(Revelation - Part 4): To the Seven Churches — A.W. Tozer

John’s Exile and Vision on Patmos

I turn to chapter 1, verse 9 and following. I, John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is 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 heard 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 Shmyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. In the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle, and his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a 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 shining in his strength. When I saw him, I fell down, and his feet as dead, and he laid his right hand upon me, and sang, 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. Let's pray. O God, we grieve because there is not found any man worthy to open this book or to expound it.

We grieve because in our blindness we see only the manless trees walking. Who is sufficient for these things? O God, certainly not thy poor servant who knows only a little. And the vast sea of truth lies luminous before us.

We can only tonight point to it and say, Behold, and then we pray that thou wilt open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Help, Lord, that where we are blind, give us sight. Where we are deaf, make us to hear.

John’s Authorship and the Authority of Revelation

Where we are low, raise us up. Where we are high, bring us down. And may truth triumph, and may thy word run and be glorified. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God sent and signified to his servant John, said, John, who wrote the book of Revelation, says the critic.

John to the seven churches which are in Asia, says John, who wrote the book of Revelation, says the critic. I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation, says John, who wrote the book of Revelation, says the critic.

You know, there are two ways to be ignorant, brothers and sisters. One way is to not go to school at all, and the other way is to go too long. I have met both kinds of ignorant people, those who never went, and I can understand them.

Then I have met those who went too long, and the longer they went, the more ignorant they got. John wrote the book of Revelation. He says so three times here in the first chapter. If I wrote you a letter and signed it three times, then you would say, Who wrote that letter?

I'd figure that you had that good examination of your head coming, because there it is in clean sight, my old scrawly signature on it three times. I, John, says John, and the critic says, Who could have written the book of Revelation?

Who killed Cock Robin? Well, my brother and sister, John wrote the book of Revelation, and as I said in the opening sermon, and all you have to do is compare it with John's other writings and you will see that it is that way, that it is like John.

He wrote that thing. He wrote this book. John says, I, John, who am your brother, and notice the humility of this man, I am your brother and I am your companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, in the word of God and the testimony of our Lord.

Now, what did all this add up to? I repeat again that I'd like to be able to preach sermons 100 percent positive. I'd like to get up sometime and not have in mind that fellow looking over my shoulder preaching something else.

I'd like to get up sometime and be able to preach 100 percent positive and not be bothered at all by people who teach wrong things. But you can't be realistic and stand up like a little statue of St. Francis with your head off on one side and a meek, gentle look on your face, as though these enemies of the gospel didn't exist, they do exist, and you've got to deal with them.

And we've got to deal with those who teach otherwise than what John teaches here, this man who is a companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and who is a witness to the word of God and the testimony of our Lord.

Tribulation Rather Than Prosperity

Now, all this, what did it add up to for John? Big contracts, that's what I hear now. You give your heart to the Lord and get born again, and if you're a business man, your contracts will get larger immediately.

You will have bigger business. If you run a store, you'll have more customers. Whatever you are, you will have more. And is it promotion, this kingdom and patience of our Lord Jesus and the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ?

Did it add up to winning at sports? It's a wonder somebody hasn't, and I suppose they have, written to Maris, telling him that if he'll only be born again, he'll have a chance to break Babe's Ruth record, no doubt, because Babe wasn't born again when he hit 60 home runs.

And they'll tell us, if you want to win at sports, why get born again? And if you want to get big contracts, get born again. And if you want your cows to give more milk, get born again. And if you want to have good grades at school, get born again.

Believe on Jesus Christ and accept him, and there it all works. What did it add up to for John? For John it added up to, I was in the isle that is called Patmos. What were you doing there, John? You were Bishop of Ephesus.

You should have been back home standing up with a long robe on, presiding over your congregation. You were born again, weren't you, John? Haven't you accepted Jesus, John? Yes, I accepted Jesus, and what it got me was I was in the isle that is called Patmos.

Well, now, if the modern doctrine were true, John wouldn't have been in Patmos. John would have had his reward back home. He'd have had peace of mind, prosperity, and the friendship of the great. But there would have been no book of revelation.

I'm glad John was on the isle of Patmos. I'm glad for that. If John had been like some of us modern fundamentalists, there would have been no book of revelation, because we're not producing the kind of men that can see visions and dream dreams and write books of revelation.

We're producing men that can barely understand the book of revelation after somebody else writes it. But peace of mind and prosperity and the friendship of the great, I suppose that John would have been back home.

He would have played golf with Caesar, but he would never have seen a door opened in heaven and never would have seen a throne with a rainbow around it. Never. But I'm glad that John took the hard way, brothers and sisters.

I'm glad he took the hard way. He could have got off the hook if he'd wanted to, if he'd have just blown through his nose learnedly and compromised the truth a little bit and stood up and looked saintly.

They'd have said, Well, this man is doing good in the community. And they would never have sent him to the Isle of Patmos, but John knew who he believed and knew what he believed, and he said, I'm your brother and your companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patient of Jesus Christ.

And I was in the Isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. All you have to do is take the heat off of your testimony and the world will take its heat off of you.

But you give your testimony and the world will turn the heat on. John must have given a mighty strong testimony because they had him in the Isle of Patmos. And they tell me he was in a coal mine, salt mine, though as I said before, I don't know whether that's true or not.

Hearing the Voice of God

He was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Now right here we could get ourselves off into a little eddy and get clear out of the stream of truth, and we could go round and round like a toy boat in the eddy and imagine we'd been somewhere and we'd never been away from one little spot.

We could talk for half an hour on what it means to be in the Spirit in the sense that John wrote it, and we could talk for another half an hour on what the Lord's day means, Sabbath or means Sunday or means that it was the prophetic period known as the day of the Lord.

And I'm not going to get into any little eddy at all so far as I can, I'm going to stay in the mainstream and not get snagged on these two nails. I would assume that the man John was in the Spirit, that is, he was caught up into a kind of a prophetic trance, and the time he remembered was on the first day of the week.

And he said, I heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet. And this isn't part of the sermon, but it's rather significant to notice how many people there are that have heard the Lord speaking behind them, because we're usually facing the wrong way.

If you were facing toward the Lord, you'd hear him speaking ahead of you, but because we turn our back on the Lord, he has to speak behind us. Isaiah said the day would come when we should hear a voice behind us saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.

Why didn't he hear a voice saying ahead of him, Come on, this is the way? Because Isaiah, whoever he was talking about, had gotten off of the main highway, so the Lord back on the highway was behind the fellow, and he said, Come, turn back.

So he turned back. I heard behind me a great voice, and John turned to see, and what he saw was seven golden candlesticks. Those candlesticks were lampstands, and some other translations have it, and I could take another 20 minutes explaining the difference between lampstands and candlesticks, but when we were finished, all I would have done would be bore you or give you a notion you knew something you didn't know, which would be bad for both of us.

So we'll pass that candlestick deal up entirely and point out only that they had candles in those days, and they stuck them in a candlestick, and if you were capable of it and you had lots of money, you made golden candlesticks, and they stuck a candle in a candlestick and lighted it, and they had light in the house.

The Church as a Receptacle for Divine Light

Those candlesticks didn't shine, I want you to notice. They were made of gold, but they weren't shining. What was shining was the candle. These seven golden candlesticks, Jesus explained, were the seven churches of Asia, and they were meant to stand for all the churches of all time.

I say they didn't shine, but they were the receptacle of all shining truth. It is the purpose of God that his churches, and here is the plural used here, churches, it's the purpose of God that his churches should not be themselves the shining light, but that they should be the containers and the receptacles of the shining light.

Just as the candlestick didn't shine, if you put the candle out, the gold candlestick didn't shine, but it held the light that did shine. So that the church ought not to be a group of people who, because of their social position, shine in society.

We ought not to conceive of the church as a group of people who, because of the learning of its members, shine in society. Why don't you know that church is the most learned church? There are more college professors who go to that church, and more retired college presidents go to that church, and more atomic scientists go there than any other church in the whole dominion.

I suppose so, but it doesn't impress me. You'll excuse me if I'm not impressed by their shining. They are just trying to shine. If I get up here and try to shine, and be learned, and quote Shakespeare and show what a shining intellect I have, I'll be a candlestick trying to shine.

But that's not my business to do that, and it's not the business of this church to shine. It's not the business of this church to gather in so many Senators and M .P.'s. That's Mounted Police, isn't it?

Members of Parliament, I mean. Everybody will say, that church there has very high social standing. I'd rather go along with that first church that didn't have very good social standing, but had a tremendous lot of power.

Peter didn't have any degrees that I know of, but Peter said, silver and gold I have none, and he didn't have much money. But he did say to a man, I say unto you, get up. And the fellow got up. He got up because the man without any money and without any prestige may have now what they call a status symbol.

It was a day when the number of servants you had in your home was your status symbol, I heard a fellow say last night. But now it's your car that's your status symbol. And how many of them you have, that's your status symbol.

I remember back to the days of the horse and buggy, and when the first automobiles that came into the neighborhood, the great high-wheeled fellows that were built to run in the muddy, over the muddy roads.

And if one man in the whole what they call county, if one man in the whole county got himself an automobile, he had a status symbol there, boy. And everybody thought unquestionably that he was somebody.

He was a big wig with an accent on a wig. But that was a status symbol. And we can have those status symbols now. I believe in clean churches, but I hope this nice new paint doesn't become a status symbol for having you all.

I hope that we'll remember that you can just be as humble in the dirty church as you can in a clean one, and vice versa. But yet I'm for this. I'm even agitating to get some rugs on the aisles so that when you walk down the aisle you won't hear you down at the corner of Bloor.

But if that becomes a status symbol, then it's too bad for all of us, brethren. There's only one thing that ought to make a church glad, and that is that there is somebody walking in the midst whose eyes are like a flame of fire.

And no matter how low and poor they may be, there's still a people walking, simple people among whom the Lord walks. I went to a church in this city, my good friend Finley, McKay and I went down there.

They were a simple people, a people most of whom could not speak good standard English. But there was something about them that warmed my heart, and I got up there and spoke to them, and they were so blessed and warmed by it all that they had a prayer meeting afterward, and I've felt good ever since.

They didn't have one lonely claim to anything, but the Lord was in the midst. And I'd rather have that than anything else I know in all the wide world. And yet I think that if we're going to serve the Lord and we're an assembled company and there's enough of us to do it, that we ought to see to it that the place where we meet is nice and worthy of our prayers and worthy of our worship.

That's why I like to see a church fixed up looking nice. That doesn't make us spiritual. I don't mind seeing a man preaching a robe. I have preached in robes before now, and with square hats on, although I always took those monkey hats off before I'd preach.

I don't care, he can put two or three robes on me, if it isn't too warm, I'll preach in a robe. It makes little difference to me in or out of the robe, but it makes an awful lot of difference to me whether I'm in the Spirit or out of the Spirit.

Well, John saw the seven golden candlesticks which would stand for all of the churches, and these churches which themselves do not shine, but which are the receptacles for all shining truth. And in the midst of the candlesticks I saw one.

In the midst of the candlesticks I saw one. Now, who would you expect if you knew that the candlesticks stood for the church and all the churches, and who would you expect to find standing in the midst of the seven churches, that is, being in each church?

Who would you expect to be there? St. Paul? No, St. Paul died. I think St. Paul may even have been dead when this was written. Who would you expect there? Well, who was it that said, Where two of you, three of you are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst?

Didn't he say that? Isn't that the one you'd expect to see there? Didn't he say, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and I will be with you unto the end of the world? Wouldn't you expect the one to be standing in the midst of the church of whom it is said that he is the head of the church, the fulness of him that filleth all in all, the foundation upon which the church is built, the life of the church?

Wouldn't you expect him? Well, that's just where he was. He was there and he was like unto the Son of Man. Hear that again. This was not a spirit in the church, but one like unto the Son of Man, a Son of Man, the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord, and he was clothed with a garment down to the foot.

Christ as Priest, King, and True Man

Here is what dear old brother W. T. MacArthur called the only authentic portrait of Jesus Christ. Here it is, the only one. All of these weak pictures that Italian artists and Dutch artists have painted with Christ, you can have them all.

I don't want to get a concept fixed in my mind, borrowed from an artist. I want the Holy Ghost to paint the picture of Jesus Christ across my heart. I want to read it out of the Bible, and I want the Holy Ghost to dip his brush in the paint of the blood and fire and paint the picture of the Son of God across the canvas of my soul, so that when I go there in his presence I'll not be disappointed.

Some people will be disappointed when they see Jesus, because they've been raised on Solomon and Hoffman's heads of Christ, and they'll expect to see what he isn't at all. Here he is, here is what he is, the only authentic portrait of Jesus Christ.

He was clothed with a garment down to the foot, and there is the priest's garment. The priest in the midst of the church, where else should a priest be? In the old days of Israel, where were the priests?

They were in the midst of Israel. The temple was in the midst of the camp, and the holy place was in the midst of the temple, and the priests were there moving in and out, and the high priest was in the holy place, so in the midst of Israel.

So here is the man clothed with a garment down to the foot. We have a priest. I believe in the priesthood. I believe it. I believe in it two ways. I believe in the priesthood of believers. I believe that you and I are priests and that we have access to the throne of God through our high priest who has gone in before us.

But I believe in the final, ultimate priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the high priest in the presence of God. And there he is standing with the garment clothed down to the foot, and girt about the breast with a golden girdle.

There is the insignia of royalty. Around his chest was a broad band made of pure gold, and it held up the garment that went down to his feet. There we see him, but there was a man there, not a spirit, not an angel, not a cherubim, but a man, a real man.

And you could have gone to that man and touched him. Jesus said, Handle me and see. A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me have. And he ate fish before them after he had risen from the dead and was glorified.

So this one that we have there is a true man, and he is girt about the breast with a golden girdle, the insignia of royalty. So we have not only a priest, but we have a royal priest, a priest who is both king and priest.

Prophet, priest, and king, they said in the early days of the Christian and missionary alliance, before we got out onto the jingle bells and began following the backslidden church over the cliff. They used to talk about the prophet, priest, and king, that Jesus Christ was all of these, and I believe that.

I believe that he is the prophet, I believe he is a priest, and I believe he is a king. And I see him here combined, a kingly priest standing in the midst of the church. And you know that is why churches exist and why churches don't fall apart with all the pressure the devil puts on the church.

How can the church exist at all? I don't wonder that churches backslide, the wonder is that they don't. I don't wonder that churches hold together, or do not hold together, the wonder is that they hold together.

If it were not for the invisible presence of our Lord in the midst, a priest to stand before God for us and a king to rule, there would be no church. It says his head and hair are white as wool and white as snow.

The Holiness of Christ and the Judgment of the Church

Now there are two views of this, and I don't see why both of them can't be true. That's one way that I like to believe. When I run onto a passage where there are opposing views, I don't accept one or reject the other, I believe both.

You get more that way and it's more comfortable. And you don't have to argue with anybody. Some say that Jesus Christ's pure whiteness means holiness, that it's the utter holiness of our Lord that makes his hair to be whiter than wool.

But others say, no, that couldn't be it, because that means right knowledge and solid judgment. It's talking about the Ancient of Days, because he is the Ancient of Days, dating back to time out of mine, therefore we see him as white-haired.

Maybe both of those are true, but on the other hand, I can't quite believe that our Lord is gray-headed. I believe that the Lord has white hair, but it's not the white hair that came as a result of age, it's white hair that came there because he wanted to show us the utter holiness of the Lord.

Do you know, friends, that we have lived with unholiness to a point where we are almost incapable of appreciating holiness? We are all but incapable of knowing what holiness is. But here he is, white as wool, white as snow.

That's why I can't go along with those who excuse sin. That's why I can't go along with the pastor who nurses a cigarette and then prays for the sick, shuffles his pack around and gets a New Testament, reads the passage and prays for the sick.

I can't go along with him. But somebody says, Well, I don't believe in Methodist morality. I don't either, but I believe in New Testament morality. And I believe that if the Methodists took up New Testament morality, then whoa, good for them, and I'm glad, and more power to them.

But this holiness, God's people ought to be a holy people. I tell you that I could only pray that God would help me to preach so that you would sweat. I don't want you to go away feeling good. This idea that the church is a place where you go to get a tranquilizer, you feel all bad, come to church and we'll sing soft songs and preach pussycat sermons to you and purr and purr until you feel better.

Why don't you go down to the drugstore and ask for a tranquilizer if that's what you want? If you only want to feel relaxed, take a hot bath and a tranquilizer. That will relax you. Relax you and let you go to hell in your relaxation.

That's not what a church is for, to relax sinners. The church is to make sinners sweat. And the church is to make backslidden Christians sweat. And if I can bring the bubbly sweat out over you while I preach, I'll only thank God with all my heart, no matter what you think of me.

Because this Lord is a holy Lord, and his head and his hair were white as wool. And it's in his presence that we're going to live. And his eyes were as a flame of fire, seeing through. You and I see, but he sees through.

There's the difference. Fire sees through. The eyes of our Lord are like x-ray eyes, and you can't hide anything from our Lord. He's got those eyes, so there isn't any use to clear your throat and swell out your chest and claim you're somebody.

No, you're nobody, and we might as well get together on that now. Neither am I, so there's no difference in our standing. You're nobody, I'm nobody. And if we had our desserts, we'd all perish alike. And he knows that, and he sees through it.

Some churches get so self-righteous as the Pharisees were, and they walk around trying to be the incarnated sum of all that's respectable. But they've got no spirituality and no garment of righteousness to hide them from the flaming eyes of Jesus.

I'd rather be exactly what I am, and stand right out and be exactly what I am. I tell the preachers, I quit preaching anymore to writers. I've quit that. Don't do it anymore. No use. No use. They won't do what you tell them anyhow, and I think that I'm going to give a preaching to preachers one of these days, because they don't pay much attention to you either.

But I tell them that there isn't any use to try to pretend to be somebody, because the preacher is nobody either. He's just an animated clothespin walking around on his two legs, and he snores just like other people when he goes to sleep.

And he'll die one of these days and be lugged out and buried just like everybody else, and the fact that he was a Reverend D .D. won't make a bit of difference to God. Not a bit of difference to God. They called me doctor long before I got doctor's degrees, but I don't know why, I just do, you know.

But I wasn't conscious of any step up in my preaching ability, none whatsoever, when they stuck some square hats on my head a couple of times, nothing to make a bit of difference. Just to be a simple, plain person standing before God, you've got to be that, completely that, for Jesus Christ sees through.

He knows, he knows, even now, if while I'm talking to you, if my very claim to humility is only another form of pride, he knows that. He knows everything. I'm glad he does. I'd hate to think that after I go to bed at night or go down to Chicago, the devil could come around and tell God something about me.

As soon as the Viscount takes off, the devil comes around and says, you know that fellow that preaches down Avenue Road, God, if you know about him what I know, he knows all about it. Nobody is going to hunt up Jesus and whisper back of his hand and say, have you heard about Tozer?

Jesus, my Lord, knows all about him, knows his weakness and knows his strength and knows that the only thing about him that harms him is his strength, not his weakness. You can never get too weak for the Lord to use you, but you can get too strong.

You never can get too ignorant for the Lord to use you, but you can get too wise. You never can get too little for the Lord to use you, but you can get too big. Yet these days we say, oh, if we only had big, wise men in our pulpits and places of Christian leadership, why, we'd be all right.

My friend, the Church of Christ wouldn't be one whit better off if every preacher in Toronto was a Ph .D. Not one whit better off, it might easily be worse off. Somebody else says, if we only had money, money that we need.

I've been toying with the idea one of these times of writing an editorial, magazine goes to 110 countries, they tell me, and I suppose that the preachers would gang up on me and write me off, but I was going to write it anyhow, I think.

Here's what it is. Money isn't enough. To point out that more money wouldn't mean a thing. If this church were endowed with $100 ,000 a day after tomorrow, and our Prager climbed a sunbeam with delight, as he would, in spite of it, this church wouldn't be one whit better off, because all you can buy with money is material things.

You can't buy spirituality, you can't buy humility, you can't buy purity, you can't buy godliness, you can't buy holiness. You need enough money, and I hope you'll keep that in mind and pray about it and give, and loose your purse strings and get rid of some of that money.

Turn it over to the church here. But when you've done it, remember, that mere money can't bail you out. Mere money won't do it. More education won't do it, more money won't do it. The Lord sees through all of that.

I, for my part, don't know why the preachers can't see through it. Well, he had a feet like unto fine brass. Now, why did he have feet like unto fine brass? Because he was to be the judge. He was a judge, to judge what his eyes had just seen.

The church that isn't judged is not the church of the Lord Jesus Christ at all. There are congregations, I have no doubt of it, congregations that meet every Sunday, carry on their programs that are not true churches of Jesus Christ at all, for two reasons.

The Spirit is not in the midst of them, and the Lord is not the center of their interest. They carry on and they call themselves churches, but the true church is going to be a disciplined church, and our priest in the midst of us, who knows all about us and loves us anyhow, is going to judge us.

Never pray that the Lord shouldn't judge you, never. Pray like the man David prayed, if it's turned around and rightly translated, Chastise me, O Lord, but not in thy wrath. It says in King James, Do not in thy wrath chastise me.

It leaves the impression that the man was not wanting to be chastised. He was praying that the Lord would chastise him, but he didn't want the Lord to do it in anger, he wanted him to do it in love. Then this one who stood in the midst of the candlesticks and stands in the midst of the candlesticks tonight had a voice as the sound of many waters.

This warms my heart and gives me a sense of something I can't explain or express. The voice is the sound of many waters, the strong, majestic, and deep. What that voice had done, that voice had called the world into being.

In the day when there was nothing, that voice called something and it sprang into being. In the day when Lazarus was dead, that voice said, Come forth, Lazarus, and he came forth. That mighty voice, that voice that said, It's finished, and the strong, bold soldiers of Caesar fell down and said, This was the Son of God.

That voice that shall someday come and wake the dead, that voice is the sound of many waters. You know, the sound of many waters is a musical sound. There's something musical about water. The poets say that the brooks babble.

I could have wished that the poet could have thought of something else sometime except babble. Oh, they have ripple and pearl, I forgot those two words, pearling brooks and rippling brooks and babbling brooks.

They're the only three things books are allowed to do by the poets. But did you ever sit by a little stream on a quiet day with a cow standing over there in the shade and maybe two or three sheep wandering around and hear the liquid pearling of that water?

I have, and I've enjoyed it tremendously. But as it gets larger and become great waterfalls or great oceans, the sound, while it's still musical, it becomes it becomes powerful. I told you about Jenny Lynn, the great Swedish soprano.

They called her the Swedish Nightingale, Barnum, brought her over here. Phineas P. Barnum brought her over to this continent and took her around as the greatest singer, and they say she was one of the greatest singers of all time.

She entered any place to sing, they packed to the rafters and hung out the windows to hear the Swedish Nightingale. And suddenly she disappeared from the scene and retired. Somebody went, some newspaper man, and they poked their nose into everything.

So they went to hunt up Jenny Lynn. They went over to Sweden, and they found Jenny sitting somewhere, whether in Sweden, I don't know, but in Europe. They found Jenny sitting with an open Bible in her lap, sitting on a rock, looking out over the ocean, listening to the roar of the breakers as they beat over the rocks.

And they said to her, Jenny, the world was at your feet. You're at the peak of your artistic powers. Why did you suddenly run out on us? She said, I found that the praise I got from the public, I found that it made me forget this and this.

And she pointed to her Bible and the ocean where she had been brought up. The roar of the ocean has something in it, the roar of the ocean. Not the ocean, but one of the great lakes. We used to go over to Beulah Beach on the northern part of Ohio, where on Lake Erie.

And the wind would rise in the night, and the lake would begin to roar, great, long, drawn trumpet blasts. The next day maybe would be a time when they were to baptize people. Always they baptized once or twice during the period.

And the lake would be coming in, and the breakers were as high as a man, or higher than a man. And I suppose it wasn't nice to smile, but I've stood there and smiled a few times while they baptized somebody.