Audio Sermon: The Beauty of Holiness — Leonard Ravenhill

I'm very glad for this privilege of fellowshipping here again. I don't know when I was here last, sometime last year in, I think, May. Somewhere about that time. And believe it or not, I've only preached one week since then.

So I'm a bit rusty, you know. I mean, I'm not like these millinery evangelists that scoop up these big love offerings every weekend. But apart from that, the thing is that you have to flex your muscles and kind of get back into stride again.

The Need to Defend and Possess the Gospel

I like that expression about a gymnast there, that we spend so much time defending something that doesn't work. Most of our preaching is defending a man who died 2 ,000 years ago. And they're very fundamental in doing that.

I heard a very moving story just about two weeks ago. You may have forgotten that the fact is that America still has 50 or 52 ,000 boys, not merely in Korea, not merely in Vietnam, but 52 ,000 men just south of the 38th parallel in Korea.

And there are 50 ,000 men still guarding the line in Germany. But I'm told there's a Christian man just south of the 38th parallel in Korea. And every day he walks up and down the street with his hands raised up and he says, It's only I have it now.

It's only I have it now. Because before the war, before he was pushed out of North Korea, south of the 38th parallel, he was a multimillionaire. And he used to give a tithe, a little bit of his money, a little bit of his time to the Lord.

It was expected of him. But he wasn't too generous. He, you know, never, pockets never burst at the seam. He didn't want to go too far giving what he had. But there came a day when the invasion took place and he was driven out of North Korea.

And now he's penniless. And every day he says, It's only I have it. It's only I have it now. Or he'd do so much with it. But when he had it, he did nothing with it. Maybe some of us will be sitting in concentration camps before too long.

It could come in the way it's heading up, it will. Thinking outside of revival. And some of us will be saying, Now, I wish I was back in that home with the wall-to-wall carpeting. I really would pray all night, but I'm too sore and stiff and I've been beaten up today and I can't do it.

So we've got some very serious things to think about and I think preach about this week. My mother used to tell me it was always good to say grace before you had a meal. And so I thought tonight we'd just say grace before we have the meats in the days that lie ahead.

I have emphasized for many years, and by jewel of this year I'm advancing my 50th year as a preacher. Isn't that an awful long while? Well, you'll be trying to guess my age, but I won't tell you. And I have emphasized, and I've written some books about prayer.

One of the most embarrassing things at the judgment seat will be to discover how little we have really, little time we've really spent in prayer. I heard a lady say the other day, God hears prayer, but he answers faith.

Well, how does that upset your theology? But anyhow, stick it in your mind and think over it. He hears prayer, he answers faith. But if we shortchange ourselves in the line of prayer, well, I'm convinced that we shortchange God on the level of praise.

Worshiping the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness

A message tonight from the 96th Psalm and the 9th verse. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before him all the earth. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The capital city of Scotland is Edinburgh.

And it lies 400 miles north of the capital city of England, which is London. Now, you could do that stretch of 400 miles in less than an hour in a jet. But if you tried to do it 400 years ago, it would have taken you maybe anything from 10 to 20 days.

It was always a hazard. It was almost impossible to do it in winter, because obviously they had no bulldozers. The roads were very undeveloped, heavily infested with highwaymen. And the stagecoaches that did the trip, remember they had no heating in them.

But a Christian man took the journey. He was going on business, but while he was on business, he combined it with real spiritual pleasure. When he returned to London, he said to a friend, well, I did good business, but I had a great time spiritually.

He mentioned a certain city, and he said, I wonder, and I saw a tall, dark, rather stout man, by the name of Blair. He showed me the majesty of God. After another week of business, I went to another city, and I saw a different type of personality, with a very different accent, with a very different delivery.

He didn't show me the majesty of God, he showed me the depravity of my own nature. And then he said the third week, I managed to get to Anroff. And at Anroff, not very tall, but a very fair man, by the name of Samuel Rutherford.

He showed me the loveliness of Christ. It was from those amazing letters that you can still get, it was from the letters of Samuel Rutherford, that Mrs. Cousins extracted those very, very wonderful words, out of which he formed a poem, and out of which there came that wonderful hymn, The Sands of Time Are Thinking.

You remember perhaps the phrase that Alexander White said, he loved so much, with mercy and with judgment,.

My web of time he wove.

And I, the dual sorrow, was lusted by his love. I bless the hand that guided, I bless the heart that planned, when thrown where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. They set this man up in a thing, very much like a coffee pot, a building out on a craggy rock.

It was lost every day with the wind and the storm and the tide. And somebody went in one day to see Rutherford and expected to find him all twisted and dishearned with rheumatism, and as the world would say, curfew is lack, or wondering why God didn't intervene.

When they got there, he said, a place where he had given his life. Ian Amorous isn't heaven, and preaching isn't Christ, but in this sea-beat prison my Lord and I hold choice. He goes on to say, concerning his relationship with God, and his anticipation of heaven, it were a well-spent journey, though seven deaths lay between.

I don't think the political or moral or spiritual situation is any better than it was last time I was here. In fact, I think it's deteriorated very severely. But I'm quite sure that my generation needs to get each of the concepts that that famous, that wonderful traveler had.

We need a new revelation of the God that we serve, a new unfolding of the majesty of God. We need a new revelation of the abyss of the human nature, so graphically given to us in the first three chapters of Romans, particularly if you read Mr. Phillips's translation.

And I'm sure we need to see afresh the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This psalm is a delightful psalm. The words in the text tonight are, Worship the Lord in the duty of holiness. Let me ask you a straightforward question.

Answer it to God, not me. When did you last worship God? I see a notice outside of a church, Sunday morning, 11 o 'clock to 12. That's tying the Holy Ghost up pretty much, isn't it? But you could go to church all your life and never worship God.

You could sit in the choir and go to all that you want to sing and sing the anthems and stand up maybe and sing a wonderful hymn and yet never worship God. You can take communion every time you go to the house of God yet never worship Him.

You can give your tithes and your generous offering on top of that and yet never worship Him in spirit and in truth. You know, a good background to this text would be to read the fourth chapter there in the gospel as recorded by John.

And you remember that Jesus met a woman there. One of the wonderful things about Jesus, He had so much time for individuals. In fact, His longest sermons were given not to the 5 ,000 but to individuals.

The woman at the well, Zacchaeus, Nicodemus. Jesus had to begin talking to this woman before she gets into a controversy as our brother reminded us tonight. Oh, she was going to put Jesus straight. You say we should worship Him.

Look, all about is Mount Gerizim. Oh, they love that place. Part of the war had been unfolded there. There's still a small tribe of people on Mount Gerizim away there in Israel. And they value and they treasure a dusty, dusty copy of the Pentateuch.

And they say we have Abraham to our father. And you say Jerusalem is a place to worship. And the other man says, no, you go to Mecca. And the other man says, nonsense, you go to Rome. Jesus says, my dear lady, I want to tell you something.

The time has come, and the time now is, we're neither in Jerusalem nor in this place nor any other place. I have a special place. So we worship God. So we worship God. Not by turning to the east. You see, as soon as the glory departs out of the church, we try and fill the vacuum.

We put in a new stained glass window or we change the robes of the choir. There's nothing any better in them. But anyhow, we change the robes of the choir. And then we decide that the preacher must be preceded by someone bearing a golden cross.

Or we must put great stately candles up there. Some of you used to say we used to have fire and now we only have a pair of winking candles. And that's about all we have. But you see when the glory departs, not very long ago, one of these men with a kind of a computer mind estimated the value of the temple that was built by Solomon.

Disregard he had for value. Why? He paved the house of God with gold. And he put solid gold on the walls and even the desk had to have gold. This man worked out the dimensions, worked out the value of gold, and said that that temple cost at least a hundred and seventy billion dollars.

And yet even when he had done this and clustered the walls with precious stones, while everybody was breathless, they stood in awe and amazement. There never was a place like Jordan, there never was a place like that.

And yet that man had the spiritual, I'm going to use the long word I want there, spiritual sense to realize that except the glory of God filled the temple, you could use it as a stable, God is not interested in temples made with hanging.

He would always try to put all this strange architecture up. Springfellow called it bastard architecture. Well you know, but let me tell you again, you know very well there's no substitute for the Holy Ghost.

We've got a Christian and it doesn't work. I'm going to talk about that tomorrow night God willing. God fills the temple. This exhortation here, worship God, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Strangely enough this word worship is repeated fifteen times in the book of Psalms and it is repeated fifteen times in the book of the Revelation. For what do they do in heaven but worship Him? I told you, you can't make God rich if you give Him a million dollars a day.

You can't make God wise if you know more than Calvin knew. He didn't know everything, but anyhow, we can't make God wise, we can't make God rich, we can't make God strong. We're exalted here to worship God.

A Life of Adoration and Fellowship with God

And also many experiences that I did have with Dr. Tozer and they were about the highest peaks in fellowship that I ever had. I went into his office one day and he turned around, his sleeves were rolled up, he had a visor over his eyes and he was something of an old typewriter.

I used to tell him it was, he should have sold it, it was the first that was ever made. If he said it came out of the ark, I could have believed it. It was old and rusty and antique, but boy he produced some marvelous books on it.

He just ran around on his swivel chair and raised his back. Oh, he said, Len, come in and flap the door, let your hair down, let's talk. And in the course of talking, he pointed to a piece of dog-eared rug.

You've seen these beautiful rugs that come from the audience, handmade and the colors are dyed by hand and the designs are so marvelous that they take your breath away when you look at them. It wasn't the kind of rug he had, he had one that cost 69 cents from Woolworth's.

When they broke up his estate, I did manage to get one of his books, but I would have loved that piece of rug for sentimental reasons, I guess. And he pointed to that dog-eared rug and he said, you know, Len, I come in here some mornings, he never owned an automobile in his life.

He used to go to his little office in Chicago on the streetcar and carry what I call postage stamp sandwiches. He used to finish about 12 o 'clock and go down the street and sit on the little stool there in a little toffee bar and nibble at his sandwiches, drink his coffee, get up and go.

He was... nobody ever recognized his genius. He said, Len, I'm in this office some mornings so full of adoration that I just call my secretary in the other room and say, look, Mary this morning, no dictation.

Today, no interviews. I can't see anyone at all. You can go home if you like and be back at eight in the morning. And then he said, using an old English word, Len, he said, I... I would get down on that rug on my belly at eight o 'clock, still be there at eleven or twelve or one o 'clock, breathe the prayer, spend four or five hours just worshipping him.

Just, just saying, as he used to quote, say this too often, oh, how beautiful, how beautiful the sight of thee must be, thine endless wisdom, boundless power, thine awful purity. Mother of Jesus, love's reward, what rapture will it be?

Prostrate before thy throne to lie, I am gaze, I am gaze, and I am thee. Prince, what is your ask of that? You see, if you learn to worship, you'll never be, never be depressed, you'll never be stressed, and I dare to suggest, you'll never be defeated.

You get a rapturous view of the majesty of God. You say, as a young man came in my office, I am living in the Bahamas just now, trying to write a book, trying to write four, as a matter of fact, and this young man came in and he sat down and put his elbow down and he said, why should I worship God anyhow?

Well I said I can give you four reasons why you should worship God. First of all because he's God. Secondly because angels worship him. Thirdly because one day God ain't going to have to worship him. So underneath your doubt.

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is God to the glory of the Father. Now this text says that we should worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Theology of the Queen of the Phoenices. The cross is the crown on the head of that Queen.

The spirit of holiness or the indwelling spirit is the jewel in the middle of that crown. Now I'm glad that the psalmist and the divine inspiration put this word beauty there otherwise the text would read worship the Lord in holiness.

Now I know some holiness that are people that are as cranky and an old boy that are as hard to live with as anybody I ever knew. Again to quote Tozer he said we preachers often twist and torch the text to make them fit our theology.

I was raised with a holiness people and I'm not a bit sorry about that. I think some of them are very extreme. They talked about death. They were always digging the grave. They didn't get out of the grave.

They didn't get any resurrection life. They didn't mount up with wings of eagles. The word of God says if we're children of God by faith in Jesus that we're a kingdom of priests but they became God's policemen instead of being priests.

They were always chasing my senior sister to measure the length of her dress. I'd like to have chased some of those women and measured the length of their tails but they wouldn't let me. Maybe Dr. Harry Jessup is right when he says that the Pharisees were the holiness people that back fled.

You see once they lost the sweetness they began to major in externals. The star dress is something else. Usually the women get beaten up on that level. But you see here the word of God says worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

And there is nothing under God's heaven more beautiful than holiness. We back off from the word but if you change the word which you could do from the Greek anyhow. For holiness actually means soul health.

Healthiness. Worship the Lord in the beauty of your soul's health. Now one of the hymn writers amongst others wrote a hymn that said oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness bow down before him and his fullness proclaim with gold of obedience and in the sense of loneliness kneel and adore him the Lord is his name.

Worship, Holiness, and Spiritual Health

Worship is rather difficult to define because it's made up of so many different things. Worship, adoration, gratitude, thanksgiving. We really get, as our brother said, the brother that was reading the thing, we don't get the ecstasy of our Christianity.

We don't get the elevation that God wants us to have out of it. My, before we had these wretched song books that we have in most churches they used to have hymn books. I think some of the songs are silly.

Don't go for mansions over the hill. To me it sounds as though you're trying to make Jesus jazzy and I don't go for jazz and Jesus. They don't mix too well. I think we're trying to get our faith down to folk songs and it's not much good.

All those wonderful old hymns, somehow they ignite my spirit. They make me want to worship him in spirit and in truth. I want to stand speechless before him and see the King in his glory. I want to recognize that not five minutes after I die, not everyone in Shakespeare said I shuffle off this mortal coil, but even now I'm an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.

I'm not a beggar, I'm a prince. And we need to rediscover, I think, the riches of his grace, the riches of his power, the riches of his love. We're not possessing our possessions. The kids don't want our religion because it is so shabby.

I've always said this, if my boys didn't want my Christianity I'd pack up right away and I'd never preach again. Thank God I've got two boys missionaries, and they're the third one, I think, going to Africa this year.

If my boys didn't want my Christianity I'd never open my mouth in the pulpit. Now you can disagree if you like, that's up to you. But if there isn't something attractive about what I have in Christ and I've no right to try and shove it down the throat of your boy, if my boy doesn't want it.

So hell, so hell, the King of his beauty is residing in the palace of my personality. For our folly dwelleth not in temples made with hens. If God almighty only dwelt in Westminster Abbey this room wouldn't have much chance, would it?

We're to worship the Lord. I used to have a teacher when I was at college, Cliff College in England, who used to say, there are just two things you need when you go to have your devotions in the morning.

One is a Bible and the other is the Methodist hymn book. Now I don't know where you'd find it these days, but really I think one of the finest hymn books ever put together was the very old Baptist hymn book about a hundred years ago.

Some of the expressions throughout all those hymns were not the product of an intellect, they were the product of an emotion if you like. They were the product of a vital experience that somebody had with God and they put it down in beautiful language.

That's right, if you go to the Methodist, all Charles Wesley did was take John Wesley's music and John Wesley's theology and put it into music. Or if you want to predate John Wesley, you go to Isaac Roth's who gave us, of course amongst other hymns were nice today, The Wondrous Cross.

And sometimes you might find an old volume, I have one, of all the hymns of Isaac Roth. Buddy, you try switching channel 12 off some night and stick your feet up whether you have a coat or not and just go through some of those hymns.

Read them slowly and digest them and feel your spirit rising. You feel somehow that you've got wings and you're in another world. When all thy mercies, O my God, my rising source of aid, Transporting with the view I am lost in wonder, love and praise.

O you take the hymn written, I've forgotten his name for the moment, O ye, I think, who wrote, Lord of all beings, Flown afar by glory flames from sun and star, Sent of his soul and soul of every sphere,.

Yet to each loving heart I'll near. Christ, the Lord God, whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, Before thine ever-blazing throne we have no laughter of our own. Come on, preacher, when did you last bury your nose in the dust?

And gaze upon the King and his beauty before thine ever-blazing throne. They have two wings and they cover their faces because they can't gaze on the King and his beauty. And the King of Isaiah chapter 6 is the person of Jesus Christ in the 12th chapter of the gospel of God.

This said Isaiah when he saw him. And when you see Christ in his beauty and in his glory, you veil your face, you can't bear the dazzling brightness of his presence. And then you put two wings over yourself because you can't bear his scrutiny of your own life.

And as Tozer says, there's only one way to worship God and that's face downwards. It's arrogance even to stand, it's arrogance even to kneel. You see, when you get that rapturous vision and you see the King in his beauty, and you realize again that even the cherubim in the front of him, those holy beings that have never sinned, gaze upon the King in all his beauty and all his majesty.

And you go right back to the book of Revelation. It tells you there that one thing, that the servants of God, they serve him day and night and they worship him. Is it the 5th chapter there that says that there's a choir of 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 and thousands of thousands?

And if my figuring's right, that's over a hundred million with a few thousand numbers thrown in. It'll be something to hear the choir like that sing, won't it? But every woman can sing better than Gali Gertrude.

And every bass singer can sing better than Robinson used to sing. Not Robertson, Robinson. And every pundit can sing better than, what, Caruso? There's a lot of things you pray about that don't make sense when you're older.

When I was young, I used to pray, Lord bless me, Lord bless me. I found that was a prayer of bankruptcy, so I quit. You go to the place where you say, Lord bless me, and you pray, Lord make me a blessing.

And when you pray, Lord make me a blessing, you get blessed, blown in, sewn in. All these hymns are matchless. I go to churches sometimes, I don't often get back at the same time, but at least the first time I'm there, I usually say to them, why don't you sell your song books and get a hymn book?

We have forgotten how to worship. I mentioned, I think, when I was here before, about your brother Buck Singh, who's been in America this last year. I hope some of you heard him. I talked with him for about three hours, and in the course of talking, he said, well, the Americans are very wonderful people, very generous people, very clever people.

But he said, I discovered that while the Americans can make planes and automobiles and do so much, I was never in a church in America where they knew how to worship. And then I said, supposing I came to your church in England for the Lord's Day, now, how would the service proceed?

Oh, well, he said, by the way, the first three hours of the service, sounds more like a ball game, doesn't it? I've often said, if you want to make money, all you have to do is invent a church fuel that's as soft as a bleachers, you've got it made.

Because nobody gets pains when they sit on the bleachers in the boiling sun for four or five... They had a game not long ago, I think this past year, that lasted the very maximum, about twenty after one in the morning, it quit.

Now, I don't think it was finished, but legally they had to finish. Went to about twenty-one innings. Nobody complained. But, boy, you preach five minutes and somebody goes, preach five minutes all the time, preach ten minutes, they go, preach fifteen minutes, they go, preach half an hour, they go.

By the way, do the thing, what happens? Oh, he said, the first three hours of the service we give to praise, worship, adoration, oh, it's intoxicating. Sure it is, the line of heaven. Well, then what?

Well, he said, the second three hours. Yes. Oh, the second three hours, we spend in prayer. Supplication, intercession. Yes. The third three hours, yes, we break bread. One has a song, one has a hymn.

Word of exhortation, this fellow's just finished twenty-one days of fasting, this lady had a revelation, this man over here has a word of inspiration, and he said, we, we, but I said, now by the thing, you don't mean that every Lord's Day you spend nine hours in service, in worship, in praise?

Well, no, not every Lord's Day. Ah, well, now, now, don't give me the normal. Well, he said, that's the normal. Well, what do you mean you don't spend nine hours every Lord's Day? Oh, he said, some days the glory comes down, whether twelve hours, thirteen hours, fourteen hours.

Do you wonder, he said, he never went to church in America. Huh? All these things, spirit of faith come down, but not until twenty to twelve. Not until after the cross, then, and the offering. Good night.

The kingdom will fall apart if we don't get those miserable dollars. Come on, let's get it. Now you can come in, Holy Ghost, and I'm the preacher now. Now listen, you've got to go through because the chicken will burn if you don't.

You see, we're not liberals, we're the fundamentals, and if we're the best God has, well, God help us. Sure, the, the, the, the teacher was right when he said, take your hymn book into, into the prayer closet, take your Bible into the prayer closet.

He's got scripture for it, hasn't he? Well, does Paul say that in the Colossians in 3 .16, that the word of Christ will in you, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

What is Ephesians 5 .18? Well, Ephesians 5 .18 is, be filled with the Spirit. What's Ephesians 5 .19? Speaking to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody unto the Lord in your heart.

I can sing like Caruso inside. He gets spoiled something out, but that doesn't make any difference. The Lord doesn't tell me to sing like Caruso. He says, make melody unto the Lord in your heart. You see.

And sometimes I need crutches. Sometimes I have to borrow another man's language and say, praise my soul, the King of heaven, to his feet my tribute bring. Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, for like me his praise should sing.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him, praise the everlasting King. Praise him for his grace and favor to our fathers in distress. Praise him still the same forever, slow to chide and swift to bless.

Praise him, praise him. Glorious in his holiness. Why, Roman Catholic once got so blessed, the old Cardinal Newman, he was quite a theologian. He brought them in praise to the holiest in the heights and in the depths did praise.

In all his works most wonderful, most sure in all his ways. All loving wisdom of our God, when all sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. All wisest love, that flesh and blood which did in Adam fail, should spare the flesh against the foe.

Should strive and should prevail. There were three famous brothers in Scotland by the name of Bonner. God to him that I love and sing very often in my devotions. So thou my light, O Lord my God, in every part with praise, that my whole being may proclaim thy being and thy will.

Not for the lip of praise alone, not even a praising heart I ask, but for a life made up of praise in every part. Praise in the common things of life. It's going out and in praise in its duty and its deed, however small and meek.

So shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free, that my whole life in every step be fellowship with thee. You see part of this business of worship and praise and adoration is that first of all, as John says in his first epistle, that our fellowship is with the Father.

I know it isn't. It used to be, but it isn't now. Our fellowship is with one another about the Father. But you can't alter the defined order. Worship the Father. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ and with one another.

Witnessing to the Grace of God

It comes down. But first of all we must learn to worship him. Some years ago, roughly about 40, I was preaching in Scotland in a series of meetings. Someone came up after one of the meetings and said, there's an old old lady who lives in a tenement.

Would you take time out to see her? And I said, well, yeah, we've got a busy day, but is she sick? Well, it's not that she's sick, but she's very old. She's just had her hundredth birthday. Well, I thought when I'm a hundred, I'd like somebody to come and see me, I guess.

So I better go along. Now I went to see the old lady. She took a friend with me, another preacher. If you've been in these old Scottish tenements, you know there are three or four stories high, and you go up a twisting stone staircase.

We went up, found a number of the room, knocked at the door, nobody answered. They said she was very deaf and we went in. You'll be very generous if you give us five dollars for every scrap of furniture in the room.

Over here there was a rusty, an old bed anyhow. And a little frail lady whose wrists were just about as thick as my two fingers. She was as wrinkled as a prune, almost as deaf as the doorpost, as we say.

Totally blind, no teeth. The teeth were sunk. And she was lying back on the bed with her mouth open. So I could see here that she's got no teeth, and she's got no eyes, and she's got no hearing or hearing.

And I got on the side of the bed and I yelled in her ear. I called out her name. Mrs. Jack, oh, she said with a Scottish dialect, oh. I said, we'll be very generous, and I shouted, oh. She says, give me a hand, give me a hand.

She got hold of my hand with these scrawny hands of hers that were like claws, and she pulled my hand down at one side and my friend's hand down at the other. And she said, she says, can you sing crooning?

I thought for a moment, crooning, crooning. Can you sing crooning? She says, what with yonder sacred throng we are, till my feet may fall, join in the everlasting throng, and crooning right about. Sing crooning.

Sing crooning. Crooning. And before he could start singing crooning, she was about four notes off key. But brother, I don't think I've never heard anything more. I looked at the tears coming out of those blind eyes.

I looked at that hollow mouth. I looked at that wrinkled skin. And I look at that woman a hundred years of age, without any creature comforts. Enamel wash bowl, and the daughter brought washing to wash those beautiful little hands.

That woman lived in the city of Port in Scotland. She had a marvellous experience of the grace of God. And she says, I was reading my Bible. And it says in the Bible, you begin at Jerusalem. It's always easy to begin at the other most parts of the earth.

But nobody knows you there. And so she decided she'd begin at home. She made a vow to the Lord. She said, I'll witness for Christ in every street in this city. And she took a Bible and she preached in the streets.

While she was preaching one day, the devil, she said, the devil said to her, And so you're preaching, huh? And your own boy's a prodigal. Do you think the folk will take notice of you? Your boy's a prodigal.

You've no right to preach that God can save others. Your boy's a prodigal. And right there she's got a Bible and she stamps her foot and she said, God Almighty. I'll never preach again as long as I live till my boy gets saved.

And as soon as he's saved, I'll start preaching again. You've got to live pretty near to God to threaten him. Concerning the work of my hands commanding me. She stood with her Bible folded and her finger up and she says, God Almighty.

I'll never preach again, as she said in Scotland. I'll never preach again till my own laddie is converted. Not many months after he was converted. Not only converted, he became one of the great preachers of Scotland.

And she went everywhere telling of the wonder of God's grace that he heard and answered her prayers. And then after that, for a whole stretch of years, more than half a century, she went preaching and singing and testifying of the grace of God.

And it was no new experience for her to lie there because they said that when her daughter was out working, you could hear that croaking old voice, something like a bullfrog. But oh boy, when it got to heaven, it sounded like an archangel singing, Call him, call him Lord of all.