Tuesday morning, 16 November 1982, Minister's Prayer Fellowship
Conference at Twin Peaks.
Speaker is Dr. Edwin Orr.
I go back to 1930, I guess it
was 36 or 37, when I got hold
of your first book, Can God?
That was the best book you ever wrote.
And since then, and then he had all
these revival experiences, bicycle days and so on
in the early days, and then he got
into, came back, got ordained.
That didn't hurt you any, did it?
And I was there in New Jersey for
that, and then they lived with us in
Long Island six or seven weeks.
And their oldest was about the same age
as our dick, our oldest was.
And my wife said, we had little and
they had less.
Remember them, their days?
It would be wonderful to hear how you
got started.
It was a great blessing to us in
Long Island to read about those bicycle days
and how you got into churches and loosened
them up and had some revivals going.
A lot of people don't know anything about
that.
They only think of your statistics and history
last night.
We want to get them beyond that, back
to the roots.
My father died of tuberculosis.
So did my older brother.
And my mother was in the sanatorium for
about two and a half years.
I was the most delicate baby in the
family, and I was what they called predisposed.
You have no idea how many gallons of
cod liver oil, that's what they gave in
those days, cod liver oil.
I hate this stuff.
But it's interesting, when I started out on
a bicycle at the age of 21, plenty
of fresh air, cycled 60 miles a day
perhaps, only eating the plainest of food, it
must have done something to my constitution.
Well, I was converted on my ninth birthday.
Mother led me to Christ.
But I didn't have a dramatic conversion.
At the age of 19, I went to
a friend of mine, and I asked him
if he'd go out and preach with me.
So we started in the open air, in
the notorious Shankville district of Belfast, where a
lot of the fighting has been going on
since.
And we formed a little band of prayer,
to pray for spiritual revival.
I found that my grandfather and grandmother were
both converted the same year.
It was the year 1859, when 100,000
people in the north of Ireland were converted
in that remarkable movement.
So I was always very curious.
My early interest in revival was sentimental.
Now I trust it's more objective, but at
the same time, just as real.
In fact, more so.
Well, our little band of preachers grew, until
we had open air meetings on Sunday nights
around the city.
The head of an organization in London heard
of what I was doing, and offered me
a salary to give up my secular employment
and go out and do this kind of
work all over the world.
But the day after I gave up my
job, he disappointed me.
He had to go to India and China
and Japan and other countries for missionary conferences.
He was going to be away for about
a year.
His committee wouldn't be responsible for it.
A stranger while he was gone.
So he wrote me a nice letter and
told me to go back to business.
Now this was during the Depression, when people
were very discouraged.
And at that time, my mother, a widow,
my brother, ill, before he died, and my
sister out of work.
I had to give up and start in
working to support the family.
I was the only supporter of Mohammed.
Now, in this little prayer band, I still
remember the little sentimental things.
For instance, when we met as a committee,
we always left the chairman's seat vacant to
remind us the Lord Jesus Christ was in
the chair.
And if ever we crossed purposes or had
any disagreement, we'd say, well, let's ask the
chairman now.
And we'd have a word of prayer.
One night coming home with Charles Coulter, he
was a salvationist.
I said, Charlie, is there anything deeper for
a Christian?
Oh, yes.
So I asked him about it.
I said, do you know anyone who's had
a deeper experience?
Well, he said, yes.
I said, who?
William Booth.
I said, General Booth is dead.
Could you please mention somebody that's alive that
I can study?
Well, as a result of that, Charlie and
I went to see a young pastor.
He belonged to George Jeffrey's movement, Elam, Pentecostal
movement.
Now, I was a convinced Baptist, and my
friend was a salvationist, but we went to
see this pastor.
God bless him.
He was having a campaign in the country
somewhere, but he came up on his Monday
off to talk to two boys.
We talked from eight until ten.
And I just told him frankly, I don't
know what to believe.
The Baptists teach this, the Methodists teach that,
the Presbyterians teach this, the Episcopalians teach that,
and the Salvation Army teaches this, and the
Pentecostals teach that.
I don't know what to believe.
He said, let me ask you a question.
Do you concede you have a need?
I said, oh, yes.
Do you think God can meet that need?
Well, yes, I'm sure.
He said, do you think he's made provision
for that need?
So he talked to me, and at ten
o'clock he had me convinced.
Just at that moment, the last thing, by
the way, he said to me was, you
seem to think, Edwin, that your besetting sins
are the main hindrance.
They're not.
He said, the blood of Jesus Christ can
cleanse you from all sin.
The problem is your will.
Clock struck ten.
The senior pastor thought, now those two boys
have been talking too long today.
My friend, he needs his rest before he
goes back to the campaign, so he came
up to get rid of us.
You know how a pastor gets rid of
you?
He says, let's have a word of prayer.
And the four of us got on our
knees, and we were on our knees till
two in the morning.
The Lord started to speak to me, and
the very first question was, what about your
besetting sins?
I said, Lord, I hate them.
I said, that's no problem.
Lord, you know how to deal with them.
I'll put them right.
But then the question was, what about your
will?
And he touched me in a very sensitive
point.
I was going steady then with a marriage
girl who had started me attending Christian endeavor
meetings.
Many a fellow started going to meetings because
of a girl.
But when the Lord said to me, are
you willing to give this friendship up if
I should ask you?
I began to argue.
I said, she's been a blessing to me.
I mean, I was telling the Lord that
it's business.
Finally, I got to a place where I
said, Lord, I don't understand this.
Not my will, but your will be done.
However, I said, if you want me to
give this girl up, let her give me
up, and I won't try and get her
back.
And for the first time in my life,
I felt there wasn't a cloud between me
and the Lord.
It wouldn't be, in fact, very rarely do
I ever mention that there were even, I
would call it, maybe the word physical isn't
the word to use, manifestations, but just as
if God poured into my soul burning cold.
Never had experience like it in my life.
Walked home at two o'clock in the
morning.
I felt like jumping over the rougher city
going over the bridge.
Got home at three, knelt by the rocking
chair, like Finney.
Finney put a handkerchief to his mouth because
he was praying so loud.
Mother was a very light sleeper and I
didn't want to disturb her, but I couldn't
but pray.
And sure enough, seven in the morning before
I went to work, she said, you came
in late last night.
Now, I've been in the habit of equivocating
by fifty-five minutes.
If I came in at five to twelve,
I'd say it was after eleven.
Well, five to twelve is after eleven.
So I was going to say it was
after midnight, because three o'clock is after
midnight.
But I couldn't deceive her, so I said
I came in at three.
She said, where were you till three in
the morning?
By the way, when I was growing up,
kids didn't stay out half the night the
way they do nowadays.
We were in by eleven, always.
Girls were in earlier than that often.
But, she said, where were you till three
o'clock?
Well, I said, Charlie and Coltrane and I
went to a meeting.
She said, where did they have meetings till
three in the morning?
Well, I said, it wasn't a regular meeting,
I said.
Just a pastor and two pastors and two
of us.
She said, what was all about?
Oh, I, it's hard to talk to your
own about things like that.
Finally, I said, well, Charlie and I wanted
to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
I thought I'd get a maternal lecture.
Well now, I'm glad to hear this, but
you know, since your father died, you haven't
always done, you know, thus and so.
But instead of that, tears ran down her
cheeks.
She said, when your Aunt Nellie came back
from Canada, she'd come into a new experience
through the Christian Missionary Alliance.
I didn't understand all that she said, but
I wanted whatever Nellie had.
She said, of course, I already had two
children, and Nellie wasn't married.
But she said, I left them with your
dad, and I went to a meeting in
the Botanic Gardens run by the Faith Mission.
And I went forward.
She said, nothing happened.
But she said, on the way home that
night, I thought, well, Lord, I've done everything
possible.
When I got home, she said, both your
brother and sister had high fevers.
Your father was distraught.
And then she said, with a little tinge
of sorrow, the rest of my life, I've
been looking after a dying husband and sick
children.
But, she said, I wondered if the Lord
wouldn't claim the unborn fruit of the womb.
She said, that was just two months before
you were born.
So, the first experience of revival was in
my own heart.
My Pentecostal friends were disappointed I didn't speak
in tongues.
But God gave me a measure of the
gift of faith.
But I started out with 65 cents on
a bicycle at the bottom of the depression.
And, I had all sorts of experience after
that.
I remember in Kent, my old bicycle broke
down and I discovered I needed new handlebars,
new front fork, new back wheel, new front
wheel, new three-speed gear, new crank, new
pedals, new tires, new tubes, and several other
new parts.
So, I prayed for a new bicycle or
the money to buy one.
A couple of days before Christmas, I was
staying with a friend in Kent.
But I got there late and they went
out to a meeting without me.
The phone rang and there was my answer
to prayer.
The Baptist minister had taken ill.
The deacons were in desperation trying to get
another preacher.
They called this one, that one, the other
one.
Nobody could come.
Most people made all their arrangements for Christmas.
Can't change their arrangements.
But I said to the man, you're doing
one thing about me.
He said, Mr. Orr, don't be offended, but
we're so hard up, we'll take anybody.
I preached the Christmas sermons in that church.
A man came up to me afterwards and
to make a long story short, he wanted
to know if I'd be offended if he
offered me a Christmas present.
A bicycle that he had custom built at
Coventry.
The best bicycle made in the world in
those days.
I said, what makes you offer it to
me?
I had no intention of refusing it.
But he explained his father died, left him
some money, bought a car, couldn't bother with
a bicycle anymore.
He said, well, I was preaching.
He thought the Lord had told him give
that young preacher a bicycle.
Those were the experiences.
Now in the first year or so when
I wrote that book, Can God, I did
not have campaigns.
I went around as a witness urging people
to pray.
Days were getting darker.
Hitler had arisen and things were getting worse.
But I was invited to take up a
big position after I'd been preaching for a
while and I turned it down.
I went to Norway, arrived in Oslo with
11 kroner.
Let's see, what would that be today?
That's about two dollars.
Something like that.
And there I saw a revival for the
first time.
I had remembered something when I was a
boy of nine, the movement of God under
W.P. Nicholson.
I was too young to take it in.
Although it was a movement of the Spirit
of God.
But in Norway, this was following the visit
of Frank Marx.
It was tremendous stirring.
I didn't know anyone there but the door
opened very quickly and I stayed in the
Baptist seminary and went with the students.
One church after another, all the churches were
full.
Great meetings in the Calamary's Garden, Assembly Hall,
and I preached in Bethlehem and Albert Loomis
for Sunday and all these places.
That was the first time I'd really seen
revival that affected the whole country.
And that's what drew Armand Gesslein and me
together.
We both had a kind of baptism of
fire there in that sense.
And by the way, we both married Norwegian
girls.
Except he got his from the north of
Norway and I got mine from the south
of South Africa.
I got 24 karat gold.
I don't know.
Well, we saw revival in Norway.
We saw a touch of revival in Copenhagen
and Denmark.
And the same sort of thing in Scandinavia.
In those days it was a movement, definitely
a movement.
It should be written up.
Trouble is, people don't write these things.
They're more often writing biographies of individuals than
they write of movements of the Spirit of
God.
Then in Riga, whom should I meet but
Jimmy Stewart.
James Stewart, the Scottish footballer.
And there was a movement of revival in
Latvia.
The Lord had anointed James Stewart and when
he went to Hungary there was such a
movement that traffic was disrupted.
That's another story out to be read.
Ruth, his wife, his widow, has told about
it in a couple of chapters, but somebody
needs to write that up.
He was Stewart's wife.
Dynamite.
Yes.
Dynamite in Europe.
But it needs to be written objectively.
That was one reason why we have this
Oxford conference.
We get all sorts.
For instance, our speaker last summer was Joseph
Zung from Romania who was expelled by the
communist government.
One of the leading figures extraordinary revival throughout
Romania.
Still going on.
So that's one reason we meet together to
get people to tell their testimony for God.
We want it done in such a way
that it's not promotional, but it's recording the
works of God.
I crossed over to Canada and Oswald Smith
asked me to preach there at Great People's
Church.
That was a church in which there was
a perennial movement moving on year by year.
He was the man with the great missionary
burden.
By the way, he's still alive.
He's 93.
Still takes part in the services.
I became his associate pastor afterwards.
We got to know him quite well.
In those days, we had such a movement
in that people's church.
It's the largest church in Canada.
We had to move to the Massey Hall
auditorium.
And then from there I went into the
States and preached in places like Moody Church
and Church of the Open Door and so
forth.
But as far as real revival was concerned,
I remember speaking in a Wheaton College chapel
on the 13th of January 1936 and about
a thousand students in those days.
A student there sent up a note.
You have spoken on revival.
When do you think you'll see revival?
Well, he came up to see me afterwards.
I said, well, what are you doing about
it?
Because you were having half nights of prayer.
Well, I said, that's the case.
Then I said, whenever you begin to put
things right with the Lord, you can expect
something to happen.
So the students, we doubled their prayers for
revival at Wheaton.
They were looking forward to the coming of
Robert McQuilkin of Columbia Bible College in South
Carolina.
They felt sure the Lord would break through
and revival would land.
But alas, when Dr. McQuilkin came through, that
godly man, he developed laryngitis.
He couldn't speak a word.
It was their annual campaign, and Homer Hamiltree
was the song leader, and they had to
pinch hit by asking somebody to come over
from Moody and from Northern Baptist Family to
take the meetings.
What a disintegrated series it was.
The students hoped some of it.
But one Thursday, I believe, it was Walter
Wilson, a medical doctor, belonged to the Brethren,
but who had a message on the Holy
Spirit, spoken chaplain.
But he had to catch a train.
He had interrupted his schedule, and he had
to catch a train to St. Louis, so
he took off before the benediction.
And the student passed up a note saying
we heard about revival again.
When are we going to see revival at
Wheaton?
And Hamiltree answered in a very perfunctory way,
well, I suppose we'll pay the price.
So the student stood up and said, I'm
the student that wrote that note.
Some folks think I'm a big man and
a chaplain, but things are not right in
my life, and he started confessing his faults.
By the way, that was Don Hillis.
He's now Associate General Director of Evangelical Lions
Mission, brother of Dick Hillis, twin brother.
And someone shouted, let's all pray.
They got to their knees.
That was one of those phenomenal meetings.
It went on 38 hours, I believe, at
that time.
There were some humorous aspects.
Wheaton had a strict rule against smoking.
Some student couldn't break the habit, didn't choose
to.
They discovered what you might call a fail
-safe method of having their smoke and getting
away with it.
During chapel, chapel was compulsory, they went in,
they went down a steep staircase to the
furnace room.
There they could smoke through the butts into
the furnace, no evidence.
They had to come up another staircase right
in front of the platform.
So they had to wait until everyone was
moving out.
Then the monitors counted their attendance going out.
This time they'd had their cigarettes, they had
timed it fairly carefully.
They're waiting for the shuffle of feet for
the singing of the last hymn.
Ten o'clock, quarter past ten, ten-thirty.
Who's preaching today?
Eleven, fifteen.
When the clock struck twelve, one fellow turned
pale and he said, it's the rapture and
we're left behind.
Ah!
Well, I was in Nacogdoches in Texas at
the time.
I got a telegram from President Buswell saying,
glorious revival, quite independent human instruments have broken
out at Wheaton.
I changed my schedule and went up by
train, no flights in those days, and got
into the tail end to see what it
was really like.
I began to see that we may have
revival, not necessarily waiting for a movement throughout
the country, because they had a real revival.
By the way, out of that revival came
some remarkable missionaries.
Let's see if my memory serves me right.
One from the Congo, Wilbert Norton, and another
one went to Costa Rica.
I could tell of several.
Among those who were affected, who didn't go
to the mission field, were people like Carl
Henry, Harold Rizzo, Stacey Woods.
Well, Dr. McQuill went back to Columbia, South
Carolina, and told his students at Columbia Bible
College, which is a missionary college, they were
all converted there, about the revival.
They started praying.
Oswald Smith was to come down for an
Easter campaign.
I was preaching for a young Presbyterian minister
in Atlanta.
His name was Peter Marshall.
Heard that name, I suppose.
Wasn't well known in those days.
Strange how many people I met became famous
afterwards.
But I went over from there to Columbia,
and the Lord poured out the revival right
away.
We couldn't report extraordinary conversions in the college
because they were all converted and dedicated to
the mission field.
But a nurse came back from the hospital
and said, I've led 27 people to Christ
this week.
Oh, the meeting was powerful.
So I began to see that sort of
thing.
That encouraged me.
So when I went down to New Zealand,
that was the next place, we saw a
real revival in the community.
A place called Narrawahia.
During the heat of that revival, I went
into the post office.
On the back of an envelope, I wrote
that hymn, Search Me, O God, and Know
My Heart Today.
J.
Oswald Saunders has written an account of that
movement.
We were as men that dreamed.
So it began taking on a different complexion.
Went over to Australia and we saw movements
of revival.
Out of the great movement in Melbourne, ended
up in the big circus stadium there, came
the Campaigners for Christ.
You've heard of that organization.
Most of the young men revived, became leaders
of that movement.
Then in South Africa, a movement of about
6,000 progressed conversion.
So that takes us up to the end
of the war, up to the beginning of
the war, I should say.
I went back to study.
I became associate pastor with Oswald Smith and
then I went to Northern back to Sandridge
to study.
I'm glad I did.
You know, when I went to Oxford to
study revival, I got an enormous letter from
some Christian saying, Having begun in the spirit,
are you now made perfect in the flesh?
I've never regretted going.
It's like trying to be a workman without
tools.
You could want to be the best carpenter
in the world, but you have to learn
your trade.
And I found that, for instance, in my
field particularly, where I had to convince people
about, for instance, Armand said last night, in
the 1930s, Edward was his brother and this
country was convinced that these were the days
of the apostasy and God couldn't work.
It wasn't until Billy Graham had his breakthrough
in Los Angeles that he even believed that
massive evangelism was possible again.
But time in the Air Force, we couldn't
call it revival, but we saw movements of
the Holy Spirit.
Jefferson Barracks, I still remember, this may sound
very odd, so many men in bad coats.
I was amused by it.
I got reprimanded from the station hospital.
Our meetings were so big and so packed
we couldn't have any chapel holding and we
were out there in a very treacherous climate
in the St. Louis area and the men
all caught cold.
Thousands of them out in the open air
arena.
Of course, whenever they were reprimanded officially for
this, it meant we had to rearrange our
meetings because it was a movement of the
Holy Spirit.
The same thing overseas, a place like Mauritius.
But 1949, in fact, 1948, I was back
in this country, and it was in 49
in the spring, about March the 1st, that
we had that Pacific Palisades meeting.
Armands referred to it.
That was a touch of revival.
Hundreds of pastors.
You know, there's some people, you know, who
simplify history and they think Billy Graham came
to Los Angeles and the result of his
very faithful preaching a revival broke out.
No, no, no.
The revival movement was underway and Billy himself
was revived up here at Forrest Hall.
But he's been called to evangelism when Sherwood
worked for his community.
And he said that it wasn't until he
went to Kennedy he saw what revival really
meant.
Billy is an anointed evangelist.
Sometimes his evangelistic campaigns are undergirded by revival.
Other times they're not.
He can't manufacture the situation.
But you notice when Billy says this is
the nearest to revival we've ever seen type
of thing, he means that's when the Holy
Spirit was working the most among his people.
But because people say, well, is revival possible
nowadays?
1951 I went down to Brazil.
I came back, told my wife, let's all
go to Brazil.
The whole family.
She said, what about school for the children?
I said, we'll find something.
But I said, 81 churches in Sao Paulo
have started weekly prayer meetings for revival.
And there's going to be a movement.
And we saw a movement throughout Brazil.
It wouldn't be fitting for me to, shall
I say, give you a rundown of my
experiences there, but I'm going to just quote
from, this is a dissertation recently written by
Charles Gates of the Nazarene Mission.
And the title is The Brazilian Revival, 1952.
It's Antecedents and Effects.
I should say the British, American, and Brazilian
Bible Societies reported 1952 a year of triumph.
Never before have so many scriptures been put
in the hands of the people.
The American Bible Society said in many ways
1952 was a triumphant year.
The Brazilian Bible Society said while most of
the growth of the evangelical movement could be
attributed to day by day witness of its
members, special efforts also drew the attention of
the people.
In a nationwide evangelistic crusade crossing denominational lines,
drawing the interest of the multitudes, a special
evangelistic team went from center to center calling
for repentance and dedication to Christ.
Time and time again, the largest auditoriums couldn't
seat the thousands who came to hear the
gospel.
Hundreds upon hundreds came forward accepting Christ.
A British missionary of the Brazilian Foreign Bible
Society said there were some who compared this
movement with the great nationwide revivals that laid
the foundation of Protestant growth in the United
States.
The strong feeling in 1952 was a crucial
hour of victory in winning Brazil to Christ.
Well, you find this from all the observers.
And my friend was interested to find out
what really happened as a result.
You find that the Presbyterians took in more
converts in 1952 than any year for about
45 years.
Probably it was three times the average.
You find a similar movement among the Baptists.
Among the Assembly of God it was just
guesswork.
They couldn't keep up with it.
They had 130,000 members in 1951.
In 1955 when they first made a count,
307,000 standing.
That was the way things were going.
And I would say Brazil was the happiest
year of my life.
My colleague Bill Dunlap was listening.
In Beirut, where Bill was on his own
for the first time, the churches increased more
one month in the previous 20 years.
One church had more in the Sunday, in
the early morning prayer meetings each day than
the whole Protestant population at the time before
the Revival.
So we've seen such a revival.
In India, Coimbatore, the Bishop of Coimbatore, Appasamy,
has written it up.
I believe in revival.
But you see, when people ask me about
today, I can't say we're in the midst
of that kind of revival throughout the United
States.
I rejoice in the loosening up there's been.
This remark was made in London, not in
this country, but the former principal of the
London Bible College was speaking on the house
churches in Britain.
There are about 200,000 house churches over
there.
And he said, well, you know, there are
some who are critical of this renewal movement,
but it has changed the attitude to worship.
I well remember the old days when people
would say, let's cut through the preliminaries and
get to the speaker.
He said, isn't that a wonderful idea of
worship of God?
Whereas today, people are more concerned.
That's one good thing.
But my great fear has been among the
manipulators, those who take advantage of movements of
the Spirit.
For instance, I believe there's a gift of
prophecy.
There's such a thing.
It's supplementary.
This is the main thing.
But sometimes God speaks to his people.
But have you ever met the manipulators who
want to get their way?
I get up and say something.
One of the favorite expressions to begin, Behold,
I, the Lord, thy God, am speaking in
the midst of thee.
A friend of mine said he was in
a meeting where somebody thought he needed straightening
out.
And the man said, And behold, my servant
Patrick has done wonderful things for which he
will receive his reward, but he has yet
many things to learn if he will only
learn to listen.
So I said, Pat, were you impressed?
He said, not a bit.
He said, my name's not Patrick.
Pat's my nickname.
Here was a man claiming to be the
Holy Spirit and calling me Patrick.
That's what I call manipulation.
Almost everything the Lord can do, the devil
will seek to counterfeit.
And you'll find people who'll get into, and
what makes me shudder is those who want
to make money for it.
They'll do anything for it.
That's what scares me.
And let me, on the other hand, be
very fair.
I was speaking at the central seminary of
a denomination that has denounced the charismatic movement
every year.
The faculty asked me, what advice do you
have?
Now, I'm a Baptist minister, and I always
held the view there's nothing wrong with us
Baptists that a revival couldn't cure.
But they knew that I was speaking from
a non-charismatic point of view.
But I said, do you think the charismatic
movement was pulled up and dissolved next week?
They said, we never said that.
I said, how about next year?
Well, not next year, no.
Well, I said, would you conceive there may
be a revival when the Lord comes?
Yes.
I said, now let me ask you a
fair question.
Do you think there are any deficiencies in
the charismatic movement?
They said, we think the biggest deficiency is
there isn't enough stress in the holy living.
I said, I feel the same way.
But when I go among my charismatic friends,
I try to make what is lacking.
I don't fight them.
I said, I've learned so much from them.
So, I keep an open heart towards all
God's people.
Now, the last word.
People say, what do you think is most
missing today?
I'm going to put my finger on it.
The first word in the mouth of John
the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, the twelve disciples,
the seventy disciples, the first word in the
last message of the Lord Jesus to his
disciples, the first word of exhortation by the
Apostle Peter at Pentecost and the Apostle Paul
throughout his ministry, is the word repent.
It is the first word of the gospel.
It is the point of the sword of
the Lord.
The last word of the revelation, sir?
Yes.
First thing, most Christians don't know this.
When I say, what's the first word of
the gospel?
John 3.16, love.
Or somebody will say, only believe.
But the first word is repent.
The Lord Jesus said, repent and believe.
You say, is that two things?
No, no, one thing.
If I said, leave Los Angeles, go to
London, is that one commandment or two?
Sounds like two, but it's only one.
You couldn't go to London without leaving this.
And you cannot truly believe without changing your
attitude, which is the meaning of the word
repent.
There's a problem.
Most people don't know what the word means.
Metanoia means change of thinking.
Instead of that, we go around telling people
just to invite Jesus into their heart.
I remember in the Hollywood Christian group, Billy
Graham was the speaker and I was the
chairman.
Half a dozen came through that night, but
one who raised his hand was Mickey Cohen,
public enemy number one, the gangster.
But he went back on it.
He had heard that Roy Rogers was a
converted cowboy, a Christian cowboy, and Colleen Townsend,
a Christian actress, Tim Spencer, a Christian songwriter,
Don Moore, a Christian footballer, Frank Carlson, a
Christian senator, and Mickey thought he could be
a Christian gangster.
He really did.
He told my friend who talked to him,
you didn't tell me how to give up
my career.
He meant his rackets.
You didn't tell me how to give up
my friends.
He thought he could invite Jesus into his
rackets, help him be a better gangster.
Yes, there's a lot of young people in
our churches who think they can be Christian
fornicators.
And in London, Kenneth Anderson said to me,
Edwin, have you ever met a Christian con
man?
Have you ever met the Christian who says,
Well, all right, I did.
Yeah, but you can't sue me.
You're a Christian.
Jack Hayford said to me, there's another side
to that question.
In Romans it says, to believers, a magistrate
is an ordained servant of God to punish
evil doing it.
If you always do right, you don't need
to fear the magistrate.
But if you, as believers, don't do right,
you have every reason to fear him.
It's a shame when the church won't settle
these things, has to go to the law.
But there's your problem.
You remember when Larry Flint was born again?
The fuller students were intrigued to say the
least.
Somebody got a copy of the first editorial
and I read it there.
I don't subscribe to the hospital, so I
had to look at the Xerox copy of
the editorial.
Born again?
Yes, I'm born again.
And I follow the spirit of Buddha, Muhammad
and Jesus.
Poor fellow still doesn't know the score.
But you see, he was inviting Jesus to
come into the hustler.
Maybe the Lord wanted to take him right
out of it.
That's our weakness.
In evangelism today, take the three evangelistic parables.
The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost
son.
How do they end?
Rejoice with me, for I have found the
sheep that I lost.
That's the end of the story.
Then the Lord Jesus said, There is more
joy over one sinner who repents.
Why did he add that?
If he hadn't added that, someone would have
said the sheep never repented.
Story of the lost coin.
Rejoice with me, I find the coin I
lost.
That's the end of the story.
But the Lord said, There is more joy
before the angels of God over one sinner
who repents.
Why did he say that?
Because otherwise some theologian would have said a
coin is incapable of repenting, therefore it's not
required.
But in the story of the lost son,
he didn't add a word, because it was
in the story.
And I find that that's one of the
great things today.
When someone said last night that Glenn Shepard,
who was Marvelous, Glenn Shepard stressed repentance.
My heart gave a little leap there because
that's what I've been preaching when the doors
opened in the Southern Baptist Convention.
I tell my Baptist friends, I'm an evangelical
of evangelicals, I believe in conversion, but repent
and be converted.
I believe in believers baptism, but it says
repent and be baptized.
We have all sorts of substitute things.
Come forward and be baptized.
Oh no.
I think this is the missing note.
And if there's a genuine movement of the
Spirit of God, it won't only be seeking
after the gifts.
It will mean a deep conviction of sin
and transformation of life on the part, first
of all, of God's people, but most of
all on the part of the masses.
So, one of my friends said, well, you
know, I use Revelation 3.20 a lot
to invite Jesus into your heart.
But honestly, Edwin, he said, I hope they'll
change.
Now, I'm disappointed if they don't.
Why don't you tell them?
You go anywhere in the states today, you'll
find ramps for handicapped people and so forth
because of birth defects.
George Gallup told me last year that the
number of born again people in the United
States has gone up 46% to 53%.
I quoted that in the Rose Bowl to
50,000 people.
They started to applaud.
And I stopped them.
I said, I don't believe a word of
it.
I had lived in the same house for
33 years in Los Angeles.
That's a record for California.
But you couldn't kid me that more than
half of the people in that street are
born again.
We've got a weakened gospel.
And I find that when real revival comes,
there's a...
Mind you, I think the Lutherans have something
to talk about preaching law to bring people
to Christ.
People have got to know what sin is
and why it is sin to bring about
conviction of sin.
So when I have a chance of doing
that, I try to inject that thought.
We've got to get back to essentials.
It's a primary doctrine.
By the way, just something flashed into my
mind.
At the Oxford conference, a friend of mine
who's a bookworm gave us a paper.
Never heard anything like it before.
He spoke about Hebrews where it spoke of
repentance from dead works.
And he says, isn't that a strange phrase?
We think of repentance from sin.
But it says from dead works.
Now, what are dead works?
Well, he said, immediately we think of our
Roman Catholic friends going barefoot in a pilgrimage
with their feet bleeding as they climb the
mountain, St. Patrick's Mountain, and Ireland, and all
this sort of thing.
That's dead works.
But he said, aren't we evangelicals guilty of
the same thing?
In some ways, hasn't the invitation become a
dead work in some places?
Where they try to get them forward by
hook or by crook just to get them
to move forward.
The result is we're taking in lots of
people who don't know the first thing about
repentance.
Repentance from dead works means that we get
to the place where unless the Lord is
in it, we shouldn't stoop to it.
We shouldn't try to duplicate it.
I've been helped so much when I find
that a man like Evan Roberts, someone who
was mentioned last night, Frank Marks, wouldn't speak
unless he was anointed.
What a boon to the church that would
be when we would be delivered from the
obligation of speaking when we don't have a
message.
Well, what did you ask me, to give
you a chunk of my heart?