Repentance in Kansas City — Andrew Strom

Amen. Well, I'm from New Zealand, which is way down the bottom of the world. And in case any of you ever want to go there, it's 12 hours by plane, so take a good book. But it's a very beautiful country.

They used our country for the backdrop for Lord of the Rings. So all the scenery they stuck in that movie. Let's pray, shall we? Father God, we just pray your anointing here tonight. Father God, we do not accept anything less, Father, than your best for this meeting.

Authenticity and Reality in Christian Meetings

Father, we desire nothing but to serve and glorify you. Father, we want to see you in your heavenly places and not as we have perceived you in the past. Father, let your judgment throne be before our eyes.

God, let your spirit be outpoured in this place. Let us truly see an awakening in 2004. Father God, because you desire to bring your church to its knees and to brokenness, so the world may believe. So the world may believe.

Just anoint this message and this service tonight, Father. In Jesus' mighty name. Amen. You know, we're all good at doing meetings. You know, I've been doing meetings since I was a kid. I come from New Zealand and I was raised in Baptist churches, Charismatic churches, Pentecostal churches.

I've been to a whole lot of things. And my whole life I learned how to do meetings real good. And us Christians, we have come to a place where our meetings are killing us. Because we are playing a game.

Most people walk into these places and they walk straight out because they see the game. And they've walked into the movie theatre and seen something more real in there this week than they ever see here.

Tell me, this church, can we bear the weight of Mel Gibson's movie? Can we bear the weight of Mel Gibson's movie? I don't think so. I think the people that go to that movie, if they have any common sense at all, will walk into most of our meetings and walk straight back out.

Because they say, the Jesus they play games around in there ain't the Jesus I saw in the movie. Where is that reality? You know, we say revival is coming. We do not realise this, that revival is the bottom falling out of the church, not the top blowing off.

Revival is the bottom falling out of the church. Most revivals have literally started this way. With people of God falling on their faces and repenting with great crying and tears for their sins. And yet we dance around the topic and we have our lovely games.

And most of our meetings are games. And they're parades and they're hype. And they're garbage. I'm tired of it, man. I've seen it for over 30 years. I'm just so sick of playing this garbage. Really. I see more of it here in this nation than anywhere else.

There's so much money to be made playing the game. There really is. So much money to be made playing the game. People, when are we going to stop that game and start getting real with God? When are people going to walk in outdoors and say, hey, that's the Jesus that I saw in the movie.

Such reality. Such crushing blows. Such, you know, the blood and the guts was there for everybody to see. They don't see that Jesus in here. What we do very often is lull them with niceness. We lull them with niceness.

Revival as Repentance and Spiritual Shaking

I've been studying revival history for 20 years. I've been saying to God since I was 17 years old, God, make me a revivalist like Evan Roberts from the Welsh revival. God, whatever it takes, take me through anything you like.

God, I want to be a revivalist like that. Where he would preach and entire rooms would be full of weeping people. Where preachers could not speak for the cries of the people so loud repenting before God.

The cries of the people drowning out the voice of the preacher. That is revival. We don't think of it that way, do we? We would love, if we could, to play all of our little games and sing all of our lovely songs and have them just come and join and fill our churches up.

We think that that would be a great revival to have. I'm telling you now, people, that ain't reality. The reality is this. God brings such a shaking to the church. God brings such repentance and deep weeping for sin.

And then the church starts to get real. The church starts to get real. And when it falls away from its reality again, it backslides. And we start to get the circus that we've got now. Pentecostalism is a hundred years old.

Azusa Street happened a hundred years ago. You know, I'm a Pentecostal. I went to assembly of God for a number of years in my home country. Praise God. But you know what happens in a hundred years? You slowly, slowly lose it.

And unless God brings something incredibly shocking to your church, it kind of solidifies. And we start entertaining ourselves instead of actually doing the real Jesus. Instead of seeing Him, we're seeing amusement.

We're amusing ourselves. We're dancing around the table, not getting to the real issue. You know what I'm saying? I hope you guys can understand me. I know I've got a strange accent. I'm just going to pick up my notes now.

Charles Finney and the Necessity of Piercing Preaching

You know, one of my favorite guys is Charles Finney. Put your hand up if you've heard of him. He's an American preacher, a hundred years ago. I believe God's... The thing that I've noticed about all the American awakenings, there have been five great waves of awakenings.

Over the last 250 years, this nation is so blessed. My country has none. No awakenings. This country has had five. Every 50 years, roughly, God brings them along. What a phenomenal thing. No country in the world has that.

This is why America has 40 church attendance every week. Did you know that? It's because God has blessed and blessed and blessed this nation. And yet it can all be lost. Charles Finney, over a hundred years ago, listen, he preached sermons that would literally peel the paint off the walls.

He was a John the Baptist preacher. And the thing I've noticed about revival in America, God wants to bring these John the Baptists every time. And unless they come preaching this piercing message, there ain't no revival.

He brought Jonathan Edwards along. Jonathan Edwards is famous for preaching a sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It was so powerful. He'd been praying all night the night before. He said, God, let eternity be in my eye.

And the people were hanging onto the pews and the pillars of the church because they saw hell opening up beneath them as he was preaching. And they were crying out. And it says he had to ask them for silence that he could be heard.

Now, he was the most boring preacher on earth, this guy. All he'd done was pray and God had started to move because this is what he preached like. He would hold up his notes like this. And in a monotonous voice, he would just read them.

Yes, and yay, and you know. That's what he was like, an old-time, old-time guy who just kind of read his sermons out. And yet God opened up hell beneath these people and they started to go, I'm not saved at all.

I ain't saved at all. I just thought I was. Charles Finney would go from place to place preaching in churches. One time, I'll give you an idea. This is how he started one sermon. If you can imagine this today, so rare.

I don't think we ever hear any preachers come with this one. He said, you serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? That was his opening line. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?

They said he used to say the word hell with such forcefulness that it shocked people to their core. He preached another time on this. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. And then he spent his entire sermon telling the people and showing them that they had no holiness at all.

That was his object in the sermon. He would get people who thought they'd been Christians for 30 years suddenly crying out with a loud voice and saying, oh my God, I'm undone. I've never been saved. Elders in the church would confess of sins.

I was reading about another revivalist who was a student of Charles Finney's writings. He went into China. He said the Chinese people all used to sit like stick figures all the rest of the time. But when the Holy Spirit started to fall on them, he would find that guys would be in total agony because saving face is very important.

You never get up and confess sins. He would find entire churches full of people standing up, could not wait to get in front of the whole congregation including elders and everything, confessing sins before everybody because the Holy Spirit was convicting them so strongly.

Now we want revival, don't we? Do we want revival at that kind of cost? Because that's what it might be. What happens when the John the Baptist arrives? Charles Finney was this close to getting shut down.

The ministers all around him tried to encircle him and make sure he couldn't go any further. John Wesley, who was another great revivalist in England, was thrown out of his own church and he could not find a pulpit anywhere in the country to preach on.

He had to preach on his father's grave. He went out into the open air and the records say that he would preach to 30 ,000 coal miners and you could see the trails of their tears on their black faces as he was preaching to them.

Quite often, 4 ,000 would be left face down on the ground when he'd finish preaching. No amplifiers and no microphones. 30 ,000 people listening as though a pin drop, you know, listening so intently to this man of God who'd been expelled from the church for preaching John the Baptist-type truth.

The Prophetic Challenge of John the Baptist

What will the church of today do when the John the Baptist arrives and says, It's all a facade. I don't believe in anything you do. Do you think they might say that kind of thing? I think they might. I think they might say, Most of the people in the church are wearing masks.

Most of them are pretend Christians. They fell away from Jesus being utterly alive in the depths of their being years ago. They don't live that way. But they'll clap their hands and raise their hands.

What if the John the Baptist come preaching that? What on earth is the church going to do to the John the Baptist? You know, he lasted six months. You know, the religious authorities, they hated his guts.

And finally, Herod had him beheaded six months into his ministry. Jesus lasted three and a half years. He would have crowds trying to throw him off a cliff, and it says he walked through their midst and was not harmed by them.

Because they hated his guts because of what he spoke to them. It challenged everything about themselves, every high and lofty thought that they thought about themselves. He would bring it to the dirt and say, You're not sons of Abraham at all.

You're the children of your father the devil. Look at your behavior. Look at the way you act. Look at the way you speak. Everything in the hidden place shows that you're false. When you confront people with sin, they want to kill you or they want to repent.

What's the church going to do to the John the Baptist that God sends for the next great awakening? Hey, I believe it could be in 2004. I believe if it is, you know what? It'll shake us first. It'll shake us so terribly.

We're so complacent. We don't deserve a movie like that. God had to send the most traditional kind of Catholic guy. I mean, he's just, you know, if we tried to match our beliefs really with Mel Gibson, we'd find, sure, he believes in the same God, but there's so different similarities after that.

And yet God sends a guy who's really utterly into a Catholic tradition, Latin mass and the whole thing. This guy makes a movie more real, more powerful and more convicting than anything we've made for 30 years in the spirit-filled so-called church.

It's a kick up the backside for us. That's what we'd say in New Zealand. It's a kick up our backside. That's what it is. Let me quote Charles Finney for you. This is in one particular place he was at.

I had not spoken to them in the strain of direct application for more than a quarter of an hour. When all at once an awful solemnity seemed to settle down upon them, the congregation began to fall from their seats in every direction and cry for mercy.

If I had had a sword in each hand, I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell. If I had had a sword in each hand, I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell. He went on to say during that meeting, everybody just fell, cranked on the floor and started screaming at the top of their voices, crying out to God for mercy.

He couldn't preach. He had to stop preaching. Nobody paid attention to him whatsoever. They were having a heart-to-heart with God. That's what revival preaching does. You know, Savonarola, here's another revivalist for you.

Listen to this. He predates all these guys. He was one of the originals. It says, His preaching caused such terror and alarm, such sobbing and tears, that people passed through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.

Can you believe that? Would you go along to hear a preacher who did that to you? You pass through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive? Actually, you know what? That's what people were like when they came out of that movie.

I saw it about a week and a half or something ago. You know what? All the reports around us tell us that's what they were like when they came out of that movie. It's like they'd been to a funeral. It's like they'd watched their best friend die.

It's like they'd suddenly seen the reality of it all. But the problem is, when they come into church, we are utterly unreal. We are utterly unreal. And we're unreal with God as well. They used to preach, all these old Revival guys, they used to preach sermons like this, The Almost Christian, basically talking about pretense.

And I would say this is the number one issue in the church today because we have gallons and gallons of pretense. And we come into the church and like I say, we can raise our hands with the best of them, man.

We can clap our little hands until they just about fall off. But you know what? We're pretend Christians. Many, many, many. We can speak in tongues because we got baptized in the Holy Spirit 10 years ago.

But are we walking in the depths of Jesus today? Is our robe unspotted today? You know, God woke me up about 6 months ago at 4 o 'clock in the morning and He showed me something that I'd never seen in all my studies of Revival.

He showed me what these guys honed in on when they preached and I suddenly saw it. You know what they honed in on? Assurance of salvation. Sounds like a weird thing to... You know, they used to preach that.

Examining Ourselves and Rejecting False Assurance

Okay, assurance of salvation. But I suddenly realized what they were doing. We're going to go down that path tonight. 2 Corinthians 13 verse 5. Everybody look it up. I'm going to read it out of the NIV because I like the clarity of it.

2 Corinthians 13 verse 5. It's a pretty simple verse. It has a lot of meaning in it. Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless of course you fail the tests.

So it's actually telling you. Paul here is telling you. Test yourselves. Examine yourselves. Are you really in the faith or not? It tells us to do that. Examine yourselves to see. Okay, so we're going to have a look at that tonight.

It's one of the things that these guys used to always do. Now we're big on ask Jesus into your heart in the church. Are we not? We are indeed. But do you know what? That thing was invented about 100 years ago for crusades.

The big preachers and we have been I guess led along by that form and that type of thing for 100 years. We do it as a matter of course. When I started witnessing to people, I was 18 years old. I was at university in New Zealand and I'd go up to people and I had this little pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws which I think came from Campus Crusade for Christ.

And this was a little procedure of course. You get people to ask Jesus into their heart. But something I noticed was strange. I would be getting people to pray this prayer and they would be totally unchanged.

I would say pray this prayer after me and they'd repeat it word for word. And you know I'd been taught this is what we were told to do. As soon as they pray that prayer, you say to them, right, you're saved now.

You just asked Jesus in. So Jesus is inside you. You're a Christian. But hang on a minute. Do you know what I believe that is now? It's false assurance. Who's supposed to assure us if we're truly a Christian?

It actually says, the Holy Spirit will cry out, Abba Father, from inside of us. There ain't no record of anybody having to say to somebody, oh, you've just prayed a little prayer, now you're in. You don't have to worry.

You've got your little ticket for paradise and you're okay. Now we do it as a matter of course, but do you know how people became Christians in the Bible? Did they ask Jesus into their heart? Remember this invention was 100 years old.

It came about when Crusade evangelism started. In the days of Moody, you know, Billy Sunday, all these guys. It slowly came about. And of course Billy Graham uses it because it processes people quickly.

They come down and they pray a little prayer and they sign a little card and they think they've got it. In the book of Acts, they did this. They repented and they were baptized and they received the Holy Spirit.

And until those three things had happened, nobody was satisfied. And in fact, they'd do them right in the middle of the night. They'd say, excuse me sir, you are repentant and I can tell that you are.

Come and be baptized now. The jailer of Paul was baptized in the middle of the night. The Ethiopian who was passing by, remember, who was in the chariot? Philip was or the Ethiopian was? The Ethiopian was, that's right.

He got baptized straight away. Why? Because you've got to deal with sin fully. And you don't muck around with things like that because it will kill you. It will kill you. And if you don't have the full experience, man, if you aren't repenting and getting baptized and receiving the Holy Spirit, the whole nine yards filled to here to overflowing with the Spirit of God, I don't believe you'll last.

In those days, I would say they would not even consider you to be part of them yet. They would say, these people are inadequate under God. We've got to get them, you know, you see it all the way through the book of Acts.

From beginning to end, repent, be baptized, you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Why do we cut people short today? Why do we shortchange people? Why do people go to our crusades and not truly end up defeating sin?

Why do 95 of people who go forward at crusades fall away within a few weeks? I wonder when we're going to get back to the Bible one of these days. I wonder when somebody's going to read the book of Acts and say, hey man, is there such a thing as ask Jesus into your heart in the Bible?

Nope. Give your heart to the Lord simply does not exist in Scripture. If you get an exhaustive concordance and you do a study on these words, you'll find give your heart to the Lord ain't there, ask Jesus into your heart ain't there, pray a sinner's prayer ain't there.

None of it's there. Convenient Christianity invented it. What's going to happen on judgment day when we have churches utterly full of people who ain't Christians at all going up to Jesus and saying, hi God, it's me.

And what does it say in Scripture? Depart from me, I never knew you at all. Depart from me, I never knew you at all. How many thousands and millions is the church turning into false Christians today? Let's go deeper than that even.

Let's say, in our Pentecostal charismatic churches, of which we're all proudly a part, how many of the people in our pews are actually walking with God? And when they get to judgment day, their robes will be clean.

How many? You know, we really do act like Jesus. Jesus is a friend of mine. And all that. We act like the gospel is a kind of Colgate commercial. And if you, you know, we used to have this ad in New Zealand.

And if you brush your teeth with Colgate, you'd get this little ring of confidence. Ding. And of course, you can smile forever after that because you've got it. And of course, it's a fake load of garbage.

But sadly, a lot of people walking into our congregations are getting the same opinion of Christianity that it's kind of like this fake little commercial. And everybody gets the little ding of confidence and walks around smiling.

And it ain't really there. It never was in half the cases. And in a lot of cases, sadly, it once was truly there and it's been lost. And all that remains is the shell of Christianity that walks into church buildings and stands and claps and does all the routine, the little parade and the little dance that we do and is going to hell.

Do you think that's possible? Do you think... Let me put this before you. The Bible very clearly shows that Jesus at the very end is incredibly angry. The Bible clearly shows that we will not be coming up in front of one of those judges who is really bored with the day and is kind of yawning his way through the day.

I don't know if you can picture this, but you know when you've been called up in front of the judge for maybe a little traffic offence and you're going in there, you're pretty confident. You think, oh well, it's just such a minor offence.

I don't even know why I'm here for, but I'll probably be like a $70 fine or something like that. And you walk into the courtroom and you just happen to look up at the judge and for some weird reason that guy is in a hell of a mood.

And you're just looking at it. It's almost like he can't bear to speak. Something has made him so angry. And you're thinking to yourself, what is this guy going to do to me? I mean, what is the maximum penalty for that infringement I did because this guy looks furious and he's going to throw the book at me.

Hello? It says the same about Jesus on the last day. We just think we've got the Santa Claus Jesus who blesses us with abundance and gives us all this stuff and everything's so lovely and we can just smile our Colgate smile and carry right on.

But what happens when we get there and we find that the judge is not amused and it says all of the wrath has been saved for the end. What happens when we get in front of someone like that and we're just kind of, we've been meandering our way through life.

Man, we paid our tithes and we went to church, but I mean, what is this guy going to do to me? I want to prove this to you that Jesus is going to be a little bit less than amused. Let's go to Revelation chapter 11.

Revelation chapter 11. Sorry, Revelation chapter 20 verse 11. It says in Revelation that it's going to be like this towards the end. It says, the great day of His wrath has come. Wrath means fierce anger.

The great day of His wrath has come and who will be able to stand? It says, all the kings and the mighty men of the earth will be rushing into caves and holes in the rocks saying, hide me from the Father who sits on the throne.

Who can stand before Him? And here we find ourselves on the day of judgment. You know the Bible says it's appointed to every man once to die after this, the judgment. We do not avoid this. There is no escape route around this.

Revelation 20 verse 11. I saw a great white throne and Him that sat upon it from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. From whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. Now I'm just going to ask you this question.

What are you going to feel like doing if the earth and the heavens have just fled away from this guy's face? If the entire earth and heavens flee away from your face and you're sitting on a great white throne of judgment, I think everybody's going to feel like that.

They're going to feel like, God, get me out of here. How could I find myself in this place? God, what is happening to all these people in front of me? Why are they being sent to hell? God, how am I going to escape?

Do you know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? The Bible says. And we don't preach fear of the Lord anymore. I wonder if we've got any wisdom at all in the church. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And this is a good place to start. So the earth and the heavens fled away. There was found no place for them. I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. The books were open. Another book was open, which is the book of life.

The dead were judged out of those things written in the books according to what they had done. According to their works, according to what they had done. The sea gave up the dead which were in it. Death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.

They were judged, every man, according to what they had done. Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

So we've got this book of life sitting there and it's been opened. And if your name ain't in it, you're a goner. It says you'll be cast into the lake of fire. But everybody says, but sir, I was a decent person.

Not only that, I went to church. Not only that, I tithed actual 10 of my income. Surely to God, please, can I get a second hearing? Is there a lawyer in the house? Is there a lawyer in the house? Because everybody will want a lawyer because we know this is America, right?

And a lawyer can always get you off. Correct? A lawyer can always get you off. If you've got a good lawyer, man, you've got it made. But unfortunately, there's no lawyers. And Jesus is taking one after the other.

And you're noticing you're in line, right? And you're going to be judged. And everybody's falling on their faces before God and crawling and saying, Lord, Lord, surely you remember how I helped those people, God.

There will be every excuse. Every excuse. And he'll be saying, depart from me, I never knew you, continually. And what are you going to do when you're seeing preachers go up in front of them and get the same treatment?

You're in the line, right? And you see a couple of famous preachers. They're going up in front of you and literally it says that the angels will be grabbing hold of them and casting them into hell. And you say, but that guy, I've seen that guy on television.

That guy has one of the most powerful ministry. God. But his face is like granite. In fact, it looks furious. It's almost like he's restraining himself. Just like the judge in the courtroom who somebody has made him very, very angry because he saved all the anger for the end.

Grace is gone. Mercy has had its day. And we're left facing a judge like that. Even John. Remember, John was Jesus' best friend in the earth. I'm talking the Apostle John. He says in Revelation 1, he says, when I saw Jesus, he's talking about the glorified Jesus, completely bright white and just glorified.

He says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though I was dead. This is his best friend because the glorified Christ is nobody to muck around with. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

It's a fearful thing. And so there'll be pretend Christians going up. You know, I'm thinking about this book that's opened, the Book of Life. Now, in my country, we have a team. Our national rugby team is one of the best in the world.

And when they read out that list of names, all the guys who are on the fringe of the team, man, they are listening so carefully because they think, maybe I made it into the reserves. This is an internationally famous team that we send out.

And I'd say in America, you know, the dream team, the basketball team, there's probably guys who are right on the edge of selection. You know, like if one guy maybe pulls out sick, they get into the reserves, you know, and they'll go to the Olympics.

They'll be part of that dream team for the basketball. You imagine how carefully those guys listen to that list being read out. But I'm telling you, there ain't a list in the world that'll be listened to like this list being read out because you know if your name ain't in there, nothing you've done, nothing you've earned, nothing you've bought, no church attendance, it's going to do you any good.

Secret Sin, Holiness, and the Call to Repentance

There's people in this room now who have secret sin in their heart. You've been living with it for years. Some of you have recurring sins. They're there because you don't fear God. If you feared God, you would repent.

Most of the church is sick because we never preach the gospel. Charles Finney, if he saw our gospel, wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. It ain't no gospel to him. Come to Jesus. He'll give you a more adventurous life.

Come to Jesus. He'll make you happy. Come to Jesus, you'll get another fake Colgate smile like me. It's a Santa Claus load of garbage, and it's not going to save us when it most counts. Did you know that nothing else matters in the world but this?

That on the day of judgment, he says these words to you. Well done, good and faithful servant. And there's that famous saying that you'd rather be a caretaker or gardener or anything, a doorman in heaven, than miss out on that.

And many, many, it says in the Bible, let's go there, Matthew chapter 7. Now this is a shocking scripture for Pentecostals to read. That's why I like it. Because I'm Pentecostal and it shocks me. Matthew chapter 7 verse 20.

Actually, I'm going to go for the NIV again. Matthew 7 verse 20. Verse 21, sorry. Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name? In Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles. Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers.

Isn't that amazing? What a shocking scripture. You mean these guys who have been casting out demons, performing miracles, speaking in tongues on television, getting a whole truckload of money while they're doing it, building two million dollar houses by the lake.

You mean those guys are going to end up with that kind of treatment? I believe so. What will happen to preachers on that day who have preached to 95 of the truth and never went to 100 because they could see the people with the money in their congregation walking out the door in their mind's eye.

What's God going to do to them? Why is it a fearful thing to be a teacher in the house of God? What happens when God lines up a whole lot of preachers and just kills them all in front of everybody just like He killed Ananias and Sapphira and fear came upon the whole church?

What happens, man? We don't believe in a God like that, do we? It's always been Santa Claus, hasn't it? What's He going to do to you? If He finds you in the state of your heart that you're in now, He doesn't care about outward appearances at all.

I'm talking about the state of your heart. What is that sin that you've been clinging to? What is it, people? What is that thing that you once had a white robe and it's spotted? There's something on it.

God can see it, the devil can see it. Humans around you can't. It's a secret sin. Nobody even knows, or hardly anybody, maybe a couple of family members know about it. You don't show it to anybody. You walk in these doors and you're faking it real good.

Are you a Christian? Are you going to survive Judgment Day in front of a judge like that? Really? You think you are? You think you are? What will your sin do to you on that day? This is how much God hates sin.

He sent Jesus to go through the passion to get rid of it. That's how much he cannot stand sin. He allowed his precious lamb to be slaughtered, to be whipped to an inch of his life, to have the flesh torn off his back, to have crown of thorns stuffed on his head, pain unbearable.