In Joel chapter 2, we find a very
pertinent scripture.
Joel chapter 2, Therefore also now saith the
Lord, 212, 212 of Joel, Therefore also now
saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me
with all your heart, and with fasting, and
with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your
heart, and not your garments, and turn unto
the Lord your God, for he is gracious
and merciful.
Slow to anger, and of great kindness, and
repenteth him of the evil.
Who knoweth if he will return and repent,
and leave a blessing behind him, even a
meat offering and a drink offering unto the
Lord your God?
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast,
call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify
the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children,
and those that suck the breast.
Let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber,
and the bride out of her closet.
Let the priests and ministers of the Lord
weep between the porch and the altar, and
let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord,
and give not thine heritage to reproach, that
the heathen should rule over them.
The margin says, Use a byword against them.
Wherefore should they say among the people, Where
is their God?
Why, isn't that a good scripture for awakening
and revival?
Now, I had thought of our having just
a little group here this morning.
I didn't know there'd be a crowd this
size at all.
But it comes to me that we don't
need our first or immediate need, put it
that way, is not a lot more heavy,
deep Bible teaching, have made alive that which
we already know.
The words I speak unto you, they are
spirit and they are life.
And if you, those of you who were
here the other day, the other evening, you'll
recall that those who gave testimony, and that
minister who gave testimony Sunday morning, you will
have noticed that there was a great deep
lot of already known truth back of their
lives, unacted upon, unresponded truth, unresponded to.
They knew a whole lot in the head.
They had a lot of hearsay.
I have heard of thee by the hearing
of the ear, but now mine eye seeth
thee.
That's the difference.
And there's so much truth known today.
We have enough truth to sink a battleship,
I often say.
But it has so little practical living reality,
so that I felt that we ought to
have a little concern, a real living concern
with revival.
Revival is, in a sense, beginning to touch
the country.
I sometimes wish I had known in the
days of the Lowry meetings what I have
learned since.
We, I believe, could have made a far
greater scoop of souls in those days.
And we did, because you could go anywhere
in the country and announce a meeting in
the schoolhouse, and some souls would come to
Christ.
That's something.
That is something, especially in the country districts
where, as a rule, people hadn't been thinking
of God and caring little about God.
And yet people would come together, they talked
about the Lowry meetings, his messages, in the
restaurants and on the streets, and I expect
in the pool halls and bar rooms and
everywhere else.
Well, that is a spirit settling on the
country in answer to prayer.
Because when I first came here in 1922,
22, 23, along in there, it was a
rare thing to hear of a soul being
saved in the country.
Maybe in some camp meetings an odd soul
would be saved, but very, very few.
Just a very odd thing to hear of
souls being saved.
And during the Lowry meetings and for some
time after that, it was rather a common
thing to hear of, in a country district,
several souls being saved.
Well, the word revival.
Now, I'll be saying things that are new
and old, but what difference does it make
if it gets over to us?
Spirit of faith and expectation for God's mighty
moving and working.
The word revival has been greatly misunderstood as
though it were a season of special meetings.
I think you've been impressed lately, have you
not, that the Sutera twins are looking for
reviving work, and not merely to deliver some
evangelistic messages.
There's such a difference, really, between a series
of evangelistic messages and meetings and what we
would call revival breaking out.
Billy Graham says he's an evangelist doing the
work of an evangelist.
He says, I'm a candidate for revival.
Now, he makes the distinction that we ought
to make.
The word revival has been greatly misunderstood, though,
and what are called revival services.
I think that's a misnomer.
It's misleading.
Dr. Ironsides tells about a time when a
certain church was having difficulty getting a certain
speaker for a series of meetings.
He was coming.
He couldn't come.
And he could, but he couldn't.
And finally, the poor pastor, in distraction, came
to church to announce that because so-and
-so was not coming, there would be no
revival this year.
Uh-huh.
So we have evangelistic services, pre-publicized and
pre-scheduled special meetings, special nights when they
bring the oldest grandmother or the most kids.
And so every night is a kind of
a special, especially induced something to get a
crowd, hoping they'll get more church members and
the budget will step up a little and
so on and so on.
Oh, these are pathetic situations.
Now, the word revival suggests there has already
been life.
Revive.
Again, life.
That's what you're saying.
Life again.
Life has been imparted already, but that life
is ebbing, is on the way, has suffered
eclipse and decline.
So Charles Finney was quite right in saying
nothing else, revival is nothing else than a
new beginning of obedience to God on the
part of God's children, just as in the
case of a converted sinner.
The first step is deep repentance in a
certain sense, repentance on the part of believers,
getting down in deep humility, forsaking of sin.
That's the ongoing and the stepping up of
the Christian life, reviving again the dying embers
on the altars of revival.
Of course, there can be no reviving where
there's been no life to revive.
But whenever Christians are revived, there will always
be, there will always follow the conversion of
sinners.
They will step aside to see this great
sight, to see what it is.
Surely God's in their midst.
I wonder if we couldn't turn to a
psalm.
What is that psalm?
Psalm 100.
Now I am stuck.
We'll find it.
I know where it is on the page
here, if I can get the right page.
All right, 126, that's right.
When the Lord turned again the captivity of
Zion, we were like them that dreamed.
Amen.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter and
our tongue with singing.
Then said they, now notice, Then said they
where?
Where?
Anybody?
Among the heathen.
Then said they among the heathen.
The Lord hath done great things for them.
Listen to what the heathen are saying.
The response is what now?
Let's read it all together.
The Lord hath done great things for us,
whereof we are glad.
Well, amen.
Gladdening effects of deliverance from captivity.
Amen.
All right.
Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the
streams in the south.
They that sow in tears shall reap in
joy.
And the margin says, In singing, he that
goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves
with him.
My, that would make a good psalm for
a good deliberate consideration.
I'd be tempted to turn aside and take
that instead of the one I've got, the
portion I have this morning.
Well, there will always be the conversion of
men.
They will say among the heathen, The Lord
hath done great things for them, whereof they
are glad.
We need that kind of an awakening.
That is an unusual visitation of God.
Not just the usual.
There are times of visitation and then consolidation
afterwards.
Consolidation of ground already gave.
But there are seasons of special manifestation and
visitation.
I don't know that you can have the
same heavy, mighty, unusual visitation all the time
year round.
I think it would wear out of its
effect.
Familiarity, in a sense, would breed contempt.
Well, but there are times when we need
special visitation.
And I think we're in one of those
times now.
I really do.
Because the heathen are saying today, Where is
their God?
The God is dead movement and all that.
Don't you see?
The heathen are saying it.
But why should they be able to say
it?
Lord, turn again our captivity, that the heathen
may have to say, The Lord has done
something there again.
Ah, that's what we want.
All right.
The time has come that judgment must begin
where?
1 Peter 4 and 18, I think it
is.
The time has come that judgment must begin
at the house of God.
Sin judged by the believer, his own sins,
and sinners feel the impact.
When the saints feel the wickedness of sin,
the worldly man says, Well, if they feel
like that about it, what's going to happen
to me?
I thought so-and-so was a saintly
fellow.
And he's bewailing his imperfections and his sins
and his failures.
Well, if he's crying like that over his
condition, what must my condition be?
Now, that's the way the impact works.
And if the judgment first begin at us,
what shall be the end of them that
know not God and that fear not God?
What shall be the end of them that
obey not the gospel?
If judgment has to begin with us, see,
which it does.
Revival in them means God manifesting himself through
human life, through spirit-filled channels and vessels,
his redeeming power bursting forth in fruits and
praise and righteousness and holiness, the reproduction of
spiritual life, and the flesh incarnation of the
gladness and rapture of the gospel.
People intoxicated with new wine and a heart
cry for redeeming power in God's visitation of
man.
Oh, beloved, you know that revival is the
only possible answer to the situation of the
present day.
Otherwise, there's no hope.
We're just more or less marking time, going
in circles and keeping our Churchianity head above
water.
That's about all we're doing.
We're getting a little done, but there's no
impact.
The heathen are not saying, the Lord has
done great things for them whereof they are
glad.
They're not saying that yet.
I like this place.
Turn to Acts 3.
I love this passage.
Acts chapter 3.
Peter and John went up together into the
temple at the hour of prayer being the
ninth hour, and a certain man lame from
his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid
daily at the gate of the temple, which
is called Beautiful.
Such Peter fastened his eyes upon him with
John and said, Look on us.
I'm glad he wasn't so ultra-humble that
he couldn't say that.
You know, some of us are so humble.
I don't want you to look at me.
I don't want you to see me.
I want you to just see the Lord.
Well, hallelujah!
Very well.
So far, so good.
But why shouldn't they see the Lord if
they look on you?
What are you so humble about?
I don't want you to look on me.
I just want you to look at the
Lord.
What you mean is, I don't want to
have the Lord so living in me that
if they look at me they're going to
see the Lord.
Come on.
Come right out of your hole now.
Some of the people said, Good.
Peter fastened his eyes upon him with John
and said, Look on us.
Look here.
Here.
Right here, please, your attention.
Right now.
Look here.
Look on us.
And he gave heed unto them, expecting to
receive something of them.
He's looking for a copper.
And Peter said, Silver and gold have I
none, but what I have, that I give.
You can't give what you don't have.
Huh?
Such as I have, give I thee.
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
get on your feet and get going.
Christianity puts people on their feet, by the
way.
And if you've got anything worth giving, it
puts people on their feet.
And he took him by the right hand
and lifted him up, and immediately his feet
and ankle bones received strength.
And he leaping up stood and walked, and
entered with them into the temple, walking and
leaping and praising God, and all the people
saw.
Uh-huh.
Saw him walking and praising God, and they
knew that it was he which sat for
alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.
And they were filled with wonder and amazement
at the fact which had happened unto him.
And as the lame man which was healed,
hailed Peter and John.
Can't you see the fellow?
He had one apostle in his left hand
and another apostle in his right hand.
And he had, he'd laid hold of these
two fellows.
Look here, these two guys.
I could just see him leaping on both
his feet and had an apostle in each
hand.
Wasn't he going places?
Oh, amen.
Ha, ha.
He was worrying.
He was going on all fours, wasn't he?
Amen.
As the lame man which was healed hailed
Peter and John, all the people ran together
unto them in the course that is called
Solomon's greatly what?
Wondering.
That's twice over to talk about wonder.
When people lose a sense of wonder, now
listen, put positively, when you finally come to
have a sense of the wonder-working of
God and have an awareness of God, that's
revival.
When you lose a sense of wonder, you
need to have revival.
These were wondering.
And when Peter saw it, now look, look
at the good combination here.
When Peter saw it, he answered unto the
people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye
at this, or why look ye so earnestly
on us?
Now, now, he's disclaiming any and all honor.
Ha, ha.
A minute, a moment ago, look on us,
come here, give me your attention.
In the name of Jesus, get up and
get going.
And the people come admiring now, admiring Peter
and John.
Ha, ha, look, these men are the servants
of the Most High God.
They do miracles.
Wonderful fellows, these.
Why are you talking about, why look ye
so earnestly on us, as though by our
own power and holiness we'd made this man
to walk?
God has glorified his Son, Jesus Christ.
That's what, that accounts for all this.
You see, he's identified, in the first instance,
he dissociates himself from all glory and honor
in the second.
That's a good wholesome position, isn't it?
That's identification, using the authority of the name
of Christ, dissociating himself so completely that God
gets all the glory.
Is that a good combination?
Amen.
What a sense of wonder.
Reminds me of the incident that I so
often tell in connection with Revival, about a
fellow by the name of Williams.
I think I have his article someplace stashed
away under the dust heaps of my stuff.
But he was a man that could write
on anything from a needle to a threshing
machine at a moment's notice.
Quite a columnist.
And when the Wales Revival broke out, his
editorial seniors told him to go down to
Wales and write up the Revival.
They knew what it was, just so much
emotion, and so on and so on.
But the rumor was running over the country
about the Wales Revival.
It was so mighty a revival that even
the mules down in the mines wouldn't work
anymore because they were used to swearing and
clubbing and cursing and kicking.
And the saints down in the mines had
become so civil and so sensible and so
saintly that they didn't kick and curse and
club the mules anymore, and the mules wouldn't
work.
Yes, that's the history of the Wales Revival.
So even the mules got the effect of
it down in the mines.
Well, this fellow, this fellow, and the preacher,
his preacher, one of these no-good parasites,
his preacher went down to write up the
Revival.
Well, they all knew what it was.
And so the preacher, the preacher's mother was
down there in the center of the Revival.
So they naturally went to her house.
They got there about ten o'clock at
night.
Uh-huh.
Now, where's mother?
says the preacher.
Oh, she's down at the meeting.
Ten o'clock?
What?
Meeting?
This time of night?
Nah.
No.
And this man, Williams, this columnist that was
sent there to write up God, he decided,
he says, this is what we came here
for.
I'm going to meet you right now.
Now we're going to see this thing.
We're going to see.
They wouldn't be there until ten o'clock
at night unless you see motion, and that's
what it is.
I'm going right down there.
No, I'm going to bed, says the preacher.
Well, the two of them, I guess, finally
went.
And the columnist dragging the preacher along, and
they went down there, and there they were
sitting there, and the local preacher was sitting
there in tears in the midst of a
lot of young people.
It was a young people's meeting, and the
kids were sitting there all glowing, happy, tearful,
rejoicing, and sharing and so on.
And finally the preacher looked up.
Brother, have you a word from the Lord
for us?
A word from the Lord.
He says, if he'd asked me to make
a speech, I could have done that.
But to put it like that, have you
a word from the Lord for us?
He said, that was a question that was
baffling.
And he says, if he'd asked me, and
he was such a man that he could
have spoken on most any subject on a
moment's notice.
He was just so versatile, clever.
He became head of a mission later after
he got right with God.
Well, there he was, and he looked at
all those children, and their eager, expectant faces.
What is the stranger going to give us
now?
Eyes all turned on him, and he looked
at them, and he says, I opened my
mouth, and a thing would come out.
Well, everything came out that was in.
He says, and opened my mouth, and the
most eloquent sermon I ever preached in my
life.
I said, nothing.
My, I look back in the time in
Kansas City when I was asked to teach
a Sunday school class before I was saved.
I was earnest, and I wanted to do
better.
And I got to that Sunday school class,
and I can still see and feel the
way I felt.
Those two or three boys there, and I
literally had nothing to say.
Couldn't open my mouth without putting my foot
in it.
And so there I was, and there this
fellow was, and finally, do you know what
he said?
He looked at all these tear-stained faces
and all these hungry little youngsters, and he
said, oh, children, pray for me.
And they all gathered around him and pulled
his coat.
God bless you, mister.
We'll pray for you.
Wasn't that, wasn't that being caught nicely?
Just imagine that high-brow piece of machinery
going to write up God, and the kids
come around, a little child shall lead them,
and tug at his coat.
God bless you, mister.
We'll pray for you.
Well, he went, he went, finally he went
back.
He was all confused yet, of course.
He went back to the house and couldn't
sleep a wink that night.
And then the preacher accounted for that.
You know, you're unstrung.
You shouldn't have gone to that meeting too
late.
I guess the preacher went to bed and
slept the sound as a dead onion would.
He didn't have any, he had no convictions
about anything.
But this man, Williams, couldn't sleep all night,
didn't sleep a wink.
He was so absolutely convicted but not converted
yet.
The next morning they got up and took
a train where they heard that Evan Roberts
was the head of the, he was the
nominal head of the Wales Revival.
And so they took a train where he
was.
And on the train they wondered if they
were going to get off the right station,
I guess.
So he, Williams said to the porter, where's
Evan Roberts?
I don't know, he says.
I don't know.
Well, porter, where's the Revival?
I don't know, but it's in me.
Porter on the train.
He was being revived in his own soul.
And so they got off the place, supposedly,
and went to the church.
And there the church was packed full of
people early in the morning.
Early in the morning.
When did this meeting begin?
Last night, six o'clock.
And there they were, and he walked in,
and they were singing, The Lamb, the Lamb
that died for me, as only the Welsh
could sing it.
Such harmony, such glory.
He says, I saw it all.
And there he was gloriously converted and became
an out-and-out leader in the Church
of Christ in Wales.
And he was the head of the Northeast
India General Mission for years.
Well, a sense, and he's the one that,
he's the one where I got that phrase
about Acts 3.
When you lose a sense of wonder, that's
what overcame him that night, just a sense
of wonder, the awe, the grandeur, the glory
of the inescapable divine presence.
That's what we need.
We had a little of it the other
night, but, oh, beloved, nothing as it might
be yet, nothing as it may be.
I'll give you more of that as we
go along.
We need a sense of awe, a sense
of wonder, a sense of the divine presence.
One of the biggest things we need, which
a real sense of real revival will bring,
a holy reverence and an exposure of immorality
and sin.
That's what we're going to see.
Until we see that, we haven't got much
of a spiritual revival.
The holiness of God hates this sin business.
And we've got it on every bookshelf, on
every newsstand, and in every paper, and over
the radio, the four-letter words that are
used all the time.
And less than ten years ago, they'd have
been put off the air for using the
very words they're using now.
And nobody's saying a word now.
Nobody's caring.
We need a sense of reverence and a
sense of the awareness of God.
Somebody has put it like this.
When God is going to do something wonderful,
He begins with a difficulty.
And when He's going to do something very
wonderful, He begins with an impossibility.
Amen.
That's God doing strange and wonderful things.
Now, one of the best expressions for revival
you find in Acts 3.19. Times of
refreshing from the presence of the Lord.
That's revival.
Times of refreshing shall come from the presence
of the Lord.
Acts 3.19. In the Wales revival, I
had with me on my first mission field
out here in the West, a man by
the name of Young.
He was an oldster, about 65 or 70
at the time.
Well, that's getting up to middle age.
Anyway.
And he told me about the Wales revival.
Marvels of the Wales revival.
He'd seen it.
And he had the language.
He was a good evangelist.
And I said, Mr. Young, it must have
been easy to preach in those days.
He said, preach?
You felt like crawling in a hole, brother.
You see how little...
I had not been through such a thing.
I didn't understand it.
That's just how little people who haven't been
through revival, how little they understand what revival
is.
I said, must have been easy to preach
in those days.
Lots of the Spirit, easy to preach.
He says, no, you don't feel it.
Nobody wanted to preach.
He said, meetings were held and there hardly
was any preaching at all.
The awareness of God.
People getting right with God.
Confessing their sins and sharing their life and
joy.
That was revival.
That's what he said, the Wales revival.
Now revival, strictly speaking, here's what a man
of God says.
Joseph Kemp of New Zealand was a great
man of God.
He said this, revival, strictly speaking, means the
reanimating of that which is already living but
is in a state of declension.
It has to do principally with the church
as a whole and Christians as individuals.
See this?
Evangelism in our usage of the word as
well as in its derivative sense refers primarily,
evangelism refers primarily to the proclamation of the
gospel to the unsaved.
To make evangelism a synonym of revivalism is
untrue to the teaching of the New Testament.
The church is responsible for evangelism, for revival
in the last analysis we are cast upon
the sovereign grace and mercy of God.
Revival is of God.
Now that doesn't mean there are not conditions
for revival.
There are plenty of them.
We have to meet them.
But after all, revival is from God.
The Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.
Amen.
In Hezekiah's day, they rejoiced in all the
people that God had prepared the people for
the thing was done suddenly.
Sovereignty of God is the divine side of
revival.
The human conditions which must be met in
prayer and confession, repentance and faith and so
on, that's the human side of revival.
But both sides are true.
If you're going to just sit down and
wait for God to send a kind of
a bombshell from heaven, no, you're not meeting
the conditions.
You'll find that in revivals in the book
of Acts, nearly every one of those many
revivals in the book of Acts and in
the Old Testament, revival is invariably accompanied by
a session of waiting, confessing, getting right with
God on the human side.
Prayer, much prayer.
Now the need for revival.
Wherefore should they say among the people, Where
is their God?
The need for revival.
The meaning of revival we've seen a little
bit of.
Now the need.
It's easy to exaggerate, but it can perhaps
be truly said that as far as Christendom
is concerned, we are in desperate need.
The one answer to the situation is revival.
Either it is revival in our hearts, somebody
says, you will have revival in your hearts
or revolution in your streets.
We're getting the revolution in our streets because
there's very little revival.
It's very scattered, just a little bit here
and there.
The thing I noticed, pardon me, the thing
I noticed is that if there's a little
bit of revival in Ashbury or Prince George
or Abbotsford or Prairie or someplace like that,
there's just a little bit.
Well, praise God, we've got a big revival
in the country.
Oh brother, you're getting satisfied too easily, too
quickly.
Next to nothing as compared to real awakenings.
It's supposed that Charles Finney single-handed won
a half a million souls to the Lord
in about 12 months' time.
What do you think of that for revival?
A hundred thousand Christians were added to the
churches in a very few weeks.
That's a real moving, isn't it?
And what's going on in Indonesia now?
Oh, it's hard to sift it out just
to get to the facts.
But it looks, and a Mr. Cook who
writes on revival in Indonesia, quite a book,
he says that, there's not a doubt, but
he says this is the greatest thing since
the days of Pentecost, where an odd case
has actually risen from the dead and marvels
and wonders are taking place and people being
swept into the kingdom, even a lot of
Mohammedans who are the unconvertibles, supposedly.
Well, it's revival in our hearts or revolution
in our streets where there's no vision.
Listen to this.
I want to write this up for the
Overcomer one of these days, just a little
World Today item.
Where there's no vision, the people perish or
they throw off all moral restraint.
Is that a picture of the modern day?
Are people throwing off all moral restraint?
What's the matter?
Among God's people there's no vision.
No moral restraint anymore then.
The salt is losing its flavor.
The earth is rotting with a vengeance.
Just yesterday I had an interview.
The CBC gave me the once over.
I don't know how much they're going to
put on the air, but I don't care.
But they asked me, what about this moral
slump and what do you mean by that
and so on?
What do you think it's going to be?
Will it get better or worse and so
on?
Well, I said, Jesus likened the church to
salt and if the salt loses its flavor,
the earth's going to rot.
And I said, we haven't enough salt in
the country to stay the corruption.
The salt has lost its flavor.
And I said, there's nothing, there's no hope
for us but further moral corruption and slump.
Human nature being what it is, there's nothing
for us but that.
And so I just told them frankly, that's
exactly what it's going to be.
But if you get enough born again people,
to make salt, the salt will have a
keeping effect, a saving, conserving, non-corrupting effect.
It'll keep from corruption if the salt has
not lost its flavor.
Then I used the illustration, I used the
illustration from Rochester, New York, where Charles Finney
held a series of meetings in Rochester many
years ago, way back over a century ago
now.
Many of the business people in that place
were converted, leading men.
Finney was a lawyer and a fearless man
if there ever was.
And he so preached that many believed.
And many years after that, the attorney, the
county attorney who had the prosecution of crime
in that area came to Mr. Finney and
he said, Do you know the effects of
that revival years ago?
Rochester has grown to three times its size
as a city.
But there is not now one-third as
much crime in Rochester as there was before
the revival, which meant 900% change.
Well, that's the effect of salt.
It stays the corruption.
And with the increasing corruption that we've got
today in crime, the only one answer, it's
God's people with enough savor, sweet savor of
the salt, to stay the corruption.
But if not, we're in for it, we're
in for it.
Listen, you want another instance of it?
In the days of the Westleys in Britain,
the Westleys in Whitfield when they came on
the scene in Britain, here's a characterizing little
sentence.
Death in the churches, rottenness in public morals,
infidelity coming in like a flood.
That was in the days of the Westleys.
Death in the churches, rottenness in public morals,
infidelity everywhere.
In fact, it's something like it is in
Philadelphia.
People are having to move out of the
city of Philadelphia, a lot of them, get
out of the place because crime is so
rampant in the city of Philadelphia.
I was there just a block away.
I was at the OMF for dinner, the
Overseas Missionary Fellowship for dinner, and then right
around the corner I stayed with the Gordon
Duns, just a block away.
And they said, here's the key to the
house now so you can go and come,
but whatever you do, be sure the door
is well locked because robbers walk right into
the daytime here now.
And it's right in the area, nice, decent
-looking area, but you can just expect maybe
to get waylaid in the middle of the
day or the house invaded.
They just walk in.
And haven't you noticed now you hear about
eight and nine, ten-year-old little gangs
that are robbing houses, robbing houses, robbing houses,
nine and ten-year-olds.
What in the world?
One of them daddies and mothers.
Oh, oh, oh.
My, you ache, and that kind of thing
is going to increase.
The human heart, I said to CBC yesterday,
the human heart being what it is, it's
going to get worse.
Nothing to stop it, nothing to stop it.
You see, the wicked notion today is that
human nature is unfortunate, physically a little something
wrong, nervously needing psychiatric treatment, and so the
psychologists and the physiologists and all the rest
of the philosophers all gang up that this
dear boy that did this, he meant well,
even though he killed his mother-in-law
with a club.
He's just unfortunate.
He's not a criminal.
Well, what in the world are we coming
to?
All based on our stupid ignorance of the
depravity of the human heart.
Do you get it?
I could make a prescription that would settle
a lot of this crime business in a
hurry if they'd listen, but they won't.
I don't expect them to.
The world couldn't take it.
The world wouldn't take it.
Give them 40 lashes, save one, and they
wouldn't have a lot of penitentiaries to build
and support and a lot of psychiatrists to
pay and the taxes to know in.
Give them 40 lashes, they'll quit it.
They'll quit it so fast, it'll surprise them
as well as others.
That's the last thing in the world a
criminal wants is 40 lashes.
They tell me that they often faint and
drop as good as dead before they get
10.
It's so terrible.
Oh, the way it cuts them up.
But that is what crime deserves, and they
ought to get it.
If they won't learn by grace, let them
learn by law.
That's God's remedy.
But where there's no vision, God's people have
lost their vision, then there is no moral
restraint.
That's Proverbs 29.18, if you wish it.
Proverbs 29.18. Now, the cry of Isaiah
sets forth this desperate need in the midst
of our appalling moral darkness and spiritual deterioration.
Isaiah 64, 1 to 3.
You can write that down if you like.
It's a great revival scripture.
It is terrible things which we looked not
for.
Thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at
thy presence.
The last thing in the world that can
happen to a mountain is to flow down.
And yet that's the kind of thing, when
God moves, say unto this mountain, be thou
removed.
Oh, that thou would rend the heavens and
come down.
Let the mountains flow down.
Consider the feeling today, beloved.
Consider the feeling everywhere of uncertainty and instability
today.
The future holding no sure promise of peace
or safety, much less of prosperity.
We're just being torn asunder seven ways in
suspicion.
Look at the suspicion now that's being gendered
between Canada and the United States.
And here's Britain sending back 105 spies to
Russia and Canada flirting with Russia and entertaining
her rulers.
And flirting with Red China.
And, oh, what's it all about?
We don't know what we're doing.
Cross currents of the worst type upon the
earth, distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts
failing them for fear, looking after those things
coming to pass on the earth for there
shall be great distress of nations.
Ah, we're there.
I was telling, I gave them on the
CBC, I gave them this yesterday.
I said, I've got a text of scripture.
Nation was destroyed of nations, for God did
vex them with all adversity.
I said, that's what God's doing.
Because, I said, the only remedy for departure
from light is judgment.
That's what I told them.
Judgment's the only remedy when the nation's turned
out.
I said, the Orient hasn't had as much
light as we've turned down.
We've turned down more light than they ever
have.
And we're going to get it.
The results are going to come on us.
As it was in the days of Noah,
I told them, so it shall be in
the days of the coming of Christ.
As it was in the days of Sodom
and Gomorrah.
What, you're preaching to unsaved men?
Well, amen.
What difference does it make?
They're the fellows that need it, aren't they?
Amen.
Oh, hallelujah.
I don't mind falling into the midst of
some of these fellows.
It gives me a good chance.
Take no thought in that hour what you're
going to say.
It shall be given you.
Amen.
I've had some good times with these boys.
Oh, these were easy yesterday as compared to
others.
Now, in recent years, there's developed so much
change and unreliability and instability that all the
classes of people share the same fears and
express the same doubts and wonder, what is
coming next?
The U.S. News and World Report had
a big article a year or so ago,
The World in a Mess, and doomed to
get messier.
That's where it is now.
All right.
Death in the churches, rottenness in public morals,
infidelity coming in like a flood.
We ought to feel much at home as
it was in the days of the Westleys.
Huh?
And getting worse so that you can't walk
out safely at noontime either.
Don't lock yourself in your house if you
ought to keep from getting robbed.
Then they'll bang the door in and get
you.
Now, there's little, listen, there's little moving in
of God so that people want to live
holy lives.
Among God's people, there's very little invasion of
God to make God's people want to live
holy lives.
Now, that's a condition that's rife everywhere.
Do you know what's happening?
Audiences sit and listen week by week to
lots of good teaching without any evidence of
being transformed, without any desire to live spiritual
lives, no evidence of having met with God,
no transformation of life.
I've heard that down on the West Coast
a lot of preachers, evangelical fundamental preachers, are
quitting.
They're going to go into business.
At least they're going to do something because
they're just preaching to a lot of people
with a pneumonia week after week after week
after week after week and getting nowhere, getting
no results.
Now, I blame the preacher.
He shouldn't quit.
But nevertheless, they're discouraged.
They're defeated, and they don't have the answer.
The answer is personal revival and then some
Elijahs and John the Baptist to point out
God's people, their sins, and get some results,
even if you have to sift them out
and send the most of them away and
then start again.
But at least get something done.
Not being able to get anything done, they're
just quitting because they're just going through the
motions and drawing their salaries and drawing their
breath.
But here's a man who experienced revival in
his church in Ohio.
He writes this.
Stephen Offord quoted this.
I am very often in a spirit of
mourning over the state of American church.
America has a leading part in the Christian
world and sends out many missionaries, but they
can never rise above the spiritual level of
their home church.
Unless you have true revival here, this man
was a missionary himself in India.
He says, unless you have revival here, we
in the foreign lands are going to be
hit hard if you keep sending out missionaries
to us.
Your shallowness will reflect on us.
Now, beloved, don't wonder if we're trying to
uphold some standards here.
We're trying to save a situation, and we're
trying to train disciplined soldiers for Christ.
And the RCMP can discipline them, make them
line up, and the Marines still do some
of it.
But if you try to do a little
of it in God's church, then the saints
begin to howl, Oh, Mr. Maxwell, your regulations
are so unnatural.
What you mean is they don't make too
much room for the flesh, and you want
it.
That's about all it is to it.
And what shall we say about a growing
number of ...
They tell me the growing number, with the
growing turn and trend in a lot of
educational circles to higher training, higher learning, and
all that, the missionary output and volunteers are
falling off correspondingly.
You'd think they ought to go up, wouldn't
you?
Better qualified?
Better qualified, therefore more missionaries.
Ah, look out.
If you cater to the flesh, to the
high-brow-ism, good education's a good thing.
If it's well sanctified, but you've got to
kill them all first.
Yes, the lesser of the dead that die
in the Lord.
But you can't educate the flesh and reap
in the Spirit.
Did you hear that?
Some of you haven't.
You don't dare hear it.
Surely it will require a revival and a
fullness of overflow if ever the need for
missionary personnel is to be forthcoming.
The demand for higher academic training, yet a
fall off in consecrated soldiers for service.
Isn't that something?
Now, we'd better quit right there in order
to give you proper time, a little lap
between here and the next meeting, and we'll
maybe begin right here.
I got about halfway through this morning.
Amen.