I am to speak tonight on the holiness
of God, and I want to read some
passages.
Exodus 15, Who is like unto thee, O
Lord, among the gods?
Who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness?
Job 15, Behold, he putteth no trust in
his saints, yea, the heavens are not clean
in his sight.
Job 25, Behold even to the moon, and
it shineth not, yea, the stars are not
pure in his sight.
How much less man that is a worm,
and the son of man which is a
worm.
Psalm 22, Thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Proverbs 9, 10, The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge
of the holy is understanding.
Isaiah 6, 3, One cried unto another and
said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts, and the whole earth is full of
his glory.
They say that when Leonardo da Vinci painted
his famous Last Supper, that he had little
difficulty with any of it except the faces.
Then he painted the faces in without too
much trouble except one.
He did not feel himself worthy to paint
the face of Jesus.
He held off and kept holding off, unwilling
to approach it, but knowing he must.
And then in the impulsive carelessness of despair,
he just painted it quickly and let it
go.
There's no use, he said, I can't paint
it.
In speaking on the holiness of God, I
feel very much the same way.
This last week, I rather suffered through this
and wondered why today and tonight I was
able to get around it all.
But I think that same sense of despair
is on my heart.
There isn't any use for anybody to try.
If it's an orator, he can play his
oratorical harp, but it sounds tinny and unreal.
And when he's through, you've listened to music,
but you haven't seen God.
I suppose that the hardest thing about God
to comprehend is his infinitude.
I know that intellectually that's the hardest thing
to grasp.
But you can talk about the infinitude of
God and not feel yourself a worm.
But when you talk about the holiness of
God, you have not only the problem of
an intellectual grasp, but you have a sense
of personal vileness which is almost too much
to bear.
Now, the reason for this is that we
are fallen beings.
We are fallen spiritually, morally, mentally, and physically.
We are fallen in all the ways that
men can fall, being what they are.
And we are all, and each of us,
born into a tainted world.
We're born into a tainted world, and we
learn impurity from our cradles.
We nurse it in with our mother's milk.
We breathe it in the very air.
Our education deepens it, and our experience confirms
it.
Evil impurities everywhere.
And everything is dirty.
Even our whitest white is dingy gray.
And our noblest heroes are soiled heroes, all
of them.
So we learn to excuse and to overlook
and not to expect too much.
We don't expect all truth from our teachers,
and we don't expect all faithfulness from our
politicians.
And we quickly forgive them when they lie
to us and vote for them again.
And we don't expect honesty from the merchants,
and we don't expect complete trustworthiness from anybody.
And we manage to get along in the
world only by passing laws to protect ourselves
from not only the criminal element, but from
the best people there are, who might in
the moment of temptation take advantage of us.
So fallen man, being born in this kind
of world, living here, breathing it in, it
gets into his pores, it gets into his
lungs, into his nerves, into his cells, until
he has lost the ability to conceive of
the holy.
But I would speak of the holiness of
God, or of the holy, or of the
Holy One.
And we cannot comprehend this, and we certainly
cannot define it, because holiness means purity, but
that isn't enough.
Purity merely means that it's unmixed, there's nothing
else in it.
But that isn't enough.
We talk of moral excellency, but that is
inadequate, for, we say, to be morally excellent
is to excel somebody else in moral character.
But about whom are we speaking?
When we say that God is morally excellent,
he excels somebody.
Who is it that he excels?
The angels?
The seraphim, I suppose?
But that isn't still enough.
We mean rectitude, we mean honor, we mean
truth and righteousness, and we mean all of
these uncreated and eternal.
God is not now any holier than he
ever was, for he, being unchanging and unchangeable,
can never become holier than he is, and
he never was holier than he is, and
he'll never be any holier than now.
And it means self-existent, for he did
not get his holiness from anyone, nor from
anywhere.
He did not go off into some vast,
infinitely distant realm and there absorb his holiness,
but he is himself the holiness.
He is the holy.
He is the all-holy.
He is the holy one.
He is holiness itself, beyond the power of
thought to grasp, or of word to express,
beyond the power of all praise.
Now, language can't express the holy, so God
resorts to association and suggestion.
He cannot say it outright, because he would
have to use words that we don't know
the meaning of.
And we would then, of course, take the
words he used and translate them downward into
our terms.
If he were to use a word describing
his own holiness, we could not understand that
word as he uttered it.
He would have to translate it down into
our unholiness.
If he were to tell us how white
he is, we would translate it into terms
of dingy gray.
So God cannot tell us by language.
So I say he uses association and suggestion
by showing how it affects the unholy.
Moses at the burning bush, there before the
holy fiery presence, knelt down, took his shoes
from off his feet, hid his face, for
he was afraid to look upon God.
Then here is this 19th chapter of Exodus
later, where Moses, the Lord, said unto him,
Lo, I come unto thee in a thick
cloud, that the people may hear when I
speak with thee, and believe thee forever.
And the Lord said to Moses, Go unto
the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow.
Let them wash their clothes, and be ready
against the third day.
For the third day the Lord will come
down in the sight of the people, and
thou shalt set bounds unto the people, round
about saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye
go not up into the mount, or touch
the border of it.
Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put
to death.
There shall not a hand touch it, but
he shall surely be stoned or shot through.
Whether it be a beast or man, it
shall not live.
When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come
up to the mount.
Moses went down, sanctified the people.
You see, he did the best he could.
He went down and tried to whiten up
a little their dingy gray.
And it came to pass on the third
day in the morning that there were thunders
and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the
mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding
loud, so that all the people trembled.
Moses brought forth the people out of the
camp to meet with God, and they stood
at the nether part of the mount.
Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because
the Lord descended upon it in fire.
And the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke
of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked
greatly.
And the voice of the trumpet sounded long
and waxed louder and louder.
After Moses answered God speaking, God answered him
by a voice, and the Lord came down
upon Mount Sinai on the top of the
mount.
And the Lord called Moses up to the
top of the mount, and Moses went up,
and the Lord said unto Moses, Go down,
charge the people, lest they break through unto
the Lord's gaze, and many of them perish.
Now, there was an effort on the part
of God.
All this trumpet, the sound of the trumpet
and the voice of words and the fire
and the smoke and the shaking of the
mount, it was an effort for God to
say, by suggestion and association, what he couldn't
say in words.
Now, there are two words for holy, there
are more than two.
But there are particularly two words for holy
in the Old Bible, in the Hebrew Bible.
And one word is used almost exclusively of
God the Holy One.
Rarely used ever of anything or person except
God the Holy One.
In that passage in Proverbs 9, 10, the
knowledge of the holy that I read in
your hearing, where it says, the fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and
the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
This intrigued me.
In fact, the book that I'm going to
write on the attributes of God devotionally considered
is to be called The Knowledge of the
Holy.
Well, I have been greatly fascinated by this,
that it should occur in our Bible, that
this word, that we should have it in
the abstract, the holy, rather than the Holy
One.
And yet, the Jewish Bible says, the knowledge
of the Holy One, and in 33 of
Proverbs, that is, chapter 30, where it uses
also the knowledge of the holy, it says,
the knowledge of the Holy One, or the
All-Holy.
And though the King James translators called this
the knowledge of the holy, they used exactly
the same word more than 40 times and
translated it the Holy One.
The Holy One of Israel.
So, obviously, this is God.
And yet, there is a vagueness enough about
it that the translators felt free to put
this into an abstraction, to make it abstract,
and call it the holy.
Now, there's another word, and that's not used
with God very often.
I think it is not his high word.
It is used of created things often.
It is something that, so to speak, is
holy by contact or association with this other
holy.
That is, we hear of holy ground, and
when it says this is holy ground, or
holy sabbath, or holy city, or holy habitation,
or holy people, or holy works, or holy
arm, it's not the same awesome, awful word
that he uses when he says the holy,
or the Holy One.
Now, in the New Testament, and I have
not read from the New Testament tonight, but
in the New Testament, we have a word,
of course, the Greek word, and we talk
there about God being holy, be ye holy,
for I am holy.
And I notice one thing about that Greek
word.
It is that a definition of it is
awful thing.
Now, think of that.
Take and set that word thing in capital
letters, the awful thing.
That's one meaning of the word holy, the
Holy One.
Now, let's talk a little about the Holy
One and his creatures.
For you see, the presence of this Holy
One allows only holy beings.
In our humanistic day, our day of watered
-down Christianity, our day of sentimental Christianity, that
blows its nose loudly and makes God into
a poor, weak, weeping old man, in this
awful day, the sense of the holy isn't
upon the church.
I was just talking with Brother McAfee.
We were talking about Brother Mathieu being interested
in European missions.
Somebody else comes interested in Hebrews, working with
the Jews.
Somebody else working with the Mountaineers.
Somebody else is concerned with memorizing scripture.
Somebody else with foreign missions.
And I said, well, everybody seems to have
something that he feels is tremendously important.
And maybe it could be that the constant
preaching that I do on the person of
God, that I too should be seeing that
only a part of the great truth, that
there's more.
But I said this, if you're going to
be narrow, then I think we ought to
be narrow on the right thing.
And therefore, if I'm going to emphasize God
and the holiness of God and the awful,
unapproachable quality that can be called that awful
thing, that one, that holy, I say that
I think I'm on the right track.
It isn't all, but it's something we've almost
lost in our day.
The thing is important depending upon how much
of it we've lost and how much of
it we need.
And we have lost the sense of the
Holy One almost altogether.
Take over in the book of Revelation, that
seventh chapter.
Look, it says, that is the seventh chapter,
yes.
The angels stood around about the throne and
about the elders and the four beasts, and
they fell before the throne on their faces
and worshipped God, saying, Amen, blessing and glory
and wisdom and power and might be unto
our God forever and ever.
And one of the elders answered, saying, What
are these which are arrayed in white robes,
and whence came they?
And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest.
He said to me, These are they which
came out of great tribulation and have washed
their robes and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God
and serving day and night in this temple.
And he that sitteth on the throne shall
dwell among them."
Now, there are people in the presence of
God, but they're there in the presence of
God not only by a technical redemption.
You see, what I worry about in this
hour is that we're technically Christians, and we
can prove it.
We can prove that we're Christians.
We're Christians technically.
And anybody can open and flip open a
Greek lexicon and show you that you're a
saint.
But I'm afraid of that kind of Christianity,
because if I haven't felt a sense of
vileness by contrast with that sense of unapproachable
and indescribable holiness, I wonder if I have
ever been hit hard enough to really repent.
And if I don't repent, I wonder if
I can believe.
Now, we're told, Just believe it, brother, just
believe it.
Now, come on, let me take your name
and address.
Here, what's your name?
Oh, yes.
What church would you like to go to?
Well, we have it all fixed up, my
brethren.
But I'm afraid our fathers knew God in
a different manner than that.
Bishop Eicher used to go out by the
riverbank and kneel down by a log and
repent his sins all Saturday afternoon, though there
probably wasn't a holier man in all the
region round about.
He felt how unutterably vile he was.
He couldn't stand the dingy gray, which was
the whitest thing he had, set over against
the unapproachable shining whiteness that was God.
Go to the book of Isaiah and you
see the fiery burners there.
With twain he covered his feet.
There wasn't any in these creatures before the
throne.
There wasn't any of the flippancy that we
see now.
There wasn't any of the tendency to try
to out hope hope and be funnier than
the clown.
There was a sense of presence, and these
holy creatures, for they were holy creatures, they
covered their feet.
Why?
They covered their feet in modesty, and they
covered their face in worship, and they used
their other wings to fly.
These were the seraphim.
They're called fiery burners.
Then there's Ezekiel 1 and 10, and we
see there creatures coming out of a fire.
Now, God speaks of himself often as fire.
Our God is a consuming fire, it says
in Hebrews, and in Isaiah 33, these words.
Who among us shall dwell with the devouring
fire?
Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?
And this is sometimes used as a text.
Who of you is going to go to
hell?
But, my brethren, if you will read it
in its context, this does not describe hell.
This is not hell at all.
And if you will go to almost any
of the commentators, they will say, this is
not hell, because the next passage says that
he that has clean hands and a pure
heart and doesn't lift up his soul under
vanity, it answers the question.
What is this devouring fire?
What is this everlasting burning?
It is not hell, but the presence of
God.
Who among us shall dwell in the fiery
burnings?
Do you not know that if you were
enabled to do it, fire can dwell with
fire?
And you can put the ray of hot
iron or the iron into the fire and
the iron can learn to live with the
fire by absorbing the fire and beginning to
glow in incandescent brightness in the fire so
we dwell in the fire.
These creatures in Ezekiel came out of the
fire having four faces and they went straight
ahead and they let down their wings to
worship and at the word of God's command
they leaped to do his will.
These awesome holy creatures about which we know
so little and about which we ought to
know more.
Then there was God when he spoke to
Moses out of the bush.
There was the God when he went with
them in the pillar of fire.
What was God saying?
For it says in Exodus 13 that the
Lord went before them by day in a
pillar of cloud to lead the way and
by night in a pillar of fire to
give them light by day and by night.
And he took not away the pillar of
cloud by day and the pillar of fire
by night that he might lead them in
all their journeys.
My friends, this was God dwelling there in
that awesome fire.
It was God dwelling there.
And then when the tabernacle was made and
the cherubim of gold overshadowed the mercy seat,
what was it that came down between the
cherubim wings?
What was it that only one man could
see and he once a year with blood
he did not dare go in?
I wonder how many high priests ever looked
at the Shekinah.
I wonder that that high priest with all
the protection of the atoning blood and the
commandment of God and the priest pulled away
the veil, the great heavy veil that took
four men to part, the great tapestry they
pulled apart.
And this man went in trembling into the
presence.
I wonder if he ever dared to look
at the fire.
I wonder if being a Jew as he
was and worshiping the great God Almighty, the
Holy One of Israel, I wonder if there
was a high priest, one in twenty, that
ever dared gaze on that fire.
He was not told he couldn't, but I
wonder if anybody ever dared do it.
I noticed that the very cherubim covered their
faces.
Moses hid his face for he was afraid
to look upon God.
And John fell down when he saw the
Savior and had to be raised up again
almost from the dead.
And every encounter with God has been such
that man went flat down and went blind.
Paul went blind on Damascus Road.
What was the light that blinded them?
Was it the cosmic ray coming down from
some exploding body or from two colliding galaxies
that tell us about?
No, no.
It was the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, the God that dwelt in the bush,
the God that dwelt in the shekinah between
the presence, between the wings of the seraphim.
And what was it?
That when they were all together in one
place and suddenly there came a sound from
heaven as the rushing of a mighty wind
and a fire appeared and sat as a
tongue of flame upon each one of them.
What did that mean and what could it
mean but that God was branding them in
their foreheads with his fiery holiness to say,
Now, the church was born out of fire,
my brethren.
She was born out of fire as the
creatures in Ezekiel 1 came out of fire.
The church was born out of fire.
But we have gray ashes today.
But we are to be men and women
of fire for that is our origin.
And here are these last words, these words
that tell us how God shall someday unto
the sky the heavens and the earth are
reserved unto fire.
The heavens shall pass away with a great
noise and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat and the heavens being on fire shall
be dissolved.
What fire is that?
Is that to be the atomic fire, the
fire of a hydrogen bomb?
Don't allow yourself to be fooled by the
scientists.
Don't allow your spiritual perceptions and concepts to
be dragged down to Oak Ridge.
Don't think in terms of the scientists.
That awesome fire out of which the seraphim
moved and that fire that dwelt between the
cherubim and that blazing light that knocked Paul
flat, that is the same fire that shall
dissolve the heaven and the earth.
The awful presence of that holy thing, that
awful thing.
Don't accuse me because I say thing, but
because I know it's a person.
He is God, the Holy One of Israel.
But there is something about him that is
awesome and awful so that one of the
definitions, I repeat, of the word that we
have in the New Testament is the awful
thing.
Now, the Holy One and the sinner, the
Holy One and the sinner, O man, O
man, sinner man, you are going to decide
when you will serve Christ.
You are going to make the decision.
You are going to push God around.
You are going to accept Jesus or not
accept Jesus, receive Him or not receive Him,
obey Him or not obey Him.
You are going to go proudly down the
aisle with your chest out.
You are going to lay your head on
the pillow tonight with a heartbeat between you
and eternity.
And you are telling yourself, I'll decide this
question.
I am a man of free will.
God isn't coercing my will.
No.
No, but I have words for you.
Listen.
Art thou not from everlasting, O Jehovah my
God, mine Holy One?
Thou art of purer eyes than to behold
evil, and canst not look on iniquity.
Habakkuk 1, 12 and 13.
Art thou not from everlasting, O Jehovah my
God?
But they say now, are your problems too
much for you?
Jesus will handle your problems.
Are you troubled mentally?
Jesus will give you mental peace.
And do you have trouble getting on in
the office?
Jesus will help you to get on in
the office.
All this is true.
But, O friends, how far it is from
biblical religion.
There was God in the midst.
And what was it that gathered the people
together in the book of Acts?
They ministered unto the Lord and fasted and
prayed.
And there in the awesome presence they heard
the voice of the Holy Ghost say, Separate
me, Barnabas and Saul.
Now we're thrown back on our planning and
our reasoning and our thinking when the great
and holy God is in our midst.
So I would recommend that you remember these
words, Thou art of purer eyes than to
behold evil.
If you have evil in your life, evil
in your heart, evil in your home, evil
in your business, evil in your memory, unconfessed
and unforgiven and uncleansed, remember that it is
only by the infinite patience of God that
you are not consumed.
For our God is a consuming fire.
And it's written here, Holiness without which no
man shall see the Lord.
Now look at them come.
See them as they come from everywhere, these
teachers, with their dingy, gray interpretations.
Pulling this down and explaining it away and
saying, See note on such and such.
Pulling it down and destroying it.
But it stands, my brother, Holiness without which
no man shall see the Lord.
Now, if you can interpret that neatly and
go home without being bothered, I wonder if
your eyes have ever gazed upon that awful
thing.
I wonder if you know, have, or do
have the knowledge of the holy.
I wonder if that sense of the overwhelming,
crushing holiness of God has ever come upon
your heart.
It was a common thing in other days
when God was the center of human worship.
When we came to Him and worshiped God,
it was common for men to kneel at
an altar and shake and tremble and weep
and perspire in an agony of conviction.
And they expected it in that day.
We don't see it now because the God
we preach is not the everlasting, awful God,
mine Holy One, who is of purer eyes
than to behold evil and cannot look upon
iniquity.
And we use the technical interpretation of justification
by faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ
to water the whine of our spirituality down
until we are what we are.
God help us in this evil hour.
And so we take into the presence of
God this tainted soul.
We come into the presence of God with
our concept of morality, having learned it from
the books and gotten it from the newspapers
and gotten it in school.
We come dirty with everything that we have
dirty and our white is quite dirty and
our church is dirty and our thoughts dirty.
We come to God dirty and do nothing
about it.
If we came to God dirty, but trembling
and shocked and awestruck and would kneel in
His presence and at His feet and cry
like Isaiah, I am undone, I am a
man of unclean lips, then I would say,
all right, I can understand.
But we skip into His awful presence.
And somebody who is dirty comes with a
book, seven steps to salvation, and gives seven
verses underlined and gets a fellow out of
his problem and out of his trouble.
Dear God, that's why we're going down each
year, each year.
More Christians, more people going to church.
More church buildings, more money and less spirituality
and less holiness.
And we're forgetting that without holiness no man
shall see God.
I tell you this, standing here tonight, that
I want God to be what God is.
And I want God to remain what God
is, the impeccably holy, unapproachable, holy thing, holy
one, all-holy one.
I want Him to be and remain the
holy in capital letters.
I want Him to be that, and I
want His heaven to be holy, and I
want His throne to be holy.
And I don't want Him to change or
modify His requirements.
Even if it shuts me out, I want
something holy left in the universe.
You can join almost any church now.
I've heard recently of a certain church.
Well, it's a Baptist church.
They're not all true Baptist churches.
I've preached some pretty strict Baptist churches.
And I'm more or less of a Baptist
myself.
And that's a Baptistry back there.
But I'll say this to you, brother, that
this particular Baptist church, and they tell me
there are many of them, they say, now
at the closing hymn we open the doors
of the church.
And they can come and anybody can join.
A gangster can join.
I say, never, never, never, never.
Never, never.
For if they can't get into heaven, they
oughtn't to get into our churches.
And the problem with us is that we
keep or let our churches stay dingy gray
instead of pleading for holy whiteness.
And as soon as anybody begins to plead,
we Christians ought to be holy, somebody comes
along and says, now, my brother, don't get
excited about this and don't become a fanatic,
for don't you understand that God understands our
flesh and He knows we're but dust?
Oh, He knows we're but dust.
But He says, thou art of purer eyes
than to behold evil and canst not look
upon iniquity.
And without holiness, it's impossible to please God.
Thomas Binney wrote this.
I think it's one of the most awesome,
wondrous things ever written.
Eternal Light.
Eternal Light, how pure the soul must be
when placed within Thy searching sight.
It shrinks not, but with calm delight can
live and look on Thee.
The spirits that surround Thy throne can bear
the burning bliss, but that is surely theirs
alone, for they have never, never known a
fallen world like this.
But how shall I, whose native sphere is
dark, whose mind is dim, before Thee ineffable
appear and on my naked spirit bear the
uncreated being?
How shall I, whose native sphere is dark,
whose mind is dim, before Thee ineffable appear
and on my naked spirit bear the uncreated
being, that fiery being, out of which come
the holy burners who sing, holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty?
How can I bear it?
And you don't know when all your religious
helps, all your marked Bibles, all your jolly
Christian friends, all your ham-eating, sweet potato
-eating, joke-telling, banqueteering Christians.
I eat ham, too, incidentally.
I'm not against ham, but we make banquets
and tell jokes and have one man band.
But one of these times each one of
us will be called before Thee ineffable to
appear and on our naked spirits bear the
uncreated being.
How are we going to do it?
There is a way for man to rise
to that sublime abode in offering and to
sacrifice the Holy Spirit's energies and advocate with
God.
These, these prepare us for the sight of
holiness above and the suns of ignorance and
night can dwell with the eternal light through
the eternal love.
I think that's one of the greatest things
ever written by a mortal man.
We don't sing it much.
It's too awful.
We're afraid of it.
Spirits that surround thy throne, seraphim, cherubim, angels,
archangels, principalities, powers, unfallen creatures, they can bear
the burning bliss, but that's because they never,
never have known a fallen world like this.
But how can I?
Isn't it enough for somebody to mark his
New Testament and rub my nose in it,
try to comfort me?
No.
I don't want to be comforted.
I want to know what it will be
like in that hour when I leave my
wife and my children and my grandchildren and
my good friends and my fifteen-year-warm
friend, McAfee, and all who give blood for
me.
I've got them here in this city that
give blood for me.
I can go to cities all over the
United States and up into Canada and they
give blood for me.
But there is not a one thing that
can help me in that awful hour when
I appear before the ineffable and the uncreated
being impinges on my naked spirit.
Then I want to know.
Well, we can.
There is a way.
It is through the offering and the sacrifice.
They advocate with God.
But don't take that lightly.
Don't take that lightly, my brother.
Conversion used to be a revolutionary, radical, wondrous,
terrible, glorious thing.
But there is not much of it left.
It is because we have forgotten that God
is the Holy One of Israel.
O God, time is running, running like a
frightened, flying like a frightened bird.
The bird of time is on the wing
and has a little way to flutter.
The wine of life is oozing drop by
drop and the leaves of life are falling
one by one.
And soon before the ineffable, every man must
appear to give account of the deeds done
in the body.
Let's pause now, please, in our prayer and
remain in an attitude of prayer and I'll
finish praying by praying for somebody if they
want me to.
Who would say, Mr. Tozer, I'm troubled too
about this.
And I may have made some sort of
religious profession, but oh, I want to know
that I'm shielded by the Advocate, by the
blood.
I want to know that by the grace
of God and the indwelling Spirit, I can
bear the burning bliss.
I want God to do something new for
me to revive my spirit, to change my
dingy gray to white, to make me sick
of compromise, weary of this checkered living.
Pray for me, Brother Tozer, that I might
become a holy man, a holy woman indeed,
by the blood of the Lamb and the
fiery purgation of the Holy Ghost.
Pray for me.
Who will say pray for me?
When we pray, we're going to have this
understanding with you that you're going to do
something about this.
You're not going to say, well, the pastor
prayed for me.
You're going to thank God and you're going
to expect him to answer, but you're going
to work with him.
Cooperation, surrender, confession, if necessary, restitution, straightening
out of your life, determination, that you're going
to cooperate with God in all this.
Let's pray.
Father, we pray for these friends who ask
us to pray.
Dear Father, we pray that Thou, through Thy
Son, Jesus Christ, will help every one of
these that they might drive a stake down
and say, as Israel said when she crossed
the river, this is a marker I crossed
here, something really happened.
Oh, we pray that this decision made tonight
may not be the careless decision, but that
it may be a determination that's as big
as life and as strong and deep as
all their faith that they will, they will
seek to meet all requirements, that they may
in that day rise to that divine abode,
that the sons of ignorant and light and
night may dwell with the eternal light because
of Thine eternal love.
Grant this.
Then for those who didn't, some who didn't
but should have, oh, Father, keep upon us
a sense of holiness that we can't sin
and excuse it, but that repentance will be
as deep as our lives.
This we ask in Christ's name.
Amen.