Thank you so much for this privilege.
Will you turn in the Bible to 1
Corinthians, chapter 1.
1 Corinthians, chapter 1.
If I can tonight, if the Holy Spirit
will help me, give me something to think
with, and a heart to feel with, I
want to talk on the meaning of the
cross.
The meaning of the cross.
The passage of Scripture that we have before
us tonight tells us how that religious people,
in the generation when Christ was here on
the earth, were scandalized by the message, the
content, the truth, the meaning of the cross.
Now, the intellectuals represented by the Greeks, the
people who thought they knew something, people that
wouldn't believe anything except they could understand, they
had to reason everything out, the word of
the cross, the message of the cross of
Christ, the content of the cross of Christ,
was to them foolishness.
But unto some people it was the power
of God and the wisdom of God.
No greater tragedy to be experienced by any
human being than to live his life's span
down here on the earth and not face
the cross of Christ until its wondrous meaning,
that which God meant it to be, should
be true of you.
You miss out here?
You missed out on everything.
God has no other remedy.
This is it.
We do not need a Bible to tell
us that there's a man named Jesus who
lived in the little country of Nazareth, and
that he died on a tree outside the
city of Jerusalem.
Any history book can tell you that.
But we do need a Bible to tell
us who he was, who he is, and
why he hung on that cross.
So these thirty-six years I've been hiking
up and down the country, I've determined one
thing will be as narrow as the Bible.
I never shall forget the old white-haired
preacher that preached the sermon when I was
ordained.
A lot of what he said I didn't
have the least idea what he was talking
about.
He said, called me by my given name,
and he said, there'll be nights when you'll
walk the floor, and you'll cry, and you'll
pray, and you'll look up, and everything will
be as brass, and you'll want to die.
And I had no idea what he was
talking about.
If I'd known what it was getting into,
I wouldn't have had the courage to do
it.
None of us would.
Is that right?
The Lord's good to us.
But one thing he said stuck in my
cross, always be as narrow as the Bible.
If the Bible says hell, you say hell.
If the Bible says the cross, that bloody
offering, you stick with it.
Just be as narrow as the Bible.
That's the only thing that's going to endure,
as always in the heart of God, the
cross of Christ.
Every clan of men will go by the
board, but people who face the cross experience
the power of him who hung there.
Bless God.
Satan can never destroy that.
Was the subject the meaning of the cross
before us?
Let's read beginning with verse 17.
Paul says, For Christ sent me not to
baptize, but to preach the gospel, not to
preach it with wisdom of words, lest the
cross of Christ should be made of none
effect.
For the word of the cross, the message
of the cross, the content of the cross,
is to them to perish foolishness, but unto
us which are saved it is the power
of God.
And here's some language that, if you listen
to it one more time, you'd be persuaded
to pick up your ears.
This message of the cross, and to experience
the power of the cross, you might miss
out on it.
For up to now, God, doing the very
best that he has chosen to do, has
never been able to stay God and save
any saver remnant.
He never had the message.
You look that in the face and start
to contemplate.
Decades go into centuries and centuries into millenniums
and millenniums on into the changing tides, and
billions of people have lived in God's world.
And if this Bible shows, the masses in
every generation have missed out on the meaning
of Christ hanging on the cross.
I look you in the face tonight and
say for myself and for you, I covet
that you'll come to experience the power of
and the meaning of the cross of Jesus
Christ.
To some it's foolishness, to some it's power.
Now listen to this strange language, for it
is written that Satan, in the Old Testament
it is written that God's word, God says,
I'll destroy the wisdom of the wise and
will bring to nothing, to nothing, the understanding
of the proof.
God says, I'll do that.
Then he asks, where is the wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this world?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of
the world?
For after that, in the wisdom of God,
God planned this now.
This is solemn.
This awful call of death, and everybody seems
like they're asleep.
Satan's got the world cocained and drugged.
So you'd better get that wax out of
your ears.
As we tried to preach last night, save
yourselves from this untoward, godless generation.
For after that, the wisdom of God, in
the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom
knew not God.
It pleased God.
And all of my reading, I never found
anything more startling, more challenging, than this statement
we're going to read now.
You'll never get to God just using this,
just using this.
You'll read now 2 and 2, 4 and
go to hell.
It pleased God.
It's according to the purpose of God.
God fixed it that way, all hell can't
change it.
Anybody on God's earth who claims to be
a preacher or a Christian don't get excited
about this, and let the devil lead him
to use any other message, any other message.
Not worthy of the kingdom of God.
It pleased God.
God loves sinners more than we do.
God's wiser than we are.
God's more tenderhearted than we are.
All this generation of people advising God and
attacking his character, and they don't like what
his Bible has to say.
Then all of us put together don't love
lost sinners as much as the God who
gave his son.
But it pleased that God.
Brother, we better be pleased by it.
If we, if I myself and just one
more in all this world, discard the cross
and think that we can get the job
done by preaching anything else, we better not.
For this pleased God.
This was according to the purpose of God.
All hell can't shake God in that purpose.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.
Never will be.
Never has been any other way.
God put all his eggs in one basket.
This is it, my beloved.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.
Somebody says that don't mean foolish preaching.
But now if you, if I don't lose
you, it is foolishness if you just use
this thing.
There isn't a human being here tonight, if
you'd be honest.
You wouldn't have to admit that the idea
that a little baby that was born in
a cow stable in a little insignificant country,
way off from everywhere else, and lived in
Nazareth, and nothing ever good ever came out
of Nazareth, and nobody that was anybody ever
became his follower.
Only fallen women and tax collectors, thieves and
fishermen, poor folks like that, became his disciples.
The religious people looked him over and turned
and died.
He wound up dying the death of a
criminal, the most horrible death that the Roman
Empire could think about.
They put him in another man's grave.
They wrapped his body in somebody else's clothing.
They perfumed his body with gifts of spice
from somebody else.
That ain't foolish to say that God Almighty,
that God Almighty, that God Almighty in all
of his wisdom, in all of his eternal
goodness, God Almighty has put all of his
eggs in that little bastard.
And he not only invites and asks, but
he commands that men and women believe that
that was his only forgotten son, and that
he was acting in good faith.
And he commands every man and woman to
lay themselves at his feet in absolute day
-by-day utter devotion and surrender.
That's the most foolish thing I've ever heard
of in my life, or it's the truth
of God.
And I'm going to look you in the
face now and tell you you're living in
a generation where everybody believes the Bible.
Makes us wonder if anybody does.
And you're living in a generation now where
everybody's a Christian.
It's a good question whether anybody is.
We take for granted and never just swallow
it down, and we'll never know when we'll
swallow it and never know when we'll lose
it.
Why, my soul, listen, no human being in
his right mind, listen to Brother Barney, no
human being in his right mind could possibly
believe that this one I've described is the
eternal God of glory, except the Spirit of
God gives you a birth from him.
You see, that which God intended should be
absolutely impossible for anybody to believe apart from
the Holy Ghost.
We've reasoned it out now the way everybody
says they believe it.
But if you believe this, it'll change.
It'll change.
But you can't believe this apart from a
miracle.
Brother Barney, that's terrible.
You mean I can't get saved apart from
God working a miracle in my life?
You dead sure can't.
That's exactly what it means to be born
from above, to receive life from Almighty God.
Oh, how solemn it is!
It pleased God.
This is God's way.
It pleased God.
By that foolishness of preaching to save them
that believe.
Why did God choose that way, he says?
For the Jews, that's religious people, require a
sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.
And God will not cater to either.
He'll not give the sign, nor he'll not
cater to wisdom.
Oh, I want you to keep your finger
on that and turn with me to Matthew
11.
And I just want to read a passage
of scripture here.
And if I could understand it, I'd be
ten million times smarter than I am.
I don't pretend to understand it.
I just bow to it.
And I'm going to ask you to take
the time as we look at it here
in connection to what we've been reading.
What's it talking about, Brother Barnum?
I don't want you people to miss Christ.
When I go and have big crowds, I
rejoice.
When I haven't had crowds like we haven't
had here, it just makes me say, Oh,
God, please don't let any of the people
who stayed for the stuff, don't let them
go to hell.
I don't want anybody to go to hell,
but I tell you, I'd hate for somebody
to sin and sin, trying to stay with
Christ's church.
I'd hate for you to go to hell.
I don't want anything you've got but a
covetousness of Christ.
But I'm telling you, everybody believes now.
But the Scriptures say, whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God.
There isn't a way to get born of
God.
It happens just like that.
But you have to both be born of
God in order to be able to believe.
That little baby over there is the Son
of God.
Why, you've got more sense than that, haven't
you?
He couldn't be the Son of God.
That's what the Jews stumble at.
They say, He couldn't be!
And the intellectuals, the college professors say, He
couldn't be!
Well, that's silly!
And it's silly!
And it's a scandal!
Well, apart from the work of the Holy
Spirit, when will we ever quit using it
as a doctrine and go to believing that
the natural man receiving it, not the things
of the Spirit, have to be interpreted to
him by the Holy Ghost?
The Apostle Peter preached on the day of
Pentecost to the very people who stood and
watched the crucifixion.
But the Holy Spirit had to interpret what
actually happened there.
And you dear preachers, brethren, you can preach
till you're blue in the face.
But God's helpless preachers, we're as helpless as
we can be.
We cannot get truth into the hearts of
men.
The Holy Ghost has to do it.
I want to read you this past scripture
in connection with what we're talking about.
In the 11th chapter of Matthew, Jesus Christ
turns in chapter 20 and pronounces judgment on
the Jewish nation who through their leaders had
looked him over and rejected him.
And in a moment he's going to give
the first invitation in the scripture to individuals.
And he talks about judgment.
For instance, Capernaum is going to be brought
down, Tyre and Sidon, and Chorazin and Bethsaida,
and Capernaum, the cities of his day, are
going to come to judgment.
In verse 24 he says, I say unto
you that it shall be more tolerable for
the land of Sodom in the day of
judgment than for thee.
Now, here is the very strange language.
And at that time, Jesus answered and said,
I thank thee, O Father.
Isn't this strange prayer?
Don't you laugh at this.
Don't you get mad about this.
This is too deep for me.
It makes me tremble, the familiarity people have
today.
This group of church people are very familiar
with Jesus.
Familiarity with Christ proves one thing.
You don't know him.
He says, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth.
What you thank in the Father about, Lord,
because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent.
Brother, they have been sweet of you.
And this one might come over from Saudi
Arabia.
You've got sense enough to look into this.
You know why the Jewish nation, you know
why they rejected the Lord Jesus.
They were responsible for it.
But back of it was the action of
Almighty God.
He says so here.
Jesus told the Father, and he thanked him,
that he hid these things from that bunch
of puffed up people.
He did it.
So they blinded bats and crucified the Lord
of glory in their willful ignorance.
You live in a generation of people as
blind as they were.
Be careful you don't crucify them too.
Oh, how solemn scripture like this is.
I thank thee.
He died on his knees.
My Lord Jesus Christ did.
And he just pronounced judgment on that nation,
and now he's thanking the Father that God
hid the things of God from them.
Then read the rest of the verse.
Because thou hast hid these things from the
wise and the prudent, and hath revealed them
unto thee.
Yea, that's the reason the prostitutes and the
tax collectors and the drunkards and all that
crowd press in, leave the religious folks to
go on to hell.
You better watch out, my friends.
And this is still the day when men
trying to get to heaven by way of
religion and by what they know in their
head, have pleased God to bypass both of
them and to hide the things of the
spirit from people who go to reason things
out and reveal the things of God to
little bitty babies.
That's reading the Lord Jesus Christ said, except
ye become converted and become as a little
child, you'll never make it.
The characteristic of a little child, it believes
what it's told.
And as long as you're trying to reason
it out and work it all out yourself,
you're just stepping on the road to hell.
God hides the things of the spirit from
that crowd, and he reveals them to little
bitty babies.
I hope you'll get to be a little
bitty baby, just believing what God says, just
looking up into his face through the word
and receiving the dewdrops from him.
And then the next verse makes it a
little deeper.
But what the Lord prayed, he said, even
so, Father, for so it seemed good.
You know, I wouldn't want you to go
away and misunderstand what I'm going to say
now.
That almost sounds like the Lord Jesus Christ
and his humanity.
He had to join poor Brother Barnum and
say, Lord, I don't understand this either, Father,
but it's all right.
Even so, for it seemed good in thy
sight.
You mean to tell me all the religious
people to which the cross of Christ is
scandalous, if they think it vulgar and they
don't like to talk about it?
Yes, it pleased God to hide the things
of God from them.
You mean to tell me the people who
think they're all so smart, just a smart
attitude generation, you know, know just enough to
make fools of ourselves?
You mean to tell me that it pleased
God to hide the things of the Spirit
from them?
I don't hide it from them, Doctor.
It pleased God to reveal the things of
God to babies.
And Jesus said, that's all right, Father.
Thank you.
Even so, for so it seemed that it's
good in thy sight.
You can pretty soon find out who's saved
in the church if you regard your watching.
Let something happen that you don't like, or
you can't understand, you'll go to rave on
with God.
Jesus said, I don't quite understand it in
the humanity.
He limited himself, I reckon.
But he said it, you did, Father, and
it's good in your sight.
It's good in your sight, says the Lord.
One thing the scripture said about old Job,
he did not rave on God.
He just said, Blessed be the name of
the Lord.
The Lord give us and the Lord take
it away.
Help us if we can do that.
The Jews require a sign.
Ain't going to get it.
God will just close up.
The Greeks, he got to wear them.
Ain't going to make it to God that
way.
The Lord will just by passion.
What are we going to do?
Preach Christ crucified.
Of course, we know it's going to make
religious people mad.
It's a scandal.
Tell them!
People trusting in themselves that they are righteous.
And unto the Jews, it's going to be
a bunch of foolishness.
But unto them that are called, both Jews
and Greeks, Christ, the power of God.
And the wisdom of God.
At the cross, if I look at it
like a little baby, I try to reason
it out.
Not clutching my fist and holding up the
face of God now.
Not being so blasphemous as so many people
are now offering God so much advice.
But just as a little baby, I try
to look at it.
And I see Satan in action.
He's behind that mob.
I see men in action.
Our kinfolks were wicked hands.
Took him and nailed him to a tree.
But I see God in action.
If I couldn't explain the meaning of it,
I'd left the preach long enough to get
to where I could at least quote it.
Until the very quoting of it would break
my whole heart.
And the heart of everybody that hears me
preach.
Isaiah says in Isaiah 53, It pleads God
to bruise him.
I wish we weren't so smart as we
are.
I wish we weren't so religious, bragged about
all the good things we do.
Oh, I wish the wonder of that verse.
It pleads God to bruise Jesus first.
If your heart were as hard as steel,
it'd break your heart.
I hope I don't go through this life
so hard-boiled, smart-ass.
But that isn't the most wonderful thing.
God was pleased.
It was part of his purpose.
It was in his plan.
He did it on purpose.
Men were responsible, but back to their actions,
they can't get away from God.
Why did Jesus Christ hang on the cross?
Because of Satan's malice.
Why did he hang on the cross?
Because of the wickedness of my kinfolks, of
me.
Why did Christ hang on the cross?
Because it pleased God to bruise him.
Oh, you argue about the love of God,
and you blow in the face.
There it is.
It pleased God to bruise him.
I wish I could be a little like
a little child once again, and drink deep
at the meaning, and experience the power of
the Christ forever on the cross in the
heart of God.
I try to look at it, and if
you spend a lifetime, it takes you that
long for the cross to mean this to
you, it'd be a life well spent.
I look at Christ hanging on the cross,
and I see first that the world's all
wrong.
It always has been, my friend.
Since the time that every human being in
old Adam doubled up our fist and tried
to push God off the throne, this world's
been all wrong.
And when in due time God was manifest
in the flesh and came so men could
handle him, Oh, isn't that wonderful?
God was manifest in the flesh, and men
handled him.
One man put his hand in his side.
God came down where men could get their
hands on him, and touch him, and carry
him.
Oh, God help you if that don't kill
you still.
And you know what this world did to
us.
They spat on us.
And they brought out a fellow named Barabbas,
a rebel.
And old Pilate said, I'll give you folks
a choice.
This is a big feast day, and I'm
going to release a notable prisoner.
Whom will ye that I release unto you?
And old E.G. Parks and Ralph Martin
brought about the release of the after-revelation.
Crucified Christ, and that's still the world's Christ.
They made the wrong choice.
They end up making them everything.
The world's all wrong.
This world's all wrong.
The stain of it's wrong.
The thing that makes it's tick wrong.
It's anti-God.
It's anti-Christ.
It's anti-wholeness.
It's anti-everything.
Don't tell me that you're saved, unless in
spirit you're separated from the very evil spirit
of this godless age.
Looked at the cross like a little baby,
and you'll see that you're a lost sinner,
obnoxious to the judgment of God and eternally.
Ah, he hung there on that cross for
some reason.
The Bible says he hung there for some
reason.
That God might be just, and to justify
them that are ungodly.
And that God Almighty made him.
I couldn't understand this for a million years.
Made him to be sin for us.
Nor that we should be made the righteousness
of God in him.
Those scriptures you spend a million years drinking
of them.
God knows don't ever lose the thrill of
them.
The wonder of what God.
I'm lost.
I believe hell is nothing more or less
than a place where men and women have
to pay the severe penalty of God Almighty's
holy law.
And I believe that without a mediator, and
without a substitute, that substitute be all God
and all man.
I believe that unless by faith, not simply
that you stand up and say I believe
something about him.
But I believe that unless by faith you
are vitally united to him, so he and
you are one and Christ lives in you.
I believe you'll have to endure the awful
penalty of God's severe law.
And that'll be hell.
Oh, this Bible tells us that to read
in Christ hung on a cross was to
be a substitute for somebody.
I want in on that cross.
The meaning of the cross the world's on.
You better turn your back on it.
You better quit claiming to be a Christian
if you head over heels in love with
the spirit of this age.
I'm talking straight to you.
Christ came to deliver us from this present
evil age.
And any salvation that leaves you in bondage
to the onions and the leek and the
garlic of Egypt is no salvation at all.
Listen to me.
Because the cross means that men and women
are lost.
And the law of God must be established
and fulfilled.
And the best man that ever lived will
have to go to hell to suffer the
awful penalty of God's holy law.
Unless he's vitally joined to the perfect substitute,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
There at the cross, I learned something.
It's like a little baby.
I'll not try to read it out or
just leave what God says about it.
That's what faith is.
God said it.
Okay, that's sold.
Here I go.
I learned the cross with my redemption.
Blessed Redeemer.
I thought that as they were singing the
night, nothing was said about it.
A lot of times fool song leaders would
come up to me and say, Brother Barnum,
you got any special songs tonight that will
catch your message?
I always turned it aside.
There in the spirit, it'll come along.
But tonight, that was all arranged.
Precious Redeemer.
Up Calvary's mountain.
You one of these religious people, I don't
mean anything to you.
No hope for you either.
You one of these smart alecks, I foolishness
to you.
Ain't foolishness to people who are being saved.
Up Calvary's mountain.
The cost of my redemption.
My God, my God, what?
And the answer comes back, Thou art holy.
He hath manner to bind thee into the
marketplace, men and women, so that thou could
be judged in turning them loose from the
touches of the holy law.
You can argue about the atonement and how
many Christ died for and all that to
you.
Blurring the faith.
Why are you arguing at it?
I'm just going to be holding on to
the cross.
He died for somebody.
And I say, Lord, let me in if
you will.
The cost of my redemption was the separation
of the Lord Jesus Christ for a while.
From the very presence.
Like a little baby, if I could be
so smart and so religious.
They're all going to hell, the wise acres.
They'll bypass the cross, they'll say it's silly.
The religious people say, I don't understand, I'm
all right.
They're going home to hell.
They'll bypass the cross, only little babies.
Only little babies are going to get this
revelation, brother.
And the reason I know if you are
saved, something happens to you.
You're saved not by your decision.
Your decision is fine in its proper place.
But if you're saved, it's when the Spirit
of God makes Jesus real to you.
Brother, what the Spirit does, he makes Christ
real to you.
There ain't enough devils out of hell to
undo that.
That's right.
If it's all something you did, well, maybe
you could undo what you did.
But salvation ain't what you do.
God bless your heart.
It's Christ being made real inside by the
Spirit of God.
And I say that at the cross, like
a little baby, looking up at the face
of God.
I ain't trying to argue with him.
I'm not.
Oh, if I get from above and I
find that God loves me.
When I was a kid of a boy,
we too nice and religious and dignified.
Sing it now, we used to sing.
The Bible tells me so.
He didn't hang on that cross to get
God in a good humor.
God loves me.
You can try to explain what you want
to while you explain it.
I'm just going to be rejoicing in it.
Oh, there it is.
Like a little baby, I'll pray now.
God loves me.
Like every great thing from God now, we
preachers long in our hearts.
To live long enough to see the wonder
of the grace of God and the love
of God and the mercy of God in
Christ.
That it would cause us to be amazed
and wonder.
We take everything for granted now.
I go up and down this country and
I see professing Christians just raving and caving
and fighting over some doctrine.
And I look you in the face and
tell you there's not a person here tonight
knows enough about any doctrine to fuss much.
We just, like little children, we say, Lord,
we understand in part who God will believe
if I don't believe.
I wish we'd cut out all this music.
That's the gospel.
And I wish, like little children, we could
sing once again, I can't explain it, but
Jesus loves me.
Wonder, wonder.
I got off the train in Illinois City
years ago.
I had the flu.
I closed the meeting on Sunday night in
Statesville, North Carolina.
I went home, had to service to Winston,
50 miles.
The next day at 2 o'clock I
got on the train.
I had the flu.
I was going to the doctor.
He was pumping me full of dope and
hypo's and pills.
I had to go start a meeting in
Illinois on Tuesday night, sick as I was.
Yeah, I went.
By the time I got there at noon
on Tuesday, I was a sick boy.
And the pastor met me, and he could
tell I was very sick.
He took me quickly to the room, called
the doctor, and he stuck some needles in
me and pumped me up.
And I got up that night, preached a
little bit.
I was pretty sick.
I couldn't preach much.
But the pastor said, Now, Brother Barnard, I
have to apologize.
I had some sort of duke flop me
up at the school, and my folks mostly
would be up there.
You know, this gang of church members.
They'd be anywhere except the house of God,
if they had the slightest excuse.
He said, Some of them start trickling back
Wednesday night.
So Tuesday night I got up and spluttered
around a little bit.
I was sick.
I couldn't preach much.
And soon as the benediction was pronounced, the
chairman of the board of deacons, he high
-tailed it to the front and come in
cussing me.
I skedaddled out the back and went and
got in bed.
Put the cover up over my head and
tried to sweat some of that flu out.
I didn't know what was going on.
And they said later that he just, Whoa!
He said, That man's a false prophet.
He said, He's going to tear our church
up.
And when the pastor got there, he said,
I'll write a check for $400.
You give it to that preacher.
Send him on back to North Carolina.
He said, Don't let him preach again.
They didn't tell me anything about it.
That'll keep.
Wednesday night I went back and preached again,
and I was still sick.
And I found out that later when it
all came out that the pastor had gone
to see the doctor and tried to talk
him into coming down and saying I was
absolutely unable to preach.
They'd handle it that way, but the doctor
wouldn't do it.
And so I got up and preached that
night.
I preached a little better than I did
Tuesday night, but still didn't have much on
the ball.
And when I got through, the pastor said,
I'm going to need the deacons down in
the basement.
And I went on home.
I was sick.
I didn't know what was going on.
And they told me later he just walked
the floor and ran his hands.
He's a good man.
He said, That man's going to tear our
church up.
What on God's earth are we going to
do?
And all the deacons said, That's right, brother
pastor.
We've got to get rid of him until
he came to one old white-haired deacon.
And they said, What about it, brother?
And he said, Better leave him alone.
He said, He's preaching the gospel, and you've
never heard it.
Better leave him alone.
And he scared them.
I still didn't know a thing about it.
Thursday night, the house was packed and jammed.
I thought because I was such a big
preacher, I still didn't know what was going
on.
That news had spread all over town.
They came down to see who was going
to get killed.
And I preached Thursday night.
And I went home.
Friday night, couldn't see them.
Saturday night, they had a fellow sing a
solo.
And he didn't mean to do it.
But the Holy Spirit took charge.
And he sang in the Spirit.
And he never did get but the first
line of the song through.
That congregation was melted by God.
He began to sing, And love sent my
Savior to die on a tree.
Why should he love me?
And the Holy Spirit took the wonder of
the love of God, the wonder of the
grace and the cross, and interpreted it to
that congregation.
The organist began to sob and then she
began to scream, And love!
And love.
She ran to the prayer room.
The second person began to scream, that is
the pastor.
I never preached that night.
The pastor got saved.
The wife of the organist got saved.
The chairman of the board of deacons got
saved.
Seven more of the deacons got saved.
Thirteen Roman Catholics got saved.
Never got to preach.
What happened?
After a week of preaching, the Holy Spirit
was pleased to interpret Christ's own cross to
that congregation.
That's always our hope.
That's always our prayer.
Brother, you think you can read it out
yourself.
Keep listening to this stuff.
That's all up to you.
You'll miss out on this.
You better be crying into your heart.
For the Lord's God to grant you the
mind of a baby and the heart of
a baby, and enable you just to believe
what God says.
We cry for the Holy Spirit to take
the truth that religious people say is scandalous,
educated people say it's foolish, and make it
the power and wisdom of God.
So many women, sometimes we see it happen.
They think we've seen it this week.
I say that because we cry to God
that the blessed Holy Spirit shall take the
things of Christ and make them real.
Amen?
Will you bow your head?
Our Father, this last night, not that this
is the wind-up of everything, but it's
the wind-up of our ministry here.
We have no promise of tomorrow.
We may never see each other again.
We're shut up.
I bring this congregation of people to you
and pray in thy wisdom, thy love.
Oh, if it pleases you, every person here,
a stranger to Jesus Christ, make him real
to them tonight.
Do it for his name's sake that once
again he may look at the travail of
his soul and be awful glad that he
died on a cruel cross.
We ask this, if it pleases you, in
his dear, blessed name, for his sake.
Amen.