Ah, but you remember, when he was a
comparative youth of about seventy, and, uh, that
was quite youthful at the time, he had
a good way to go.
You remember how he left his home, and
how he met God, and God promised him
everything, and Jacob made his vow, and I
would say he was converted, and for twenty
-two years he went on, and oh, what
a mess he made of it!
Formed a business partnership, it was Jacob, Jacob
Laban & Co, Inc., and he was doomed
to fail from the beginning.
And they scindled each other, cheated each other,
and oh my, what a time they had!
Everything went wrong.
Married the wrong woman, he did, Jacob did,
that's God anyway.
And there he was, as a believer in
God, as a man who'd met God, and
for twenty-two years he was on an
absolute treadmill, going down the hill.
Say, can a Christian live like that?
Yes, he can.
How do you know?
Because I did.
Not for twenty-two years, but for ten.
You can be indwelt by the Spirit, but
mastered by the flesh.
And that's been my experience for years.
Ruined the best years of my life, from
twenty to thirty, by living like that.
Oh, you can't be, yes, you can be
a Christian and live like that.
How do I know I was a Christian?
Because I was miserable.
Hmm.
Before I was a Christian, been thoroughly happy,
drinking, dancing, gambling, going to shows, everything, thrilling.
But now I was a Christian, I hate
it, but I wasn't prepared to give it
up, because the price of discipleship was too
great to pay.
And here's Jacob, just going to pop, going
to pieces.
Ah, but when a Christian starts living like
that, I tell you, my friends, God lets
the reins out, but he holds them in
his hand.
He lets his servant out on a long
lead, a long lead, and he watched him,
watched him.
And there came a time when he said,
now Jacob, it's got to stop.
And he began to pull in the reins,
pull in the lead, and said, get back
home.
And Jacob went back home, and he met
God again at Peniel, and he wrestled with
him all through the night.
And God said, let me go for the
day break.
And Jacob said, I won't let you go
unless I bless you, till you bless me.
Lord, I can't go on living like this.
I've been defeated for 22 years.
I can't be a hypocrite any longer.
Oh, God, oh, I won't let you go,
except you bless me.
And God said to him, what's your name?
What's your name?
Do you think he didn't know?
He'd been watching him for 22 years, play
the fool, watching him go deep into sin,
watching him fail.
As a man, he'd promised everything to him.
Jacob was out of his will altogether, and
watched him.
What's your name?
Say.
God wasn't asking him for information.
He was asking him for compassion.
And there came a moment, and if I
know anything about Jacob's experience, as I think
I do, that he looked up into the
face of God and said with a tear
-stained eye, sorry, Lord, but after 22 years
of knowing you, it's still Jacob.
What's your name?
Cheat, deceiver, supplanter, defeated, worldly, in bondage, beaten,
battled, almost giving up, can't stay with it,
tough, no testimony, no radiance, no joy, no
blessing.
What's your name?
He doesn't want your information.
He knows all about you, bless you.
And he doesn't condemn, but he holds up
some nail-pierced hands to you today, and
he wants to just take you.
And he wants for somebody here that this
morning should mark the end of wrestling with
God, and the beginning of nestling into the
heart of Jesus.
What's your name?
Jacob.
Friend, you would think I wish you ill,
but I wish you well when I say
that I want this morning to be for
somebody here, a morning when you just feel
that you haven't anything left to cling to
except God, that you're absolutely beaten from all
your self-confidence, and you're brought to the
place of self-disgust and self-abandonment, and
you hate yourself.
And then gleaming through that dark moment, you
see the face of Jesus.
Just four years ago, I was flat on
my back with cerebral hemorrhage.
Couldn't speak, couldn't walk.
My ministry apparently was finished.
Preachers often say from a pulpit, we should
never ask why, only what.
Lesson about to learn.
I asked why.
Lord, why is it taking me out of
a busy church?
Why is it when this church apparently is
getting blessed, and we're full, why should I
have to go through this?
Why?
And at that time, there came to me
such thoughts for which I dare not speak,
of which I feel intensely ashamed.
Impurity, bad language, low boiling point.
My wife and family all suffered from having
a husband and a father who would revert
it to type.
I had no defenses.
My prayer wasn't anything.
My Bible meant nothing.
And in sheer desperation, I said one day,
oh God, get me out of this.
Get me to heaven right away.
Don't let them remember me as a cabbage.
Man lives like this.
Just take me right home.
It seemed to me that the Lord Jesus
drew very near and said, you've got this
all wrong, you know.
The devil hasn't anything to do with it.
I did this to you.
I had to do it.
To make you see and really believe that
this is the kind of man you are,
with all your thoughts and all your impurity.
And you'll never be any different.
And it's what you'll always be like, apart
from the grace of God.
I looked up my sermon records when I
began to preach again, because then at that
morning when it seemed that he spoke to
me like that, I said, thank you Lord,
I understand.
And I found in my sermon records that
I had preached 52 times on the text,
Romans 7, 18.
I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.
I've never dared preach on it since.
Because I knew it then as a theory,
and now I know it as experience.
The living letter's translation of that is this.
I know that in my sinful nature is
rotten through and through.
And oh brother and sister, as the Lord
just took me right down the corridor of
memory, and I looked back over 33 years
of ministry, and I saw that I'd put
work in the place of worship, and I'd
lost my first love, and I saw the
absolute corruption of myself.
What a wonderful, wonderful moment it was to
put my heart, as it were, oh just
to nestle into the heart of Jesus, and
to find that from that day, from sinking
sands he lifted, with tender hands he lifted,
from shades of night to planes of light,
O praise his name, he lifted me.
Do you think that any medical person here
would like to come and tell me that
he knows I've had a stroke?
God has done a miracle.
But he didn't do it in a flash,
he didn't do it by instant healing, he
did it by putting me right down on
my back, and I couldn't be lower, and
teaching me lessons, then, oh I don't profess
that I have attained.
In fact, I've been amazed at the things
I still have to learn, deeper and deeper,
for the making of a man of God
never finishes, until we get to heaven.
But I'm telling you, if you want revival,
you've got to come from being Jacob into
Israel, and that means going through brokenness.
My time has long since gone, Jacob, and
what's it going to take to break you?
I'm not saying that you have to come
my way, no, but I'm saying that if
you want revival somewhere in your life, and
you know about it, you know about it
right now, there's a price to pay.
Thy name shall be no more Jacob, but
Israel.
It didn't all happen in a second, but
the Israelite prevailed, and triumph, and it happened
in a second.
But I'm telling you that God may put
you this morning on a new track from
which you'll never go back, until that day
when he presents you as Jeshurun, the man
who is mature, the righteous one, the man
who has been made like Christ.
John Wesley once prayed, Lord, cure me of
my intermittent piety.
Make my religion to be my regular diet,
not medicine to be taken as necessary.
Lord, don't let me go on another moment
in any sin of which I haven't thoroughly
repented.
I will pour water upon him that's thirsty,
and floods upon dry ground, my spirit upon
thy seed, thy children, and my blessing upon
thy offspring.
What a promise for us who are mums
and dads right now.
And you can have revival now, at this
moment, if in your mind you'll draw a
circle where you sit, and put everything of
yourself in that circle, and say, Lord, right
now, I'm willing, any place, any time, any
cost, revise me, let's pray.
Which I shall never forget.
You probably, many of you have seen it.
It is entitled, Moments with Lincoln.
And you sit in a kind of theater,
and there Lincoln, an effigy of him, sits
on his presidential chair.
And suddenly, with remarkable lifelikeness, he stands up
erect, and he speaks with amazing authority, and
quotes from one of his presidential speeches and
says, I have no fear of this great
American continent ever being overcome from without.
She is surrounded on all sides by thousands
of miles of ocean, but my one great
fear for the United States of America is
that she may yet be overcome from within.
And that came to me as the voice
of a prophet, for that very thing is
actually happening as we sit in this conference
this morning.
I don't pretend to be a prophet, but
it's my conviction that Russia never will need
to bother about launching nuclear warfare on America.
She can just sit back while millions of
America are spending billions of dollars in Vietnam,
and sit back and watch a country, a
great leading country, being overcome by corruption from
within.
My dear friend, I don't speak this lightly,
but it's not often that a man has
the privilege of living long enough in two
countries to feel that he's part of the
life of both of them.
But I've lived for 12 years in North
American continent and the rest of my life,
however long you may think that is, in
Britain.
And what is taking place in America has
already taken place in Britain.
The greatest missionary country in the world 50
years ago is now the greatest gambling country
in the world.
Britain spent between Christmas and New Year no
less than the equivalent of 1,500 million
dollars on alcohol in a country with only
50 million people.
15 months ago I was in the Republic
of South Africa.
I won't allow myself to be diverted on
that subject, but may I say that that
is the most misunderstood country in the world.
I lived there for five months, and when
I came back to London airport within half
an hour I felt miserable.
For in London airport I saw about two
dozen teenagers swinging away at a neat bottle
of whiskey, none of them knowing what they
were doing or where they were going.
Never saw that once in South Africa, never
once.
There the churches are full, not all evangelical,
but they're all full.
In Britain I'm told by my good friend
Mr. Lindsay Glegg that church attendance at the
beginning of the century, I wasn't here at
the time believe it or not, at the
beginning of the century church attendance in London
was 80 percent of the population.
It's now less than four percent.
And Britain is a country which has lost
its gold, lost its character.
It's a swing country, drug country, and in
that country I live.
My heart bleeds for it.
Mind you, let me not paint too black
a picture, for in every town, every city,
you will find one church at least where
there is a real work of God going
on.
But nevertheless, I've lived long enough now here
to watch the same trends, same things happen,
and we've got to be on the lookout.
For the great call of the hour to
the church today is repentance to our God,
forsaking of sin, that even in this desperate
moment in history, He may grant us mercy.
No answer to sit piously and say the
Lord's coming back and all's going to be
well.
The New Testament which tells us to lift
up our heads for our redemption is drawing
nigh, also tells us to prepare for battle,
to humble ourselves before God, to watch and
pray, to declare war against sin in the
church and outside the church.
It's so perilously easy to join the anti
-communist army, preach against communism, and you'll rake
in thousands of dollars.
Oh, that's wonderful.
It's terribly easy to do that and to
fail to face the sin with which we've
become accustomed to live in our own lives,
to settle for something less than a full
salvation, to go on living in defeat.
And my fear for North American continent is
not that we may be overwhelmed by Russian
power, but by our sheer compassion and sheer
sinfulness, we may be cut off from the
power of God.
People say to us that the great tragedy
today is that the church has lost touch
with this generation.
Well, there's always a law of cause and
effect.
My dear brother and sister, the bigger tragedy,
the bigger sorrow is that we've lost touch
with the Lord.
And that's what I want to face this
morning and these mornings with you, how to
get back to reality, how to recover the
sense of thrill, the sense of glow, the
sense of joy, the lilt of Christian living,
the thrill in it.
I've been to church after church in this
last six months, and I'm telling you, I'm
sick to death of traditional church programs.
The crowd of youngsters who sit inside those
churches, you look at them, ninety percent of
them are bored stiff.
They're wrongly there because they're children of Christian
parents anyway, who are in the church, and
they're just bored.
They don't care about it, they're not interested,
they're not thrilled, they're bored.
Do you mean to tell me that when
they're old enough to get married, they don't
have to be very old these days for
that, but when they get married and have
children of their own, do you mean to
say they're going to bring their children into
a church with which they themselves have been
bored?
No fear, no they won't.
And they sit there on their pews on
a Sunday with a Christian education program, and
it's all streamlined, excellent, but I'm telling you
in many cases, they're just dead to the
door though.
They're not interested, they're not concerned about it.
There's only one thing that can turn the
tide of evil.
It's the power of the Holy Spirit released
through a church living in revival, nothing else.
And I believe, my friend, you don't need
to wait till you go back to your
church to have that revival, you can have
it now, if you're in business with God.
And that's what we're going to look at
in this portion of Scripture this morning very
briefly.
The Lord deliver us from complacency and smugness,
and give us an earnest hunger of heart
for himself.
For in picture form here in Isaiah 44,
I see God's promise of revival.
The great covenant blessing of the church in
verse 3, I will pour water upon him
that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry
ground.
I will pour my spirit upon thy feet,
and my blessing upon thine offspring.
You notice that the promise of the first
part of that verse is explained in the
second.
I will pour water upon him that's thirsty,
floods upon dry ground.
I will pour my spirit upon thy feet,
and my blessing upon thine offspring.
Here is God's promised gift of the Holy
Spirit.
Now you and I need to realize today
that he has already been given, and has
never been withdrawn, and never will be withdrawn
till Christ returns.
He is permanently resident in his people.
You and I, if we're born again Christians,
have God in our hearts every day, every
moment of the day.
And yet we are lamentably lacking in every
evidence of his presence.
And I tell you I don't know about
your own experience, and your own heart's desire
and longing today, but without him we're like
a battery that hasn't got a spark to
it.
We're like a sailing ship without any breeze.
I was in Ethiopia just a little while
ago, and at one missionary conference, the missionaries
concerned may be here for all I know.
They said they hoped to be.
I remember at a little town called Sotu,
I went in to have a meal with
the missionary builder and his wife.
And I think I'm right in saying they'd
just had a wedding anniversary or something of
that kind, and he'd given his wife an
amazing present, or they'd given each other an
amazing present for a birthday.
Do you know what that present was?
I thought it was quite unique.
I've never heard of any husband or wife
giving each other this for a birthday.
It was a bathroom.
Now that's a personal need of course, and
it was a very wonderful bathroom.
And I thought how thrilling, because I'd been
living in somewhat primitive conditions, and I was
facing more to come, and I felt a
great personal need of sharing in the benefits
of the blessing of this bathroom.
So I was just building up my hopes.
It was such a lovely bathroom, obviously the
work of an expert builder, and all the
tiles were green, and the taps were chromium
plates and everything, and it was just gorgeous.
I thought, bless the hearts, it's just what
I need.
When suddenly he said, you know, doesn't it
look fine?
He said, but then the local council hadn't
turned on the water yet, and it won't
be on for three or four months.
So I departed, my hopes destroyed, and my
condition more needy than ever.
Fancy!
They had everything except the water.
My brother, my sister, that's where you and
I are spiritually right now.
We've got everything except the water of life.
Jesus promised, the water that I shall give
you shall be in you a fountain springing
up into everlasting life.
He that believeth in me out of his
inner man shall flow rivers.
Not a drop, not a trickle, not a
stream, not a river, but rivers of living
water.
This beg he, says John, by way of
explanation of the Holy Spirit, which they that
believe on him should receive.
And the church today, oh don't let's talk
just about the church.
You and I have got everything except the
water.
I spoke of missionaries in the S.I
.M., and I'm reminded so much of one
you know very well, the dear man of
God who's gone to glory, but whose wife,
I believe, is here with us, Dr. Guy
Clapper.
What a man!
He was a member of Woody Church, and
in my pastures, I shall never forget he
came back, I think I'm right, three times
on furlough.
And every time he spoke on the same
text, I have somewhat against thee in that
thou hast left thy first love.
And he said, every time I come back
to this continent, I find the church with
more equipment but less endowments, with more machinery
but less motivation, with more things but less
dynamic to move men to God.
And I confess to you, after I'd heard
it three times, I got a bit nettled
with him.
What does he mean, I've lost my first
love?
I'm working here 16 hours a day, seven
days a week.
How have I lost my first love?
That was how I'd substituted work for worship,
and I lost my first love for Christ
in the work of the kingdom of God,
and lost the unction and the power and
the authority of God's Spirit in my ministry.
Any missionary can do that, any preacher can
do that, and he suffers from it, and
I'm telling you that one day God catches
him up.
And I cannot conceal this from my own
heart, for I've often been made to feel
it to the humbling of my own spirit,
to stand up and face a congregation and
know that my wings have been clipped, that
the one thing that matters in the preaching
of the word is gone.
The thing that carries it with conviction to
the hearer, unction, authority, utterance.
And you know that, as Sunday school teachers,
as pastors, as evangelists, as missionaries.
Oh, we say the right things with sound
and orthodox and all that.
We've got the right formula, we've got the
right sermons, beginning with three points, beginning with
the same letter introduction, conclusion.
We're all right homiletically.
Oh, we've got everything, everything except life, everything
except power to move men to God, and
power to make men bend before the Word.
That's what concerns me.
And yet, yet here is God's promise.
Oh, listen to it, I will, I will.
And the promise is to the man who's
thirsty, to the one who's parched and dry.
And if there's anyone here at Prairie Bible
Institute this morning who thinks themselves well-watered
and unconscious of deep need, you're the one
person in the whole conference for whom God
has got nothing.
An unconscious of deep need, you're the one
person in the whole conference for whom God
has got nothing.
It's upon the life that laments its barrenness,
that confesses its deadness, that's absolutely sick to
death of itself, that's disgusted with itself, that
loathes itself, that God prepared to come.
Just a bit of dry ground, that's all.
Have you ever read books of Dr. Tozer?
He was such a friend to me in
Chicago.
You know, I'll tell you a secret about
him.
If you wanted to find Dr. Tozer any
morning between about April and November, you would
find him at five o'clock every day
on the south shore of Lake Michigan, literally
stretched on his face with an open Bible
in front of him.
That's what made him the man he was.
And I quote from his book, The Pursuit
of God.
Everybody should have it.
I hope the bookstore has got it, so
that you can get it for yourself.
Listen, everything is made these days to center
upon the initial act of accepting Christ.
We're not expected thereafter to crave for any
further revelation of God to our souls.
We have been snared in the coils of
a spurious logic which insists that if we
have found him we need no more seeking.
This is set before us as the last
word in orthodoxy.
The hot theology of a grand army of
fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a
smug interpretation of scripture that would have sounded
strange to Augustine, Rutherford, or David Rayner.
Oh, says Dr. Tozer, oh that the language
of John Samuel Mansell was in our hearts
again.
I hunger and I thirst.
Jesus, my manna be, he living waters burst
out of the rock for me.
For still the desert lies, my thirsting soul
before.
Oh, living waters rise within me evermore.
Strange language these days.
But listen, my friend, the test of life
is appetite.
If you're hungry, you're well.
If you've lost your appetite, you're sick.
And here today do I speak to men
and women, I believe I do, to many
of you who are desperately hungry for God.
Hungry, thirsty, and nothing but Christ can satisfy
you.
Well, I will, I will pour water upon
him that is thirsty and floods upon the
dry ground.
Dear Lord, I'm a candidate for blessing today.
Are you?
Oh, I long for him.
The more I know him, the more I
want him.
I trust that you are hungry.
For here's the promise to the hungry heart.
And you notice in this chapter, not only
the promise of revival, but the product of
revival.
There's a marvelous stamp of permanence about the
work of God.
Verse four, wherever the living water comes, the
grass will be sure to follow and everything
begins to live.
And you know, when the Holy Spirit comes,
there will be life in the church, life
in the ministry, life in the prayer meeting.
Have you ever seen anything so deadly as
the average church prayer meeting?
Oh, boy.
What's the smallest beating in the week on
your church calendar, your prayer meeting?
Oh, it's a killing business.
And it's broken many a pastor's heart, for
he can turn the chairs around and decide
to kneel instead of sit, and he can
divide them up into groups or into ages.
And it's as dead as mutton.
And he knows every time who will pray
first, and what he'll pray for, and how
long he'll go on praying until the prayer
meeting before it started.
But when the Holy Spirit comes, there's life
in the prayer meeting, and there's life in
service, and life in holiness, and life in
love.
I wonder if I may dare just quote
from Charlotte Chapel magazine.
Oh, this is some years ago now, but
once that dear church knew revival, soon after
the days of what is called the Welsh
Revival, and in reporting on it one year,
the church secretary says this, I am quoting
him, I went back with a hungry heart,
for I longed to see that measure of
blessing during my ministry.
By the time I had got there, it
was one of these churches which, whose motto
was, as it was in the beginning, is
now, ever shall be, nothing must change around
here.
And oh, dear, I saw the church dying
on its feet, because it wouldn't get out
to reach people where they are, and the
hunger had gone from the prayer meeting, and
it was dead.
And then I read this, listen, our sun
had been eclipsed, this is the church secretary
reporting, the light had gone out of our
lives, the joy had fled, our communion was
disturbed, our hope was unsettled, our efforts for
the good of others were weak and intermittent.
What had happened, we dare not tell, but
he, the tender shepherd knew, for his keen
eye had followed us through the desert of
unholy and disobedient lives.
He caught us in the thicket of some
evil habit, or struggling in the bog of
some sinful cause.
Oh yes, he saw it all, the sad
detail which perhaps nobody else knew or dreamed
of, but he sought us, and he found
us, and he restored us, and he led
us back to himself.
This has been a great year of salvation,
a year of victory.
The church has been stirring like a military
camp on the field of war, alive with
martial music and a tramp of fighting men.
Many have been converted to God, and many
backsliders restored, and many believers received an entombment
of the Spirit.
And listen, if you would ask me the
secret, I would tell you of the prayer
meeting, daily, of forty to sixty people strong,
at six o'clock in the morning.
We have advertised this, our Sunday morning service
will start at eleven, if the prayer meeting
stops in time.
And those meetings go on seven days a
week, starting at six, and we'll have our
service at eleven, if the prayer meeting's over.
And it's that continuous, persevering, God-honoring, weekly
campaign of prayer that has moved the mighty
hand of God to pour upon his people
the blessing of his grace in such rich
abundance.
Oh God, do it again.
Do it again.
Do it in your life here this day,
this week.
Do it in mine.
I believe that the whole of this conference,
I believe our principal and president gladly would
scrap the whole thing if God would only
break through, and do the supernatural, that we'd
get out to the rut, and out to
the machinery, and really see God move in
to bless.
Oh I know he's sovereign.
I know that where the Holy Spirit works,
there's not confusion, but there's order.
But oh Lord, oh God, oh breath of
life, come sweeping through us, and revive thy
church with life and power.
Just like what's happened in Indonesia.
Just like what's happening with the little flock
in China.
Just what's happening in Latin America, and in
Central America.
Oh God, has he deserted?
Has he deserted the white race altogether?
We deserve it, with our strange, arrogant superiority.
Has he left us out?
Has he left western civilization to its fate?
Oh, will he not reign the heavens and
come down?
Yes, I believe he will.
But my friend, I sometimes wonder if God
doesn't take us seriously, because we don't take
him seriously.
May I just close in a word concerning
the pathway of revival?
I know that the wind blows where it
listens.
I know that God could stop me speaking
and shut me up.
I know just in the sense that God
has broken through, I know all that.
But at the same time, there seems to
be a clearly defined pathway here in this
chapter.
Do you notice that the promise of revival
is given against the background of judgment?
You notice the language of the previous chapter
in the 28th verse?
Therefore I have profaned the princes of the
sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the perps,
and Israel to reproaches.
Therefore, why?
Verse 22 of chapter 43, Thou hast not
called upon me, O Jacob.
Thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.
Are people sick of God?
Tired of him?
And therefore, verse 24, Thou hast wearied me
with thine iniquity.
You know, I only saw that picture, I
must have read this portion many times.
Against the background of a relationship with God,
which is rather like a marriage that has
gone stale, where love has died out, God
promises revival.
I'm tired of him, the people said.
Now let's be honest, are we quite sure
that isn't our position?
Oh, we're sick of the routine, sick of
religion, sick of playing church, tired of programs,
churning it up.
Some of us find it desperately hard to
stay with the call, with our commitment.
Oh, it would be so much easier just
to pack it up and go to Florida.
You know, take the heat off, get out
of this situation quick.
Oh, anybody feeling like that today?
I wonder how many people would be honest
enough, bold enough to stand on their feet,
yes, that's me.
Yes, I got it.
I'm tired of it.
And I'm saying to you that God's answer
is all right.
I'm tired of you.
I'm weary of your sin, weary of your
settlement to living sin, weary of your absence
of search for deliverance, weary of you getting
used to living in it all.
So there's a mutual weariness, mutual tired, and
it's against that background that God says, I
will pour water upon him, listen.
Oh, I'm so glad that judgment has gone
out God's last word.
I've tasted a bit of that in my
life, but his mercy is from everlasting to
everlasting.
And if somebody's going through it right now,
and you're almost tired and weary of it,
oh, what a tremendous promise this is, that
God is promising his blessing along a pathway.
And I may be wrong in this, and
I stand to be corrected.
As far as I know, this is the
only portion in scripture where the three names
given to God's chosen people appear.
Jacob, Jacob my servant, Israel, whom I've chosen,
chapter 44, verse 1.
Verse 2, Fear not, Jacob, and Jeshurun.
I think this is immensely significant, for in
the promise of revival, here is God reminding
people of, of the name, the character that
he's given them.
Jacob, he saved them from that.
Oh, Jacob, I must have started to study
of him.
At least I know this, that unlike his
father, Isaac, who began well, but ended badly,
Jacob began badly and ended well.
And it's not how I begin life, but
how I end it that really matters.
Not many of us begin and end well,
but Jacob.