In this sermon, the speaker begins by describing a scene at a train station where a ticket taker is checking tickets. Despite facing unpleasant comments from the crowd, the ticket taker explains that his boss is watching him from a window on the 14th floor, and he must do his job diligently to please him. The speaker then transitions to discussing the power of persuasion and how it can influence the mind but not the heart. He prays for God's help in delivering a message as impactful as Stephen's, and urges the audience to consider their eternal destiny. The sermon concludes with a comparison between a baseball game and the gospel, emphasizing the importance of solving the problem of sin through faith in Christ.

Hello, my name is Michael Conrad, and welcome to Tozer on Tape. A. W. Tozer was called a prophet in his own time, a unique man with a unique message for the church and for the world. Now, via the Tozer on Tape series, you have the privilege of hearing his message in his voice. From the folks at Christian Publications, may God bless you as you listen. Three texts tonight, three texts. One in 1 Thessalonians, first chapter, it reads like this. Verse 4 and following. Knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God. Here's a man who believed in election, and who knew why the Thessalonian Christians were elect. Because our gospel came not under you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. As you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake, and ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so that ye became examples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. Then there's another text, back in 2 Corinthians, 5th chapter, verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. Then the book of Revelation, 3rd chapter, these words of our Lord to the church at Sardis. Unto the angel of the church in Sardis write this. These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars, I know thy works, and that thou hast the name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die. For I have not found thy works perfect before God. Now, before I try to speak on these texts, I'd like to have you indulge me in a moment of prayer. O God, our God, thou knowest how tough the human heart is, how encrusted and hard to get to. What a system of defenses it has built up around itself. But we appeal to thee, thy holy son said, that when he went, he would send the comforter, and when he came, he would convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Now, Lord, arguments can't convict. They can persuade the mind, but they can't get past the defenses of the heart. We beseech thee tonight, as thou didst make Stephen irresistible so that they could not resist the spirit and the wisdom by which he spoke, we pray that if it please thee, O Lord, thou will tonight bless the word of one unworthy, unworthy to tie the shoelatches of Stephen. Speak, Lord. Here we are gathered together this nice evening in just a short time, and there won't be one of us left. O God, we would face eternity tonight and think and decide and determine in the white light of everlasting tomorrow. Help us now, we pray, hear and speak of through Christ our Lord. Amen. Now, there are three texts here by the Holy Ghost written. The first text says that the gospel may come in one of two ways. It may come in word only, that is, empty. It may come in power, that is, with moral effectiveness. Now, Paul said that he knew that the gospel message had come to the Thessalonians effectively in moral power, and he gave as his reason that they had much assurance and they became followers of Christ, and of Paul as he followed Christ, having received the word in much affliction, nothing could turn them back. They had a strange and supernatural joy which Paul labeled the joy of the Holy Ghost, and they went on not to be followers only, but examples in their own right. They became examples to the other churches, and from them sounded out the word of the Lord. They became a missionary church. Now, that's what the first text says, and if it's true that that's what happens when the word comes in power and the text opens the door to the belief that the word can come nominally and without power, then exactly the opposite would be true. They would become Christians by some decision but without much assurance. They became Christians, but they were not followers of the Lord particularly except in name, and when affliction came they didn't take it very well, and they hadn't very much joy. They had to work it up, and it didn't stay long, and they were not very good examples, and they were lukewarm when it came to the missionary zeal. Now, that's a fair explanation here, and it lies in this Thessalonian verse. Now, the second text says that the effect of the gospel when received in power, in addition to what Paul, the same writer, said in Thessalonians, he tells us that it regenerates a man's nature. Generate means to create, and regenerate means to do it again. That's what it does when it's received in power, and that the old things of the old first generation, that is the first creation, passes away, and everything becomes new. A set of new things takes the place of the old set that was placed aside when the Holy Ghost regenerated the heart to belief in the gospel. Then the third text says that there are those who have heard the gospel in word only, and they are called Christians. They are Christians in name. That's what nominal means. It means in name. But that actually they have not been changed fundamentally at all, and they are still old, that is. They are still dead. I said that generation means to create, to make alive, to generate, and regenerate means to do it again. And the reason God has to do it again is because sin came and we died, and he has to do this life-giving job the second time in order that we might live. But that there are some who have only a name to have this change. They've not been changed fundamentally at all. They're still old. They still belong to the old life, actually. And the Holy Ghost says they have a name to live, but actually they are dead. Now I have given a brief exegesis of these three verses, these three great major truths that lie here, because I want you to see what it means to have the gospel come in word, and then what it means to have the gospel come in power, and then the danger that it shall be only in word and not in power, and then what we should do about it. Now that it's possible to be a believer in the gospel, but have that gospel powerless within us and have it in word only, I say is taught in the scriptures. Our Lord Jesus taught it in Israel. He told them bluntly and frankly and went on telling them till they got them so angry they killed him. He told them that they were dead. He said, you're dead, you're like dead men's bones. He said, you polish and paint your sepulchres, but they're full of dead men's bones. He said, you stand and make your long prayers, you put on your religious robes, but you don't have anything. They looked at each other and tugged at their long beards and determined that as soon as it was possible to do it without a mob scene resulting, they'd kill Jesus. Well, they killed him finally. God raised him from the dead the third day and set him at his own right hand. They thought they were murdering a man, but God was offering a sacrifice. That's the difference. That's the irony of fighting against the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, now I'd just like to talk to you a little while about Christian religion as a word game, because that's what it is in too many places. You say, I know that very well, because I used to belong to the thus and thus denomination. I know that was true then. They were dead as could be. The pastor didn't believe in the virgin birth. And somebody else says, yes, before I came to have a new road, I used to go to a church where they didn't believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch. They were scoundrels. They were liberals. But do you know that the Holy Ghost isn't talking about liberals at all here? He isn't talking about people that deny the truth of the scripture. He's talking about people that admit the truth of the scripture, and they receive the gospel as a fact. And don't deny it, and support it, and follow it, and kick the pastor out if he didn't preach it. But it's only reached them in words, because their religion is simply a word game. Now, you know what's the difference between a game and work, a game and serious action. A game is something you do, and that is you create a problem, and then you have fun solving it. You ever think about that? Now, I don't know much about hockey, as I've said, but baseball I grew up with a bat between a rifle and a ball bat. I grew up with one in one hand, the other in the other as a kid in Pennsylvania. And I know little about baseball, so we'll use that for illustration and show how the baseball creates a problem, and then solves it, and spend millions of dollars solving a problem that didn't exist until they created it. Now, here's the way it is. You see, they decide, a fellow decides, now let's create a problem. A fellow named Abner Doubleday, he created a problem. He said, now I'll tell you what we'll do. This will be our problem. We'll put one man out here with a ball, and put another man 60 feet away from him to catch the ball, and he throws it to him. Now the problem is for this man with the ball to throw it so the other man catches it, but in the meantime, in order to make it tough for this man to get the ball through to the other man, we're going to put a fellow in there with a stick. And this man with the stick will stand there, and he'll try to keep that ball from getting to that other man's mitt. Now that's our problem. That's what we'll work on. One fellow out here will be called the pitcher, or the hurler, and the ball will be called the bean, or the apple, or the ball. And this man will wind up and gyrate, and then throw, and the other man will catch, but this fellow with the stick, he's the devil in between, and what he's trying to do is to keep him from catching it. So that's the way they do it. Now they've got a problem there, but the problem never existed, you know. There was polio, and cancer, and there was war, and there was starvation, and there was everything, but they had to create a problem, and then put the healthiest man in the world out to play at it. And that was the problem, didn't exist until Abner Doubleday created it over in, what's the name of the town in Pennsylvania, or New York. Well, anyhow, now this happens, and this fellow throws this ball, and the fellow with the stick hauls off and strikes. And if he connects with it, that problem is solved in his favor. He's having fun. They feel, they hear the sound of the ball on wood, and they say, I think it sounds like a homer, but there are nine or eight other men out there that determine that he's not going to have that solution. They're going to have it. So there they are, the shortstop, the three basemen, and the three outfielders, they're all there ready to catch that ball. And if anybody can get that ball before it gets down, the fellow with the stick is out, that is, his problem suddenly blew up in his face. Now that's the way we do, and you know, we spend millions of dollars solving that problem hundreds of times of a sunny afternoon. Now, I don't think it's sinful to watch a ball game, but I have a lot of sympathy for that president of a certain college years ago who refused to allow a football team to travel. He said, why should we spend money to send out a lot of healthy young fellas with a bag full of wind, and to have them chase it all around and carry it and kick it over a field? Couldn't they find something better to do? Well, now that's a game, and some people like games. I used to like games before I got too old and creaky to play them, but I admit it, I never took it seriously, never take a game seriously, because it's play. Or they'd have a lot of activity and a lot of noise and an infinite amount of perspiration, not to say a consumption of tubs of popcorn. And in Chicago, where I went two or three, four times to see a game in 31 years, I noticed also a prodigious amount of beer was also slousing down in the gullets of the various enraptured onlookers. And in other matters, they had there eating them hot dogs and other things. Well, now they're all having a lot of fun. And the fella down there in the black suit, he was determining whether or not who on whose side the solution was, whose problem it was and whose fault. And when he gave his vote in favor of the team with the red socks, he got roundly abused by the boys with the white socks. Now that's a word game, or that's a game, not a word game, but a game. And I just give you that little outline in order that you might see how a game is carried on. And the one thing about a game is that nobody's any better nor any worse for whatever happens. I used to, in October, every October I go down to New York and I have my week there in a church. And they billet me in the Manhattan Hotel and they have televisions in every room. And Sunday after, I mean, the afternoons, it's just the time when they're having the World Series. And I used to sit and watch those boys. You know, I'd get in an inning or two in between other things. And poor softy me, I always pitied the fellow that lost no matter who he was. Because they were such big, good-looking fellows and I hated to see any of them lose. You know, some pitcher there that just looked as if he'd walked right out of a magazine ad. And he'd stand there, you know, and look serious, shake it off, shake it off. He didn't want that, and didn't want that one. He shook everything there was off. And then the pitcher throwed whatever he wanted to, or threw whatever he wanted to anyhow. It comes so naturally when you're talking about baseball, even though it's grammatically out. But anyway, um, nobody's any better and nobody's any worse for it. Whoever side is on, if the man with the stick wins, he's not any better off. He just goes home and if his wife doesn't like him, she still doesn't like him. And if he's in debt, he's still in debt. And if he's got a disease, he's still got his disease. And no matter what, if he's got a habit, he still has. He's no better off. And the other fellows, no worse off. Now that's a game. But if a man plants a tree, that tree lives for a hundred years. And if a man cuts down a tree, a tree was and isn't. And if instead of playing, this is war, there's a problem there too. But it's not a problem men have created artificially. It's a real problem. If there was an enemy outside of Toronto, soldiers with guns, ready to come in and take city hall and take over, men would leap to arms within this city. And men who never picked up a gun before would pick it up. And in the name of Canada and Toronto, they'd stand at the street heads and fight to protect the city. Why? Because they knew and would know that if the enemy came and took this city, it would mean slavery and bondage and occupation. When it's a game, whoever wins, it doesn't matter anyhow. But if it's war, it matters tremendously who wins. You have the Olympics. You go to Norway or Squaw Valley, California or wherever it is, and they compete with each other, but it's all games. And when it's all over, they go home. Nobody's any better off nor any worse off because they created their problems before they sent those boys over here to solve them. But when Canadians and Americans and British were fighting Hitler, it did matter. What was the difference between slavery and living on your knees and hailing a hound? Hitler, the two-armed paper hanger with paranoia. It did matter. There's a difference between playing a game and fighting a war. There's a difference between playing a game and planting a garden. And in religion, the temptation of everybody is to take it as a game, the word game. And instead of a baseball or a football, we have other little gadgets that we throw around, words. We write books and buy books and proofread books, sweat over books. We edit magazines. We buy magazines. We subscribe. We write songs. We sing songs. We make prayers. We say prayers. We print sermons. We hear sermons. And this requires, of course, a vast amount of activity and a tremendous lot of money and a good deal of perspiration, particularly in the summertime, and a lot of inconvenience and a good deal, a good deal of money, I say. And yet to a great number of people, they're simply playing the game of religious words. It makes no difference. The giveaway is that the religious word game doesn't change anybody fundamentally. They're not much different from what they were before. Somebody went out and did a little investigating, and though there isn't anything, somebody won't spend time investigating. And these boys are usually college professors. They investigated the, what do they call it, ethics of religious men or men who wasn't religious. Business ethics. Now they say, we're going to take a hundred men who are devout churchmen, and we're going to investigate their ethical standards in their business. Then we're going to take a hundred scoundrels who never went to church and laugh at the whole business and wouldn't give a dime to support any preacher. And we're going to investigate their ethics to see how they run their business. And after a while and the spending of a lot of money and a lot of investigating, you know what they came up with? They said, by and large, there isn't one bit of difference between the ethical business standards of the religious churchman and the non-religious man who never enters the church door. Now that was the United States. I don't know whether it's the same here. But I would suppose that you don't get sanctified by crossing the border. I never did. I got in a lot of trouble sometimes with customs men. But outside of that, I never felt I was any holier going either direction. We're just human beings, brethren, wherever we live and whatever our nationality. If it's true one place, it's likely to be true another. So what are these men doing, these hundred men that have been investigated? They're just playing a word game. They go to church. Maybe they're ushers, and up and down the aisle they go looking dignified with a boot and arrow on. Or they're preachers, and they stand up and take a text and breathe through their nose heavily. And preach the word. And people say, wasn't that a sermon? And they shake his hand and say, I was blessed. But he goes out, and the next morning his business ethics haven't been changed a bit. He's had fun playing the word game. We set up a problem and solve it. We throw the ball, and somebody else with the stick hits it. And when it's all over, we say, boy, our church is growing, and we're known in the city. We're a great church, aren't we? And let's see what we can do to make the thing look better. So, thank God, we're going to paint the thing one of these days. Someday you're going to come and won't know it. It's going to be white up there instead of whatever that is. And you're going to pay for it later as we'll get braced. But um, that's the word game, my brother, and that's the word game. And now I, for my part, I don't know how what you think about it, but I want nothing to do with it. I want nothing to do with that which isn't real. I want nobody fooling me with unreality. Nobody come and paw over me if he doesn't mean it. Nobody lie to me in the name of etiquette. Nobody ask me for a dime to support something that I don't believe in. No man asked me to believe in a religion that I've got to take on somebody else's authority. If Jesus Christ can't change me, if my Christianity isn't real, if I, if the problem I face isn't a real problem, if it doesn't mean heaven and hell and death in the grave, then I don't want to be monkeying with it at all. I'd rather take a walk and listen to the birds sing than listen to any man preach who tries to smooth me down or to put up a problem that doesn't exist and play with it. But that's what's going on all the time. And the giveaway of this religious word game is that no one I say is fundamentally different. The same old principles motivate the life. A man comes and says he's a Christian and joins the church, but his natural appetites are just the same, only they're refined a little bit, that's all. His egotism hasn't been destroyed. It's only less gross than it was before. You know, it's possible for an egotist to get a college education and be a refined egotist, skillful at hiding the fact that he is an egotist. And he can refine that still more by getting converted. And the word of the Lord will come to him, but it won't come to him in power. All it does is refine his egotism. And then there's selfishness. Exactly the same selfish fellow he was before, only he's purified his selfishness a little bit now. And he loves gain, just as he always did. He just rubs his hands to see the money come in. Only now he gives a little of it to the Lord, gets it off his income tax, and feels that he is a saint, but all he's done is what any sinner might do. And pride, but now he has a different object. You see, the trouble is the roots of the life aren't changed. That's why we're half dead. That's why we're where we are. The roots of the life haven't been changed. We're growing in the same old root as we were before. Only we're religious now. We carry a hymn book or a Bible under our arms. And that's why Christians are so largely ineffective, brethren. That's why Communists are so tremendously effective, because they believe in what they're doing. They say, there's a problem we didn't create it, but there it is, let's lick it. And we Christians have to fight that and face it and win over them. But they mean business and we're fooling. We don't, we can't. God won't accept any, any tossing things around or playing with words or songs or sermons or books. What happens to a man when he's really born anew? We've used that word born again in evangelistic circles and Christian businessmen circles and Gideon circles and youth for Christ circles and gospel circles and missionary. We've used it until it doesn't have any more meaning left. It's worn as thin as an old 1914 dime. But it's still in the book there. It's still there, brother. You've still got to be born again. That is regenerated, made a new creature. Those are the same words or different words meaning the same thing. And when a man has been regenerated, renewed, made over, recreated, born anew, born from above, born again, what does happen to him? When religion ceases to be a game and becomes a serious reality. When instead of playing a game, he's fighting a war. When the word of God has come in power, a number of things happens and time gets away and I'm going to have to run over rapidly. One is this. It is immediately changed from the external to the internal, from externals to internals. Our trouble is externality everywhere we go, everywhere we go. The automobile manufacturers keep poor automobile owners on their toes continually by changing just one little button inside the big machine. And the fella has an old button. That's just a year old. I got to trade this in. It's external, you see, and if your house has one level and you have a friend who has a split level, you're worried until you get a split level. I was born in a split level house, log cabin. And I literally was, and so was my wife, although she doesn't want me to tell it. But she was born in a log cabin too, and a different log cabin, of course, in two different states. Then now, we go from the externals to the internals. Our hope, our interest, everything that we're absorbed with and in is internal instead of external. And we see the emptiness of the appearance of things and of forms. You know, God said that God looketh on the inside of a man and man looketh on the outside. And the new man sees the transcendency of things, of things eternal, and the transiency of things temporal and belonging to the earth. And he sees the inadequacy of everything intellectual. And he sees the value of things that are above. That happens to a man. He doesn't have to have an education, he doesn't have to be cultured, he just has to be born anew. And when the Holy Ghost regenerates him, he sees this. And the Holy Ghost shifts his interests into a new sphere, the kingdom of God. And the love of life shifts from self to God. He is dedicated now to the honor of another. He was once dedicated, bitterly dedicated, to his own honor. But now he's dedicated to the honor of God. And he's changed in this too. He desires social approval. He used to, I say, desire social approval. He wanted to be approved by the people. And now that's all changed. And he wants to be approved by God Almighty. That's all. Once in one of the big cities, I think New York, in what they call commuter trains. You know what they are. He said that there was a ticket seller there. Or not a ticket seller, but a ticket taker, whatever you call him. He was at the gate taking the tickets. And the people were coming along. And it was in sight of an office building. And they queued up and everybody was anxious to get home. And the train was in danger of pulling away. And the ticket taker was looking at each ticket and punching it. Demanded each one of someone to crowd by and all. He said, I want to see your tickets. And so they got to saying unpleasant things about him. And somebody said to him finally, Mister, you're not very popular with this crowd, are you? No, he said, I'm not very popular with this crowd, obviously. But he said, I want you to look up here on the 14th floor. He said, do you see that window there with the shade? He said, yes. Well, he said, now my boss lives up there. And he said, he's been known to watch me from up there. And he said, if I get careless and let him go through, he said, I won't be very popular with him. And from him I get my pay. So he said, regardless of what these people think, I want to be popular with the boss. Well, now let me change that around a bit and say that as long as a man is a natural man, he wants to be popular with the crowd. But when he is born new, he says, I don't care so much now about the crowd, but I want to stand approved of God. I want God to say in that day, this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased and I can well afford to stand the angry attacks of the people if I can only keep right with God. Well, then, his attitude toward earthly goods completely changed. He no longer feels that he's a proprietor owning anything. He feels he's a steward who just has something for the time being. You know, there's a big difference in your life. And it won't mean you'll have any less, but it'll mean you'll have a different attitude. Some Christians feel that they are, that their God, their proprietors, they own the joint and they give God part of it and feel they've done God's service. And they have, I suppose. But there are other people who get blessed and they see it differently. They say, Oh God, I'm not a proprietor. I'm a steward. This is all mine. And I'm serving thee. And I don't give thee an amount that's mine. I simply give you back what's thine and you let me keep enough to run my family and my business. Now that's a different attitude, but it's the only right attitude. As long as we imagine we own anything, that thing will curse us. As soon as we know that we own nothing, it's God's. And that's what happens to a man when he becomes a Christian. And then he receives and lives by a new moral code. A man who knows God, Oh, I grieve over the situation that's loose in the earth these times. You missionaries going out, God bless you, you're going to have to fight not the devil out there so much as changing standards. Changing standards. In the early days, in the old times, a young man used to go out and if an old chief had nine wives, they said, Get rid of, get rid of every one but the first. Nowadays they talk about culture. Well, but it's contrary to their culture. It's not the way we're trying to impose our culture on them. And what is a case of downright compounded adultery becomes excused now. The psychologists and psychiatrists and sociologists and professors have made sin cute and real and say what? Just a different culture, that's all. Sodom had a different culture too. Sodom's culture I won't go into now, I couldn't without blushing before a mixed audience. That was their way of looking at things. And when a stranger came at night, they said, Bring him out, we want to know him. And the angels of God smoked the place and pulled Lot in and said, We'll handle these. And later fire came down from heaven and burned the whole thing into ashes. But all around people are saying, Well, it's their culture, it's their way of looking at things. Don't try to make Canadians out of them or Americans or British. Leave them where they are, only get the gospel to them. If the gospel doesn't change a man and transform a man and take the evil out of the man, he's not got the gospel. The gospel is a transforming power. Otherwise you have a name to live in, you're dead. A certain fellow, this came out in all the papers, a certain fellow, a gangster out in California, a Jew, by the name of Mickey Cohen. He heard about the Graham campaign and he decided to go to hear the man. He went. And he showed an interest. And he talked to the evangelist. And finally, Mr. Graham said to him, Well, Mickey, if you give your heart to Jesus Christ, you're going to have to do some changing. And he rubbed it on him hard. And he said, Am I going to have to give up my Jewish religion? He said, You're going to have to become a Christian. Well, he flounced out angry and never went back. Now we excuse it and say, Well, but tell him, No, no, no, no, he doesn't have to change anything. Just believe on Christ. Thank God Billy didn't do that. He lost a friend and made an enemy, but he kept his own garment clean on the thing. I only mention this because it's in all the newspapers and magazines and everybody knows about it. Now, the man who's been really born anew, he lives by a new moral code, I say. He doesn't go to the psychiatrist or the psychologist or the sociologist or the anthropologist and say, What do you think of the Sermon on the Mount? He says, Ipsy Dixit. That was the phrase they used to use in the olden times when a Greek philosopher gathered a bunch of young men around him. And they believed in that philosopher so completely that all they had to answer was, Ipsy Dixit. He said it. Oh, they said, Did he say it? And that was all. There was no argument. If he said it, it was so. Well, I never knew the philosopher I trusted that much, but I know a man I trust that much. That holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called a son of God. I can trust him. And so my moral code is Ipsy Dixit. Who said it? Jesus Christ said it. You've heard it said so and so, but I say unto you. You've heard it said, I say unto you, Ipsy Dixit. I said it. He said it. And that's your moral code. You don't go to the philosopher and find out what Schopenhauer thought about it. I don't care what that old scoundrel thought about it. I don't even care what Plato thought about it. Jesus Christ is the one who saves me if I'm saved. He's the one who transforms me. He's the one who stands with bleeding hands pleading for me. He's the one who shall speak and raise me from the dead. He's the one who shall stand my advocate above my savior by the throne of love. So I don't care what George Dewey says about it. And I don't care what Julian Huxley says about it. And I don't care what HG Wells says about it. What they say in New York University or Columbia or Toronto. He said it, Ipsy Dixit. And the man who's a Christian doesn't ask somebody else. He says, did Jesus Christ say that? Well then I'm going to obey him. And all this he acts upon and lives by in his total life. Not in his public life only, but in his total life. In private as well as public. And at any cost to himself, he'll follow Jesus Christ and carry his cross if he's truly born new, regardless of the cost to property or cost in pain or even in life itself. Now there's a danger, my friend, I bring this to a close. There's a danger of our falling short here. Millions, millions have a name to live. I can't keep statistics in my head overnight. Maybe I ought to be glad for that, because you've got too many figures in your head, you haven't room for anything else. But sometimes it's embarrassing when you want to call them up and they won't come. I forget how many million church members there are in the United States. Is it 65 million? Oh, it's more than that. It must be more than that, because there's 180 million people there, 190 in the new census, and I guess 60-some percent of them go to church. I talked to an Englishman from London, either this week or last. He came to see me here. He was an editor from London, wanted to talk with me. So I came down. We had a chat here. And he got to talking about the news they got out of America and England. And I said, yes, I know. I said, I am rather amused, as well as somewhat embarrassed, to get magazines from London telling about the religious revival in the United States. And I quoted to him, I said, I caught a magazine published in London. I couldn't remember the name of it. Maybe it was a good thing. And I said, I read an article in there saying that there was a literal forest fire from coast to coast in the United States of religious revival, great spiritual upheaval. Well, I said, I lived in the United States 60 years, and I traveled all up and down the United States, from Florida to Seattle and from New York City and Boston and on to San Diego, and I have never seen it. He just shook his head. Never seen it. There are millions who have a name to live, but they're dead. You say they're the liberals. No, liberals don't have any name to live. They don't pretend to live. They say, I don't believe in that stuff. I believe just be good and find the fires within you and love your brother, integrate and be nice and you'll be all right. No, they're not talking about liberals. I'm talking about people who are supposed to be Christians and who have received the gospel, but received it in word only. It has never come in power because it has none of the fruits of power about it. Nobody thinks this could be true of himself. Brethren, it'll pay us to do some heart searching in this terrible hour. The only safe thing to do is to surrender to the power of the gospel. Surrender to the words of Jesus Christ for your life, for your life at home, your business life, your property life, your private life, your personal life, your secret life. Surrender to it. And don't let an area of your life as big as a postage stamp belong to the devil. Give everything to Jesus Christ. Everything. Say, it'll cost me my job. All right, God will find another job for you. I've been young and now I'm old and I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed big in bread. Somebody else said I'll get stuck in jail if I follow the Lord. All right, go to jail and sing as Paul and Silas did. I'll lose property. All right, lose your property. Better by all means live in a rented house, and a poor one at that, and have a mansion on the avenue with questions and uncertainties and moral spots all over it. Far and away better come clean and get right, pay up, clean up, confess up, than to go along covered up, having a name to live and be dead. I yearn for this church. I yearn for it. Here we are situated where they can come from everywhere, now known all over this city. And if the great God Almighty could come and would come and revive us again, and waves of power and light and hope and confession and moral elevation could come upon us, we could, we could become a standard for the city. But it's got to come one at a time, one at a time. You must get right by yourself. You must do that confessing. You must do that paying up. You must do that cleaning up. You must bring that business into line with the teachings of Jesus. You must seek his face. Remember, the word can come without power and leave us with a name to live but dead. The word can come with power, transform, change, regenerate, make the old things new, and make us examples to the world. Which do you want? Let's pray.