What Is Revival — James A. Stewart

What Is Revival — James A. Stewart

So I'm reading in the book of Revelation, chapter 1, verse 1, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servant things which must shortly come to pass, and he sent him signified by his angel unto his servant John, who be arrested of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

Blessed is he that readeth, and he that heareth the words of this prophecy, and keepeth those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you, and peace from whom which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the sevenfold spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, and to him that hath loved us, and washed us, or loosed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests, or a kingdom of priests unto God in his Father, or kingly priests, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.

Amen. Behold, he cometh with clothes, and every eye shall see him, and the altar which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall will because of him. Even so, amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the elders called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and had behind me a great voice as of a trumpet saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and what thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia, and to Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks, or lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like unto the son of man, closed the garment down to the foot, and girded about the breast with a golden girdle.

His head and his hair were white like wool, and as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. And his feet burned like unto fine brass, as if they burned in the furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters.

And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his face. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as day. And he laid his right hand upon him for me.

Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, amen, and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.

The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

God will bless to us the reading of his own inspired, infallible word. Now you know that we must define this word revival. Now I define it over, and over, and over, and over again. Just the same way we define the fastened work of the Holy Spirit.

And just the same way we define the ministry of salvation, what it means to be saved. And you have been preaching year after year, reiterating, Lord be after Lord, what it means to be saved by the grace of God, through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Defining Revival and the Need for Spiritual Revolution

And there is no more corrupted word in our vocabulary, our evangelical vocabulary, than this word revival. And in fact it's been so corrupted that sometimes I think we ought to get a new name and say a revolution.

What we need in our church is a revolution. Because if you say what we need in our church is a revival, we'll say pastor, we're free already this year, and what do you want another one for? And so I believe it's necessary to define revival.

Now you know that revival ought not to be necessary. Revival ought not to be necessary. I lived in Hungary for years, and I attended hundreds and hundreds of prayer meetings of all denominations, and I never once heard anybody pray, oh God send revival.

You know why? Because God already sent revival, and they didn't need the revival anymore. You see, it's not God's will that we should have periods of declension and backsliding. It's not God's will that we should have periods when we keep on repenting and repenting and repenting.

Because the normal Christian life is that the moment we are saved, we should be filled with the Holy Ghost, and then we would reign victoriously in life by Christ Jesus, as Paul expresses in Romans 5 or 6, and then we would grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in that Christian life, if it's a normal life, there is no room at all for repentance in one sense. There is no room at all for backsliding. But as one has said, if we still have that malarial type of Christianity, a chill and a fever, a chill and a fever, we'll always need revival.

Now we must have surgery sometimes, but it's not normal to live in a hospital all the days of our life. And I believe, that there should come a time in our life when we don't need revival. Now the very mentioning of the word revival presupposes that we are living far below our Christian privileges and our Christian responsibilities.

And so we cry, O God, send revival, O God, send revival. Now when there's an abnormal situation, then God raises up prophets. And these prophets are holy men of God, anointed by the Holy Ghost, and they call the Church back to repentance.

Now this is the most difficult job of all. The hardest job on earth is to be a prophet, because they'll stone the prophet if he preaches the true message of repentance. And the last message of the risen Redeemer to the Church was not the Great Commission.

The last message of the risen Redeemer to the Church was the message of repentance. But the last message of the risen Lord to the Church was repentance. And so the true prophet of God is raised up by the Lord, and he has a message of revival.

He is a revivalist, and he forms this message like John the Baptist says, repent, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Now I believe that here in the book of Revelation, particularly in the first chapter concerning the seven messages by the risen Redeemer to the seven churches in Asia, we have outlined for us a pathway to revival.

Revival as a Fresh Unveiling of Jesus Christ

Now you will notice first of all here about the way of revival. I would say first of all that revival is a fresh unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ to the soul. Revival is a fresh unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ to the soul.

We have here in Revelation 1 .1 the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, or the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Now there is no book in the New Testament that so reveals and manifests the glory and the beauty and majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ, apart of course from the people of Hebrews and this book of Revelation.

It is the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. And here right to the very end, the whole book has a message, the unveiling of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so here we see that John was in the isle of Patmos, although they are soon in the isle of Patmos.

It is a bleak kind of sort of a desert island not too far from Ephesus and Smyrna in Asia Minor. And there he is, that beloved John, and he is there for the testimony of Jesus Christ. And suddenly he hears a voice behind him and he turns to see who spoke.

And there he has a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ in all his high priestly beauty and glory. And when I saw him, I shouted glory hallelujah. When I saw him, I said, Lord Jesus, let me shake thee by the hand.

And when I saw him, I clapped him in the back and said, hi brother, so glad to see you. I've been always wanting to see you face to face. Hallelujah, Lord Jesus, will you come and sing in the choir? No.

When I saw him, I said, Lord Jesus, let's go and have a little cup of coffee together a lot. And when I saw him, what? I said, at his feet is day. And when I saw him, at his feet is day. Now, I believe, friend, the church is too familiar with the Lord Jesus Christ today.

Now don't misunderstand me, I didn't say too intimate. You can never, I say this, no matter how long you live. I don't care how long you spend in prayer and how long you spend in the Bible, you can never be too intimate with your blessed Lord.

But the church of Jesus Christ today is too familiar with our blessed Lord. Listen to the way we preach, listen to the way we pray, listen to what way we sing. Many times I wonder why God doesn't strike us down dead.

The church is too familiar with our hands. John said, and when I saw him, I fell at his feet is day. Now, what I want to say is this, that revival is the, just the church, individual believers having a fresh unveiling of their blessed Lord Jesus.

Now you must have your patents. And I pray God that you'll have your patents today before the meetings go on. You must have your apocalypse. You must have your personal unveiling of the beauties and glories of the Lord Jesus Christ to your soul.

I wonder today, if you're willing to draw a circle around you and say, oh God, revive everything inside this ring. Now don't go about criticizing. It's so easy for me to say that brother needs a revival.

That brother needs broken down. That sister needs broken down. That pastor that I brought with me, he sure needs a blessing. But I'll find his every, every dear pastor. Oh God, I'm the man. Oh God, I want the, I want the patents experience.

Lord, I need, I need a fresh apocalypse. I need a fresh unveiling of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, up there in the Hebrides, in the north of Scotland, when the revival broke out there about 12 years ago, under the ministry of my dear friend, Duncan Campbell and others, that many, many days he's persecuting elders who weren't but in a trance.

They couldn't work. They were in a trance. Can you imagine? They were in a trance. Cry unemotional people. They speak very, very tenderly and their rate of speaking is so, so slow. The slowest speaking people in the world.

You couldn't even listen to a sermon. It's too slow. You could say in 10 minutes it takes them sometimes an hour. And yet these unemotional people, when they saw the Lord, they went about in a trance.

They were dazed with the glory of Jesus. Now that's what I'm talking about. We're too familiar with the Lord, but not too intimate. When was the last time your congregation was dazzled with the glory of the Lord Jesus?

Tell me. Dazzled with the glory of the Lord Jesus. Brother, sister, it doesn't matter, dear brother, if they're dazzled with our glory. God help us if they are. We're not here for preaching. One of the greatest curses of camp meetings is great preaching.

We're not here for great preaching. We're not here to show how we can preach. We're here to meet with God. And we're here to be dazzled with the glory of the Lord Jesus. Now, what does this fresh apocalypse do?

Brokenness, Repentance, and the Normal Christian Life

What does this fresh unveiling of the Lord Jesus Christ do to us? First of all, it leads to what I call a prostration of brokenness. I don't know a better expression. Maybe you know. A prostration of brokenness.

Have you had your apocalypse recently? Has your love been grown cold? Has your service for the Lord become mechanical? Even your very preaching become mechanical? Now, Douglas Brown lived around about 1928, and he was one of the greatest Baptist preachers of London.

His father was a mighty, mighty pastor in the days of Spurgeon. But, you know, he went through a Gethsemane experience for six months in his ministry. And then it wasn't until he said, Oh, Lord, anything, Lord, that revival came.

And he said it took him six months just to say these two words, anything, Lord. And he said, I went through a Gethsemane experience. And when Douglas Brown was broken down before the Lord in the prostration of brokenness, the Holy Ghost came upon him and used him for the mighty Lostop revival and other revivals in the south of England among the fisher folk when tens of thousands were saved.

Now, this is a Gethsemane experience. I wonder this morning, you can go right through the scriptures and you'll find about this crisis. For example, take Enoch. For 65 years, he lived a decent, simple, straightforward life of a delightful Christian.

But then he bore a son, Methuselah. And after he bore Methuselah, he walked in intimate fellowship with God for 300 years. Now, I don't know what lies behind the birth of Methuselah. There's a missing story here.

The Holy Ghost hasn't told us. Now, you know, we've heard many a time, a man began to walk with God. He had a new experience after the death of his son. But Enoch, he had a new experience at the birth of his son, Methuselah.

And, you know, he walked with God. His life was changed. That was a crisis, Methuselah's birth. And he walked in perfect communion with God for the next 300 years. And, you know, he walked so close to heaven one day that God said, Enoch, you're nearer my home than yours.

Just come home with me. And so we read, and he was not, for God took him. And then we think of Jacob. Now, you know, if Jacob, he was a stockbreeder. But if he was living today, he would be a stockbroker, maybe in New York City or Dallas or New Orleans.

And, you know, he had an experience, all right, at Bethel. But he didn't go back and square up with Esau. And he lost the blessing. And he wandered about. He began swindling and being swindled for the next 20 years until he had a crisis at Peniel.

And there he saw God faced with aid. And it was broken down. And you can go on, for example, you can get, you can talk about, say, Peter. Peter would have been one of the most delightful Christians in our assembly today.

His devotee is the most popular member of our church. And yet there was something lacking in Peter's life. He had a crisis when he was broken down before God. Now, I believe, brother, sister, that, I believe, brother, that God can't use me.

God can't use you for blessing in your church and your community until we have a fresh unveiling apocalypse of Jesus Christ all to ourselves individually. And then that will mean we'll be broken down before the Lord.

And it won't be an easy experience. There'll be deep humiliation. And we'll go through maybe a Gethsemane experience. And we will have even to have to testify to a congregation of people. But please remember that God does not want us to lie prostrate in the dust all the time.

Now, Jeremiah was an exceptional thing. He was a prophet of lamentations and the prophet of ten years. But I believe the normal Christian life is the life of this dear man of God, Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul.

And here he is in prison, manacled to Roman soldiers. And he cries out in Philippians 4 and 4, Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice. We have it's the same word that say Judith used of the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane, all hail master.

And we use it in Greece when we're evangelizing in Greece. We use it every day. That just means all joy in Israel. We say shalom, shalom, peace, peace be unto you. But in Greece, we say all joy, all joy be unto you.

We use it every day. You see a person who says, and that's what Paul said, and again I say, and yet he was in prison. And this is the brightest and most joyful of all the letters of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament.

And it's a necessity of joy. It's robbing of life and joy. Now, I believe that the experience of Jeremiah is not the normal experience of the child of God. I believe that Paul's experience is normal. I don't believe that God wants us to lie in the prostration of dust all the time.

No, God wants to raise us up. And he said, the Lord helps him to stand up. Now, God, friend, he wants to bring us low. And then when we go through our experience, then he raises us up. And then we have a time of worship.

We have a time of worship. But let me just give you some of the experiences of some holy men of God. Now, I don't know if you've got any books by light and you're a Bishop Westcott, a Bishop Whitefoot, or Bishop Hanley Moon in your library.

If you haven't, you try and get these men. They were successors of each other in Durham Cathedral in the north of England, Anglican Cathedral. And you know that Bishop, our dear friend, Bishop Hanley Moon was one of the mightiest scholars of Great Britain.

And he wrote two books on Romans. One is what we call the Cambridge Experience, and the other is what we call the Bible Series. And you can see the difference. There was a crisis in his life after he wrote the book on Romans on the Cambridge Series.

And then the book he wrote on the Bible Expositor Series. And you can see the difference. Something happened. He had a crisis. And God dealt with him. And he was broken down before the Lord. And then he had a new ministry.

And I can think, for example, of John Toller. John Toller was a medieval preacher in the medieval age in Europe. He was well up here in the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the whole of Europe. And he drew vast audiences by the thousands to hear him preach.

But the Holy Ghost sent a very simple brother called Nicholas of Basel, a very simple peasant brother. And he said, he tried, he took him weeks and weeks to get a personal interview with Toller, John Toller.

And at last Toller says, oh, well, if he wants to see me, let him come in for my study. And at last he was shown in. He was going to ball out the peasant brother. But he saw right away the stamp of God was on him.

And the brother said, John Toller, the Holy Ghost has sent me to tell you that you're no use. He said, no use? I'm the most brilliant medieval preacher in all Europe. Thousands listen to me. The Holy Ghost has sent me just to tell you, you're no use.

And you know, he was angry because he was the most popular preacher without a peer in Europe. Until, friend, he was broken down before God and John Toller didn't preach for two solid years until he had a crash in his life.

And then the power of Pentecost came upon him. The greatest poetess we have, I believe, I call her the poetess of the deeper life, the poetess of holiness, was our dear friend, St. Elizabeth of Haverhill.

I have a little book about it just in the back there. And, you know, she came into, she had a crisis in experience. And, you know, it came after a humiliating experience. And she set herself before God ominous in despair.

And then she had a voice saying, Egyptians, which you have seen today, you shall see no more again forever. And she cried, Hallelujah, Lord, I take it. So she said to herself, never see those Egyptians again is the deliverance.

And she rose, delivered. And it was after that experience that she wrote these words. I never thought it could be that month after month to know the river of thy peace without a ripple in its flow, without a quiver in the trap, a flicker in the glow.

It was after that experience she wrote, like a river glorious is God's perfect peace over all victorious in its bright increase. And when we're broken down before God, then worship takes place. I said, it's not normal to lie down broken before God.

Now that's one of the devil's businesses, is to keep you lying down humiliated without getting a blessing. And then you just say, woe is me, woe is me, woe is me. I don't go about saying, woe is James Stewart, woe is James Stewart.

No, no, that's not our business. They don't want to keep us in the valley of despair. But I believe, friend, that we're broken down in order to start praising God, in order to start worshiping God. And I have just put down here about that blessed man of God, Jonathan Edwards.

Listen to what he says in his diary. Once I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was before me extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God as mediated between God and man, and his wonderfully great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension.

The grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued as near as I can judge about an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.

I felt an urgency of souls to do what I know now, but I know not how otherwise to express, empty and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ alone. I love that, to be full of Christ alone, to love him with a holy and pure love, to trust him, to live for him, to serve him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.

And so this revelation, this apocalypse, leads me to a frustration of brokenness, and then that leads to a frustration of a resurrection of power, a resurrection of worship, and I praise the Lord because the glory of the Lord is manifested.

Revival and a New Ministry

And then will you notice that this revelation also leads to a new ministry? It not only leads to the brokenness of frustration, but it leads to a new ministry. For in verse 19 we read, ripe, ripe, the things which thou hast seen and the things which thou hast had.

Now I say reverently, this aged apostle with all his Christian maturity, with all that glorious Christian experience behind him, he could never have written a book of a revelation if he hadn't this fresh unveiling of the Lord Jesus before his wandering eyes.

Now I want you to understand, dear brothers, that maybe God has brought you to this camp meeting for this one reason. He's going to give you a new apocalypse, and this is going to lead to a new experience for you.

And God is saying to you this morning, behold, I will do a new thing. Now the trouble with many of us, we'll get in a rut. Now, ritualism is just as bad as ritualism in the Lutheran church and the Episcopal church.

A lot of ruts in the Baptist church. And we've got a lot of ritualism in our pastor's life. And our Christian life is just monotonous all the time. But that shouldn't be. The Christian life should be one of fresh surprises.

God says, behold, I will do a new thing. And every day I get up from my bed, no matter how tired and weary I am, I say, oh God, do a new thing for me. Do a new thing for me. And I'm always looking for God's fresh surprises.

Looking for new friends today. Looking for God to speak to people through me. Or to speak through people to me. And I'm looking for God to do something for me. And friend, God may have brought you here, dear brother.

He has a ministry for you that you never dreamed of. But you have to have this fresh revelation from the Lord. And then he's going to say to you now, this is my new ministry for you. That will save you.

And you will be surprised what that new ministry is. But he's going to, after you've had this fresh experience, God says, I'm ready for you. You've been running ahead like Moses and trying to do the job.

But you are not prepared because you haven't a fresh vision of myself. But now you're broken down. I have a ministry for you. And then will you notice that revival is a new entrance of the Lord Jesus Christ into the church.

Christ Outside the Church and the Call to Repentance

I don't like that, but that's just exactly what it is. Revival is a new entrance of the Lord Jesus Christ in the church. You say, Brother Stuart, why do you not like that statement? For the simple reason, it is a painful, pathetic picture.

In Revelation 3 .20, we see Jesus Christ standing outside the very church that he had redeemed by his precious blood. And he's saying, not to the sinner, but to the church, to the saints. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any man will hear my voice, I will open the door. I will come in to him and talk with him and he with me. Now you see the deterioration set in in the first church of Ephesus. They had lost their first love.

And then in Laodicea, the last church of the seven, Christ is outside that very church. Oh brother, sister, if there's any more pathetic, painful picture in the word of God, please show it to me this morning.

My Redeemer, my Redeemer, knocking, knocking, knocking, pleading, pleading, pleading, begging, begging, begging, saying, please let me come in. And there's nothing that will make us weep more. It's to know that Jesus Christ is outside the church.

And the situation is now nauseating to him. He says, I will, you say, Brother Stuart, that's not a nice word to use in the pulpit. Well, if some of you Christians weren't so bad, we wouldn't even use this word.

When I was preaching once, a man interrupted me and he said, he was a communist, I think. And he said, I don't like you talking about the blood, the blood, the blood of Jesus. It's vulgar. I said, I said, there's nothing vulgar about the precious blood of Christ.

What is vulgar is the vulgarity of your sin that made it necessary for Christ to shed his blood. Nothing vulgar about the precious blood. And there's nothing vulgar for me to stand or you to stand up in any pulpit and repeat the words of the Redeemer.

I will spew it out of my mouth. In other words, I will remove thy candlestick. I'll remove thy testimony. I'll remove my presence from your midst. And the situation is so nauseating, Christ says, I'm sick of you.

Have you ever felt that way yourself as a pastor? I wrote, when I first came to the States, a book, a booklet called Hollywood Evangelism. I had just come from revival from Europe. All I, all we needed was the Holy Ghost and the Bible.

And when I came to America, I discovered that you didn't need the Bible, you didn't need the Holy Ghost. Oh, they didn't want the Holy Ghost, they didn't want the Bible. They wanted a, a, a, a six-ringed certificate.

And I was spewing for three solid weeks like a dead man. I never stopped the whole time vomiting about the well, told me to write about the compromise of the modern day. And after being sick and vomiting for two or three weeks, the Holy Ghost said, write now.

And my brother, my sister, if we could only see through the eyes of our blessed Lord Jesus, through the spiritual eyes of our Redeemer, as he surveys our people and our church gatherings are assembling, we begin to vomit too.

And God, the Lord Jesus says, the situation is nauseating to me. I'm sick of your loving, I'm sick of your worship, I'm sick of your salvation. And I say that revival is a new entrance of the Lord Jesus Christ into his church.

And glory be to God, Frank, I have seen that new entrance again and again. A new church, why? Because we had a new Jesus. He's no longer standing outside. And then may I, I suggest to you also from these scriptures that revival is an awakening of love and loyalty to the Lord Jesus.

Revival as Love, Loyalty, and Faithfulness to Christ

An awakening of love and loyalty to the Lord Jesus. You have, for example, in verse 10, be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life. Then you have in 225, hold fast till I come. And then you have 311, hold fast that which thou hast and let no man take thy crown.

And then think of 321, unto him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne. Now these are privileges to the, to the overcomers, but here are warnings and here are not only warnings to those who may not overcome, but here are blessings and golden promises to those who will overcome.

And so I say that revival is awakening of love and loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. One of my, I suppose one of my, the story most in my history touches me most of the heart is concerning a man called John Brown.

As you know, in my country, Scotland, we haven't got a piece of ground anywhere. I don't care where you show it to me, that it's not seen the blood, the blood of my forefathers, when they died for the faith in Jesus Christ.

And the, we have tombstones everywhere. Sometimes 1 ,000 shed their blood in that very spot. If it was Milldale, we could take you someplace in Milldale where they were butchered for Christ. And when Carverhouse and his soldiers were killing during the killing time in Britain, when thousands were being killed for the faith in Christ, he set a price upon a man's head called John Brown.

And he said, I will give the biggest price of money. If anybody will capture John Brown dead or alive. John Brown was an ordinary man. He wasn't a preacher. He was just an old farmer with two sheep, but his job and his family's job was to go and hide the preachers or when they were hiding up in the mountains to go up there and take food to him and clothing for them.

But one day Carverhouse's men surrounded the little farm and John Brown was at home. And there Carverhouse took out his sword and cut off the head of John Brown before his wife and children. And then Carverhouse said, Mrs. Brown, what do you think of John Brown now?

And Mrs. Brown picked up the head of her bloody husband and hugged that bloody head to a bosom and said, you child of the devil, I've never thought so much of John Brown as I do now. And she kissed the face of her husband till her whole mouth was covered with his blood.

And I'm thinking this morning of my brothers and sisters that I know of in Romania and Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria and Poland and Russia who are still tortured for their faith in Jesus Christ. I have a brother who was bought out of Romania.

His brothers paid something, I think $20 ,000 to get him out of a prison after he's been locked in there for about 15 years. He's coming to see me. I don't know if he'll come to Milldale, but he's just been with the, I think with the President Johnson, congressional committees to talk about communism and tell him his experience.

Now friends, if that man came here and stood here this morning with me, there wouldn't be one of you say, I'm going to preach anymore. You'd say, I'm not going to be a pastor anymore. I'm not going to be an evangelist anymore.

I'm not going to be a missionary anymore. I'm not worthy. And you know, you, you may not need to die for Christ here in Alabama or Texas or Louisiana, Mississippi, wherever you come from, but your loyalty and love to Jesus Christ can be tested in even the very little things, and yet you're miserably paid.

We're not asked to die for Christ, but we're asked to die for Christ daily. And sometimes it's a far harder thing to live for Christ than to die for Christ. And may I say very kindly and yet very firmly that there's not a pastor here can hang his head and say, I've got a perfect church.

I had a pastor on the radio on Sunday as we're coming here, blowing up his people. I always feel there's something wrong. You have to blow up your people all the time. There's something wrong that there's a, there's something shaky about it.

When you hear a husband always saying, all the time before the people saying wonderful things about his wife, I begin to think there's something wrong. And when I hear a wife always say lovely things about her husband all the time in front of other people, I think there's something wrong with their marriage.

It's going to shake your foundation to keep on saying these things. But my dear friend, the hardest job in the world has been given to you, dear American pastor. You know that? Because you have people in your congregation who desperately need an awakening of their love and loyalty to Jesus Christ.

They're a mystery. They come on Sunday morning and disappear during the week. A pastor told me recently, he said, I got the very finest man of God I could think of for two weeks in my church. And I prepared months ahead so there could be no excuse to be fooled up during these two weeks with an engagement.

But he said after the first Sunday morning, they left me holding the bag. Hardly 10 come out night after night to hear this blessed man of God. And when I say that revival is an awakening of love and loyalty to Jesus Christ.

And you, dear pastors, you must preach more severely to your people. You must set a higher standard before your people. And you mustn't excuse your people. Don't excuse them. They have no excuse for not being true to Jesus Christ and true to your church.