The one issue, and having laid some groundwork
for it, I hope to ask two very
simple and yet solemn questions of all of
us who are gathered here, hungry, hungry for
fellowship, but in great need, in great need.
What is the issue?
And I have two passages of scripture.
The first is found in the book of
Genesis, at chapter 3, where the issue was
stated, and from that hour to this, every
other issue has grown out of this one,
and this issue, that was the issue in
the Garden of Eden, remains the issue to
date.
I was up in Binghamton, New York, many
years since, and God was giving us great,
but light harvest.
That took a while.
Somebody invited somebody to come to the meeting
to hear me preach, and he said, no
use to go.
He says the same thing all the time
he preaches.
I met a young Methodist preacher, he's got
a well-painted ribbon and sharpened teeth.
He's less than forty years old.
He's taught at the Duke University, and yet
he's one of the powerful preachers of this
hour.
He started a church among the Methodists with
nine families, and is making that city sit
up and take notice as he is seeking
to create a fellowship of men and women
who live in the power of the resurrection
life of the risen Lord.
And I asked him how on earth he
had come to the clearness and the oneness
of this message.
Well, he said, Brother Barnard, there isn't but
one message to be preached, and that's God's
eternal purpose in Jesus Christ, that on the
basis of his life laid down, he proposes
to set up his totalitarian rule in hearts,
in institutions, and in this world before the
round of time comes.
But that's quite a purpose, isn't it?
That's quite a message.
The issue is stated in Genesis 2,
verse
15, and the Lord God took the man
and put him into the Garden of Eden
to dress it and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat, but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it, for in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
In the 9th chapter of the Gospel of
the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, two
verses, verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah 9.
Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7.
For under us a child is born, under
us a son is given, and the government
shall be upon his shoulder.
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor,
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince
of Peace.
And of the increase of his government and
peace there shall be no end.
And upon the throne of David, and upon
his kingdom to order it, and to establish
it with judgment and with justice from henceforth
even for ever.
The zeal of the Lord, of course, will
perform this.
A hundred years ago, the controversial voice of
his age, a man who was not an
ordained public preacher, a man who wasn't perfect
like we are, but he was crying aloud
against exactly what we are facing today, where
we live in America, where almost unanimously the
people have agreed that we ought to go
to church on Sunday morning and then go
home.
But we must not get involved in what's
going on.
This world is being torn to pieces by
everybody out of hell, but we, like the
people in New York City, are watching women
ravish, husbands beaten up for trying to protect
their wives because this generation of people wants
to go to church on Sunday morning, listen
to the preacher preach a fire, and go
home.
He cried out against the same thing that
John Wesley cried out in his day and
that our brother Blissfield talked about this morning.
This man wrote a parable a hundred years
ago about the conventional faith characteristic of his
fellow church members in Denmark.
I wanted to begin the message tonight so
some of you will be familiar, you'll bear
with me.
The subject of this parable is the tame
geese.
Mr. Kierkegaard writes on the tame geese, and
here's what he says.
Suppose it was so that the geese could
talk, and they'd so arranged it that they
also could have their religious worship, their divine
service.
Every Sunday they came together and one of
the ganders preached.
The essential content of the sermon was, I
think this was a conference on the grace
of God, I'm not certain, what a lofty
destiny the geese had, what a high goal
it created for them.
And every time this word was mentioned, the
geese curtsied and the ganders bowed their heads.
What a high goal the Creator had set
before the geese.
By the ring of rings, they were told,
they could fly away to distant regions, blessed
climes, where properly they were adorned.
But here they were only strangers.
And so it was every Sunday.
They broke up, each waddled home to his
own affairs.
And then the next Sunday again to divine
worship and then again home.
And that was the end of that.
They flew and they were likey, became plump
and delicious, and then were eaten on Martin
Mass Eve, and that was the end of
that.
That was the end of that.
For though the discourse sounded so lofty on
Sunday, the geese on Monday were ready to
recount to one another.
But before a certain goose that took serious
levitation and who wanted to make serious use
of the rings that were designed for the
high goal that was proposed to him.
And the geese were wont to tell about
what a terrible tragedy and what a terrible
death this one encountered.
Also among the geese, there were some individuals
that seemed suffering and grieved hearing.
About hearing, it is currently said among the
geese, you see what it leads to when
you take this flying seriously.
For because their hearts are occupied with the
thought of wanting to fly, therefore they become
thin.
Do not fly, do not have the grace
of God as we have, who therefore become
plump and delicate.
And then Mr. Kierkegaard says, and then when
someone reads this, he says, it's very pretty.
And that's the end of that.
Then he waddles home to his affairs, becomes,
or at least endeavors with all his might
to become, plump and delicate and fat.
But on Sunday morning the parson preacher cries,
and he listens just like the geese.
This world don't go to hell, because we've
reduced that for which God hung his tongue
on the cross to a matter of attending
divine worship on Sunday morning, waddling home, and
refusing to get involved in what's going on
as this world's being butchered from every direction.
The geese listen to the parson preacher cry,
and that's the end of that.
I have two testimonies that speak to my
heart.
One of them is for this same gentleman.
I wish you'd listen to this testimony of
all the nonsense uttered in these miserable times.
Perhaps the most nonsensical is the sentence written
with a pretense of wisdom, which I've often
enough met up with in the course of
my reading, and whose excellence I've heard some
people praise.
The nonsensical sentence is this.
Nowadays, no man can be a martyr anymore,
for ours is an age incapable of making
a martyr of anyone.
Then Mr. Kierkegaard says, What a misconception!
We are not to think it is the
age which has the power to put a
man to death or to make him a
martyr.
But it is the martyr, the genuine martyr,
which must give to the age the punishment,
the bitter punishment it can.
Real superiority always works in two ways.
It produces the force which brings about its
own fall.
Thus, when a disturber of conscience fails to
put to death, it is not the age
which puts it in its own strength and
leads him to the palace, but it is
he himself who, by dealing his salutary blows,
gives to me the passionate desire to kill
me.
And if the age is stopped in the
worst kind of laxity, such a brave man
has only to appear to disturb such an
age to its core.
I know I've got much time, but so
help me, God, I'm getting so sick and
tired of being nice.
I'm about to explode.
I wish I let God, God Almighty, with
great power and force, grace
and to help great people in this world
I've had to put up with.
We couldn't disturb a convention that pleased the
whole shooting match-up.
A great French preacher makes another statement that
I preface my remarks with.
Mr. E.
Matthew M.
A.
P.
H.
R.
O.
T.
He says, after twenty-five years of preaching
this first preachers, he said, I'm still appalled
by all the fine words I've uttered from
the pulpit, thunder by thunder, for twenty-five
years.
Anyone of which lived up to the hilt
would have been enough to send me to
church.
If Christianity is not persecuted in the West,
it owes its security to its unfaithfulness.
God's blessing is withdrawn and cannot be experienced
in the midst of our verbal sonorities.
Be the best snorer you ever saw.
God's blessing seeks a truly adventuring life.
God gives to us only by halves because
we trust him by halves.
With that preface, I want to prepare to
ask my heart one more time and yours
two questions.
It is said, or it is true, that
when a queen or a king, a sovereign,
is crowned in Great Britain, that one part
of the traditional service is as follows.
They take a golden orb, surmount it on
a cross, and this golden orb on a
cross is presented to the sovereign.
And then the words are spoken.
When you see the orb set under the
cross, remember that the whole world is subject
to the power and to the empire of
Jesus Christ.
This will serve to focus our attention tonight
on the one issue of this hour, of
every hour, past, present, and future, in whom
is authority and how may it be recognized.
In the Garden of Eden, there's just one
issue.
On Golgotha's Hill, there's just one issue.
In the Garden of Eden, just one issue.
Does God have a right to be God,
and does he exercise that right?
There's just one issue at Calvary.
We will not have this man reign over
us.
Does God have a right to sit on
the throne?
The Bible says he does.
Does God have a right to exercise that
right?
The Bible says he does.
When the issue was first joined, there was
peace in Abraham's tent as long as it
snowed.
It was only the sun.
And there were wars when Isaac came.
So he was out fighting in the Second
World War, and he kept getting letters from
his wife.
He was in bed.
She was the daughter of a husband.
She was nagging him to death, worrying him
to death about problems.
He finally sat down and wrote her a
letter and said, For God's sake, quit worrying
me with your troubles.
Leave me alone to enjoy this war in
peace.
Figure out peace, and all do it all
together.
If God Almighty had the key, if he'd
step down off the throne and quit bringing
his commands, quit pressing his toes, quit murdering,
quit interfering, then the Garden of Eden, Tuesday,
happened.
God's friendship was threatened.
If Adam had a wand, God would have
been out of business.
And manhood, his wholeness, was lost.
It was so lost that now the scriptures
speak of the natural man to describe the
unnatural man, the fellow that craves it, who's
beside himself and has to devote to himself,
or he'll act like he's got sense enough
to come in out of the rain.
Oh, things ought to kill him.
Now, the issue of the same scripture of
God Almighty has got to be set.
God Almighty will never listen to you on
any other matter until this issue's set.
We have the privilege.
I used to look in the back of
the algebra book to cheat a little bit
and find out the answer, and I've gone
to all trouble working it out.
Praise God.
And I've looked in the back of the
book, and I read in the 15th chapter,
1 Corinthians, this thing's going to be settled.
Praise God.
He must reign.
He must.
Until that thing's settled.
Until this world is bought.
Into subjection to Almighty God in Christ.
Man's wholeness was lost.
Man was made to be governed.
There's never been any government placed on anybody's
shoulders but Jesus Christ.
The government was on his shoulders.
The whole house fell and turned over to
him.
Nobody got any right to make any decisions
there.
The government shall be on his shoulder, not
yours.
I can't quote it.
But John Calvin dedicated his institute to the
reigning monarch of his day, and in the
climate of boldness in his heart, was pleased
to remind that monarch that he'd sit where
he was as long as it pleased.
The only one that's ever been given any
rule or any government, Jesus Christ.
Man was made to be governed.
The ungoverned man is not a real man.
Only so will he be a whole man.
Otherwise he's just a fish out of water.
He was created to serve God.
His human personality was designed for something more
than self-centered animal existence.
Made this man not to stand alone but
to be lost in a great purpose.
That strange expression is still true.
In whose service is perfect freedom?
Sin is personal slavery instead of obedient freedom.
To be free, a man must be under
him upon whose shoulders the government of everything
that riles and wriggles from time to eternity
has been placed.
What a Savior.
Salvation, then.
We heard about somebody seeing God's salvation this
morning.
Salvation, then, if it's God's salvation, is the
restoration of the throne-ship of God and
making a man a man one more time.
It follows, therefore, that three things are true.
The gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation
of Him, in Him, through Him, and in
Him, for Him.
God put the system of all things, and
in and through Him, we gain God's throne
-ship in all of the earth and restore
man to where he's a whole man.
You don't buy any of the other books
back there that your wife lets you buy.
Mr. Warfield's The Plan of Salvation.
Ah, when you get the blues, go read
it.
This world's going to be redeemed.
God bless your heart.
This world's going to be brought back as
the creature with God on the throne.
The gospel is the story of how God
has put all of His eternal purposes, all
of His eggs in one basket.
The gospel is God, is as God as
Christ and as power as Christ.
The gospel is shutting the door to hoping
that all else except Him cries, and open
it to Him back.
The gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation,
not the explaining, of a person in Him
and through Him.
God's purpose is to do everything that'll ever
be done for kingdoms or nations or systems
or worlds or individuals.
That is, we can understand all threefold description
of the credentials of gospel preaching.
I hope Brother Mayhem can stay on the
radio, but I warn him right now.
If we ever find out what to preach,
and he ain't going to stay on, imagine
what would happen if the Jewish people in
America ever got wise to what's happening on
the radio.
That's an insult to a Jew.
The stuff you preach is that illegitimate son
of a fallen woman!
That man, if they hadn't killed him, he'd
have done irreparable damage to the Godhead of
God and the religion of the Fathers.
My soul, we can understand that the reason
we're pretty comfortable yet in America and go
to church on Sunday morning and gobble home
is that we don't have the power of
God on us.
So to indulge in gospel, this is what
we preach.
No wonder Paul said, preaching of the cross,
the word of the cross, is a scandalous
agonizing insult to a Baptist or a Methodist
or a Presbyterian or a Roman Catholic or
a Jew or anybody else that's got religion
but don't know Christ.
A little child can understand it and everybody
go to hell believing it.
But if it's the gospel, the word of
the cross, it's scandalous, scandalous.
And it's downright foolish to anybody that's got
right good sense.
It's foolishness to the Greek.
I said many times, only a fool or
a Christian believes that Jesus, the born of
God, is the Son of God.
There's not enough brain power in this world
to figure that out.
If you're an idiot, I don't understand how
you can believe Jesus is the Son of
God.
Otherwise you can't, apart from the miracle of
the new birth.
No wonder the simple gospel, where the preachers
of the day said, just give them the
simple plan of salvation.
Well, if you do, they'll take it.
They'll never know when to swallow it, never
miss it when to lose it, never regret
it in hell.
It's not simple.
We can understand why it's the power of
God and the wisdom of God to them
who are called.
If the issue of the hour is the
threat to the throne-ship of God, man's
rebellion, the restoration of the total manhood of
believers, then the gospel of God's salvation is
a proclamation of this one, of whom who
is scandalous to religious people, downright silly to
educators, wonderful to those who are here.
In the second place, to be saved, if
what I've said is so, to be saved
means to be converted to the kingdom of
God, and the kingdom of God is Christ.
The New Testament identifies, to be saved means
to be converted to the rule of God
in Jesus Christ.
To be saved means that one's heart's concern
is fully given to God sitting on the
throne.
Yes, holy.
We must keep preaching, some with an open
hand, but under God we must preach as
we've never preached.
While your hand's open, let your knee be
bent.
We must preach that man must become captives
of Christ and thus may free.
We must preach that man is made to
be governed and any salvation, don't take care
of that, is not that which God hung
his son on a cross to pay for.
We must preach that we're most free when
we're most fierce, that we never stand so
straight as when we're bowed to him.
We must preach that under his authority and
nowhere else is a man free.
We must preach that the greatest need of
a man is to find the right answer
to the question, where shall supreme loyalty be
given?
How may I surrender to someone beyond myself?
How may I resign as a general manager
of the universe?
How may I render up my sword because
that's a symbol of authority and God will
have your sword and send you to hell?
How shall I come to be able to
swear allegiance willingly to him?
No wonder the New Testament speaks, and the
Lord added, under the church daily, such is
what being saved.
Oh, my soul, and understand these people that
never have to pray and never have to
confess and never have to repent and never
have to apologize and never have to walk
the floor at night and cry when they
haven't seen to the grass.
They never have to face for one second
the claims of Jesus Christ.
Oh, my soul, I confide myself to you
and I get along fairly well but the
claims of Christ's Lordship, save it!
Save it!
Not to God, I look far after that
time when with undimmed eyes I shall get
a undimmed look at the Lord Jesus Christ
and how they like him.
If you heard this morning and I can
understand how a Christian is the most memorable
happy person beside a hill and he'll never
be satisfied until he awaits in the likeness
of Christ.
Yes!
Nobody's got a right to make a single
decision except Christ.
If in a mood of formidation one had
each fall apart, my God, we'd have, as
D.W. Johnson said, mourned beaches in our
hearts and in our churches once again and
the icicles might fall apart, and Mr. Wet
Eyes and Miss Damien might come back to
me.
Oh, my soul, conversion means a change of
mastery, converted to the kingdom, the rule of
God Almighty.
And thus the saved man's found freedom.
He's just whistling by the graveyard, hoping the
ghost won't get him.
He's found freedom by becoming a slave to
one greater than himself, the self-centered man
that comes to church on Sunday morning, wanders
home, and that's the end of that, refuses
to recognize the claims of God on his
life.
The only kingdom he'll recognize, one he's built.
Thus he attempts to become the rule of
his own life, and his will becomes his
God, for his will is just exactly in
the place God said he'll not share with
another.
And thus he's not free, but he's a
slave.
This is sin, the setting up of our
own little kingdom in opposition to God.
This is sin, to build a tower of
Babylon, reach up to God and bring him
down to do our bidding.
This is sin, its intention to be the
creator, not willing to be the creature.
This is sin, the subject trying to be
the sovereign.
This is sin, open rebellion, and by God
you'd light a match tonight, this building would
explode.
Rebellion!
Oh, it's a good thing Jesus ain't coming
back in the flesh, we wouldn't let him
get out inside the city limits.
We'd wind him apart.
This is sin, it's rebellion against the will
and the authority and the sovereignty of God
and spiritual deadness to his voice.
And sin's a lot more than an action
now, it's a condition.
Salvation must come where man is, and he
must be converted to a lifelong pursuit of
the will of Almighty God.
I'm so hungry for my own heart to
keep, I'm so tired of preaching to drive,
I'm about to shoot somebody.
I'm so tired of preaching to high sickles
and orthodox people.
My soul, one inch below, I'd put a
$25 bounty on a lot of folks and
make me some money.
I'm so tired, aren't you, of this nice
little convenient stuff we call being saved.
I long for somebody that makes about 1
,700 mistakes a day, but bless God he's
headed toward the will of God.
That's it.
Oh, boy.
That's right.
A fellow told me about to sit there,
and this fellow here saw this side of
him, my heel.
Said as he got converted, his face lit
up like an old abandoned cathedral when darkness
came, when it was lit up with candles.
Said his face just lit up with candles.
I told him to read, let him sit
down here and scratch for me.
Oh, boy, and he gets happy.
He likes to ruin us around here.
We could do with it.
Oh, my soul.
To be converted.
To be hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Instead of telling about that fellow, he ain't
straight on the doctrines of grace.
Oh, if I ever meet one of these
graceful fellows again, I'm going to kill him
and cut him to death.
Because they can't stand the grace in him.
Well, I won't charge anything extra for that.
But it follows that if God's eggs are
in one basket in Christ, then that salvation
means to be converted to the kingdom, the
rule of Christ.
It follows, therefore, that revival, if you like
the word, I don't.
I use it for glory.
Oh, that will be glory.
It's coming somewhere down the road.
Well, it'll simply be, it'll be when men
see Christ sitting on the throne, and they
say praise the Lord.
Sure I'm glad he's there.
Amen.
It sure ain't going to be when we
get some more church members.
We've got ten.
It ain't going to be when we get
some more people.
What's Paul say?
We done saved America.
I don't know what it would be.
It would be when Paul's right with the
world.
God's on the throne.
Now to this I wish to ask quite
quickly two questions.
I cannot answer the questions, but I live
in the hope that be God's will, and
that before he says it's enough for me,
I'll experience something other.
I want to ask you two questions first.
Can a given local assembly, the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ in a given assembly,
represented several ways here tonight, can it be
brought to rejoice that Christ, my
God, how much longer is God going to
stand the rebellion inside of the churches of
Jesus?
I say to you, not as a plea
for pity, I've been preaching thirty-seven years,
most out of the Hitchhiker Band, getting smaller
every year, most of the preachers have already
thrown up the white flag, they have proved
time to win in above Christ.
This ain't no use.
We've gone about as far as we can
go.
Some of you pastors have gone about as
far as you can go.
You know, and I know, unless God's voice
begins to be heard in the church on
your lap.
As God is my judge, we just about
shut up there.
The only way Christ may manifest himself is
where his authority is recognized.
On the day of Pentecost, we've seen it.
It must take place again.
We haven't got any message.
We can holler about, we're not saved, the
works were saved, the grace, we're elected, and
all that to reveal the peace.
Isn't that precious?
But they're not the issues of this hour.
The issue of this hour is who false,
lawless church members are dragging the gospel under
that dirty feet.
Kneel and profess loyalty to a far-off
risen Lord that will not be subject to
him as he speaks through the territory which
he's here.
I say to you, my pastor friend, we
sweat the dirt under the rug about as
long as we can.
We've got to honestly face up.
Nobody has the answer.
Will we see in our day churches where
Jesus Christ, sitting on the throne of that
church on the day of Pentecost, pierces the
hearts of 3,000 people?
All of our efforts took up on the
blind side of this situation and about played
out on all of them.
About the only hope I see now is
the revelation of Christ sitting right in the
center of this church, speaking through lips of
clay, speaking the message of God.
I want to ask another question.
I haven't the answer.
I just have a hope.
Don't drop me my hope.
Can we again see in our day men
utterly conquered by and taken captive to the
Lord Jesus Christ?
I said, I guess it's old mean Ralph
Barnard, somebody got converted in our church.
Boy, wouldn't he make a change.
I mean converted.
We get them to profess faith.
We're doing the best we know how.
I'm a member of the church.
They ask them about joining every Sunday.
Ain't no more people in prime meeting the
next night.
The budget ain't no bigger.
Nothing bigger.
I don't know what happens to them.
They get converted and say, Goodbye, Jesus.
Hope to see you in heaven if you
make it.
Oh, I'd love to see somebody converted.
Somebody that ain't perfect yet, but blessed God,
he's turned up a trail in that direction.
He's changed.
If you know that the Reformation was born
in the heart of Lutheran Calvin, we mustn't
camp on first base.
We must speak for our day, there and
all we can.
But they accused the church of Rome of
having a man-centered faith.
They said that the church of that time
was turning people out whose faith was centered
in their own efforts to meet their own
needs.
And they said if they'd honestly answer two
questions, we'd come to the heart of it.
First, do you seek God for what He'll
do for you?
Second, do you believe that by your efforts
you can get from God what you need?
Now that those two things were formed, the
doctrine of justification, we wouldn't know if American
or old.
It suffered at the hands of its friends
and enemies.
But it meant then that the gift, that
salvation was the gift of God, and that
it was achieved by receiving, not doing.
As you know, there are two types of
faith within professing Christianity today.
There's the faith that centers on me, what
I can do, and what I can get.
And then there's the faith that centers on
God and His glory.
Whatever faith is, it's basically a relationship between
God and man.
It's either God-centered or man-centered.
I'm going to ask you this question, and
I'm going to ask us preachers.
Dear one, do you seek God because you
take a right relationship with Him that benefits
you?
Then the real important person that I'll pick
you with, do you believe your own efforts
will bring you those benefits?
Man's need and man's efforts to have his
need met.
Boy, he rolled up his sleeve and spat
on his hand and said, I'm going to
get right with you.
That's good.
You put this and you did this.
And then finally, he came to see that
he was worshiping himself in his own efforts.
He saw that true faith was not a
matter of his needs or the desire to
have peace, but the true faith was a
bowing to God, even if nothing resulted to
Him.
And thus he came to define salvation as,
I quote him, the realization of God's will
and purpose, whatever that might be, rather than
the satisfaction of human need.
He even went so far as to say
that those who truly love God freely offer
themselves to all the will of God, even
to hell and death eternally, should God so
will, in order that His will may be
fully done.
Calvin came and echoed, he said the Christians
should be willing to be damned for the
glory of God.
He said we must affirm God without demanding
that He affirm us.
He said that true faith means having confidence
in God regardless of profit or loss.
He said only those go to heaven who
are willing not to go.
I don't go down so deep, I don't
know how to handle it, but we're
back to our subject.
Which comes first?
Glory of God on His throne, the will
of God, or what we can get out
of it.
I pray for myself and for every public
preacher and for every child of God in
this hour for a baptism of the voice
of authority regardless of this age or this
age.
It's got no use for God except as
a milk cow to get something out of
Him.
He won't send the morning gives a little
service to a far-off God.
Oh, to this bedeviled and bedazzled and religiously
cocaineed a generation of people in for hell
is just one issue.
That's the glory and the will of Almighty
God whether we spend eternity in Hygma Hill
the glory must come back to our pulpits.
It's a mighty dull business to defend the
doctrine.
God bless your heart.
I wish we could be set on fire.
The soul quests this issue.
This generation will pay us a compliment of
thinking we're a little like him whom we
profess to love.
Away with him.
Get rid of him.
If we don't get rid of him he's
going to tear up our Sabbath worship and
our offerings and our sacrifices.
Oh, God, give us a baptism of fire
and passion and tears that quests this claim
of Almighty God on men until some shall
gnash their teeth and others shall say it
is impossible that he's anybody except.
Bring it by your heads.
I'm going to ask us to softly sing
a verse to cast me not, O gentle
Savior.
Dear, my humble cries will need a book
while on others thou art calling.
Do not pass me by.
And while we are bowed head, will you
sing it?
I want us to have a prayer and
then a plea.
Just sing it quietly and proudly.
A church could sing this.
A preacher could sing this.
An unsaved man can say, Oh, Lord, don't
pass our congregation by.
And a sinner could pray it.
In these desperate days when our hearts cry
out for parts and tongues for manifestation of
the power of the risen Lord.
Make it to your private prayer while we
sing it.
Leave it to our Lord.
God bless you.