When revival comes, people not only see themselves
sinners, but they get right with God.
They get right with God.
Well, how do we get right?
In the last chapter of Hosea, we have
instructions for getting right with God.
People are out of tune with the Lord,
coming back in tune.
Take with you words and turn to the
Lord and say unto him, Take away all
iniquity.
Now, iniquity is the general term for anything
that's unholy.
And the way to have a reviving is
to come to the Lord in sincerity and
say, Take away all iniquity.
Of course, we've got to face up to
what iniquity is before we can even want
it taken away.
And see how our lives are failing the
Lord's purpose for us before we can want
something better.
And then what will the result of reviving
be?
In Psalms 85,6 we have, Wilt
thou not revive us again?
What for?
That thy people may rejoice in thee.
The result of reviving is joy in the
Lord.
Joy in the Lord.
Now, let me ask you, how long has
it been since you've seen people just bubbling
over with the joy of the Lord?
Well, I've got a little more personal.
How long has it been since you yourself
just bubbled over with the joy of the
Lord?
Maybe you've never seen anyone revived.
Maybe you've never been revived yourself since the
day you were saved.
Well, it's the time to pray for revival.
After I'd been in China a number of
years, the missionaries all over Shantung Province, where
I worked in northeast China, began to pray
for revival.
We had about 50 missionaries, about 80 churches,
about 80 preaching places that were not churches,
preaching chapels.
We had 86 country schools where some of
them weren't teacher schools, where a teacher taught
four grades.
The village furnished the building, and every pupil
furnished their own desk and stew.
And the villagers paid a portion of the
teachers' wages.
I couldn't call it a salary, it'd be
five or six dollars a month.
And then we pieced out what they couldn't
pay with money from the foreign mission board,
and every year we took back a little
bit that we gave and let them give
a little bit more.
And it was a public school, free for
everybody.
And those who could pay something did, and
those who couldn't, didn't.
And then in several market towns we had
six grades of work, two teacher schools.
But just imagine the hundreds of youngsters we
were reaching with the gospel.
When the Depression came in 1932, all those
schools had to be closed instantly, every country
school, which was a tragedy indeed, because the
villagers were not able to keep them going
completely.
They would have been in a few years.
Well, the gospel was being spread, and we
wanted to see a gracious reviving in our
churches.
After praying for some years for reviving in
the city where I worked, the pastor, I
suppose the suggestion made to him by the
missionaries, set aside the first day of every
month as a day of prayer to pray
for revival.
And everybody who could went to the house
of God at 8 o'clock, stayed till
12 and went back at 2 and stayed
till 5.
That was a day of prayer.
We had a leader each hour, a different
leader each hour, not to talk, not even
talk about praying.
He only read a passage of scripture, and
we chose a hymn, and then we spent
the time praying.
We prayed for a whole year, and all
the Christians who couldn't go to the church
knew that the first day of the month
was a day of prayer.
And as soon as they, any time during
the day when their mind didn't have to
be on their work or what they were
doing, they were supposed to be lifting their
hearts to the Lord in prayer for reviving
at our church.
We prayed a whole year, no reviving came.
The second year, third year, fourth year, no
reviving came.
We did see, however, greater blessing on our
work than we'd had before.
But lo, instead of seeing a gracious revival,
China at that time was trying to jump
from an absolute monarchy where the people had
no voice whatsoever in the government to a
democratic form of government.
No nation has ever done that, and China
didn't either.
They fought it out for years and suffered
greatly from trying to make such a leap
at one time.
People in different places of China wanted their
man up in Peking as president.
And in the province where I lived, the
western end of the province wanted one man
for governor, and the people over to the
eastern part of the province wanted another man
for governor, and all they knew was to
fight it out.
And it was not long until, and all
the common people wanted, I'm for the man
who will not let his soldiers march across
my little farm.
If my crop's destroyed, my children will go
hungry.
And that's all they knew.
With one man and a hundred able to
read and one woman and a thousand, you
can realize they were not very well informed
on government affairs.
Well, the next day after the city of
Nanking was burned in 1927, all American missionaries
received a message, a telegram from the American
consul, proceed to the ports at once.
And British missionaries, we had a few Swedish
missionaries out there and a few from Norway,
received the same message.
And we all had to go to ports
and pack up.
Those of us in the northern part of
Shantung province, 28 of us went out to
the port of Chifu.
We had a few families on furlough.
And the others went down to the port
of Qingdao.
We had only two mission residences in Chifu,
and there were no houses for rent.
There was so much communism in the Chinese
city that the American consul requested us not
to go into the Chinese city.
They didn't call it communism at that time.
They called it the Western atmosphere, anti-West,
anti-Western atmosphere.
Well, it surely was an era of anti
-Westernism because they'd just been stirred up by
communism.
Well, the city church was out on the
main street where we could attend the Chinese
church.
They had the Chinese pastor.
And we could go to church Sunday and
Wednesday evening, and that settled.
Humanist speaking, we would have had a very
difficult time, packed up 28 people in two
residences, children and spencers and couples.
Well, we had a glorious time.
We had spiritual sense enough to know that
the Lord could take even the work of
the devil, even what the devil may have
brought about in that war, to work out
for good for his children if we committed
it to him.
And that's surely what we wanted to do.
And we began to meet every morning after
breakfast at 8 o'clock to pray together
for an hour.
We wanted to pray that we would not
miss what the Lord wanted to teach us
in permitting us to be torn away from
mission work that we loved more than we
loved our own lives and packed up down
the end of Port City where we couldn't
do anything.
Well, we had one other subject for prayer
when we began.
Some of the Chinese military officials were Russians,
and others were officers that had been trained
in Russia, and they were permitting their soldiers
to break windows out of preaching chapels.
And we knew if that armor were victorious,
our Chinese Christians would be in for persecution.
And, of course, we wanted to pray for
the Lord to enable them to show Christ
in them, and persecution came.
Well, it was not long, friends, until we
were praying not from 8 to 9, but
from 8 to 10 and 8 to 11
and 8 to 12.
And no one was remembering to pray for
the Chinese whom we'd left behind.
We were all praying for ourselves.
And the Lord just got us away from
our work.
Now, to show us what kind of missionaries
we were, I'm sure that never a more
dedicated group ever went to a mission field
or got put together than those 50 missionaries
in North China.
We put in, some of us, 15 hours
a day at our work.
We kept long prayer lists.
Some got on their knees once a day
to pray for those lists, through those lists.
Some got on their knees twice a day
to pray through those long prayer lists.
And I'll tell you, we were doing everything
that we possibly could to advance that mission
work and spread the knowledge of our Lord
and Savior.
But, you know, friends, it's kind of dangerous
to ask the Lord to do something for
you.
If you're not ready for Him to do
it, you may find Him doing it.
And that's just what we found.
The Lord began to show ourself, friends.
We began to see that we were just
a crowd of dedicated self, thoroughly dedicated self
doing jobs for God.
And we were doing the Lord's work and
calling on Him to come and help us
do His work.
And the Lord has something better for His
people than dedicated self doing jobs for Him.
And He had to get us away from
our work to teach us.
Fortunately for us at that time, one of
our number, Miss Jane Lyde from South Carolina,
perhaps one of the most brilliant minds that
the mission board ever sent out, had just
returned from Southern California where she had to
come home the autumn before to bring her
sick sister, Miss Florence, out.
She was not even able to go to
church on Sunday while she was there.
But during the day, she looked after her
sister all day.
They had an apartment and a private home.
So there were people there on week evenings.
So the only service that Miss Lyde could
get to during the week was to a
Bible class held nearby in a home where
one woman taught one subject all winter.
I don't know whether it was in a
home or not.
May have been in some little preaching hall.
Anyway, Miss Jane, Miss Florence, got tucked in
bed at bedtime, and Miss Jane slipped out
to that Bible class.
And what do you suppose, what subject do
you suppose that woman taught all winter?
Christ our life.
Christ living His life in us.
Christ expressing Himself through our personality all the
time.
This old sinful nature not in control anymore.
Paul and his epistles called it living dead
to yourself.
We never heard anything like that.
The best we knew was to dedicate yourself
to the Lord and work for Him, and
we were ever more doing it.
But we surely were not pleased with our
work.
We had a little handful in our churches
who were just on fire for the Lord.
Inside in the big cities perhaps we had
ten or twelve like that.
Maybe out in the villages we'd have only
one or two in the churches.
And we wanted all of our church members
to be just like that little handful that
were just on fire, everywhere they went and
telling people how wonderful it was to have
a living Lord living inside of them instead
of going to a temple to bow down
before a dead idol.
Dumb idol, never had had any life.
Well, the Lord began to show us that
the trouble was that He had to begin
with us before He could answer our prayers
for revival.
Miss Jane came back full of her subject.
That meant full of Christ.
And she was so different.
We all wanted to know her secret.
We wanted to know the Lord like she
knew Him.
And we asked her to share some of
that teaching with us at our morning prayer
time.
And we learned from this book that that's
the secret of the Lord working.
It's Christ living through us, expressing Himself through
our personalities all the time.
And I had trouble for years over that
passage in 2nd chapter of Galatians where Paul
said, I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live.
But it's not I that live.
Christ liveth in me.
Well, I just couldn't understand why Paul could
have an experience like that and I couldn't.
Now, I didn't have Paul's heredity and all
of his marvelous Old Testament Bible teaching.
I didn't have his great mind.
But I had his Savior.
And if Paul could say I'm dead, why
couldn't I say I was dead?
Birth was always too much a lie.
Oh, I could just think of more things
to do for the Lord.
And my work was being in charge of
a girls' boarding school.
And I taught all the Bible and all
the English.
And they had six years of English.
They started English at the 7th grade and
went through the 12th.
And where there were no schools in the
village, they had to come into the city.
Children would have to come in for 1st
grade.
And then I taught all the Bible, 1st
grade up.
Of course, we had Bibles just like we
had history.
Every day for the younger lower grades and
three times a week for the upper grades.
And by combining grades, I was able to
teach it all.
I led chapel about three times, the Chinese
teachers one.
We took turns because I knew the Bible
better and could give them all what they
needed.
The Chinese teachers knew that and asked me
to do it.
And at night, sometimes after teaching all day
and had a lot of preparation to do,
I would go into the city, walk two
miles, no other way to go unless I
rode a donkey.
And that wasn't very comfortable.
I preferred to walk to a chapel where
a Chinese man was a pastor, a preacher.
Our pastor was going in there to preach.
And to get the students to come, they
asked me to go in and teach an
English class.
And I didn't know any better than to
go.
And the woman that I lived with, that
saint from Alabama, Miss Alice, she was an
older missionary than I was.
Used to say, Bertha, the Lord is not
a slave driver.
You ought not to go into that city
at night.
Well, the only thing I ever did was
to take my proper sleep.
About seven hours at night.
The Chinese don't go around working like Americans
to make money and get else's.
They take it easy.
They have two hours off at noon from
12 to 2.
And of course, schools go the same way
because the teachers all had to have their
rest after their noonday meal.
And so I got my rest and got
in another hour.
And I always got in some kind of
walk.
I always kept up my walking for exercise.
That was all I could do.
It was raining, I just walked back and
forth across the porch.
Till I'd walked about two or three miles.
Measured my walking with a clock on a
watch.
Well, anyway, I did take care of my
health.
But I found out I didn't.
That was not of the Lord going to
that.
But that's just the way we went.
And we lived just as frugally as we
could out of our $45 which we had
left after we took out the tents for
the Lord to put where we thought he
directed it.
We had a lot of churches to help.
We couldn't help just the city church because
we didn't, we were going to the other
churches anyway, good deal.
And there was absolutely nothing that we wouldn't
have done for that mission worth.
And yet, friends, as that moment showed us
from the Word of God that we ought
not to be living anymore, that the Lord
put us in the position of death when
we were saved.
Of course, not actually dead.
We'd have had to been buried in the
dirt of grace.
A grave of dirt, not just a grave
of water that we were buried in announcing
to the world that we had died in
Christ.
That we'd taken his death as our death.
But the Lord showed us that we had
to live in that position of death that
the Lord had shown, that the Lord saw
us in by counting the death of his
Son to us.
Well, that was something new to us.
And I'll tell you, that meant live a
holy life.
And of course, we wouldn't have been there
working and had any sin that we'd known
about in our lives.
But oh, how much began to come out.
Attitudes and attitudes toward each other.
And proud of our mission work.
Oh, so proud when we went up to
mission meeting every year for that letter that
was going to be sent, a report on
our work for the year that was going
to be forwarded to the foreign mission board
if we'd had a lot of converse during
the World War.
And we didn't know that a lot of
them were not really born of the Spirit.
Well, the Lord began to show us ourselves
and we began to make apologies to each
other and get right.
And she talked about Christ living his life
and all the things that didn't show Christ
in us had to come out.
We went down to Chippewa in March.
And people go out to war.
They couldn't fight in the daytime.
And when kings go out to war, that
means they go out in the spring in
the east.
They have nothing but one blanket they carry
on their shoulders and no tents and no
heaters.
And they would die, freeze to death out
in the winter in North China with one
wrapped up in a blanket lying out in
the field.
So the war is over in the middle
of November.
And then that's what they call they get
home before the big cold comes.
And then they come back after Easter and
pick up again right where they left.
And one army in our city that spent
the winter there came out the next spring
with different insignia on their collars.
They'd change sides during the winter.
Came on back to pick up where they
left off.
So we had to stay in Chippewa while
they fought.
And then we were able to go back
to the west.
Well, we'd spent most of the summer way
up mid-August just getting right with the
Lord.
Getting right with the Lord, missionaries, preachers.
And we surely thought we were right with
him.
And now we did start a mission work
with the American Navy.
When the American Navy goes up the 7th
Fleet from the Philippines up to the northern
ports, all the destroyers and the flagship to
Chippewa and the submarine carriers down to the
port of Qingdao.
And there's nothing for the U.S. men
to go to there.
They did have a YMCA building, but the
men didn't have any confidence in the YMCA
secretary.
He borrowed too much money from them and
couldn't pay it back.
So they didn't care to go there.
And we rented an empty preaching hall and
rented some little cheap handmade wooden chairs, folding
wooden chairs.
No, they didn't fold them yet.
They weren't that clever yet.
And so we had services every night.
And in the afternoon I gave the teaching
Bible to those that could read it and
those that wanted it, Christians and those that
loved the Bible and wanted more of it.
And then every evening we were there.
So we got busy after a while.
But anyway, at the time this lied, it
shared a good deal with us on Christ
our life.
And we were confessing everything as we went
along, as the Lord showed us things that
were not like Christ.
As I said, most of it attitudes.
Sometimes something we'd said to another missionary, but
most of the time it was inner feelings
of pride for ourselves.
And it certainly came from the devil.
The Lord didn't make us like that.
Well, we had among our number a woman
who'd had a terrible eye malady, Mrs. Charles
Tupper from Texas.
And she'd suffered a number of years.
Occasionally she'd have an attack to that eye,
a twitching uncontrollably so, and the twitching accompanied
by such excruciating pain that it tore her
nerves to pieces for days.
And our mission doctors could do no more
for her.
They asked her to go to Peking, where
John D.
Rockefeller, Jr. had built a university combined with
what was supposed to be a mission university.
All the missionaries that did mission work in
Peking went in together.
And he built a wonderful hospital in connection
with the medical college.
And it was a great deed of social
service.
That's what the Baptists called it.
Other people talked about it being John D.
Jr.'s mission work, but they called it his
social service.
But it was great training doctors for time.
And John D.
went all over the world and got the
leading specialists in every field and sent them
out there to teach in that medical college
and practice in that hospital.
The eye specialist at that time was a
leading one from Vienna, Austria.
And he told me his tailpaper that he
couldn't do it, that eye couldn't take any
more treatment.
She would lose it in a period of
from three to six months.
And no doubt the good eye would soon
follow.
And she came back knowing that she was
facing blindness.
If that man couldn't help her, nobody in
the world could.
She didn't even tell us.
She just said the doctor couldn't do anything
for her.
Didn't even tell us she was facing blindness.
And no, when we'd been there in Chifu
about three months, that eye didn't start up
again, have another attack.
And we knew there's no human being in
all the world that could help her.
Well, we loved her devotedly.
And she was a wonderful missionary, and her
husband was one of our key men.
He was head of our educational institution, which
had just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
high school students that had come from all
over that part of the province.
And we had a college, a junior college,
and our seminary, and a business college, and
a teaching college, training teachers.
And we just thought we couldn't spare him.
And she was a wonderful missionary herself.
And we just couldn't bear the thought of
losing him.
And we decided we'd just get holy enough
to call on the Lord to perform a
physical miracle and heal that eye.
Now we knew we'd have to be holy.
You see, we would have to have faith.
And faith is produced by the Holy Spirit
in cleansed hearts.
Now you know yourself, right after a meeting,
when you've been gloriously revived and gotten your
sins forgiven up to date, why, you just
have faith for anything.
And then you get cold, and you know
that you're not living to please the Lord,
and your faith's gone.
You want somebody else to produce the faith.
You're calling on somebody else to do the
praying.
Well, we knew all of that.
Of course, we never called on somebody else
to pray.
We kept in praying tune.
But we knew.
We just believed that if we were right
enough with holy God, that we could call
upon him in a case like that and
expect him to perform a physical miracle.
By that time, our 28 had come down
to 18.
And some had gone on furlough.
Furlough was nearly due, and they went on
early.
Some had a furlough due.
And about a half a dozen of those
saved, thoroughly dedicated, hardworking, love the Lord, missionaries,
said, Why, we can't expect the Lord to
perform physical miracles in this age when we
have doctors and when the Bible is complete.
He worked physical miracles through his apostles as
an evidence that he was alive and seated
up in the heaven and working through his
apostles.
Now that the Bible is completed, we just
can't expect physical miracles.
Well, about a dozen of us agreed with
him in theory.
But we had something to add.
My God shall supply every need of yours.
And this is a definite need that no
human doctor can do anything about.
And we were just convinced if we would
get holy enough, we could call upon the
Lord to perform a miracle and heal that
eye.
And we began to search our hearts.
And Ms. Culpepper went through a week.
And I'll tell you, the Lord began to
bring to that woman everything that she'd said
that didn't please him, and not everything, but
a plenty.
A plenty.
All the way back to the time she
was a young woman that she'd never diagnosed
as sin.
Now she was always saying something cute and
clever to the delight of all of us.
And she's just one of the prettiest women
you'd ever see anywhere.
We took turns there in each house.
The women each took turns being head of
the house.
And we planned the meals.
And, of course, everybody helped with the work.
But one was the head and planned the
meals.
And the one that planned the meals sat
up at the head of the table and
served the meal.
And the sitting up there at the head
of the table, just looking so perfectly lovely
and charming, she said something to me or
she said it to the group about me.
I've forgotten which.
Now, we lived in the same city and
loved each other devotedly.
But she's just going to be cute, you
know, and make people laugh.
Well, what she said was cuddly.
It wasn't cute, it was cuddly.
Now, she didn't mean it to be cuddly,
I'm sure.
She just meant to be cute.
Well, everybody laughed at me.
I suppose I had a grin on the
outside of my face, but there wasn't any
laugh inside.
There was no call for it.
And it didn't do me any good.
Now, I didn't hold it against her.
I forgave her immediately.
I knew she just wanted to make people
laugh, and she didn't know any better than
to attract attention to herself, to make somebody
else laugh.
And she didn't know then that every time
we attract attention to ourselves, we grieve the
Holy Spirit.
We're supposed to be magnifying Christ through our
personalities and be living in a position of
debt to this old self, but she didn't
know that then.
Well, did you know that last week when
we were getting ripe enough to call upon
God to heal that eye, the Lord just
showed that woman that it didn't please her
to say things about other people that didn't
do any good, or to them.
Didn't do any good.
And she came into my room with the
tears just rolling down her cheeks, begging me
to forgive her for that thing she'd said.
Well, she still says just as cute things
as ever.
But I've never heard her say anything cuter
since that day.
She was cured.
And the rest of us were searching our
hearts.
And the Lord showed me two, three little
things.
One I especially remember, I went over to
another missionary, and I said, I don't know
why the Lord sent me over here to
confess this to you, but I'm trying to
get it right enough for them to pray
for Ms. Culpepper's eye.
And when I told her what it was,
she said, I know why he sent you
over here.
I said, well, that's just one of my
sins.
That's one of my sins.
The Lord wants you to come over here
and remind me of my sin that I've
got to get right.
Well, we got on our knees and called
on the Lord to deliver us from whatever
it was.
And when it came time, and when the
Culpeppers couldn't think of anything else to be
made right, they called us in.
And I went into that room, friends, right
with the Lord.
I wouldn't have dared gone otherwise.
Ms. Culpepper sat in a chair in the
middle of the room.
We all stood around.
Dr. Culpepper read from the 5th chapter of
James about calling for the elders of the
church when anyone was sick and anointing them
with oil.
And the admonition is made, confess your false
one to another.
And then the promise is, the prayer of
faith shall save the sick.
Well, he didn't give that oil any significance.
We all have olive oil in our pantries.
That's what we use for company when we
want some mayonnaise.
It's shipped out from pure olive oil from
southern Europe out to the port cities.
And we keep a bottle of it on
hand because we don't have anything else that
we can make salad dressing from.
Well, he was just not leaving undone anything
the word of God speaks of.
And after he put the oil on her
head, he said, we'll all come up now
and put our hands on her head and
pray.
Well, Doctor, I was younger than most of
the missionaries at that time.
And of course, as a young person should,
I stood back and waited for all the
others to go up.
And I went up the very last one
and put my hand on Ms. Culpepper's head.
Friends, I had to bring my hand back.
There stood just opposite me a dear old
woman, 68 years old, who had had charge
of a girl's boarding school in her early
mission work.
But for about 25 years she'd gone from
village to village teaching the old women who
didn't know one Chinese word from another about
the Lord.
And she'd get them saved.
And then she'd even teach them how to
read, that funny language.
And many of them she taught after they
were 50 years old because they wanted to
learn to read the Bible.
And they'd walk miles to a church and
give their testimony to the church and be
baptized.
And she'd just built up a great store
of illustrations from the weaving and the spinning
and the hatching of the chickens and all
of that in their country life that illustrated
the gospel.
And the boys' school there in the port
of Chifu had been neglected for years.
Mr. Moore was head of the school, mind
you.
And his evangelistic field was 14 counties, villages
and towns in 14 counties and 14 county
seats.
Well, of course, he didn't have any time
for the school.
His wife taught English.
And a Chinese had to teach the Bible
who hadn't had much training.
Well, because I was a school person, I'd
majored in education in college.
And by that time I'd had 10 years
of teaching experience.
I was asked to take his place at
the school when he became infertile.
And, no, the open school, middle of August,
would just give a short time.
And I just arranged to put all the
Bible together that I could for the lower
grades and taught all the English and all
the Bible.
And Mr. Moore had to go home, too.
Now, that was a pretty big task.
But I did it all.
And then I suggested to the Chinese teacher,
head teacher, who planned the worship every day,
that we have one person lead a week
so they could build up a message in
a week.
There was only one Christian in the senior
class which was going to finish the following
July.
Another one had been saved, but his parents
wouldn't let him be baptized.
Well, I'd never let a graduate get to
the senior high school in my room, I
mean a Chinese, without getting him saved.
It's a very interesting gospel.
I didn't have room for him anymore after
they'd heard it.
That was my plan, but I never did
have to send anybody home because they didn't
know I had that plan in my head.
But I did.
I wasn't going to keep anybody and make
an educated tool for the devil.
I thought the devil could use them better
educated than he could ignorant.
I'd leave them in ignorance if they're going
on serving him and resisted the gospel after
they'd been taught it and heard it.
Well, anyway, I asked that old lady, suggested
her to the head teacher, and he invited
her to lead chapel for a week.
And if she didn't come down there and
treat those poor city young men just as
if they'd been those old Chinese women and
gave all of her illustrations, because they'd never
been to the country in all their lives
out in a village and probably never would,
and they didn't know what she was talking
about, and they just took it to be
a joke.
Well, I sat there just so wanting those
boys saved, and I thought the gospel had
to be presented to them relatively.
They were not those old ignorant women.
Why couldn't she give them?
If she couldn't paint any illustrations, just take
some from the Bible.
I thought she surely could have found some
illustrations in the Bible of difference in people
being saved and what the gospel did for
them.
Well, I couldn't wait until Friday.
And if Monday morning here she didn't come,
I'd go through another week.
Well, it was harder on me that week.
And a third week and a fourth week.
You see, somehow she understood that she was
to lead chapel, period.
Well, I knew then since I'd gotten her
out, gotten her in, I had to get
her out.
And I didn't know as much then as
I know now about dealing with people.
So she was living with Miss Lyde, and
I just told Miss Lyde to tell Miss
Hartwell that her time was up leading chapel.
Well, if I'd gone over there myself and
told her, I don't...
I hoped she wouldn't have been hurt, but
she was hurt.
And hurted me.
Well, you know I wouldn't have hurt that
old soul for the world.
But, you know, I just didn't have a
particle of patience with her being hurt.
Well, I just thought that old fogey ought
to have more sense than to present the
gospel like that.
I know.
When I put my hand on Miss Culpepper's
head to call upon Holy God to stretch
forth His holy hand and touch Miss Culpepper's
eye, blessed did that woman just opposite me.
I shall never cease to praise the Lord
that He made me bring my hand back.
I got my hand off of that woman's
head in a hurry.
Now, it would have been so much easier
if the Lord had convicted me of that
sin when I was pleading with Him in
my room on my knees that morning.
Show me anything else that needs to be
right before I pray for Miss Culpepper's eye.
I could have gone over to Miss Hartwell's
home and called her out over to the
next house and I could have begged her
to forgive me and the rest of the
missionaries wouldn't have known I ever had an
attitude of disgust toward her.
Well, the Lord knew that and He had
to put that pride out of me.
And right there before all those missionaries I
had to say, Miss Hartwell, she's in the
glory now.
She'd love me to share this with you.
I didn't have the right attitude with you
about that school affair.
I begged you to forgive me.
Well, then she begged me to forgive her.
Now, friends, I really believe had I kept
my hand on Miss Culpepper's head after I
was convicted of that sin, Miss Culpepper would
be a blind woman today.
Now, sin hinders prayer.
And the promises of those who are of
one accord, one accord, one accord, and I
wouldn't have been in one spiritual accord with
Miss Hartwell, nor she with me.
Well, I put my hand on Miss Culpepper's
head again after I'd prayed, after I'd confessed
that sin, and we prayed.
And, friends, heaven just came down.
It would just be impossible to ever share
with anyone the thrill of our souls.
Now, we didn't have to wait to see
if she was going to have another attack.
Everyone knew in our hearts she would never
have another attack.
Well, now you just imagine how we acted.
We didn't act very Southern Baptist, but I
assure you we were quite biblical.
We just started walking around in that room,
waving our hands to every one of us,
praying his or her prayer out loud, just
praising the Lord at the tops of our
voices.
We were literally on a mountaintop of ecstasy.
Now, I don't know how long we went
on.
We went on.
The dinner was put on the table, but
nobody ate.
And, lo, in the midst of all of
that glory, God, holy God, had heard the
prayers of human beings such as we were
and had performed a miracle and healed that
eye.
Now, everyone knew it in our hearts.
Well, right in the midst of all that
joy, I had to be the door killer.
It just occurred to me how inconsistent we
had been, and I couldn't but speak of
it.
I said, Prince, what kind of missionaries are
we?
Here we've gone through a week humbling ourselves,
a special week after we've been confessing sin
all this summer, to be sure that we
are right enough with holy God to hear
our prayer and heal the physical eye of
one of our own number.
And we've not gone to all this much
heart searching and humiliation to be sure that
we are right enough with God to hear
our prayers and open the spiritual eyes of
the blind Chinese to whom we've been sent.
And when that came out of my lips,
everyone came down on the floor on our
knees, and we just began to weep before
the Lord that we'd gone along so carelessly,
just supposing that we were the people that
the Lord could use.
Why, the Lord wanted rivers of living water
to be flowing from us to other people,
which is the truth of this book made
quick and powerful by the Holy Spirit.
If the Holy Spirit was grieved with us,
what could he do?
I don't know how long we were up
there.
I don't even remember whether we ate supper
or not.
We might have just gone on.
I know we just couldn't get over how
we had failed the Lord by not being
holy enough for him to hear our prayers.
We couldn't get over it.
But, Prince, we got up from our knees
when we did get up with a new
message.
What was that?
The tragedy of sin in the life of
a saved person.
The awful tragedy of permitting anything that came
from the devil to remain in our hearts
where the Holy Spirit dwells.
And he will never leave us.
Sin just pushes him back in a corner.
And he's just grieved.
The tragedy of sin.
And we went back.
And, Prince, that great revival in North China
came as a result of our being brought
that low before the Lord and getting holy
enough for him to hear our prayers.
I'll tell you some more about that the
next hour.
Now, I'd like to know now.
I asked the pastor not to give an
invitation this morning.
I said, I want to give the invitation.
And if you have anyone who want to
join the church and confess Christ, they'll keep
until next Sunday.
He agreed that they would.
Now, my invitation is you go home this
afternoon after your lunch.
If you come back the next hour, you'll
have to wait until after then.
You just get a good big sheet of
paper and put numbers down the left-hand
side, one, two, three, four to the bottom.
Turn over your sheet and continue your numbers.
You get along with the Lord.
It's possible.
Don't let anybody see this paper.
This is going to be your secret between
you and the Lord.
I don't want to see it.
Don't you let your wife see it or
anybody.
And the Lord already knows it.
And you'll be the only one to see
it.
And you list on those sheets of paper
everything in your heart and life that is
unholy, everything you can think of.
And just keep adding your numbers as you
need them.
Don't let anybody see it now.
Don't destroy it.
That's your first lesson.
I'm going to have homework these days.
And those of you who want to get
holy enough to pray and know you're holy
enough to give a person a testimony and
expect the Holy Spirit to use it, and
you want rivers of living water to begin
to flow from you to other people, which
is His Word made quick and powerful by
the Holy Spirit, and you stand by me
and you do this.
And I'm going to expect you to do
it if you're a Christian.
I'm going to expect Christians to follow this.
Now I use this everywhere I go, and
I'm here to share with you the very
best I know.
And this is the very best I know.
It's what I've tried and proven for years.
Everybody that goes through with me and my
homework is blessed.
And I want you to be blessed, and
I know you want to be blessed.
And all God's people said, stand for a
word of prayer.
Father, your Word is indeed sharper than a
two-edged sword, piercing us under our hearts,
showing us the holiness of you and the
sinfulness of man.
I thank you, Lord, for this dear saint
that you've sent our way.
I pray that in these days ahead we
may learn, we may apply, most of all,
Father, that we may come to the place
of getting absolutely right with you, that we
may so live our lives that Christ lives
through us.
Now dismiss us, Lord, from this place into
our Bible study hour.
Then you can bring us back at the
11 o'clock hour as we lean upon
you, trust you, and praise you.
In Jesus' name, amen.