A Man of God - Part 3

Sorry that that's all that matters. And I said, that's not true. And I said, we'll stay with you while you really get a real relationship with God.

So we stayed. And she passed from death to life. How do I know? Because two years after I was passing the church, she was coming out with a Bible.

And I said to her, he said, that's the woman you prayed for the last time you were here. She's the best Bible teacher we have there. But the thing was, before she got saved, and back to Bible school days, she got married, she got divorced, she had a child, she had a broken heart, a broken life.

It would have been avoided if she got saved the first time. But she didn't get saved. She made a mental decision.

She wanted to be better. She wanted to go to heaven. But how many people really want to know? I mean, isn't the essence of Christianity Christ in you, the hope of glory? There's no other religion in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of him.

And we made it appear as though if you get saved, of course, you're going to give up all your joys, you give up these crazy habits, you don't go to movies, you don't go to ballgames. Christ is all you want. But on the other hand, what about peace that passes all understanding? What about a home eternal in the heavens? What about the eternal aspect? We don't present that.

I got two fellows in here, didn't we? And they came from a certain... Well, actually, they came from Criswell Seminary. And one of them said he needed a semester in it. I know how to put a sermon together.

I know how to get words together, but I've no power. The other man burst into it. I said, I've just opened a paper and your picture's in there.

He said, well, I didn't put it somewhere. I said, but you're a preacher. He said, I've had 300 people saved in the last three months.

He said, how do you know? And he hadn't an answer. Well, he said, I don't know. That's why I've often wondered.

They'll come out and say a prayer and go out and live the same. He said, they don't live to be born again. You become a new creature.

If any man anywhere at any time be in Christ. And there's no better example of that than Dave Wilkinson with all the people he covers and less. I don't know if you know Jackie Pullins.

Do you know Jackie? Well, she was here to see me. And, I mean, she goes. She doesn't go out until 10 o'clock at night.

She goes to the gutters. She goes to the outcasts. She goes to the prostitutes.

She goes to men who smoke opium for 50 years. She goes to women who have prostituted for 40 years. You've got to have a gospel.

You can't give a mental flip to those people. And she stays with them until they're born again in the Spirit of God. That's one of the most amazing works in the world as far as I'm concerned.

But where are the people? I mean, you add up all the people who made a profession of Christ in the last few years of our crusades. Or let me put it here and then quit. I had a veteran missionary from South America, and he said, before I came out of the barrenness, I was talking to a veteran missionary, and he said, Brother, if you add up all the crusades in South America and all the people, everybody in South America has been saved five times in the last 15 years.

Well, is it the same in this country? Are we talking about how many people came to the meeting? How many people came forward? Why aren't the churches increasing? I had a lawyer call me from one of the greatest churches in the country. He said, Mr. Raymond, at least a thousand people walk down the aisle in our church every year. And after three years of doing that, he said the church is still the same size.

We still have the same seating capacity. The prayer meetings haven't grown. There's no evidence except that these people come forward every Sunday.

Why haven't they? As I said to you earlier today, Brother, the darkness of this day is the gift of the church to the world. The street meetings have gone. Dear God, we have all kinds of ministries around here, but Tyler goes to hell.

How many churches do you have in megachurches in Dallas? I guess you can't find one street. I spent 50 years of my life in street meetings. Every Saturday night, I went out at 9.30 till midnight.

And after, every night, whether it was snowing or raining or what, we went out to the same place. And people came out of taverns and out of movie houses at 10 o'clock and stayed an hour and two hours in the cold. No air-conditioned buildings.

No nice, no attractive singers. Just testament. I call on one man and say this man was in jail.

This man used to run around with women. This man has a prison record. This man over there used to beat his wife in the trance.

Well, this girl was a prostitute. Put them out living flesh and blood. Nobody could argue.

People would stand and say, Why are you the only preacher in the town that does this? I don't know except God told me to do it and I do it. Well, that's where the lost people are. A man would be an idiot to buy $100 fishing gear and fish in his bathtub.

And that's all we do in church. We're fishing with the same people every week. And people are dying without God.

I'm glad, dear brother, I was raised in a church where we had another preacher off and boarding. I devoured the Methodist in book 80 years ago. And I can recite still dozens and dozens of hymns.

And one was a hymn by Andrew Bonner. Go labor on, spend and be spent. I, George, do the Master's will.

It is the way the Master went. Should not the servant tread it still? Men die in darkness at your side without a hope to cheer the tomb. Take up the torch and wave it wide.

The torch that lights time's pickest gloom. I go to the prayer meeting. Somebody will pray that.

After that, somebody will pray the prayer of one of the greatest of modern women there from India. What was her name? Amy Carmichael. Yeah, thank you.

Amy Carmichael. You know, give me a love that leads the way. A faith which nothing can dismay.

A hope, no disappointments. Tired of passion, the will burn light. Let me not seem to be a clod.

The woman didn't weigh over 100 pounds. Make me thy fuel flame of God. She never married.

She took a one-way ticket to the mission field. People go now. There's plenty of money in our church.

Oh, we'd love you to come back for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Do come back. So they break off and come back.

They go back. They run to and fro. They have to go with a camera.

They have to go with a load of stuff. You don't find the old-fashioned mysteries going like they used to do. Jackie went on a single ticket to Hong Kong when she was 19.

She's 44 now. She's still there. She's shed a million tears.

But she's had some of the greatest characters, infamous characters. Stayed there. How many people come forward in your church, and you can go back afterwards and say, you came to the altar.

Well, what happened in your life? I think that everybody that comes to the altar, we should visit them during the week and be sure that they did pass from death unto life because what happens? They say, well, I've been out twice and never got anything. Well, they can't. Because what do you say mentally? I don't see any brokenness.

I see kids come forward in a crusade. They're laughing and joining hands. They go out, and the first thing they do is stop at a hot dog place or something.

They don't go home to grieve and read the Word and find out if it's true. They go back full of jollity, and they sing on the bus. We had a wonderful time.

But what are we doing? The summer's gone. The harvest has passed. And we're not saved.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, well, I'm saying, dear brother, I don't believe that we reach the conscience like some people, like one of the classic things Dr. Tozzi used to quote to me often. He used to say, well, Len, remember when our famous American preacher, D.L. Moody, went to London, the first day he preached, he laughed at his Yankee clothes. The second day, they laughed at his style.

The third day, Cambridge University men were there laughing, and he said, gentlemen, laugh at my style, laugh at my Americanism. But he said, in God's name, don't laugh at the Word of God. He says, the Word of God, I would just as soon handle fault lining.

But what happened? He's an illiterate man, comparative with no education. He goes to London. He goes from London to Scotland where Alexander White was the king of the pulpit at that time, and Alexander White sits on the edge of his chair with his mouth open.

Well, I thought, where does this man go? He doesn't know history too well, doesn't watch Quaker very correctly, but there's something about him. So much so that across town, there's a man, I don't know if you know a book, written by Henry Drummond, the greatest thing in the world. It was one of the greatest classics ever.

And Alexander White says to Drummond, hey, come over and hear this fellow. We haven't had any finds. It was like this.

And they were spellbound. What would have happened if he'd gone to London for three days? He didn't. He went for eight months.

He went to Scotland, and the tent hall is still there. I think they called it a tent hall because people came out of the tent, the mood he had, and went in that hall. Also, one of the greatest Bible schools ever, Glasgow Bible Institute, was founded because of that.

And the money was given to him. Well, I'll tell you, you talk about background. One of the most wonderful men I ever saw was C.T. Studd.