Plague, the Terror Word — A.W. Tozer

Solomon’s Prayer and the Plague of the Heart

Dr. Tozer starts this cassette by reading from 1 Kings 8, verses 37 -40.

In the book of 1 Kings 37 -40, the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple. I'll break into it, for it's a long prayer. Is there be in the land famine? Is there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locusts?

Or is there be caterpillar? Their enemies seek them in the land of their cities. Whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be, what prayer and supplication to ever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house.

Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest, for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men, that they may fear thee, and hope that they live in the land which thou gavest unto our house.

Verse 38, which shall know every man. Hear this word plague. One of the great of the language. History, this word, and all that it connotes. Talk to all thy world. Less horrible forms. Sometimes it strikes nature.

What's called here the blight, the mildew, the blasting. In the hills of Pennsylvania, chestnut trees. There were more. They grew everywhere. Anywhere from the little saplings on up to the great majestic chestnut.

Every fall, about the first frost, the squirrels would go up and cut down the chestnuts. And any boy who knew would go out with a basket and gather them up and bring them in. They didn't ask the squirrels, but they took advantage of the busy labors of the squirrels.

Or if there were no squirrels above, they knocked them down with rocks or clubs. And then broke open the great spiny outer shell and got to the chestnuts themselves. And then the chestnut blight struck that state.

And every chestnut tree died. I'm not very good at statistics, but the last I remember hearing was that there were only 17 chestnut trees left out of all the millions that once had graced every landscape and every meadow and every forest and field throughout that great state.

Plague in Nature and Human History

Now that is in its less horrible state. Chicago and all throughout that area, we have what we call the English Elm. Very many of you are familiar with that tree. It is a tall, majestic, sweeping tree that grows up like a fan.

They'll plant them down from both sides of an avenue. And after a few years, they'll come together at the top, at the peak. And driving down that street is like driving down the aisle of a cathedral. Now they tell me that the last year or so, the plague has come to the elm tree.

The government is fighting hard to try to stop it, but the elm trees are dying. And unless modern science can stop this plague, it will be only a matter of two or three more years until Chicago, that leafy forest city, will stand stark and barren, because the elm trees will all be dead and will be taken away and burnt up.

That's the plague in its least terrible form. But the full horror of the plague strikes human beings. You have read of the black death of the 14th century. As I remember again vaguely, the statistics were that 25 out of every 100 persons of the population died of the black plague.

And even now, with all of our antithetics and our other wonderful remedies, the words bubonic, they still have a grossly fearful sound in the ears of the people. In the Bible, it was to be struck with a kind of a curse.

It meant sore or spots of a fatal disease, often pleasant and mysterious. Leprosy was called that also in the Bible, the plague. I thought of the terror of discovering leprosy. A man living with his family, not knowing anything was wrong with him, going out to work in the morning and coming in in the evening, having his children run to grab ahold of him and laugh and talk as he came up to walk.

And then one day he notices something on the back of his pants, and he thinks nothing of it. It's an insect bite, he says, but it's there the next day and the next. And he doesn't tell his wife, and then finally goes to the priest.

In the Old Testament times, the priest looks at it, tests it, gives it a seven-day test, and says it's leprosy. He's shocked in the horror of this terrible thing. It isn't any wonder that people hate to go to doctors if they suspect they have cancer.

They don't want to hear this, this plague of the flesh, this plague of the cells. But you know this is not the worst thing that can happen to anybody, and it's not the worst kind of plague there is. For this man, in his prayer by the Holy Ghost, says, if they know, every man, the plague of his own heart.

The Inner Plague of Sin

And we have here the plague of the heart. It's not in the flesh, it's deeper in. It's in the spirit of the man, far in, in that part of him with which he's going to have to live forever. It's the plague of the heart.

And the plague of the heart is more dangerous than Satan. I talked yesterday about Satan, and I do not want certainly to underrate the virulency of Satan. But Satan can only destroy that which has the plague in it.

He cannot harm a man without the plague. If a man has the plague in his heart, that places him in depression, and it's through that that Satan gets at the souls of men. Jesus said, the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in need.

But when the prince of this world came to Peter, he had cowardice. And when he came to Joseph, he had love of money. He found the plague in those two men, and he roared one, and also he roared the other.

So, Satan is destructive only when he has somewhere to work. He has something that belongs to him. He is the father of all plagues. And when he finds his children in the heart of a man, he claims his children.

He claims that the plague's brought him on, and works there. The more dreadful this disease, this plague disease, more dreadful than any physical disease, more dreadful than war, more dreadful than the calamities of nature, more dreadful than the atom bomb, the plague of the heart, you see, can destroy the whole man.

The atom bomb can pulverize you, burn you up, and it can take you to your god, but it can't get at your soul, or your heart, or your spirit. But the plague of the heart is already in the spirit and the heart of the man, and so it is worse, I say, than the bomb, worse than any calamity that nature can visit.

For the plague of the heart can destroy the man, and the strength of this plague of the human heart lies in its healthiness. It's like a panther. It has protective coloration, and it can sneak in on you.

It can get in there and take over unsuspected, while it incubates to change the figure. It can lay its deadly eggs under the leaves of the garden of Eden, and there it can incubate, and suddenly it appears and spreads and bursts out into the open, and then out into ruinous conduct and havoc.

And the strange accompaniment of this plague of the heart is that hardly anyone will admit its presence. Hardly anybody is willing to admit that there's any plague there, because it carries a shame and a fear.

If you say you want to get your need met, anybody will come because he doesn't lose any faith when he comes to the order to get a need met. That's very general, and it may be anything. A man can proudly walk down the aisle to have a need met, but if you say you have the plague thought that you want to be delivered from, then we tighten up, and you don't have many successful overcalls talking as I am going to tonight.

No one likes to hear about the plague of the heart. They want to laugh, or they want to be entertained with oratory, or they want to be told stories, but hardly anyone knows the plague of the heart. But you know there is no help possible until we know.

That is, until the Holy Spirit has made its claim. Now it's in the saints. It's when they turn, when they know, they turn and stretch their hands and confess, and they are delivered, but they don't do it until they know.

Nobody visits the doctor until he has reason to believe that he's sick, and nobody goes to the Blackfoot Lending until he knows that he is ill, that he is unclean, that he has a plague. Now only God can stay in the plague.

Nobody else can. But you see the terrible thing about the plague of the heart is you can't get to it. No psychiatrist can get to it. No psychologist can probe to it. No doctor, nobody can get to it. You can't x-ray it.

You can't find it by any test. There isn't anything that you can do. The plague of the heart goes deep into the nature, and you can't get at it. Nobody can help you, and you can't help yourself. If you're struck with the plague, you can't get to it.

You can't get at it. There. It lies there incubating. It may be looking very large yet, but it's growing. It's hatching. It's developing, and it's getting into the bloodstream, into the life. Now, there's no help possible except God.

Only God. So he says, O God, forgive and do. The old writers called it the cleansing of the forgiving love of God. I like that expression. The cleansing of the forgiving love of God. And they talked about the restoration of moral innocence.

You know you will sin, but you've been so completely cleansed that you feel as if you had it. You know you will have it. You're penitent for all your past. But the cleansing is so complete that it leaves you like a child again, like a slave again, naked until you're born innocent.

Now, the forgiving love of God and the cleansing of the blood. Now, the danger is that we don't know, you see. Look what this plague has done to people. Look what it did to Cain. You suppose Cain was the black, frowning being that the archipelago, I don't think so for a moment.

Cain and the Hidden Violence of the Heart

Cain looked so much like Abel that you couldn't tell one from the other, because you see there was no possible way they could look any other way than alike. They had no hereditary line from which they could draw.

The reason three brothers in the home, one's a redhead, one's sloth, and one's scotch, is that they've been sleeping back several generations. Back from subterranean father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and even further back.

They're hereditary lines. Every one of us, we're intermingled with the inter... We are the result of the intermingling of lines that go way back. So we're likely to look very much different from a brother.

But Cain and Abel had nothing to inherit except straight from their father and mother. So they must have been and look very much alike. But Cain had the plague in his heart, and he didn't know it. Do you think that Cain was altogether bad?

Even Adam didn't know that he was. They didn't expect a murder to take place. And Cain didn't expect it, and certainly Abel didn't. There was no indication of it. Don't you think that Cain often picked little Abel up, his younger brother, and carried him about, and tickled him, and fondled him, and perhaps let him play with him for warmth, and gave him toys to play with, whatever simple toys they might have had for him?

Don't you think that Cain had some normal, humorous, excellent... Oh, yeah, he certainly had. And he had a plumber's box, and big hats on him. And John says, Wherefore was Cain with his brothers? Because his brothers were righteous and rejoicers.

He was zealous. It was zealotry in the heart of the man, Cain, that caused him to say to his brother, Let's take a walk. And when they took the walk, one of them came back, and the other was buried under the leaves.

They found his blood there in the soft earth, and that blood cried to God for vengeance against the man with the plague on. And then there was Achan in the Old Testament. Say to this man, Achan. Now, Achan was a decent fellow.

Nobody could tell me any otherwise, but he was a decent fellow. He had a wife, whom he no doubt loved. He had a family, quite a good-sized family. And he was a decent, obedient man. And he was so obedient and decent that nobody ever dreamed that he would be the one that would steal the golden wedge and the brutishly Babylonish garment.

Disobey God's direct command. Nobody dreamed that. If he had been a delinquent, or a borderline criminal, or a fellow you had to watch, they wouldn't have had to draw lots to find out who it was. They'd have known.

They'd have said, "'There's no other good question, Achan. Probably he's been into everything. He's probably the fellow.". Achan was a good chap. He started songs in the choir, and helped around, and done lots of nice things.

There's nothing wrong with Achan, except that he had a plague spot that he didn't know about. He wanted gold, and he wanted the garment, and he disobeyed God to get them. And Israel was defeated, and God said, "'Hunt out the man, search out.

You'll find the man with a plague spot. When you find him, the river is in the way. So let him.". You think that Achan ever meant that he was a Jew, or probably why he was a Jew, but let me be specific.

He was probably still a Jew. You think that Achan's heart didn't ache and his face turned deathly pale when they came to him, and they said, "'Stand up, stand up there. Do you hear your words? Stand up.'".

He took his watch, put his arms around her, and I suppose he said, "'Can you forgive me? I never meant it. I never meant it to hurt you. I never meant to hurt you children. I've stepped up as a holy man.

I don't know what she'd say, and I don't know what the children would say, or could say, but they put them there in the valley of Achan and honed them to death. For the power of that holiness that all generations might see, must display and do to a man's heart when he hadn't dealt with it.'".

Herod’s Lust, Pride, and Unintended Violence

And then there was Herod. You remember that man Herod who used to listen to John the Baptist? Herod was, I suppose, an average king, and he listened. He listened with a lot of pleasure and a lot of worry.

He had an anxiety about this prophet. He sent for him and said, "'Preach to me!'. And Herod would come in and preach. I mean, John the Baptist would come in and preach to Herod. And then one day, Herod put on a skirt.

Well, he put on a skirt, and he had a little, little sissy girl dance for him there, one of those pretty little painted dolls, slick and sleazy. And she stood up there and gave it all she had and danced before him, and the old man's eyes began to shine with a light that shouldn't be in an old man's eyes.

His old, bald head indicated he should be dead by now, but he was. And when he looked at that, he looked at that girl, and she sinuously waved like a willow in the wind and leaped and made eyes at him.

He couldn't take it any longer. He called her over, some sweat breaking out on his lecherous brow, and he said, "'What would you want, honey? Ask me anything, and I'll give it.'. She said, "'I'll ask Mama.'.

And she dashed off, and her mama was ready. She said, "'The head of John the Baptist!'. And because he had made that vow before all the rest, he couldn't take it back. And so, trembling with superstitious fear, he sent an executioner out, and brought him the head of John the Baptist on a tray, and gave it to that little wench, and she took it and gave it to her mother.

Do you think that Herod ever expected this? His lust, and his recklessness, and his fear, and his pride, and his love of his job? Do you think he ever meant to kill a prophet? The terror might follow him all the rest of his days, because when Jesus came into his neighborhood and did miracles, he went right with fear, and sent somebody out to ask if this was John the Baptist come from the dead.

The ghost of John the Baptist's head creamed out of every hedgerow in the dark from there on till Herod died. Herod never meant to do this, but he didn't know the plague of his own heart. Later on, there was a man by the name of Ananias.

Ananias, Deceit, and the Judgment of God

He loved money, and he loved to stand well with the congregation. He wanted to give the impression that he was a generous giver, but at the same time he wanted to keep something back more than the congregation knew.

So, he was a liar and a deceiver, as well as loving money, and wanted, at the same time I say, to stand well with the congregation. And he got into a tight spot, and he couldn't get out. So, he tried to get out by cheating, and he lied to the Holy Ghost.

He lied to the Holy Ghost. Now, this man, Ananias, must have had some good in him. You tell me that a man with his wife who could stand in the fellowship of that early church, that early church, straight-faced, morally, with the Holy Ghost upon them like flames of fire, do you suppose that he was a careless man?

Never. A careless man couldn't have got away with it. That's a careless loose liver. Do you think that he didn't live a close life? He certainly did, but he had the plague spot in his heart. The plague was there.

The plague was on him, and he lied to the Holy Ghost. And Peter said, Send for the man. If Peter hadn't had the gift of discernment, they'd never have known. Never known. He'd have lived and died an old man, and probably when he got old, they'd have given him some kind of a Christian medal or book or Bible or present to say to Ananias, for he's long faithful to work here as a member of our Lord.

But Ananias, God got to Ananias, brother. The Holy Ghost got through to Ananias. He had a reputation for being a pious member of that church, but he was a sneaky deceiver. And he had a reputation for being generous, but he lied about how much he gave, and he fell dead, and they carried him out.

And when they saw his wife come, she fell dead, and they carried her out. Think of the murder. Not long ago up in the city of Chicago, not very far from where we are, the Baptist church, Covenant Baptist church, I believe they call it.

The Chicago Murder and the Unrecognized Capacity for Sin

I can see a vision as I talk, because I pass it often. And a little 16-year-old girl went to what they call, I think in Baptist church, B .Y .B .U. It was the Baptist Young People's Union or something.

Well, she was there that night, and she started home. It wasn't really late. I think around 9 or 9 .30. And as she walked under a railroad bridge, old Rock Island Railroad line, I've ridden over it a hundred times, 210 ,000 times, maybe I've ridden over it a thousand times.

Well, this little girl under the bridge, suddenly a young fellow, the butcher knife, leaped out and killed her. They found him very soon. He had left his mother that night and waved her goodbye, his goodbye mother.

He hadn't meant to do wrong, this boy. He hadn't intended to do wrong. Why he took the butcher knife, they never found out. But he killed her, this young Baptist Christian girl. She's in heaven, and I think, as I recall, he went to the electric chair.

Now, when he said goodbye to his mother, she told about it afterwards. She said, you boy, and he waved goodbye to me as he walked down the street. When he came back, he had the blood of his little girl on his hand.

He had a place that he didn't know, a place that his mother didn't know. You think he intended to go that far? No, he never intended to go that far. He's a common sinner who never does a dramatic thing.

But is he not dramatic in his sinfulness? He's just a sinner. But there's a place there working in him, and it's the place of his heart, and it's going to lead him into fatal sins. There are sins from which you can recover.

There are sins from which you can't recover. There are sins that you don't pray and can't pray for, at least one. And there are many sins that people never do, because when they've committed them, they don't try to come back.

They could, but they don't try to. The plague lies unsuspecting, the plague of luck. A man that can work hard and sweat out a ministry, may never know that there lies in his heart unsuspected and uncorrected and unpurified, the plague of luck.

The next thing, it may be out all over the papers, and there's Christ that lies in the human records. And we don't know it there, but it lies there in incubation. You remember one other heretic delivered a speech, and they called him a god, and he died of worms.

Resentment, Secret Sin, and Unforgiveness

The plague broke out into the very worms that destroyed the man. I meet a lot of people that are resentful. I know a certain preacher of a certain denomination. I've known him a long time. And resentfulness is characteristic of him.

You can't talk to him 20 minutes until he is bristling with resentment at something somebody did to him. This church has wronged him, that superintendent has stood against him, that board member has betrayed him.

Always there's resentfulness there. Resentfulness never should be felt by any child of God. When we're Christians, we take the cross, and the cross Jesus carried. He didn't complain about it. He took it and went.

And then there are secret sins. I'm not going to pry into your life, but my dear friends, now that I'm getting to be an older man and people feel a little freer to talk to me about private things, I've had people come to me and confess things that I never dreamed that people did.

Now, I'm not an innocent man by a long way, and I have committed many sins that are now under the precious blood of Jesus Christ. But friends, I didn't know that women could get into the sins that they can get into.

My mother was a darling, little, dark German lady. A little gentle-faced, so gentle in him was prudence. You know, they named him their virtues in those old days, and called her prudence, and everybody called her prudy.

And everybody around the neighborhood came and wept on prudy's shoulder. She was that kind of woman. And since she wasn't converted, she was very old, and maybe sometime I'll tell you it was converted partly through my ministry, pretty much all together through my ministry.

But the dear little lady gave me my concept of womanhood, and I carried that concept with me, the purity of her. She never would say a bad word, nor think a bad thought. Though she wasn't a Christian until later in life, she lived a moral life as pure as this poet's.

When I got that idea, that's what a woman should be like. What a shock when I got older and found that women have let themselves go until they're guilty of sins you can't talk about, takes doctors to talk about.

Young women even, and good and grudges. I'm preaching to some people now that have never forgiven certain others for what they've done. They've never forgiven. You don't know it. You say, I've forgiven them, but you haven't.

You avoid them. You prove that you've got a grudge by avoiding them. And then some people have temper. We blame it on our Irish grandfather, or we blame it on something else. But it's a place for us. I have seen a few Christians.

Temper, Envy, and the Need for Inner Cleansing

I remember a man who came into the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and he had a very high spiritual testimony. He became a pastor in our society. He had a very high spiritual testimony. And one night at a board meeting, he lost his temper like a mule driver.

And after that, nobody believed in him. I've seen Christians blow up. I was riding with a Christian one time. I thought it was a fine Christian. He had a new car, and somebody came along and dented his fender.

He blew like a little bomb. I never believed in him again. Whenever I see a man blow his top, I never believe in that man unless I know he has gone to the fountain that cleanses and got delivered. No man has any more right to go about over these grounds with an unclean temper than he has to hold a rattlesnake in his jacket pocket.

No more. I'm serious. He has no more right to do that than he has to leave a cancer on his tongue that hasn't been operated because it'll destroy his ministry. He's a layman. He's a simple man of the church.

He can pray and testify and give and labor, and then one day blow. Nobody will believe in him after that. And there's envy. You know the difference between jealousy and envy? Jealousy is the pain you feel when you think somebody else has got that which belongs to you.

Envy is the pain you feel when you think somebody else has got that which belongs to them. There's the difference. It's fine, but there it is. The jealous man is jealous if I take what belongs to him.

But the envious man is envious because I have what I have that never belonged to him. He shall know the plague in his own heart. Now, God can heal the plague, brethren, just as sure as you live. God can heal the plague.

Purgation, the Blood, and the Refining Fire

He heals it by blood and by fire. I hear every word used but one. We've lost that word out of our vocabulary in Christian circles. It's the word purgation. It's the word purge. We don't use it anymore.

We invite people to the altar to get something, but we forget that what they often most receive is purgation, a purging, a cleansing. Jesus Christ purges and cleanses and takes the plague spot out and fixes that in there.

Now, I don't know what doctrine I'm preaching, you see. I don't go along with the eradicationist so it can't be eradication, and I don't go along with the suppressionist so it can't be suppression. So don't press me on what, or you classify this doctrine.

I don't know. I only know that there's blood and fire and that it'll take the impurity out and make you clean and keep you clean so that you'll be clean and you'll not be in danger of having an incubation of iniquity within your spirit that'll break out on you.

The blood that Jesus once shed for me is my redeemer upon the tree. The blood that makes the captive free has never lost its power. So we used to say in cat meeting times back then. I don't know whether you sing it here.

The blood, the blood will never lose its power. And call it what you will. Classify yourself where you will so doctrinally on this subject. There's such a thing as a victorious life. The Wesleys never taught eradication, incidentally, but they did believe that you could be filled with perfect love that would kill the old evil within you.

And here's what Charles Wesley wrote. Jesus, thine all-victorious love, shed in my heart abroad. Then shall my feet no longer roam rooted in taste in God. Oh, that in me the sacred fire might now begin to glow.

The fire of cleansing, that it might now begin to glow. Burn up the dross of base desire. Just another figure, but it's the same. It is the destruction of the place, but burn up the dross of base desire and make the mountains flow.

Oh, that it now from heaven might fall and all my sins consume. Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call. Spirit of burning, come. Refining fire, go through my heart. Illuminate my soul. Scatter thy light to every part and sanctify the whole.

Renaming Sin and Seeking Sanctification

Brethren, this is what we need. Refining fire to fall on our hearts, to kill the plague, to destroy the plague spot in some young life, in your life. Some of you older people have coddled the plague spot and have made a peck out of it and have given it a name, a euphonite that you've seen, and fixed it up with a euphonious name so that it doesn't sound the way it used to.

You used to call it temper, but now you say you're nervous. You used to call it covetousness when it's in somebody else's heart, but you say that you look for the future. And we rename things, but they're the same old plagues.

But we need the refining fire to go through the heart, to illuminate the soul, to scatter the life to every part and sanctify the whole. My steadfast soul from falling free shall then no longer move. Now Christ is all the world to me, and all my heart is love.

What we need is cleansing, my brethren. If I say, come and get, you'll come to get. But I say, come and get delivered, come and get freed from something. And of course, then we lose faith when we do that, and we don't like it.

I preached one time, something on this order at one of our camps, and among those that came was a young woman. And I haven't forgotten her. I think the seven-year story forgotten this young woman, that face of hers.

She knelt at the altar, and God gave her what she wanted and took away what she was ashamed of. And she leaped to her feet, completely delighted. She hunted up her father-in-law, with whom she'd had a quarrel, and hugged the old fella, and called me over, and then she walked back and forth, saying over and over again, Oh, I didn't know it could happen to me.

Oh, I didn't know it could happen to me. I didn't know it could happen to me. What happened? Oh, let's not be technical and become doctrinal and divided. Let's just say the refining fire went through her heart and illuminated her soul and scattered God's light through every part and sanctified the whole.

And she leaped up and said, I didn't know it could happen to me. My dear friends, the Alliance has always taught this, but nowadays we don't quite teach it. We apologize for it. I don't apologize for it.

Tozer’s Testimony of Deliverance from Temper

I know what God can do for a man. I'm born of an English paternal side and a German maternal side, and I got the worst of both sides, the high pride of the English and the stubborn temper of the Germans.

And I had both. I had a temper so bad that once, at least that I remember, I got so mad it made me sick. I went to bed in illness. I've seen my father, and this is the English side too, I've seen my father get so mad that he would pull a horse back on her haunches until the pit in her mouth would all but make her mouth bleed.

I've seen my father lose his temper and get so angry that he would grab the shovel and beat the wheel there in insane anger. And I had that same thing, a temper that would leap and go in the precious blood of Jesus.

And the fire of the Holy Ghost has made me unlike my father, though I grew up to be like him. When I look in shaving, I see my father looking out, but my father didn't know what plagued his own heart until he was 60 years old.

Then he was converted in the Baptist Church and went to the Baptist Church and died when he was 64. He had four years to walk with God before he finally went. Dear friends, I can testify that God can deliver you from evil habits and evil dispositional tendencies and tempers.

He can deliver you. Oh, refining fire! Oh, blood that was shed for sinners and for Christians. Little Frances Ridley Haverhill testifies, this experience came to me that she tells Chris Lawson called Deeper Experiences of Painless Christians.

This experience came to her. She said, It came when I arrived at the place where I knew in my heart that when the Holy Ghost said the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, He meant from all. He meant from all.

Moody, Deeper Experience, and the Cleansing Work of the Spirit

Up in Chicago, they can take you to the home of a little old Mrs. Mother Crook. She heard the young evangelist, Dwight Moody, preach. And he was sure of himself, and a soul winner. The little Mrs. Crook recognized carnality when she saw it.

So she called him down to her house. And he was humble enough to come, the young evangelist. And he came down, and she said, Dwight, you need to be baptized as a Holy Ghost. You need to have the fire go through your soul and deliver you.

Well, he said, Maybe I do. Let's pray. And they got down, I think if I recall, on the linoleum. And he gave himself to the Lord, and nothing happened. But he went east then, and said he was walking down the street to one of the eastern cities, was it Philadelphia?

And suddenly, the refining fire fell on him until he had said, Oh God, save your anger on us. He said, I began to preach the same old sermons I'd been preaching before, but oh, what a new power was in me.

Do you believe in this? Refining fire. Oh, cleansing blood. How we need it tonight. How you young people need it. What you put down to animal spirits and youth may be the plague of your heart. How you older people need it.

Maybe I'm preaching to some old, beaten-down, weary relics of the church down the years, and you've left the smear of iniquity behind you down the years. We need cleansing tonight. They told me of an old man out in the middle west somewhere, east of here, west of where I live, who was a cattleman.

The Cattleman’s Temper and God’s Deliverance

And he was known as the biggest sinner in all the little town where he lived. And somebody came through preaching, and he heard the gospel, and he was converted. And it was one of those dramatic conversions that everybody talks about.

And it went like wildfire. And Mr. Stone's soul had gotten religious, and he lived it. He lived it. But there was one thing wrong. He had an awful temper, a terrible temper. And after a few weeks of walking on the clouds, that temper began to flash like the light, and began to hinder his testimony.

And one day, some people came through preaching what I preach tonight. This old man walked down, very big, square-shouldered, old fellow walked down, and he said to the preacher, he said, Reverend, I'm converted, born again, and I'm old.

And he said, everybody else knows that around these parts. But he said, I've got a temper that's like a streak of lightning. He said, I don't know what to do. Reverend, he said, is there anywhere in the Bible where it says God can galvanize an old man like me to take that temper out of him?