The True Vine — Leonard Ravenhill

Spiritual Poverty and Responsibility

By biblical definition, godliness is a mystery. Nobody has dared to define for us what proportion of responsibility is ours in our spiritual development and what proportion of the responsibility for our spiritual culture is God's alone.

We have three sons. I think they're the finest three boys in the world. You might disagree. And they're all pretty smart. They don't inherit their brains from me, only their good looks. But they get their brains from my wife, I'm sure, and one of them is particularly clever.

He has a very, very high IQ. He's very modest about it. I think he has his priorities in, well, in the right order. And, you know, if we could be selective, particularly as we get older, we would really prefer to be kind of super intelligent.

If you're materially poor, there could be a lot of reasons for it. If you're intellectually poor, there are maybe reasons for that. But if you're spiritually poor, that's entirely your fault. Nobody else.

It's just yours. Could be plain laziness. Could be that you have a pastor that doesn't know how to teach you. There are a lot of them. And there could be a whole stack of reasons why you're not spiritually mature this morning.

It seems to me that the Church of Jesus today is more like a nursery than an armory. And you don't usually tell little boys and girls in the infant classes in Sunday school to put on the whole armor of God.

A little out of kilter, as you say. As we came, we drove through the country after we got off the plane from the Bahamas, and we noticed the difference in the corn crops. I noticed some corn locally that isn't much more than knee high.

But as we were traveling, we saw some that was well over our heads. Now, I don't know a thing about farming, and so you can catch me out here, but it may be due to many reasons, I think. Maybe that some corn is purposely planted later than other corn.

Some of it is retarded because maybe of its environment. Maybe there hasn't been enough rain. Other things that haven't brought it to maturity. And you know, this is true in the spiritual realm. There are so many classifications of spirituality that you can't classify them.

We usually kind of divide them into two sections and say people are either spiritual or they're carnal. But there are many, many areas of carnality. There are many, many areas of spirituality. Now, I got some good news last night, which was bad news.

Some people said they didn't understand a word I said. Now, that's not due to your bad English. I know you don't have much, but that's not due to your bad English, but due to, again, due to these wires literally getting crossed.

So, if you can't hear this, put up your hand, and I don't know what we'll do, but at least there's no point in talking if you can't hear and you'd have a big excuse for disobedience, and I don't want you to have any excuses for that at all.

I want you all to get into trouble at the judgment seat. I have been, for a long while, fascinated with what we call the fourth gospel. There isn't a fourth gospel, you know that I'm sure. There's only one gospel told by four different men.

John's Unique Gospel and the Call to Repentance

Some people have said the gospel of John is the most profound and the most beautiful thing in literature. Amongst other things, the gospel of John, John has, in his writing, given us somewhere around about 90 of what he says is original.

We're going to think in a little while about the 15th chapter of John. Now, the 15th chapter of John has no parallel in any shape or form in the other three gospels that we call the synoptic gospels. Some things are uniquely belonging to John.

For instance, again, the 15th chapter, the 17th chapter, and so forth and so on. He has an entirely different vocabulary from the other evangelists. I was preaching up north a few years ago, and it was in the, in the, I was going to tell you the name of the town, I've forgotten it for the moment.

That, while I was there, a famous broadcasting preacher came into the meetings. And afterwards he wrote me a letter. I, I, I think he thought he was writing on asbestos. He really scorched me. He said he didn't like what I preached, he didn't like how I presented it.

Well, he should have come and told me, I would shake hands with him, because I don't like it either. I'm sure it could be done in a much better way, but he didn't like it. And he went down the line and ticked me off here, there, there, there, there, all negative, negative, negative.

But his chief argument was this, I don't like what you say because you emphasize repentance. And he said you should know that the last gospel that was written was the gospel of John, and John does not mention repentance once in the whole of his writing, which is perfectly true.

But if that man was as smart as he thought he was, he should have known that the man who wrote the fourth gospel, as we call it, is the same man, in my judgment, that wrote the book of the Revelation.

And the last message of Jesus Christ was not the Great Commission. The last message of Jesus Christ was not to the world, it was to the church. And his last emphasis repeatedly, right through the seven churches, is repent, repent, repent.

John Wesley used to lay a great emphasis on the repentance of the believer. Dr. Tozer said on one occasion he went to a meeting, there was a great crowd of preachers there, it was a conference, and the Spirit of God came on the assembly and he had to quit preaching.

People got down and began to cry to God. All except one man, he said, he was raised with a very strict holiness group, and that poor guy didn't have anything to repent about. Everybody else did, he said, but he was in a tough spot, he couldn't think of anything at all, he was so immaculate, you wonder he hadn't gone to heaven right away.

Now I think there are things to repent about that are not necessarily sinful. Some things that we have done that, well, like wasting time, or maybe wasting money, or doing some other thing. But the emphasis again of Jesus is the emphasis on repentance.

Now this brother argued in his letter that I shouldn't mention repentance because it's not mentioned in the Gospel. It's what the lawyer calls the argument of silence. But if you take that argument, you're going to have to eliminate many, many things from the Gospel as recorded by John.

John doesn't talk about demons, John doesn't talk about angels, John doesn't mention children, lots of things he doesn't mention. So again, keep this in mind that 90 of what John has given to us is John's, it is not, again, borrowed like apparently some of the other evangelists borrowed from each other.

This is entirely different. And it seems to me that the whole of this marvellous book is catsue for us in the very first verse of the first chapter. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

In the beginning, eternity. The Word was with God, equality. The Word was God, deity. Now Jesus is more than divine. If you're really born again of the Spirit of God, you're divine, but you're not deity.

We are made partakers of the divine nature. The miracle of miracles on God's side is that, as Wesley in one of his hymns says, God was contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. And the reason that the world will not accept the virgin birth, that as some people call it the immaculate conception, and it's different really, because they think the Virgin Mary had no sin either, but the virgin birth, they won't accept it because you can't explain it scientifically.

You can't explain it with a test tube. You can't explain it on any grounds at all, outside of divine revelation. As I've said very often before, I'm not clever, and so I don't have any problem with the virgin birth.

My simple reduction is this, that if God made the first Adam without a mother, he could make the last Adam without a father. Just as simple as that. Profoundly simple. Simply profound. There's this thing we've got to really adjust ourselves to in our Christian life, and this is that God doesn't owe any explanations to anybody.

You can't question a thing he does, either on the international level or on the individual level. He has prerogatives. He's going to use them. He doesn't have to explain what he's doing or why he's doing it.

It's his, it's his sovereign right to do it. If he's put you in a jam this morning, well, accept it from him. It's easy to sing in a congregation, isn't it? Where he leads me, I will follow. You get a bit sniffly and have to rub the tears off your nose or somewhere.

And when you come to, though he lead me through the garden, and you think, yes, he won't take anybody else in this assembly except me, but look, I'll go through with you. And tomorrow, when as soon as you see the gates of the garden, you back off.

It's a great thing in my judgment to realize this, that whatever God is doing in your life and mine, he isn't doing it to please me. He isn't doing it to make me more acceptable in my community or to make me a better Christian.

God is working for eternity in your life and in mine. Again, he doesn't owe us any explanation. The man that merely wants forgiveness for his sins and to escape hellfire is toying with Christianity. God has infinitely more in that.

The purpose of God is to bring me, to bring you into conformity, where to be transformed, that we may be conformed to the image of his Son. I was thinking as we drove up the road there this morning, the prayer of Esau.

Bless me, even me. The old song we used to sing in England, no, no, pass me not, O gentle Saviour. Isn't that the hymn? Blessing others, O bless me. Now that's the prayer of a spiritual child. That's a prayer of immaturity.

Sometimes we pray that life may be easy. We should only pray that God may get more glory. If he makes it ten times rougher than it is now, I should be able to rejoice in it because, again, if he's going to get more glory out of my life, well, then that's what he wants and that's what I want.

I'm sure there comes a time in the life of an individual when we quit saying, Lord, bless me and we change the prayer to something like this, Lord, make me a blessing. Again, there's all the difference in the world.

Revival, Altar Calls, and the Cost of Conversion

Now, I do think this, that very often in our, particularly the fever that gets all the evangelists, poor things. You've got to prove your ministry by how many people come to the altar. It doesn't matter how you get them.

They'll soon be giving green stamps to get them there. But we put pressure this way and we put pressure that way and manipulate. I was in a meeting just the other night where the evangelist said, now, I don't believe in long altar calls.

Well, I'm glad he didn't because he took twelve minutes when he finished preaching. There are no altar calls in the New Testament. But you don't have altar calls in revival. The church becomes an altar.

One of the best accounts in my judgment of the spiritual history of the Methodist church was written by Abel Stevens. I bought three big old volumes of this a while ago. And as I kind of flicked through the pages, I'd been amazed at the manifestations of the power of the Spirit of God where people would.

Be out. If the altar call.

Was called at nine o 'clock, they were still seeking and praying and travailing at one o 'clock, two o 'clock in the morning. Some of you must have read a book by Gilchrist Lawson, The Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians, and in that he says this, and he says it, I'm only quoting it.

He says that the aftermath of a revival conducted by Charles G. Finney showed that seventy percent of the converts were standing years after they had made what you like to call perhaps a decision for Christ.

But in Mr. Moody's case, only forty percent of them stood. Moody had a sixty percent back backsliding rate among his converts, and the other man only had thirty percent, half of that. Moody had an altar call.

Finney did not. It is true that he says after a period of preaching that he opened what he called the anxious seat. And he operated that this way, that he said that after he had preached he would say to people now, you're free to go home, but if you're really distressed about your spiritual life, I suggest you stay behind, and this they did.

It seems to me that we've given too much for too little in our evangelism. Too much of a package deal. We don't dare to tell people, particularly young people, to read as we say the fine prints. As I said last night, we guarantee them salvation, we guarantee them a mansion over the hilltop, and they're gonna rule over five cities, and everything's gonna be laid on pretty good.

But if you read the context of the fifteenth chapter of John, you'll discover there are some rather difficult, thorny things in there. If you and I are really born again, well as the hymn writer says, is this vile word a friend to grace to help me unto God?

Or the guarantee of Jesus in the world, he shall have tribulation, or as he says in the twentieth verse of the fifteenth of John, remember. That's a good thing to remember too. When it says remember, we should remember.

Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. It goes on to speak of hatred.

The Vine, Fruitfulness, and Abiding in Christ

Now this fifteenth chapter of John, if you're familiar with the Bible at all, you know it has something to do with with the vine. And I always say to people, and there's some repetition here because repetition is a law of learning anyhow, and if you want to study the fifteenth chapter of John, I suggest that you read the fifteenth chapter of Ezekiel before you read the fifteenth chapter of John.

Because in the first five verses of Ezekiel fifteen it describes the vine. And it says there that the vine isn't good for anything at all except to produce fruit. You don't buy furniture made of the wood of the vine.

You don't buy anything that I know of, not even a pair of candlesticks made of the wood of the vine. I talked with a missionary who had been in the Middle East for forty years. He had all kinds of wonderful curios.

He had the most amazing display that I have ever seen. He had a beautiful dagger in a lovely scabbard that had all kinds of wonderful little things on the outside. It was given to him by the King of Arabia.

And he had other things in different kinds of wood. Myrtle wood and redwood. Well a kind of redwood. Actually cedar of Lebanon which looks very much like the wood from the redwood tree. And he had something, a camel that was made out of an olive tree.

And I am quite ignorant in this area but I could tell that one kind of wood was very different from the other. I can tell the difference between coal and salt in case you don't know. I can tell coal, I can tell salt.

I can tell redwood and I can tell say ordinary pine. And I looked at these various things made out of different kinds of wood and then I said to him now did you ever see anything made of the wood of the vine?

He said no but and now you mention it I I never thought of it before. I've seen vines growing by the million out there in the east but I never thought of anything except of course the one thing that you get from a vine.

And the one thing you get from a vine obviously at least a great vine is great. Now Jesus here says to his disciples I am the vine ye are the branches. And sometimes I hear an interpretation of this as though Jesus is over here he's the vine and we're over there the branches.

Now you can't exist like that. Jesus is not only the vine he is the branch too. I wouldn't like to think that I have to try to get to my automobile if my body somehow could be dismembered and my legs stayed on the chair here and I tried to get over there I have to be a complete unit.

And Jesus Christ is the vine and he is the branch in the vine in the truest sense of the word. There are three promises made in this chapter. In the second verse there is a promise that we shall bear fruit in the eighth verse that we shall bear much fruit and in the sixteenth verse that we shall bear permanent fruit.

Our fruit shall remain. Now Jesus says I am the vine no he says I am the true vine. That's a little word that this man loves very much. He doesn't say that Jesus is the light of the world he says he is the true light.

He doesn't merely say he is the bread of life he says he is the true bread. He doesn't merely say he is the vine he is the true vine. Or as the Greek would say the vine the truth and my father is the husbandman.

What does a man produce or labour so hard with his with his vines for? Well again if the grape vines he is after one thing that he may produce a bunch of luscious beautiful grapes. And as far as the what do you call him a farmer or whatever he is who owns the vineyard.

The master of the vineyard is only concerned that he may produce grapes. Wouldn't you think that logically the scripture would say this I am the vine and you're the grapes. Doesn't say that. He says I am the vine and you're the branches.

The branch cannot bear fruit of itself. There's many a branch on a vine and it has no fruit on it at all. For various reasons it could be disease maybe it wasn't pruned properly but you see the branch cannot bear fruit of itself.

We're not the grapes. If you say that we're the grapes then of course again you take the figure of the vineyard and the man that produces the grapes that's all he's concerned about. And if you're in the Niagara Falls area you'll see trucks coming down the road as we saw trucks the other day coming through Florida with I just wondered how many thousands and thousands of oranges were in each truck.

Great big long things piled up you could see the oranges I was hoping some might roll off but they didn't but those oranges look very tempting inside of that truck. You go up the other area you'll find that the grapes by the million are just stacked up there in those in those trucks.

As far as this man is concerned when he's produced the grapes when the vine has been trimmed and when he's got that luscious fruit there you are he's done with it. But that's not true in the case of the husbandman the divine husbandman I think I'm not quite sure but I think it was the man that wrote one of the most popular books of daily readings.

Oswald Chambers who used to say very often in his prayer make me broken bread and poured out wine. Now this is really coming to maturity. It's one thing to be a lovely bunch of grapes if you want to keep the figure that the Christian is or the fruits in his life shall we say like that bunch of grapes.

They're very attractive, they're very luscious they're very delicious to partake of. But when this man has finished with his vineyard and cast all his grapes into the truck and they go off somewhere, they don't go on exhibition they go to be pounded, they go to be put under pressure, they go that out of them every bit of life may be squeezed out of them in order that they may produce the wine.

Or as the Bible says about corn thinking of corn here as oats and as we do in England anyhow I used to wheat you have to take it and put it there in the mill and you have to grind it and not only that but as though the pressure isn't enough to be put between two millstones and grind it into powder and then it has to go into the furnace or before that my mother used to take it and knead it and pound it and push it around and then put it by the fire and she would say it would rise after she put yeast in it and then she would take it and put it in an oven.

Well you can almost see that parallel in the life of the Lord Jesus. He was pounded, he was bruised he went into the heat of Gethsemane and you know we offer the victorious life something like a luscious bunch of grapes and say you know the Lord wants you to be very beautiful and very sweet and very appetizing and very attractive that's only one side of the picture.

Faith, Suffering, and Spiritual Maturity

I've said very often that I do not believe that faith is a key that opens every door if faith could do anything as some people say well you know God can do anything I don't doubt that but I'm quite sure he won't as I've said if you believe that faith can do anything I suggest you take a plane and go over to England and a bunch of you get round the grave of John Wesley and take a week of fasting and prayer and sleeplessness and agonizing intercession and tell God that you believe he can do anything he can even raise those dusty bones of John Wesley and bring him back because we need him so much.

Or go over there into New England and find the grave of David Brainerd and you young people could certainly read his life because he died at the ripe old age of 28 and tell God we need this man to come back again.

The man with the most extravagant interpretation of faith would never dare to do anything like that at all. If faith could do anything we wouldn't have any martyrs in the Church of God. And it's easy to take one side of the calendar as it were and say well look here is Hebrews 11 and in Hebrews 11 these amazing men and women of faith look what they did they subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness and obtained promises and stopped the mouths of lands what a fantastic catalogue and again I remind you to remind myself this morning that nobody in Hebrews 11 ever had a Bible.

You sit down and chew that over for a while. As I said last night it doesn't matter if the world goes on another hundred million years God has no PS to add to this book. He's given us all that he can ever give us.

God hasn't another word to say to our generation or any other generation. And if men and women in pre family pre Christian days could have such faith that they could subdue kingdoms and stop the mouths of lands and do all the things that they did then I wonder what you and I really ought to be doing.

You know unless we really live in the spirit it's desperately easy to get cheated about our spiritual life. You take me down the road and show me a church and you say you know that man a few years ago only had 40 members and now he has 3 ,000.

So what? My hair won't stand up. You try and tell me it's because he's more spiritual and the other man at this end of the road who had 50 people 10 years ago and only has 65 tonight. Today that wouldn't raise my hair either.

You can't judge spirituality by results of that kind. If you could get to the inside of that man up there and really get close to him he might admit to you that he thinks he's the greatest failure there is within a hundred miles radius of where he's living.

He may be a bit smarter he may have a better personality. It could be a radio program or something. This cursed, and I choose that word, this cursed thing of popularity. I'm a very popular evangelist.

Well you better sit down and ask yourself why Jesus wasn't popular. Possibly you're selling him at bargain basement prices. You're offering a Christianity without a cross. You're offering a Christianity that again means escaping hellfire and all your dirty sins are forgiven and from here out God lays it all on, lays it all on and boy it's a great joy ride from here to eternity.

This is not how the scripture reveals it. You see the center really of this study in the 15th of John again comes down to what's basic and what is the greatest ministry in the whole world and that is the ministry of prayer.

Because after Jesus has been talking about pruning and refining and all the things that the husbandman does then he switches over and he says that you know you can ask anything of the Lord and he says if ye keep my commandment ye shall abide in my love, verse 10 even as I have kept my father's commandment and abide in his love.

And verse 16 ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit. Now that's the only ordination that we really need. It doesn't matter how you ordain a man you don't necessarily give him any unction.

You can't transmit super spirituality because you give him a degree and give him a little scroll that says he's an R .E .V. A title that I don't like because it really belongs to God. Holy and reverend is his name and I don't think you and I have a right to share it.

In England we always do this but I think the Spurgeon said the name pastor is a far better word but he says I have ordained you and I've ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain and whatsoever ye shall ask the father in my name he shall give it unto you.

Now that again is in my judgment is considering the fact that we have come to the place where God has done his pruning and his refining and his correcting in our lives and we've come at least to some degree of spiritual maturity.

It really is not true to say that God will send a bulldozer and clear pull down the hills and fill in the valleys and make the crooked places straight. I've heard preachers, I've heard evangelists say you know after I got saved man it's been wonderful.

Everything's been taken care of I've a bigger home, a bigger car, I've more income and everything's really you know everything's really going wonderful man it really is wonderful well I'm going to say this I don't believe I've got anything to do with your spirituality at all.

If it has well what's God doing for the Christians in Russia this morning? What is he doing for the Christians in China this morning? I'm almost prepared to say though I've not quite finalized this that I think in the Old Testament the sign of God's blessing in the Old Testament is prosperity and the sign of God's blessing in the New Testament is adversity.

What's your breaking point? What load can you carry? Oh forget how much people like your preaching or your singing or some other contortions you may do on the class. Tell me this are you so lost in him?

Are you so one with him? Are you so abiding with him that God can whisper his secret into your heart and ask you to carry a burden he can't ask the other fellow up the street to carry. I think sometimes we ask God to do things for us and when he starts to do them the first thing we do is break down and begin to wonder why or begin to cry.

Sometimes I think the very hymns that we sing are very dangerous hymns. Dr. Tozzi used to say that not only should Christians not paralyze, we shouldn't sing them but he said most of us do. You know like when we sing when I survey the wondrous cross, we're the whole realm of nature mine.

Oh it's a nice atmosphere. The sinners have all left now and it's just the last few minutes of Sunday morning and there's a sweet atmosphere and all the choice saints have gathered round the table and we're the elect of God and we sing we're the whole realm of nature mine.

It were an offering far too small. Or as Isaac Watts originally said a present far too small. But you know we do there what we have done with so many other hymns. We've amputated them. I don't know a hymn book.

Yes I do. I'm thinking back for a moment. Pulling that word back. I know two hymn books only that give the fifth verse. I know three. I think of another one now. When I helped to compile the old old old old Baptist hymn book and a modern hymn book which is maybe the best hymn book of all written by produced by the Pentecostals.

I tell them sometimes I wonder why it's been so blessed because they stole all the hymns anyhow. From the Methodists and the Salvation Army and the Baptists. But it's a remarkable hymn book of nearly a thousand hymns.

And Isaac Watts' last verse to when I survey the wondrous cross is this. His dying crimson. His dying crimson like a robe spread o 'er his body on the tree. Then am I dead to all the globe and all the globe is dead to me.

So maybe it's as well we don't sing it because we'd be lying half of us anyhow if we sang it. Then am I dead to all the globe and all the globe is dead to me. Really? Were the whole realm of nature mine it were an offering.

Well why don't you go to a prayer meeting Wednesday nights and why are there some other areas where you back off. So easy to get carried on a wave of emotion. You know sometimes we sing a hymn like draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord.

And the Lord says well alright I'll do I'll take you up on that. And then something breaks down here and something breaks down there and somebody over there doesn't treat you right and these people over here have asked you the last ten times that they gathered a few people around to play dominoes or something.

You've been every time and this time they didn't. And now I wonder why. I wonder why she got hurt. I wonder why they didn't invite us. I mean we're as good as anybody we're as spiritual as any. But they didn't well all the Lord was doing was answering your prayer you said draw me nearer.

And the only way he can draw you nearer to him is to draw you further off from other people. But oh as soon as he does that then I want to back off and say but now Lord I don't want to lose any of my popularity in the church.

After all I am the head of the sowing league. Not sowing seeds sowing shirts for missionaries or something. And not only that but usually I do sing the main solo at Christmas in the choir and the Lord says well you don't need this you've grown up and you don't need that and you want to come nearer to me and so the only thing I can do if I'm going to clothe you I'll have to strip you.

If I'm going to draw you nearer I'll have to pull you further away from them. If I'm going to fill you I'll have to empty you. If I'm going to lift you up I'll have to cast you down because Bible logic is natural logic in reverse.

Do you want to really become mature in God? Well there's only one way to do it that is lose your life and you'll find it. As long as you keep it you'll lose it. Wasn't it Wesley who said what I kept I lost and what I gave away I have which is true.

Cheap Grace and the Narrow Way

Now most of you won't agree with this you'll ignore it you want to be a popular evangelist you want to be a nice guy you want to be you'll nod your head right here and tomorrow when you get a challenge or next week you want to back off.

Bonhoeffer I don't agree with a lot that he said in his later years I'm not too sure he was quite sane but I don't think if I'd been shut up for years under Nazi torture and brainwashing I wouldn't be too sane either.

But in his first popular book over here The Cost of Discipleship I think it's about the third chapter in which he talks about cheap grace what a disgrace it is. He's very very belligerent against our modern concept of Christianity that all we do is have a sinning and repenting business.

That is not Christianity it may be Romanism but it's not Christianity. Christianity is victory over sin and self. And by the grace of God and the indwelling spirit they're able to tread the narrow path that he calls me to.

Now my father is the husbandman your father is the husbandman. And I say again God does not have to explain anything to anybody at all. And I'm very very often challenged. At one time I used to go hear all the famous preachers in England.

We had a forum there. And Tuesday lunchtime they used to bring preachers from Scotland, from London, Dr. Sangster from the Methodist, Dr. Martin Lloyd Johns, Dr. Farmer from where Oxford, Dr. Black from Scotland and a host of other great brilliant preachers.

C .S. Lewis I remember hearing him there. And you know one time I was fascinated with the the different emphasis, the different ways there are, the different interpretations, the different presentations of the same truth from a different angle.

Very very fascinating. I'm not too interested in that anymore. I'm interested now in seeing how God brings men and women into into maturity in the spiritual life. I'm amazed what some burden some people can carry and not break under them.

Spiritual Greatness and Hidden Faithfulness

You know a lot of our so called success will go down the drain when we when we stand at the judgment seat. As your famous old preacher I preached one week with him and enjoyed him immensely. Old Vance Havner that many of you have read of, read his articles and maybe heard him preach.