What Is Your Name?

The Bible says in he, and that's the man Jacob, whom we'll study tonight, he rose up that night and took his two wives and his two women servants and his eleven sons and passed over the four day box. And he took them and sent them over the brook and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day, and when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh.

And the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him, and he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel. For as a prince hath thou prayed with God, it was me that hath prevailed. And Jacob asked him and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.

And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place, Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my likeness preserved. And as he passed over Peniel, the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.

Go back to verse twenty-seven, if you would, please. It will be our text. So the Bible says, and he said unto him, and here's our subject for tonight, What is thy name? Thank you so much.

You may be seated. Let's bow our heads in hearts and pray. And ask the Lord to bless our time together tonight.

What is your name? Now, Father, please help me tonight as I preach the Bible. Lord, I am a nothing and a nobody, and I need the help and the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit of God upon me as I preach thus therefore from this pulpit. So help me tonight.

And then, Lord, help these my friends at the Double Springs Baptist Church as they listen to the Bible. And, Lord, I pray that you will do tonight what only you can do. I pray that you'd meet the need of every heart.

And, Father, that tonight you will do what my sermon cannot do. And so I pray that you'd go in and out of these pews and aisles, and, Lord, you'd speak to our hearts, and you would condense us tonight. Comfort us where we need comforting, and, Lord, change us certainly where we need changing.

Use the word of God as a mirror tonight. Show us who we really are and what we need to do. And we'll thank you for it.

For it's in Jesus' name we ask it and pray. Amen. Let's suppose tonight that before the service I passed out some ink pens and some little white three-by-five cards.

And on those little white three-by-five cards, let's suppose when I got in the pulpit tonight, like I am right now, I were to look at you and say, I want you to pull out your three-by-five card, pull out an ink pen, and I want you to number one through ten and write down your top ten favorite characters in all the wonderful word of God. Now, you can go from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22-21, and you can pick any person, any character, any man, woman, teenager, boy or girl in all the Bible, and you can put them as one of your top ten favorite Bible characters. Now, there's no doubt in my mind somebody would write down the man David because he was a man after God's own heart.

There's no doubt somebody would write down one of my favorite characters in the Bible, that wild, spooky-eyed preacher by the name of John the Baptist. No doubt somebody would write down the Apostle Paul. No doubt somebody would write down John the Beloved.

Somebody would write down Shadrach, Meshach, Nebednego, Myshach, Yershach, Nebungalow, whatever you call them, somebody would write their names down. Somebody would write down perhaps the name of Joseph. Perhaps somebody would write down the name of Noah or Moses or Abraham or something like that.

And I can promise you one thing, I'm not real smart, but I promise you, and I don't think I'm real stupid either, I don't believe there'd be one person under the sound of my voice who'd pull out a pen and a three-by-five card and write down the word, Joseph. Because before Genesis chapter 32, I'll be honest with you, you wouldn't have spit on this fellow if he was on fire because he really was a young man who cared about one person, and that was himself. He didn't care about his family.

He didn't care about Jehovah God. He didn't care about the Bible. As a matter of fact, he was a young man that ran from God.

He ran from himself. He ran from his family. And up until Genesis chapter 32, here was a young man who cared about one person, and it was himself.

But I want to show you a couple of things about this man's life. But if we are going to understand Genesis chapter 32, we must get the context to where he is in his life. A couple of chapters before this, we find out that God comes down to a man by the name of Isaac with his beautiful wife, Rebekah.

And He says, Rebekah, you have conceived, and you're going to have some boys. But God did not say that there are two boys, two twins in your womb. He said, Rebekah, there are two nations in your womb.

He said there's going to be bitterness and anxiety and animosity and turmoil that are going to be frustrated. One's going to fear the other, and so on and so forth. And there's going to be great, great trials between these two boys.

And then God made a remarkable prophetic statement. He said the eldest is going to serve the youngest. Now, in all American culture, we say within ourselves, well, so what? Well, so this.

That was a big deal in the Old Testament economy because the eldest, even though they were twins and they were born at the same time for the most part, the eldest boy was born seconds and moments before young Jacob. And he had all the right blessings, benefits, and privilege of being the firstborn. And God tells us that the eldest was actually going to serve the youngest.

And you know that when Rebekah went to the hospital and those boys were being delivered, the Word of God tells us that the hand of Jacob reached forth from the womb and grabbed the heel of his brother Esau. And from that moment, you mark her down, those boys couldn't stand one another. They argued and fought and fought like a bunch of cats and dogs.

They didn't look alike, act alike, smell alike. They didn't even have the same taste, the same likes or dislikes. These boys were 180 degrees diametrically opposed the one to the other.

The Bible tells us that Esau was a hairy man. And if the Word of God says you're hairy, you're hairy, friend. And so here's this hairy fella.

And the Bible says he was a man of the field. That means that he liked to grow crops. He was a farmer.

He was a hunter. He was one of these fellows that liked to get up about this time of year at 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the morning when it's freezing cold and put deer skin all over him, get a muzzle on him, shimmy up a tree like an anemic squirrel and wait for the big one to get away. That's the way that Esau was.

But his brother was just the opposite. His brother didn't like to kill things. His brother liked to cook things.

He was one of these little lip-wristed mama's boys who ran around with a Don Juan suave hairdo and a little white apron. And he just was kind of a pretty little prim and topper, had nice manners, ate with one hand on the table, no elbows on the table, had a napkin in his lap. And those fellows just could not get along.

I mean, one of them was a daddy's boy and one of them was a mama's boy and they fought and fought and fought all throughout the Bible. Well, you know that Jacob lied and was deceptive and deceived his older brother Esau out of his birthright. Then two chapters later, we know that he lied and deceived and was deceptive and his mother Rebekah helped him come up with this little concoction and he deceived his way into receiving the blessing.

And now, in two chapters in your Bible, he steals a birthright that did not belong to him. Two chapters later, he steals a blessing that did not belong to him. And there was a great big problem in their family.

It was the problem of favoritism. The Bible tells us that Rebekah loved Jacob, that Isaac loved Esau. They knew it, the boys knew it, God knew it, everybody else knew it, and it caused even more animosity in the hearts of these two boys.

But you see, one day Jacob did something rather foolish. He pushed his brother's last button. And his brother gets home, finds out not only has he stolen the birthright a couple of chapters and a couple of months and years earlier in the Bible, but now he steals the blessing.

He had the gall to go behind his back, to lie to say that he was Esau, and to have his father, whose eyes were dim and he could barely see, had his father give him the blessing that rightfully belonged to his oldest brother Esau. And Esau said, listen, that's it, I'm going to be avenged of my birthright. I'm going to be avenged of this blessing.

I'm going to kill him. I'm going to slice his throat, and my food will taste sour in my belly, and my pillow will be rock hard at night, and I'll get no sleep until my brother is a dead man. Rebekah heard about that.

She ran upstairs and she said, Jacob, pack your dirty dead son, get your shoes on and get out of town. Don't you come back in five days. Don't you even come back in five years.

As a matter of fact, don't you ever look back because your brother will never be happy until you're dead, laying in a ditch somewhere. He'll never be happy until you're nothing more than an old, bloody, cold, dead carcass. And the Bible tells us that Jacob packed his bags and he ran for the high country.

Now, there are several things I do not know about him. I do not know how old he was when his brother Esau vowed to kill him. I have no idea.

I don't know if he was 18. I don't know if he was 20. I don't know if he was 35.

But I do know this. He had no wife. He had no children.

No heritage. No houses. No land.

Absolutely, positively nothing. He was just a young man on the run. I do not know how long he has been running.

But it has been for some time because when we catch him in Genesis chapter 32, he's got two wives, two women servants, and 11 sons. So I don't know how long he's been gone, but he's been as busy as a Bible bumblebee, that's for sure. And the Bible says that he's got a large family.

Now, notice what the Word of God says in verse 22, would you? Genesis 32 and verse 22. And he rose up that night and took his two wives and his two women servants and his 11 sons and passed over the four jayboxes. That's a little crooked river, if you will.

And the Bible says he took them and sent them over the brook and sent over that he had. Now, notice verse 24. It's key to the text.

And Jacob was left alone. Notice it again. And Jacob was left alone.

And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he clutched the hallow of his thigh, and the hallow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, and he wrestled with him. And so the Bible tells us that he takes his wife and his women servants, his concubines, if you will, and he takes his children, anybody and everybody else that's with him.

He sends them over the four jayboxes, and he comes back across and nestles down in the cold, cool mud of the waters of the jaybox river. The Bible says that he's going to kind of settle down for a long winter's nap. You must remember he's under much frustration He's been under much pressure, and there's been many problems, and he's trying to get a little bit of rest, but no rest was given him that night because the Bible says there wrestled with him a man.

Now please understand, at the beginning of this story, he did believe it to be a mere man, but by the end of the story, he realized that he had gotten in a fight with somebody bigger and better than he was. He did not call him a mere man, but he named the place in Yale for I've seen God face to face. And I'll remind you, most of the theologians will agree, this is what we call a Christophany or a Theophany.

It's not an angel of the Lord. It's the angel of the Lord. It is an Old Testament appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus Christ did not come into existence in Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 2 out of the womb of the Virgin Mary. He's always been God. He's God right now.

He'll forevermore be God. And the Jehovah of our Old Testament is the Jesus of our New Testament. And the Bible tells us that Jacob and almighty God were wrestling and arguing and toiling and laboring until the brink of death.

Now Jacob was giving him a pretty good run, if you will. The Bible tells us that as they were rolling around in the mud and bleeding and hollering and just kind of walking back and forth, the Bible tells us that the God of the Bible reached forth with His sovereign fingers and touched the hollow of his thigh. If I can say it this way, He touched his hip.

His hip was dislocated. His hip hopped out of stockings with his head down south. And the Bible tells us that no doubt, great excruciating pain was in this man's body, but he kept on fighting.

He just had some bulldog tenacity, man. He came to the end of his rope, he tied a knot, and he kept on fighting, and he kept on arguing, and he kept on rolling around until the breaking of the day, until the wee early hours of the morning when the sun began to come up on the horizon. Now notice what your Bible says.

This is key to understanding the message tonight. Notice, please, in verse number 25. And when He, this is the angel, almighty God, showed that He prevailed not against Him, He touched the hollow of His thigh, and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as He wrestled with Him.

Now notice, and He said, this is almighty God speaking to Jacob, and He said, let me go for the day breaking. And He said, I will not let thee go, notice, except thou bless me. That's a marvelous thing, ladies and gentlemen, because if you study your Bible, you will find out this is one of the first times in the life of Jacob that he cared anything about the blessing of God.

He always served Himself. He was always a lying, defective, conniving young man, and here was a fellow who finally realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew, he was tired of running, he was tired of waking up every morning with no peace, with no joy, with no relaxation. As empty as a burnt out volcano, here's a man who went to bed at night with no peace, he dreamt about no peace, he woke up with no peace, and he finally got tired of that, and when he realized that God was calling him, when he realized that he was wrestling with God, he says, listen, I will let you go, but it will not be until you give me your blessing.

Now we can say anything we want to about the life of Jacob up to Genesis chapter 32, but this was a turning point. This was a pivotal point in the life and in the ministry, not just of one man, but an entire nation of people called the Israelites, God's chosen people, the Jews, and it all centers back to this one focal point in your Bible, Genesis chapter 32, when Jacob said, I will let you go, but it will not be until you, the God of the Bible, bless me, a little insignificant peon that needs your power. Now hear me tonight, if I were to take a vote, if I were to ask you tonight, how many of you desire God to bless your family? How many of you desire God to bless your wife? How many of you desire God to bless your kiddos? How many of you desire God to bless your marriage? If you have any brain matter between your two God-given earlobes, you would raise your hand, and no doubt, 100% of the people I'm preaching to tonight would say, I want God to bless me.

If I can say it this way, Jacob was praying for personal revival. As Brother Robertson said this morning, we cannot control national revival. We can't even control local church revival, but we can control whether we have revival or not in our hearts.

And Jacob looked at him and said, Lord, I'm sick of running. I'm sick of the fear, and the doubt, and the anxiety, and the frustration. Would you bless me? Fill me with your Spirit.

Give me revival. Give me your power. Whatever you want to call it.

Jacob was tired of living for himself, and he wanted to start to live for God. And so just this voice, as Jacob gave God an ultimatum, so God gave him one. Notice what your Bible says, before God ever blessed him, in verse number 27, would you please? He just says, I'll not let you go until you bless me.

And notice what God said, and he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. He said, thy name should be called no more Jacob, but Israel. For as a prince, hath thou power with God, and with men, and hath prevailed motives.

And Jacob asked him and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. Jacob said, Well, before I give you my name, he said, What's yours? And Almighty God looked at him and said, Wait a minute.

I'm not the one on trial here, Jacob. He said, Do you want revival? Yes, sir. Do you want me to bless you? Yes, sir.

Do you want me to do something in your family and in your marriage like I've never done before? Yes, sir. Do you want to be incubate of filth and filled with the spirit? Jacob, let me ask you a question, son. Do you really want my blessing? And I believe he said with all of his heart, and I believe he meant it, Yes, I want you, the God of heaven, to bless me.

And God said, All right. If you really want my blessing, let me ask you one small, simple question that has one small, simple answer. What is thy name? Now, we read that rather generically as we peruse through the Bible and we think within ourselves, You know what? That's not a real big deal.

And you know what? It was a very big deal. God was not interested in the surface name, Jacob. He knew what his name meant.

It's kind of like in the Garden of Eden when God said, Adam, where art thou? He wasn't looking. He knew where he was, but he was going to play a silly little game for a while. And so when God said, What is your name? He knew his name was Jacob.

He was not looking for a surface answer. He was not looking for Greg or Steve or Don or John or Billy Bob or any other name. He was not looking for a surface answer for God knew what the word and the name Jacob actually meant.

If you believe anything you want to about that Bible sitting in your lap, Jacob knew what his name meant as well. And I do not believe Jacob kind of bowed his back. I don't believe he began to cross his arms and huff and puff like the magic dragon and say, well, what's it to you, big shot? I don't believe he did that.

I believe with fear and trembling he bowed his head, his knees hit that glass, his palms began to get sweaty, but couldn't talk, almost like he was sucking on cotton swabs. He had cotton mouth. And he looked at God and he said, My name is Jacob.

And I believe with all of my heart that was a defining moment in this man's life. You know what God was trying to get Jacob to do? To get honest about who he was. Do you know what Jacob knew about his name? The word Jacob in your Bible means deceitful child.

And Jacob had known all of his life that he was lower down than a snake's navel in a wagon track. He knew good and well if he were to die at that moment, you'd have had to put him in his casket with a corkscrew. He was so crooked.

He was wicked. He was vile. He was deceptive.

He cared about no one but himself. And the Bible tells us that God said, Jacob, you owe my blessing. Jacob, you owe revival.

Then you better get honest about who you are, what you are, and where you are. And God never blessed him until he simply died. And do you know why many of our fundamental Baptist churches are not experiencing old-fashioned, heaven-sent, heartfelt revival in the day and age in which we live? It's simply because we harbor sin in our hearts and we won't get honest about who we are.

We change everything. We relegate sin to nothing more than problems or habits or good in the making or a myth at that. And we get to the place where we will not get honest with God.

We will not turn from our wicked ways as we preached on from 2 Chronicles 7, 14 this morning. And we get to the place where we're stale, we're cold, we're formalistic, we're no better than a Catholic church, and we have the idea that man is us for and no more. And it doesn't make any difference if we have revival or not.

And I'm telling you, we'll never see one. We'll never have one. We'll never experience one until we fall on our face in old-fashioned humility and get honest with the God of the Bible.

And if you're not willing to get honest tonight, you're not willing to have revival tonight. I wonder what your name is tonight. I wonder who's going to have to fall on their face and say, Dear God, you know, before I ever tell you, that I am bitter in my heart towards somebody.

And I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, doctors tell us more and more, it's not what we're eating that's killing us, but it's what's eating us that's killing us. It's been said that adultery has slain its thousands, but may it be said that bitterness has slain its kin. Ladies and gentlemen, I wonder tonight if you're going to have to confess that your name is bitter.

I wonder tonight, mister, if you've got a hot-headed temper, you say, Well, I only blow up every now and then at the house. That's all right, but I don't want to take the shotgun one time and go off the road somebody's head and clean off their shoes. What you can say in a fit of fury and a fit of rage can ruin your marriage forever, ladies and gentlemen.

And I wonder if there's somebody in here you've got a hot-headed temper. I wonder if there's somebody in here you're going to have to confess the fact that you've got some things in the house you know you ought not have. I wonder if there's some young people on the side of my voice you're going to have to fall on your face and say, Dear God, you know my name.

I've been disobedient to my parents. I've not been listening. I've been huffing and puffing and mad and cussing out of my breath when I have to take out the garbage and do this, that and the other thing.

And I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, from the back door to the front, we're going to have to get to the place where we get honest with God about who we are and about what we are and about all the mess that we've involved ourselves in as young people. And if we never get honest, we'll never get revived. I was preaching a Revival meeting two years ago at the Great Baptist Temple of Memphis, Tennessee.

To make a long story short, God got in on that first week and I'm telling you, He came down in a mighty way and He began to work. We had 15 or 16 adults saved in the very first week of the Revival meeting, baptized in the meeting and added to the church. It was a marvelous, marvelous thing.

The preacher was about 85 years old at that time and his name was Dr. John Lamar. He had many, many health problems but he's in heaven now and doesn't have a one. Amen.

And I remember when I got there, he's 85 years old and two years ago I was some 24-year-old whippersnapper about like I am now and I showed up to preach at his church and he thought to himself, I wonder if your mother knows you're this far from home. Amen. And I showed up and I'll be honest, it was one of the greatest Revival meetings I've ever been in in my life.

He called me a couple of months ahead of time and asked if I'd come and he said, you be careful when the preacher tells you that because buddy, you're getting a cancellation and that day I got one. Well, I wanted to be a man of my word so I called him back and said, Dr. Lamar, I said I'll be there on such and such a day. He said, well, amen.

He said, I need to tell you two things about my church. He said, number one, we're not big and number two, we ain't got no money. And I said, wonderful, we're going to get along fine.

I said, I'll preach to five people, sit them all down, tell them all to shut up and pay them all and let me preach to them, amen. I said, so we're going to get along just grand. Man, I showed up and God got in on that first service and I'm telling you, we had a marvelous time.

People were saved, baptismal waters were served. At the end of the week, he said, Brother Locke, I've been reluctant to ask you this but I just wondered, can you stay another week? Well, to make a long story short, man, we had a two week revival meeting. Man, we got back and God came down the second week just as well as He did the first week and I had to cancel the camp about a week in advance or so so I could go back.

I couldn't go the very next week because I was scheduled to fly to Providence, Rhode Island. Man, we got back and it was almost like they just kept the meeting going. I mean, the Spirit was still there.

People were still getting saved. You're talking about a wild man. You think I'm a little crazy.

I'm telling you, this 85 year old preacher, he needed some rhythm about like I do. I'm telling you, he was wide open. I'd get in the pulpit and he had this big old black back Bible under his arm, big old family Bible and I'd get in the pulpit to preach and he had a cane and he's just real old feeble guy, eyes weren't working real well, you know.

And when I was a preacher, he'd take that cane preacher, take that Bible and he'd wave them back and forth whenever he got happy. He'd say, hey man, little buddy, hey man, little buddy. Now, if you can't preach through that, you're dead anyhow, amen.

I'm telling you, he got like, stirred me up, man, that cranked me wide open. I wanted to preach all night, but he was doing that. And so, man, I was just a preacher and people didn't say, well, I got up in the pulpit on Wednesday night and I was a preacher and I don't remember what it was and about 10 minutes into my sermon, a fellow comes walking to the back door.

Now, let me stop and say this, I knew he was going to be late. They told me that he worked at a diesel garage, he was a diesel mechanic. They said when he comes, he'll look like a grease monkey and buddy, he did look like a grease monkey, I'll tell you that.

They said, but he needs to be saved. His name is John. His wife was there who he was in the process of getting divorced from.

His little girl, little boy, whichever it was, his father was there. They'd been praying for months, if not years, that John would be saved, that John would be saved, that John would be saved. And he didn't care anything about church and to my knowledge, this would have been the first time he ever knocked on the door of the great Baptist temple on Overton Crossing Highway there in Memphis, Tennessee.

Well, as I think that he come walking in, I'm telling you, from his head to his toe, he was a grease monkey. I mean, you've never seen a man so greasy in your life. But I didn't care, I was just glad he was there and greased and all.

I wanted him to get saved, man. He could have slid down the altar for all I cared, all that grease, man, I wanted him to get right with God. And he was sitting there and I got to preaching.

And I just, you know, had myself a good time and his face, honest, his face got red as a rose. You've never seen anything like it in your life. I've never seen a man's face so red in my life.

I thought the guy was bad. I thought he was going to beat the devil out of me when I got to the pulpit. I mean, that vein popping out of his neck, his eyeballs look like a glorified road map, that's the bloodshot.

And there he stood about the third row to my left and I mean, that face was just so red, that head was shaking back and forth. And I was thinking, this man is crazy. He's demonically possessed.

Something is bad wrong with him. And I'm going to tell you the honest truth I've never told you. Man, I got happy and I hit that pulpit and about the time I hit that pulpit, he went, and passed out right in a few.

I thought, oh, that's preaching there buddy. Amen. That's preaching in the floor.

Man, that's preaching there. They never taught me that in Bible college, but I still like that trick. And so then he went and just passed right out on the floor.

And you know what would happen tonight if somebody on this side of the building passed out while I was preaching? Everybody on this side of the building would look over there. That's just natural. We're naturally born rubberneckers.

We got to turn our rubbernecks around and see what's going on. That's why people drive five miles an hour and back up traffic for 25 miles when a cat got run over. That's what happens on the interstate because we're rubberneckers by birth.

And so all the rubberneckers would turn around looking at what was going on. And since they were looking that way, I figured I'd hop over here so they'd start looking over at me. They didn't pay any attention to me one bit.

I mean, I could have stood on my head and called the peanut butter and quoted ABC's backwards and they wouldn't have remembered one thing about it. They'd say, what about John? Passed out over there. I didn't know what the fellow's problem was.

He had Crohn's disease, I found out. It causes great abdominal pains and then he'd get in a pressurized situation and get under condition or something and get nervous and BOOM! He just passed out right during that sermon. BOOM! He did.

He just passed right out. So everybody was picking him up. You know, his dad and a couple of guys were dragging him to the back door and I thought, you know, this ain't gonna work.

So I did something. Matter of fact, I've never done it since and if I ever have to do it again, I'll think about it because I'm telling you it really cramped me up. I stopped.

I stopped my sermon right in mid-sentence so we could pray for that. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I preach fast. That's quite obvious.

I preach fast. You listen fast. You get done before I do.

You sit there and don't leave before I finish my sermon but I'll tell you one thing, you get me to stop while I'm preaching, that's like putting the brakes on a 747 at 35,000 feet, amen, just stop the whole thing. I'm telling you, I've never done that in my life. So I said, Bob, let's just stop right here.

I said, I'll finish my sermon in a minute. I said, we didn't pray for this fella. I said, nobody's paying attention to me and I said, rightly so.

I said, let's pray for John. And so he started to slip out. I said, let's bow our heads and close our eyes.

And so we did and I had my eyes open like that. You say, brother, you ought not do that. You ought to close your eyes and bow your head.

The blessed God of the Bible says watch and pray and buddy, I've been watching and praying. I'll tell you that right now. And so they slid him out the back door.

You've never seen so many ambulance workers in your life. I believe they had the FBI and CIA there to put that fella on a leather gurney and take him down to the Memphis hospital. Everybody in the world was out there.

What a commotion it was. Well, I jumped back in the sermon I finished, gave the invitation, God bless that night and I didn't figure out I'd ever see that guy again ever, ever, ever. Well, the next night I was a preacher and about 10 minutes into my sermon I guess he walked through that door.

But this night there was a great transformation. He didn't have a little grease on him. He had on a black suit, black pants, black coat, white shirt, solid red top, had on a black Bible, wire rim glasses, had his head all slicked back, had on some black slick shoes and I thought to myself, one night he comes looking like a Greek monk and the next night he comes looking like an independent Baptist evangelist.

I'm telling you, what a transformation. I thought somebody got to him in the hospital and led him to Jesus and I thought, what in the world has happened to this guy? And he comes in and sits down in the same spot where he was the night before. And I'm thinking, move over a little bit.

That's a bad spot. And so, I got to preaching that night on the raising of Lazarus from the dead like I mentioned this morning, and I was talking about how Jesus raised him from the dead and I got to the end of the sermon and the last part of the sermon, the last part was God wants to revive His people. And I preached on that when we get revival, there's some grave clothes that we're going to have to get rid of.

There's some grave clothes and some napkins that we're going to have to throw away. And I preached on all of this. And honestly, your preacher will understand this, he was running shotgun sermons.

He didn't have much of an outline. You just pull the trigger and let the bullets fly all over the building. I'm telling you, I preached on things that night.

I never preached on. I mean, that's the only thing I didn't do was cut off my legs and preach on walking and I thought about it halfway through the sermon. I mean, I just preached on movies, I preached on dancing, I preached on worldly music, I preached on drinking, on smoking, on shacking up.

I preached on everything you can imagine. I just did it all along. I figured, you know what, we're halfway through the second week and we've already taken the love off and we might as well just go ahead and preach.

And man, I tell you, I just preached and preached and had myself a glorious, glorious time. And when I got through, when I came to the invitation, I said, hey, don't you head bowed and eyes closed and I didn't even get a chance to have the people stand up yet. And the pianist came, the organist came, they started playing just as I am, something like that and I was inviting the people to come.

I mean, I hadn't even really gotten the invitation yet and all of a sudden, boom, he popped up. Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me, excuse me. And man, he makes his way out of that key and I've never seen it in my life.

I wish I'd see it every week of my life. I've never in all my ministry seen somebody literally skip to the altar. Have you seen that? I'm telling you, that fellow played skip to the altar in a Baptist church.

I'm not charismatic. I'm telling you, he was in an independent Baptist church. Can you imagine that? And he skipped to the altar.

See, he wasn't in a Baptist church all of his life. He didn't know he wasn't supposed to act that way. And so, he skipped down there and he fell on his knees and I mean, this fellow got to pray and nobody was helping him.

Now, I'm going to tell you the honest truth. I know some people say, yeah, you know, Jim Angus, you said the truth. Well, it's either the truth or it's a lie and I'm going to tell you the gospel truth because I've never told you.

I've never seen a moron so big in my life. He came down there, he fell down on his face and there was a big old rail. I don't know what it was, some kind of big cherry wood banister, one of these deals here and it kind of came over this way and it was right at the top of the altar and it was wonderful to stamp on like that while he was preaching.

Well, that fellow didn't stamp on, I'll tell you what he did. He pulled his head back like Woody the Woodpecker. He had his forehead lined up with that thing and during an invitation in a Baptist church, he was mumbling something I didn't know what he was saying, a bunch of mumbo jumbo coming out of his mouth.

He pulled his head back and went, boom, boom, boom, boom and he was beating his head on the altar of that Baptist church. Everybody who hadn't been paying attention, boom, eyeballs blowed up like gilladeen sausage cakes, man. all them little old ladies who hadn't been paying attention started paying real close attention.

The preacher was about to flip his wig. This guy, and I'm thinking, somebody help this guy. Counsel him, pull him out of here and do something.

But nobody was helping and I knew there wasn't nobody else going to come to the altar while that guy was down there doing that and so I figured, well, if they're not going to take the initiative, I might as well and so I leaned over to help him. I was just going to help him or put a pillow between him and the altar to do something. I mean, I was just trying to help the guy.

I've never seen anything like it in my life. Well, you've been in a lot more meetings than I have. Maybe you've seen crazy people like that, but I haven't.

And so I come down there to lean down to help him and I knew his name and so I started calling his name. John, let me help you. What can I do? Can I pray for you? And about the time I got real close to him, he threw himself back on his legs.

He threw both his hands in the air and I'm so glad he didn't have a microphone because, buddy, he didn't need it. He scared me and everybody in the building. He threw both his hands up in the air and after I had just pinched on every bit of worldliness I could imagine, I'll never forget in a million years what that man said.

He lifted up his voice in front of all those people and said, Oh, God! Oh, God! I'm a fornicator! Everybody just kind of fucked up. Oh, God! Forgive me! I'm an adulterer! Oh, God! Forgive me! I'm a drug addict! Oh, God! He started pulling cigarettes out of his pocket, laying them on the altar and I was waiting for the switchblades to come out. Man, I was getting nervous.

He started confessing everything under heaven. I mean, he confessed things in public that I didn't think he was supposed to live for about in private. I mean, he talked about it all.

I mean, his wife over there, his dad over there, everybody just kind of looking around. After about 30 seconds of that stuff, I said, Preacher, this guy needs some spiritual help. Maybe somebody can counsel the Preacher.

He got up with his little cane. He walked over to his little Bible and he set that fella down in the front row. A couple of deacons came around and they all started playing out loud.

Man, I'm glad God could hear about it at the same time. And they all started playing around that fella and finally the Preacher opened up his Bible and started going through Romans 3, 23, Romans 6, 23, Romans 5, 8, Romans 10, 9, 10, and so on and so forth and 10 and 13. And man, he just began to preach to them on the Romans road.

And I remember old John turning around and got down on his knees and they played. And I don't know, this was all four or five minutes by this time people had come forward. You can imagine.

I'm telling you, God broke through that night after he had spilled his guts in front of everybody. And old John got saved. And you can think anything you want to about me, but when you're 85 years old you can do anything you jolly well want to.

And I'm going to tell you what that Preacher did. Now, he's in heaven tonight and I'm telling you, he can't defend himself, but I'm telling you the honest truth. That Preacher got up off his seat.

He had that little old cane in his hand and after old John got saved, that Preacher turned around and went, Whoopee! Man, I never heard anything like that in my life. I wanted to say, Whoopee too, but I was scared people would think I was too dignified to do that, you know. He said, Whoopee! Man alive! That place got wide open.

Then it's like God knocked the honey dish over and the bees started swarming all over the building. And man, I mean, people just started coming and coming and coming. Well, old John, he hadn't been saved 30 seconds.

I mean, he was a new Preacher in Christ. Thank God for new converts. New converts pay the bills and get the job done.

It's been bad to spend 30 years who thank God owes them a favor that gives us trouble in our local churches. And old John got up and he looked up at me and he said, Hey Preacher. I said, Yeah? He said, You had not come up there in so long.

That's what I thought. I thought, Oh boy, even so, I'm coming to Lord Jesus right now. I thought, if he's going to say all that down there without one of these, what's he going to say when he's got one square in his mouth? And he gets up there and he had a songbook in his hand.

And the reason I remember he had a songbook is because he made so much racket with it he was so nervous. And he got up and put that songbook in his hand and he jammed it all back and forth. He was preaching that microphone.

Man, he was scared to death. You know, he never spoke in front of a little old ladies club much less a church. That church probably had thirty people on the song.

I bet that night we had a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty people there. Man, the preaching was ecstatic. They'd never seen anything like that in their life.

Man, God was working. And it wasn't because of me. And they begged me to stay another week.

And I said, if I keep canceling meetings I'm going to be out of a job for him. I can't call another evangelist. And all of a sudden he's like the Holy Spirit just arrested him.

He dropped that songbook, grabbed ahold of the side deck to open up to fix the microphone. Took a breath and he said, you know, I don't know a whole lot about church and this God thing. He said, but I know one thing.

It sure does feel good to come clean with God. You know what John had that night? Now, he was pretty unorthodox in what he did but I'll be honest. But you know what John had? John had a Genesis 32 experience.

He told God, and I wonder who in this building tonight is going to have to get honest and right with God before the double springs Baptist church. You know, we go to some churches and they're so divisive. There's so much pride and bitterness and animosity.

You can't get the termites and the cells of this wall to fellowship with the termites and the cells of this wall. Well, he took my seat. Well, he took my spot in the choir lounge and people argue and bicker and fight and cud.

You know why we put babies in the nursery? Because they're babies plus God and that's the way they act the way we do. And the average Baptist church is nothing more than a glorified nursery room. We got so many babies in our Baptist churches they won't get right with God.

They won't hug each other's neck and shake each other's hands. Well, I tell you one thing. I was in a revival meeting not long ago.

It is the only revival meeting I've ever been in that I canceled myself halfway through the meeting. I hope I don't have to do that this weekend. But it's the only meeting I've ever canceled myself.

I had to go through Wednesday night and fly to Pensacola, Florida for a youth retreat and they were going on through Friday and they had another evangelist in. I went through Tuesday. I called that girl on the phone and said, you finish up on Wednesday.

I'm flying to Pensacola the day early. I'm getting out of this mess. You'll never see anything like it in your life.

People wouldn't even go out to eat with us because they found out that another family in the church was going out to eat with us. Arguing. Fighting.

The preacher got up one night and he was working on this lapel mic saying, he said, excuse me, my own, he said, can you hear me? And a fellow stood up behind my wife and said, we can always hear you. I'm telling you, you're talking about fighting. You're talking about a cat fight.

I'm telling you, it was a mess and a lot of our Baptist churches are that way. If not, actually taking place in our hearts. And I wonder how many people in this room are going to have to get right with God for somebody before we can have revival.

I wonder if people are going to have to swallow your pride and come forward. You know, there's people on the side of my voice, honest, I don't know you, madam's house cat, you don't know me. You know, there's people in this building right now.

It's been a long, long time since your knees have revisited that altar right there. I mean a long time. You say, well, what's that got to do with revival? It has everything to do with revival because if you're not willing to get honest, you're not willing to have revival.

I'm telling you, friend, how many people do you know that really get honest with God in their life? I want you to let your fingers do the walking and go to your New Testament tonight. Hebrews 11. I want to show you something marvelous.

Before I say it, I love the Word of God. I want to show you how minutely inspired and preserved it is. Don't you ever let some knothead tell you that words in the Bible don't mean something.

I'm telling you, words in the Bible mean something. And I'm talking about this Bible I'm holding right here in my hand, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not ashamed of the King James Bible, the Word of God.

And I want to show you how minutely inspired and preserved it is. Hebrews 11. Now I've got to tell you something about Hebrews 11.

It's what we would refer to as the Hall of Fame. Now, how many of you in this building like any kind of sports? Would you slip your hand high in the air if you like any kind of sports? Alright, God bless you. I don't like a whole lot of sports.

I'm not real good at them. I like to golf, but when I golf, it's goo. But nonetheless, you know, all major sporting events have what we call a Hall of Fame.

Believe it or not, baseball has a Hall of Fame. Football has a Hall of Fame. Can you believe this? NASCAR.

Can you believe that? NASCAR has a Hall of Fame. Now let me give you my theology on NASCAR if I may. If I'm going to get in a car, bless God, and drive 500 miles, I ain't getting out the same place I started.

I promise you that right now. But nonetheless, even NASCAR has a Hall of Fame. Now notice what your Bible says in Hebrews 11, would you? Now you remember who we've been preaching on tonight.

Jacob, right? But I've been preaching on Abraham, Moses, and Noah. I've been preaching on Jacob. Notice what happens in verse 21, would you? Hebrews 11, 21.

By faith, Jacob... There's our culprit. By faith, Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph and worshiped... Now notice how minutely detailed your Bible is. Leaning upon the top of his staff.

Somebody says, well brother, let me explain that to you, son. He was an old man getting ready to die and that's why he was leaning on the top of his staff. And I'll give you credit.

He was an old man getting ready to die and I promise you you'll never convince me in a million years that the reason he was leaning on the cane is because he's old. I'll tell you why he was leaning on his cane because God never let him get over the night he touched him. That's why.

You remember the end of the story, where the Bible says that the sun went down upon him and he halted upon his staff and from a young man to a middle-aged man now to an old, gray-headed Christian gentleman with one foot in the ground. God never let Jacob get over the night. You see, whenever he walked the dogs, whenever he walked the kids to school, whenever he went to Wal-Mart, whenever he went to the temple, everywhere Jacob went he had a vivid reminder of the night God touched him.

Everywhere Jacob went, he remembered, this is what I had to go through and endure to get the power of God on my life. You know what, don't feel sorry for Jacob because if we could resurrect him from the glory land, put a suit and tie on him, stand him behind this microphone and right here in this pulpit, I believe he'd say a million times over and over and over again, I'd rather leap into heaven than leap into hell any day of the week. Here was a man who was mightily, evidently, miraculously touched by God and he never got over it.

You know what I find out about God's people? You ever get to a place in your life where you fully surrender to God? You ever get to a place in your life where you fully sell out and you turn your back on the world? You spit in the eyes of the devil? You don't worry about what friends and families and relatives and neighbors and associates think and you really come to God and you really get honest and you confess your pride and you confess your laziness and you confess your bitterness and you confess this, that and the other thing? You confess your worry, you confess your doubt, your fear, your frustration. If you ever really get honest with God, He'll touch you in such a way you'll never get over it to the day you drop dead. Never, never, never.

And God never let Jacob get over the knife. You hear me, ladies and gentlemen? Until we get honest, we'll never get that heavenly touch. Until we fall on our face and get honest, we'll never, ever have God bless us.

I want to give you this illustration that we'll be through almost two years ago now. I was preaching a camp. It was the Victory Baptist Youth Camp in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

Jack Daniels, currently. You could smell that mess a mile away when you drove across the county line. I flew from Chetek, Wisconsin, the camp that I was in.

I closed up from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. Closed up on Wednesday It's my wife, Melissa, goodbye Thursday morning. I said, I'll be back on Monday to start camp again on Monday night.

I flew home and got a little car that my stepfather had gotten for me, a little vehicle. I drove to the mountains of Lynchburg, Tennessee and I got there, I suppose, maybe about 4 or 35 o'clock in the afternoon and the service that night was going to begin about 8 o'clock or I guess maybe about 7 or 30 or so. As soon as I got off the airplane, I'm telling you, I thought a bunch of Tennessee spring lizards jumped in my throat and I couldn't hold it.

I was sick. I didn't feel good. I was running a fever and as much as I love to preach, I live for about 40 or 45 minutes a day.

I'd rather preach than eat and sleep and I preached and forsaken both of them and I'd do it a thousand times again. I love it, but that night I didn't feel like doing the preaching. That night I was tired and weary, not for my trip.

I was just sick and couldn't figure it out. I very rarely get sick and I thank God for that. But when I did it, I get it.

I was just sweating and tired and wore out and couldn't get my thoughts together. My mind was all discombobulated and I was just absolutely, positively ill. And so I went to the youth director and I said, listen, I don't want to be one of these snotty evangelists that don't have a fellowship with anybody.

I said, but I'd appreciate it if I didn't have to come to supper tonight. He said, don't you worry about it. We didn't bring you here to fellowship with anybody.

We brought you here to preach. He said, if you're tired and weary, he said, don't even come to song service in the skit time. He said, you'll be in the pool but at 8.15, just show up then.

I said, well, I'll probably show up about 10.45, maybe 8 o'clock. I ended up getting there about 8 or so to get some of the songs and some of the skits. And so I went back to my room and I was praying about what God wanted to preach and I was sucking down honey and lemon juice and hot water and peppermints and Hall's cough drops and all kinds of things.

I was just working on trying to get myself to feel better. And I was praying, Lord, what do you want me to preach? What do you want me to preach? What do you want me to preach? And God laid on my heart a message that I had just preached at Staff Training Revival, that meeting I just left in Wisconsin from Romans chapter 1 on God's greatest enemy, the reprobate. Now, it's a difficult sermon to preach to adults, much less to a boatload of teenagers who you've never preached to and never seen in your life before.

And so, you know, I'll be honest, and if you're a preacher, be honest. You know, some preachers sometimes, and I find myself doing this, we think we know what we ought to preach better when God knows. We think we know what we ought to preach and where we ought to preach it and how we ought to preach it and God knows better.

So what I did in my room there, I kind of opened my Bible and I said, now look at there, God, you talk about an outline, whoo, I had to get them down the aisle. Now, that right there's a verse, and boy, look at that illustration right there. And I knew in my heart if I preached any other message but Romans chapter 1, it was going to be the biggest mess.

I knew it was going to be a fall. I knew it wasn't going to be good. I knew God wasn't going to save a person.

I knew I'd been a disobedient preacher if I didn't preach on Romans chapter 1. Sure as I know, it's pulpits made out of wood. I knew God wanted me to preach that sermon. So I said, okay, Lord, if that's what you want, I pray, Lord, forgive me for my bad spirit.

Forgive me for my reluctance and lack of faith. If you want me to preach it, I'll preach it. If it's a prop, it's a prop.

But if you want me to preach it, I'll preach it. I got there that night and I did, just like you said. He kept his word.

I got in the pulpit exactly at 815. Exactly at 815. They'd given me a sheet when I got up there on the mountain of all the names of the teenagers that were there.

And I didn't know the teenagers. They didn't know me. I didn't know their needs.

I'd met a couple of them before at the Tennessee Statewide A.C.E. Convention that the Rodgersons and I were privileged to minister in just a couple of years ago. And so I met a couple of them, but I didn't know these kids. And I prayed down through the list, you know, and I didn't know their needs.

I didn't know their family situations. But I know this, and I hope you remember from the illustration. There was exactly, you hear me right, exactly 98 kids in attendance.

There were about three or four churches that came together. The biggest of them had been Victor Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Tennessee. That's where I was going to be the following Sunday.

And all they did was have me come in Thursday and Friday. That was it. They'd already had camp Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night.

And I was just coming in to finish you up Thursday and Friday, the last two concluding sermons of the week. That was it. Two shots is all I had.

And I got in the pulpit that night and stared those 98 teenagers in the face and I could barely say a word. I mean, I was so sick. My throat was so messed up.

I said, young people, open your Bibles to Romans chapter number one. They opened up to Romans chapter one and I got to preach. Now I have to say, by the grace of God, the more I preached the more it began to open up.

And I wasn't able to project that much. I wasn't able to move around. They didn't have a lapel mic and so if you can believe it, I stood still like a totem pole behind that pulpit the whole time.

I didn't feel like being up there. And here I was preaching, belaboring, telling these young people about what it means to be a reprobate. And basically, the whole sermon deals with conviction.

What happens when you turn conviction away for the last time and God pulls away the welcome mat from the door of salvation and you go to hell as sure as a Martin to his gourd? That's basically the sermon I preached that night. Well, it was exactly nine o'clock when I quit preaching and sat here bowed and eyes closed. I had preached exactly on the nose 45 minutes.

And I began to get to the invitation and Miss Warren, the youth director's wife, came up and she began to play just as I am with that one plea on the piano and she played about two, three, no more certainly than three stanzas and I believe it was about two. She was playing these two stanzas and you know, it wasn't a long invitation as far as that part was concerned and the moment she started to play, I said, young people, if you need spiritual help, if you don't know Christ, you leave this building right now and go to the back. Somebody will sit you down outside and show you from the Bible how to be saved.

And immediately a young man and a young lady walked to the back and in my heart I said, thank you Lord, this must be why you want me to preach that sermon. That young man and that young lady could get saved or get assurance or get something taken care of in their life. But that's not at all why God wanted me to preach that.

After she played her couple of stanzas, maybe one or two young people had come forward. No big emotional appeal, nothing like that. And so I just felt like the Lord was through.

I felt like we ought to just close her down. He told me to pray and get rid of the service and turn it back over to Him. You know, to pray and dismiss as far as the service part and the preaching part and the invitation was concerned.

So I did. She was done. I said, you can go back to your seat.

I prayed. I prayed. I turned around and I began to give the invitation, begin the service, begin the whole kit and caboodle back over to Brother Lord Warren, the youth director there.

And I was saying right then, Brother Warren, I'm through. The service is yours. And while that praise was coming out of my mouth, a young lady stood up out of the corner of my eyesight in the front row.

She turned behind me and tugged me on my jacket. I turned around. She looked at me and the youth director and said, may I give a testimony just before the invitation is concluded and done with.

I said, young lady, if that's what God wants you to do, Brother Warren, is that alright with you? He said, that's fine. He said, just keep it short and keep it in the corner. Now hear me.

I walked through that crowd of 97, because one of them was in the pulpit, teenagers. I went to the back and I sat down in a metal folding chair and didn't open my mouth one more time during that whole service, that whole invitation that whole time. Didn't say another word.

He sat down in a folding chair expecting her to be done in just a few seconds. And she was. She did not take a long time.

There was no more music. There was no choir. There was no special music.

There was no evangelists begging people and coercing people and giving hot dogs and hamburgers away if you'd come for it. None of that. Now young lady got in the pulpit and got to quivering and she said, everybody in the Christian school that I go to knows me to be loose with my morals and my behavior when it comes to boys.

I'm always talking about what I can do or what I have done or what I will do. And she said, especially to the cheerleader in the locker room. She said, God has convicted me about that tonight.

And she said, I want you to forgive me and keep me accountable. Now buddy, you tell that to a preacher. That's one thing.

But you say that to 97 of your peers and I'm telling you that takes a rod iron backbone to do something like that. And I mean, I was amazed. I mean the kids all sit there just dumbfounded and she got up there and apologized to everybody for her rotten sorry testimony.

She had no sooner left the pulpit and sat down that a young man to my right jumped up and I mean, it was almost like he was chewing on matchsticks and drinking gasoline. You've never seen somebody so excited in your life. He come flying up to the pulpit.

He got down behind that thing like a wild spooky evangelist and his mom and dad were sitting right there on the second row and he turned and looked right at them and he said, Mom and Dad, he said, I've been looking at some dirty magazines and he said, when we go back home under my bed and in my closet in between the mattresses there's some girly boots and some dirty magazines and me and my friends have been looking at them and his buddies were there that night and he started calling out their names. Under the pews they go, buddy. And I mean, he looked at them and he said, Mom and Dad, I've never heard a teenager talk like this in my life.

God give us more of them. God bless this kid. He said, if you spank me harder than you've ever spanked me before and if you drown me from every privilege I've ever had or ever will, he said, I don't care.

He said, I just gotta get right with God tonight. And man, I'm telling you, it started right there. We didn't have a stick of music and kids got up from all over that building and started coming to that altar and I mean, there was weeping and crying.

People started getting in that pool pit, forgive me of this, forgive me of that. People started crossing the room, hugging each other's necks. We had moms and dads get up.

You hear me? We had moms and dads get up and apologize to their teenagers for arguing in front of them at the house and not having a testimony of godly Christian parents on them. How do you, get up and say, fellas, the other day before school closed, he said, I told a rotten joke in the locker room and God convicted me about that. He said, that's not my character.

That's not customarily like me and the Holy Spirit has just been ringing my bell about that thing and he said tonight in Bullock's message, man, it just so convicted me. He said, I'm sorry about that, fellas, I want to get right with God. We have some teenagers standing up.

You talk about mean kids. You talk about some jerks of teenagers. You let me preach to a hundred teenagers and you put them all in there and I don't have to know one of them.

And buddy, by the time I get through preaching, I can tell you all of them that listen to the world of the music. I can tell you all of them that hang around the wrong crowd. I can tell you those who love preaching and those who don't.

And buddy, there was four or five boys over here, they were so full of the devil you could see the demons swapping behind their eyeballs. I mean, they were wicked. And I mean, they sat there and they laughed and popped their bubble gum and chewed their fingernails and dug their nose and they wouldn't listen to anything the preacher had to say.

But buddy, I'm glad the Holy Spirit can preach a whole lot better than I can. Because man, when that thing broke loose, those boys stood up and out loud said, man, we've been fakes and we've been phonies and man, they all, four or five of them darted out the back door. Somebody went out there with a Bible, showed those fellas how to get saved.

Two or three girls got up. A couple other guys got up. We had 15 teenagers saved by the grace of God with no music.

Can you imagine that? People kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. People kept getting right and getting right. People kept hugging each other's necks.

I'm telling you, the altars were flooded with kids. They were weeping. They were crying.

I mean, they were crying for lost loved ones. They were crying for sin in their hearts. And kid after kid after kid came to this pulpit.

Now, you hear what this preacher is telling you. I told you there's 98 teenagers. Now, in attendance there was about 125 or 130 people because we had preachers and college workers and preacher boys and counselors and cooks and janitors and all that kind of stuff.

So we had about 130 people there. But out of the 98 teenagers that were there, you hear me, all 98 of them. All 98 without exception came to that pulpit, preacher.

And either number one confessed something openly to their friends to get right or number two gave verbal praise to God. I gave that invitation at nine o'clock with two stanzas of an invitation music with no other singing, with no announcements, with my mouth closed sitting with my Bible closed in a chair in the back of the building and nobody stood in that pulpit as far as the leader was concerned. The Holy Spirit took over that meeting.

I gave the invitation exactly at nine o'clock and we closed it on a mountain a half a mile from a Jack Daniels liquor joint with 98 teenagers and we closed that thing down at twelve, twenty, three hours and twenty-two minutes on a mountain with 98 teenagers. All of them came to that pulpit and gave verbal praise to God. The kids got saved by those scores and I'm telling you God's Spirit was marvelously at work that night and one of the greatest meetings I've ever been in was with 98 teenagers.

You say, my, my, Brother Grimley, that must have been one blistering, blazing, stirring sermon on the reprobate and I hope you're not so naive as to think it was my sermon that did that. I'll tell you what it was. It all started with a 17-year-old young lady who got in the pulpit and told God, you want revival tonight? You want God's blessing tonight? You better answer this question, what do you need? There you are.

Stephanie, head down please, have the eye closed. Thank you.