I asked someone who I thought would be
able to help me in this job of
introducing our speaker, and I said to them,
how shall I introduce our speaker?
And this fellow, I can't tell you what
to say, but I know if you don't
do it right, you'll know about it before
he speaks.
The thing that I could do to save
myself would go and ask him, and to
be obedient will now preach.
I think it's a brother remembers I said
brother Tozer will now preach the
gospel according to John 8 chapter 31.
John 8 31 and then those Jews which
believed on him, if he continue in my
words, are ye my disciples indeed, and ye
shall know the truth shall make you free.
And they answered him, we be Abraham and
were never in bondage to any man.
How says thou, ye shall be made free?
This answered them, verily, verily I say unto
you whosoever committed sin is the servant, and
the servant abideth not in the house forever,
but the son abideth ever.
Therefore shall make you free, ye shall be
free.
I know that ye seek, I don't think
I read that right really, I suppose the
way is something like this, I know that
you're Abraham's seed, but ye seek to kill
me, my word hath no place in you.
I speak that which I have seen with
my father, and ye do that which is
your father.
They answered and said to him, Abraham is
our father.
Jesus said, if ye were Abraham's children, ye
would do the works of Abraham, but now
ye seek to kill me.
That hath told you the truth which I
have heard of God, this did not Abraham.
Ye do the deeds of your father, and
said unto him, we be not born of
fornication, we have one father.
Jesus said unto them, if God were your
father, ye would love me, for I proceeded
forth from God, neither came I of myself,
but he sent me.
Now these Jews who lived in Jesus' time
were said to be believers, just what kind
of believers they were I wouldn't know, but
the conversation Jesus had with them indicated that
they were very far off the track.
Here's where they were off the track, in
physical descent from Abraham, and they were proud
of it, and they used it as men,
and our Lord didn't deny it, he said
I know that, you're Jews, you can trace
your lineage back to Abraham.
Their error was not in believing that they
were in physical descent from Abraham, their error
was that because they were, they were therefore
in speech from Abraham.
Now let me say that again so that,
because a lot will depend on this, that
they were under the false impression that because
they were the physical descendants of Abraham, they
were therefore automatically the speaker, and our Lord
tried to explain, don't think they got it,
but he did his part, he told them
this, he said if you were actual succession
from Abraham, you would do the works of
Abraham, you would inject him, fault was to
tell you the truth, Abraham he said never
acted.
God reckoned internal life and external conduct, not
by physical descent, and he unchurched these, and
took them out of the covenant, and said
to them you are not true sons of
Abraham, you are not children of Abraham at
all, you're the seed, you are descendants of
Abraham, but you're not his children, because Abraham
was a man and love, and you're none
of these things.
You hate me because you want to kill
me, for no fault but preaching truth to
you, said this did not Abraham.
Now that is the basis of what I
want to say, but I want to make
an application of that, I never was much
for digging up dead for generations, and I
don't think I'm morally worthy to do it.
So we're going to leave these Jews of
Jesus' day with God's image they were once
created, for he is the judge and not
I.
But I want to make an application of
this, now we're not dealing with Abraham and
the Jews, we're a few Jews here, you're
here as a Christian I presume, but there's
something in the world that we call Christendom,
it's composed in addition to the cults, it's
composed of Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox and
Protestant liberals, and then in addition to these,
it's composed of believing evangelicals.
Now the word evangelical is to be thought
of tonight in lowercase letters, it's not capitalized
because I'm not talking about the evangelical church,
a denomination, I'm talking about us and others
like our in it.
We help compose Christendom too.
These five are believing evangelicals, there are the
Pentecostals of course in various shapes, and then
there are the holiness people, and then there
are the deeper life people, old Calvinistic fundamentalists.
And we'll put us all in there and
shake it, some of you might feel a
bit alerted, but it's all right, it won't
hurt you.
I won't put you among the Roman Catholics,
nor the Coptics, but I know they're certainly
not among the Protestant liberals, but I don't
mind shaking you up, the Lawsons, and the
holiness people, and the deeper life, and the
victorious life, and the fourfold Gospels, and the
fundamentalists.
What do I mean when I say we
evangelicals, and where I'm a little afraid, are
guilty of an error so, quite so tragically
bad, it's an error nevertheless, the same error
that the Jews were guilty of, and assume
it rather proudly, and without any proof, that
we are in direct lineal descent from Christ.
Now those Jews in Jesus' day assumed, they
assumed this, not only did they assume it,
and that's always worse.
Anything you're not sure of, and have to
argue yourself too, that's something.
But when you're so cocked sure of it,
that you don't even mention it, that's worse.
And until our Lord pressed them, they didn't
even mention it.
They took for granted, without even mentioning it,
that they were the disciples of Abraham, that
all Abraham had was a disciple.
We rule out the Roman Catholics, we rule
out the Greek Orthodox, and we rule out
the Protestant liberals, and the prince sects, and
all of the...
But when it comes to Bible-believing evangelicals,
such as we are, we rule ourselves in.
We imagine and believe that we are in
descent, in spiritual succession from the apostles, from
our Lord and his apostles, and from the
early Church.
Now I'd like to say this, and I'm
always glad to say something nice, at least
in one sermon.
But I'd like to say that just as
the physical descent from Abraham, and nobody challenged
it, so the evangelicals are in creedal descent
from the apostles, and not just that.
We are in creedal descent from the apostles.
We believe the same thing that Paul believed,
we believe the same thing Peter and John
believed, and the man who wrote the book
of Hebrews, and the book of Acts, and
believe what they believe, we evangelicals, we don't
doubt it at all.
Here it is, it's the word of God,
we believe in God the Father Almighty, and
we believe that he made heaven and earth
by an act of his power, and that
he made man and his own, and through
him the breath of life.
We believe that man fell and incurred death
and judgment.
We believe that God is only begotten Son,
the second person of the Trinity, to be
incarnated in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
to suffer under Pontius Pilate, to be dead
and buried, and to rise again the third
day according to the scriptures.
We believe in forgiveness of sin by repenting
Jesus Christ.
We believe all that, we believe it easily
and restfully, and we don't doubt it.
We are in the Apostle, nobody's going to
challenge that.
Jesus said, I know that you're the seed
of Abraham, so you know, you're all good,
creedal, doctrinal sons of the Apostles.
Nobody's challenging that at all.
The error is in assuming that because we're
in creedal descent, we're in spiritual succession.
Now, just a mistake, and the Lord straightened
them out on it, and quietly ruled them
out of the Abrahamic covenant.
And so children of Abraham, though you're the
seed of Abraham.
So it is entirely possible that we may
be assuming too much, that because we believe
what Paul believed, therefore we had.
That because we believe what Peter believed, therefore
we are all that Peter was.
Because our creedally in conformity, we're spiritually an
identity.
Now this we dare not do, my brethren.
I will not for my part.
I don't know about you, but I live
in the light of eternity and the judgment.
I'm afraid most of the time.
Fear, you know, it doesn't make your hair
gray, you know, worry you, but it's that
sense of eternity.
I think the little son of eternity's values
in view.
And that's what I try to do.
And therefore, I don't want to take anything
for granted.
That's why I don't like creatures over and
smooth me down and make me feel good,
whether I'm good or not.
If I'm not good, I think that's a
terrible trap.
If I'm not good, I want to feel
natural.
But there are a lot of the dear
brethren, you know, they haven't got blood enough.
The whole crowd of them couldn't fill a
fountain pen with what you got there.
They're anemic, you know, and weaklings.
My technique is to paw over you, make
you feel good.
I don't want to.
I want to know the truth about all
this.
Oh, if we support our claim to be
in living succession from the apostles, we've got
to do it.
That this is that.
Jesus disproved the claims and the assumptions of
the Jews there by saying, not Abraham.
He said, this that you have is not
that that Abraham had.
This is not that.
Did not Abraham.
And he ruled them out.
Now, there is only one, only one real
proof.
Spiritual succession from the apostles, the Fathers, the
New Testament, the Church Fathers.
There's no proof of spiritual succession, and that
is identity.
If we can point to ourselves and say,
and then point to the New Testament Church
and say, is that, and make it stick,
then we ought to be the happiest people
in the world, and happy with a reason
for being happy.
Not happy blind, but happy with our eyes
open.
If this that I'm looking at, I hope
you're out there, the light's so bright here
and the shadow's so great there that I
got to take you by faith, but I
think you're there.
But if what I'm looking out on here
tonight, if I can point to that and
say, God, this is that, and then point
to Paul and the rest of them as
to that, and you as to this, if
you're the same, then we're wrong in our
assumption.
But if there is a difference, as there
was between the Jews and Abraham, the Lord
said, Abraham wasn't like you.
You claim to be in spiritual descent from
Abraham.
You claim to carry on the spiritual succession.
One way, and Abraham was another.
He are not children of Abraham, and he
broke it off sharp and left it at
that.
In the Paul, now there are marks of
identity.
I've given you one of them already, and
that is the creedal proof of identification with
the early church.
We got to believe what they believe.
I don't think that it's possible to be
a good Christian and not believe the truth.
I don't think that we ought to be
off on anything.
I think we ought to believe all the
Bible.
I never did enough thinking or got enough
education ever to jar my whole scriptures.
I get happy about scriptures that some people
get worried about.
They worry about it, and they read them
in different kinds of wonder.
I read them, and usually in the King
James, though I've got 25 or 30 others.
I just believe them, and I believe them
all.
It can be proved by any man of
goodwill that the doctrinal position of the evangelical
church is identical with the doctrinal position of
the church fathers.
Now, I want to give you some other
indication which would be necessary to prove that
this is that, and to show that we
are in spiritual descent from the early church,
and that this that we have among us
today is truly the New Testament church.
Well, let me give them to you.
I'll take them down sometimes after I've talked
enough to say that in print, and the
answer is no.
Most everything that I preach is not in
print because it's impossible to write it, and
if you take it down and tape it,
it sounds awful and looks awful when you
get it, and it takes longer to edit
it than it does to write it.
It's not in print.
If you want to take these points, all
right, if you don't, just sleep on.
But the march of identification, that is the
relationship, our relationship, to the early church.
First, or second, really, there's a tendency of
moral elevation.
Christ Jesus, our Lord, came into the world
to save people.
He said he came to save his people
from their sins, and the whole tenor of
it is that Jesus Christ, by his blood
and his power, saves sinners.
Now, we got a lot of excuses put
up, that is, drawing wrong conclusions from right
doctrines.
A lot of conclusions that you got to
sin a little all the time and keep
at it in order that you might prove
to God that you are no saint.
Prove to the devil that you're just a
good fellow and mean well, and don't make
the sinner feel embarrassed because he ought to
be jealous.
So you don't preach what they call sinless
perfection, but also I don't preach nor do
I believe in the doctrine that we sin
a little all the time.
I believe that the grace of Jesus Christ
and the power of the Holy Ghost can
take any man, even the mad as I
by nature, and can help him to walk
in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts
of the flesh.
And the evangelical church ought to have a
height of moral elevation so great that the
sinners would look themselves there.
But instead of that, we have edited it
down, and watered it down, and diluted it.
We've had a lot of people out showing
us that we ought not to be holier
than thou, but that we ought to have
the same journey I have as Savior.
It would be like two men dying on
hospital cots in the same ward, both of
them, and one of them saying to the
other one, now I've got what you've got,
but the only difference between us is that
you don't have a physician and I do.
Well you couldn't interest a dying man in
another man who fell off because he had
a physician.
If the physician couldn't cure the fellow, what
was the good of the physician?
You might as well have been out playing.
And so if I go to a sinner
and I say, now I'm just exactly the
same as you, only the difference is that,
but I do the same thing that he
does.
I tell the same dirty jokes that he
tells, and I waste my time the same
as he does, and I do everything he
does.
And then I say, now I have a
Savior.
You ought to have a Savior.
Hasn't he the right to ask me what
kind of Savior I have?
Is it going to profit a man to
say I have a physician if he's dying
on a cot?
What does it profit a man to say
I have a Savior if he's living in
iniquity?
No, the Church of Jesus Christ in apostolic
days had a very high level of elevation.
Now the Church, any Church, your Church, back
there in Ramshorn, Minnesota, wherever you are, that
Church of yours, my Church if I had
one, Bill Newell is the boss up there
and I just stick around, but I'm up
now.
Well, our Church up there, any Church here,
any Church, if it does not have a
level of elevation comparable to the New Testament
Church, then it has violated the law of
spiritual success.
And it may be doctrinally in lineal descent
from the Apostles, but morally it has broken
its successful doubt.
Now the next point is identity of attitude
toward God.
The apostolic everything, the triune God, the Father,
the Son, the Holy Ghost, they hadn't invented
the term triune yet, and they hadn't invented
the term trinity.
They did that in order to state in
few words, or in that case one word,
a whole chapter.
But they believed in God the Father, and
they believed in God the Son, and they
believed in God the Holy Spirit.
Not only did they believe him trinity, but
they were, he was everything to them.
God was at the center.
They gathered unto the Lord, they worshiped the
Lord, they obeyed the Lord, the Lord was
everything to them.
But you know, the Churches, perhaps most Churches,
to them God is no longer necessary.
I think that this is one of the
most awful things.
The knowledge of Gabriel won't be more awesome
than the knowledge that there are Churches claiming
to believe, and being full of belief by
way of doctrine, that still have so arranged
their Church that God isn't necessary to them.
I stand before you tonight and tell you
this, that I pray often, and I want
to live in line with my prayer, that
me in a state where he has to
help me or I'll flop.
I want to be in a place where
I have to have God.
The thing I do, I want God to
be to it.
But the carnal human mind soon wants to
geekly off on a shelf.
Oh yes, to the average Church, God is
desirable, and he may even be useful, but
he's not.
I like to be in a place where
God is indispensable to me.
That is, I like to be where he
lights you out, you know, when that time
when he had teased those prophets of Baal.
I used to say 400, but I was
reading it again the other day, and at
450 there were those prophets.
And they'd kept themselves all day, and they
were angry, and Baal hadn't heard them.
And he'd needle them on, you know, and
he'd say, your God's asleep, or he's hungry,
or he's off in conversation with someone, and
he said, they'll hear you, hear you after
a while.
And when he got them so mad that
they were in a state of frustration and
bitterness, it came time for him to offer
his offering.
Now, if God hadn't helped to light you,
you know what they'd have done to him.
They'd have tore him limb for limb, from
limb of health.
It wasn't a question of, now Father, we
thank you, you're here, and we're here, amen.
But he said, God, show them that your
hair shows them all right.
And the fire came down and licked up
everything, including the water.
And I don't always want to be on
the mount, and certainly I don't enjoy being
surrounded, but I do want to keep in
a place where I have to have God.
I think that to be in lineal descent,
to be in spiritual succession, those that I
got to live a bit, what Dr. Brown
calls, hazardously.
And if you don't live hazardously, I think
that you're too soft.
So they gathered around Christ, too.
Christ's presence, Christ's power, Christ's lordship.
He was, they were his disciples, all in
all to them.
It never occurred to the apostles, nor to
the apostolic church, it never occurred to them
that they could bring in a big shot
and forget God.
Never occurred to them.
They were God's followers.
They followed Christ.
They found themselves Christians.
They loved the Lord.
And the Lord added to the church, such
as should be saved.
So that they, their spirituality, by their attitude
toward God.
And we can prove ours only if we
have a similar attitude toward God.
Churches, we can get on without God, but
we just give God his place in a
nice way as our guest.
We have, then we say our honored guest
is here tonight.
And God's there as a guest, but he's
soon forgotten in the midst of all the
claptrap.
Well, now, my brother and sister, that isn't
an apostolic church.
Then the next point is the identity of
the Holy Spirit.
There's been a great indignity heaped upon the
third person of the Trinity.
It is this that declared an end to
his gifts and therefore declared an end to
him.
Now I'm not a, never been, and I
have no intention to join them, but I
want to tell you this, my brother and
sister, that I believe in the gifts of
the spirit.
And I believe they ought to all be,
I not only believe they ought all to
be in the church, but I believe they
all are in the true church of Christ
somewhere to be found.
Otherwise it could not work at all.
But there's been a great indignity heaped upon
the Holy Spirit where they, we have said
that the, that the gifts of this were
the death of the apostles.
Why they fixed on that arbitrary time, I
don't know.
Because you know, we don't know the date
of the last apostolic.
And for that reason, we don't know when
the Holy Spirit ceases to have any power
among us.
So the Holy Spirit gets into the benediction
and verse three of hymn number nine.
But further than that, the Holy Spirit isn't
necessary to the church.
We have a reign necessary.
He's been displaced by what we call programming
and by social activities.
Now the New Testament is born out of
fire.
And if this is going to be that,
then we're going to have to be born
out of, and not all the books we
have or the creedal niceties that we can
quote will prove anything to the Lord said,
I know you're Jews.
You don't have to tell me.
I know the books, the records in Jerusalem
shows that you're Abraham, but you're not the
children of Abraham because you don't live like
Abraham.
You don't have the spirit of Abraham.
You don't have the faith of Abraham, but
you have Abraham.
This did not Abraham.
So if the Holy Spirit is not a
decoration that old fellows preach about pensively and
remembering better days, the Holy Spirit for the
apostolic succession as breath is necessary to you,
you have to breathe to live and that
is the Holy Ghost to live.
And if we do not have the Holy
Spirit, if he's not here in power, he,
we, the apostolic church, we are creedal descendants
of the apostles, but in creed only, we
are not the children of the apostles.
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has gotten
into disrepute and a lot of people are
worried about it.
And in our schools, I give you three
or four theories and tell you to take
your choice.
The man that doesn't, isn't, is the man
that isn't convinced enough about the Holy Spirit,
have one theory, ought to go out and
plow corn.
He ought not to be in the pulpit
at all.
He has a half a dozen possible theories
may be true, but he is altogether too
broad and too charitable ever to insist.
He's just too broad and too charitable on
people.
He ought to be somewhere else.
Oh man, if God ever falls on you,
if the Holy Ghost ever comes on you,
your fears all go up in certainties and
you'll be able to teach the word of
God with prophetic certainty.
You got to have the same relation to
the Holy Spirit that the apostolic church had.
And I want to ask you whether you
do and whether your church.
Now the next is our attitude toward the
flesh.
Now the New Testament church repudiated the flesh.
I don't mean your mortal body.
God hasn't anything against your mortal body.
I think I've said that every council meeting
now for the last 20 years.
But that is anybody's body.
They're not all they ought to be.
And they have a way of getting out
of fix.
And they'd get hinged after a while and
the top comes off.
But you needn't worry about your body.
I don't mean your body.
Your flesh, brother.
Your flesh is your personality.
Your flesh is your id.
Your flesh is your ego.
Your flesh is that of which you are
so in order.
That's the flesh.
Now the New Testament church, they repudiated the
flesh completely.
They said by baptized into Christ's death.
And when he rose, we rose.
And when we rose, we rose in him
and the dead.
And we are henceforth new creatures in Christ
Jesus.
Now that's what they taught.
Paul taught that.
And the believers were baptized.
That's what they thought happened.
They thought the old man, the old flesh
was gone.
They said the old boy is gone.
Living new lives in Christ Jesus the Lord.
And we're hidden with Christ in God.
But now we say that we are in
spiritual from the apostles in the apostolic church
because we believe their doctrines.
But I wonder if our attitude toward the
flesh there.
Many churches nowadays, of course, they incorporate the
flesh.
We manage somehow.
And we even write books to show that
it's, that it should be there.
One dear teacher, I won't tell you what
it's a man or man.
And uh, she said, she said, oh, impulsively,
you know, I'm so sweet and cooey.
She said, saints, she said, they do such
awful things.
They get drunk.
God's saints get drunk and hell go not
into the holy place of the most high
God.
But we've incorporated the flesh and we've to
give the flesh a good reputation.
Our daughter down in Niagara found a stray
sick cat, stray sick cat and took it
in the home and nursed it back to
life again and kept it cat and nursed
it up.
Well, we do that with the flesh.
We take the flesh that God has condemned
and we nurse it back and feed it
plant life or whatever you feed cat.
And we make it slick and smooth and
educated and call it by night hymns and
the church adopts it.
We elect it to the board and make
the ushers and deacons out of it.
But it's the flesh, the flesh that they
left in the waters of baptism.
That flesh that the early church said dies
with Christ when he died on the tree.
We don't even claim dead anymore.
We, we give it nice names.
We've organized around the flesh now and with
the value and the standards of the flesh.
Now, I'm not an old man sour on
the world.
I'm not sour on anything.
I love every, even crew chef.
God held mercy on me.
But I, I love everybody and I'm not
in the slightest sour, not because I'm older
than I was 20 years ago.
It's just plain Bible truth.
I believed it then.
And I hope to believe it when the
carrier comes for me, that the people of
God and the, and the world have different
standards.
Flesh has no place in the kingdom of
God at all.
And that we ought to rule it out.
That we ought to feel about the power
of the spirit and the power of the
blood to get rid of the old man
with these deeds, to put it off as
you put off an old dirt and to
put on the new man, which in Christ
Jesus is renewed into righteousness and true holiness.
And then there is a density of attitude
toward them.
Now the apostolic church fled the world.
It fled the world.
Those early Christians, they were crucified and that
the world hated them.
They were crucified to the world and the
world under them.
And they remember if the world hates you,
it's because they hated me before they hated
you.
And they heard the apostle John say, little
children, these are the things that are in
the world.
Or if any man loved the world, the
love of the father is not in him.
We have a good deal of unpleasant things
to say about the liberals because the liberals
rule out certain passages of scripture.
I was reading a book the other day
in which a was telling the gospels were
valid and what parts were written in by
a nice people who didn't know any better.
Well, I believe that the Bible is including
1 John 2 15 that I just quoted,
but it isn't a popular passage anymore.
People don't want to have adopted the world.
We have conformed to it.
We have identified ourselves with it all except
of course, the worst and bank robbery and
dope.
We don't commit them, but then the average
sinner doesn't either.
He doesn't want to do that with ourselves
because we live as clean as the cultured
people who attend the opera.
We congratulate ourselves because we live as a
school teacher who doesn't believe in God and
a scientist who believes that God is energy.
Why my brother and sister, our world ought
to be so completely other than that.
We ought to be saved from it completely,
but we have sold out to the time.
Modern evangelicalism has surrendered to the world, excused
it and explained it and documented it.
And there are more of you young preachers
now right now.
Now, you know, boys, I don't mind saying
this to you because you don't and I'm
not up for election.
So I'm not after your vote.
And if I was up for election, I
wouldn't be after your vote and I'd say
it anyhow.
But you young fellows, now you might as
well admit it, junior, that a lot of
you imitate men in the world with a
good deal.
Then you imitate the holy saints of God.
And you know a good deal more about
the big celebrities in the world today than
you haven't read the lives of the saints.
They're boring you.
You don't want to hear about them.
They made you read the biography when you
were not one cent and you're not going
to.
Because you're more interested in Allie Kahn and
Allie Katz and other such things.
You're not interested in the saints.
And your imitation, you're imitating not the saints
of God, you're imitating the world, the world
and taking it in.
And then there is a tendency of worship.
But I might say, incidentally, that the church
that's taken the world in, or taken in,
and the world usually takes the church in
before the church takes the world in.
That church is not a succession from the
apostles, even if it has a creed drawn
from the epistles of Paul, and even if
it takes from the doctrines of the faith.
I know you're of the seed of Abraham,
but you're not of the children of Abraham.
And we have more liberal morals in evangelical
circles than we have bibles in our day
in which we live.
Well, there must be an identity of worship.
Now, Jesus Christ, our Lord, located the kingdom
of God within.
God is within you.
And a lot of those old Greek jockeys,
they've told us that means that the kingdom
was among you.
It didn't mean anything of the sort.
It meant the kingdom of God lies inside
your breath.
And Paul later said, the hope of glory.
And Jesus said that God is spirit, and
they that worship him must worship him in
spirit.
And through that, we have an inward worship.
The whole center and core of Christianity lies
inside the heart.
It's impossible to have a church and not
have any of the accouterments of the church.
I preached one time in a tent in
a certain city.
They ran it all week long, or all
summer long, I guess.
And I took the week, and somebody else
had taken a week before me, and somebody
else had taken a week after me.
And I came up to Saturday night to
end my week, and during the day while
I was off about my business, they had
a whole lot of stuff backing me on
the platform.
And I said to the pastor that we
sat there with that mountain back of us,
I said, what's this?
Well, he's following you tomorrow.
He said, that's his, that's his, those are
his props.
I said, well, he needed a prop.
I'm pretty sure that he'd won the judgment
day, that he had props.
Now, I don't know what they contained.
I didn't look.
But here's what I had.
That's all I had, you know, the book.
Sixty-six books bound into one.
And that's all a man of God needs.
And to run a church, just about all
you need is a good Bible, and to
get along without the hymn book, if you've
got a fair memory.
So, my brother, we have externalized worship.
Jesus put it in the Ark, and we
have put it in the side rooms.
Jesus put it in the Ark, and we
put it in the projection booth.
Jesus put it in the church, and we
internalized it, so that the average fellow, he
can't practice his religion now any more than
a Catholic priest can without his oil bottle,
and he can't practice Christianity.
If you can't practice your worship with nothing
in your hand but your Bible, you haven't
got religion.
And nobody needs to claim he's in succession
from the apostolic church, and that he's orthodox
in the truth, if he has to support
his Christianity with a lot of gadgets.
We spend millions of dollars, evangelicals, that don't
need to be at all.
Some of you think I'm horrible now, and
you'll shake my hand tomorrow and look me
in the eye, but you don't think it
was good at all, because you are an
addict of gadgets.
And you've got the habit, and you and
your church, without being cluttered up with a
with a small truckload, a pickup truckload of
junk, then you could try to blow up
a moonbeam.
You've got to be affected that way.
They taught you how to do that.
No.
It used to be that a boy on
a log, and on the other end of
the log, made a college.
And it used to be that one man
of God, surrounded by a little company of
people, made a church, and more.
And yet we piously say that we're in
lineal descent from the apostles.
We've been out in bondage, we're not fornication.
One is our Father, even God.
And Jesus patiently said, now I know your
creed is the same, but same.
This did not Abraham.
He didn't act like that.
And when we get into politics, we want
jobs, and Brown trying to push fellows into
offices.
God help us.
We ought to be listening to what the
Holy Ghost has to say.
The Holy separates me, Barnabas, and Saul.
And anybody the Holy Ghost says separate, I'll
not only vote for, I'll follow.
I don't care who he is, and I
don't care if he looks, has a personality
that gets him by, or if he looks
like me.
It doesn't make any difference to me.
I don't care.
What I want to know is the Holy
Ghost said, separate him, and I'm on his
trail.
I'll follow him as far as he wants
me to go with him.
Well, we've got to have a dent in
that.
Worship is absent in the average church.
Downtown University, in February, I gave a, what
they call a lectureship.
There weren't, I told them that, but they
called it a lectureship on worship.
And I want to continue to preach about
worship because I love to do, I love
to worship the Lord, but I don't attend
many prayer meetings, you know, because nobody worships
the Lord much.
We have information that we obviously didn't have
before, but we don't do a great deal
of worshiping.
I was at a Bible college, now it
wasn't in Toronto Bible college for a day
called Good Friday, I don't think it was
better than the other Friday, but they called
it Good Friday.
And they had communion service, and they asked
me if I'd come over and preach, and
I did.
I went over and preached on Isaiah 53,
and then I went back and sat down.
And the faculty, not the faculty of, what
are they?
I don't know, anyhow, they ran the shack.
They were sitting around there, and different ones
prayed, and did different things.
And I was listening, I was waiting there,
you know, seeing if I could get a
spark.
And then old brother Phillips, I think his
name was, would you lead us in prayer?
The old dignified, white-haired man bowed his
head and began to pray.
And he hadn't been praying more than half
a minute, till my heart began to sink.
I was in tune with the infinite.
God was talking to my dear old brother.
He quoted a few nights, a few scriptures,
and his low, reverent tones were the tones
that a subject would use in addressing, and
the tones that a lover would use in
addressing someone dear to him.
Oh, he worshiped the Lord.
This thing happened afterwards.
I went to him, and I said, Brother
Phillips, we don't often comment on prayers, but
I said, I just wanted you to know
I was praying, I was worshiping the Lord.
You know, the reason I tell that is
because it happens so rarely.
It ought to be regular, just as regular
as we meet.
But it isn't.
It only happens now and again.
It's a four-leaf clover.
It's a pearl in an oyster.
We'll have oysters, but we only find a
pearl occasionally.
And we've got bushels of religious gatherings, but
only once in a great while.
God is in the midst.
I'd walk through mud to get to a
group where there was nobody showing off, only
God was present.
People that prayed talked to God, and when
they sang, they talked to God, and sang
about God.
But we've ruined our time.
We've got programming now, they call it, that
awful, hateful word, programming.
So we go around programming, but absent.
Now, if they were worshipers in the day,
and they were worshipers, for you remember that
Paul said that when the unbeliever came in,
he fell and said, God is among them
as a truth.
Now, it wasn't the personality of the speaker,
they might not even have had one, but
it was the presence that made them fall
down in worship.
I'll join anything, I won't leave the alliance,
but I'll just join on the side.
Anywhere, when I can go into and spend
ten minutes and come away relaxed and saying,
oh, I've been where God was.
They were like that.
Now, we say we're not born of fornication,
what do you mean?
We believe what the apostles believed.
Yes, we believe, but I wonder if we
are one with them in the succession of
spiritual worship.
I doubt it.
Well, now, I'd like to hear and hear,
and go rolling down the alley, and if
it's a hollow sound, you'll know it had
nothing in it.
But here's what I want to say, of
the C and M A.
I'd like to say this to you, brethren,
that there's a great danger that we shall
assume too much.
A great danger that we shall meet, absolutely
convinced that we are the people, and piety
will peek around with us.
It's nice to talk about the C and
M A being a miracle, and I suppose
it was, and is.
But I don't want you to forget, my
brethren, Jews had miracles in their history, too.
But all the miracles of Israel didn't prevent
them, nor them, from the judgment of God.
And the very people who were physical descendants
of the miraculous nation, were scattered to the
ends of the earth, and they haven't been
restored since.
Except a little in Palestine there, still scattered.
And the judgment came upon them in spite
of the fact that they were the sons
of the miracle.
And it's perfectly fine to assume too much.
I think, my brethren, we ought to examine
our hearts.
We ought to examine our life.
Young man, you ought to examine your relation
to your wife.
You ought to examine the way you will
live in the home.
Are you the same good and gracious brother
in the home that you are in the
vestibule?
Then I think we ought to examine our
churches.
Is God there, of course, to bring in
attractions from everywhere, to get anybody present?
I remember, I suppose I've told you, it
ain't the place now where I've been around
so much and preached to so many people,
and I don't know anything I haven't said
before.
But anyhow, I remember, Cherubinack and somewhere at
church, they had some sort of a pageant,
pagan pageant, and they had at Christmas a
whole bunch of things there, and among them
they had a donkey, an ordinary hee-haw
jackass.
And time came for him up on the
platform, among the other actors, and he just
chose to go.
He sat down there.
So they were coaxing him, you know, just
frantic.
It was his cue.
And there he was, sitting down on his
little stumpy tail, and they were pushing and
pulling.
Now, that's as far as I got.
I don't know whether some other member of
the cast took his part and probably played
it a good deal more realistically than he
could have done.
But they tried to drag the jackass, and
then they say, we are not born of
fornication.
We are the sons of Abraham.
That's what you think, bud.
But so did not Abraham.
So did not Abraham.
We are the descendants of A.
B.
Simpson.
We believe what he believed, or we say
we do.
But so did not A.
B.
Simpson.
Now, I think that we ought to examine
our church and point to it with tears
in our eyes and say, this is that.
We ought to be able to go back
to our church, big or little, and point
one finger to the New Testament, the other
finger to our church, and reverently say, this
is that.
And if we can't, we ought not to
fall back that we're members of the Christian
and Missionary Alliance and we've got missionaries in
21 fields.
That doesn't mean a thing to God.
God's spiritual succession with the Apostles.
He wants us to be in moral descent
from the early church, to give the Holy
Ghost the same place in our church that
they gave him in the Book of Acts.
He wants us to make Jesus' central figure
in our church that he made him there.
Not say we do, but do.
And if we don't, then we're only fooling
ourselves.
And I don't know about you, but I
repeat, I don't want to be fooled by
anybody.
When anybody's fooling me, I want to know
whether I am in spiritual descent from the
Apostles or not.
And if I'm not, I want to do
something about it.
Wisdom of God speaketh, brethren.
I'm about true.
I believe the wisdom of God speaketh, and
I want to read a verse.
If my called by my name shall humble
themselves and pray and seek my face and
turn from their wicked ways, then will I
hear from heaven and will forgive their sins
and will heal their land.
Now, there's one way we can deal with
this talk that I have.
We can reject it and say that's what
he thinks.
Or we can humble ourselves unto God, and
we can hear the Holy Ghost say, if
my people called by my name shall humble
themselves and pray and turn from their wicked
ways and seek my face, then I will
hear from heaven and will forgive and will
heal their land.
I want my little work, which isn't as
big as lots of man's, but I want
it to be genuine.
I want it to be solid gold the
whole way through.
I want it to my heart that I'm
in descent from the Apostles.
Not as big as they were, but as
real as they were.
Not as vast as they were, but spiritual
as they were.
I believe that's possible for any one of
us.
I don't think there is an Alliance Church
in Canada or the United States that can
have the same intensity of spiritual devotion that
they had in the Book of Acts.
I don't think there's an Alliance Church anywhere
in the world that can have the same
purity of life, intensity of worship, and the
same liberty in the Holy Ghost, and the
same high moral level that they had in
the Book of Acts and in the Epistles,
in the Apostolic Church.
And if our churches do not have it,
but wild flight of the imagination, can we
dare to say that we are indeed in
succession and in descent from the Apostolic Church?
One point isn't enough.
Physical descent isn't sufficient, just as physical descent
wasn't sufficient for Israel.
We must do something else.
Now, brethren, let me say to you that
if God has hinted to your heart this
night, if he's spoken to your heart this
night, what about that?
What about your own personal life?
What about the way you live?
What about it all?
Maybe joy in your heart you can clear
and say, thank God, brother, told you this
is that.
And if so, I'll be one to rejoice
with you.
Don't think it's true in too many instances.
And we who are ministers of the gospel,
they'll be like us as the fruit is
like the tree.
And what we are, they will be.
And if you are a quippy, smart, you'll
make a people like that.
If you're an entertainment-loving people, you'll get
a people like that.
And if you're a loose-living people, the
people.
You must be what the apostles were and
what the early church held as its alone.
And then your people will tend to be
like you.
And then with joy in our hearts, we
can know that we are from the apostles.
I, for my part, feel very shaky about
saying I am in descent from A.B.
Simpson.
Holy, quiet, reverent, poised, heavenly-minded, otherworldly man
of God, who in another world while he
walked into this one.
I don't feel good when we assume that
he was and we have what he had.
Brethren, we'd better look to ourselves.
And I think tonight is the time.
If my people, called by my name, shall
humble themselves and pray and seek my face.
Now tonight, there are those who are going
to stick, who are going to brace your
feet and refuse to let me influence you
in the slightest, and I can't help you.
Those then I suppose also in that class,
they are going to argue and prove something
by argument.
That won't do.
But there are those whose hearts want to
be what the fathers were, and who are
not satisfied with a sound.
You want to be spiritually right, so you
can say without embarrassment, you know what we're
going to do, I want you to sing.
I don't care what we sing, it doesn't
make much difference.
Because if you've got to sing, people down
there might as well stay in their seats.
But I thought we might have five or
ten minutes of prayer tonight here.
Later, but any missionary would be glad to
have you pray five minutes.
They'll wait that long.
I wonder brethren, particularly you young preachers, sorry
for that matter, if in your heart of
hearts, you'd like to spend five minutes on
your face, and just get up and come
here.
Clear these front seats for us, and we'll
have a little prayer meeting.
All right, clear the front seats please brethren,
and anybody to whom, clear them now please.
And anybody that is, get up and leave,
get out of them, that's what I mean.
And if you want to pray, of course,
drop on your knees, but come brethren, come,
come, come.