In this sermon, the preacher discusses the current state of the church and how it is being taken advantage of by politicians and those seeking personal gain. He emphasizes the need for the church to be restored and revived, so that it can be a powerful force for God. The preacher then focuses on the topic of prayer, using three texts from the Bible to highlight its importance. He encourages the congregation to pray fervently and without ceasing, emphasizing the effectiveness of the prayers of a righteous person. The preacher also expresses his love for young people but criticizes the older generation for not truly knowing and experiencing God, leading to a lack of respect from the youth.

I have three texts. One is found in the fifth chapter of James, the latter part of the 16th verse, this statement. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Then in the fourth chapter of the same book, two and three, ye have not because ye ask not, or ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss. And then in the 18th of Luke, he spake a parable to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to think. This is the only parable that is explained before it is given, so I'll not read it. The moral, as they say, is given before the parable is told, and the moral is, men ought always to pray and not to think. Now there are three texts telling us three things. So that indicates, of course, that I am to speak on prayer, since all three texts have to do with prayer. There was a great old Spanish brother by the name of Molinas. He wrote at least one great book, and in it he makes this statement. That prayer is an ascent or elevation of the mind of God, and that God is above all creatures, and the soul cannot see him nor converse with him, if she raised not herself above them all. Because God is above all, I must, in order to speak to him, raise my soul above all, and contemplate that which is above all. And now with that thought in mind, that prayer is an ascension of the soul to God, notice these three texts. One of them says that prayer is a potent thing. I'm amused at the translators trying to translate into English what the man said here. But it all adds up to this, that it is a potent thing. Prayer has tremendous power. Now this the Old Testament and the New Testament teach, but this also the Old Testament and the New Testament demonstrate. Then another text says that even though prayer is a potent thing, sometimes we do not have, even when we pray. And the reason we do not have is that we have asked selfishly. Or we haven't asked at all, that of course is part of the text. We either haven't asked, or having asked, we have asked with wrong motives. And prayer with wrong motives is useless. But the third text says that nevertheless, even though there are times when prayer doesn't get through because it isn't the right kind of prayer, nevertheless, there are difficulties and discouragements, men ought always to pray and not to faint. Now I could sit down after having said this, and I have said considerable already, I think, because these three texts have said it, and I have repeated them with a minimum of explanation. Now about prayer, you know there is a great deal of prayer going on currently. A society such as ours in the United States and across the line into Canada, and I suppose all over the world for that matter, wherever we are influenced by some current philosophy or something else, we have our ups and downs. If we were to take prayer and its popularity and have a graph, and start way over on this side of the tabernacle and end over there, and go back, say, over the last 50 years, you would find your graph moving up and down. There were times when prayer was at the peak of popularity, everybody was praying, and then there were times when it was considered rather old-fashioned to think about it, and then it would go back up again. Right now we happen to be in one of those peaks of the graph where it is quite the popular thing. Everybody prays. I don't know whether the gangsters have started praying yet or not, but I wouldn't put it past them. Everybody else does. Movie actors who make movies so filthy that police have to ban them in the cities will solemnly pray. Prayer seems to be quite the thing now. Everybody prays. Between the First World War and the Second, it was philosophically bad to think about prayer. It threw you over on somebody else, whereas you ought to be depending upon yourself. Then in the Second World War there were no atheists in the foxhole, and everybody began to pray. A prizefighter would even pray that he might be able to paralyze the other fellow, and then after it is a nip-nip and tuck, and he is bloody but unbowed, and the other fellow is lying over quivering in the corner, and they are fanning him, putting ice packs on his noble dome. They say, Now all right, would you say a word to your public? And he gets up with much panting and breathing and says, I didn't do it, God did it. I didn't do it, God did it. We've been praying. I've got praying friends all over, and I want to take this opportunity to thank my praying friends for praying for me. Amen. Well, God bless him. That kind of paganism belongs in New Guinea. It doesn't belong in the United States, but it's in the United States nevertheless. You imagine what kind of a God God would be, who would get into a prize ring and answer the prayer and unseen be the third man in the ring, and when the number one, the man who had done the praying missed and didn't duck in time, why God would hit the other fellow so as to guard his friend. That would be a terrible thing to do. It would be a sneaky thing to do to begin with, and it would be unlike God, and unlike Christ, and totally carnal, and altogether out in left field. God would never be caught doing it. So prayer is a common thing. Everybody is praying, you know. People stop in the midst of any kind of wickedness and put up their little hand and pray. God's on everybody's mailing list. Everybody that wants anything, they go to God about it. I remember once reading an article about John D. Rockefeller and what a bunch of deadheads he had hanging around him, and freeloaders always writing him for money. One fellow wrote him this, Brother King, if you want to copy this for making money for the Alliance missions, this works, you know, if you can get anybody to go along with it. This man said, Dear Mr. Rockefeller, you're a rich man and you're a man who understands business. I'm not rich and I don't understand business, but what I want to ask is you lend me $500 and then invest it for me wisely. And then after it has made a big chunk of money, take out your $500 and send me the rest. Now that's one way of getting money. And that's one of the wolves of the rich man. He's on the mailing list of every freeloader and bum, you know, from the rock-bound coast of Maine to the sunny slopes of California, as a politician said. And now every sort of personal interest and selfish project, I say project because I've been up in Canada a year and a half, and that's what they say, but project is American. Every kind of selfish project is being carried on, unscriptural, unspiritual and injurious it may be, but it's sanctified with a text and it may have no higher motive, you know, than to relieve some fella from doing an honest job or making an honest living with his own two little hard patties. He just won't do it, so he gets a religious job somewhere and he thought up himself that it has no place in the scriptures at all. He didn't learn from the scriptures and he puts that across and works all his lifetime and gets old on that. Or it may have no higher motive than to provide him an opportunity to travel at other people's expense. That's quite a popular thing now. And yet the fellow will call prayer meetings and he'll even pray all night in order to get that prayer answered, asking God to bless the project that God never thought of. Jesus said that here are these trees and every tree that my father didn't plant will be cut down and thrown into the fire. My dear people, we ought to be generous and we ought to give generously. But let me say to you most solemnly this morning that if you waste your money contributing to the delinquency of religious bums, you will pay for it in the day of Christ when he asks you what you did with your money. You're not only to give, but you're to find out where you should give. And give it where it counts. And give it where God is doing something. Put your money where obviously the cloud and the fire are. And don't waste it giving to fair-haired, curly-locked boys with a good soft voice who have no higher motive than to get out of a job. The fellow one time had a letter, sent a letter around, Evie's deadly sent it around to all of his mailing lists, and I happened to be one of these suckers. And I got a letter and it said, just a form letter, nicely written, you know, and he said, I feel deeply, I feel called to make a missionary journey. He said, I must go, the heathen are perishing, we must get the gospel out, and therefore would you put a dollar in this envelope and send it in? If all of my friends to whom I write would send a dollar, I can make the missionary journey. So he said, if you will send in enough, I want to go to Bermuda. Can you imagine it? So I send out to my mailing list from Toronto and say, I want to go to Florida. In midwinter. What ridiculous kind of business is it? But that fellow is on, he's praying, oh Lord, bless my trip to Bermuda. And I'll take my bathing suit along just in case. Well, now about prayer. There are personal, intimate things that we ought not to pray about in public. I'd like to pass that little word on to you. As a pastor of about 43 years, I have learned the hard way that there are some things you just don't talk about in public. You don't bring them in. We should talk those over to God. There isn't a thing, not one lonely, tiny little thing that God isn't interested that affects you. He's interested in everything concerning you. John Wesley prayed for his horse and it got well and he rode off to his next appointment. The Lord will hear your prayer for almost anything that is not selfish because the Lord loves you and he loves everything about you and he loves all around you and beneath and above you and you move around in a glow of God's love if you're his child and everything that touches you touches God. But there are things that ought to be talked over between you and God and not be brought into the Wednesday night prayer meeting. I've seen many a prayer meeting bogged down by personal details that never should have been brought there at all. I remember one time being in a prayer meeting and a dear old brother, a godly old scholarly looking sweet old man by the name of Brother Adams, he was leading it. He's long been in heaven. But he was leading the meeting and he said, now we'll have prayer requests. And there was one prayer request after another was made and one little old lady said, Brother Adams, would you pray for my twitching eyelid? It's bothering me. And he solemnly took time out to pray for her twitching eyelid. Well now if I'd been leading the meeting I'd have said, honey, rub it. Rub it. He's praying for a twitching eyelid. Rub it. It'll get all right. And we just ought not to waste prayer meeting time bringing in personal things. We ought to pray for the great big things. I'm going to tell you what they are shortly here. But then there is a second kind of prayer and that is what we call corporate prayer. That's the kind of prayer that should have an aim that affects the whole Church of Christ. Not only the Christian Missionary Alliance, but the whole Church of Christ. That should be what I call strategic prayer. Do you remember once a group of people in the New Testament met and prayed for a man? And it was a rather personal deal because Peter was in prison and his brother James had been killed with a sword. No, James, one of the other men, had been killed with a sword and Peter was in prison waiting also to get the sword. So they went to God about Peter. Now that affected Peter, but oh, it affected everybody else. Peter's job wasn't done yet. Peter was so important. Peter wasn't the first Pope, but Peter was so vastly important to the Church of Christ at that time that he was indispensable for a moment and they couldn't give him up. So they met and prayed, Oh God, here, this affects all the Church and the Church for all the centuries to come. Get Peter out of prison. Peter got out of prison and they didn't believe it, do you remember? Because some of them had prayed. The ones that had believed, believed it, but the ones that had just been going along for the ride, they didn't believe it. And when they saw Peter, they had been mumbling, but they hadn't been believing. And when they saw Peter, they said, it's his ghost. They said, he's dead and this is his ghost. They've already beheaded him and here he comes with just his ghost. But that was strategic praying, my friends. They were praying strategically. They were doing something that would not only affect a man and particularly a man's twitching eyelid, but that would affect the whole Church of Christ. And I believe that corporate prayer, the prayer of the body, prayer of people when they meet, ought not to be wasted on details, but that it ought to be given over. For instance, our Congo situation, it's so tragic now and so, so critical. When we meet to pray, we ought not to pray that my foot will stop hurting. And then he stridles, we ought to pray, Oh God, have your way in the Congo. That's strategic praying. We ought to pray strategically. And we must pray in harmony with our work. That is, we can't, as William Law has said, we ought not to pray one way and live another. But we ought to pray in harmony with the way we live and in harmony with what we're doing. And then we ought to bring our doing in harmony with our prayers and our living in harmony with our prayers. Pray according to the will of God and then bring what you're doing in the way you're living into harmony. Now there are two desires that should burn in the children of God. I want to give you these two desires. These are prayer requests that can be made in private. And God knows that I, for one, try often and much and earnestly to pray these two prayers in private. But they are legitimate prayers for the corporate body, the saints, when they meet, the company, the assembly of God's redeemed people when they meet, ought to keep praying these two, these two great kind of prayers, these two great prayers. One is a restoration of the vision of the Most High God. Now I am getting along and after a while I'll be middle-aged. And I don't want by any means to become a fanatic and go out on a limb and sit out there and playing a little harp before my time. There are too many of the Lord's dear people, when they get along a little, they get out on one thing and they sit and twing, twang and they think it's a whole symphony and it's just one little note, twing, twang. Well now I don't want to do that. And I don't think I'm doing it. I believe that I have surveyed the whole Church of God and I know something of Church history and the developments of the work of God through the years. And I believe I know something of the scripture. And I am in a position, I think, wisely to tell you these two things. One of the is, I've said, the restoration of the vision of the Most High God. You see, we have too low a view of God now. And that is why the Church has such a low place. The Church rises or falls altogether depending upon her view of God. If she takes a high view of God, her people are inclined to be reverent and worshipful and solemn and grave. If she takes a low view of God, they become funny and flippant and foolish and live worldly lives and give up to the flesh. If she takes a high view of God, she simplifies her church services immediately. If she takes a low view of God, she has to drag in every kind of theatrical cut in order to keep her people coming. It depends upon her view of God. The old Presbyterians used to have such a high and noble view of God. What is the key end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. And many of that school fought hell, high views of God. Brethren, do you know the result of that? The result of that is that generation after generation following generation they stayed true to the faith. But as soon as we take a low view of God and get to thinking of God cheaply as they think of him now, cheaply, that God is a pal, or that he's my partner, or that he's the big Joe upstairs, that he, call him by some other name, a living doll one girl said he was. Well now as long as we think about God like that, we've never seen God. Imagine Moses tumbling in the fire and smoke on Mount Sinai, referring to God in any other way than in awful solemn terms. What we need in the United States is a revelation of what the philosopher called the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery, and what the Bible calls Jehovah, high and lifted up. And I there saw him with his train filling the temple. The trouble with you dear young people, and God knows I love you as I've told you before. I do. I love young people. I love the twinkle in their eye. I love their little giggles, and I love everything about kids. I love youth, and I don't like the word youth at all, but I love young people. I love them, but they're being cheated in this awful hour in which we live. They've never seen God, and they've never seen very many people that have. And so you poor kids are victims of an elder generation that never saw God. And so they've had to teach you to crash and drag in every kind of clap-clap to try to keep you happy. And if you tell me the truth, you don't respect them for it. You go along with it, but you don't respect them for it. My brethren, we need to see God again, the glory of God and the return of that glory. This is an imperative, and anything else is secondary to it. It is more important that God be glorified than men be saved. It's more important that God be glorified than that his work be carried on. It's more important that God be honored in his universe than that I be saved. But here is the wonder of wonders. God in his love and goodness has so arranged it that the more he is honored, the more people will be saved. So that it isn't an either-or. I either win souls or I glorify God, but the more I glorify God, souls will be won. And if a baptism of clear seeing were to come to the Church of Christ in America, sinners would come. And you wouldn't have to talk like them in order to win them. You wouldn't have to go out on that false philosophical boat with holes in it that will sink one of these days, that I've got to come down and be like them in order to win them. I don't have to do anything of the sort. Paul made himself all things to all men, but all he meant by that in the wide world was that he'd sow tents or he'd go anywhere. He never meant that he was going to keep himself and come down to the level of cheap sinners in order to win those sinners. No, he was that dignified man of God that walked about with a glow on his face. And in those early days, the Church dwelt on Solomon's porch and no man dare join himself to them. Nobody on Solomon's porch was running out and learning to talk like a beatnik in order to win a beatnik. On Solomon's porch they were there in a glow of glory so that people were afraid to come near them. They said, look, God is on those people. And they fell on their faces and said, God's in this place. What we need is to have a vision of God again. And by a vision of God, I do not mean anything to the visible eye. Anything you see with your visible eye, you can safely ignore, because that's merely matter. Matter. But I'm talking about the inner eye. You see with your inner eye. You have an eye inside of you, and with that you are to gaze upon the holy face of God. And we are to walk one more time to see God. And you know the first corporate prayer was, Our Father which art in heaven, and the first request was, Hallowed be thy name. That the name of God should be hallowed in the sinful world is more important than anything else. It's more important than can be. It's more important than any church on the continent. It's more important than any school or any project that we're doing, that the name of God be glorified. But the beauty of it all is that if we're to see God big and think of him big and honor him, all these other projects, as we call them, if they're his projects, will glow and grow like the lily of the valley. You don't say, I must either work with Canby or I must glorify God. No, glorify God and watch Canby grow. Glorify God and watch the Alliance grow. Glorify God and watch your church grow. But we try to make it grow and forget God. God isn't in half of the things. A fellow told me the other day about being with a certain man. He was one of the Christian businessmen, brethren. I worked with them a lot and loved them, and certainly this isn't true of very many, but it was true of this one. He wanted to sue a fellow, a doctor, and this doctor went to him and tried to talk with him. He had printed some tract or other that's supposed to reflect on this man and hadn't, but he said it did. And he came to see this Christian, and he said, now I'll sue unless something is done. And this doctor said, well now, brother, he said, we're brethren. He said, surely God's... Oh, leave God out of this, he said. Leave God out of this. This fundamentalist, this evangelical, this man who bellows about being born again, he wants to leave God out of it. Brethren, anything you leave God out of will rot in your hands. Anything you leave God out of will die before your eyes. Anything that God isn't in will be burned in the fire. Don't leave God out of it. God must be in it. And whatsoever ye shall ask, in my name that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son, said Jesus. God answers prayer for the glory of the Father through the Son. And no project and no organization and no need, nothing is valid till the glory of God has been restored to mankind. Until we think of him reverently, until we think of him high and lifted up, until we understand that he is the great God Almighty and Jesus Christ is the Lord. Jesus Christ has been reduced and reduced and brought down and brought down until nobody fears the Lord Jesus anymore. He is simply a big brother, easy to get along with, without very high standards. And we can live in the flesh and go along with the world, and then when we're in trouble, run whimpering to our big brother and he'll help us. Oh, what a neat, what a neat trick of the devil to get people to live like the world and the devil, and then think they can run to the Lord when they're in trouble. Why, the Lord isn't a garage you go into when you've had a fender dinged. He isn't a hospital you go to when you've had a heart attack. He is the Lord. God hath made this man both Lord and Christ, and has set him at his own right hand, and there he has all authority. When John saw him, he fell at his feet as if he was dead, and took the hand of Jesus to raise him back from the dead again. A low view of God means a low living church. High views of God mean correspondingly high living church. And we need, how desperately we need to see the church brought back again. And that brings us now to our second thought. That the second great desire should be a deliverance of the church. Now again, I do not want to be nostalgic. I never knew better times than I know now, so I'm not looking back on any departed glory. And I don't date back so far that I remember Finney and Augustine by any means, but I will say this. Judging the scripture, judging the church, our church, you say, what church, Brother Tozer? You're referring to the liberals? No. What are you referring to? I'm referring to us alliance people, for instance, and then I'm referring to all of the other evangelicals who are all tied with the same stick, or blessed with the same grace, and hold the same doctrines generally. The church now. When I say the church, she ought to be and must be restored from her Babylonian captivity. For the church is in Babylonian captivity, as Israel was in Babylon. You remember Israel in Babylon. She stayed there 70 years, and there came along a man by the name of Ezra and Nehemiah and some others, and they took them back into the land again, built the temple, dedicated it, and started again to live as they should have been living all the time. This was the parenthesis, 70 years out of the land. I believe the church of Christ now, the church, the evangelical church, the fundamentalist church, and the borderline church. It doesn't know whether it's liberal or evangelical. I believe the church is in Babylonian captivity. But the Lord didn't desert Israel while she was in Babylon. He kept her there, he blessed her, he had her whole, so she came back, the covenant held, she wasn't lost, she was still God's covenant people, but she was out of the land. And being out of the land, she was away from the place of power, and away from the flame, and away from the sacrifice, and away from worship. She was scattered through Babylon. Then when they brought her back, she built her temple and went to worshiping again. I believe the church now needs to be delivered from her Babylonian captivity, her disgraceful fornication with the world, and brought back into the place where the church should have been all the time. Now, some people call that a revival. I don't talk much about revival. I used to when I didn't know anything about revivals, preach about them. I'd read Finney and then preach on revival. But I've got humbler since that day, I hope. And I don't preach on revival, but I do believe that it would bring revival to the church of Christ. The church would be revived if she was brought back again to the place she should be, back to her New Testament position, back to living her morals in line with the New Testament teaching, back to the methods of the New Testament, and back to the objectives of the New Testament. Nobody has any right to institute any program that is a New Testament in its origin. And then nobody has any right, having instituted a program, ever to carry it on by any other methods except those given us out of the New Testament. Methodology that doesn't originate in the New Testament is a deadly thing, and you ought to get away from it as far as you can. Methodology that goes according to the laws of psychology and salesmanship and all the rest, it's a poor, cheap substitute for the Holy Ghost, and we ought to reject it. I tell you, until this is accomplished, until the church has been restored, until we've been brought back again to the place where we can live as New Testament Saints, a good deal of our work will go down the drain. Somebody says, what we need is evangelism. Do you know what evangelism is, my dear friends? Evangelism is simply an extension of the kind of religion you now have. The evangelist can only reproduce himself. There's a law in the Bible, after he's kind, everything produces after it's kind. And the evangelist goes into a neighborhood, he can only make converts in his own image. That's all he can do. And so evangelism is simply extending the degenerate Christianity that's now everywhere abroad. Now, by degenerate, I don't mean there's not some life in it. There was life in Israel when she was in Babylon, but she was out of the land. There is life in the evangelical church. If there wasn't, I'd leave it. There's life here. There's life here, it can be. I trust there's life right here in this body. And I believe there's a life among you people of God. This is not to talk you down and unchurch you. It's only to say we're not where we ought to be. We're taking, we're judging each other by each other and ourselves by the rest, and we have adopted a low dead level by comparing each other with each other. And we haven't seen samples in recent time of holy men and women. I saw the other day a scrapbook given me by Mrs. McGarvey, or lent to me to look over, and there were the old Saints there, way back to the beginning. Hess and Brother Richard's father and Dr. Simpson, those were men of outstanding, they were head and shoulders above the average. They were giants in the earth in those times. And they naturally reproduced themselves. But now we're slidding badly down, and our evangelism only reproduces and turns out a great mass of people there just like us. The children that were born to Israel in Babylon were born in Babylon. They were born and there was some life there, but they were born in Babylon. And then somebody else says, well, then what we need to do is to get busy on missions. Now, the treasurer of the Christian Missionary Alliance is here, but I have to say this anyhow, that, and he agrees with it, I'm quite sure, I'm only kidding. I know he agrees with it. You know there's a notion abroad that if you got an old dead church, where instead of having sheep you got goats, and instead of having Saints you have people that are hypocrites and no good livers and all the rest. You just start a missionary program, boom, up you go immediately. That is the panacea for all backslidden churches. And if you'll just start a missionary program, you'll have a revival immediately. My dear brother, that just isn't so. There is nothing in the New Testament to teach that. And dear Reverend brother, if you've tried that in your church and it hasn't worked, remember that it didn't work because it wasn't so. And if you have instituted a spiritual program for missions in your church and the church has been blessed, then that still doesn't prove it works. It proves that the same yearning after God that led you to institute the missionary program in your church also led you to God. One is not the cause of the other, but the both are the cause of a deeper, or the result of a deeper cause. So now, what is mission? What are missions? I don't, I never knew whether to say was or were. I don't know it's singular or plural. Whichever it is anyhow, missions. What's foreign missions? It's simply going to another country than your own and preaching the gospel. And a missionary is an evangelist who has gone abroad. An evangelist is a missionary who is preaching at home. And what true evangelism is true of missions? A degenerate church goes to Cambodia, Timbuktu, makes some converts, establishes a church. They will carry their own concept of Christianity to, what did I say, Cambodia or Timbuktu. And the church there will be what they made it. And if they're occupying a secondary low place at home, they'll carry that same secondary concept over there. I've been disappointed to the point of being disgusted. Some of the information we get from the field, somebody dies. And they'll say, and at the funeral, the trio sang, there's no disappointment in heaven. And you tell me what excuse in the wide world of God anybody with the IQ of six and seven eighths, what he, what excuse he would have of going to Cambodia or Laos or I don't mean those fields, and transplanting a cheap, low, almost vulgar song from the United States to that country when we have a whole bushel basket full of great hymns that they could translate into the languages over there and teach them theology while they're singing. That's only one sample. And we make them in our own image over there. So what we need to pray for is that God will raise up missionaries of such a superior spiritual quality that when they go over there, they'll produce converts of a superior spiritual quality. But somebody says, Mr. Tolga, now wait a minute. You mean to say there's a difference when you're born again? Aren't you born again? And isn't every Christian like every other Christian? How foolish can you get? There's such a thing as being stillborn. We had seven and they were all live born. But there's such a thing as having a stillborn baby. There's such a thing as having a baby that lasts a few in her forties before she had her first baby and then it died. Well, now that's too bad. And I'm sorry for that. That baby lived just a little while. It's in heaven now, thank God, but it just lived a little while. Well, there it is. There are babies born healthy. There are babies born not healthy. We had a baby born that weighed 10 pounds and 14 ounces. Well, now that boy, he came into the world bouncing, bouncing. But my younger brother was born to my mother when she was in middle life and he was quite a long, several weeks old before they could take him off a pillow. They carried him about on a pillow. He couldn't, couldn't, his head was all pulled off on one side. He is, he came into the world a sickly baby. Our boy Roland came into the world a bouncing, healthy 10-pounder. So Christians can be born into the kingdom of God and they're different kinds of Christians. Some are born well. Some pray through and repent and change all their ways and leave the world, die to their flesh, believe on Christ and take him as their Lord. Man, they're big Christians in no time at all. Others come in under poor auspices. They come in where they barely get in and they're weaklings and they live and die weaklings and beget weaklings after them. So missions and evangelism won't do. Missions and evangelism ought to grow out of spirituality, not be the, not produce it. And also our books and our schools and our magazines and our editorials and our sermons will all be of a kind with the kind of Christians we are. If we're poor Christians, second-rate Christians, third-rate Christians, weaklings, our books and our schools and our printing presses and all the rest will be second-rate weaklings. But if the power of God rests upon our foreheads and if we have said goodbye to the world and decided to follow Jesus Christ and follow the Lamb, whether to wherever he goeth, our schools and our books and our magazines and our sermons will rise correspondingly. So I say it's very necessary that we pray. I want to say this, and this is really going to get you down. I suppose some people wish I hadn't said I'd come back next year, but I have thought when I have seen certain activities, I have thought that these activities, so-called Christian, are just the working of bacteria in the decaying church. There never was a time when there was more activity than there is right now. There's something religious going on all the time. We're incorporating some new religious thing. Every time the clock says, tick, we incorporate, and every time it says, talk, we incorporate. We've got them all over the continent, and boy, the money they're taking, the overhead, the offices, the presence, you know. It's easy to become a president of something that you have founded. And so we have presidents of this and presidents of that, and the money it's taking and the time. Religious activity, there's plenty of it, but a lot of it is the working of bacteria in a decaying church. We need to hear a voice say, Lazarus, come forth. We need to hear a voice say, come out of Babylon to change the figure and go into the land that I will show thee. And then when the church stands straight upright and has her temple back and her worship back and her cloud of glory back and the blessing of God back again, and she's living like Christians, then she'll go to work and she'll be active, but her activity will have in it eternity. It will have in it the eternal qualities that will make it live while the ages roll. We must pray and work till the church is back where we ought to be. I read this morning this text. I thought I'd leave it with you now in closing. Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners? There's the church. There's a picture of the church. She looketh forth as the morning, and she's fair as the moon. She's clear as the sun, and she's terrible as an army with banners. The most pitiful organization in the world today is the church. The politicians use her for whatever they can get out of her, and the poor use her, and poor fleece cheap, and pretty soon the church is back as something that may never have been of God at all. But when the church looks forth clear as the morning, fair as the moon, and clear as the sun, she'll be as terrible as an army with banners. I'd like to see the church restored and revived until the company of God's saints were not looked upon as being poor cheaplings, but were respected for what they are, saints of God and followers of Christ. I'd like to see that, wouldn't you? I'd like to see the church brought back and made clear as the moon, and bright as the sun, and make her again terrible as an army with banners. I'd like to see pastors that were anointed with the Holy Ghost and with authority of a prophet, that would dare to stand surrounded by enemies and say, instead of sneaking up and giving a little essay he learned at some Bible school where he got out of a book, and then rush off somewhere afraid somebody didn't like it. What's the difference whether they like it or not? Dear brother and sister, I've made a career of preaching what I believe God wants, and the odd thing about it is the people like it, you know. I preached just the way I wanted to preach here, two years in now, and you want me back. That proves maybe that you're a little further from Babylon than I thought, but there's still room for a good journey yet before you get the temple built. Shall we not pray that God will restore his whole church, including us, back to the land again? Shall we not pray, first and above all, that he shall show himself once more to his people, high and lifted up with his train, filling the temple, so that instead of flippancy and nonsense and play, we'll have sobriety and gravity and power? Amen?