Chapter 4, and the verse is 19.
My little children, of whom I travel in
birth, notice, again, until Christ be formed in
you.
See the tenderness he has?
He doesn't even say children, he says, my
little children.
And you think how much protection they need,
and counsel, and wisdom.
Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians, to
the Philippians, four years before he wrote this
letter to the Galatians.
And in his letter to the Philippians, he
says, I'm Paul the aged.
Paul the aged.
Well, he was older by four years, at
least, when he wrote this epistle.
I admit that Paul is my hero, after
Jesus himself.
I was pondering about him today, and wondered
this, where did he get his incredible courage?
Where did he get his unshakable faith?
Where did he get his unfailing love?
I believe he explains it all in this
amazing epistle.
One of the best known writings of Paul,
surely, is Galatians 2.20. Tell me what
it is.
Good.
Very good.
How many of you know that by memory?
Come on, let me see your hands.
Good.
How many believe it's real in your life?
That's a bit tougher, isn't it?
I believe that the reason that Paul had
what I call incredible courage, unshakable faith, and
undying love, is explained by two things that
he wrote.
In verse 14 of chapter 6, he says
this, but God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto
me, and I unto the world.
I believe there came a moment in his
life, which is explained again by Galatians 2
.20, I am crucified with Christ.
I do not believe anybody enters unconsciously into
an experience with God.
Demands our intelligence and our will, and I
believe again the reason, one reason is this,
there came a place in his life where
he wrote the world, all the world's systems
off as corrupt, as totally antagonistic to the
gospel of the grace of God.
In plain language, he saw the world as
a boneyard.
He saw the world like Ezekiel 30, what
736?
Where the prophet is carried out into a
valley full of bones, and Paul sees every
human system as being fallible and deathly.
Now, one thing none of us have ever
seen, I've seen a lot of things, but
I've never seen the crucifixion.
I don't think I'd like to see one.
I know when a man went out to
be crucified, as dear Dr. Chaucer used to
say, Len, when he went out with a
cross, you knew one thing, he wasn't coming
back.
A cross was a one-way ticket.
The other thing is, at six o'clock
at night, you could go to that crucifixion
and throw anything you like on that man
on the cross.
Bucket of filth, rocks, rotten eggs, rotten fruit,
curse him, kick him, do as he likes.
Once he was nailed to that cross, he
lost all his rights.
Come on, did that happen in your life
and mine?
Happened in the life of Jesus.
Six o'clock at night, you could do
as you like.
Six o'clock in the morning, nobody went.
The first birds there were something like these
horrible things we have around here, only a
much larger edition, vultures.
I remember seeing a lot there in India,
huge horrible things about this height from the
ground, with seven or eight foot wings span.
They hide their necks in their feathers, and
so they should, because when it comes out,
it looks like a long string of meat.
They've no feathers on their necks.
They were there, they pecked at the eyes,
they pecked at the body, they pecked at
the body until the guts hung out, and
the dogs came and licked the blood.
Nobody went to see a crucifixion 12 hours
after the person was crucified.
Now look at that horrible picture.
You know, that's the place where Jesus was
crucified, outside the city wall, the dump, where
they put dead bodies, where only lepers were
allowed to live, where all the garbage was.
It stunk, it smelled, it was full of
everything, it was crucifying, and it was there
they crucified the most spotless man that ever
lived.
And all they had in the gallery were
skeletons hanging from crosses.
Now, a woman might rush up to the
cross when her husband was being crucified, but
she didn't rush up to the cross in
the morning when the birds had torn him
apart, she didn't go two or three weeks
after when he had no flesh at all.
That's a figure that Paul, the world is
crucified, it's hideous, it's corrupt, it's so totally
unattractive to me.
You know, very often in the heat of
a meeting, when the preacher knows the temperatures
at the right degree, he says, how many
of you will pray half an hour a
day for the next year or something?
All the hands go up, okay.
Or the other thing he asks is, how
many people will give so much every week
for the next period?
Never make a vow in the heat of
your emotions or the heat of a meeting.
Paul didn't just scratch his head and say,
well I I think I'll be crucified with
Christ too.
He took the sum total of his life,
and he says there in Philippians chapter 3,
what things were gained to me, he says
in verse 7, those I counted for loss
for Christ, yea doubtless and I count all
things lost for the knowledge of the excellency
for the excellency of the knowledge of the
Lord Jesus Christ my Savior, for whom I
have suffered the loss of all things.
It was a calculated deal he made.
Elsewhere he said he lost all his tribal
rights.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin and
the seed of Abraham.
He was one of the most cultured men
in the world.
And yet, I think one of the few
people who could really say with Isaac Watts,
my richest gain I count but loss and
pour contempt on all my pride.
You know, it's easier for you to pour
contempt on your pride.
It's when somebody else pours contempt on it,
you're in trouble, isn't it?
You know, when somebody rubs you out and
says you're only a zero anyhow, you haven't
much intelligence, you've no social standing, you don't
have this, that, and the other, and boy
you start going down, down, down till there's
nowhere else to go.
Then can we really put up our heads
and say of this dear man said, I
rejoice, I glory in infirmities, in necessities, in
reproaches.
We run away from them all, don't we?
Lord, I'm heading into trouble.
Lord, send an angel, send anybody, but don't
let me get into that situation.
When that's the situation I need to prove
my spirituality.
Not prove it to God, but God has
to prove it to me.
But he says all these things, I suffered
for the loss of all things and count
them but done, that I may win Christ
and be found in him.
I said again that this man has an
indestructible, unshakable faith, an unquenchable zeal, and an
unfailing love.
Think of his letter there to the 2nd
Corinthians chapter 5.
He gives us the nearest to his theological
outline, I think.
He says in chapter 5 of 2nd Corinthians,
we know if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of
God and house not made with hands.
Verse 10 he says, we must all appear
at the judgment seat of Christ.
Verse 11 he says, knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord we persuade men.
Verse 14 he says, for the love of
Christ constraineth me.
Now on the negative side, he was crucified
with Christ.
On the positive, he has this great driving
force, the love, the agape love of John
3, of John 3.16, God so loved
the world, is that love, sacrificial love.
I think the world around us is just
about fed up of black book theology and
notebook theology.
The world is not waiting for a new
definition of Christianity, it's waiting for a new
demonstration of Christianity.
And it can only have that when that
love of Christ is constraining us.
Now Paul has a desperate love for these
people.
That's an interesting word, isn't it?
In the 4th chapter there, verse 19 again,
my little children of whom I travel in
birth again.
The word again fascinated me, I pondered that
today.
The Greek word there is palin, p-a
-l-i-n.
It means to restore to its original quality.
He says that they may be born again.
Notice what he says in chapter 3 and
verse 1 there.
All foolish Galatians who have bewitched you, that
ye should not obey the truth.
So there they have become disobedient.
In verse 3 he says, are you so
foolish that having begun in the spirit ye
are now being made perfect in the flesh?
Have ye suffered so many things in vain?
If it yet be in vain, he therefore
that ministereth to you in the spirit and
worketh miracles among you.
So there you are, they've been embraced in
truth, they've been surrounded with a miraculous net,
they've backslidden.
Because in the 7th verse of chapter 5,
he's speaking obviously in the past tense, he
did one well.
He ran well.
Who did hinder you?
I heard someone quote that verse the other
day that's always misquoted anyhow.
Saying about somebody he's lost his first love.
Not so.
Is that what the scripture says?
No.
At least not the King James version doesn't.
What does it say?
He left his first love.
He didn't lose it.
If you lose a thing, you don't know
where you lost it.
If you left it, you know where you
said goodbye to that person down the road,
or you know where you made a deliberate
choice.
And these people unfortunately have made a deliberate
choice.
They did run well, but something or somebody
hindered them.
My little children of whom I travail in
birth again.
Wouldn't it be something if every pastor in
the nation suddenly realized how thick his congregation
was, and how far they backslid, and he
began to travail in birth, and ordered every
deacon to come along and say we're going
to have a week of traveling.
It would revolutionize the whole nation.
He doesn't say we travel.
He doesn't say all his buddies in the
other revival party, no.
Bless you, this man was so isolated that
he says Demas have forsaken me, and somebody
else has gone off there, and somebody else
has gone off there.
He stands in splendid isolation, and he says
when all men forsook me.
Come on now, come on.
Have you been singing nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,
draw me nearer, me nearer.
Not us, not last days, me nearer, blessed
Lord, or Agapio, wherever you go.
And God starts doing it.
What we do?
We start squealing.
The only way he can draw you nearer
to God is to draw everybody else away
from you.
Is that okay?
Is that a good deal?
Is that what I want?
My little children for whom I travel in
birth.
You know, somebody has said in marriage, if
the wife had the first baby, and the
husband had the second, there'd never be a
third.
This is something we don't know a thing
about, travel.
And these days, of course, when everything's made
easier, even childbirth is made easier in many
cases.
Some say they're sweated out, these precious women,
and go the natural way, which often can
take them to the very gates of death.
Now, here's a man who does not depend
on somebody else's prayers, or somebody else's support.
He has a hold on God.
He's like the prophet Buck's bait, and an
old Jewish commentator.
In fact, he lived in America until a
few years ago.
He said, maybe the most tragic figure in
the world is a prophet.
Some of you guys aspire to be a
prophet, get ready for pain.
He said he's a tragic figure because he
has a fierce loyalty to God, and a
consuming passion for his nation.
He's drawn in two directions.
Come on, how many, whether it's your daddy,
or does your pastor, do you think he
lays at night in travel?
Do you think he goes into the Holy
Land with his own steam, his scholarship, his
ordination, or what?
There can be no birth without travel.
There can be no revival without travel.
Little children, for whom I travel in birth,
what do they say about it?
My little children, whom I travel in birth
again, until Christ be formed where?
In you.
On the Damascus road, he said, Jesus came
and revealed himself to me.
A few years later, he said, he revealed
himself in me.
That's why he says so often, it's Christ
in you.
You can't love a theologian, you can't love
a textbook, you can't even love Mr. Finney,
he's gone away a long while ago.
As good as you are.
You can love me, I wouldn't mind that,
but that's all right.
You can only love a person.
God is love.
The fruit of the Spirit is love.
Love is the most extravagant, ridiculous thing in
the whole world.
And essentially, sacrifice is tied up with love,
and true love is tied up with sacrifice.
I'm praying, he said, not that you may
make a mental ascent, maybe they'd made that.
Maybe the reason that they'd backslidden so easily
was that they'd never come into, what he
calls later elsewhere, a full assurance of faith.
He says, you began in the Spirit, why
have you gone back into the flesh?
You came out of Judaism, why are you
going back to circumcision?
Why are you leaning on visible things instead
of the invisible one?
Now, this man knows something about anguish and
pain.
What did he say in Philippians 2?
That I may what?
Know?
Know about the second coming?
What did he say?
Know him and?
Yeah, but you see, actually, as we go
the other way around, we have to know
the fellowship of his suffering before we can
know the power of his resurrection.
The fellowship of his suffering.
The dearest friend is the one to whom
you can go and pull out your broken
heart.
Anybody will listen to you when you're in
the good weather and in a good situation.
But what about when your world collapses, when
somehow, something's gone desperately wrong?
Do you know somebody you could go to
and pull out your heart?
What is Paul?
You remember on the Damascus road when he
was intercepted by, Ananias was told to go
and tell this man Saul what he must
suffer?
That's not what he said.
The Lord said, tell him what great things
he must say.
That's bad psychology.
I had a man chase me one day
because I said, true disciple, to become a
Christian you have to renounce your sins, repent,
restore what you can restore, and then take
up your cross.
Oh no, he said, you mustn't tell young
people to take up the cross, it will
frighten them.
Well, you argue with the Lord about that,
not me.
That's what the Word of God says, you
take up your cross and you follow him.
Paul is, I don't know, I was going
to say it, well, I'll say it anyhow.
Must be right if I say it, but
anyhow.
He wrote fourteen epistles, if you include Hebrews.
By the way, let me remember, because I
slipped so many times, we were going to
start the class next Tuesday night, we have
to postpone it until a week next Tuesday,
which is good, it gives me breathing space.
I didn't change it, someone else did.
It's going to be over in Dave Wilkerson's
place, as we call it, and we're going
to stay with Hebrews 11 approximately from next
Tuesday night until Christmas.
I said last week I've been in coal
mines and submarines and seen many things, but
the most wonderful thing that I find interesting
is how God makes men and women.
And that's what he shows us in Hebrews
11, how he makes people.
There's only one common denominator, and that is
they all had faith, but boy, their ministries
were as varied as could be.
Now, this man is tied to a whipping
post, he was liced 195 times.
Well, he says, five times I received 40
stripes, save one, so it's 539.
195 times, thrice I suffered shipwreck, once I
was stoned.
I don't think he had any smart, wonderful
personality.
He says, even to the Corinthians, they said
that, what will this babbler say?
I think he's pretty ugly.
I think he limped.
I think his face was creased, he'd been
stoned so many times his cheeks had been
split and his jaws broken.
In weariness, in fasting, in painfulness, in perils
of the deep, in perils of mine own
countrymen.
Come on, add them all up.
What's the bottom line?
He's filling up the sufferings of Christ, but
what does he say?
Does he whine about it?
No.
He says, it's one thing to have a
bleeding back and somebody rub salt in your
wounds and stick you in a stinking hole
and leave you there for days and weeks
and months and years, but he says, you
know, the most hurtful thing is this.
What does he say?
I what?
That which cometh upon me, what is it?
Remember?
That which cometh upon me daily, the what?
The care of all the churches.
Do you think you've got problems with your
children?
What about a man who has a whole
string of churches?
They've just come out of heathendom, many of
them are weak and vacillating, there's no revelation,
there's no Bibles yet.
God pity us.
I preached to the, what, the first son,
it's Friday night here, on Elijah.
And the more I see men like that
and realize all he did, and yet he
never had a Bible.
All the heroes in Hebrews 11, not one
of them ever had a Bible.
And you and I have everything that God
is ever going to say to the world.
Boy, we're in for trouble at the end
of the line.
I like the hymn, Our Firmer Foundation, remember
that hymn?
What more can he say than to you
he has said?
But here is a man who has had
the veil of eternity lifted up.
That's why he says in the chapter that
we read, in 2nd Corinthians 5 there, the
love of Christ constraineth me.
Why?
Knowing the terror of the Lord.
None of this sloppy, sentimental love business.
God is a just God, a holy God
has a big investment in you.
Your parents have a big investment, they sent
you to school, maybe high school and college.
They're paying your way here or paying your
way somewhere anyhow.
But above all, the precious blood of Jesus
Christ was shed for you.
I understand there's a bit of a garment,
a bit of a girl's, do you remember
the old-fashioned pinnacles?
You won't, but girls used to wear.
You know, a lot of holes in them,
I don't know what you call that.
You used to wear one, didn't you Betty?
You didn't?
Oh, she didn't wear one, they didn't wear
one.
Okay.
But my sister used to wear them.
They had holes in them.
No, I don't mean holes like you when
you rip a thing.
I mean, you know, they used to stitch
round them, they were beautiful.
There's a piece of a girl's pinafore up
in, what do you call the place there?
I just mentioned them, you forgot, what was
it?
In Washington, the museum, Smithsonian.
It's not much bigger than, less than my
handkerchief.
It's got a brown stain on it.
It's one of the great treasures of America.
It's a chocolate stain, it looks like it,
but it isn't.
What is it?
When they were carrying the precious man that
was murdered there, Abe Lincoln, carrying him out
of the theatre, he passed by a girl
and some of his blood dropped onto a
pinafore.
They took that piece of that pinafore and
it's a national shrine almost.
The Rockefellers can't buy it, nobody can buy
it.
It's stained with the blood of one of
the greatest men that ever lived, never mind
in America.
We could do with him now in the
White House, I'll tell you.
Soon with the Black House away, some things
are going.
Why is it so precious?
It's the blood of a famous man, just
one or two drops of his precious blood.
Nobody can buy it.
And one drop of that precious blood, sinners
plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty
stains.
That's a great hymn written in England by
William Cowper, contemporary, a friend of John Wesley.
Can you imagine John Wesley and Cowper and
Newton who wrote Amazing Grace and all that
bunch of guys getting together every week for
discussions and talks?
It must have been wonderful to be there.
I wish you could find a tape recording
of it.
So here you have this man with a
comprehension of eternity that maybe nobody has ever
had except himself.
He says that you may know the height,
the depth, the length and the breadth of
the love of God and he's only touched
the fringe of it, he admits that.
That burning, consuming love that never fails and
he talks about it in one, isn't it
amazing that the man who went down to
Damascus bleeding out threatening, carrying in his pocket
a signed statement that he's permitted to liquidate
every Christian he can find.
And then instead of burning with unholy anger,
he burns with an incomparable love.
They throw him outside of a city on
the refuse heap and say that's the end
of him.
He gets up, he has a kind of
a little private resurrection.
They lash him 195 times but they can't
beat the grace of God out of him.
They starve it but they can't starve it
out of him.
They send him to prison, they threaten him,
they can't threaten it out of him.
If we could get a baptism of that
love in the church of Jesus Christ today
we'd shake the world in less than a
year.
Theology on ice is no good.
I would have liked to have been a
scholar, I'm not a scholar by any shape
or form, I'd like to have been.
But Paul was a scholar.
I think he had the greatest intellect of
any man that ever lived apart from Jesus
himself.
You know somebody called John, John that gave
us the, as we call it, the fourth
gospel.
As I've said often there are not four
gospels, there's only one gospel told by four
different men all with a different accent.
And John, somebody called him the Plato of
the New Testament.
Ninety-two percent of what he writes is
his own.
He doesn't borrow from like Matthew, Mark and
Luke borrow from each other.
Ninety-two percent of what he says is
entirely original.
Take the 15th of John, nobody else talks
about the true vine.
Take the 16th, nobody presents the Holy Ghost
like he does.
Take the 17th, the most profound thing in
prayer ever recorded.
Not the most profound prayer, the most profound
prayer was never recorded, it was Gethsemane.
It was too holy, it would have shattered
us if you and I had heard Jesus.
I'd love to have heard but I don't,
I'm sure I couldn't have taken it.
But here is a man consumed, he sees
the world, hospital, every system.
If you want a picture of his courage,
turn for a few minutes here to the,
where will we go, the Acts of the
Apostles.
What chapter is it?
Chapter 17.
I was thinking about a certain message for
Sunday morning and sure it was exactly what
the Lord wanted me to speak on, but
the Lord said it isn't.
So I've got to obey the Master and
change it.
But in connection with that message, I've been
thinking of one of the most famous poems
ever, I guess, written by an unbeliever, W
.E. Henley.
This is what he says, Out of the
night that troubles me, black as the pits
from pole to pole, I thank whatever God
there be for my unconquerable soul.
It matters not how straight the gate, how
punishment the scourge, no let me go on
the next verse.
Out of the night that troubles me, black
as the pit from pole to pole, I
thank whatever God there be for my unconquerable
soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have
not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is
bloody but unbowed.
That's the most quoted poem I think, praise
in all his poems.
Loom's got the horror of the shade, and
yet the menace of the years finds and
shall find unafraid.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears, loom's
got the horror of the shade, or the
grave he means, and yet the menace of
the years finds and shall find me unafraid.
Now listen to his arrogance.
It matters not how straight the gate, how
charged with punishment the scourge, I'm the master
of my fate, I'm the captain of my
soul.
Exactly, go to hell.
You're the master of your fate.
You refuse to bow to God, the laws
of God, the word of God, the son
of God, the spirit of God.
You refuse the blood of the land, well
go to the wrath of the land.
That's the only alternative for him or this
generation.
After him comes A.C. Swinburne.
Remember his famous phrase, glory to man in
the highest, for man is the master of
things.
He says, from too much love of living,
from hope and fear set free, we thank
thee with brief thanksgiving, whatever gods may be,
that no life lives forever, the dead man
rise up never, and even the weariest river
winds somewhere to the sea.
Now Paul, in the 17th of the act
here, marches with his head unbowed, marches with
a holy confidence into the midst of the
most intellectual group of people in the world
in that time.
This 17th chapter says the Stoics were there,
and the Epicureans, and the poets, and all
the rest of them.
And Paul goes in the midst of these
people, Stoics, Epicureans, their
great leaning was on the natural primal facility
of man, or faculty of man, on individual
self-sufficiency.
But all he could see when he went
into that city, he said his spirit was
stirred when he saw, amidst all that massive
intelligence, they bowed down to gods of stone,
and they sought for the unknown god.
He walks into the midst of them with
all their philosophies, and all their reasonings, and
everything else, and they listened intently when they
found he knew as much philosophy as they
knew, as much poetry as they knew, as
much history as they knew.
But then suddenly he comes out with something
they never heard of.
He talks about a man called Jesus Christ,
who died and rose again from the dead.
What did they do?
He says, I passed by and I saw
your devotions, and I found an altar with
this inscription to an unknown god, whom therefore
ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you.
God hath made the world, and all things
therein, seeing that he is lord of heaven.
They wouldn't accept that very well.
He's the lord of heaven and earth, and
he dwelleth not in temples with hands.
All these temples you have down the side
of the road, the investments of millions of
dollars, all your philosophies, all your writings, they're
nothing to him.
He is the one god, he's the creator
of heaven and earth.
He dwelleth not in temple made with hands,
nor is he worshiped with hands, as though
he had need of anything.
Then he winds it up, verse 31.
Because he hath appointed a day to which
he will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he
hath given assurance to all men that he
hath raised him from the dead.
The message of the New Testament was not
the death of Jesus Christ.
That was only half of it.
They could understand men who died as martyrs.
What they did not understand was the resurrection
of Jesus.
That by one man's sin, disobedience, sin entered
into the world and polluted the whole human
race.
This debate has been a bit interesting, not
too much this week.
I'm glad somebody really pulled one of the
speakers up, was it last night, and said
when they said about the abortion, this is
a very emotional issue.
Was that Fierce Ferraro that said that?
This is a very, it's not an emotional
issue, it's a moral issue and it's a
spiritual issue.
Oh, we don't want a nuclear war, that
would destroy a lot of our young people.
Oh, doesn't that, a lot of our people,
doesn't that sound very holy and compassionate?
They don't want young men to go to
war, they want to murder them in the
womb, which is the worst.
We should take care of our young people
for the next generation.
There won't be any young people in the
next generation.
Their womb is their tomb.
Is God going to wing it out iniquity
much longer?
If I were a protestant pope, I would
close every evangelical church in America or the
world until after the election.
Not that we can buy it by our
supplications and devotion, but at least let's get
serious.
There's more talk about the World Series this
week than about what's coming up onto the
nation.
There's more interest in football, now we're in
the football season.
I don't believe we've ever, as a nation,
been at a more serious situation than we're
in tonight.
One day we'll have backed the philosophy and
Ferrar too.
They'll have backed the philosophy of these men
there, these epicureans and these stoics.
These men who want to rationalize everything and
reason everything out.
Our only hope is God.
Revival is not the best thing that can
come to America, to say that it's the
only thing.
And you can't start it in Washington.
If you could, I'd be up there right
now.
You know, I think one of the horrors,
if I can use that, when we get
to eternity and we see the winding path
from the throne of Jesus Christ right back
to the moment you were born again, and
you see how near you came to supreme
blessing and supreme deliverance and revival, and we
missed it by a hair's breadth almost.
I think that will be one of the
sorrows.
No sorrow in heaven, of course.
It's all joy and peace.
We go to funerals and say, no more
tears.
But the same book that says that, the
same book, Revelation says, God shall wipe away
all tears.
So where does he wipe them from?
I consider at the judgment seat.
No, the judgment is only for rewards.
No, that's what Paul says.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 there, we
shall suffer loss.
You don't usually laugh if you suffer loss.
When we look back and see the turn
in the road, the wrong choices we made,
we didn't wait on God enough.
We didn't obey him enough.
I wonder what kind of compassion.
No, I don't.
I think if Paul came back today, he'd
look generally over the church and say, you
know what I do?
I don't sleep much at night.
I don't eat much.
My whole spirit is groaning.
I travel.
The man that honors me, too many come
to my door almost, but the man that
honors me is the man that honors me
with his burdens.
I've not come for money.
I've got such a burden.
I've got such a concern.
I'm in such agony.
I'm in this, that.
So what?
What if God himself puts a burden on
us?
Do you know one sign of spirituality is
when you ask God to give you a
burden nobody else wants to carry?
Unless you didn't say amen, but it's true
anyhow.
Share your heart with me, God.
God says to one of the churches there,
you know, people say it goes to the
Great Commission.
What was the Great Commission?
Going into all the world.
That was God's message to the church.
Prove it from scripture, you can.
That was the message of Jesus to the
disciples.
The last words of Jesus were not going
into all the world and preach the gospel.
Last words of Jesus were to the church,
repent.
And he says to one church, I counsel
thee to buy eyestars from me.
And that was the chief industry of that
church, that city.
They didn't have glasses like we have to
screen their eyes.
Their eyes got very sore going down dusty
roads and seeing the white tan.
And so they exported from that town eyestar
that went all over that part of the
world.
And the irony is that the Lord says,
you need eyestar yourself that you can't make
and you can't buy.
I counsel thee to buy of me eyestars.
Remember that hymn that says, open my eyes
as I may see glimpses of truth thou
hast for me?
I used to like that till I found
out it's a favorite hymn of the Spiritist.
So I don't sing it anymore.
But there comes a moment, this blessed man
on the Damascus road was what?
Blinded with the light.
I've not read this anywhere else, but I'm
sure of it.
I don't believe he ever got his eyesight
back again.
This eyesight yet, yes.
But he never saw the world the same.
He never saw men the same.
He never saw eternity the same.
He never saw heaven the same.
He never saw hell the same.
He was born into the presence of God
to see the lost world as God saw
it, to see eternity even caught up into
the third heaven and never said a word
about it.
You know, if you're going to a mission
field, whether the mission field is the hell
of a hole in America, ghetto or London
or somewhere, Soho, or to a foreign country.
If you don't have this love, you'll break
down within six months of going to a
mission field.
You'll be a casualty there.
You'll be a liability instead of an asset.
The mission field isn't dying for want of
miseries.
Most of them will be better come home.
They malfunction after a while.
What?
They went out of compassion, went out of
sympathy.
We went to teach, we went to help
the poor.
Very good.
But not the primary object of the man
of God or the woman of God.
It's to go with an anointing, to go
with a love that surpasses everything they have
ever seen.
A selfless love, an undying love, an unbreakable
love.
It's not the love of the poets.
It's not the love of a book, novel.
It's the love of God.
Can you imagine that?
Paul says, the love of God shed abroad
in the heart by the Holy Ghost.
We try to prove we're filled with the
Spirit by our different gifts.
I'm not going to argue about that.
There is one qualification that proves we're filled
with the Holy Ghost, and that is we
live a holy life.
One qualification, that is that the love of
Christ constrains me.
You can trample on me if you like,
I won't squeal.
My richest gain, it means I'll surrender even
my citizenship.
I know a man that did that in
India.
When you've been there 15 years, wanting to
come home, the government said you can go,
but you can't come back.
I must come back.
This is my life.
Well, then you surrender your American citizenship.
I have to think about it.
I've got a boy of 15.
I've got two or three children.
I take them out to America.
They can't come back.
No, no.
And he renounced everything, his citizenship, and everything
that he had in order that they may
stay there and burn out for God.
Exactly what Jesus did when he came to
this lousy world in which we live.
He took upon him, not the form of
angels, he took upon him our human flesh.
He took human limitations, he laid his glory
by.
They bowed down to him every day and
cried holy, holy in eternity.
Down on earth they spitted in his face
and pulled his beard.
Oh, that this love could possess our hearts.
This undying love, this unbreakable love, the love
that doesn't seek its own, but is not
provoked, that thinketh no evil, that beareth all
things, and hopeth all things, and endureth all
things.
Look, let's face it.
Why don't we get on this in God's
name?
What the church of Jesus Christ has had
in America, or any other country in the
last 25 years, has not changed in one
of those countries.
So, something needs to be changed.
We've gone to other countries.
Have we taken them?
No, we haven't taken the gospel.
We've taken American Christianity, or English Christianity, Bible
Christianity.
It's the most costly thing in the world.
It's the most beautiful thing in the world.
It's the most glorious thing in the world.
Paul says, I remember the time when I
sat down and I did everything up.
There isn't one thing, my citizenship, my position
in the church, the tribe of Benjamin, the
seed of Abraham.
There isn't one thing that I will not
forfeit to God.
There's not one thing that's worth putting up
as a barrier, that he can't come in
and possess me, my spirit, and my soul,
and my body.
I've told you before, and I've said it,
I've finished talking right here.
I think the greatest honor that was ever
given to a man on earth, was given
to the apostle Paul.
Remember when some men tried to deliver demons
out of a man, and the demons jumped
up and beat the preacher up?
I think he had every right to do
that.
What did the demons say?
Jesus we know, and Paul we know.
Didn't that take your breath away?
In the same breath they say, Jesus we
know, and Paul we know.
He's on par.
He terrifies us when he moves.
We have to have a council meeting in
hell every morning.
Which way do you think he's going today?
Oh you don't know, because he doesn't walk
in the flesh, he walks in the spirit.
Before he gets very far, he'll turn around
if need be.
Everybody's disappointed.
He was going to Bithynia, but he went
somewhere else, because God told him so.
One of the hardest things is to change
your mind when God says, that tests your
pride.
What will people think?
Well if you've any sense, you know people
don't think anyhow.
But what if they do think?
Are you living for what people think?
God help you if you are.
There's only one thing more difficult than finding
the will of God, and that's difficult at
your age, I know that for many of
you.
One thing more difficult than finding the will
of God, what's doing it?
When everybody says you're a fool, why don't
you stay at home?
Why don't you take over your daddy's business?
You could make a lot more money and
give it to missions.
God isn't after money, he happens to have
all the world.
I remember being in a prayer meeting with
dear old Dr. R.
R.
Brown there in Okoboji.
He was in that great church of the
Christian Missionary Alliance in Omaha, and he said,
Brother Aidan, we're going to have a half
night of prayer.
You'll enjoy that.
I said, I will.
He said, boy we got some old farmers
here, boy can they pray.
He said, you better watch out, they'll scare
you.
I said, I'm not going to be scared
in a prayer meeting.
Well last week, he said, one of them
got going.
He said, he took his coat off and
went onwards.
He really got praying.
We've been talking about many needs that we
had, and he said, this old boy got
his hands up, and he voiced up, and
he said, Lord, the cattle on a thousand
hills are yours.
The farmer next to him said, drive them
this way, Lord, drive them this way.
He thought that would solve their problems.
I would have liked to have heard the
Apostle Paul preach.
I'd like to have heard him on my
own hills, surrounded by intellectuals, philosophers, poets, epicureans,
stoics, what have you got.
But above all, I'd like to have heard
him pray.
Travail!
It's forgotten in our day.
I think a meeting we had, we had
a rough guy with us, and boy did
he shout when he prayed.
After praying one day, an old lady came
up to the front, she said, son, God
isn't deaf.
He said, no, and he's not nervous either.
If you have to give expression loudly, so
what?
When do you shout?
When you're in need.
When you shout, when you're in danger.
Isn't America in danger tonight?
Isn't America in need tonight?
Isn't my generation the greatest need it ever
had?
Is hell enlarging its mouth to swallow this
generation?
Hasn't the church miserably failed?
Only God can deliver us, and I believe
he, I don't believe he answers prayer.
I believe he answers desperate prayer.
I travail.
Can you do this?
Can I do this?
Can you call the Holy Ghost to that?
That's a dangerous thing to do.
Paul does.
Is it Romans 10, where it is, I
call the Holy Ghost to bear witness, what?
That I could wish myself accursed.
Do you know the literal word is there?
I could wish myself damned if need be.
Madame Guillaume says, if there isn't room in
heaven for one more sinner, give them my
seat and let me go to hell, because
I enjoyed you so much on earth, Lord,
I'd enjoy you in hell.
Now, that's not my kind of theology, but
that's what she said.
I understand the feeling.
I can understand Paul saying, let me be
an outcast.
Let me be the most rejected man in
the world, considered with my staggering intellect the
biggest idiot, because I'm the following invisible person
called Jesus Christ.
I might have been the greatest rabbi that
ever lived.
What is that?
My richest gain I count but loss.
Poor contempt and all my pride.
I'm not suggesting you get into that state
of prayer after two weeks in this Bible
school or any other, but I'll tell you
what, if your prayer life isn't deepened in
this school, you've missed it, or any other
school.
Prayer is the simplest form of speech that
infant lips can try.
Prayer, the sublimest strength that reached the majesty
on high.
It's always great when you get to my
age to have hindsight.
I told my darling wife recently, I said,
Martha dear, I think if I were 10
years younger, I'd sell this house we're in,
with permission from the Lord.
I'd go by the old house that Iain
Barnes used to live in.
I walked in that house a while ago.
The rugs were still the same, the chairs
were still the same.
The rug where he stained it with his
tears, the chair when he used to dig
his elbows in and groan and travel.
There was something almost mystical about that house.
I'd love to see somebody.
I'd turn it into a school of prayer,
a 10-weeks course.
No going out shopping.
Day and night, considering, studying prayer, getting men
that come in that could pray, and men
that could teach us to pray.
The greatest need in the nation today.
I want you to pray.
Time is going.
It's amazing how people stay at ballgames till
three o'clock in the morning.
You know, it would be amusing if it
wasn't so sad that people can't bear an
hour, one hour in the house of God.
Oh, it's a long one, that hour.
What do they do?
Get up and walk out.
What are they going to do when they
go to eternity?
If you can't stick an hour with God
down here, in God's name, what are you
going to do for a million years in
his presence?
Accept some reports from earth about football games
or something?
No.
I say this again.
My great concern for this area is that,
in his mercy, God will produce a new
race of Christians, anointed with a new zeal,
a new passion, a new love.
Say goodbye to the sports world, and the
business world, and every other world.
And say, I'm going to live from the
crown of my head to the soles of
my feet, my spirit, my soul, my body,
my mind, my will, my emotions on the
altar.
I like that verse of the hymn, Thirst
and Obey.
We don't sing it so much.
But we never can prove the delights of
his love until all on the altar we
lay.
For the favor he shows and the joy
he bestows are for those who will thirst
and obey.
We all need a new baptism of love,
a baptism.
My eyes need to see.
I've been around the world.
These precious friends of mine are going back
to India, lousy holy for Israel.
We've described this week on TV as the
filthiest city in the world.
I think the second one is Mexico City.
You go and tiptoe through bodies on the
streets.
People just fall down in front of you,
pull their clothes over their heads, and sleep
at night.
Babies are left on the side of the
road.
Holy cows take up every blessed place.
It's only one of so many nations.
Two thousand years after Jesus died, there are
more lost people tonight than ever there have
been in history.
Does that make you happy?
Where did we miss the turn in the
road?
What are we missing?
We're missing holy love, holy passion, holy anointing,
holy vision.
Do you think you dare kneel down and
ask God for some of that now?
Pray for our precious friends if he goes
to India.
Pray for that group of young men that
at this moment we'll be praying for the
first time, seven of them.
Pray for the ministries around here.
One of them doesn't need a new anointing.
Is that right, Brother Martin?
You've got to pray particularly because there's a
crisis period in, it's not a moral crisis,
not just a financial crisis.
There's a certain crisis here at last days
that these precious leaders need special wisdom from
heaven to decide at this time.
Maybe thousands of lives depend on it.
Pray about the political situation.
It's a critical situation.
We'd rather go forward or backward.
We'd rather go up or go down.
It's a horrid thing when the blind are
leading the blind.
Farrah talked last night as well, you don't
need to ask the Russians to come to
the table.
It'll all be nice and obedient.
Then the news this morning says there are
17 recent violations of the promises that they
make.
What did they do in England today?
The IRA blew up, tried to kill Mrs.
Thatcher and the whole cabinet and killed five
that didn't fortunately kill her.
She just got up and said, well it
must go on as usual.
Oh God baptize us with love.
Baptize us with this courage this man had,
this zeal that refused to give up, this
love that would not, could not fail, this
courage that wouldn't waver.
If 120 people could go out and turn
the world upside down, there's more than that
here tonight.
Would you cry to God and ask him
to give what you need?
Let's kneel and pray.
As we kneel, let's sing when I survey
the wondrous cross.
When I survey the one
on which the prince of