Obey all things and hold fast to that
which is good.
And in 1 John 4 it says, Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits,
whether they are of God.
Now this is a little spiritual treasure which
God has given me, some gave it to
me some years back, and I want to
share it with you.
God gave it to me as a rule
to tell how, whether a doctrine is from
him or not, whether a blessing that I
may receive or an emotional experience I may
have or a miracle I may think I
see or anything else is of God or
not.
And some Christians, of course, can't profit by
this for the simple reason that they are
static, they have had no new experiences, and
they're not going to have any if they
can help it.
And they have no crises, no epochs, no
advances, they never circle and fly higher, they're
satisfied to beat their wings fast and buzz
around low, they're not going up there where
there's any danger, so they can nod and
wish it was over.
But you that are seekers after God, who
are troubled and concerned about your spiritual lives,
this message is for you.
I hope that's all of you here tonight,
that you are seekers after God's best things,
that you are ready to hear anyone who
offers help.
There are some people who are troubled, they
are really troubled in their spiritual lives.
And they read the Bible, but that doesn't
seem to help them, they don't seem to
be able to find themselves.
They're troubled, and they're ready to hear anyone,
and that is one danger.
I don't like to see anybody too willing
to accept things.
I like to have them do what the
Bereans did, examine the scriptures to see if
these things be so.
I never trust a man who gets converted
too easily, if I want to maintain my
reputation as knowing the English language from a
hole in the wall.
But if a man gets converted too easily,
the chances are you can unconvert him just
as easily.
If you can stampede him into the kingdom,
you can stampede him out.
I like to see a man just a
little bit stubborn and hard to deal with.
And then when he gets in, he's just
as stubborn and hard to deal with by
the enemy.
That was Paul.
Paul was a stubborn man, and he wasn't
easy to convert.
But when he got converted, it was a
tremendous thing, and he never went back.
Now some, I say, are eager, and they're
looking after some new thing.
And of course on the radio you'll hear
everybody and his brother John lecturing and talking
and giving messages.
Well, that's right, it's all right, the radio's
a good medium of communication.
But you have to use your head and
your heart, and you have to find out
whether what this fellow's talking about is right
or not.
Just the fact that he gets up there
and talks fast and sounds pious doesn't mean
one thing in the world a devil can
come as an angel of light.
So you've got to learn to know an
angel of light from an angel of God.
You have to learn to know pseudo-truth
from truth.
Well, there are those, I say, who are
willing to take up with new doctrines, and
there are those who are willing to seek
new experiences if somebody else comes along and
demonstrates they've had one.
And there are always those who are easily
moved by miracles.
I have never been.
I've seen God do some miracles, or near
-miracles, I think, in my time, but I
have never been much convinced by miracles.
If they will not believe Moses and the
prophets and the apostles and our Lord, they
would not believe even if a man rose
from the dead.
So miracles are secondary proofs of anything.
And yet miracles move some people tremendously, and
if somebody can come along and do a
miracle, they'd just believe anything.
Well now, I want to give you a
rule divided into about seven parts, but this
will be a brief sermon, I hope.
Here's the rule.
How does this affect my attitude toward and
my relation to the following?
Now, anything, whatever doctrine I begin to get
interested in, whatever new fad, new religious fad
comes my way, whatever religious experience I may
seem to be having or have had, check
it.
You dare to check it.
In fact, you're under orders to check it.
Check it by asking, how does this affect
my attitude toward and my relation to these?
The following.
First, God.
That new doctrine that has come my way
by some fellow who perspires and talks unctuously.
All right, now he's got his doctrine.
What does that doctrine do for God?
Does it make God great or small?
Does it make God necessary or less necessary?
Does it put God where he belongs and
bring glory to him, and does it humble
me and show me how little I am
and how great God is?
Or does it obscure God and draw a
veil across the face of God?
Whatever makes God less or less important or
less wonderful or less glorious or less mighty,
that isn't of God, because the whole purpose
of God in redemption, in sending the Scripture
in the first place, and in redeeming men,
is that he might be glorified among men.
The glory of God is the health of
the universe, and wherever God is not glorified,
that part of the universe is sick.
Hell is sick because God is not glorified
there.
Heaven is abounding in glorious health because God
is glorified there.
Earth is halfway in between, sick and well,
because only some glorify God and the rest
don't.
The glory of God is the health of
the universe, and the sound of the anthems
of praise to God Almighty is the music
of the spheres.
Therefore, any doctrine, any phase or emphasis of
doctrine, any experience that I may seem to
have, any miracle that I may seem to
have seen, if it doesn't make God big
and keep him big and make God indispensable
and wonderful, then put it away and dare
to stand and say I'll have nothing to
do with anything that diminishes God.
Then, Christ, how does it affect my attitude
toward and my relation to Christ?
Because Christ is who he is, and what
he is, he is and always will be
indispensable.
And he is and always will be necessary
to the point where I must have him.
And any teaching, any experience, any fellowship, any
activity that makes Christ less necessary to me
can't be of God.
Now, you've had experiences, you've gone to the
altar, you've prayed and you've been blessed and
you've heard teachings and emphases given here, and
you've heard them given by men with their
breath in their nostrils.
The fact that Dr. Brown said it doesn't
make it true, the fact that I said
it doesn't make it true, the fact that
George Klein of Waterpool said it doesn't make
it true, the fact that your Bible teachers
have said it doesn't make it true, we
can be mistaken.
You've got to test us as well as
everybody else and search the scriptures and know,
has our teaching made Christ more wonderful to
you?
Is Jesus Christ bigger and grander and sweeter
and more indispensably beautiful now in your life
than he was before?
If he is, you have every good reason
to believe you've been hearing from God.
If he's less glorious and you've become attached
to men, then he isn't, the teaching you've
had is bad, or at least it's been
given in a bad way.
Any teaching, any experience that comes to you
that makes Jesus Christ any less necessary, I
say and repeat, is not of God, because
Jesus Christ is absolutely necessary.
He is the divine imperative.
He is the one without which we cannot
live.
We must have him and we must be
in him and he in us.
If it is of God, your dependence upon
Christ will increase and Christ will become sweeter
and more wonderful all the time.
Now I don't say he will become sweeter
every day.
I don't say that he will become sweeter
as the days go by.
We sing that song and I don't believe
it half the time I hear it.
I don't believe it most of the time
that I hear it.
The same old deacon will come and he's
the same old deacon, and every second Sunday
morning for twenty years he'll sing sweeter as
the years go by.
And he's the same sour, salty, stubborn old
guy that he was before, only he's a
little balder, that's all, and a little more
wrinkled, just the same mean old Christian that
he was twenty years ago.
And you tell me that Jesus is sweeter
as the years go by.
No.
If that man is not moving along, let's
not sing it if we don't mean it.
I'd rather sit as mute as the harp
on Tara's walls that the poet wrote about
and never croak an amen than to lie
to God and the people.
But if he is more glorious every day,
why it's no harm in saying so, and
I believe in coming out and saying so.
I believe that we ought to practice again
boosting our preachers a little bit.
Some of you Christians that have sat and
looked at your pastor, your young pastor, with
cold level eyes for the last two or
three years, and you're beginning to pray the
Lord will move him, if you had boosted
him a little with an occasional friendly amen,
he might have been a better preacher than
he is now.
He would have been a better preacher.
A congregation can make a preacher.
Don't forget that.
Congregation can take a young fellow just out
of Nyack or Simpson, and the first thing
he knows, he's preaching over his own head.
He's doing better than he thought he could
do.
Why?
Because he's being boosted from the congregation.
But the sermon tasters will kill any preacher,
I don't care who he is.
The sermon tasters, particularly the old boys that
heard Simpson, the ones that say, I heard
A.B. Simpson in my day, well, A
.B. Simpson has gone to be with his
Lord, and he's left his work in hands
that are not as big as his, and
voices to voices that are not as eloquent.
But he's dead, and we're alive, and we've
got to do the best we can.
And so the young fellows that come to
be pastors of your church, maybe he isn't
as deep as you say.
But if you were as deep as you
ought to be, you'd put up with him
a while and pray him through and love
him, and if you could find one little
squeak to appreciate, you'd go tell him so.
And he'd go home feeling good and say,
well, if that dear old brother believes my
sermons are all right, I thank you, Lord,
that I'm improving a little.
You could help the man, and your superintendent
wouldn't have to be playing checkers all the
time.
He's just checker-playing.
Your reverend so-and-so's here, and reverend
so-and-so's here, and he plays checkers.
He jumps over so-and-so and gets
to so-and-so, and he plays checkers
all the time.
That's a district superintendent's old heartache, that one
fellow is in Mule Ear Junction, and he's
there two years, and the people don't pray
for him, they don't say amen, they don't
trust him, they don't love him, they sit
there and wonder about J.G. Williams or
somebody they heard century years ago, half a
century ago.
And they were great men, but they're gone.
God's taken them and crowned them up yonder
and said, you work enough, come up and
rest.
These young fellows have taken over, so they've
got to get that fellow from Mule Ear
Junction and take him over here to Osceola
Mills and put him down there.
And so the poor fellow has to play
checkers, and boy, he gets underpaid.
If I had that job, I'd rent $40
,000 a year in a big car.
That isn't part of the sermon at all,
and it isn't in the notes, but I
wanted to get that out of my system.
Well, Jesus Christ our Lord is indispensable, he
is preeminent above all, and any experience, any
interpretation of scripture that doesn't make him big
and great and wonderful, it isn't of God.
For God wants to make his Son glorious,
and the Son wants to make the Father
glorious, and the Holy Ghost wants to make
the Father and the Son glorious.
And so anything that comes to you, if
an archangel with a wing spread of 40
feet and shining like a neon sign were
to come down here and stand among these
great Douglas spurs and tell me that he
had just seen a miracle and wanted me
to come, I'd want chapter and verse.
I'd want to know, I want to know
he was from God, I'm not running after
any will-o'-the-wisps.
Of course I've bothered a lot of people,
they wonder why I don't get all worked
up about them when they come steaming in.
I'm not going to get worked over a
man with his breath in his nostrils.
Here's my book, here are my two knees,
and I'm still able to bend them, and
when I get so old and rheumatic I
can't bend them, I can stand up and
pray.
God Almighty hears his people pray, and here
I have a line open to him.
When people tell me that the Lord told
them to tell me something, I say, well,
my line is open to God, why didn't
he tell me?
And I reject it, unless it obviously makes
God wonderful and makes Jesus Christ beautiful, and
then I'll give it in the earth.
But that doesn't happen very often.
Well then, this new experience, this new interpretation,
this new preacher, this new emphasis, how does
this affect my attitude toward and my relation
to the scriptures?
Are they more or less precious to me?
A woman told me, I was trying to
think where that was, and I can't, it
might have been in Toronto, and she said,
it might have been here, I doubt it
though, but I think it was in Toronto.
She came to me and said, Mr. Tozer,
I'd like to ask you a question, and
said, I'm troubled.
I said, what, did you trouble?
She said, well, our pastor.
She said, I belong to a church, and
she said, the pastor, he's developed and he's
gone ahead and gone forward and he's gone
so fast that he tells us that God's
given him new revelations that are not in
the scripture, and that he wants us to
divest our minds of all that we've learned
and follow him, and that we'll be sinning
if we don't follow him, that the scriptures,
he's got revelation that's beyond the scriptures.
Now, I told her in a nice, scholarly
way, but the sum of what I told
her was to tell him to go get
lost and go back to the word of
God.
No man will ever be able, I trust,
to persuade me to follow him unless he
follows the scriptures.
Here's the book, here's the book, to the
law and to the testimony.
If they speak not according to the law,
it's because there's no truth in them.
He that hath the dream, let him tell
his dream, but he that hath the word,
let him speak my word faithfully.
You can always check with the word, brother.
If this new experience doesn't make you read
the word more, it's not of God.
If it doesn't make you meditate on the
truth more, it's not of God.
And I don't care how good you feel.
If you feel so good, you can, you
feel brand new, as the camp meeting song
used to have it.
You're still not being blessed of God, that
you say, is it possible to get an
emotional experience that isn't of God, I should
say so.
Entirely possible to get emotional experiences that are
not of God.
But I believe that true experiences carry an
emotional overtone.
And for that reason, I have no objection
whatever to emotions, as I've tried to tell
you.
I believe the Lord's people ought to be
the happiest, most radiant people in the world,
and I believe they ought not to hesitate
to speak right out and say amen when
they feel like it.
If to feel like it, if it's not
just a habit.
If it's a habit, of course, it's just
so much dry wood.
Well, what do these experiences, how do they
affect my attitude toward the scriptures?
And then how do they affect my attitude
toward myself?
Whatever comes from God diminishes myself and glorifies
God, and makes me less and less self
-confident.
Whatever comes from God humbles me.
Whatever comes from God makes the flesh intolerable.
But if it comes from the flesh, why,
it puffs up, and makes us feel superior,
and makes us look down on other Christians.
Do you ever meet these Christians with their
nose elevated at a forty-five degree angle
from the plane, and from the level field,
and they smile down at you from their
Empyrean heights, and say, you do not understand
me, brother, just pray about it.
And they'll go away looking like St. Francis.
But all they had was a bad case
of pride.
It was just pride grown bad, grown cancerous.
No, no.
If it's of God, it always humbles you.
If it's of God, it makes you appreciate
your fellow Christians that much the more.
And it makes you appreciate the humblest, poorest
Christian in the whole congregation, and makes you
love that Christian.
Well, self, anyhow, puffs up, and makes us
look down on other people, and makes us
feel pity for them, and smile down on
them.
Never put yourself on a pedestal, brother.
In you there dwells no good thing.
I don't care who you are, or how
many degrees you have, nor anything that you
might say or have justly said about you.
In you there dwells no good thing.
And any experience that is of God, any
doctrine that is of God, certainly humbles my
flesh and brings me down lowly before him,
and makes him great, and makes me little.
And then how do these experiences, or how
do these new doctrines, or emphases, or whatever
they may be, how do they affect my
relation to other Christians?
Are other Christians dear to me, or less
dear to me?
Are we drawn to them, or are we
the opposite?
Whatever brings separation in spirit from others of
God's children can't possibly be of God.
Now, you would say, do you not believe
in separation?
Yes.
I believe that if your pastor is teaching
that the Bible isn't the word of God,
Christ isn't the son of God, that the
scriptures are not to be trusted, that they're
only partly true, and that a new birth
is an old-fashioned idea that the blood
doesn't cleanse, I say the thing for you
to do is separate yourself.
I wouldn't give one dime to support a
lazy preacher who reads books written by liberals
and then tries to preach them to the
congregation.
He couldn't get one dime of my money.
I wouldn't give him a Lincoln penny, not
even a dull old one, not one.
But if the fellow loves God, I'm going
to fellowship with him.
I can't possibly.
Now, you may not want me back after
I've said this, but I'm coming, God wills.
But I can't possibly take the position that
the Alliance people have it made.
Brethren, we don't have it made at all.
Some of us Alliance preachers can well sit
at the feet of the denominations, that is,
some brethren in the denominations, not the big
old liberal denominations, but there are saints.
I was in a Presbyterian church over in
a city in New York here not so
long ago.
Well, you know what that Presbyterian preacher said
to me?
Oh, he said, I got home late last
night, and I slept in till six o
'clock.
He said, I'm so sorry about that.
He slept in till six o'clock.
How many of you Alliance preachers get up
and get on your prayer bones by six
o'clock in the morning?
You can learn from that Presbyterian preacher.
I've met a lot of them.
I know Methodist preachers.
I don't know how many, but I know
this one anyhow.
This Methodist preacher, why, he's blessed of God,
and so blessed this young fellow.
They put him down as far as he
can get because he certainly does pour on
the gospel and shuffle him off into a
corner, God bless him.
But I can learn from that bright-faced
young man.
I can learn from people, and I want
to learn from people.
And I don't want to ever get that
hidebound, dyed-in-the-wool conviction that we
Alliance people have it made, and that when
the Lord comes, he'll take us in the
first installment and come back for the Methodists
and the Presbyterians and the free Methodists and
the rest of them, you know.
No, no, my brethren, we're all one in
Christ Jesus, all one.
And I didn't know till this afternoon, and
I was with him all of last year
and all of this year, twenty-two days,
and I didn't know till tonight, just before
supper, that he was a free Methodist.
Now that's what I like, a man that
doesn't go around telling about we, us, and
our, and our marvelous denomination and our beautiful
movement.
Oh, brother, don't forget this.
God will let a movement die, and he'll
throw it on the fire if it doesn't
keep close to the blood and close to
the truth and close to God, and if
it doesn't keep Christ in it and keep
right and keep morally sound and doctrinally sound,
he'll let that movement die, and he'll let
the Alliance die, unless we keep it alive
by prayer and heart-searching and good preaching
and walking with God.
So don't you ever think for a minute
that there are Christians inferior to you because
they don't belong to your group, not for
one second.
Other Christians are dear to me.
I'm a Catholic.
You know what that means?
That means a universal Christian.
That means somebody that believes in the whole
Church of Christ, and I'm that.
I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I'm a
Catholic.
That is, I believe in the Catholicity of
the Church of Christ.
All of these children are my brothers and
sisters, and they that love the Father love
these children, you know.
I have a son, Bud, his right name's
Forrest, and he's quite a big-shot lawyer,
but everybody calls him Bud.
And Bud has four children, and I love
those children to death.
And you know one reason?
I love one of them particularly by the
name of Paul, and this tape will never
be heard back there in Chicago, so I'll
tell you.
He's eight years old, and oh, boy, is
he a nice boy.
From the time he was born, I've loved
that little scoundrel.
He and I are pals.
He's a blond, just as blond as they
come, but you know why I love him?
Because he reminds me of his dad when
he was that age.
His father's now about thirty-six or seven
or eight.
My wife would know exactly, but I'd guess
somewhere in there.
And he just reminds me of Bud when
Bud was a little boy.
Oh, their beautiful curves and their lovely shape,
and have it photographed half-clad day and
night before the camera to feed the carnal,
vicious lusts of men and women.
And then our lovely, pretty, sweet girls, pick
them starry-eyed if they could just have
their autograph or just touch them.
I saw one one time on a train.
I won't give her name.
Maybe this will be heard someplace.
But she ate across, she and somebody else,
I said it was her secretary.
Somebody pointed out and said, that's so-and
-so.
Well she just looked like anybody else.
I have sisters that just look as good
as she did.
She just looked ordinary, you know, just a
little bitty.
And then I went back to my Pullman
car after watching her eat.
I went back to my Pullman car, and
I opened the newspaper, and here my eyes
fell upon this same woman, advertising, showing her
coming to the town where we were going
to put on one of her big deals.
Boy, she looked as if she had had
a permanent waive given her by the angel
Gabriel and had borrowed her diathanas clothing from
Gabriel.
She looked as if she had dropped, plumped
right down to heaven, the dust not off
her wings yet.
And she was just a homely little woman
sitting there looking like any other homely little
woman.
But when they got through with her, she
looked like somebody else.
Then we want our young people to imitate
those phonies.
You want to imitate somebody, imitate Suzanne Wesley,
honey.
She had seventeen kids, and John Wesley was
the last one, and you can thank God
on your knees for the rest of your
life that John Wesley was ever born.
And Charles Wesley was, what was he, sixteenth
or fifteenth, and you can thank God all
the rest of your life that he was
ever born.
Thank God for Monica, the mother of Augustine,
if you will.
Thank God for good women.
Pick missionaries and pastor's wives and saints in
your church back home, simplehearted, glorious people with
hearts that are wondrous and full of grace.
Pick them and imitate them, and you'll thank
God all through eternity you pick the right
models.
Don't pick the wrong model.
So, well, that world, that miserable world out
there, it wants us, and it gets most
of us.
It gets most of us.
Any doctrine that makes the world your friend
is not your friend.
Any doctrine that makes it easy for you
to hub-nub with the world and the
world's ways and accept the world's values and
do the way the world does is not
of God, it can't possibly be.
Lastly, what does that new interpretation of scripture,
or that new experience, or that new teaching,
how does it affect my attitude toward my
relation to sin?
If it is of God, it will make
sin intolerable.
The closer I come to God, the more
intolerable sin becomes.
Yet I have heard of people who have
had spiritual experiences where they said, well, now
sin isn't sin to me anymore.
God has made me holy inside, and I
can't sin, and therefore I can do these
things that other people if they did them,
they'd be sin.
The devil certainly crawled up inside that fellow
before he ever started teaching that doctrine and
got into his heart.
Sin is sin no matter who practices it.
And if God will send a sinner to
hell for sinning, how much more ought his
children never to practice sin?
We ought to be saved from sin, brethren,
completely saved from sin.
And while I am not one who believes
in what they would call Christian perfection, I
believe that there is such a thing as
being cleansed from sin and then walking in
the Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of
the flesh.
I believe it is entirely within the right
of any Christian to go to God and
demand that God make him holy and keep
him from sin.
Of course he may stumble.
If he stumbles, there is a first-aid
kit.
My little children, these things write I unto
you that ye sin not.
That's the will of God, number one.
But if any man sin, he have him
advocate with the Father.
That's the first-aid kit.
The Lord doesn't let his stumbling children die.
He picks them up, dusts them off, and
binds up their wounds and starts them all
anew.
So there is deliverance if we sin, but
we should not be always making provision for
sinning.
If we make provision for sinning tomorrow, we'll
be sinning tomorrow.
But if we go on our knees and
say, Lord, there's nothing good in me, but
I believe that thou art my keeper, my
sanctifier, and that thou wilt keep me from
sin, God will keep you from sin.
Well, those are the seven tests.
Let me run over them again, because I
don't want you to come after church and
ask me to give you the numbers, because
it takes time and people often want to
talk.
Well, here, the first is, how does it
affect my attitude toward my relation to God,
Christ, the scriptures, self, other Christians, the world,
and sin?
And I exhort you now in closing, for
these days that lie ahead after the glory
of this camp, a little bit of it
is faded in the sweet, friendly fellowship and
enthusiasm that we've engendered here over these ten
days.
After that's all gone and you're back to
your little church, and the singing isn't as
radiant as it was here, and the solo
quite as good, don't get discouraged and say,
well, I guess I didn't have anything.
Press on.
Do you love God more?
Is Christ sweeter to you?
Have the scriptures come alive to your love?
Are you ready to trample self under your
feet?
Are you ready to throw your arms around
all other Christians that are truly Christians and
desert the world and forsake sin?
And God's done something for you, brother.
He's done something for you.
Thank Him with all of your heart and
seek those things which are above where Christ
sitteth on the right hand of God.
If the Lord tarry and we live and
things go all right, we'll be back next
year.
But if the Lord comes, we'll be in
a better place than can be.
Yes, sir.
Better than can be.
You know, there's a pun on that that
I want you to get.
The place up there is better than can
be down here.
And there is nothing in this wide world
of God that will be as wonderful as
when we look upon His face and we
see Him as He is.
If talking with Him here is wonderful, how
much more wonderful talking to Him without avail.
There is a verse or stanza in that
hymn that you sang a while ago, Brother
Booth, it says, The King there in His
beauty without avail is seen.
The King there in His beauty without avail
is seen.
We see Him through a veil now, then
we see Him without avail.
I saw the Queen of Romania, I saw
Roosevelt, if that's anything, and I saw a
few other big shots.
But oh, the King there in His beauty
without avail is seen, and how it will
enlighten our eyes and joy our hearts when
we gaze upon Him.
So cheer up, keep believing, fight the good
fight with all thy might, and don't take
any wooden nickels.
Don't dare take anything somebody comes all excited
and offers you.
See if it meets up to the test.
If it doesn't, throw it out.
You dare to do that and you dare
not do anything else.
Now let's pray.
Dear Lord Jesus, we thank Thee for Thy
people, all of Thy people, the good people
and the people that are struggling and stumbling,
and the queer people and the odd people,
and we little know how odd we ourselves
may be.
And we thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for every
one of them, for the newborn baby that
was just born on these grounds, and walk
off to hear a child of God when
He walked on, a child of sin, converted
and born again.
We thank Thee for that child.
We thank Thee, Lord, for these preachers, and
pray Thy blessing upon them now, and the
superintendent and all this district up and down
the coast, of all denominations and groups and
churches.
Bless them, every one.
Thou hast given each one something to do.
May they do it, we pray Thee, with
fervor and vigor and humility and love.
Blessed Brother Richards, let Thine anointing be upon
his head.
Bless his wife.
Thank Thee, Lord, for the harmony that keeps
them plugging away together through the years.
May they be greatly blessed.
Blessed Brother and Sister Booth, as they go
off with their singing and playing, O God,
may they indeed be cheer and light in
person and over the radio.
Pray Thee for these missionaries, every one of
them, Lord.
Father, times are tough, and the world is
evil, and judgment is drawing nigh.
We know not when this field will close,
or that field will close, or when there
will be martyrs on the field, but, O,
we pray Thee, give them the courage and
the nonchalance.
Let them go cheerfully and nonchalantly, careless of
whether they live or die, if only they
can bear the message.
Bless the Alliance with all of its wide
field of service, twenty-two fields, eight hundred
and thirty-five missionaries, O God, bless them,
every one.
And these others of any other denominations that
are here, we pray Thee, let Thine oil
be upon their heads.
May they carry back to their churches of
whatever denomination so much of glory and goodness
and grace and spiritual enthusiasm that they will
stir others to seek and find what they
have found.
Now be with us, Lord.
And then we pray Thee, our Father, for
safe journey for all that are traveling, some
left this afternoon, and Lord, the highways are
dangerous.
And some will be leaving after church, and
some will be driving home tomorrow or the
next day.
Father, we dare to look up now to
Thee and ask Thee, don't let anybody get
hurt.
Keep everybody in perfect health, let not a
bruise be on anybody's shin, let there not
be any harm done to anybody.
And we pray Thee for those who fly,
our God, and ask that Thou will give
them safe conduct from the moment they take
off till they land into their homes.
May the churches grow, and may they prosper,
and may their missionary zeal be fired up,
and may they learn to love Thee more
and each other more every day until Christ
comes.
This all we ask of Jesus Christ, who
loved us and gave Himself for us.
Amen.