(John - Part 31): The Unpopularity of Jesus and His Doctrines — A.W. Tozer

Jesus Refuses to Be Governed by Public Opinion

Now, the night in the seventh chapter of John, after these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jury, because the Jews ought to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand.

His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly.

If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him. Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come, but your time is all were ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hated, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

Go ye up unto this feast. I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not yet full come. When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. That's as far as we'll go tonight, and I want you to relax and lean back and don't expect anything amazing.

Just hear what the word of the Lord says, and we'll see whether we can get real help out of these opening verses. Now, I call attention to this, that Jesus walked in Galilee, and he would not walk in Judea, here called Jury, because the Jews sought to kill him.

Now, I see something here that I wonder if you see. I see how perfectly poised and self-assured our Lord was in God his Father. He was perfectly free and uninfluenced by public opinion. He was not forced to be reckless to keep up his reputation.

It is great to be free to say amen when you want to, if it's appropriate, whether anybody else is saying it or not. Keep perfectly quiet when everybody else is excited, and to stand still when everybody else is running, and to run when everybody else is standing still, and to do strictly what you feel God wants you to do regardless.

Now, it is wonderful to be free and poised and self-assured like that. Mostly, we go along with the brethren. Mostly, particularly that inner circle of brethren who are real Christians. But Jesus, our Lord, was not stampeded by the opinions of the people.

They said, Why don't you go to Galilee? And he said, I am not going to Judea. I'm not going there. I'm staying in Galilee. And he did stay in Galilee. Now, he might have been afraid that someone would call him a coward.

He might have been afraid that somebody would say, If you don't do that, you're a coward. Then he got under bondage to that person who was accusing him of cowardice, and would have gone to Judea out of the will of God.

But he was too free for that, and too sure of himself in God, so that he stayed in Galilee, even though he was on the borderline of being thought afraid to go into Judea. Now, there are people who are too cowardly not to do something, and then there are those who are too cowardly to do it.

You see what I mean, my friends? When everybody is doing it, and you see that it's not right for you to do it, then it's possible to be too cowardly to obey your conviction. You know, we let ourselves get jockeyed into doing things that God doesn't want us to do.

You say, Well, now what will the people say? Well, usually the answer to that is, What's the difference what the people say? Now, Jesus didn't care what the people said. He stayed in Galilee because he did not want to go up and put himself in jeopardy before the time.

And the historian would say he was scared. Our Lord would not walk into a trap. He would not go into an ambush there in Judea. He was just plain afraid, and he knew that they would say it. And yet he was so completely free in God that he let them think and say what they will.

He stayed in Galilee. Unless somebody would say, Well, then he was afraid. I remind you that when the time came for him to go, he went. And I remind you that our Lord Jesus Christ did not know fear. He sent word to Herod.

Herod sent a word to him. Sent somebody and said, Did you know that Herod has sent a word? King Herod has sent a word to you. He was walking along and he stopped and turned around and said, You go tell that old fox I'll be here three days.

And then I go. Just three days. He wasn't afraid to call that king an old fox because he wasn't afraid. And when the time came, he went up to Jerusalem and he told the people, Now the time has come. I'm going up to Jerusalem and I'm going to fall into the hands of the Jews and they will sell me to the Gentiles and the Gentiles will crucify me and I will be crucified and three days I'll be in the earth.

Well, he wasn't afraid. He walked up boldly and did what he had to do in the will of God. He was neither afraid to be thought a coward, nor was he a coward. He was just what he was in God. Now that's a good lesson that I wish we could learn.

Freedom from the Consciences of Other Christians

So many of the Lord's people do things under bondage to other people's consciences because somebody else thinks their testimony is not quite consistent. If you do this, your testimony isn't consistent.

Some fellow says, I believe the Lord heals. All right, he does. And the Lord does heal him. Maybe 15 times. The 16th time why he feels that he has to go somewhere, maybe get an operation or take a pill, a vitamin capsule or something, but he's afraid to take it because he's afraid of what the people will say.

He's not a free man. A man ought to be free to say to God, Now God, you lead me and say to the people, Now God's leading me and you can expect me to do anything at all, not what you expect. You can expect me to disappoint you.

You can expect me to say and do things that you don't agree with and I will fall in your sight. I will shrink and get little in your eyes because I'll be doing things you don't think I should be doing.

I'll be taking a course you're not approving. Now if I'm a free in God, I say, Now God, I'm sorry that my brethren don't agree with me, but this is the course thou art leading me and go do what God's calling you to do.

Now that was exactly what Jesus did. He stood before Pilate and there was no panic there. He'd had his bloody sweat in the garden of Gethsemane and now poised and self-possessed and sure of himself and unaffected by the consciences of other people or public opinion, he went calmly out to die.

He would not even be turned aside by the kind but badly directed sympathies of his people. He did what he did and that was that. Now that's lesson number one for me and it's good if God's people would only get out from under bondage to each other.

I've always had that to worry about when I go into the pulpit. When I go into other pulpits, other places, I have that that bothers me. And I talk to myself. I don't mean audibly, but I say to my own soul, Now wait a minute here, friend.

You take a position that's different from these people and if you say the things to this congregation that you say at home, people at home know you and the ones that don't like you don't come. And you've thinned your audience out and there are people who expect that kind of thing from you, but these people don't know you.

And if you talk to them the way you talk at home, you'll hurt people. You'll get in bad and you'll disappoint the man that calls you and you'll disappoint the man that runs the meeting. Now calm down here and just give them a nice little talk tonight.

Now so help me God, I never yield to that cowardly temptation. Never. I never yield to that cowardly temptation. I get up there and take an outline that I've preached at home first usually and preach exactly what I preach at home.

But also, if I am preaching for a blood and thunder fire-eating type of preacher that expects high-pressure evangelism and preaching on hell three times a night and the Lord says, now son, this congregation needs love and grace and they've been preached hell has been held over them like an atom bomb.

Give them love and grace. I'll give them love and grace even if the man that called me sits and frowns. First time I met Brother McAfee was about 11 years ago. He was a song leader in a church in a certain section in the city of Chicago and I was the evangelist.

The pastor had called me over there and called him to lead the singing, or he was there for a while, part of the time. And I understood after I had gone that he was very much disappointed in me. He expected me to preach a loving evangelism and win a few souls, but instead of that I plowed into his congregation and they were dead and I plowed into them and I plowed in every blessed night.

I don't know what happened, but I plowed in. He didn't like it so well. He was disappointed in me, but I claim the holy right to disappoint men in order not to disappoint God. Jesus didn't disappoint God, but some people thought he was afraid.

Judging Motives and the Rejection of Jesus by His Family

Now notice what his brothers said to him and his brothers of course were his blood brothers, son of his mother, sons of his mother. Now they exposed their ignorance and their earthliness. They said this to him.

They said, Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world.

Now they were creating Jesus in their own image. They thought he had a racket. They thought they didn't believe in him. It says so here. And they didn't claim to be disciples. They said, If you want to get known the way we believe you do, why don't you go up to Jerusalem where the great feast of tabernacles is on, where you'll be able to talk to twenty people compared with the one you're talking to here.

Why don't you go up and make yourself known? If you want to put on this great religious racket, why don't you go up there and get known by the people who, they said, is trying to promote himself and yet stays with a little circle.

Why don't you go up where there's a big crowd? Now they were creating him in their own image. They couldn't understand a selfless man. They didn't know how to appraise a man who didn't have an axe to grind nor anything to gain.

Our Lord was here to die for people, not to win them to his political side or even his religious side. He was here to die for men and save them. Now this, my brethren, is authentic cynicism. A cynic, you know, the word cynic comes from the Greek word dog.

The old cynics were such sour pusses that they snarled at the people and they said they're dogs and they called them cynics. Now a cynic is a philosopher who believes with the devil that every man has his price.

You remember Dr. Max Rice's great sermon on Job when he told us that the devil was a cynic because he said, yea, doth Job serve God for none. Now that's cynicism. That's hedonistic philosophy, the old Greek hedonistic philosophy that says, everybody moves for his own ends.

And everything we do, we do for our own ends. Echoes of hedonism and cynicism have come down the years. It was crystallized by those Greek philosophers but it's been in human nature all these years and we find it even now in human nature.

It was Clarence Darrow who said that when a man put a quarter in the cap of a blind man on the street corner, he didn't put that in the cap in order to help the blind man. He put it in to make himself feel good.

Now that cynicism, you see, that's the devil's doctrine. The doctrine that you, that every man has his price and that you can always be saved in looking back of the motives, the façade of things, to the real motives.

That every man is out for what he can get. That's cynicism and that, of course, what they said about the Lord. They said, now what are you doing loafing down here in Galilee and you're promoting a racket here.

Why don't you go up where the crowds are and get known if you're doing these things. The commentator says that these things was a sarcastic reference. They didn't believe in the things he was doing. You're doing them and they're real and they're what you say they are.

Why don't you go up and show them off. Now my friend here was a complete misunderstanding of Jesus. And what we can learn from these things is two. Two things we can learn here. Be careful about judging other people's motives.

You never quite know why a man does a thing. You might know, but you're likely not to know, and particularly you're likely to be mistaken if you yourself are not in sympathy with what he's doing. So let's not judge each other's motives before the time.

And the second thing is that your own family may be the last people to accept you. That is one of the hard things for us to get hold of. Why is it that our own family is the last to believe in us? Jesus' own brethren now, born of his own mother, didn't believe in him.

They said, why don't you take your disciples and go up with your disciples, your disciples that differentiated between his disciples and themselves. The brethren were not his disciples. That is a tough one for us all, a hard thing for any Christian to understand, is why his own people do not believe, or are the last to believe.

That's hard, but you may figure on that. That, you see, Jesus grew up among them, and they played together, and they saw him grow, and they said, why, we know this boy. He's our brother. What does he know, anyhow?

We know as much as he. And they were right in it from the human angle, but they didn't accept him. And I suppose that was hard for Jesus to take, the human Christ, that his own brethren didn't believe in him.

And I want to tell you that it may be they'll believe in you in some other city before they'll believe in you in your own house under your own roof. Now, that's strange, but a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and among his own people.

So if you're having a hard time at home, remember Jesus had a hard time at home. And remember John Wesley's wife used to throw shoes at his head while he knelt and prayed in Latin so she couldn't understand it.

And remember that many of the saints of God have not had an easy time at home. For all the Christians that have an easy time at home, I suppose we ought to be glad. But sometimes Christians are made not in an easy home, but in the fiery furnace of opposition.

Jesus Christ our Lord himself was not believed in by his own people. Now that's a little lesson. Now notice about Christ and the world, that's lesson number three. The world cannot hate you, he said, but me it hates.

The World’s Hatred of Christ and the Conflict Between Two Spirits

The world can't hate you. Why did he say this? Because they were part and parcel of the world, and a house divided against itself cannot stand. The world cannot hate you because there is a spirit that indwells the world, and you are part of that spirit, he said, and that spirit is in you.

The world's people can quarrel and bloody each other's noses, but basically they're one. They're one spirit, and therefore the world clings together. They're united, and the spirit that's in the world, Jesus said many times that the world was one, and he made the world a collective noun, a unit.

Now that spirit that dwells in the world is anti-God and anti-Christ. This is what's so hard to make people see in the day in which we live. So very hard to make people see that the spirit that lives in the unregenerate world is anti-Christ and anti-God.

In Ephesians, Paul tells us that plainly. He tells us that plainly in Romans. Our Lord tells us plainly in the Gospel of John, that the spirit in John, the first John, tells us the same thing. The spirit that dwells in the world is hostile to God and hostile to Christ.

This thing of peaceful coexistence between the born again and the unborn again is a myth. They that are born of the flesh persecute them that are born of the spirit even as it is today, said the Holy Ghost in the epistle.

Now, a peaceful coexistence can only be maintained by unworthy compromise on the part of the people of God. Christ is altogether of another spirit. The two spirits are entirely hostile. This is why I don't understand that people can't get this.

It's so simple. It's so biblical. It is found in the writings of the saints. It's part of the theology of the Church of Christ. It is the belief, the traditional evangelical belief of the saints from the Pentecost to the present hour, and yet today people don't see it, and I always feel somehow that I'm out of gear with my times when I remind people what's plainly taught in the Scriptures, that the spirit that indwells the unborn again world is an anti-God, anti-Christ spirit, hostile to God, and not subject to the law of God, neither can it be.

And when we become truly born again, something is born into us that is hostile to the world. Not hostile to the poor, suffering, dying people of the world, but hostile to that religion of Cain that fills the world.

Now, the world cannot hate you. Jesus said, I testify that the works thereof are evil. He that is born of the flesh persecuteth him that is born of the spirit. Someone said that Jesus our Lord, when he came into the crowd, he made the heart condemn itself.

Whatever makes the heart condemn itself will never be forgiven. Keep that in mind. You can talk religion to people and they'll come back for more. But when you are so spirit-filled and so in touch with God that your life and your demeanor and your very presence is so pure and Christ-like that it rebukes the sinner and makes his own heart turn against him and condemn itself, you're a marked man, and you'll not be forgiven.

Until, of course, conviction comes on that soul and he falls down before his God and finds hope. A lot of criticism of Leonard Ravenhill, but ladies and gentlemen, I think we need a little more Leonard Ravenhill in these days in which we live.

I'll have no part in meetings that simply console the saints and give them more assurance and pat their carnality and swoop down the hackle on their lovely carnal backs. I'll have no part in it because sin is a reality, a devilish, terrible, damning, grave-filling, hell-filling reality.

And when we take the stand against it, we're going to raise the anger of those whose hearts feel self-condemned because of it. Religion's every place now, every place. Somebody sent me an article called Piety on the Potomac.

It's written in one of the current magazines, national magazines, called The Reporter. Cut it out and send it to me, two or three pages, and they show how that it's in vogue now to be religious. I remember just between the two World Wars, it was out of vogue to be religious.

You couldn't be intellectually respectable and be religious. But after Second World War, they said there were no atheists in Foxhole, and then it became religious or intellectually respectable to be religious.

I was religious all the time in between, respectable or not respectable, as some of you were. But they've now given us the right to be religious, and it's quite the proper thing to say something nice about God.

But brother, it's one thing to say something nice about God, it's quite another thing to be so in God that your very breath makes the hearts of men condemn themselves. They won't forgive you for that.

You can talk all you want to about religion being good for mankind, and they'll approve you. And you can say, I think there ought to be churches in every community, and they'll nod and say, that's right.

And you can say, I believe that the teachings, the morality upon which America was founded ought to be restored. They'll all nod and say, that's right, that's fine, reverend, that's good, doctor, that's good, brother.

But when you get past that keen-eyed religion, that religion of patriotism and shallow philosophy, and get past that and through to the point where it's either Christ or damnation, and you won't be liked, I'm telling you.

They're going to, you're going to find that same spirit rising up against you, because the spirit that is in Christ and the spirit that is in the religious world are hostile to one another. Or in the world, and I'm not talking about the churches now, I'm talking about the world.

Jesus Christ Cannot Be Reduced to “A Good Man”

And now, you know what the Jews said about Jesus? They said, some of them said he's a good man. And others said, no, he deceives the people. Whose side are you on, on that? There's a debate. Here was a debate.

Here they stood, and their little beards were quivering with anger and their eyes flashing. He's a good man, said some. No, but he deceives the people, said others. So there was a dividing line, and Jesus always had a dividing line, always.

You walk down the street, you draw a knife blade between men. Now, whose side are you on? He is a good man. No, but he deceives the people. Whose side are you on, on this? I don't mind telling you bluntly, I'm on the side of those who said, no, but he deceives the people.

Now, let's, I'll show you what I mean. They both believed that he was just a man, and believing that he was just a man, and not God, they took their sides. And some said, he is just a man, but he's a good man.

And the others said, if he's just a man, he's a deceiver, and he's not a good man. Whose side are you on? I'm on the side of those who said, he's not a good man if he's lying to the people. He's not who he said he is, he's not a good man.

And the others said, no, but now, wait a minute here, don't, don't condemn, that's the way he worships, that's his religion. That's, don't condemn other people's religion, that's his religion. And he believes that, no, it's perfectly all right, it's all right.

A fellow said on a radio broadcast I heard this evening while I was resting, this afternoon, he said, I have a creed. What was his creed? It was something about, if you'd always be good, things would go well with you.

And now, that's his creed. And let him alone, they say, don't bother him, don't disturb him. A fellow writes in, cancel my subscription. You're condemning other people the way other people worship. Cain's worship, and Balaam's worship, and Judas's worship, and the worship that Paul condemned in his epistles, and Christ castigated in his teachings, and John condemned in his teachings, and the evangelists and reformers down the centuries have had to stand up and protest the pagan religion of the world, and accept everybody's religion.

Jesus Christ was not a good man if he was only a man. He had to be more than a man, or else he was deceiving the people. They were both wrong, for they both began on a wrong premise. It was that he was a man.

If they had said, he's a good man, and he's a god man, they'd have been right. But they said, he's a good man. Sure, he's mistaken, but he's a good man. Certainly, he was extreme, but he's a good man.

Certainly, he's making demands that we can't fulfill, but he's a good man. Certainly, he's talking about things that just couldn't be so, but he's a good man. That kind of smirking tolerant religion is worse than atheism.

I would rather be an atheist than have that kind of religion. He's a good man. He's a good man. Of course, he's mistaken. He's a child of his age, but he's a good man. Now, if he's only a man, he's anything but a good man, for he led the people to believe in him as God.

If he was not God, he was the world's top liar. You come and say you're God. We smile at the little colored man in New York. I don't know if he's in New York now. They ran him out, but I think he's in Philadelphia now.

The little fellow that speaks is wonderful and God. We say, isn't that cute? The little bald-headed cowboy says, I'm God. He's not cute, brethren. It's tragic. It's terrible. A man to deceive the people, that's not a good man.

And a man who leads people to believe that he is what he's not, is not a good man, even though he can point to good that has been done. Not everything that does good is good. Remember that. And not everyone who is capable of doing some good sometimes is to be trusted.

There's a great divide. Any well-intentioned religion is good, says some, and the others say, no. He's either God or he has tragically misled generations of men. And I take my side with them. And I say, but I have found him to be good.

Jesus Christ cannot be tolerated as being merely good. He must either be obeyed or rejected. Either obeyed or rejected. One or the other. But this is the day of the tolerance of the Lord Jesus. We're tolerating him now in the civilized world.

We're tolerating him, just as we tolerate the Queen Mother. You hear that broadcast yesterday where the Queen Mother made a nice little speech? Little housewife, lovely little soul, made her a doctor of laws.

Dear little old lady, she was and is. We tolerate queens when they come over here and call them your majesty. But we tolerate them. Basically, we don't believe in them. We believe in the democratic processes.

We believe no man is a king or queen in America, or rather every man is a king and every woman a queen. But we tolerate them smilingly, treat them nicely. And Jesus is being tolerated by people. He gets into the newspapers now, and magazines, and his name is used over the radio a lot.

And songs are sung about him, and the speech is made. He is the tolerated savior. No, no, no. He can't be, can't be. How long can it go on? I'm not a prophet, but I think a little common sense will help me to see something.

We've been scared by communism. We've been scared quite by the dangers of the cobalt bomb. We've been told that people would go sterile and couldn't reproduce the human race if we got any more radiation.

Or we've been told what is worse. I saw it no later than in today, yesterday's press. We've been told that there's enough radiation in the air now to cause women to produce, instead of healthy offspring, cripples and deformed people.

We've been frightened. We're a jittery, scared, frightened people. And we're tolerating Jesus Christ as a cow tolerates a bush in a hot day. We're getting up and hiding from the flies and the heat, because we hope maybe if we're good, someone will help us and we'll get a little help, the spirit of George Washington or something will help us.

Brethren, I wonder how long, much longer we're going to continue to be scared. Now let me prophesy a little, and I don't know I need to apologize for it, but let me tell you something. Maybe I won't be here to see it.

Maybe I will. If I am, I'll remind you. Let me tell you something. If there comes a period of peace, if there should come, I don't know that it can, but if there should come a period in the world when Russia is no longer feared as an aggressor, and when some kind of United Nations or something else has pushed war into the remote future, and there's no longer anything to be scared about, we'll see such a reaction from our present religious piety as we haven't seen since the seventeenth century in France.

We will see the churches empty and men go their carnal ways. You can only scare a man into being good so long, and when he gets hardened to the scare, and is no longer afraid of the future, then his carnal self will go in a wild binge, and you'll see what will happen in America.

We're a scared people now, and so everybody's talking about trying the Lord, and turning to God, and being religious, but we're not making Jesus Christ Lord of our lives in this country, and we're not drawing the line fine and saying, I believe in him not as a good man, but as my God and Savior and Lord.

We're saying rather he's a good man, and I believe religion ought to be promoted, and I think we ought to do better and acknowledge the Lord, and when we say, going here to a one nation, indivisible under God, I think we ought to put that phrase under God.

I was the other night at a high school gathering, and when they made the pledge to the flag, for the first time I'd ever heard it, the phrase under God. In God we trust, says the dollar that some scoundrel is prying out of a widow.

In God we trust, says the dollar that some punk is winning in the gambling den. No, my brother, it's going to be more than in God we trust. It's going to be more than under God we do this and that. It's going to be more than friendly gestures in the direction of God.

Before God Almighty's great power comes into a life to make it over, there has to be an acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus. He is Lord to the glory of God the Father, and we make that assertion now.

He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He tells us the day will be when in hell they'll make that assertion. They'll grind it out of their hot, blistered teeth. He is Lord to the glory of God. All around the world they'll admit he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Salvation Requires the Lordship of Jesus Christ

Who are the ransomed? Who are the saved? Who are his friends? There are those that admit it now, that say not he's a good man, not he deceived the people, but he is Lord to the glory of God. The first little talk, I gave my little nine points.

I didn't know whether they'd run me down the alley or whether they would accept it. They accepted it. Brother Redpath wants to print it. He wants to print it. One of the things that I said was this. There is no Saviorhood without Lordship.

You cannot receive him as Savior and deny him as Lord. You cannot be saved and boss your own life. He is Lord to the glory of God the Father, or he's just a good man. So, friends, we've got to make up our minds.

It's tough, isn't it? Wouldn't you like to hear something sweeter? Well, you should have been here this morning. I preached on the immortality, and last week I preached on the descent of the Holy City.

No conscience in that, nobody scared in that, everybody looking forward to the Holy City coming down from God out of heaven as a bride adorned for a cousin. But who's going to be the ones that will see it?

Who will enter into it? They who have owned him as Lord in this hour. They who in the midst of piety and religion and soft talk and patriotism have stood out and said, whatever the world believes, I take him as my Lord and Savior, my Lord and my God.

They're the happy ones. Oh, Jerusalem, the golden. Oh, they stand, those halls of Zion, all jubilant with song and bright with many an angel and all the martyrs throng. The saints are ever in them, the daylight is serene, the pastures of the blessed are decked with glory.

My brethren, they who have taken him as Lord, whose side are you on? He that is not for me is against me. And there can be no neutrality, no neutrality. Before some things there can be no neutrality. When Hitler's Nazism was capturing the world, a man wrote a book, say, called Only the Stars Are Neutral.

There's no neutrality when it comes to Nazism. There's no neutrality when it comes to communism. Some things you can't be neutral about, stand up and be counted, take your medicine like a man. When it comes to Jesus Christ, there's no neutrality.

He that is not for me is against me. He that gathers not with me scattereth. Wouldn't it be a terrible thing if in that hour we find that we had been camp followers of the Lord, mixed multitude only? Wouldn't it be a tragic thing if we found in that day that we had never really obeyed him?

We had been wooed to believing in him by thoughts of fear or thoughts of how much better a country is that believes in God. We have heard men say, our noble heritage of religion and it charmed us, but we ourselves never actually found him, God and Savior.

That would be a terrible thing, I think, terrible thing. And much worse for you, because you have had a chance to know. I trust it isn't true, but it would be frightful, terrible, terrible for me if I had preached to others and myself be a castaway.

I'd rather have died like my old dog Mac back in the hills of Pennsylvania that got old and they shot him to get him out of his misery. Better had I died and sleep beside his old carcass than I stand and preach these holy things and myself be it.

Which side are you on? He that is not with me is against no neutrality there. To be for him is to believe on him, obey him, and let the world know. Let the world know. No underground, no Christian underground, no hiding place, no underground.

Public Confession, Obedience, and the Call to Decide

If you deny me before men, I'll deny you before my Father which art in heaven. Tell the world, never let them hear the last of it. He's my Lord and my God to the glory of God the Father. Never let the world hear the last of it.

Don't hide. Stop doing some things and begin doing other and start giving your tithe and start pledging demissions and start attending services, but don't tell anybody you're a Christian. No, no, no, you can't do it.

He that is not for me is against me. He that's not gathering under my banner is gathering under my enemy's banner. You're denying me before men, I'll deny you before God in heaven. Let the world know.