Not many people realize that directly after the
American Revolution, there was a moral slump in
the country.
Drunkenness became epidemic.
There were reported to be 300,000 drunkards
in a population of 5 million.
They were burying thousands of them each year.
Immorality was gross.
There were infidel clubs.
Women were afraid to go out for fear
of assault.
Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.
Perhaps the worst conditions were in Kentucky and
Tennessee.
That was the frontier.
Congress discovered that in Kentucky, there had only
been one court of justice held in five
years.
They couldn't bring the criminals to justice.
The decent people formed what we would call
vigilante regiments and fought the outlaws in a
pitched battle and lost.
You say, what were the churches doing?
The largest denomination in those days was congregational,
but the church was in decline.
The pastor of the Lenox Congregational Church in
Massachusetts said he hadn't taken anyone into membership
for 16 years.
It was like being chaplain to an old
people's home.
They were dying off.
The Presbyterians met in General Assembly to deplore
the ungodliness of the country.
The Episcopalians were even worse off.
The Bishop of New York, Samuel Provost, not
having confirmed anyone for a number of years,
decided he was out of work, took up
other employment.
The Methodists were the most aggressive at that
time, and they were losing more members than
they were gaining in spite of emigration.
The Baptists said they had had their most
wintry season.
Now, you know, the 1960s were bad times
for the churches in this country, but I
never heard anyone suggest that the church would
be wiped out.
But in the 1790s, that was the case.
Walter said, Christianity will be forgotten in 30
years' time.
And Tom Paine gleefully repeated this in the
newly independent United States.
Now, there were men of God.
George Washington prayed.
But Thomas Jefferson was a deist.
He was a noble man, but he didn't
believe that God was interested in us.
When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, the
first draft didn't have any reference to God.
Some Christians worked on him, and finally he
said, All right, we'll say our Creator, nature's
God.
That was the only concession he would make.
On the other hand, Tom Paine was a
blasphemer, died in disgrace.
Conditions were bad.
They took a poll at Harvard and discovered
not one believer in the whole student body.
At Prince, in a much more evangelical place,
there were only two believers, and only five
students who didn't belong to the filthy speech
movement of that day.
Now, this may be news to you, but
of course the sequel was wonderful.
Some Scottish Presbyterian ministers wrote what they called
a memorial.
They addressed it to the people of Scotland
and elsewhere.
I thought that was a very neat division
of the world's population.
And they urged the Christians to set aside
one day a month to pray for revival.
The churches knew they had their backs to
the wall.
A copy of this was sent to Jonathan
Edwards, the great New England theologian.
It deeply moved him.
He had seen the earlier revival, 1734, 1740,
when Whitefield came.
So he wrote a response, and it got
longer and longer until finally it was published
as a book.
My sister writes letters like that.
The title of the book, by the way,
was A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement
and Visible Union of All God's People in
Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and
the Extension of Christ's Kingdom According to Scriptural
Promise and Prophecies Concerning the Last Days.
That was just the title, not the book.
He sent copies across the Atlantic, and a
minister published the original memorial, and Jonathan Edwards
replied, and sent it to Mr. Baptist, the
editor of the Baptist Register in Bristol, in
England.
He was a busy man, one of these
busy executives.
His name was Don Ryland.
He's never heard of him.
You've heard a story about William Carey, when
he pleaded with the Baptists, sent out missionaries.
The moderator said, sit down young man, when
God decides to win the heathen, he'll do
it without any help from you.
That was Dr. Ryland.
But he didn't want to throw away books
on prayer, his conscience wouldn't let him do
that, so he sent them to two praying
men that he knew.
One of them, Andrew Fuller, took leave of
absence from his church, and traveled the length
of England, Scotland, and Wales, urging the Baptists
to set aside one day a month to
pray for revival.
The other man, John Sutcliffe, didn't travel for
domestic reasons, but he was a layman in
his church who was a ball of fire.
He was a teenager, his name was William
Carey, shoemaker.
Between them they started what they called the
Union of Prayer.
Soon the Congregationalists joined them, then the Methodists,
then Evangelicals in the Church of England and
the Church of Scotland, until Britain was interlaced
with a network of prayer meetings.
The Christians were praying for God to intervene,
and the revival came in 1792, the year
after John Wesley died.
I'm not going to describe that to you,
it was a wonderful time.
But in 1792, conditions were deplorable in the
United States.
In 1795, a Baptist minister called Isaac Backus
in Massachusetts adopted the same idea, he called
it a concert of prayer.
In other words, let's pray concertedly for revival.
And within a short space of time the
revival came.
It swept the country.
It began in the Connecticut Valley, spread throughout
New England, into New York, down into the
South.
Completely transformed the country.
The country was going to the dogs, and
yet after that revival it completely turned the
country around.
That was the Second Great Awakening.
I'm not going to take any more time,
I'm just giving you a little appetizer.
You see, the Owens have been singing Lord
Bless Us again.
What do we want them to do again?
Just to bless us?
Lord Bless Us?
There was a Scotsman who prayed Lord Bless
Us.
My son John and me, his wife and
my wife, just us four.
That's not a prayer.
Do you want God to bless us only?
What about the rest of the country?
We live in terrible days.
So we can sing Lord Do It Again.
By the way, I don't know where John
Cramp got those books of mine.
All my books were out of print.
I wrote about ten of them in the
70s.
He's managed to get one, The Eager Feet,
which describes the revivals of the 1790s and
1830s.
Well, that's just a little appetizer to give
you an appetite for what to pray.
Now, I wonder how many people here tonight
are over the age of 35.
I'm not going to ask you to raise
your hands.
I just want to alert you.
Can any of you remember what happened in
1957?
How old were you then?
See, it's no good asking anyone under 35
to remember 1957.
Well, I was in Adelaide, Australia, when the
Sputnik came over.
A satellite with a dog called Laika.
Do you remember that?
Those of you who are over 35?
We saw that little bright light going straight
across the sky.
That's what alarmed the United States and got
her into the space program.
Young people today have never seen a satellite.
Isn't that strange?
The sky is full of them, but they've
never seen one.
But do you remember in 1957?
Everyone was naked-eyed.
We could see that little dot of light
going across the sky.
I was in Adelaide in a bus sitting
beside an old lady, and she said, You
wouldn't catch me riding in a Sputnik.
She said, I'm just terrified of dogs.
Well, it comes as a great surprise to
most of my audiences when I tell them
that every human being has his own satellite.
Now, you know, there are so many satellites
in the sky, we forget the original one,
the moon.
The moon is the satellite of the earth.
You know, the word Sputnik is the word
they use.
The word Sputnik in Russian means accompanying one.
Nik means one.
And the moon is the Sputnik of the
earth.
As I say, most people don't know that
every human being has his own Sputnik.
A student at UCLA said to me, Well,
we have television in the sitting room and
in the den.
We've got two cars in the garage, but
I doubt if we'll ever have a helicopter
on the roof.
And certainly we'll never have a Sputnik because
we're out of light.
But he misunderstood.
The New Testament word, I don't know how
many of you understand Greek, because I'm giving
you the clue, is sonidesis, accompanying knowledge.
The Latin is more familiar, conscientia.
Now you've got the idea.
The English word is conscience, conscience con with
science knowledge.
Everyone has a conscience.
I don't think anyone would stand up and
contradict me and say, I don't have a
conscience.
Every human being has a conscience.
But it's a kind of satellite.
You say this is entirely new to me.
All right then, I'm going to ask you
some questions.
By the way, my little grandson came back
from school and he said, my teacher sure
is dumb.
She's always asking questions, doesn't know anything.
I'm going to ask some questions, but this
is what we call the Socratic method.
A man puts his shoes on his feet,
his watch on his wrist.
Where do you keep your conscience?
Well, you have one, haven't you?
Where do you keep it?
It's part of my mind, is it?
Would you say that the conscience is part
of the intellect?
Would you say that a student who gets
straight A has a better conscience than a
poor guy who has to work hard to
manage an average C?
The answer is no.
Would you say that a professor in a
university has a better conscience than the man
who looks after the classrooms?
No, it's not part of intellect.
Well then, is it part of your will?
Would you say a person with a strong
will has a better conscience than a person
with a weak will?
I read an item in the paper, I
wonder if you've ever seen it, called Peanuts.
Little Lucy Van Pelt held up her five
fingers and she said, Charlie Brown, these five
fingers by themselves don't mean very much, but
combined into a fist are going to make
you do what I want you to do.
And Charlie Brown capitulated.
Which had the stronger will?
Charlie Brown.
No, Lucy.
She had the stronger will.
But which had the better conscience?
Charlie.
Conscientious little fellow.
In fact, so conscientious sometimes he's afraid to
do anything.
Well then, is conscience part of your emotion
or feeling?
Would you say a warm-hearted person has
a better conscience than a cool-headed person,
or vice versa?
Now the warmest-hearted people in the world,
without a doubt, are Brazilians.
Anyone here has ever been in Brazil?
Well, you've missed it.
You should go and preach in Brazil if
you want encouragement.
They not only shake hands with you and
say, I enjoyed that, or whatever you used
to hear, but they give you a big
hug they call the abraço.
If you've done well, they'll kiss you on
both cheeks.
And if they're really enthusiastic, they'll lift you
off your feet and set you down again.
I have never met people as warm-hearted
as the Brazilians.
Now, it's not like that in Scotland.
I was speaking at New College in the
University of Edinburgh when the principal said to
me in a burst of Scottish enthusiasm, Well,
Mr. Orr, we're not averse to having you
in Scotland.
That was as much as he could say
without blowing a fuse.
In the north of Ireland, it's very like
Scotland.
Nobody comes up and says, I enjoyed that.
They might, in enthusiasm, say, that wasn't bad.
But on the other hand, I'd rather leave
my suitcase in a bus station in Scotland
than in Brazil.
They're such warm-hearted people, but even though
they may swipe your suitcase, the Scots are
very honest.
Now, you see, it's not part of emotion.
It's not part of intellect.
It's not part of will.
Adolf Hitler had a strong will but a
miserable conscience.
On the other hand, Winston Churchill had a
strong will but a pretty good conscience.
So, you see, what I'm telling you is
this, that your conscience is not part of
the intellect, not part of the will, not
part of the emotion, yet it's influenced by
your intellect and your will and your emotion.
What you think will affect your conscience.
What you want to do will affect your
conscience.
How you feel will affect your conscience.
We lived for 36 years about a mile
west of UCLA.
The university notified the neighbors.
They'd very much appreciate it if American families
would invite foreign students for Thanksgiving dinner.
Because come Thanksgiving, all the American students take
off for home.
And they leave a bunch of foreigners rather
lonely and wondering what's going on.
Now, Thanksgiving is one of the most wholesome
of American institutions.
However, we decided we'd invite six.
My wife made preparations.
We got plenty of turkey and so forth.
They all came except a Hindu from India.
My wife was a little peeved.
She might have phoned to say he wasn't
coming.
I said, he was too embarrassed.
She said, what is there to be embarrassed
about?
I said, if he were a conscientious Hindu,
he would not come to a Thanksgiving dinner.
Hindus not only believe in reincarnation, which is
such a fad these days, but they believe
in reincarnation into lower animal forms, as called
transmigration of souls.
Their idea is this.
If you behave yourself, perhaps next time around
you'll be a multimillionaire or a princess.
But if you don't behave yourself, you may
come back as a cockroach and get tramped
on.
So you better behave yourself.
That's their religion.
No Hindu would come to a Thanksgiving dinner.
That turkey might be his grandmother.
You see, his conscience wouldn't let him come
to a Thanksgiving dinner.
What you think will affect your conscience.
A man may say, what you will will
affect your conscience.
A man may say, I'm going to make
a million dollars and I don't care how
I do it.
He becomes a rogue.
There are such people, so determined, they'll break
any rule.
They may try to avoid jail.
Sometimes they don't escape it.
And then as far as emotions are concerned,
I remember when I was a chaplain in
the Air Force, a girl coming to me
with tears.
She said, chap, I can't help my feelings.
I love the guy.
I said to her, you have no business
loving the guy.
You knew when you dated him first, he
was a married man with three little children.
Now you want me to persuade his wife
to give him a divorce, to marry you?
I don't know how he'll feel about you
in a year's time, or if he goes
overseas.
So, there's a strange thing.
Conscience is not part of the intellect, the
will, or the emotion, yet it's affected by
what you think and what you want to
do and how you feel.
Just as the moon is not part of
the earth, but it pertains to the earth.
What we call the moon is not the
satellite of Jupiter.
So I say everyone has his own little
satellite.
Sputnik.
Now, I expect you to think that over.
I mean, I'm not asking you to agree
with me right away, but I think you'll
see.
I'm going to ask you another question, if
I may be so dumb.
Is your conscience your friend or your enemy?
This is quite scriptural.
Romans 2.15 Their conscience will either accuse
or excuse them.
That's what it says.
Your conscience can be your friend, and it
can also be your enemy.
How do you account for the independence of
your conscience?
Can your conscience be your friend?
2 Corinthians 1.12 The apostle says, Our
boast is this, the testimony of our conscience,
that we behaved in this world with godly
sincerity.
What's that really mean?
If we do what we believe to be
right, our conscience is our friend.
I was having breakfast in a pancake house
in Tempe in Arizona.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk when I
noticed the young lady had given me too
much money in my change.
Fifty cents too much.
So I went back.
I looked her straight in the eye.
I said, You gave me the wrong change.
She said, Oh, did I?
The temperature had dropped a couple of degrees.
I said, Yes, you did.
She said, Can you prove that?
I said, Yes, I can.
You gave me fifty cents too much, and
I gave her two quarters back.
What a change in climate.
She said, Oh, thank you, sir.
Thank you very much, sir.
God bless you, she said as I went
out.
And when I got out on the sidewalk,
my conscience said, Good for you.
Down in Australia they would say, Good on
you.
My conscience was my friend.
I had done what I thought was the
right thing.
Have you ever had that experience?
Of course you have.
But can conscience be your enemy?
Surely you know the story of the woman
taken in sin.
The Pharisees dragged her before the Lord.
They weren't interested in justice.
They wanted to embarrass him, but they were
willing to sacrifice a woman to do it.
They said, The law says she should be
stoned to death.
She was caught in the act.
Now what do you say?
Our Lord stooped, wrote with his finger on
the ground.
Have you ever wondered what he wrote?
Did he just doodle?
They must have thought, What's he doing?
I think he wrote scripture on the ground.
When the devil tempted him, he said, It
is written.
But this time he wrote it.
And I remember going all the way through
scripture, looking for what he might have written.
This is only speculation, but I think this
would certainly suit the circumstances.
I think what he wrote on the ground
was from the book of Hosea.
I will not punish your daughters when they
play the prostitute.
Nor your wives when they commit adultery.
For you yourselves are doing the same thing.
That's Hosea.
If you want to look it up sometime,
not now, but it's Hosea 4.14. You
know, this double standard has been a curse
of civilization.
That a man can get away for anything,
and a woman is punished.
What happened?
He stood up and he said, Whoever is
without sin among you, let him cast the
first stone.
It was as if our Lord had summoned
a hundred hornets and said, Sting these men.
They were so busy beating off the stings
of their conscience, they forgot all about the
woman, they beat a hasty retreat.
Have you ever seen anyone running away from
bees?
Or angry wasps?
And what does the scripture say?
Being convicted of their own conscience.
They went out one by one.
Conscience had become their enemy.
Now tell the truth.
Has your conscience ever given you a bad
time?
Well, it's your conscience.
Why didn't it take your side?
Down in Brazil, there's one of the funny
punchline jokes they have.
A couple of Brazilians went out hunting jaguars.
Sometimes they call them tigre, tigers.
It's one of the cat family, you know.
In Brazil it's called the onça.
And one of them shot an onça.
But when they're back telling about it, every
time he described it, the onça got bigger
and bigger and bigger.
Until his friend said, Now, just a moment.
And the Brazilian other fellow turned to him
and said, Whose friend are you?
Are you my friend or are you the
tiger's friend?
And you could say to your conscience, Whose
friend are you?
Your conscience can become your enemy.
I remember asking in a meeting, Anyone remember
any verse of scripture about conscience?
One man raised his hand right away.
Let your conscience be your guide.
Well, that's not in the scripture.
But I could ask you the question, What
do you think is the business of conscience?
If you're looking for a street address and
you turn right instead of left, will your
conscience prompt you?
No.
If you're learning Spanish and you have difficulty
with the verbs, will your conscience help you?
No.
If you're playing chess and you make a
wrong move, will your conscience help you?
No.
Will your conscience help you with a mathematical
problem?
Yes.
But only in your income tax returns.
You can make all sorts of mistakes in
your check stubs.
Well, I might as well tell the truth.
My wife sometimes has quite a job trying
to find out why my balance isn't the
same as the bank's balance.
So she'd go over all those check stubs.
But make a mistake in your own favor
and your income tax return and your conscience
says, uh-oh.
Why is it that conscience is not concerned
with street directions, learning Spanish, playing chess, or
mathematical problems?
Because it's not the business of conscience.
If a teenager takes a girl out on
a date and she refuses to kiss him
goodnight, not much good calling the police.
They'll warn you.
They'll be very much annoyed.
They'll say, you tend to your own business,
wasting our time.
So conscience is not concerned with these other
things.
Well, what is conscience concerned with?
Moral law.
You say, what do you mean by that?
Well, just take what we call the social
commandments in the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not commit murder.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Conscience goes to work on that.
Now one of the troubles today is that
professors in our universities and teachers in our
high schools tell our kids that there is
no such thing as morality as far as
absolute morality is concerned.
They say it's just what we arrange in
our society.
As one guy put it to me, cannibalism
is wrong in Canada, but it's okay in
New Guinea.
How can I illustrate this?
Well, Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher who
was not a Christian, said the test of
morality is its universal application.
In other words, if it's wrong in Canada,
it must be wrong in New Guinea and
vice versa.
And if it's not, then it's not a
moral question.
There are such things as mores.
You know, in Argentina, a young man wants
to take a girl to a concert.
He has to buy three tickets.
One for himself, one for the girl, one
for her grandmother or her aunt, a chaperon
that goes along.
That's the custom, but it's not a moral
question.
It would not be immoral to take a
girl to a concert without a chaperon.
One fellow asked me in university, he says,
in certain countries a man can have four
wives.
That's okay for them.
It's wrong for us.
I said, what do you mean it's wrong
for us?
Well, he said, it's just okay for them.
That's their way of doing things.
I said, look, I know Afghanistan.
I've travelled in Afghanistan.
I remember asking the governor of Herat, one
of the provinces, do you have more than
one wife?
He said, people misunderstand what the Prophet taught,
the Prophet Muhammad.
He said, a man may have four wives
if he can afford it, and second, if
he can love them equally.
He said, I can't afford it, he said,
and I don't think I could love four
women equally.
So I'm quite satisfied with the girl I
married.
But it's the law in Afghanistan, a man
may have four wives.
It's interesting in South Africa, in the cities,
a black man can only have one wife,
but in the home territories, he may follow
the local law and be a polygamist.
What I said to the university student, supposing
25% of the men in Afghanistan have
four wives each, that would use up 100
% of all the eligible females in Afghanistan.
What would the other 75% do?
Would they apply to the United Nations for
aid?
No.
Mathematics features monogamy.
Now there have been occasions in history when
polygamy was practiced.
After the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the
number of German males was decimated.
It meant about nine women to every man.
So some of the German states permitted polygamy
for one generation only, because you see, in
polygamist families, you may have a man and
four wives, but you have equal numbers of
boys and girls.
So you see, it makes sense.
Thou shalt not murder.
There are many more murders in Mexico than
in the United States per population.
But in case we congratulate ourselves too soon,
there are more murders in Houston in one
year than in England, Scotland, and Wales put
together.
You say, well, that's not proving anything.
That shows there's a different attitude in different
countries.
Ah, but I've traveled very widely, and I've
met people by the hundreds, thousands, if not
by the millions, and I've found this.
I've never met anyone who liked to be
murdered.
There's your Brissett morality.
And in the Declaration of Independence, among these
rights, inalienable rights, the right to life, even
before liberty.
Not much good giving a member vote than
executing him.
So you see, there's some basis.
I have known of places where they steal
right and left, what nobody likes to be
stolen from.
I remember in India, a gang of train
thieves from Bengal murdered the passengers.
But the train had been boarded by a
gang of Gujarati train thieves.
And they robbed the Bengalis, train thieves, who
were furious.
Nobody likes to be stolen from.
Have you ever met somebody who can look
you straight in the eye, they've trained themselves
to do it, and tell you a blatant
lie?
But they don't like to be lied to.
They don't like to be deceived.
And then when it comes to murder of
sex morality, see, our young people say, well,
I love my old folks, but they're old
fashioned.
They don't know what we know.
It doesn't change things.
There's a basic morality.
Now, when that man said to me, let
your conscience be your guide, I said, you
can't always let your conscience be your guide.
I can't go into all the details, but
the scriptures speak of a clear conscience.
The apostle said, I have a clear conscience
towards God and towards men.
An obedient conscience.
It is not for the sake of avoiding
punishment only, but also for conscience sake.
If you're going to pick up some dry
cleaning, and when you get down there, you
find a new parking space, so you drive
around the block, hoping that someone will move.
Nobody has moved.
You drive around the second time, nobody has
moved.
The third time, you think, I wonder if
I could get away with double parking.
Before you double park, what do you do?
You look this way, and you look that
way.
What are you looking for?
To see if there's a cop.
And if a police car comes by, do
you double park?
No, you drive around the ground.
Why do you do that?
To escape punishment.
That's a good motive.
But not for the sake of escaping punishment
only, but also for conscience sake.
Double parking is a hazard.
Down in Latin America, I've seen not only
double parking, but treble parking, and quadruple parking,
and some poor guy in a circle, blowing
his horn for an hour and a half,
trying to get out.
Accidents happen through double parking.
You can have a mistaken conscience.
Paul said, I've lived in all good conscience
to this day.
Yet he was guilty of the murder of
Stephen.
He said, I'll take the responsibility.
Well then, how do you dare say I
always had a good conscience?
He was a conscientious Jew.
And the law said that a man could
be stoned to death for blaspheming.
I mean, he thought he was right, but
how mistaken he was.
I wonder what Paul would have to say
to Stephen in the hereafter.
You can have a weak conscience.
If eating meat causes my brother to offend,
I will not eat meat.
That's not our problem so much today, although
sometimes it is, you know.
But I would say, if drinking a cocktail
would set some boy off on a road
to alcoholism, then I won't touch the stuff.
You can have a seared conscience.
Seared.
That's an old Anglo-Saxon word for burned.
Any of you womenfolk have ever put on
the iron to do a little bit of
ironing?
Then the phone rings, and after a short
feminine conversation of 55 minutes, you come back
again, and you wonder whether the iron is
on or not.
So you take your finger and you grab
it, and you put it on.
Oh, it burned.
Did you feel it?
You felt it.
But you don't feel it the next day.
As a matter of fact, if you take
your finger and put it on the point
of a pin, you can't feel it.
You've burned the nerve endings.
You've lost feeling.
And I'm saying this.
It's worth remembering.
If you keep on doing what you shouldn't
do, you lose all conviction.
That's one of our problems today.
You know, they talk about alternative lifestyles, but
they never discuss them, because nature would tell
you what's right and what's wrong.
The sex relationship was designed by almighty God
with primary purpose of companionship, primary purpose of
companionship and offspring.
But what goes today as an alternative lifestyle,
Mother Nature abhors.
Surely the worst warning of all is the
word to Titus.
To the pure, all things are pure.
But to the impure and unbelieving, nothing is
pure.
Their very minds and consciences are defiled.
To put it in colloquial English, their minds
and consciences are rotten.
All the way from a good conscience to
a rotten conscience.
How can you say, let your conscience be
your guide?
Now that brings us to a question that
some people have asked me.
Is conscience the same as a conviction of
the Holy Spirit?
The answer is no.
See, your conscience can be mistaken, but the
Holy Spirit cannot be mistaken.
Your conscience can be disobedient, but the Holy
Spirit, of course, couldn't permit disobedience.
But conscience is the mechanism the Holy Spirit
uses to convict you.
He'll bring things to your remembrance.
But where you've been used to excusing it,
then he breaks in conviction the crust of
resistance and resentment.
I'm Irish by birth.
What are the Irish noted for?
Good humor, bad temper.
I had my share of both.
I had such a bad temper when I
was a boy.
I remember trying to commit suicide at the
age of eleven.
You say, wasn't that young?
Well, mother had thrashed me.
My father died when I was ten.
Mother had to be father and mother.
She thrashed me when I thought they wouldn't
appreciate me around here.
I'd throw myself in the river.
It was all over some trivial affair.
Mother thrashed me for taking two pennies out
of her purse and buying a box of
matches and trying to set fire to two
other boys.
So I went down to the river to
commit suicide, but the water was too cold.
Oh, I've told people in the Middle West,
some people commit suicide by jumping off the
Golden Gate Bridge.
I've never heard of anyone committing suicide at
Duluth, Minnesota, because the water there in midsummer
is 35 degrees Fahrenheit.
Well, I didn't commit suicide after all.
That's obvious.
But I had a bad temper, but I
excused it.
I went to work in an office, and
sometimes the girls there said, ha ha, look
at the Christian nine.
Temper, temper, temper, temper.
I'd say, it's not bad temper, it's righteous
indignation.
But the Holy Spirit once said to me,
it spoils your testimony.
It's bad temper.
It's out of control.
I had to repent of it, and confess
it.
Seek deliverance from it.
You see, the Lord Jesus himself said of
the Holy Spirit, and when he is come,
he will, sometimes they say, convict the world,
but sometimes convince the world of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment.
That's his job.
If a man has been practicing evil for
years, how can you work on his conscience?
He'll argue with you.
For instance, if I were on television, and
someone asked me about this AIDS epidemic, and
boy, I don't always agree with Jerry Falwell,
I hardly agree with him when he says,
if you don't want it, don't do it.
But what would my interviewer say to me?
Well, that's your set of values.
Doesn't somebody else have a right to have
an alternative lifestyle?
But they won't go into the details of
it.
Because if you went into the details of
it, you'd see how wrong it was.
But you see, they go to work to
defend themselves.
If a person is practicing, lying in business,
for instance, or stealing, or whatever, he makes
excuses for himself to live with himself.
And it takes the conviction of the Holy
Spirit to break through that.
This happens on a large scale in times
of revival.
One of the marks is that the Holy
Spirit convinces believers of things wrong in their
lives.
And then he begins to convict complete outsiders
of the wickedness in theirs.
That's his work.
I started with a good conscience, and concluded
with a corrupt one.
But I can give you a verse of
scripture that's encouraging.
What can you do if your conscience convicts
you?
Now, on a Tuesday night, as was said
already, we take it you're all believers here.
You say, well, we're just average Christians.
We're not engaged in murder.
We're not hitmen.
We're not bank robbers.
We're not making our living by misrepresentation.
We're not living in adultery.
But we do fall short.
Sometimes our conscience accuses us.
What can you do about an accusing conscience?
It says in Hebrews 9.9, When gifts
and sacrifices repeatedly offered cannot cleanse the conscience
of the worshiper.
What does that mean?
You can join the Boy Scouts and do
a good burn every day, but it won't
clean your conscience.
You can join the Red Cross and help
build a hospital in Bangladesh, but it won't
clean your conscience.
You can join a church and be a
heavy tither, but it won't clean your conscience.
Then what will?
Same chapter, How much more shall the blood
of Christ purify your conscience from dead works?
All that you've been doing has been, I
heard the phrase used here, playing church.
Unless it's going to work out in your
life.
Therefore, I'd like to conclude, if we may,
by singing, we're not ready just for a
moment, the first verse of that hymn, Search
me, O God, and know my heart.
He's the only one who can search us.
But I'm going to make a proposition to
you first.
I'm not going to ask anyone to stand
up or to come forward or raise a
hand, but I'm going to just put it
to you, as speaker, to hearers.
You tell me that you're interested in seeing
revival in this congregation, throughout the denomination, worldwide.
If God should show you something in your
life that's not right, are you willing to
put it right?
Now, if you're a spiritual person, you'll say,
of course I'm willing.
If you're not quite concerned, you'll say, well,
let me think about it.
But if you've got something to hide, you'll
probably say, I don't want to get involved.
But if you carry the burden of spiritual
life in this church, if you share in
concern for the spiritual well-being of everyone
here, this is a family.
Are you willing to say, if the Lord
should show me something wrong in my life,
I'm willing to put it right?
If you're going to say, no, I'm not
willing to say that, well then, we're wasting
our time.
But if you say, yes, if God should
show me something wrong in my life, I
will put it right.
That's what I want to talk to you
about this week.
I'm so glad that this church is called
a discipleship institute.
There's a continuity of teaching here.
It's not like the usual quote-unquote revival
meeting, where they have pack-a-pew night
and youth night and senior citizens night and
so forth.
That's all right for evangelism.
Get different crowds to be evangelized.
But our business is the spiritual life of
the people who belong here.
And I'm sort of putting you on the
spot.
Are you willing to say, yes, if the
Lord clearly shows me something in my life
that needs to be put right, I'll put
it right.
By His grace.
All right then, Ron, would you lead us?
You'll find the hymn, only one verse, 266
in the Baptist hymnal, but we'll sing it
to the Maori melody that people know so
well.
Just one verse.
You can sing it twice if you like,
but just one verse.