I said something last night about this business
of taking a text that begins with the
word and, which is really a mistake, because
that tears it out of context.
Mention the one, ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free, which
is rather incomplete for a text, because it
starts with the word and, and therefore you
have to get an earlier start, if ye
continue in my word, then are ye my
disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
Here's another one you've all preached from it,
Romans 12, 1-2.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service, and you want to get
a good start in verse 1 of it.
Not enough just to preach separation from the
world, and be not conformed to this world,
but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that ye may prove what is
that good and acceptable and perfect will of
God.
The devil goes about as a roaring lion,
but he does far more harm as an
angel of light.
We're not to be ignorant of his devices.
One of his most effective weapons, I'm going
to call by a new term which I
had to invent because I couldn't find it
in the dictionary.
When I can't find a word I want,
I make one.
I've got as much right as anybody else
to make a new word if I want
to.
And this word is trendism.
And by trendism I mean this business of
studying and following the trends of the times,
getting with it, drifting with the drift, swept
along by the current carried about us every
wind and dust, following the craft.
Trendism is the order of the day, and
we're a generation of trendies.
When Paul wrote to Timothy, he wrote about
three trends and warned him appropriately regarding each.
In the first epistle of chapter 10, verse
11, money is the root of all evil.
There is the trend with regard to fame.
Not money, not the making of money, but
the love of money which is the root
of all evil.
Money is dangerous in the pleasure of procuring
it.
It's dangerous in the pride of possessing it.
It's dangerous in the peril of what you
can purchase with it.
It means fame, and a man's life consists
if not in the abundance of the fame
which he possesses.
Then in 2 Timothy, the third chapter, he
warns him with regard to the trend in
the times.
We have that formidable list of the characteristics
of men living in the last days.
You know it very well, in the last
days perilous times shall come.
And then follows the catalog.
It reads pretty much like Romans 1, where
you have the depravity of the human heart
in one case, and the degeneration of the
human race here in the other.
There's a man that has to be blind
in both eyes and bereft of his brains
not to be able to read this downward
trend on the front page of a newspaper
every day.
Then the third trend you find in the
fourth chapter, where the time will come, and
they will not endure sound doctrine, but after
their own last shall they heap to themselves
features having itching ears.
That has to do with the truth, things
and the times and the truth.
They shall turn from the truth to fables,
and the word there is myths.
And of course, everybody knows now about the
demythologizers, and these fellows who say that the
virgin birth, the resurrection, and so on, are
not historical events, didn't necessarily happen, but they
teach us certain lessons.
The demythologizers, if I have to believe that
these precious things were just myths, then I
am certainly going to be mystified, and I'm
going to be mistaken, and I'm going to
be miserable.
We reigned over a generation that cannot endure
sound doctrine.
When our Lord expounded the scriptures to the
Emmaus disciples, you remember that they developed a
holy heartburn.
But here we have men who have itching
ears.
The tragedy of the Church today is we've
come all the way from heartburn to ear
itch.
That's the degeneration of the times.
And each time that Paul deals with the
trend, he turns right from the trend to
Timothy, and he uses to the Lord, but
thou.
And I like the New Translation that says,
but as for you, the law of the
money is the root of all evil, but
as for you, O man of God, flee
these things, and in the last days perilous
times shall come, but as for you, continue
in the things which thou hast learned, and
the time will come when they will not
endure sound doctrine, but as for you, verse
5, watch in all things, endure afflictions, do
the work of an evangelist, make full proof
of thy ministry.
The man of God is not here to
test the spirit of the age.
He's here to condemn it, to correct it,
and to introduce another spirit into it.
He's not a chip swept along by the
current.
He's supposed to be a rock that jerks
out into the stream, and around which the
waters boil, as boil they will, because he
won't be moved.
We're not to be trendists, squeezed into the
mold of this age, but if I may
invent another word, transformists, not just non-conformists,
but transformists by the renewing of our minds.
I want you to think for a moment
of the trickery, the treachery of trendism.
The classic example, I think, is back there
in the Old Testament, when Ahab decided to
go up against Raymond Gindy, if you remember,
and he had scripture for it.
But you have to have something besides the
verse of scripture for adventure.
This is a case of a bad man
trying to do a good thing the wrong
way, and he told him Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat was a good man, but easily swayed,
and they have put on a banquet.
That's about all it takes, you know, a
kick-off supper is about all it takes
to get these Jehoshaphats in on almost any
kind of a thing.
They decided to go up against Raymond Gindy,
and Jehoshaphat said, Well, let's have a word
from the Lord first.
Now, it's a little late to be saying
that, after they'd already decided to go.
That's what we do.
We decide to go and then ask God
to bless it instead of asking God what
to do.
So they decided to go, and they called
in 400 preachers, and any time 400 preachers
can talk before two kings, why, they'll all
be there.
And they all replied unanimously, Go on, Jehoshaphat!
That sounded too unanimous to Jehoshaphat.
I've said many times that whenever 400 preachers
agree, something's bound to be wrong anyway.
So he said, Is there not a prophet
of the Lord here besides?
I like that.
Hadn't we got an oddball in the outpost?
Hadn't we got a squire?
And they had said, Yes, we've got a
fellow by the name of Micaiah, but I
hate him.
That's the best recommendation that old Micaiah ever
had.
So they sent out, you remember that prophet
among the 400 who took horns of iron
and waved them and said, Jehoshaphat!
He had a little dash of Hollywood theatric.
Bad enough to be a false prophet when
you're a ham actor beside.
That's really felt.
Well, they went after old Micaiah, and have
you noticed what that eunuch said to him?
He did not say two kings have decided
to go up against them again.
He said the prophets have been noticed.
The clergy recommend it.
And not the devil can ever get the
clergy to recommend anything.
Victory's won, they think.
But old Micaiah said, What the Lord saith
unto me, that will I see.
He was not a trend in that case.
The trend was toward Raymond Gilead, but Micaiah
was not getting told in it.
You have there institutional religion on one side
and the voice of dissent on the other.
Elijah on Carmel, Amos at Bethel, John the
Baptist out in the wilderness, our Lord, and
the Pharisees.
The trend is always toward institutionalism.
Judaism started out with a glowing experience of
God, wound up with institutionalism.
The Reformation started out with an experience, wound
up with a performance.
It stayed true.
That's always the course.
And one of the leading theologians in my
own denomination, Dr. Finley Edge, a beautiful seminary,
says he thinks we Southern Baptists are at
least halfway around in the circle.
The trend toward institutionalism, they didn't realize how
far gone the state of religion was around
Bethel until Amos showed up.
It takes an Amos to reveal the situation.
They didn't realize how low Judaism had sunk
until our Lord appeared and gave his opinion
to the Pharisees.
Now, when the prophet warns of the trend,
he's resented always by those who belong to
the trend and don't want their status quo
disturbed.
Barclay says the subtle ministry began to resent
the intrusion of wandering prophets who often disturbed
their congregation.
The subtle ministry always tends to resent the
itinerant event.
Now, this is not Havner talking, this is
Barclay.
You understand, that's what he said.
Trendism is treacherous, and sometimes it looks so
good that you dare not lift up your
voice against it.
Beloved, we are in danger of being carried
off our feet today by trends, and the
test of any issue is this.
Not what it is in itself, but which
way is it headed?
What is it a part of?
Whither does it tend?
What ways is it riding?
Not what is it right now, but where
is it going, and where will I be
if I go on with it?
I think that would solve a great many
problems about specific issues today.
Now, you can argue about smoking and dancing
and Sunday baseball and TV and all the
rest of the things until the end of
the age.
The real test of all these things, as
far as I'm concerned, is to see them
in their context.
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do
evil.
Wide is the gate that leads to destruction,
and many go in thereat.
There are things that are not evil in
themselves when taken out of their context.
Mead offered the idols.
It wasn't evil in itself.
Mead has no moral quality, but Paul saw
the context.
He said, I will touch it.
I believe you can apply that principle to
other things today.
We have to see the thing in the
light of what it is a part of.
You take the trend with regard to worship
that you mentioned here a while ago.
You know very well the trend is away
from experience to performance.
Sunday morning Christianity can be a hateful thing
in the sight of God.
It can be a part of the trend
of the times from reality to ritual, and
I-D-O-L, idol worship in Africa
is no worse than I-D-L-E,
idol worship in America.
I used to be thrilled over a church
full of people on Sunday morning, and of
course I still try to remember every time
I face it.
I'm glad they're here and not somewhere else.
I thank God for the opportunity of preaching
the word of God to them, but I'm
purposely frank with you.
Sometimes I am depressed instead of delighted by
some Sunday morning congregations in church.
I can't forget the first chapter of Isaiah,
for one thing.
I can't forget God thundering in those days,
saying, I'm fed up, I'm sick, I'm tired
of all this.
I was over in Ashland, Kentucky, some time
ago, in a Bible study, and the editor
of our own paper there, and I only
mention this because all you have to do
is put your crowd in the same, in
the space here, our editor said the only
difference between 8th century D.C. Israel and
much of 20th century A.D. Baptist is
the date on the calendar.
We think we please God when we go
through prescribed and accepted church activities, whether or
not we are new persons through an experience
with God.
We delight in beautiful music, orderly worship services,
precise and clever sermons, attendance records, and oversubscribed
budgets, but often leave the church house without
ever really hearing a word from or saying
a word to God.
This kind of worship by the Israelites was
actually condemned as a sin by God.
It's possible that there are cases where it
can be a sin to go to church.
God hated their solemn services and turned the
deaf ears of their father's songs because their
manner of life was ungodly.
That disturbs me, beloved.
You said I despise your solemn meetings.
You're very fond of it.
You bring your tithes.
So what?
When Amos goes up to Bethel, come to
Bethel and transgress.
Multiply transgression.
You bring your tithes.
This you like to do.
You're fond of it, but God despises it.
You say, well, that's all the Old Testament.
Well, how about Matthew 15, 7, 8, where
our Lord quotes from Isaiah to the religious
people of his day, who went to church,
read the Bible, prayed in public, were all
tithers, were moral folk separated from the world.
Well, honor me with your lips and your
mouth, but your heart is far from me,
all such worship is vain.
And worse still, it's downright evil, and instead
of being glory means ought to be repented
of.
We'd better wake up, beloved.
We're deceiving nobody but ourselves, even the world,
since there's a difference between a force and
a part, and certainly God's not not.
And then the trend today is toward the
homogenization and the amalgamation of all mankind into
one faceless mass.
Black and white have been smudged into indefinite
graves.
Light would have communion with darkness, righteousness with
unrighteousness, believers with infidels, a temple of God
with idols.
And we would establish concord between Christ and
Belial.
And concord is the Latin-ish form of
the word in the original from which we
get the musical term symphony.
There is no symphony, no harmony between Christ
and Belial.
I've heard of the unfinished symphony.
This is the impossible symphony.
There is no symphony between Christ and Belial.
Now, according to the new pitch, Martin Luther
should have had a summit meeting with the
Pope, and the Martins died in fame.
Wycliffe, Kramer, Huss, Savonarola should have been diplomats
instead of prophets.
We're living in the day of Erasmus, not
the day of Luther.
You remember that Erasmus was a contemporary of
Luther, and he was a smooth fellow.
They said he could doctor up notes, and
it sounded like yes, and he could work
on yes, but it sounded like no.
I think I've heard a few of these.
And the trend is toward a genial, amiable,
good-onionism, and the old-fashioned head-on
collision between Christianity and this world has been
toned down to pleasant peaceful coexistence.
One thing is certain, beloved, the new policy
is not working.
It can't work.
Lawlessness abounds, and love abates, as Jesus said
it would, as the world hurtles on to
disaster.
Christianity is popular.
We're the Ian crowd now.
We're no longer the disinherited.
I preached some time ago at the Church
where I belong, Greensboro.
We have a lovely church there.
We had 38 years of powerful gospel preaching
under Dr. Clyde Turner, and he wrote a
history of that church, and he said less
than 100 years ago the members of this
church were laughed at, and the pastor was
hissed when he walked the streets.
So some time ago I said they're not
laughing at us now.
Nobody is hissing at us now.
How come?
They say times are better.
No, you don't believe that, not if you're
intelligent.
How come?
I know how come.
We've got a degenerate brand of Christianity that
does not bring on the opposition of the
world, as it did in those days.
We have settled in Sodom.
We've joined the affluent society.
We are rich and increased with goods that
don't need anything.
We've forgotten that we're strangers and pilgrims.
I used to hear people talk about being
homesick for heaven, but I don't hear anybody
talk about that now.
Why, you've got Social Security, you've got Medicare.
Who's homesick for heaven?
I heard of a preacher marrying a couple
the other day, and he said, When you
stand by this man in sickness or health,
with or without Medicare, why, we've got everything!
We've got everything!
I tell you, beloved average Sunday morning congregation
that I face now is in no mood
to sing in the sweet by-and-by.
Have you ever tried the average church congregation
today, living out in suburbia, have you ever
tried to get a rise out of that
crowd on a tent or a cottage, twice
your back peg, or build a mansion for
me over there?
You try that if you want to throw
a chill over the meat and make it
that.
We have merged into the old age.
Now, this age is a pretty good place
to build Christian character.
After all, you can't sharpen an axe on
a pound of butter.
It takes a grindstone.
But a grindstone will dull an axe or
sharpen an axe, depending on how you hold
the axe.
My daddy used to have an old grindstone,
and I was the official crank-turner.
Any crank can turn a crank.
He put me to turn in the crank,
and he would hold the axe so, if
you held it so, it'd sharpen, but if
you held the axe down, it would dull
it.
This age is going to do something to
every preacher, to everybody else, depending on how
you go at it and how you rub
up against it.
I'm afraid that more people are being dulled
than sharpened by this age today.
Of course, our Lord said, as the Father
sent me, even so send I you.
We're supposed to get out there, yes.
But on the pretext that the end justifies
the means, we are not only in the
world, but sometimes we're of it.
We join its societies and enter into its
culture, and what a lot of people think
is the world becoming more Christian is just
Christians becoming more worldly.
Christianity made its greatest strides when it was
poor and persecuted.
Dr. Campbell Morgan has said that the Church
of England fared better in the persecution under
Queen Mary than the patronage of Queen Elizabeth.
He said the Salvation Army got along better
when it was pelted with sticks and stones
than when its general was smiled upon by
a king.
He said Methodism fared better under scorn than
when its leaders were received into court.
This pringism reaches out in all directions, the
Supreme Court ruling on prayer in the schools.
I'm not a lawyer.
There may be legal and constitutional justification for
it, but the trend in our national life
is away from God.
And this ruling, as well as all attempts
to remove the name of God from coinage
and the national anthem and elsewhere, just to
please a few incidents, is part of that
trend.
And anything that aids and abets that trend
should not have been supported in Christianity.
You see the trend, of course, toward anarchy
that we talked about here last night, lawlessness
still abounding because it does the love of
the majority, it really says, to wax cold.
You see the trend toward universalism.
They tell us now that everybody's saved, they
just don't know it, and it's our business
to tell them.
You know that Dr. Moricara and others are
saying that, and you see how it cuts
the nerve of missions and takes the fire
out of evangelism and the urgency out of
preaching.
The trend is toward the secularization of the
sacred.
With regard to the Lord's Day, for instance,
our statement in that regard, and one of
our great Church bodies, says the Lord's Day
should be observed by rest from secular employment
with two exceptions, works of mercy and necessity.
Now, there are other things today that are
being accepted which are neither works of mercy
nor necessity.
You see the trend in our Church music.
They tell us that if an African convert
wants to express his religion in jazz, let
him bring his bongo drums to church.
Maybe rock and roll can be made to
praise the Lord.
So we have Duke Ellington in Fifth Avenue
Presbyterian Church in New York.
He used to take the Church to the
jungle, now we bring the jungle to the
Church.
He used to say that he sings in
minors and only the gospel in major, and
we won't be hearing that anymore, the way
things are going now.
You see Hollywood portraying the Bible, and I
soon listened to a gangster lecture on honesty.
They have no business portraying the Bible.
The Church in the show business, Christian nightclubs,
Christian theaters, Christian church-a-terps to match
the discotheques today.
Spurgeon was invited by the showman Barnum to
come over to this country and lecture and
was offered an eye-spat fee.
Now today I know what we'd say.
We'd say, well, the devil's had that money
long enough.
Go over there and preach, maybe you can
do him some good.
You know what Spurgeon said?
He sent back that Reed Act 1310.
You know what that says?
This was from Mr. Barnum.
Thou child of the devil, thou enemy of
all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert
the right ways of the Lord?
Evidently, Spurgeon was not a tringer.
Then you have the trend in professionalism in
the ministry.
Preachers once fell to cold priests, and now
the temptation is to drift with this computerized
age, pro-life, politics, know the right people.
After all, I'm not Elijah, God's not sending
ravens to feed prophets anymore.
I've got to look out for no more.
Maybe that's why some prophets become propheteers.
Something happens to the soul of a preacher
when he feathers his nest in this world.
The eagle in him dies when he moves
from the crag to the cave.
Spurgeon said, I'd rather be a lean bird
in the woods than a fat bird in
a cave.
We're getting tired of old-fashioned preaching.
They are telling us now that the preacher
has been at the center of the stage
too long, that he ought to retire into
the wings now and let the layman take
the center of the stage.
Well, I believe in the equipping ministry over
there in Ephesians.
It's been there all the time.
I haven't gotten too excited.
It's been there, just like a lot of
other things that some folks seem to have
discovered just later.
But it's been there all the time, and
I think it's the business of a preacher
to equip the saints for the work of
their ministry.
Yes, but there are other functions of a
preacher, and you must not forget that.
And while he is an equipper, God also
called him to be a prophet.
And nobody can take the place of the
prophet in the pulpit today.
How shall they hear without a preacher?
It doesn't say how shall they hear without
a brass band.
How shall they hear without a preacher?
And don't let any preacher ever forget that
part of his mission, whatever else he may
be called upon to do.
We revise church discipline.
I am discovering that a lot of church
covenants are being revised these days, and they
omit all references to such things as dancing
and drinking and so on.
They say, well, we believe in dealing with
principles, not particulars.
Well, I do too.
But the worldly element in the church uses
that argument to erase all lines of demarcation
between the church and the world.
The trend today is toward the breaking down
of all of these disciplines in the home
and in the government and in the church,
and anything that relaxes our standards is part
of that trend.
Somebody wrote to Billy Graham the other day
and said, I'm interested in a certain church,
but they are very Puritanical, and I don't
know what to do about it.
And Billy said, you'd better join that church.
He said, one thing is certain, that whatever
mistakes Puritanism may have made in Puritanism will
never save us.
And that is well said.
Now, they say, don't name anything today.
Well, that's not the way Jesus went about
it.
The woman at Jacob's well, he talked about
where's the best place to work it, and
that's a good church, and the water of
life, and that's a good church.
She didn't get into conviction until he named
the trouble.
Go call thy husband.
She'd had too many of them already.
That was the trouble.
And she said, you must be a prophet.
The business of a prophet is to specify.
Then he had a sermon on how to
preach to us to convert nobody.
He said, preach on sin, but never name
any of the sins of your congregation.
And I'll go out and shake their heads
and say, sin's terrible, but they won't do
a thing, and they'll worry about it.
But just name something, and then things will
start happening.
Now, there are some things that are all
right in himself.
All things are lawful, but there is the
rule of expediency, enslavement, edification, example, and the
doubtful thing.
Five things, I haven't time to go into
it.
And if that questionable thing can clear those
hurdles, it's all right.
But we want to be careful also not
to cause to stumble these little ones who
believe anybody who causes them to stumble is
better off with an earlstone around his neck
cast into the depths of the sea.
When people ask what's wrong with this and
what's wrong with that, they're already off on
their own foot to begin with.
They're asking how near the precipice can I
walk without going over?
How worldly can I be and still be
a Christian?
Why don't they ask how much like Christ
can I be, and how little like the
world?
It's exactly backwards when they put it that
way.
I've been in this thing a long time,
and I have never yet had a born
-again, Bible-reading, spirit-filled Christian submitted to
Jesus Christ as Lord whoever asked this question,
because they're past all that.
And I don't think we're spending a lot
of time today dealing with issues that are
really not the issue.
I heard of some preachers some time ago
discussing their church problem.
One said, Our church is just too close
to the lake.
Another one said, We're the same distance from
the lake, but that's not our problem.
Our problem is we're not close enough to
the Lord.
Now, you get close enough to the Lord
and the lake won't make any difference.
And we worry about TV and Friday night
ball games and all these other things, but
that's not the main problem.
If people love our Lord, these things won't
matter much.
And we need to beware not only of
the treachery but the tyranny of this thing.
If you don't go along with it, you're
an oddball.
A dedicated Christian is always out of step
with the times.
He's not a conformist, he's a transformist.
This tyranny goes all the way up even
to the clothes we wear.
Why, there are people today who are wearing
clothes they wouldn't be caught dead in if
they weren't to start.
And I don't think that you have to
look like something to get dragged in, but
the New Testament does have much to say
about modesty and dress as well as deportment.
But who dares touch that with a forty
-foot pole today?
My good wife dresses neatly and I'm proud
of her.
And she says many a time, I go
to the dress shops and I wonder what
in the world can a Christian woman do
today about this problem of where the folks
are wearing clothes.
Well, you say it's not the clothes but
the heart that matters.
Yes, but the world doesn't see your heart,
it sees your clothes.
Well, you eat or drink or whatsoever you
do, do all to the glory of God.
I do know one thing, I'm glad when
fall comes and the Saints get back in
their clothes, if not in their right minds.
But anyway, there is no worse thing in
the world than the bondage of creedism, a
generation of rubber stamps, even teenagers talk about
being different.
They look alike, dress alike, think alike, talk
alike.
Now, my text does not say be not
conformed, period.
I'm not preaching mere nonconformity.
As I said, the first words end, go
back up in the first verse.
The Pharisees were nonconformists.
Some of the most unreflective, un-Christlike people
I've ever known, were fundamental evangelical and free
millennials, sound as a dog, theological, and separated
from the world ethically, straight in creed and
strict in conduct, saying, I'm dwelling in Beulah
Land.
You couldn't see any pigs in the farm
grass anywhere in the neighborhood.
I hate to hear a fellow saying, I'm
dwelling in Beulah Land, all he's got to
throw for us is crab apples.
Not just nonconform, but transformed by the renewing
of the mind.
Now, the tragedy of creedism is this, the
times cry out, and in such a time
we make a great mistake of not tackling
these things in their insipid stages.
Churchill says that communism should have been strangled
at birth.
That's where we missed it, 1933.
Recognize those gangsters as the decent government.
Then when it started in China, sent a
delegation over there and said it's just an
agrarian reform.
And then when we had victory in our
hand, Korea called MacArthur home.
Should have been strangled at birth.
If we wait, until these Koreans become tolerance,
it's too late.
Whether in one's own personal life or in
your church, nip it in the bud.
Don't let the little snake become a bore
constrictor.
But nobody wants to warn today against earlier
symptoms of theological and moral malignity.
Because they'll call you a witch hunter if
you do.
They'll call you a pessimist, a calamity howler.
And the only time to deal effectively with
evil in our lives and in our churches
is when it starts moving.
Not after it gains momentum and runs wild.
Better still, overcome evil with good.
I heard of some small boys in a
parade.
One of them was out of step, and
they checked and found that he had a
transistor radio inside his coat, and he was
marching to music from a thousand miles away.
Well, that's the way a Christian ought to
be, as he marches through this world.
We're out of step.
We're in step with another drummer.
Now, you may be saying, well, you're getting
old.
Listen, beloved, these convictions were settled in my
soul as a young man.
They are true to scripture, true to history,
and true to my own experience.
At the end of the First World War,
I was a preacher.
Woodrow Wilson had gone to Paris to start
the League of Nations.
It looked like we were going to have
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
man.
Things were looking rosy.
Boswick had just written his three meanings, and
Parks Cadman had just started preaching over that
strange construction known as a radio.
And I caught the fever.
I thought my preaching ought to be adapted
to the modern mind, and not very modern,
not much mind.
But I started adapting it to the modern
mind.
You know, that church filled up with sinners
because they never got any conviction.
They liked that preaching.
It greased their consciences.
And I'm sorry to say some of them
went to hell under that kind of preaching.
And then one day God knocked all the
props out and closed all the doors, and
I had no word to preach.
And I came back to my old home
down here in Catover County, on top of
that high hill.
My father died that winter, a bit disappointed,
I think.
And my mother was left, and we had
only a grocery store.
And one night, somebody robbed it and burned
it to the ground.
And I had nowhere to go and nothing
to do.
And the good Lord spoke to my heart
and said, if you will go back and
preach what you did when you were a
boy, I'll take care of you.
I'll spare the trash.
You couldn't have argued me out of that.
He's alive, you know.
They're all alive, and they're arguing about those
things.
Couldn't have argued me out of it.
I sat in a blackberry patch in the
red direction of Mason's Christianity and liberalism, saying
he didn't want to wake me up in
anything else.
I owe a lot to that president.
Well, I took God up on his offer.
And the very first thing I had to
do was go back to that church and
for three years stand in that pulpit and
preach it right.
That was the first thing I had to
do.
And from that day to this blessing, I
have never left for an open door.
Now, how do you explain that otherwise?
There's no other explanation.
I didn't know what to do.
There wasn't a thing on earth I couldn't
do.
I've never lifted a finger for a date
from that time to this.
I have no organization.
I don't even have a secretary.
I have written my books this way, typed
them off.
I have nothing.
And yet through these years, if the letters
would quit coming, I'd have to quit going.
It's just as simple as all that.
But the Lord has done it.
The devil tried to scare me.
He said he won't stand for that kind
of preaching.
I said, you start to do it.
Now, from the way I look, he may
think the devil is right, but I'm getting
on my way.
I'm doing fine, thank you.
And you don't have to wait for some
talent scout to find you.
The man who will give God's message will
always have a place.
I believe that.
I'm getting out of the point where I'm
supposed to sit in a rocking chair and
wait for my Social Security and reminisce about
the good old days that weren't so good,
some of them, after all.
I'm not about to quit.
I've been praying for the Lord.
I've been praying with old Hezekiah for an
extinction of time.
I've been praying with old Jabez for an
enlargement of coasts.
I've been praying with old Elisha for an
end to human power.
You know, six years ago, they thought I
was going to die, lay in a hospital
in Greensboro, point of death.
A fine Christian nurse, head nurse, who is
here this week, said I'm going to take
his case that night, spoke to her yesterday.
And I looked out from that old oxygen
tent, and when she wasn't watching me, she
was praying.
And you like to have somebody like that
around at a time like that.
I stuck out my hand and said, I
haven't got breath enough to pray.
You pray, and we'll claim the promise that
the two of us agree, and we did.
And I'm frank to say to you, I
believe God touched me because you don't get
over what I had in a few days,
and I was home just shortly thereafter.
They were praying for me all the way
from the Holy Bible Institute, down to the
Baptist Adventists who come from Jacksonville, Billy Graham's
team in Miami.
Billy called up my wife that night and
said, Ruth and I have just been praying,
and I think the Lord is going to
raise his hand to get up some more
sermons for the rest of us to preach.
I lay there fluttering my back, and old
Billy sent me the letters that I used
to affirm the last Sunday over our decision.
He said, I had a little trouble getting
your 45 and my 22, but the Lord
blessed it.
And I testify to you today, beloved, that
I'm just having the time of my life
on this postscript that the Lord has given
me.
I don't know how long it's been alive.
It's six years of it now.
But you know it sort of changes the
picture when you've got a postscript and you're
living on a postscript.
It's like looking through the other end of
a telescope.
It sort of changes the perspective of everything.
But I may outlive you, and so I
beseech you, beloved, in the fact of it.
But where the trend is, and I walked
that old hill down there in Catoba County
when I was a boy, and as I've
told you, I slipped from it temporarily.
But I said, Lord, and you tell me
what to say, and I'll try to say
it.
All in God's world, if he ever has
seen one of these, be faithful and take
care of the rest of it.
You know what a picture it is.
The first time I ever went out to
preach, they asked me over there a phrase
from the country.
And I mean phrase, from the country, to
preach.
My daddy and I got hold of an
old model Ford, got a neighbor who took
us one of these with the bulb horn,
you remember?
Some of them, 30 horsepower and 20 of
them dead.
And I got over there and looked down
the aisle, looked like a mile to the
pulpit, and my daddy said he'd stay back
there and pray, and I'd go up there
and talk.
And the pastor stood on one side and
the state evangelist on the other, and that
was my first try.
I did the best I could, and I've
been trying to do that ever since.
And that's all God ever asks of anybody,
be thou faithful.
And at the last day when I'm no
longer here as well, I'm now good and
not green, not successful, but faithful.
And finally let me remind you there is
one trend that I'm in step with, that
divine far-off event toward which the whole
creation moves.
And I don't think it's far off either.
My Lord's coming back.
Paul Harvey said it is the Christian conviction
that Christ will return and take over when
mortals have made a hopeless mess of self
-governing.
Well, then he ought to be here just
any time, because we've made the mess.
He may show up any day.
That's the way God's moving.
And our biggest responsibility is to find out
which way he's moving, get going that direction.
That's history within history.
Let's get in the stream of God's purpose,
not be trendest, but transformeth, not mere non
-conformist, but transformeth by the renewing of our
mind.