The latter part of the 16th verse, this
statement, the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much.
And in the fourth chapter of the same
book, two and three, he hath not because
he ask not, or he ask and receive
not, because he ask amiss.
And then in the 18th of Luke, he
spake a parable unto them to this end,
that men ought always to pray and not
to think.
This is the only parable that is explained
before it is given, so I'll not read
it.
The moral, as they say, is given before
the parable is told, and the moral is,
men ought always to pray and not to
think.
Now there are three texts telling us three
things.
So that indicates, of course, that I am
to speak on prayer, since all three texts
have to do with prayer.
There was a great old Spanish brother by
the name of Molinas.
He wrote at least one great book, and
in it he makes this statement, that prayer
is an ascent or elevation of the mind
of God, and that God is above all
creatures, and the soul cannot see him nor
converse with him if she raise not herself
above them all.
Because God is above all, I must in
order to speak to him, raise my soul
above all, and contemplate that which is above
all.
And now with that thought in mind, that
prayer is an ascension of the soul to
God, notice these three texts.
One of them says that prayer is a
potent thing.
I'm amused at the translators trying to translate
in English what the man said here.
But it all adds up to this, that
it is a potent thing.
Prayer has tremendous power.
Now this the Old Testament and the New
Testament teach.
But this also the Old Testament and the
New Testament demonstrate.
Then another text says that even though prayer
is a potent thing, sometimes we do not
have, even when we pray.
And the reason we do not have is
that we have asked selfishly.
Or that we haven't asked at all, that
of course is part of the text.
We either haven't asked, or having asked, we
have asked with wrong motives.
And prayer with wrong motives is useless.
But the third text says that nevertheless, even
though there are times when prayer doesn't get
through because it isn't the right kind of
prayer, nevertheless, even though there are difficulties and
discouragements, men ought always to pray and not
to faint.
Now I can sit down after having said
this, and I have said considerable already, I
think, because these three texts have said it,
and I have repeated them with a minimum
of explanation.
Now about prayer.
You know there is a great deal of
prayer going on currently.
Societies such as ours in the United States
and across the line into Canada, and I
suppose all over the world for that matter,
whoever were influenced by some current philosophy or
something else, we have our ups and downs.
If we were to take prayer and its
popularity and have a graph and start way
over on this side of the tabernacle and
end over there, and go back, say, over
the last fifty years, you'd find your graph
moving up and down.
There were times when prayer was at the
peak of popularity.
Everybody was praying.
And then there were times when it was
considered rather old-fashioned to think about it,
and then it would go back up again.
Right now we happen to be in one
of those peaks of the graph where it
is quite the popular thing.
Everybody prays.
I don't know whether the gangsters have started
praying yet or not, but I wouldn't put
it past them.
Everybody else does.
Movie actress who makes movies so filthy that
police have to ban them in the cities
will pray solemnly.
And prayer just seems to be, it's quite
the thing now.
Everybody prays.
Between the First World War and the Second,
it was philosophically bad to think about prayer.
It threw you over on somebody else, whereas
you ought to be depending upon yourself.
And then in the Second World War, there
were no atheists in the foxholes, and everybody
began to pray.
The prizefighters even pray now.
When a prizefighter, he prays that he might
be able to paralyze the other fellow.
And then when after it's a nip, nip,
and tuck, and he's bloody but unbowed, and
the other fellow's lying over quivering in the
corner, and they're fanning him, putting ice packs
on his noble dome, why, they say, Now,
all right you, would you say a word
to your public?
And he gets up and with much panting
and breathing says, I didn't do it, God
did it.
I didn't do it, God did it.
We've been praying.
I've got praying friends all over, and I
want to take this opportunity to thank my
praying friends for praying for me.
Amen.
Well, God bless him.
That kind of paganism belongs in New Guinea.
It doesn't belong in the United States, but
it's in the United States nevertheless.
Can you imagine what kind of a God
God would be who would get into a
prize ring and answer the prayer and unseen
be the third man in the ring?
And when the number one, the man who'd
done the praying missed and didn't duck in
time, why, God would hit the other fellow
so as to guard his friend.
That would be a terrible thing to do.
It would be a sneaky thing to do
to begin with, and it would be unlike
God and unlike Christ and totally carnal and
altogether out in left field.
God would never be caught doing it.
So prayer is a common thing.
Everybody's praying, you know.
People stop in the midst of any kind
of wickedness and put up their little hand
and pray.
God's on everybody's mailing list.
Everybody that wants anything, they go to God
about it.
I remember once reading an article about John
D.
Rockefeller and what a bunch of deadheads he
had hanging around him and freeloaders always writing
him for money.
One fellow wrote him this, Brother King, if
you want to copy this for making money
for the alliance missions, this works, you know,
if you get anybody to go along with
it.
This man wrote and said, Dear Mr. Rockefeller,
you're a rich man and you're a man
who understands business.
I'm not rich and I don't understand business,
but what I want to ask is you
lend me $500 and then invest it for
me wisely.
And then after it has made a big
chunk of money, take out your $500 and
send me the rest.
Now that's one way, that's one way of
getting money.
And now
every sort of personal interest and selfish project,
I say project because I've been up in
Tenet a year and a half and that's
what they say, but project is American.
Every kind of selfish project is being carried
on, unscriptural, unspiritual and injurious it may be,
but it's sanctified with a text and it
may have no higher motive than to relieve
some fellow from doing an honest job or
making an honest living with his own two
little hard patties.
He just won't do it, so he gets
a religious job somewhere that he thought up
himself that has no place in the scriptures
at all, he didn't learn from the scriptures,
and he puts that across and works all
his lifetime and gets old on that.
Or it may have no higher motive than
to provide him an opportunity to travel at
other people's expense, that's quite a popular thing
now.
And yet the fellow will call prayer meetings
and he'll even pray all night in order
to get that prayer answered before asking God
to bless a project that God never thought
of.
Jesus said that here are these trees and
every tree that my father didn't plant will
be cut down and thrown into the fire.
My dear people, we ought to be generous
and we ought to give generously, but let
me say to you most solemnly this morning
that if you waste your money contributing to
the delinquency of religious bums, you will pay
for it in the day of Christ when
he asks you what you did with your
money.
You're not only to give, but you're to
find out where you should give, and give
it where it counts, and give it where
God is doing something.
Put your money where obviously the cloud and
the fire are, and don't waste it giving
to fair-haired, curly-locked boys with a
good, soft voice who have no higher motive
than to get out of the job.
So the fellow one time sent a letter
around, and every step he sent it around
to all of his mailing lists, and I
happened to be one of these suckers.
I got a letter, just a form letter,
nicely written, and he said, I feel deeply,
I feel called to make a missionary journey.
He said, I must go, the heathen are
perishing, we must get the gospel out, and
therefore would you put a dollar in this
envelope and send it in.
If all of my friends to whom I
write would send a dollar, I can make
the missionary journey.
So he said, if you will send in
enough, I want to go to Bermuda.
Can you imagine it?
I send out to my mailing list from
Toronto and say, I want to go to
Florida in midwinter.
What a ridiculous kind of business is it?
But that fellow is praying, O Lord, bless
my trip to Bermuda, and I'll take my
bathing suit along just in case.
Now about prayer.
There are personal, intimate things that we ought
not to pray about in public.
I'd like to pass that little word on
to you.
As a pastor of about 43 years, I
have learned the hard way that there are
some things you just don't talk about in
public, you don't bring them in.
We should talk those over to God.
There isn't a thing, not one lonely, tiny
little thing that God isn't interested in that
affects you.
He is interested in everything concerning you.
John Wesley prayed for his horse and it
got well and he rode off to his
next appointment.
The Lord will hear prayer for almost anything
that is not selfish.
Because the Lord loves you and he loves
everything about you, and he loves all around
you, and belief and above you, and you
move around in a glow of God's love
if you're his child, and everything that touches
you touches God.
But there are things that ought to be
talked over between you and God, and not
be brought into the Wednesday night prayer meeting.
I've seen many a prayer meeting bogged down
by personal details that never should have been
brought there at all.
I remember one time being in a prayer
meeting and a dear old brother, a Godly
old scholarly looking sweet old man by the
name of Brother Adams, he was leading it,
he's long been in heaven, but he was
leading the meeting.
And he said, now we'll have prayer requests.
And there was one prayer request after another
was made, and one little old lady said,
Brother Adams, would you pray for my twitching
eyelid?
It's bothering me.
And he solemnly took time out to pray
for her twitching eyelid.
Well now, if I'd been leading the meeting,
I'd have said, honey, rub it.
Rub it.
That's the best way to handle a twitching
eyelid.
Don't waste God's time, they're my time.
You rub it, it'll get all right.
And we just ought not to waste prayer
meeting time bringing in personal things.
We ought to pray for the great big
things.
I'm going to tell you what they are
shortly here.
But then there is a second kind of
prayer, and that is what we call corporate
prayer.
That's the kind of prayer that should have
an aim that affects the whole Church of
Christ, not only the Christian Missionary Alliance, but
the whole Church of Christ.
That should be what I call strategic prayer.
Do you remember once a group of people
in the New Testament met and prayed for
a man?
And it was rather a personal deal, because
Peter was in prison, and his brother James
had been killed with a sword.
No, James, one of the other men, had
been killed with a sword, and Peter was
in prison waiting also to get the sword.
So they went to God about Peter.
Now that affected Peter, but oh, it affected
everybody else.
Peter's job wasn't done yet.
Peter was so important.
Peter wasn't the first Pope, but Peter was
so vastly important to the Church of Christ
at that time that he was indispensable for
a moment, and they couldn't give him up.
So they met and prayed, O God, here
this affects all the Church and the Church
for all the centuries to come.
Get Peter out of prison.
Peter got out of prison, and they didn't
believe it, because some of them had prayed
with him.
The ones that had believed, believed it.
But the ones that had just been going
along for the ride, they didn't believe it.
And when they saw Peter, they had been
mumbling, but they hadn't been believing.
And when they saw Peter, they said, It's
his ghost.
They said, He's dead, and this is his
ghost.
They've already beheaded him, and here he comes
with just his ghost.
But that was strategic praying, my friends.
They were praying strategically.
They were doing something that would not only
affect a man, and particularly a man twitching
eyelids, but that would affect the whole Church
of Christ.
And I believe that corporate prayer, the prayer
of the body, the prayer of people when
they meet, ought not to be wasted on
details, but that it ought to be given
over.
For instance, our Congo situation is so tragic
now, and so, so critical.
When we meet to pray, we ought not
to pray that my foot will stop hurting.
These tribals, we ought to pray, O God,
have your way in the Congo.
That's strategic praying.
We ought to pray strategically, and we must
pray in harmony with our work.
That is, we can't, as William Law has
said, we ought not to pray one way
and live another.
But we ought to pray in harmony with
the way we live, and in harmony with
what we're doing.
And then we ought to bring our doing
in harmony with our prayer, and our living
in harmony with our prayer.
Pray according to the will of God, and
then bring what you're doing and the way
you're living into harmony with your prayers.
Now, there are two desires that should burn
in the children of God.
I want to give you these two desires.
These are prayer requests that can be made
in private, and God knows that I, for
one, try often and much and earnestly to
pray these two prayers in private, but they
are legitimate prayers for the corporate body.
The saints, when they meet, the company, the
assembly of God-redeemed people, when they meet,
ought to keep praying these two great kinds
of prayers, these two great prayers.
One is a restoration of the vision of
the Most High God.
Now, I am getting along, and after a
while I'll be middle-aged, and I don't
want by any means to become a fanatic
and go out on a limb and sit
out there and twang a little harp before
my time.
There are too many of the Lord's dear
people, when they get along a little, they
get out on one thing and they sit
and twing, twang, and they think it's a
whole symphony, just one little note, twing, twang.
Well, no, I don't want to do that,
and I don't think I'm doing it.
I believe that I have surveyed the whole
Church of God, and I know something of
Church history and the development of the work
of God through the years, and I believe
I know something of the scripture, and I'm
in a position, I think, wisely to tell
you these two things.
One of them is, I've said, the restoration
of the vision of the Most High God.
You see, we have too low a view
of God now, and that is why the
Church has such a low place.
The Church rises or falls altogether depending upon
her view of God.
If she takes a high view of God,
her people are inclined to be reverent and
worshipful and solemn and brave.
If she takes a low view of God,
they become funny and flippant and foolish and
live worldly lives and give up to the
flesh.
If she takes a high view of God,
she simplifies her Church services immediately.
If she takes a low view of God,
she has to drag in every kind of
theatrical truck in order to keep her people
coming.
It depends upon her view of God.
The old Presbyterians used to have such a
high, noble view of God.
What is the chief end of man?
To glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Many of that school of thought held high
views of God.
Brethren, do you know the result of that?
The result of that is that generation after
generation following generation they stayed true to the
faith.
But as soon as we take a low
view of God and get to thinking of
God cheaply as they think of him now,
cheaply, that God is a pal or that
he's my partner or that he's the big
Joe upstairs or that he's, call him by
some other name, a living doll one girl
said he was.
As long as we think about God like
that, we've never seen God.
Imagine Moses trembling in the fire and smoke
on Mount Sinai, referring to God in any
other way than in awful solemn terms.
What we need in the United States is
a revelation of what the philosopher called the
mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery, and what the
Bible calls Jehovah, high and lifted up.
Isaiah saw him at his train filling the
temple.
The trouble with you, dear young people, and
God knows I love you as I've told
you before.
I do.
I love young people.
I love the twinkle in their eye.
I love their little giggles.
And I love everything about kids.
I love youth.
And I don't like the word youth at
all, but I love young people.
I love them, but they're being cheated in
this awful hour in which we live.
They've never seen God, and they've never seen
very many people that have.
And so you poor kids are victims of
an elder generation that never saw God.
And so they've had to teach you trash
and drag in every kind of crap to
try to keep you happy.
And if you tell me the truth, you
don't respect them for it.
You go along with it, but you don't
respect them for it.
My brethren, we need to see God again,
the glory of God and the return of
that glory.
This is an imperative, and anything else is
secondary to it.
It is more important that God be glorified
than that men be saved.
It's more important that God be glorified than
that his work be carried on.
It's more important that God be honored in
his universe than that I be saved.
But here is the wonder of wonders.
God in his love and goodness has so
arranged it that the more he's honored, the
more people will be saved.
So that it isn't an either-or.
I either win souls or I glorify God.
But the more I glorify God, the more
souls will be won.
And if a baptism of clear seeing were
to come to the Church of Christ in
America, sinners would come.
And you wouldn't have to talk like them
in order to win them.
You wouldn't have to go out on that
false philosophical boat with holes in it that'll
sink one of these days, that I've got
to come down and be like them in
order to win them.
I don't have to do anything of the
sort.
Paul made himself all things to all men,
but all he meant by that in the
wide world was that he'd sow tents or
he'd go anywhere.
He never meant that he was going to
cheapen himself and come down to the level
of cheap sinners in order to win those
sinners.
No, he was that dignified man of God
that walked about with a glow on his
face.
And in those early days, the Church dwelt
on Solomon's porch and no man durst join
himself to them.
Nobody on Solomon's porch was running out and
learning to talk like a beatnik in order
to win a beatnik.
On Solomon's porch, they were there in a
glow of glory so that people were afraid
to come near them.
They said, look, God is on those people.
And they fell on their faces and said,
God's in this place.
What we need is to have a vision
of God again.
And by vision of God, I do not
mean anything to the visible eye.
Anything you see with your visible eye, you
can safely ignore, because that's merely matter.
Matter.
But I'm talking about the inner eye.
You see with your inner eye.
You have an eye inside of you, and
with that you are to gaze upon the
holy face of God.
And we are one more time to see
God.
And you know the first corporate prayer was,
Our Father which art in heaven, and the
first request was, Hallowed be thy name.
That the name of God should be hallowed
in the sinful world is more important than
anything else.
It's more important than candy.
It's more important than any church on the
continent.
It's more important than any school or any
project that we're doing, that the name of
God be glorified.
But the beauty of it all is that
if we're to see God big, and think
of him big, and honor him, all these
other projects, as we call them, if they're
his projects, will glow and grow like the
lily of the valley.
You don't say, I must either work with
candy or I must glorify God.
No, glorify God and watch candy grow.
Glorify God and watch the alliance grow.
Glorify God and watch your church grow.
But we try to make it grow and
forget God.
God isn't in half of the things.
A fellow told me the other day about
being with a certain man.
He was one of the Christian businessmen, brethren.
I worked with them a lot and loved
them, and certainly this isn't true of very
many, but it was true of this one.
He wanted to sue a fellow, a doctor,
and this doctor went to him and tried
to talk with him.
He had printed some chapter or other that
was supposed to reflect on this man, and
hadn't, but he said it did.
And he came to see him, this Christian,
and he said, now I'll sue unless something
is done.
And this doctor said, well now, brother, he
said, we're brethren.
He said, surely God's children.
Oh, leave God out of this, he said.
Leave God out of this.
This fundamentalist, this evangelical, this man who bellows
about being born again, he wants to leave
God out of it.
Brethren, anything you leave God out of will
rot in your hands.
Anything you leave God out of will die
before your eyes.
Anything that God isn't in will be burned
in the fire.
Don't leave God out of it.
God must be in it.
And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name,
that will I do, that the Father may
be glorified in the Son, said Jesus.
God answers prayer for the glory of the
Father through the Son.
And no project and no organization and no
need, nothing is valid until the glory of
God has been restored to mankind.
Until we think of him reverently, until we
think of him high and lifted up, until
we understand that he is the great God
Almighty and Jesus Christ is the Lord.
Jesus Christ has been reduced and reduced and
brought down and brought down until nobody fears
the Lord Jesus anymore.
He is simply a big brother, easy to
get along with without very high standards.
And we can live in the flesh and
go along with the world, and then when
we're in trouble, run whiffering to our big
brother and he'll help us.
Oh, what a neat, what a neat trick
of the devil to get people to live
like the world and the devil and then
think they can run to the Lord when
they're in trouble.
Why, the Lord isn't a garage you go
into when you've had a fender dinged.
He isn't the hospital you go to when
you've had a heart attack.
He is the Lord.
God hath made this man both Lord and
Christ.
And has set him at his own right
hand, and there he has all authority.
When John saw him, he fell at his
feet as if he was dead, and took
the hand of Jesus to raise him back
from the dead again.
A low view of God means a low
living church.
High views of God mean correspondingly high living
church.
And we need how desperately we need to
see the church brought back again.
And that brings us now to our second
thought.
That the second great desire should be a
deliverance of the church.
Now again, I do not want to be
nostalgic.
I never knew better times than I know
now, so I'm not looking back on any
departed glory.
And I don't date back so far that
I remember Finney and Augustine by any means.
But I will say this.
Judging the scripture, judging the church, our church,
you say, what church, Brother Tozer?
Are you referring to the liberals?
No.
What are you referring to?
I'm referring to us land people, for instance.
And then I'm referring to all of the
other evangelicals who are all tied with the
same stick, or blessed with the same grace,
and hold the same doctrines generally.
The church now.
When I say the church, she ought to
be and must be restored from her Babylonian
captivity.
For the church is in Babylonian captivity, as
Israel was, and he is in Babylon.
You remember Israel in Babylon.
She stayed there 70 years, and there came
along a man by the name of Ezra,
Nehemiah, and some others, and they took them
back into the land again.
Built the temple, dedicated it, and started again
to live as they should have been living
all the time.
This was a parenthesis, 70 years out of
the land.
I believe the church of Christ now, the
church, the evangelical church, the fundamentalist church, and
the borderline church, doesn't know whether it's liberal
or evangelical.
I believe the church is in Babylonian captivity.
But the Lord didn't desert Israel while she
was in Babylon.
He kept her there, he blessed her, he
had her whole, so she came back, the
covenant held, she wasn't lost, she was still
God's covenant people, but she was out of
the land.
And being out of the land, she was
away from the place of power, and away
from the flame, and away from the sacrifice,
and away from worship.
She was scattered through Babylon.
Then when they brought her back, she built
her temple and went to worshiping again.
I believe the church now needs to be
delivered from her Babylonian captivity, her disgraceful fornication
with the world, and brought back into the
place where the church should have been all
the time.
Some people call that a revival.
I don't talk much about revival.
I used to when I didn't know anything
about revival, preach about them.
I'd read Finney and preach on revival.
But I've got humbler since that day, I
hope.
And I don't preach on revival, but I
do believe that it would bring revival to
the church of Christ, the church would be
revived if she was brought back again to
the place she should be, back to her
New Testament position.
Back to living her morals in line with
the New Testament teaching.
Back to the methods of the New Testament,
and back to the objectives of the New
Testament.
Nobody has any right to institute any program
that is a New Testament in its origin.
And then nobody has any right, having instituted
a program, ever to carry it on by
any other methods except those given us out
of the New Testament.
Methodology that doesn't originate in the New Testament
is a deadly thing, and you ought to
get away from it as far as you
can.
Methodology that goes according to the laws of
psychology and salesmanship and all the rest, it's
a poor cheap substitute for the Holy Ghost,
and we ought to reject it.
I tell you, until this is accomplished, until
the church has been restored, until we've been
brought back again to the place where we
can live as New Testament saints, a good
deal of our work will go down the
drain.
Evangelism is simply an extension of the kind
of religion you now have.
The evangelist can only reproduce himself.
There's a law in the Bible, after his
kind, everything produces after its kind.
And the evangelist goes into a neighborhood, he
can only make converts in his own image.
That's all he can do.
And so evangelism is simply extending the degenerate
Christianity that's now everywhere abroad.
Now, by degenerate, I don't mean there's not
some life in it.
There was life in Israel when she was
in Babylon, but she was out of the
land.
There is life in the evangelical church.
If there wasn't, I'd leave it.
There's life here.
There's life here, it can be.
I trust there's life right here in this
body.
And I believe there's life among you people
of God.
This is not to talk you down and
unchurch you.
It's only to say we're not where we
ought to be.
We're judging each other by each other and
ourselves, by the rest, and we have adopted
a low dead level by comparing each other
with each other, and we haven't seen samples
in recent time of holy men and women.
I saw the other day a scrapbook given
to me by Mrs. McGarvey, or lent to
me to look over, and there were the
old saints there, way back to the beginning.
Hess, and Brother Richard's father, and Dr. Simpson,
those were men of outstanding, they were head
and shoulders above the average.
There were giants in the earth in those
times.
And they naturally reproduced themselves.
But now we're slidding badly down, and our
evangelism only reproduces and turns out a great
mass of people that are just like us.
The children that were born to Israel in
Babylon were born in Babylon.
They were born, and there was some life
there, but they were born in Babylon.
And then somebody else says, well, then what
we need to do is to get busy
on missions.
Now, the treasurer of the Christian Missionary Alliance
is here, but I have to say this
anyhow, that, and he agrees with it, I'm
quite sure, I'm only kidding.
I know he agrees with it.
You know, there's a notion abroad that if
you've got an old dead church, where instead
of having sheep, you've got goats, and instead
of having saints, you have people that are
hypocrites and no good livers and all the
rest.
If you just start a missionary program, boom,
up you go immediately.
That missions is the panacea for all backslidden
churches.
And if you'll just start a missionary program,
you'll have a revival immediately.
My dear brother, that just isn't so.
There is nothing in the New Testament to
teach that.
And dear reverend brother, if you've tried that
in your church and it hasn't worked, remember
that it didn't work because it wasn't so.
And if you have instituted a spiritual program
for missions in your church and the church
has been blessed, then that still doesn't prove
it works.
It proves that the same yearning after God
that led you to institute the missionary program
in your church also led you to God.
One is not the cause of the other,
but the both are the result of a
deeper cause.
So now, what are missions?
I never knew whether to say was or
were.
I don't know whether it's singular or plural.
Whichever it is, anyhow, missions.
What's for missions?
It's simply going to another country than your
own and preaching the gospel.
A missionary is an evangelist who's gone abroad.
An evangelist is a missionary who's preaching at
home.
And what prove evangelism's true of missions?
A degenerate church goes to Cambodia or Timbuktu,
makes some converts, establishes a church, they will
carry their own concept of Christianity to Cambodia
or Timbuktu.
And the church there will be what they
made it.
And if they're occupying a secondary, low place
at home, they'll carry that same secondary concept
over there.
I've been disappointed to the point of being
disgusted.
Some of the information we get from the
field, somebody dies.
And they'll say, and at the funeral, the
trio sang, There's No Disappointment in Heaven.
Can you tell me what excuse in the
wide world of God anybody with the IQ
of 6 and 7 eighths, what excuse he
would have of going to Cambodia or Loyola
or wherever it is, and I don't mean
those fields, and transplanting a cheap, low, almost
vulgar song.
From the United States to that country, when
we have a whole bushel basket full of
great hymns that they could translate into the
languages over there, and teach them theology while
they're singing.
That's only one sample.
And we make them in our own image
over there.
So what we need to pray for is
that God will raise up missionaries of such
a superior spiritual quality, that when they go
over there they'll produce converts of a superior
spiritual quality.
But somebody says, Mr. Tozer, now wait a
minute.
You mean to say there's a difference?
When you're born again, aren't you born again?
And isn't every Christian like every other Christian?
How foolish can you get?
There's such a thing as being stillborn.
We had seven and they were all live
born.
But there's such a thing as having a
stillborn baby.
There's such a thing as having a baby
that lasts a few minutes.
A dear lady told me that she was
in her forties before she had her first
baby and then it died.
Well, now that's too bad, and I'm sorry
for that.
That baby lived just a little while.
It's in heaven now, thank God, but it
just lived a little while.
Well, there it is.
There are babies born healthy, there are babies
born not healthy.
We had a baby born, it weighed ten
pounds and fourteen ounces.
Well, now that boy, he came into the
world bouncing, bouncing.
But my younger brother was born to my
mother when she was in middle life, and
he was quite a long, several weeks old
before they could take him off a pillow.
They carried him about on a pillow.
His head was all pulled off on one
side.
He came into the world a sickly baby.
Our boy Roland came into the world a
bouncing, healthy ten-pounder.
So Christians can be born into the kingdom
of God, and there are different kinds of
Christians.
Some are born well.
Some pray it through and repent and change
all their ways and leave the world, die
to their flesh and believe on Christ and
take him as their Lord.
Man, they're big Christians in no time at
all.
Others come in under poor auspices.
They come in where they barely get in,
and they're weaklings, and they live and die
weaklings, and they get weaklings after them.
So missions and evangelism won't do.
Missions and evangelism ought to grow out of
spirituality, not produce it.
And also our books and our schools and
our magazines and our editorials and our sermons
will all be of a kind with the
kind of Christians we are.
If we're poor Christians, second-rate Christians, third
-rate Christians, weaklings, our books and our schools
and our printing presses and all the rest
will be second-rate weaklings.
But if the power of God rests upon
our foreheads, and if we have said goodbye
to the world and decided to follow Jesus
Christ and follow the Lamb wherever he goeth,
our schools and our books and our magazines
and our sermons will rise correspondingly.
So I say it's very necessary that we
pray.
Now his name was Pat Kelly, and he
was an Anglican.
He was an Anglican.
And I believe he said, if I recall,
that he was the chairman of the Red
Cross, either Red Cross or Heart or Cancer
Society of Canada.
Anyway, he believed in that.
And he said, I hope you won't think
that I am too pessimistic.
And I said, no, I've just written a
book that's worse than that.
It's just about as bad.
Because I don't believe in humanity.
I don't believe in the goodness of people,
unless God helps us, unless God gets into
us, or unless we get into the kingdom
of God.
People are not good by nature, they're bad.
But we don't believe it.
Humanity doesn't believe that.
People don't believe it.
And there's man's kingdom, filled with the subjects
of Satan.
And it's organized and it's implemented by science
and it has in its favor history and
familiarity and visible success.
And it is of the flesh and it's
from the flesh and it's for the flesh
and it's dedicated to the flesh and to
the passing world.
Now that's the kingdom of man, into which
you and I are born, regardless of our
race.
That's the kingdom into which we're born, a
fallen, hostile, alienated race.
Then there's another kingdom, and that is the
kingdom of God.
And that kingdom consists of recreated persons, persons
who have been born again anew, persons who
have made Christ their Lord and in whom
Christ is honored, persons who have no confidence
in fallen humanity, persons who have no confidence
in the soundness of man's moral judgment, but
believe that left to himself, man will always
go wrong, persons who know that they can
do nothing in themselves and have no confidence
in the flesh or in their own strength,
persons who trust in God alone to do
an immortal work in them and through them.
These are called Christians and they make up
the true Church of Christ of whatever denomination.
But it's a different kingdom altogether.
There's the kingdom of man and there is
the kingdom of God.
And those two kingdoms coexist and sometimes they
spill over into each other as water spills
over into the boat and has to be
bailed out to get together.
And I suppose there isn't any church anywhere
that is totally, totally, totally committed to the
kingdom of God to a point where everything
is done by God.
I suppose there will be a little bit
of the flesh and a little bit of
old Adam and a little bit of the
kingdom of this world getting to all churches.
I've never heard of one that didn't have
a little of it.
Then there are churches that have almost totally
given themselves over to the kingdom of man.
And their philosophy is man's philosophy.
Their beliefs are man's beliefs.
And their viewpoint is man's viewpoint.
And they go the way man goes and
they live the way man lives, and yet
they call themselves churches.
Then there are such churches as this, where
an effort at least is made that the
majority of what we do should be divine
and the majority should be on the side
of the kingdom of God, but where undoubtedly
around the edges there are things that God's
not in.
And the business of a minister and the
business of elders and deacons and church members
and Christians everywhere is to keep the church
and make the church just as pure as
she can be, and to keep all the
kingdom of man out of her, and to
keep her so replete with the kingdom of
God that when you step into the fellowship
of the saints you step into a divine
fellowship, a fellowship dedicated to the proposition that
all men are bad until they're made good
by the blood of the Lamb, dedicated to
the proposition that we're on the wrong road
until we find the road home to God
through the cross, dedicated to the belief that
it's only God in us that can do
any mortal work.
And so we in the kingdom of God
have for our motto, in everything by prayer,
because you see we've already admitted we can't
do anything.
We've already admitted there's nothing in human muscle
that can do the work of God.
We've already admitted there's nothing in the human
brain that can think the word of God.
We've already admitted that there's nothing in human
nature good enough to build in to the
temple of holiness which God is raising in
his universe.
We already have admitted that.
How then can we do?
What shall we do?
Hunt a monastery somewhere and hide ourselves away?
No.
We're to be in active work.
But we're to do it by prayer, in
everything by prayer.
Now let me show you the contrast between
the kingdom of man and the kingdom of
the world, the kingdom of God and the
kingdom of man.
And then you see how locate yourself, locate
this church, locate me, locate us, locate ourselves
in this.
Now the world says in everything by money.
Just have money enough you can do anything.
Everything.
Money talks.
And money opens doors.
And it's money, money, always money.
The more money the better we get along.
Always money.
Christ hadn't a dime.
But we say money, if we had more
money.
But the church says in everything by prayer.
The church says we're wise enough to know
that money is needed in the kingdom of
God and that God uses it and says
let everybody lay up in store on the
first day of the week.
We know that.
And we know that when we give God
takes it and blesses it.
He has spread abroad, he has given to
the poor, scattered abroad, he has given to
the poor, his righteousness remaineth forever.
We know that.
We know that in the kingdom of God,
God uses money, but he uses it only
because everything is done by prayer.
But if you have money without prayer, you
have a great curse on you.
I believe the greatest curse could happen to
have a new road church would be for
somebody to will us $100,000 and the
Lord not to raise up praying people commensurate
with it.
If God will raise up men and women,
commensurate with the gift.
And I wouldn't hesitate to accept $100,000
and put it to work.
But you get money without prayer and you
have a curse.
Yet prayer without money is amazing what God
can do and where he'll find money.
Amazing where he'll find money.
So the world says in everything by money.
And then churches rise up and they're dedicated
to the kingdom of this world without knowing
it, the kingdom of man, and so they
try to run the church the way man
runs the church.
One man said, I'm a such and such,
that is he was certain denomination which I'll
try not to divulge.
And he said there hasn't been anybody interested
in my soul in all these years.
He said nobody.
He said I make my pledge yearly and
I send in my check monthly and nobody
has bothered me in years.
He said I never go to church.
Why don't you go to church?
I never go to church because nobody's interested
in me.
He said they're only interested in my pledge
and my check.
And he said I see, coach, that I
get my pledge and my check in and
that takes care of my religious responsibility.
Now he was sarcastic in that.
He didn't believe it, but he knew the
church believed it.
The church got his check and that's what
they wanted.
He could stay home.
The pastor could preach to his empty seat
because the check was in.
I'll take the people and you can have
the checks.
I'll take the people, God's people, God's good
loving people.
I love the people.
But you know, I find if you get
the fish, you get the coin.
And you get the fish, they'll be coining
his mouth.
And if you get the sheep, they'll have
wool on his back.
So it isn't a choice between getting the
people and getting the money because if you
get the people, you get the money.
The point is if you go after the
money and don't care about the people, we're
hirelings and not shepherds.
You know, get to know people.
Big shot.
Well, I've always felt that social prestige won't
do it.
Christ was born in a manger.
And Peter was a fisherman and John was
a fisherman.
And Levi was a despised tax collector.
And the early church came up out of
people that didn't amount to very much.
Not many.
Not many are wise.
Not many are learned.
Not many are rich.
Not many, a few, but not many.
The early church was born up out of
the lower stratum of the strata of society
and not out of the higher strata.
She came up from the common people.
And the people who did miracles and went
about everywhere doing miracles were common people.
And some of our modern scholars shake their
heads over Peter's Greek.
They say, Peter's Greek wasn't so good.
It wasn't anything like Paul's Greek.
No, it wasn't so good Greek.
But he managed to write some epistles that
have blessed a few million people down the
centuries.
And he managed to preach a sermon that
converted 3,000.
And he managed to do a few other
things, and yet his Greek wasn't so good.
I suppose that if he had been more
proficient in the Greek, he would not have
had one ounce of power more than he
had, because everything was done by prayer.
It was not by social prestige, but by
prayer.
And then in everything by publicity.
I sometimes tremble to think that my son
is now the head of a publicity, a
public relations society, public relations.
Well, they're talking about getting a Bureau of
Public Relations in the Christian missionary line.
Bureau of Public Relations.
I don't even think I know what they
mean.
I don't really know.
You go out and stand on the street
corner and preach Christ to the passing crowd,
you have public relations.
You preach Christ to the people you work
with, and that's public relations.
Be decent to your neighbor, and that's public
relations.
Behave yourself and obey the law, and that's
public relations.
Live as a Christian should, and that's public
relations.
But I don't think we need a Bureau
of Public Relations.
I don't think we need somebody sitting back
at the desk deciding how he can make
everybody like him, and win friends and influence
people for the Christian and missionary line.
Brethren, what we need is the power of
God, and let the public think what they
will.
And if we have the power of God
on us and live like Christians, regardless of
what the world says, I don't care what
the world thinks of me.
I want to stand well with God, and
if I stand well with God, I'm likely
to stand well with these best people.
And after that, I'm not much concerned.
But the world says public relations.
We ought to have a Bureau of Public
Relations.
I went to a church when my wife
and I went there before we were married.
We continued there after we were married for
a while, and I began to preach.
And it was a great church, really a
great church.
They used to pray and testify and sing,
and the power of God was there.
They'd come to communion service and kneel down
to take communion.
I've seen them break into tears and break
into laughter along the altar, and the joy
of God was on the place.
The little church was packed full, and we
were having a great time.
Then something happened, and they had a tremendous
church row, and the pastor was thrown out
and the devil was voted in.
And then you know what they did next?
They established a Bureau for Public Relations.
And we used to get literature from them,
the Bureau of the such-and-such Bureau
of Public Relations.
Imagine that!
When they grieved the Holy Ghost so he
couldn't bless them, then they felt they should
do something to keep themselves in good with
the public.
Scripture says, in everything by prayer, not in
everything by money.
In everything by prayer, not in everything by
social prestige.
In everything by prayer, not in everything by
publicity.
In everything by committees.
You know, we just tried to do everything
by committees, and it would go wrong, and
we'd get a bunch of committees, and we'd
get a committee together.
A committee, said Vance Havner, is a company
of the incompetent, chosen by the unwilling to
do the unnecessary.
And we have these expensive committees floating around.
And just one fellow, the Holy Ghost would
come on one man, and he could make
a decision and say, do it this way,
bang, it's done, you know, and he can
go off about his business.
Instead of that, they have to sit around
and talk for hours about trifles.
Talk for a half an hour about whether
to take a 15 or 17 minute coffee
break in a religious office.
They say they have to have it to
relax.
And everybody knows coffee doesn't relax you.
It does exactly the opposite.
I drink it, but I know it doesn't
relax me.
Everything by committees.
I am for one more committee.
I would like to see a committee formed
for the abolition of all committees, for at
least a little while.
No, you've got to have them, I suppose.
They're like cleaning a house, and scrubbing the
dogs, and doing things you've got to do.
You don't like it, but it's necessary.
And I suppose there's got to be committees
until the end of time.
They had them in the Bible all down
the years, and we've got them now.
But the point is, if we realize that
a committee could cut its time down one
half if it prayed more.
Moody said that a man prayed in public,
the length of time a man prayed in
public was sure to be an inverse proportion
to the length of time he prayed in
private.
If he prayed a long time in private,
he made his public prayers short.
But if he was short in private, he
was long in public.
And I believe that the committee meetings that
run endlessly are simply indicating that they haven't
prayed enough.
And if we pray more, we can talk
less.
And then in everything by business methods.
We're trying to do the work of the
Holy Ghost after the technique of modern businessmen.
It won't work.
And everything by prayer.
Everything by education, they say now.
What we need is a more educated clergy,
more educated ministry.
Well, I believe in education.
I have said that many times.
And if you don't get it in school,
you ought to get it in somewhere or
other.
There are books everywhere.
You can go down here to Eaton's.
Twenty-five dollars, you can buy yourself enough
good books.
Get yourself an education in some fields.
And you can get it in a year's
time if you read.
But I have noticed that when a denomination
starts to backslide, they always start to elevate
their standards academically.
The less we have of the Holy Ghost,
the more we have to know about Plato
and Aristotle.
Call that being acquainted with contemporary theology.
I think that we ought to be acquainted
with the ancient theology of Moses, Isaiah, David,
Daniel, Paul, Peter, John, and the rest.
And let the contemporary fellows kick the football
around.
Because always there's a bunch of self-conscious
intellectuals who are busy kicking around a current
football having to do with theology.
Nowadays, you know, it's neo-orthodoxy and neo
-evangelicalism.
Those are big, long words that don't mean
very much, really.
But in everything by prayer, says the Holy
Ghost, says Paul.
In everything by prayer, and he made good
on it.
And then the world says, in everything by
compromise.
I met a man not long ago, a
Canadian man, who says that he is a
goodwill ambassador for industry between the United States
and Canada.
I pressed him to know what he did.
Well, he said, I go from the United
States to Canada, back and forth, all the
time, from city to city, representing Canadian industry
in the United States.
Keep us in harmony.
I like that job.
It's trying to get harmony between the two.
And he said this odd little thing.
He said, the difficulty is to make the
two countries see that they're foreign to each
other.
He said, they don't act as if they
were foreign countries.
He said, they won't act alike.
He said, you can't do that under law.
I said, it's a pretty nice way to
be, though.
Yes, it's a nice way to be socially.
But he says, under law, they've got their
two countries, but they're one socially, in friendship.
Well, that's a good thing, I suppose, to
make compromises where you can.
But in the kingdom of God, compromising is
a pretty deadly business.
And the Church, as long as the Church
goes out to the world and follows the
world's ways, the Church says, compromise where you
can.
Compromise everywhere, and just take in anybody.
I think that if you, I don't think
there's a gangster anywhere from San Francisco to
Long Island, but what could join some church
in the United States?
I don't know about Canada, but I suppose
you're about the same.
They could get in somehow or other, you
know.
If you smile and give them a check
and dress well and comb your hair nicely,
if you have any, they'll take you in.
They'll take you in.
Nobody asks any questions.
Compromises are cut in everything by compromise.
Try to get along with people.
Let the Church get along with the world.
The Church in the days of her power
never got along with the world, and the
world never got along with the Church.
In the days of her weakness, she gets
along with the Church, and the Church uses
her like a cat.
A politician wants to get elected, so he
makes love to the pastor, hoping the pastor
in turn will be silly enough to tell
his congregation that they ought to vote for
this big love.
I wouldn't vote for him if he wrote
me a letter.
Just the fact he wrote me a letter,
I wouldn't vote for him.
Try and use the Church.
The Church isn't to be used, brethren.
The Church is to serve her generation by
the will of God.
But she'll decide how she's to serve her
generation.
The world won't decide it for her.
Well, the truth is, you can't delegate prayer.
Now, there are some things you can delegate.
I can delegate my singing, for instance.
I can have Nan McCracken sing my solos
for me, because I can't sing solos.
But I can't delegate my prayer.
Nobody else can do my praying for me,
unless I'm unconscious.
And then, you know, your wife sends for
somebody to come pray for you, but you
can't pray for yourself.
But normally, you pray and we'll do the
practical things.
You pray and I'll sing.
You pray and I'll give.
You pray and I'll entertain missionaries.
You pray and I'll teach, or sow, or
serve.
You pray and I'll do the practical things.
That is a deadly snare.
If you cannot and will not pray, God
won't accept your sowing.
If you can and will not pray, God
won't accept your singing.
If you cannot and will not pray, God
won't accept your entertaining people.
God won't accept your money, if you cannot
and will not pray.
It is prayer that gives power to all
these other things.
Singing, giving, entertaining, teaching, sowing, working, serving.
Those are all good things, if we set
them aflame by prayer.
But if we try to do them without
praying, we would hay and stubble in the
day of Jesus Christ.
Now, the true success of any church is
going to be prayer.
We can easily deceive ourselves, but our purity
and our power and our spirituality and our
holiness will parallel our prayer.
If you were to have a graph that
businessmen love so well, and politicians, if you
were to take a graph and put it
up here and have two lines across it,
zigzag lines, one you mark prayer.
You've just listened to the second portion of
a message by Dr. Adolph J.
Tozer of Toronto, Ontario, the editor of the
Alliance Witness, on this great theme, In Everything
by Prayer.
I'm sorry due to technical difficulties, we weren't
able to get the last few moments of
this message, but the gist of it was
that no man has any right to be
on a church board unless he's a pray
man.
No Sunday school teacher has any right to
be serving in the capacity of a Sunday
school teacher unless they are a praying teacher.
No individual has the right to be a
church visitor unless they are a praying individual.
And you follow that gist of truth, which
is so good for us to re-evaluate
these days in the light of so much
watered down and meaning spiritual activity within the
church.
And we trust that God might have used
these remarks that Dr. Tozer gave us to
bring us back to these basic things that
are so important.
A praying church, praying board members, praying teachers,
praying pastors, and a praying family.
Would have gone that this might be a
fall season in which we would give ourselves
to prayer.