The Church of Jesus Christ is largely sleeping,
like a great bedroom.
And you have all the Christians in bed,
and they're all sleeping.
And they're saying, please, don't wake me up!
I want to speak on.
And of course, when God starts to operate
a revival, people cannot sleep.
You can't sleep in church when the Spirit
of God awakes the people.
Look at the first verse of this 52nd
chapter.
Awake!
Put on strength!
WAKE IT UP, YOU SLEEPY CHRISTIANS!
AWAKE, ALL THAT'S SLEEPING!
ARISE FOR THE DAY!
Christ will come!
There's no finality to the Christian life this
side of eternity.
We pray that some of us may go
to our own funeral tonight, and die to
serve, and end all the failure, and all
the weakness.
Why should a person come to the cross?
Why should a person embrace death with Christ?
Why should a person be willing to go
in identification down to the cross, and into
the tomb, and up again?
I'll tell you why!
Because it's the only way that God can
get glory out of a human being.
If I were to ask you tonight, are
you safe?
Would you say, yes, I'm safe.
When?
Oh, so-and-so preached, I got baptized,
I'm safe.
What are you safe from?
Hell?
Are you safe from bitterness?
Are you safe from lust?
Are you safe from cheating?
Are you safe from lying?
Are you safe from bad acts?
Are you safe from rebelling against your parents?
Come on, what are you safe from?
And there's no room for him in the
inn.
He got a bit older.
There was no room in his family.
His family turned on him.
He went to the temple.
No room in the temple.
The temple turned on him.
And when he died, there was no room
to bury him.
He died outside of the city.
Well, why in God's name do you expect
to be accepted everywhere?
How is it the world couldn't get on
with the holiest man that ever lived, and
it can get on with you and me?
Are we compromised?
Are we no spiritual stature?
Are we no righteousness that reflects on their
corruption?
Jesus from above is above all.
I want to say to the Christians, don't
go around apologizing for him.
Don't go around worried because you can't make
this doctrine.
Don't go around spitting him with what you've
learned in school.
All you learned in school was one fallen
head instructing another fallen head.
And you don't have to apologize for him.
As dear Dr. Tozer used to say, Len,
you knew one thing about a man that
was carrying a cross out of the city
and knew he wasn't coming back.
Let's come to a mountain, and we go
back the next week, and we're as fascinated.
We haven't spent half an hour with Jesus,
but we've spent two stinking hours in a
movie house.
And Paul says that's what the world is
to me.
It's a system of corruption and rottenness and
vileness.
It's anti-Christ from the world goal.
Is the world crucified to you tonight, or
does it fascinate you?
Do we not need a very much greater
conception of how tremendously valuable a true expression
of the church is to the Lord?
It's priceless.
Let the Lord give us more of this
anguish for his church as a whole, and
then it will be precious to him.
When God stepped down, suddenly men and women
all over the parish were gripped by the
fear of God.
God, are my hands clean?
Is my heart pure?
The moment that that happened in the bar,
a power was let loose in Barber that
shook the whole of Louis.
God stepped down.
The Holy Spirit began to move among the
people.
And the minister writing about what happened on
the following morning said this, You met God
on Meadow and Moorland.
You met him in the homes of the
people.
God seemed to be everywhere.
What was that?
Revival?
Revival of an evangelist?
Not a special effort?
Not anything at all organized on the basis
of human endeavor, but an awareness of God
that gripped the whole community so much so
that was God.
I can remember once within 24 hours addressing
a meeting.
Crowded churches that night.
And while this young man was praying in
the aisles, the power of God moved into
that dance.
And the young people, over a hundred of
them, fled from the dance as though fleeing
from a plague.
And they prayed for the church.
For I endeavored to get up into the
pulpit.
I found the way blocked was young people
who had been at the dance.
When I went into the pulpit, I found
a young woman, a graduate of Aberdeen University,
who was at the dance.
And she's lying on the floor of the
pulpit crying, Is there mercy for me?
Is there mercy for me?
God was at work.
Well, that meeting continued until four o'clock
in the morning.
Mr. Campbell, there must be anything between two
and three hundred people at the police station.
They're gathered there and some are on their
knees.
Now, I can't understand this.
Now, he wasn't in the church, you see.
But here a crowd of men and women
from a neighboring village, five and six miles
away, were so moved by God that they
found themselves moving to the police station because
the constable there was a God-fearing and
well-saved man.
They were there.
And this young man begged of me to
go along to the police station.
And I went along.
And I shall never, never forget what my
ears heard and my eyes saw.
That morning, young men were kneeling by the
roadside.
One of them under the entrance of drink.
And his old mother kneeling beside him and
saying, Oh, Willie, Willie, are you coming at
last?
Oh, something wonderful has happened.
Revival has broken.
And from the group who sought the Lord
that night, There are nine in the ministry.
The door and see the crowd.
And I went to the door and there
must have been seven hundred people gathered around
the church.
And within a matter of minutes, the church
was crowded.
A quarter to twelve.
Now, where did the people come from?
How did they know that a meeting was
in progress in the church?
Well, I cannot tell you.
But I know this from Billy and Hamlet.
The people came.
Were you to ask some of them today
what was it that moved you?
Only the power that they could not explain.
And the power was such as to give
them to understand and see that they were
held deserving sinners.
And of course, the only place they could
think of where they might find help was
at the church.
Now, that is a fact that cannot be
disputed.
God was everywhere.
And because of this awareness of God, the
churches were crowded.
Crowded.
Through the day, right on through the night
till five and six o'clock in the
morning.
In revival time does not exist.
One of the mighty moments in the midst
of this gracious, vicious age.
You know that the drinking house was closed
that night.
Never been opened since.
The men who used to drink there and
spend the evening there are now praying in
our prayer meetings.
It is because they entered into the fullness.
It is because the people of Druids grasped
that truth that we can say today we
know practically nothing of that sliding from that
gracious moment of years ago.
My dear people, do you good folk understand
what revival means?
Have you a conception of what it means
to see God working?
The God of miracles.
Father and supernatural.
Moving in the midst of men and hundreds
swept into the kingdom.
Oh, that we might see it.
That we might see it.
Oh, that
we might see it.
See it.
Life, it
is even a vapor that appeareth for a
little time and then it vanisheth away.
That world outside there is not waiting for
a new definition of Christianity.
It's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity.
Would I be out of line in order
if I were to talk to you for
a little while about utilitarian religion and expedient
Christianity?
And the question that you're going to ask
yourself is, is God an end or is
he a mean?
You have to decide very early in your
Christian life whether you're viewing God as an
end or a mean.
A more challenging question than this text.
What is your life?
The philosophy of the day became humanism.
And you can define humanism this way.
Humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the
end of all being is the happiness of
man.
The reason for existence is man's happiness.
Now, according to humanism, salvation is simply a
matter of getting all the happiness you can
out of life.
This group of my people, the fundamentalists, that
say, We believe in the inspiration of the
Bible.
We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ.
We believe in hell.
We believe in heaven.
We believe in the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ.
Remember, the atmosphere is that of humanism.
Humanism says the chief end of being is
the happiness of man.
So it wasn't long until we had this,
that the fundamentalists knew each other because they
said, we believe these things.
They were men, for the most part, that
had met God.
But, you see, it wasn't long until, having
said, these are the things that establish us
as fundamentalists, the second generation said, This is
how we become a fundamentalist.
Believe in the inspiration of the Bible.
Believe in the deity of Christ.
Believe in his death, burial, and resurrection, and
thereby become a fundamentalist.
And so it wasn't long until it got
to our generation, where the whole plan of
salvation was to give intellectual assent to a
few statements of doctrine.
And a person was considered a Christian because
he could say uh-huh at four or
five places that he was asked to.
And if he knew where to say uh
-huh, someone would pat him on the back,
shake his hand, smile broadly, and say, brother,
you're safe.
At what cost?
And so it had gotten down to the
place where salvation was nothing more than an
essential scheme or a formula.
And the end of this salvation was the
happiness of man because humanism had penetrated.
And so if you were to analyze the
fundamentalism in contrast to liberalism of a hundred
years ago as it developed, it would be
like this.
The liberal says the end of religion is
to make man happy while he's alive.
And the fundamentalist says the end of religion
is to make man happy when he dies.
We're still paddling on the edge of the
ocean of the possibilities of grace.
What a holy dissatisfaction in us to make.
Until we find something like this.
Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven.
You don't want to go to that old,
filthy, nasty, burning hell where there's a beautiful
heaven up there.
Now come to Jesus so that you can
go to heaven.
And the appeal could be as much to
selfishness as a couple of men sitting in
a coffee shop deciding they're going to rob
a bank to get something for nothing.
Become so subtle that it goes everywhere.
What is it?
In essence, it's this.
That this philosophical postulate that the end of
all being is the happiness of man has
been sort of covered over with evangelical terms
and biblical doctrines until God reigns in heaven
for the happiness of man.
Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of
man.
All the angels exist in the whole.
Everything is for the happiness of man.
And I submit to you that this is
unchristian.
Christianity says the end of all being is
the glory of God.
Humanism says the end of all being is
the happiness of man.
This is the betrayal of the ages.
The betrayal in which we live.
And I don't see how God can revive
it until we come back to Christianity.
Isn't man happy?
Doesn't God intend to make man happy?
But as a byproduct and not a prime
product.
Now I ask you, what is the philosophy
of mission?
What is the philosophy of evangelism?
What is the philosophy of a Christian?
If you ask me why I went to
Africa, I'll tell you I went primarily to
improve on the justice of God.
I didn't think it was right for anybody
to go to hell without a chance to
be saved.
And so I went to give poor sinners
a chance to go to heaven.
Now I hadn't put it in so many
words, but if you'll analyze what I've just
told you, do you know what it is?
It's humanism.
That I was simply using the provisions of
Jesus Christ as a means to improve upon
human conditions of suffering and misery.
And when I got to Africa, I discovered
that they weren't poor ignorant little heathen running
around in the woods waiting for, looking for
someone to tell them how to go to
heaven.
That they were monsters of iniquity.
They were living in utter and total defiance
of far more knowledge of God than I
ever dreamed they had.
They deserved hell.
Because they utterly refused to walk in the
light of their conscience.
And the light of the law written upon
their heart and the testimony of nature and
the truth they knew.
And when I found that out, I assure
you, I was so angry with God that
one occasion in prayer I told him that
it was a mighty little thing he'd done.
Sending me out there to reach these people
that were waiting to be told how to
go to heaven.
When I got there I found out they
knew about heaven and didn't want to go
there.
And that they were loved their sin and
wanted to stay in it.
I went out there motivated by humanism.
I'd seen pictures of lepers.
I'd seen pictures of ulcers.
I'd seen pictures of native funerals.
And I didn't want my fellow human beings
to suffer in hell eternally after such a
miserable existence on earth.
But it was there in Africa that God
began to tear through the overlay of this
humanism.
And it was that day in my bedroom
with the door locked that I wrestled with
God.
For I was coming to grips with the
fact that the people that I thought were
ignorant and wanted to know how to go
to heaven and were saying, someone come and
teach us, actually didn't want to take time
to talk with me or anybody else.
They had no interest in the Bible and
no interest in Christ.
And they loved their sin and wanted to
continue in it.
And I was to the place at that
time where I felt the whole thing was
a sham and a mockery and I'd been
told a bill of goods.
And I wanted to come home.
And there alone in my bedroom, as I
faced God honestly with what my heart tells,
it seemed to me I heard him say,
yes, will not the judge of all the
earth do right?
The heathen are lost.
And they're going to go to hell not
because they haven't heard the gospel.
They're going to go to hell because they
are sinners who love their sin.
And because they deserve hell.
But I didn't send you out there for
them.
I didn't send you out there for their
sake.
And I heard as clearly as I've ever
heard, though it wasn't with physical voice, but
it was the echo of truth of the
ages finding its way into an open heart.
I heard God say to my heart that
day something like this, I didn't send you
to Africa for the sake of the heathen.
I sent you to Africa for my sake.
They deserve hell, but I love them.
And I endured the agonies of hell for
them.
I didn't send you out there for them.
I sent you out there for me.
Do I not deserve the reward of my
suffering?
Don't I deserve those for whom I died?
And it reversed it all.
It changed it all.
It righted it all.
And I wasn't any longer than ten heckles
and a charge.
But I was terribly guilty.
The longer I lived, the more I find
I don't know.
Two years ago God gave me a word
for the new year.
I don't go scattering through the books to
find one.
The Lord gave me a word, rejection.
Why did you repent?
I'd like to see some people repent on
biblical terms again.
The difference is here is somebody trembling because
he's going to be hurt in hell.
And he has no sense of the enormity
of his guilt.
And no sense of the enormity of his
crimes.
And no sense of his insult against deity.
He's only trembling because his skin is about
to be seen.
And this is the difference between twentieth century
preaching and the preaching of John Wesley.
Wesley was a preacher of righteousness that exalted
the holiness of God.
And when he would stand there with the
two to three hour sermons that he was
accustomed to deliver in the open air.
And he would exalt the holiness of God
and the law of God and the righteousness
of God and the justice of God and
the wisdom of his requirements.
And the justice of his wrath and his
anger.
And then he would turn to sinners and
tell them of the enormity of their crimes
and their open rebellion.
And the treason and their anarchy.
The power of God would so depend upon
the company that on one occasion it is
reliably reported.
That when the people dispersed there were eighteen
hundred people lying on the ground utterly unconscious.
Because they had a revelation of the holiness
of God and in the light of that
they'd seen the enormity of their sin.
And God had so penetrated their minds and
hearts that they had fallen to.
It wasn't trying to convince good men that
he was in trouble with a bad God.
But that it was to convince bad men
that they deserved the wrath and anger of
a good God.
Anything that you love more than you love
Jesus Christ is an idol.
I don't care what it is.
I'm embarrassed to be part of the church
of Jesus Christ tonight which is so totally
radically different from the New Testament.
So impoverished, so black, so powerless.
I've come to this conclusion.
There is a move of God in America
today.
But not amongst the unsaved.
It's amongst the redeemed who are determined by
the grace of God to be part of
the bride.
And to be part of the bride you
have to be divorced from everything in the
world.
We have a witness of somebody who is
going to an eternal hell according to our
theology.
But we talked about some tribute to them.
Whisper in my ear that Satan has moved
you up.
He says you're getting to be dangerous to
his kingdom.
He says you're spoiling his plans.
You're thwarting his purposes.
You're pulling down his strongholds.
We're not pulling things out.
We're building pretty little churches and little rooms
for people to sit around.
If Jesus came back he wouldn't cleanse the
temple.
He'd cleanse the pulpit.
We're in grave danger when we let our
accomplishments become the ground of our confidence.
Oh boy, how we want to be esteemed.
How we want to be respected.
How people should realize what precious gifts of
the Spirit I've given them.
Do you know why they don't?
Because you stink with pride.
That's why.
John died in 1791.
Converted at 35.
So in that round it makes 53.
Add them together it makes 88.
Because he was saved at 35.
Preached for 53 years.
Do you know what he left when he
died?
He left a handful of books.
A faded Geneva gown that he preached in
all over England.
Six silver spoons somebody gave him.
Six pound notes.
Give one to each of the poor men
that carry me to my grave.
And that's all he left.
Six pound notes.
Six silver spoons.
A handful of books.
A Geneva gown.
And something else.
What was the other thing?
Oh I know something else he left.
The Methodist Jew.
He could have died as rich as your
famous TV preacher Sunday.
Sure he made money.
And he built orphanages.
Sure he made money.
He printed Bibles.
Sure he made money.
He compiled with Charles the Methodist hymn book.
And those orphanages.
And he died worth about 30 dollars.
He printed Bibles.
He printed hymn books.
He financed missionaries to go across the earth.
That's the way to use your money.
You think of the reward.
Why in God's name do you think it
says don't lay up treasure enough?
Lay up treasure in heaven.
I'm tired of writing about revival.
It's the history of the world.
And God wants some men who are really
drunk, intoxicated with the spirit of God.
Who have a love life with the Lord
Jesus.
And he can ask anything of you and
he'll do it.
I have talked with people that have no
assurance of sins forgiven.
They want to feel saved before they're willing
to commit themselves to Christ.
But I believe that the only ones whom
God actually witnesses by his spirit are born
of him.
Are the people whether they say it or
not.
That come to Jesus Christ and say something
like this.
Lord Jesus I'm going to obey you.
And love you.
And serve you.
And do what you want me to do.
As long as I live.
Even if I go to hell at the
end of the road.
Simply because you are worthy to be your
loved and obeyed and served.
And I'm not trying to make a deal
with you.
But oh I know so many people that
are trying to know the fullness of God.
So that they can use God.
A young preacher came to me down in
West Virginia.
Huntington, West Virginia.
Brother Reed and I have got a great
church.
We've got a wonderful Sunday school program.
We've got a radio ministry.
Drawing.
But I feel a personal need and a
personal lack.
I need to be baptized with the Holy
Ghost.
I need to be filled with the Spirit.
And someone told me God has done something
for you.
And I wondered if you could help me.
I looked at the fellow.
You know what he looked like?
Me.
Just looked like me.
I just saw in him everything that was
in me.
You thought I was going to say me
before.
No.
Listen to your heart.
If you've ever seen yourself you'll know that
you're never going to be anything else than
you were.
For in me and my flesh there's no
good thing.
Looked like me.
He was like a fellow driving up in
a big Cadillac, you know, to someone standing
at the filling station.
Say, fill her up, bud, with the highest
octane you've got.
Well, that's the way it looked.
He wanted power for his program.
And God is not going to be a
means to anyone's end.
I said, I'm awfully sorry.
I don't think I can help you.
He said, why?
I don't think you're ready.
I said, well, suppose you consider yourself coming
up with a Cadillac.
You've talked about your program.
You've talked about your radio.
You've talked about your Sunday school in church.
Very good.
You've done wonderfully well without the power of
the Holy Spirit.
That's what the Chinese Christian said, you know,
when he got back to China.
What impressed you most about America?
He said, the great things Americans can accomplish
without God.
And he'd accomplished a great deal, admittedly, without
God.
Now he's wanted something, power, to accomplish his
end even further.
I said, no, no.
You're sitting behind the wheel and you're saying
to God, give me power so I can
go.
You won't work.
You've got to slide over.
But I knew that rascal because I knew
me.
I said, no, it'll never do.
You've got to get in the backseat.
I could see him leaning over and grabbing
the wheel.
No, I said, it'll never do in the
backseat.
I said, before God will do anything for
you, you know what you've got to do?
He said, what?
I said, you've got to get out of
the car, take the keys around, open up
the trunk lid, hand the keys to the
Lord Jesus, get inside the trunk, slam the
lid down, whisper through the keyhole, Lord, look,
fill her up with anything you want and
you drive.
It's up to you from now.
And that's why so many people, you know,
do not enter into the fullness of Christ
because they want to become a Levite with
ten shekels and a shirt.
They've been serving Micah, but they think if
they had the power of the Holy Ghost,
they could serve the tribe of Dan.
It'll never work.
Never work.
There's only one reason for God needing you,
and that's to bring you to the place
where in repentance you've been pardoned for his
glory and in victory you've been brought to
the place of death that he might reign
and in the fullness Jesus Christ is able
to live and walk in you and your
attitude is the attitude of the Lord himself
who said, I can do nothing of myself.
I can't speak of myself.
I don't make plans for myself.
My only reason for being is the glory
of God in Jesus Christ.
If I were to say to you, come
to be saved so you can go to
heaven.
Come to the cross so that you can
have joy and victory.
Come to the fullness of the Spirit so
that you can be satisfied.
I'd be falling into the trap of humanism.
I'm going to say to you, dear friend,
if you're out here without Christ, you come
to Jesus Christ and serve him as long
as you live, whether you go to hell
at the end of the way, because he's
worthy.
I say to you, Christian friend, you come
to the cross and join him in union
and death and enter into all the meaning
of death to hell in order that he
can have glory.
I say to you, dear Christian, if you
do not know the fullness of the Holy
Ghost, come and present your body a living
sacrifice and let him fill you so that
he can have the purpose for his coming
fulfilled in you and get glory through your
life.
It's not what you're going to get out
of God it's what he is going to
get out of you.
Let's be done once and for all with
utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means instead
of the glorious end that he is.
Let's resign.
Let's tell Micah we're through.
We're no longer going to be his priests
serving for ten shekels and a shirt.
Let's tell the tribe of Dan we're through
and let's come and cast ourselves at the
feet of the nail-pierced Son of God
and tell him that we're going to obey
him and love him and serve him as
long as we live because he is worthy.
Two young Moravians heard of an island in
the West Indies where an atheist British owner
had two thousand to three thousand slaves.
The owner had said, no preacher, no clergyman
will ever stay on this island.
If he's shipwrecked, we'll keep him in a
separate house until he has to leave.
But he's never going to talk to any
of us about God.
I'm through with all that nonsense.
Three thousand slaves from the jungles of Africa
bought to an island in the Atlantic and
there to live and die without hearing of
Christ.
Two young Moravians heard about it.
They sold themselves to the British planter and
used the money they received from the sale
for he paid no more than he would
for any slave to pay their passage out
to his island for he wouldn't even transport
them.
And as the ship left the river at
Homburg left its pier in the river at
Homburg and was going out into the North
Sea carried with the tide the Moravians had
come from Hernhut to see these two lads
off in the early twenties never to return
again for this wasn't a four year term
they'd sold themselves into lifetime slavery simply that
as slaves they could be as Christians where
these others were.
The families were there weeping for they knew
they'd never see them again.
And they wondered why they were going and
questioned the wisdom of it.
And as the gap widened and the houses
had been cast off and were being curled
up there on the pier and the young
boys saw the widening gap one lad with
his arm linked to the arm of his
fellow raised his hand and shouted across the
gap the last words that were heard from
them.
They were these May the lamb that was
slain receive the reward of his suffering.
And this became the core of Moravian missions.
And this is the only reason for being
that the lamb that was slain may receive
the reward of his suffering.
And the question isn't were you challenged the
question is were you changed.