. I said, you mean right here? My wife and I. He said, right here. And all I remember is my knees gave way. He said later I preached in German and English. I don't know. I don't know what I preached. But I'll tell you something, brothers and sisters, I didn't have a whole lot of wisdom, but there is a load went off of my back that I can sympathize so much with Christian when he came to the wicker gate. That old load of sin and heaviness and burden and guilt and crime and filth, it left! And I got up and I'd like to tell you something else. I had just got done smoking a little before that. I was still, oh, a carnal person. And those three brothers came up and put their arms around me. I wasn't used to something like that. I wondered, how can you do that with someone like me? But they understood what God had brought. Alright, so much for my experience. I'm giving you this. And it's time to quit. What more do I say? There's so many things I'd like to say concerning emotionalism and these things. Listen, one thing I would like to say before I sit down. Never in your working with a Christian give him the idea that this Christian life is going to make everything flow easy. Don't you do that. Because he's going to come into the times, and I just told a young person not long ago, after he gave his heart to the Lord, I had the experience of working with him. If you think Satan was roughing you before, he's going to really come now. And he looked at me and said, do you mean that? I said, I mean that. But I said, never forget, there is one in you that is greater more glorious, more powerful. Tell that to them. I just have to give Brother Isaac the time. There's so much I wanted to say. But like I said the other evening, I'm a little poor in putting it together. Brethren and sisters, reach out. There are souls out there. You can't see the anguish in their hearts. You don't know what they're longing for. Too many times we don't see it. You say, well, oh Abner, how am I going to get openings? You be open to the Spirit. And it's surprising. It's surprising. Now I know, some of us that are preachers, oh, you know, I thought this evening, when I got up, I just felt like asking all of you, you know last evening, and I didn't say a whole lot to the boys over here, but I'd like to say something. I was tempted to ask, how many of you have ever had the privilege of leading a soul to Christ? Do you hear how I said that? How many of you have ever had the privilege of leading a soul to Christ? I'll tell you, brethren and sisters, I'd like to talk on the joy. That to me is wonderful. But there is hardly anything so glorious as to see that soul just give up. Broken. Oh, there's so many things. Repentance and confession, and those things that go in there. That brokenness and understanding of, and I've had experiences where some person gave his heart to the Lord, and they were crying, and I'll tell you what, these confessions, these giving their hearts to the Lord, and they're tearless and dry. We have people in our church at home that just inspired me. They came to our church about a year or so ago. We say, are you converted? Are you born of God? Are you a child of God? You know what they said? They said, when I was walking in the world, and turned around, turned around. Well, where do you find that in the Bible? Well, you find it in repentance. It's a turning around. You're walking with the world, and you stop, and you turn around. You've got too many people that slow down and then continue on. You be sure that when you bring the soul to Christ, you tell that person you're heading in another direction. God give grace.