And I thought of where I was, Oxford,
in the heart of England, and all the
mountains there, the mountains of doubt, the
mountains of inordinate desire, the mountains of dead
works.
And it all became so vivid in my
mind, in the question pressing on my heart,
do you believe that I will move these
mountains?
And my heart was really rebelling.
I was saying, Lord, we were having such
a wonderful prayer meeting.
Why did you destroy my enjoyment of it
by pressing these matters upon me?
But still the question was there.
And I finally said, why, Lord, it's no
distance from Oxford to the sea.
Yes, I certainly believe that these mountains, through
prayer, will be moved into the sea.
And then the question became much more personal.
How about Chicago and Wheaton?
Do you believe I will move these mountains?
And I gasped, Lord, it's a long ways.
To the nearest ocean from Chicago, the question,
do you believe?
And finally, in faith, I said, yes, Lord,
I believe.
And I did.
And I do.
But we're going to have to get to
work and fill in what valleys we can
and bring down what mountains we can, by
the grace of God, level.
We've got to prepare the way of the
Lord.
And every crooked place or path shall become
straight.
Crooked doctrines, crooked practices, crooked relationships, crooked thinking,
crooked self-appraisal.
And all the rough roads must be smoothed
out.
Our inconsistencies, our ups and downs, our hots,
our colds, our openness, our closeness, our trusting,
our suspicion, many of us are loaded with
inconsistencies.
A few days before coming down here, I
finally got to that point in my reading
of revival literature, when I laid hold of
one of Edwin Orr's books, and hadn't read
this one before, about the revival that began
in 1790.
And there were some beautiful accounts in it.
But somehow, in the midst of all this,
he started to talk about a visit he
made to Wheaton, Illinois, and that incredible stirring
of the Holy Spirit in the 1950s.
When Jim Elliott was so deeply moved, and
when the other men who sacrificed their lives
before the Alka Indians, and when a host
of the world missionary leaders were students at
Wheaton, God came in an incredible visitation.
But he gave an extract from the diary
of Jim Elliott.
Jim Elliott acknowledged that he hadn't been very
careful about keeping a diary, but he had
heard Edwin Orr talk about its importance, and
about the importance of establishing a daily time,
early in the morning, with the Lord.
And so, in his diary, he wrote, I
have been deeply moved to do this, and
I'm going to do it with the greatest
possible integrity.
And the first thing I must set down
is the gross inconsistency that has accompanied my
time with the Lord over the years.
And now, by God's grace, I'm going to
deal with that.
And all who know his story know that,
indeed, he did.
And God moved and blessed, wonderfully, every crooked
way made straight, every high place brought down,
every low place filled in, every rough road
smoothed, and all flesh shall see the salvation
of our God.
Is that not what your heart beats toward?
So, there's the quotation from Isaiah.
There are two or three other things in
terms of his message I want to draw
to your attention.
Look at verses 7 and 8.
He, therefore, began saying to the multitudes who
were going out to be baptized by him,
you brood of vipers.
He'd, of course, recently read Carnegie's book on
winning friends and influence.
You brood of vipers.
Who warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?
Therefore, bring forth fruit in keeping with your
repentance, and do not begin to say to
yourselves, we have Abraham for our father.
For I say to you that God is
able from the stone to raise up children
to Abraham.
How deeply do you concern yourself with fruits
appropriate to your repentance?
If one were to read this passage carelessly,
they might gasp when they realize that multitudes
were coming, and they might even envision these
hypocrites that Jesus labeled scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.
They were there.
They were seeking baptism, it would appear.
Long ago, when I was pondering that, I
suddenly realized there was a passage in Luke
that made it clear John didn't baptize those
hypocrites.
And I felt tremendous relief.
But some of you pastors have been busy
baptizing scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.
Some time ago, I asked a pastor if
he ever knowingly baptized an unconverted person, and
he acknowledged that he had.
And I asked him how often.
He's one of these mega church fellows, you
know.
And he said, well, I never counted, but
I shouldn't think more than a thousand times
why the average godly pastor doesn't baptize a
thousand in a lifetime.
And here, this foolish young fellow admitted baptizing
knowingly unconverted people.
And when I asked him why, he said,
you've got to understand, I've committed myself to
build a mega church.
Yes, and I said, you need to understand
that the blood of every one of these
people is on your hands, you hypocrite.
But I ask again, is there fruit in
keeping with your repentance?
And let's go beyond ourselves.
Do you preach repentance?
If you do, do you demand fruit appropriate
to the repentant?
How are we going to prepare the way
of the Lord if we neglect repentance, or
if we speak fervently of repentance and make
no demands in terms of appropriate fruit?
We had a wonderful lesson on that last
night, did we not, out of 1 John
chapter 1.
But there's another issue here that I want
you to look at in verse 9, and
what an incredibly important issue it is.
And also, says John, the axe is already
laid at the root of the tree.
Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the
fire.
I believe we need to concern ourselves with
the gospel axe.
You see, many of us, if we apply
an axe at all, are applying the axe
to the twigs of the tree.
We're fussing around with the fruits of sin.
We haven't come anywhere near the roots of
sin.
John took the gospel axe to the root
of the tree.
Some years ago, I agreed to a series
of 18 one-night stands throughout New England,
sponsored by one of the Baptist denominations.
It was an exhausting 18 days.
But on toward the end of the second
week, I arrived at a church just where
Cape Cod verges out from the main coast.
And on a Sunday night, I walked in
and sat down on the platform.
And as I looked over the congregation, I
gasped.
There was somebody in every pew.
But there was nobody sitting anywhere near anybody,
except an occasional husband and wife that were
apparently still on speaking terms.
I sat there pondering that strange and tragic
phenomenon.
And I kept thinking, I wonder what has
brought this about?
When I stood to preach, I said, I
have been observing the seating pattern.
And I know something is mighty wrong.
But that's not what God has burdened me
to preach upon tonight, so I lay it
aside.
And I announced my text and preached my
sermon.
Immediately afterward, the leaders of the church huddled
around me and said, Mr. Roberts, you must
come back.
We've got to have a series of meetings.
I said, I'm sorry, I can't.
Simply no time.
And one of them with a lot of
gall said to me, do you carry a
pocket diary?
I said, yes.
He said, give it to me.
So I took it out of my pocket
and handed it to him.
First and only time in my life I
was ever asked to do that.
He began leafing through it.
He said, you can't say you can't come.
You've got a Saturday night and a Sunday
and a Monday night with no appointments.
And that's only six weeks from now.
You must come.
I said, you don't observe that I'm an
old man?
You don't think I have ever any reason
to be home with my wife?
He said, the need is urgent.
You must come.
And I said, all right, I will.
And when I arrived for that Saturday night,
imagine a series of meetings, Saturday night, Sunday
and Monday, first time in my life ever
had that particular pattern.
When I stepped out on the platform, I
almost fell over because there were about three
times as many present as had been present
on the Sunday night earlier.
And they were all crammed together in the
center section.
And I said to them, some of you
will feel very strongly that you must tell
me what's been wrong.
I forbid each and all of you to
do so.
I don't want to hear from anybody what's
been wrong.
I said, like John the Baptist, I've come
with the gospel acts, and I'm going for
the root.
And that Saturday night, that was honored.
And Sunday morning, it was honored.
And Sunday evening, a little bit of a
woman slipped up to me, and she said,
I must meet with you.
I said, I do not meet with women,
except in very public places.
Well, she said, this is very urgent.
I said, is this to tell me what's
wrong?
Oh, no, no, no.
I heard what you said about that last
night.
No, no, not that.
Well, I said, I have no desire to
meet with you.
But if you insist, I shall be having
my breakfast.
And I named the hotel, and I named
the hour.
It was a huge dining room.
I said, I'll be seated in the middle
of the dining room.
And she came.
And she barely got herself seated before she
began to tear to shreds the organist.
I kept holding up my hand, stop, stop,
stop.
I refuse to listen.
But I couldn't stop her.
And when the poor organist was nothing but
shreds, she then turned on the song leader.
And my, did she give him a lacing.
And all the time, I'm trying to stop
her.
But when finally she's vented herself, I said
to her, you're one tremendous choir director, aren't
you?
She was the choir director.
She said, I did not think you would
mock me.
I said, you don't know me.
I don't have to.
I don't have to resort to mockery.
I have declared an absolute truth.
You are one tremendous choir leader.
I sat on the front row when you
came in with the choir on Sunday morning.
Even Napoleon could not have had the kind
of command over his troops that you had
over that choir.
I almost fell under the bench when you
sang.
It was incredibly beautiful.
You are a terrific choir director.
She said, you really do mean that, don't
you?
Yes, I said, I really do.
Well, thank you.
I said, I wonder if it has occurred
to you that little bit of you, she
was just a very small woman, little bit
of you without any help whatsoever can completely
destroy this church.
And you've done a whole lot already in
that direction.
She gasped.
She said, how could you say something like
that?
And I said to her, and listen now,
there's never anyone more dangerous in the church
than a gifted person who serves God with
their gifts and not with his graces.
She looked horrified.
She said, I don't understand what you mean.
I took an hour explaining to her the
difference between serving God with gifts and serving
him with grace.
And I pause and ask you, is your
service that of gifts or that of grace?
It takes a great deal of time and
serious prayer and thoughtful concern to be certain
that on every occasion of service, it is
service in grace, that our gifts are at
all times bathed by divine grace that is
never the flesh, but always the spirit that
is ministering.
My dear friends, if we're going to prepare
the way of the Lord, we're going to
have to see to it that our gifts
are saturated with our graces, just as John
the Baptist did.
Can you imagine a more gifted man than
John the Baptist?
Or can you imagine a more gracious man?
His message, bring forth fruits in keeping with
your repentance.
You've noticed, I'm sure, as we were reading
the passage, the three different groups that responded,
verse 10, the multitudes, verse 12, the tax
gatherers, verse 14, the soldiers, and the urgent
word that John spoke to each of those
three groups.
And then finally, in terms of the message,
the very significant words of verse 17, and
his winnowing fork is in his hand to
clean out his threshing floor and to gather
the wheat into his barn, but he will
burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
What if the Lord came with his winnowing
fork tonight?
How much would be pure chaff that had
to be consumed in the fire?
But now let me seek to make some
direct applications of these matters that I've tried
to hold in front of you tonight.
We have been faced already this weekend with
the issue of sin, and I shall not
spend any considerable time on it, but certainly
many of us who are not guilty of
wild and awful sins of the flesh may
very well be guilty of incredibly awful sins
of the Spirit.
And surely pride is the very ultimate in
sin against God.
So I plead with you again to deal
with pride and to do so in a
very biblical fashion.
Sins of omission, oh how the church needs
to seek repentance in terms of its prayer
life.
What a tragic day in which to live
when prayer has become a ridiculous joke in
the typical church.
But as I said, I don't intend to
concentrate upon sin.
I made mention in passing yesterday of the
problem of dead works, and I do intend
to speak a little more carefully on that
matter at this time.
Do you know what a dead work is?
We are required to repent of our dead
works.
How can we do so if we have
no notion of what constitutes a dead work?
Well number one, a dead work is anything
we do where we hope to gain merit
from God in what we do.
For a high percentage of church membership there,
accepting Christ is nothing but a dead work.
They hope to gain some merit.
I already used the term fire escape.
They don't care anything about God, whether God
lives, whether God dies, wouldn't mean anything to
them.
But just the possibility of a hell that
they may be sent to concerns them sufficiently
so they engage in some silly little motion
that some very unwise and ungodly preacher encourage
them to believe constituted salvation.
The dead work of decisional regeneration.
We ought to get serious about this.
In my mind, it's absurd to talk about
revival and to go on making converts who
are twofold more children of hell than we
are ourselves.
It's about time we got serious and preached
the gospel of Christ instead of the nonsense
of American Christianity.
The dead work of doing something in which
we hope to gain merit with God.
Oh, we may not couch it in those
words.
We may be much more sensitive, wise in
our language, but the result is the same.
A dead work is also anything I do
that has no capacity to be made alive
by the Holy Spirit.
For instance, we read, if I regard iniquity
in my heart, the Lord will not hear
me.
Thus, prayer becomes a dead work.
There is no capacity for prayer out of
a sinful heart to be quickened by the
Holy Spirit, to be made alive, to be
made effective.
A man can preach beautiful sermons and sway
multitudes by his words, and yet all of
his preaching can be nothing other than dead
work, because he has no capacity to be
touched by the Spirit of God, because he
harbors some sin in his heart.
I have been dealing recently with pastors who
have turned into moral dens of iniquity.
I spent three hours with a man one
afternoon a while back.
He came to my office, and for three
hours he told me of his moral intentions.
He had already filed for divorce from his
wife.
He was fully intending to run off with
another woman.
I begged him.
I pled with him.
I gave him every relevant scripture I could
think of, urging him to turn from his
wicked ways.
And suddenly he looked at his watch, and
he said, oh my, I've got to go.
I'm preaching tonight.
And he rushed off and preached in a
church that I happened to be the supply
preacher in at that time.
Oh, my heart just broke.
Any ministry that cannot be set afire by
the Holy Spirit is nothing other than a
dead work.
The choir director of whom I spoke a
few moments ago, her labors were nothing other
than dead works doing incredible damage in the
church.
It's not only that they're dead works, but
the damage of dead works is phenomenal.
But also one must say that not only
is a dead work anything we do to
gain merit with God, and not only is
a dead work anything we do that cannot
be made alive and powerful by the Holy
Spirit, but third, a dead work is any
ministry, any action in which we engage and
do so in the power of the flesh
and do not seek the enabling of the
Holy Spirit.
And many a man preaches Sunday after Sunday,
and he has spent no time at all
wrestling in prayer and pleading with God for
a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit and
fire.
I'm talking about matters that must be faced
in preparing the way of the Lord.
Sin.
Dead works.
And now I mentioned the issue of erroneous
doctrine.
The American church is plagued with false doctrine.
I'll perhaps make some lifetime enemies now, but
you won't be able to stand before the
throne and say, I never knew.
After tonight, you're going to understand.
We have made an incredible error in equating,
as if they were synonyms, such terms as
conversion, salvation, regeneration, justification.
How dumb is the Holy Spirit?
Do you think he's so dumb that he
would take words with radically different meaning and
treat them as synonyms?
We've got to begin this portion of my
message by facing the fact that he is
both the Holy Spirit and the all-wise
Spirit.
Now you see, what we are doing today
is pretending that people are born again as
a result of their exercise of repentance and
faith.
I don't care whether you like this or
not.
The only way you're going to avoid it
is to get up and leave.
Because if you stay, you're going to hear
me out on this matter.
It is both intellectually absurd and it is
an affront to God to pretend that repentance
and faith lead to regeneration.
That's sheer nonsense.
Have you got a Bible?
Turn, if you will, to John chapter 2
and let me give you a biblical dose
on this subject.
Do you realize that at the end of
the second chapter of John, there is a
very, very forceful issue that is pressed upon
us?
Let me read the last three verses of
John chapter 2.
Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the
Passover, during the feast, many believed in his
name because I've got to get this in
the right light.
My eyes are a bit dim.
Let me start again.
Verse 23.
Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the
Passover, during the feast, many believed in his
name, beholding his signs which he was doing.
But Jesus, on his part, was not entrusting
himself to them, for he knew all men
and because he did not need that anyone
should bear witness concerning man, for he himself
knew what was in man.
Now, if you haven't figured this one out,
you should.
Here comes a crowd, we have no idea
how many, and they report to Jesus that
they believe as a result of the signs
that they have seen him perform.
On his part, he simply rejects their claim
to faith.
Now, most of us understand that faith comes
by hearing, and hearing by the word of
God.
We have no grounds whatsoever to suppose that
people come to faith as a result of
sight.
I'm not saying it couldn't happen if God
determined it.
I'm saying we've no grounds to suppose that
that is really true.
But without getting into the depths of that,
let me simply insist on what the passage
says.
A multitude came saying they believed as a
result of what they saw, and he rejected
their claim to faith.
First, he didn't need their affirmation.
I want to speak to the pastors here
and say, you are indeed an extraordinary danger
to the kingdom of God when you require
the affirmation of men.
And one of the major tragedies of our
day is those men in positions of leadership
who can't live without a claim.
And if you need a claim, you'll bend
the message in whatever direction it takes to
get the acclaim that you require.
And in a wicked day like this, when
the church is in such degenerate condition, you're
not going to get much acclaim if you
stick to the truth.
I want to plead with you to seek
total deliverance from all need of human affirmation.
Our Lord was able to say at the
end, I have finished the work that thou
gavest me to do, because he was totally
free of any need of human affirmation.
It was enough for the Father to say,
well done.
But what about you?
Our Lord knew what was in their hearts.
That's also plain.
He didn't accept their claim to faith because
he knew what was in their hearts.
But now this is the point we must
come to.
What is stated in chapter three about a
multitude is narrowed down.
No, what's stated at the end of chapter
two is narrowed down in the beginning of
chapter three to a single individual.
You're aware of that?
You face the fact that when Nicodemus came
to Christ that night, he made the same
claim to faith that the multitude had made?
Read it for yourself.
Now, there was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
This man came to him by night, and
he said to him, Rabbi, we know that
you have come from God as a teacher,
for no one can do these signs that
you do unless God is with him.
Now, I ask you, do you think Christ
is inconsistent?
Do you think he would send away a
multitude because of their false claim to faith
and then accept a prominent individual?
You wouldn't dare think such a thought concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ.
But there's another incredible matter here.
What our Lord does in this passage is
to draw a comparison between physical birth and
spiritual birth.
Can you imagine the greatest teacher of all
time drawing parallels of non-parallels?
You follow me?
I've stated already, he makes a parallel between
physical birth and spiritual birth.
But the interpretation of the American church in
regard to this passage says there is no
parallel here.
Christ was a stupid teacher.
He didn't know what he was doing.
He wasted the time of this significant man.
He spoke absolute foolishness.
He said to Nicodemus, a man cannot see
the kingdom of God unless he's born again.
He said again, a man cannot enter the
kingdom of God unless he's born again.
But in actual fact, you see, we are
born again as a result of what we've
seen.
We're born again as a result of our
repentance and our faith.
That's the teaching that many of you have
been engaged in.
And that's the teaching under which some of
you who are not teachers have suffered for
years.
Heresy, nonsense, foolishness, ridiculousness.
And in talking about preparation for revival, we
better set our hearts to take out some
of these crooked truths and get things lined
up with Holy Scripture.
Listen, if I were to ask an individual
here, in fact, I'll do this for my
dear friend, what part did you have in
your physical conception and birth?
We all have to say the same thing,
absolutely none.
We are the result of the other.
Please, I beg of you, understand.
Regeneration is that work of the Holy Spirit
that takes away the blindness of the eye
and the deafness of the ear and the
hardness of the heart and enables a person
to hear the word of God and to
receive those two precious gifts of repentance and
faith and to be converted.
If you insist on putting regeneration after repentance
and faith, you will produce multitudes of unregenerate
persons who have been confused into believing they
are born again when all they've ever engaged
in is a dead work.
I could not begin to speak of this
with the degree of seriousness that it deserves.
I don't suppose there's any other single doctrine
that I've held forth on that has earned
me more enemies than this doctrine.
But you couldn't make me back down on
this, even if all of you made it
clear this was the last sermon I ever
preached.
Now, this is tremendously urgent for many reasons,
but I want to pinpoint the issue of
prayer in the church.
It has become a farce.
Most churches have discontinued the prayer meeting, or
if they still have it, the pastor pleasantly
says, well, you know, there's a few old
people in the church.
They're not good for anything else, and they
want to be active and do something, so
we let them have their prayer meeting.
And these prayer meetings have been described by
many with such terms as organ recitals, when
the old folk get together and discuss their
aches and pains and pray for one another
and their suffering friends and family.
Whatever happened to the concept, my house shall
be called the house of prayer.
Well, if you think you can win men
to Christ and get them regenerated as a
result of your activity, you don't need prayer
for that.
In fact, prayer is a hindrance.
If you're going to have to wait upon
God to regenerate a person before they can
repent and believe, you're going to slow everything
down.
I believe with all my heart that many
of our megachurches would be about the size
of your church if they stuck to the
truth.
When you understand that the only people who
are able to repent and believe are those
who have been quickened by the Holy Spirit,
then you're cast up upon prayer.
Imagine a church where every believer gathers at
least once a week for prayer, and at
the heart of their prayer is that the
Spirit of God will quicken men and women.
I don't care whether you agree with my
viewpoint or not, but I can delight in
the truth that I know, whether you like
it or not.
Spend my incredible joy time after time in
preaching the Word of God to see people
come alive under the preaching of the Word.
I think some of you are so fond
of invitations because you don't have that much
confidence in the Holy Spirit and the Word.
Now, I'm not speaking against invitations, but in
comparison with what the Holy Spirit does through
the Word, invitations are pretty insignificant.
But I want to be sure you understand.
You don't have to believe me, but I've
got to be sure you understand that dead
men do not repent.
Dead men do not believe.
We are all dead in trespasses and in
sins until we are quickened by the Holy
Spirit.
And in preparation for revival, we've got to
band together and plead that God will indeed
come in the power of the Spirit and
quicken multitudes and enable them to hear, to
feel, to see the kingdom of God.
Poor Nicodemus, he comes saying he believes, and
Jesus sends him away saying, you can't even
see the kingdom of God in your deadness.
But oh, for the day when a band
of mighty men of God preach and confidence
the Word of God and watch as multitudes
are brought forth from the dead under the
preaching of the Word and the ministry of
the Holy Spirit.
Now listen, in case you need some further
fortification of what I've said, why do you
think it is that most of our evangelistic
agencies, when they're honest, admit that up to
97% of their converts have fallen away
within two years?
I'm not all that fond of Charles G.
Finney.
I think he made some very severe errors,
but believe me, if Finney felt that 5
% of the converts were falling away in
two years, he would have spent hours and
hours in his prayer chamber until he got
things right with God.
And here, if you say something to some
evangelistic agency about this incredible fallaway rate, 80%,
90%, 92%, 95%, 97%, the first thing they
want you to know is it's not the
problem of our evangelism, it's the problem of
the follow-up.
Nonsense!
You can't follow up the dead!
And if you try, you're going to wear
yourself into sheer exhaustion.
The problem is in the message.
We don't take the Holy Spirit and the
words seriously enough.
And when we have these things right, we're
not going to see the fallaway rate that
we're seeing now.
Isn't it lovely that our Savior was able
to address the Father and to say, of
those whom thou hast given me, I have
lost none.
And true evangelism produces true converts that endure.
Preparing the way of the Lord means we
must deal with sin, we must deal with
dead works, we must deal with false teaching.
And may I add as well, we must
also deal with false practices.
I know it's late, but I warned you
in advance, I haven't been unfair in that
regard at least.
When our Lord said, my house shall be
called a house of prayer, what do you
think he meant?
Do you think he meant that there would
be some praying people in it?
I don't believe that for a moment.
I believe he meant that every believer would
be praying with every other believer.
Have you stopped to think of this fact?
Our Lord made it clear, a house divided
against itself cannot stand.
In the typical church, the general feeling seems
to be, well, you know, there's some people
who have the gift of prayer, and some
who have the gift of teaching, some who
have that gift and the other gift.
And so let the people with the gift
of prayer do the praying, and let those
with the gift of teaching, and so on.
What garbage.
My house shall be a house of prayer.
Any church where a portion of the people
pray, and a portion do not, is a
house divided against itself.
And one of the major reasons why tens
of thousands of men are leaving the ministry
these days, is because the house is so
badly divided, they can't even see their way
to continue in the ministry to which God
called them.
And of course, many are not just simply
turning aside to other occupations, but many of
them are going down the tubes morally.
Our Lord gave that incredible story at the
end of the Sermon on the Mount about
the two men building, the one who builds
upon the sand, and the other one who
builds upon the rock.
And a church that has a portion of
its people praying, and a portion not praying,
is a house built upon the sand.
Christianity requires that all, within a given fellowship,
be men and women of prayer.
Now, it's not that way, but brothers who
are pastors, I want to tell you, if
you're content to pastor a church that is
divided against itself, there's something seriously wrong with
your heart.
Why should you not set your heart to
pastor a flock of people who pray together?
Why should you not determine that under God,
every single believer will participate regularly in the
prayer life of the church?
We need some holy and high goals, and
I can't conceive of anything more urgent than
turning the house of God into a house
of prayer.
But I would also like to mention some
of the other foolish things in which the
church engages.
I want to speak just for a moment
about children.
The church is dumbing down the message to
the children.
Children are being treated as if they were
idiots.
The church, these days, is doing the same
ridiculous thing the public school is doing, turning
everything down to the lowest level.
One of the major reasons why the homeschool
movement is flourishing and producing wonderful effect is
because those children are being treated for what
they are, intelligent human beings with incredible capacity
to embrace divine truth.
We, if given opportunity, could hear dozens and
dozens of testimonies of people right here tonight
who, as a child, thoroughly embraced the gospel
of Christ and understood many of the deepest
things of the Christian faith, and yet we
treat the children as if they had only
partial intellects.
Oh, that the church might begin to seize
the potential of these lovely children.
And you all understand, don't you, that in
some of the mighty revival movements of the
past, it's been the prayer meetings of the
children that have had such profound impact.
But let me speak as well about the
matter of Christian fellowship.
Someone else spoke of this issue already this
week.
We regard Christian fellowship as just being neighborly,
as being friendly, as being a bit kindly
toward one another.
Not many churches practice what I would think
is genuine Christian fellowship.
How long has it been since someone stepped
up to you in an obvious spirit of
love and said, now listen, brother, I'm concerned
about you.
How are you doing spiritually?
I require you to give me a history
of your recent walk with the Lord.
Why, you could be a member of a
typical church for 20 years and never once
in those 20 years ever have anybody who
really extended Christian fellowship to you.
What's wrong with the old Methodist class meeting
concept where every individual was personally shepherded and
cared for with great diligence?
Maggie and I had a rather incredible experience
along these lines.
I was teaching at that time in one
of the large churches in our area, and
I had been giving a series on Christian
hospitality and what it really meant.
And then suddenly it came to our attention
that an elderly couple in our church who
had been faithful members had gone home after
the Sunday morning service and by pre-arrangement
had their lunch together, and then he took
a gun and shot his wife through the
head, and then he shot himself through the
head.
And I had the gall the next Sunday.
That was all hushed up.
Nobody was supposed to know that happened, but
I had the gall to get up and
to say, we call this a Christian church.
We say we practice Christian fellowship, and yet
there's a couple in our midst that are
sunk so low that they enter into a
pact of mutual suicide, and nobody has the
foggiest notion that they are in such desperate
circumstances.
We need to get serious about Christian fellowship.
Well, they got serious, all right.
The elders summoned me in the next week
and ordered me to cease all that type
of teaching and preaching, and when I refused,
they then arranged for my easy departure from
the church.
And I was only there as a volunteer
teacher.
But now listen, friends.
That afternoon, that Sunday afternoon where I spoke
so clearly on the issue of Christian fellowship,
I got very agitated in my spirit, and
I just couldn't get out of my mind
the young African boy who Maggie had met
somewhere along the line.
He was a student in the college, and
she had invited him home to dinner, and
it just dawned on me that that boy's
been in our home maybe five or six
times, and all we really did was to
extend American hospitality to him with a little
Christian flavor.
And I went to Maggie, and I said,
Maggie, I'm very agitated about this boy Tunji.
Well, she said, so am I.
I said, you must get on the phone
and reach that boy and get him here
quickly.
And she called him, and after a while
I was able to reach him, and he
came, I think, perhaps on Tuesday for dinner,
and we had dinner together.
Then he and I went and sat in
easy chairs, and I said to him, Tunji,
first I must apologize to you.
We have shown you American hospitality, but we've
never really offered Christian fellowship, and tonight I
must ask you how you are doing spiritually.
Suddenly he erupted into the most awful wail
that was ever sounded in that room.
He was in one of these swivel rockers.
The whole chair just shook and vibrated with
his sobs.
It was quite a long time before I
could even distinguish a single word he spoke,
but eventually it became clear he was crying
out, no man cares for my soul, no
man cares for my soul, over and over,
no man cares for my soul.
Eventually he got control of himself, and he
said to me, you are the first man
since I came to America who asked how
I was doing spiritually.
He said, in my own country I had
memorized 500 hymns, and I was constantly singing
and whistling and humming.
I had four stated seasons of prayer every
single day.
I walked and talked with God, but since
being in Wheaton, I have forgotten all the
hymns.
I haven't been able to pray at all
for months.
In fact, when Mrs. Roberts called me, I
had laid my plans to commit suicide, and
if it had not been for her telephone
call, I would be dead tonight.
And God in his grace reached out and
touched that boy and restored him.
I'm telling you, we need to get ready.
We need to prepare the way of the
Lord.
We're going to have to take some of
these matters seriously.
We're going to have to stop engaging in
all this foolishness that we call church and
get down to the serious business of helping
one another along the way into the kingdom
of God.
Well, I've said a lot, and I finish
now.
I understand as you do that John's role
was peculiar, it was special, it was wonderful.
None of us will ever be called to
be the forerunner in the same exact sense
that John was, but we are in desperate
need of another visitation, and we're not ready
for it, and we need to prepare the
way of the Lord.
Will you do what you can and what
you must, and do it in wonderful expectation
that the Lord himself will soon be among
us, manifesting his glory and advancing his kingdom.
Now, Lord, most of us are well aware
of these matters.
They have concerned us in the past to
some degree, but we face them afresh tonight,
and we're in danger now, even as we've
been before, of allowing these sacred matters to
be snatched away and to go on even
as we have done so often in the
past.
In your grace and in your mercy, will
you enable each of us, first in our
own lives, to prepare the way of the
Lord, and then to do everything in the
arena where you have placed us to prepare
others for his coming, and grant in your
great mercy that we will not languish long
in our present condition, but even as the
psalmist has stated it, that we may once
again rejoice because you have revived us, and
to thee be forever the praise and the
glory.
Amen.